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WHY DO MEN STARVE?
BY C. BRADLAUGH.
ht is it that human beings are starved to death, in a
wealthy country like England, with its palaces, its cathe
drals, and its abbeys ; with its grand mansions, and luxu
rious dwellings, with its fine enclosed parks, and strictly
guarded preserves ; with its mills, mines, and factories ; with
its enormous profits to the capitalists ; and with its broad
acres and great rent rolls to the landholder ? The fact that
men, old, young, and in the prime of life; that women, and
that children, do so die, is indisputable. The paragraph in
the daily journals, headed “ Death from Starvation,” or
« Another death from Destitution,” is no uncommon one to
the eyes of the careful reader.
In a newspaper of one day, December 24th, 1864, may
be read the verdict of a London jury that “ the deceased.
Robert Bloom, died from the mortal effects of effusion or>
the brain and disease of the lungs, arising from natural
causes, but the said death was accelerated by destitution,
and by living in an ill-ventilated room, and in a court
wanting in sanitary requirementsand the verdict of
another jury, presided over by the very Coroner who sat oil
the last case, “ that the deceased, Mary Hale, was found
dead in a certain room from the mortal effects of cold and
starvationas also the history of a poor wanderer from the
Glasgow City Poor House found dead in the snow.
In London, the hive of the world, with its merchant
millionaires, even under the shadow of the wealth pile, star
vation is as busy as if in the most wretched and impo
�2
WHY DO MEN STARVE?
verished village; busy indeed, not always striking the victim
so obtrusively that the coroner’s inquest shall preserve
a record of the fact, but more often busy quietly, in the
wretched court and narrow lane, up in the garret, and down
in the cellar, stealing by slow degrees the life of the poor.
Why does it happen that Christian London, with its mag
nificent houses for God, has so many squalid holes for the
poor? Christianity from its thousand pulpits teaches,
“ Ask and it shall be given to you,” “ who if his son ask
bread, will he give him a stone ?” yet with much prayer the
bread is too frequently not encugh, and it is, alas 1 not seldom
that the prayer for bread gets the answer in the stone of
the paved street, where he lays him down to die. The
prayer of the poor outcast is answered by hunger, misery,
disease, crime, and death, and yet the Bible says, “ Blessed
be ye poor.*’ Ask the orthodox clergyman why men starve,
why men are poor and miserable; he will tell you that
it is God’s will; that it is a punishment for man’s sins.
And so long as men are content to believe that it is God’s
Will that the majority of humankind should have too little
happiness, so long will it be impossible effectually to get
them to listen to the answer to this great question.
Men starve because the great bulk of them are ignorant
of the great law of population, the operation of which coiltrols their existence and determines its happiness Or misery.
They starve, because pulpit teachers have taught them for
centuries to be content with the state of life in which it has
pleased God to call them, instead of teaching them how to
extricate themselves from the misery, degradation, and igno
rance which a continuance of poverty entails.
Men starve because the teachers have taught heaven in
stead of earth, the next world instead of this. It is now
generally admitted by those who have investigated the sub
ject, that there is a tendency in all animated life to increase
beyond the nourishment nature produces. In the human
race, there is a constant endeavour on the part of its mem
bers to increase beyond the means of subsistence within
�WHY DO MEN STARVE?
3
their reach. The want of food to support this increase
operates, in the end, as a positive obstacle to. the further
; spread of population, and men are starved because the great
, mass of them have neglected to listen to one of nature’s
clearest teachings. The unchecked increase of population is
in a geometrical ratio, the increase of food for their subsist
ence is in an arithmetical ratio. That is, while humankind
would increase in proportion as 1, 2, 4, 8,16, 32, 64, 128,
256, food would only increase as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
The more the mouths the less the proportion of food. While
the restraint to an increase of population is thus a want of
food, and starvation is the successful antagonist of strug
gling human life, it is seldom that this obstacle operates im
mediately—its dealing is more often indirectly against its
victims. Those who die of actual famine are few indeed
compared with those who die from various forms of disease,
induced by scarcity of the means of subsistence. If any of my
readers doubt this, their doubts may be removed by a very
short series of visits to the wretched homes of the paupers
of our great cities. Suicide is the refuge mainly of those
who are worn out in a bitter, and, to them, a hopeless struggle
against accumulated ills. Disease, suffering, and misery
are the chief causes of the prevalence of suicide in our coun
try, and suicide is therefore one form, although comparatively
minute, in which the operation of the law of population may
be traced.
From dread of the pangs of poverty, men, women, and
children are driven to unwholesome occupations, which des
troy not only the health of the man and woman actually
employed, but implant the germs of physical disease in their
offspring. A starving woman seeking food mixes white
lead with oil and turpentine for a paltry pittance, which
provides bare existence for her and those who share it; in
a few weeks, she is so diseased she can work no longer, and
the hospital and grave in turn receive her. Men and
women are driven to procure bread by work in lead mines•
they rapidly dig their own graves, and not alone themselves,
�4
WHY DO MEN STARVE.
but their wretched offspring are death-stricken as the
penalty; the lead poisons the blood of parent and child
alike. Young women and children work at artificial flower
making, and soon their occupation teaches that Scheele’s and
Schweenfurth green, bright and pleasing colours to the eye,
are death’s darts too often fatally aimed. The occupation
may be objected to as unhealthy; but the need for food is
great, and the woman’s or child’s wages, wretchedly little
though they are, yet help to fill the mouths at home: so the
wage is taken till the worker dies. Here, again, the checks
to an increase of population all stop short of starvation—the
victims are poisoned instead of starved. So where some
forty or fifty young girls are crowded into a badly ventilated
work-room, not large enough for half the number, from early
in the morning till even near midnight, when orders press;
or in some work-room where slop clothes are made, and
twenty-five tailors are huddled together in a little parlour
scarce wide enough for three—they work to live, and die
slowly while they work. They are not starved, but is this
sort of asphyxiation much better ? The poor are not only
driven to unhealthy, but also to noisome dwellings. There
are in London, Liverpool, G-lasgow, Edinburgh, Man
chester, and other large cities, fearful alleys, with wretched
hoftses, and small ill-ventilated rooms, each room containing
a family, the individuals of which are crowded together
under conditions so wretched that disease, and often speedy
death, is the only possible result. In the East of London,
ten, eleven, and, in some cases, fourteen persons have
been found sleeping in one wretched little room. Is it
wonderful that some of these misery-stricken ones die
before they have time to starve? • Erom poverty the
mother, obliged to constantly work that the miserable
pittance she gets may yield enough to sustain bare life, is
unable properly to nurse and care for baby-child, and often
quick death, or slow but certain disease, ending ultimately
m the grave, is the result.
The poor live by wages. Wages popularly signify the
�WHY DO MEN 8TAB.VE ?
5
amount of money earned by the labourer in a given time;
but the real value of the money-wages is the amount in
quantity and quality of the means of subsistence which
the labourer can purchase with that money. Wages may
be nominally high, but really low, if the food and com
modities to be purchased are, at the same time, dear in price.
An undue increase of population reduces wages in more
than one way : it reduces them in effect, if not in nominal
amount, by increasing the price of the food to be purchased;
and it also reduces the nominal amount, because the nominal
amount depends on the ©mount of capital at disposal for
employ, and the number of labourers seeking employment.
No remedies for low wages, no seheme for the prevention
and removal of poverty can ever be efficacious until they
operate on and through the minds and habits of the masses.
It is not from rich men that the poor must hope for deliver
ance from starvation. It is not to charitable associations
the wretched must appeal. Temporary alleviation of the
permanent evil is the best that can be hoped for from such
aids. It is by the people that the people must be saved. Mea
sures which increase the dependence of the poor on charitable
aid can only temporarily benefit one portion of the labour
ing class while injuring another in the same proportion; and
charity, if carried far, must inevitably involve the recipients
in ultimate ruin and degradation by destroying their mutual
self-reliance. The true way to improve the worker, in all cases
short of actual want of the necessaries of life, is to throw him
entirely on his own resources, but at the same time to teach
him how he may augment those resources to the utmost. It is
only by educating the ignorant poor to a consciousness of the
happiness possible to them, as a result of their own exer
tions, that you can induce them effectually to strive for it.
But, alas 1 as Mr. Mill justly observes, “ Education is not
compatible with extreme poverty. It is impossible effec
tually to teach an indigent population.” The time occupied
in the bare struggle to exist leaves but few moments and
fewer opportunities for mental cultivation to the very poor.
�6
WHY DO WEN STAHWE?
The question of wages and their relation to capital and
population, a question which interests a poor man so much,
is one on which he formerly hardly ever thought at all, and;
on which even now he thinks much too seldom. It is neces
sary to impress on the labourer that the rate of wages de
pends on the proportion between population and capital. If'
population increases without an increase of capital, wages
fell; the number of competitors in the labour market
being greater, and the fund to povide for them not having
increased proportionately, and if capital increases without
an increase of population, wages rise. Many efforts havebeen made to increase wages, but none of them can be per
manently successful which do not include some plan for
preventing a too rapid increase of labourers. Population
has a tendency to increase, and has increased, faster than
capital; this is evidenced by the poor and miserable condi
tion of the great body of the people in most of the old
countries of the world, a condition which can only be
accounted for upon one of two suppositions, either that
there is a natural tendency in population to increase faster
than capital, or that capital has, by some means, been pre
vented from increasing as rapidly as it might have done. That
population has such a tendency to increase that, unchecked,
it would double itself in a small number of years—say
twenty-five—is a proposition which most writers of any
merit coneur in, and which may be easily proven. In some
instances, the increase has been even still more rapid. That
capital has not increased sufficiently is evident from the
existing state of society. But that it could increase under any
circumstances with the same rapidity as is possible to popu
lation, is denied. The increase of capital is retarded
by an obstacle which does not exist in the case of popu
lation. The augmentation of capital is painful. It can
only be effected by abstaining from immediate enjoyment.
In the case of augmentation of population precisely the
reverse obtains. There the temporary and immediate plea-,
sure is succeeded by the permanent pain. The only pos-i
�WHY DO MEN STAI1VE?
7
sible mode of raising wages permanently, and effectually
'benefitting the poor, is by so educating them that they shall
be conscious that their welfare depends upon the exercise of a
greater control over their passions.
In penning this brief paper, my desire has been to
provoke amongst the working classes a discussion and
careful examination of the teachings of political economy,
as propounded by Mr. J. S. Mill and those other
able men who, of late, have devoted themselves to ela
borating and popularising the doctrines enunciated by
Malthus. While I am glad to find that there are some
■amongst the masses who are inclined to preach and put in
practice the teachings of the Malthusian School of political
economists, I know that they are yet few in comparison
with the great body of the working classes who have been
taught to look upon the political economist as the poor
man’s foe. It is nevertheless amongst the working men
alone, and, in the very ranks of the starvers, that the effort
must be made to check starvation. The question is again
before us—How are men to be prevented from starving ?
Not by strikes, during the continuance of which food is
scarcer than before. No combinations of workmen can ob
tain high wages if the number of workers is too great. It
is not by a mere struggle of class against class that the poor
man’s ills can be cured. The working classes can alleviate
their own sufferings. They can, by co-operative schemes,
which have the advantage of being educational in their
operation, temporarily and partially remedy some of the
■evils, if not by increasing the means of subsistence, at
any rate by securing a larger portion of the result of
labour to the proper sustenance of the labourer. Systems
of associated industry are of immense benefit to the work
ing classes, not alone, or so much from the pecuniary
improvement they result in, but because they develop
in each individual a sense of dignity and independence,
which he lacks as a mere hired labourer. They can per
manently improve their condition by taking such steps as
�8
WHY DO MEN STARVE?
shall prevent too rapid an increase of their numbers, and,
by thus checking the supply of labourers, they will, as
capital augments, increase the rate of wages paid to the
labourer. The steady object of each working man should
be to impress on his fellow-worker the importance of this
subject. Let each point out to his neighbour not only the
frightful struggle in which a poor man must engage who
brings up a large family, but also that the result is to place
in the labour market more claimants for a share of the
fund which has hitherto been found insufficient to keep the
working classes from death by starvation.
The object of this pamphlet will be amply attained if it
serve as the means of inducing some of the working classes
to examine for themselves the teachings of Political Economy.
All that is at present needed is that labouring men and
women should be accustomed, both publicly and at home, to
the consideration and discussion of the views and principles
first openly propounded by Mr. Malthus, and since elaborated
by Mr. Mill and other writers. The mere investigation of
the subject will of itself serve to bring to the notice of the
masses many facts hitherto entirely ignored by them. All
must acknowledge the terrible ills resulting from poverty,
and all therefore are bound to use their faculties to discover
Ft’ possible its cause and cure. It is more than folly for the
working man to permit himself to be turned away from the
subject by the cry that the Political Economists have no
sympathy with the poor. If the allegation were true, which
it is not, it would only afford an additional reason why this
important science should find students amongst those who
most need aid from its teachings.
;
1
London: Austin & Co., Printers and Publishers, 17, Johnson’s Court
Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Why do men starve?
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Bradlaugh, Charles [1833-1891.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
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[Austin & Co.]
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[1867]
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G4940
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Social problems
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English
Poverty