Hunger strike

“ But when I entered Holloway on that April day in 1913, it was with full knowledge that I had before me a far more prolonged struggle than any that the militant suffragists had hitherto faced. I have described the hunger strike, that terrible weapon with which we had repeatedly broken our prison bars. The Government, at their wits' end to cope with the hunger strikers, and to overcome a situation which had brought the laws of England into such scandalous disrepute, had had recourse to a measure, surely the most savagely devised ever brought before a modern Parliament. ”

“ This statement can be verified by the conditions existing in most any county jail where members of the I. W. W. are confined. A very recent instance is at Topeka, Kansas, where members were compelled to go on a hunger strike as a means of securing food for themselves that would sustain life. Members have been forced to resort to the hunger strike as a means of getting better food in many places. ”

“ Hunger forces even the most timid ones to take bread wherever it is. So it has been evident in all revolutions and rebellions that the women, who were politically the most reactionary, were now, as it was necessary to satisfy the hunger of their little ones, the most revolutionary and desperate in the plundering of bakeries and butchers shops. ”

“ All of them, confined in one jail, should be kept together in the same ward. At least one standard daily newspaper in vernacular or English should be given to them. Full and proper facilities for study should be granted. Lastly, they should be allowed to supplement their expenses for diet and clothing from their private sources.
We still hope that the government will carry into effect without further delay its promise made to us and to the public, so that there may not be another occasion for resuming the hunger strike. ”

“ He/she and his/her family members have a bad habit of getting hungry in the afternoon. A strike by textile workers started in 1982 in Mumbai is perhaps still going on legally. I will have a cake with icing or I will go hungry without it is a slogan for the labour leader. He gets the icing but the workers have to deal with hunger every day. They have to live dog's life. ”

“ You who see, each day, poured into the lap of your city, food sufficient to assuage the hunger of a nation, can form but an imperfect idea of the horrors of famine. In battle, in the fulness of his pride and strength, little recks the soldier whether the hissing bullet sings his sudden requiem, or the cords of life are severed by the sharp steel. ”

“ From all the land rises the hunger wail, from Ghetto and countryside, from prison and casual ward, from asylum and workhouse—the cry of the people who have not enough to eat. Millions of people, men, women, children, little babes, the blind, the deaf, the halt, the sick, vagabonds and toilers, prisoners and paupers, the people of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, who have not enough to eat. And this, in face of the fact that five men can produce bread for a thousand; that one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people, woollens for 300, and boots and shoes for 1000. ”

“ From him who has a little, a little is required—and from him who has much, much is required—that the plague of famine be stayed. The case is beyond the reach of legislation, but clearly within the power of associated benevolence to mitigate. A cry of hunger is gone forth—is the ear deaf, that it cannot hear?—are the hands that have been often effectually stretched forth, shortened that they cannot save? ”

“ Meantime a blight had fallen on the earth, and a whole people's food, in one night, perished. To the new Government, the famine that ensued was an assurance of subsistence and success. Hunger would waste the bodies of the people, as the dearth of truth had wasted their souls. The ministry affected great sympathy, great diligence, and great impotence. ”

“ I was about to speak; had I done so, I would not have been here this night; for an alarm would have been sounded, and the hunters been put on my track. Here were hunger, cold, thirst, disappointment, and chagrin, confronted only by the dim hope of liberty. I tremble to think of that dreadful hour. To face the deadly cannon's mouth in warm blood unterrified, is, I think, a small achievement, compared with a conflict like this with gaunt starvation. The gnawings of hunger conquers by degrees, till all that a man has he would give in exchange for a single crust of bread. ”

“ In addition, within the camp, famine, like a madness, plagued them. For if, as they say, "nothing does more harm than hunger wrung from the unwilling," what suffering do you think they endured, to what crosses were they constantly condemned, without a single, even false, consoling hope, as they laid siege each day to the impenetrable walls? The ordinary people, eaten away by poverty, wandered through various provinces; driven by the lack of food, some began to wander towards Cyprus, others to Romania, while others made their way to the mountains. ”

“ Which sword and famine both at once oppress:
Famine so fierce, that what's denied man's use,
Even deadly plants, and herbs of poisonous juice,
Wild hunger seeks; and, to prolong our breath,
We greedily devour our certain death:
The soldier in th' assault of famine falls:
And ghosts, not men, are watching on the walls. ”

“ But if this were true, what was the abhorred catastrophe to which I was now reserved? The sides of this pit were inaccessible; human footsteps would never wander into these recesses. My friends were unapprized of my forlorn state. Here I should continue till wasted by famine. In this grave should I linger out a few days in unspeakable agonies, and then perish forever.
The inroads of hunger were already experienced; and this knowledge of the desperateness of my calamity urged me to frenzy. ”

“ If the workers were suffering hunger, the Company was encroaching on its millions. Why should it prove the stronger in this war of labour against gold? In any case, the victory would cost it dear. They would have their corpses to count. He felt the fury of battle again, the fierce desire to have done with misery, even at the price of death. It would be as well for the settlement to die at one stroke as to go on dying in detail of famine and injustice. ”

“ When gaunt famine intrudes upon their household, it is but natural that they should inquire the cause. Hunger began the French Revolution.
Virginia did not read this editorial, because it appeared in that abhorred organ of the Mudsills, the 'Missouri Democrat.' The wheels of fortune were turning rapidly that first hot summer of the war time. Let us be thankful that our flesh and blood are incapable of the fury of the guillotine. But when we think calmly of those days, can we escape without a little pity for the aristocrats? ”

“ Then are the streets choked with blackened ruins and putrid masses, and the days of sorrow and wailing come, when the living are unable to bury the dead. Again, a great famine has come upon the city after the days of its early tribulations have passed away, and strong men, driven to desperation by the pangs of hunger, slay their wives and children, and feed upon the dead bodies, and mothers devour the sucking babes in their arms ”

“ Yet the Government is forced to accompany its preventive measures with an expenditure of 20s per head of the population on public works—equivalent to an English rate in aid of twenty millions! Could there be a more conclusive proof that the dread of hunger is a real and a terrible power for evil among Continental nations; that their choice lies, in a word, between a recognition of the right to subsistence—a Poor Law with severe labour tests and restrictions—and periodical, spasmodic measures of relief enforced by insurrection? ”

“ When famine reigns, a few children may be found in the streets; but they are the wan, emaciated victims of hunger, who wander from their desolate homes to beg, with tears and outstretched hands, for bread. If the war or the famine continue its ravages, the number of children steadily decreases. ”

“ Thousands of all classes, ages, and sexes, are turned out of their homes, and wander about in nakedness and want, begging and plundering, selling their children into slavery or giving them to those who will feed and keep them as servants, while other thousands perish of hunger in the jungles and the highways, or are swept off by diseases incident to such squalor. In a single year, famine alone has carried away a million of the population of a land fertilized by a thousand rivers, and fecund of vegetation under the warm blushes of a tropical sun. ”

“ You probably remember our telling you that when first these people were forced into the cities, and began to feel the pangs of hunger, they begged the authorities to give them permission to go back to their farms, and gather in the crops that were rotting in the fields, that they might have food to save themselves from starving. ”

“ But cold weather and crop failure are not the only things that could bring a famine in America. Slacking in production has the same effect as crop failure. A farmers' strike could bring a famine. A railroad strike could do the same. Many men advocate a combination farmers' strike and railroad strike to destroy capital (that is, to destroy the food supply) . Don't get impatient, boys. You shall have your famine, if you will wait long enough. And the less work you do while you are waiting, the sooner it will come. Nature is never whipped. Nature will take a crack at you, if you leave an opening. ”

“ Hunger, they say, will break through stone walls, and when we reflect, that in addition to this irresistible stimulus, we may add a spirit of strong prejudice and resentment against these heartless persons, it is not surprising that the starving multitudes should, in the ravening madness of famine, follow up its outrageous impulses, and forget those legal restraints, or moral principles, that protect property under ordinary or different circumstances. ”

“ Progress has been made in averting the threat of famine in many regions, but widespread poverty and hunger, especially in developing countries, constantly challenge us to ease the human suffering they cause and to preserve the human potential they deplete. As hunger robs people of health and strength, it also saps the economic systems to which they might otherwise contribute, upsets the social order, frustrates progress at every level, and engenders hopelessness and instability. ”

“ For example, the worst reports of hunger and starvation often come from countries that have been racked by years of political upheaval and civil war. Indeed, in countries such as the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, famine has not been so much the result of adverse weather conditions and crop shortages as of strife-related barriers to the distribution of food. The needless suffering of millions of innocent men, women, and children compels us to persevere in the quest for lasting peace and security. ”

“ There was nothing left in the country to eat. Yea, a crow flying over it would have failed to discover a morsel with which to appease its hunger; for a Sheridan by another name had been there with his minions of destruction, and had ruthlessly destroyed every vestige of food and every means of support. Every larder was empty, and those with thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, were as poor as the poorest, and as hungry too. Packing trunks, in every house to which refugees had returned, contained large amounts of Confederate money. ”

“ And I am assured by several experienced observers, that there are thousands of men who rise in the morning and go forth to labour with their picks and shovels in their hands, who are irrecoverably doomed to death. No human aid can save them. The plague spot of famine is on their foreheads; the worm of want has eaten in two their heart strings. Still they go forth uncomplaining to their labour and toil, cold, and half naked upon the roads, and divide their eight or ten pence worth of food at night among a sick family of five or eight persons. ”

“ Hunger creates the right of capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.
By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way. ”

“ Famine added its horrors to the stupendous weight of afflictions under which the people were groaning. The gaunt spectre of starvation stalked abroad amidst them, and the prospect of a slow and painful death haunted their vision.... People and government alike sighed for the relief which they could nowhere obtain. ”

“ If one considers that most of these people were without any resources whatsoever, and that the housing and feeding of such vast masses demanded the expenditure of large sums of money, which apparently were not available, it will easily be understood that all these men, women, and children of all ages and conditions suffered not only untold inconveniences, but actually the pangs of hunger and thirst, which in a great many instances resulted in the outbreak of epidemics and in the decimation of whole camps. ”

“ Like the rest of the citizens, he was sunk in a heavy stupor of starvation—selfish, reckless, brutalised. No disasters could depress, no atrocities rouse him. Famine had torn asunder every social tie, had withered every human sympathy among his besieged fellow-citizens, and he was famishing like them. ”