Famine price

“ It was also feared that, in case of a failure of the crops, a serious famine might happen to the people, owing to the want of the accustomed stores which are usually laid up by the government, in the paternal spirit of providing the poor with food at a moderate price, in the event of such a contingency. ”

“ The Pasha’s attempt to regulate the price of food by edicts has been very disastrous, and of course the present famine prices are laid to his charge—if a man will be omnipotent he must take the consequences when he fails. ”

“ Baker, for instance, says about the pressure upon urban populations and small fixed incomes owing to the famine is true; but then the pressure appears to be permanent, famine or no famine. The rise in price of ordinary provisions seems to be continuous and general. I heard the same complaint in the Deccan, in Eastern Bengal, Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Delhi, and Lahore. Within twenty years wages may have doubled, but the cost of common food has quadrupled. ”

“ She might be the granary of Europe, if her industry were freed and restored.
On the whole, there can be no fear of our being disappointed of any supply that we may be able and willing to pay for, at the price that the circumstances of the year will determine. Since the corn trade of the world has been thrown open, there has been an end of all apprehension of famine, in a country like England. There is always enough to be had by those who have ports to receive it, roads for its transit, and money to pay the price that it may bear. ”

“ November 2.—If I go ten yards from home it can 402be only into the world, and therefore I never move but for mischief. I have every post a packet of letters from Lord Sheffield, filling the tables and for many hours employment every day. There seems to be no great reason for apprehending any famine, or even such a scarcity as before, but the price must be too high for the poor, without being half high enough for the farmer: I mean of wheat, the crop of which is full as bad as it has been for ten years past, but there is a stock in hand which will keep it down. ”

“ That unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of scarcity, and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The daily allowance of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and extravagant proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of the rich ”

“ It also states that in one of the worst famines in India ten million people died of starvation within nine months. The average wage of the laboring man in India, according to the Governmental statistics, is fifty cents a month, and in famine years the price of wheat has risen to as high as $3.60 a bushel. ”

“ The people assembled in considerable numbers in parts of the South calling for food or employment. A man died of starvation on the public works in Limerick. At a meeting in Newry for the purpose of taking measures against the scarcity, and whilst some were denying its existence in that locality, the Right Rev. Dr. Blake, the Catholic bishop, said, that since he had entered the meeting, a letter had been handed to him stating that a person had just died of starvation in High Street. In April and May potatoes had risen to a famine price in the provinces. ”

“ It is true that in days of more restricted commercial intercourse, famine and starvation were more frequent, and a failure of crops in certain places was succeeded by such an extortionate price for the cereals as would be today inconceivable. ”

“ At Carrick-on-Shannon he witnessed what he calls a most painful and heartrending scene—poor wretches in the last stage of famine begging to be received into the house; women, who had six or seven children, imploring that even two or three of them might be taken in, as their husbands were earning but 8d. a-day, which, at the existing high price of provisions, was totally inadequate to feed them. Some of those children were worn to skeletons; their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone. ”

“ This has been done, I am assured, in parts of the Highlands of Scotland, where the failure of the potatoes has been as great and as severe a calamity as it has been in Ireland. [176] There is, no doubt, some inconvenience attending even these modes of interference with the market price of food; but the good over-balances the evil. Local committees or agents of landowners can ascertain the pressure of distress, measure the wants of a district, and prevent waste and misapplication. ”

“ Trade could not revive, until there was food to sustain it. Yet the mass of the people in 1816, still further impoverished by a deficient home harvest, imputed the evil to defective legislation, and the exclusion of foreign corn save at famine prices ”

“ Christmas is approaching, when the potato pits, most of them, will be opened; the poor people will clasp their hands in helpless despair, on seeing their six months' provisions a mass of rottenness; there will be no potatoes for seed next season; a general panic will seize all, and oatmeal for food will be scarcely purchasable by the people at any price. The Goverment, however, have been warned—let them act promptly, decisively, and at once, and not depend on the people helping themselves; for such is the character of the people that they will do nothing till starvation faces them. ”

“ In order to keep in check, as far as possible, the social evils incident to an extensive system of relief, it is indispensably necessary that the relief committees should not sell the meal or other food provided by them, except in small quantities to persons who are known to have no other means of procuring food; that the price at which the meal is sold should, as nearly as possible, be the same as the market prices which prevail in the neighbourhood ”

“ That which is not possible by a Government is possible by individual and social exertions. Everyone who travels through Ireland observes the large stacks of corn, which are the produce of the late harvest. There is nothing to prevent the purchase of grain by proprietors or committees, and the disposal of these supplies in shops furnished on purpose with flour at a fair price, with a moderate profit. ”

“ The low rate of wages fixed by the Government; the high price of provisions; the closing of the Government depôts; the large quantities of corn which they saw sent daily to England, whilst they who raised it starved, were amongst the chief causes which excited the people to acts of intimidation. In several instances they went in formidable bodies to the presentment sessions, apparently under the impression that the ratepayers, there assembled, had something to do with fixing the amount of wages, which of course was a popular error. ”

“ The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more mouths, less bread, fewer people. Europe and the Orient reached the starvation limit before America was settled. A bad crop meant a famine, and a famine started a plague. This plague and famine would sweep off a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to thrive on. England and Wales have had famines, Ireland has had famines, France has had famines, Russia has a deadly famine after every bad crop year, while in India and China famine is a chronic condition.
America has never had a famine. ”

“ But we are not exempt from famine. In the year 1816, known as the year of “eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death,” the crops failed throughout America because of freezing weather all summer long. Little or no food was raised and the Americans would have perished from famine had it not been for the wild meat in the woods. The people lived on deer and bear that winter. To-day if our food supply fails we can not live on venison. No country is by natural law exempt from famine. Our famine will come when we fill this country as thickly as men can stand; China and India have so filled themselves. ”

“ Similarly, we hear and we continue to respond to the cry that comes to our ears from the famine-stricken regions of Africa. That famine has already caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people and endangers the lives of millions. The solution to such famine involves not only rushing emergency food and medical supplies to the areas stricken, but also improving agricultural policies and enlisting greater cooperation by certain governments with international relief agencies. ”

“ In times past, it was the gaunt Avenger which decimated the people and which kept down the population within the range of tolerable existence. The god of dirt and insanitation carried away the unneeded residue left by famine. Famine is one of the very few evils before which human power stands helpless. The government has done very much by irrigation schemes and by the building of railways to mitigate [pg 022] this evil. By famine funds and relief works it strives, as it did the last famine, to reduce the mortality and suffering arising from these seasons of drought. ”

“ His favourite dream was of a general European peace with religious toleration: and one need only realize the state of France a hundred years later—populations crushed by cruel taxation and dying of famine by thousands—to see what the difference might have been if Henry and Sully could have worked their will for twenty years more, keeping the nobles in check, insisting on justice, studying and carrying into practical effect the means of making the country prosperous by useful public works, by careful training in agriculture and other industries. ”

“ The increase has been quite rapid during the last five years, owing to the experience of the last famine, when it was demonstrated that facilities for rapid transportation of food supplies from one part of the country to another were an absolute necessity. It is usually the case that when the inhabitants of one province are dying of starvation those of another are blessed with abundant crops, and the most effective remedy for famine is the means of distributing the food supply where it is needed. ”

“ The situation is becoming all the more difficult because of the ever-increasing famine due to the shortage of means of production as well as of all the necessaries of life; this famine will be felt very acutely, not only on account of the lack of these goods, but also because of the overabundance of paper money. ”

“ It is not the first time in history that starvation and famine affect people all over the world. What is new is the scale of the problem, affecting well over one billion human beings. In June, 1974, in the Assessment of the World Food Situation, commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the situation was described in terms still unchanged: "The causes of inadequate nutrition are many and closely interrelated, including ecological, sanitary, and cultural constraints, but the principal cause is poverty. ”

“ The artificial causes of famine have mostly ceased to be operative on any large scale. Chief among them is war, which may cause a shortage of food-supplies, either by its direct ravages or by depleting the supply of agricultural labour. But only local famines are likely to arise from this cause. Legislative interference with agricultural operations or with the distribution of food-supplies, currency restrictions and failure of transport, which have all caused famines in the past, are unlikely thus to operate again ”

“ Famine, indeed, was one of the plagues of France until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Instead of allowing, as in the present day, supply to follow demand, the Government of the country maintained laws and regulations for particular provinces and privileges for particular corporations. Wheat had to be sold at fixed places and nowhere else, and often it was left to rot in one district, while at another, not many miles distant, the peasants were dying of hunger. ”

“ It thus comes about that scarcity amounting to a real famine cannot result from the failure of crops in any single year. It requires two consecutive failures to produce extensive suffering among the very poor, and three to result in a real famine. ”

“ From the observations now made, however, it is apparent that the effect of the famine has been, not to conceal the effects of free-trade, but to accelerate them. For what has the famine done? It has simply caused fifteen millions' worth of domestic agricultural produce to be exchanged for fifteen millions' worth of foreign agricultural produce. The potato crop, which has perished in Ireland, is estimated at fifteen millions' worth ”

“ The people are all anxious to lay in a little supply of provisions against sudden famine conditions, and the merchants are holding them up for all the traffic will bear. Articles that will keep indefinitely, such as flour, chocolate, dried fruits, potatoes, coffee, and preserved meats, are most in demand. Owing to the hand-to-mouth buying methods of the French, Paris is never more than three days ahead of famine. No one realizes this better than the French themselves, and therefore each and every one desires to lay in at least a small supply of provisions. ”

“ This is the simple history of the famine in 1847. And this history must inevitably be repeated in every country that transforms its agriculture into raising stock, and which yet aspires to support the same number of inhabitants; for it is quite evident that a stock-raising country cannot feed as many people as an agricultural one. ”

“ If it is said, But our present question is what must be done to save the people’s lives now, I answer, We are spending Millions! How are we to spend them? We are employing a Million of people! How should we employ them? If in consideration of this question we are to exclude the word Water, if this is a sine qua non in the matter, we must lose all the money and leave the Country in the same state of exposure to the horrors of another Famine. The main point of all is this, that we have the most indisputable proof that the Country must not leave the Famine in the hands of the India Office. ”