CHAPTER VII. — FLOUR RIOT OF 1837.
Starvation will always create a Riot.—Foreign Population easily aroused against the Rich.—Severe Winter of 1836.—Scarcity of Flour.—Meeting of Citizens called without Result.—Meeting called in the Park.—Speeches.—Sacking of Hart & Co.'s Flour Store, in Washington Street.—Strange Spectacle.—National Guards called out.—Disperse the Mob.—Attack on Herrick's Flour Store.—Folly of the Riot.
Hunger will drive any people mad, and once let there be real suffering for want of food among the lower classes, while grain is piled up in the storehouses of the rich, and riots will surely follow. In the French Revolution of 1789, there was a great scarcity of provisions, which caused frightful outbreaks. It will never do to treat with scorn the cry of millions for bread. When, amid the general suffering in Paris, one said to Foulon, the minister of state, the people are starving for bread, he replied, "Let them eat hay." The next day he was hung to a lamp-post. The tumultuous multitude marching on Versailles, shouting wildly for "bread," was a fearful spectacle. One can hardly blame starving men from seizing food by violence, if it can be got in no other way; and if ever a mob could be justifiable, it would be when they see their families suffering and perishing around them, in the very sight of well-stored granaries.
In the old despotisms of Europe, the poor and oppressed attribute all their want and suffering to the rich and powerful, so that they are not held back from redressing their wrongs by ignorance of their source, but fear of the strong hand of their rulers.
These men, embittered not only by their own sufferings, but by the traditions of the past, when they come to this country are easily roused to commit acts of violence by anything that reminds them of their old oppressions. They have tasted the wormwood and the gall, and refuse to have it pressed to their lips in a country where liberty is the birthright of all. This is what has made, and still makes, the foreign population among us so dangerous. The vast proportion of them are from this very class. Ignorant of everything but their wrongs, they rise in angry rebellion at any attempt, or fancied attempt, to renew them here. Unfortunately there are Americans among us, who, knowing this, work upon this sensitive, suspicious feeling, to accomplish their own ends. The politician does it to secure votes; but the worst class is composed of those who edit papers that circulate only among the scum of society, and embittered by the sight of luxuries beyond their reach, are always ready to denounce the rich and excite the lower classes against what they call the oppression of the aristocracy.
It is doubtful whether the frightful riot of 1863 would ever have taken place, but for this tone assumed by many of the city papers. So of this flour riot, it probably would never have happened, but for demagogues, who lashed the ignorant foreign population into fury against their rich oppressors. Starvation, which as we said may be a justification of violence, did not exist—it was only the high price of provisions, growing out of scarcity, that caused it, but which scarcity, they were told, was created solely by the cupidity of the rich.
The year in which the great fire occurred, was a disastrous one to the crops of the country. The mighty West, that great granary of the nation, was not then open as now, and the main supply of grain came from east of the Alleghanies. Hence the cause which would create a short crop in one section, would be apt to prevail more or less over all the grain region. We imported wheat at this time very largely; not only from England, but from the Black Sea.
In September, flour was about seven dollars a barrel, but this, as the winter came on, went up to twelve dollars—a great rise at that time.