ription: '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