Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/53

 10 soon as possible. On the 5th, in retaliation for the daily murder of communards captured by the Versailles troops, there was enacted a decree for the arrest of hostages, but it was never carried out. On the 6th, the guillotine was fetched out by the 137th battalion of the National Guard, and publicly burnt amid loud popular applause. On the 12th, the Commune ordered the triumphal column on the Place Vendôme, which had been constructed by Napoleon I. after the war of 1809 out of captured cannon, to be overthrown, as it was a symbol of chauvinism and mutual hatred among the nations. This was accomplished on the 16th of May. On the 16th of April, the Commune issued an order for a statistical account of all factories and workshops which had been closed by the employers; for the elaboration of plans for their management by the workingmen hitherto engaged in them, who were to be formed into co-operative societies for the purpose; and, also, for the federation of these societies into one great coöperative organization. On the 20th, it abolished the night work of bakers, as also the register-offices for procuring employment, which, since the Second Empire, had been the monopoly of certain police-appointed scoundrels, exploiters of the worst kind. The matter was hence-forward placed in the hands of the mayoralties of the twenty arrondissements of Paris. On the 30th of April it decreed the abolition of pawnshops, as being incompatible with the right of workmen to their tools and to credit. On the 5th of May it ordered the destruction of the chapel erected in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI.