insisting that it shall be solved. The other things can follow.""There was an old Egyptian chap," he said, "a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: 'In my time no man went hungry.' I'd rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months' journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: 'In my time no man went hungry.' And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What's the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men's souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man's a hungry beast.
"I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman's union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London's poor. There was a 'glut' of it, they said. The 'market' didn't want it. Funny, isn't it, a 'glut'
of food: and the kiddies can't learn their lessons for want of it.
I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble.
The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them. It's the muddle of the thing that makes me mad--the ghastly muddle-headed way the chief business of the world is managed. There's enough food could be grown in this country to feed all the people and then of the fragments each man might gather his ten basketsful.
There's no miracle needed. I went into the matter once with Dalroy of the Board of Agriculture. He's the best man they've got, if they'd only listen to him. It's never been organized: that's all.
It isn't the fault of the individual. It ought not to be left to the individual. The man who makes a corner in wheat in Chicago and condemns millions to privation--likely enough, he's a decent sort of fellow in himself: a kind husband and father--would be upset for the day if he saw a child crying for bread. My dog's a decent enough little chap, as dogs go, but I don't let him run my larder.
"It could be done with a little good will all round," he continued, "and nine men out of every ten would be the better off. But they won't even let you explain. Their newspapers shout you down. It's such a damned fine world for the few: never mind the many. My father was a farm labourer: and all his life he never earned more than thirteen and sixpence a week. I left when I was twelve and went into the mines. There were six of us children; and my mother brought us up healthy and decent. She fed us and clothed us and sent us to school; and when she died we buried her with the money she had put by for the purpose; and never a penny of charity had ever soiled her hands. I can see them now. Talk of your Chancellors of the Exchequer and their problems! She worked herself to death, of course. Well, that's all right. One doesn't mind that where one loves. If they would only let you. She had no opposition to contend with--no thwarting and hampering at every turn--the very people you are working for hounded on against you.
The difficulty of a man like myself, who wants to do something, who could do something, is that for the best part of his life he is fighting to be allowed to do it. By the time I've lived down their lies and got my chance, my energy will be gone."He knocked the ashes from his pipe and relit it.
"I've no quarrel with the rich," he said. "I don't care how many rich men there are, so long as there are no poor. Who does? I was riding on a bus the other day, and there was a man beside me with a bandaged head. He'd been hurt in that railway smash at Morpeth.
He hadn't claimed damages from the railway company and wasn't going to. 'Oh, it's only a few scratches,' he said. 'They'll be hit hard enough as it is.' If he'd been a poor devil on eighteen shillings a week it would have been different. He was an engineer earning good wages; so he wasn't feeling sore and bitter against half the world. Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat.
It's been tried and what's been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.
"A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals.