text:  The Committee of Public Salvation was often shaken by a scarcity of provisions in the capital and never failed to tremble at the forests of pikes which when want became severe issued from the Faubourg St Antoine; but a trades'-union committee succeeds in compelling men by threats of the torch and the dagger to remain in idleness for months together and surrender their birthright and inheritance the support of themselves the food of their children to the commands of an unknown power which retains them in the agonies of want till suffering nature can no longer endure