Thus adulteration, which John Bright declared was a legitimate form of competition, made its appearance in a widely different industry from his own, to the detriment, even thus early in the struggle, of the legitimate growers of more acid but more genuine beverages in the South. Adulteration became a war-cry among the peasants, who felt themselves defrauded. Republicans of great commercial reputation and high standing in finance were accused, rightly or wrongly, of being deeply and profitably concerned in this nefarious traffic. That was all bad enough. But, at last, a remedy for the vineyard plague was discovered and widely used, with the aid of the Government, partly by chemical applications to the vines, partly by bringing in new stocks from without. Then followed exceptionally good vintages in the Bordeaux country, while the adulteration, falsification, manipulation of other wines with sugar and the like continued. Hence an abnormal glut of wine of every degree, with a corresponding fall in price. The peasants, whose views of the admirable law of supply and demand were very crude, only discovered that the more wine they produced the less money could they get for it! To produce for the consumer, at a loss to themselves, at once struck them as an unfair dispensation in the order of the market, since it affected the sales of their wines. Obviously, they said, the Government was to blame. How could they pay taxes when wine was fetching a derisory price? Why should they borrow to pay taxes when wine was fetching a derisory price? Let Government take short order with the adulterators and big producers out there in the West, who were preventing the hard-working toilers on the soil in the South from disposing of their sole saleable product at a profit. A Republic which couldn't protect the backbone of the nation, the Southern wine-growers, to wit, was of no use to them. And the people of the South, as M. Clemenceau knows very well, for he is Senator for the Var, are a vivacious and an excitable folk. But their vivacity and excitement had already been worked up to a high pitch by gradual exasperation before M. Clemenceau himself took office. It was his hard fate to meet the full fury of the storm as Premier of France.