INTRODUCTORY In the following Introductory remarks I have given a bare outline of the suggestion-for it is nothing more-which I have endeavoured to formulate more fully in the succeeding chapters. The Standard and other papers when noticing my article on "Corn Stores for War Time," in the Nineteenth Century for February, 1896, said it was a result of the recent threats of war from America and Germany. But it was not so. It was the result of living and moving about all my life among this enormous and densely-packed mass of human beings in London-nearly six millions* of us within the Metropolitan and city police districts, all absolutely dependent on foreign food supplies. Those who say that it is absurd and preposterous on my part to talk of a precarious week's supply of bread should * Over five millions of our fellow-subjects died through famine in India in 1877-78. a 3 ask themselves what is to happen if London Will the starving is unable to obtain food. mill hands of Lancashire allow whatever food there may be stored at Liverpool to pass out of the county? Will other densely-populated places where food first arrives at our shores pass it on to London and other great inland towns? The Bishop of Stepney said recently that, in that district alone, there were one hundred thousand skulking loafers who constituted a danger to London and a peril to the empire. If our food supply from abroad is ever so seriously interfered with as to place bread beyond the reach of our millions of toilers, leavened with hundreds of thousands of "skulking loafers," it will be quite impossible for this country to carry on war-we must give in at any sacrifice in order to feed our masters. What I want is to remove from America and Russia the power to starve us into submission by withholding from us our daily bread. Russia is all-powerful in the north of Europe-in addition to stopping her own people from sending corn to us, she would not allow any Baltic State to do so either. The United States is all-powerful in North America. Canada only sends a little more than one million quarters of corn a year in peace time, how could she do even that when fighting for her very existence with her great neighbour? Thus we see that for over seventeen out of the twenty-five million quarters of wheat forming our total import in a year, we are absolutely dependent on North America and Russia. It must be presumed that Argentina, India, Australia, Uruguay, Chili, Roumania, Turkey, Persia, etc., which between them send us about seven or eight million quarters, send us practically all they have to spare of each harvest. I mean that it is not likely that any of those countries keep enormous stores of corn on hand in addition to their regular annual export. No, we shall be very fortunate if we can get the amount we generally get from them safely through our enemies' commerce-destroyers in war time, considering the enormous distances they are away. It will be seen I have proposed only to have a reserve of wheat to make bread with for our people. I have not dared to suggest a reserve of other corn, such as barley, maize, rye, etc., for feeding our live stock, although our imports of other corn are nearly as large as those of wheat-and also come chiefly from America and Russia. The countries named practically exhaust the list of exporting corn-producing countries. The other great Powers of Europe are either only producing just enough corn for their own needs, or are actually importing it like ourselves. Of course we should not be in such danger if we could elsewhere get our bread supply, but we can not, turn where we will. Offer what price we may, nowhere on the face of the globe could be found the enormous supply of corn which America and Russia alone have it in their power at any moment to deprive us of. And then would come the pity and the madness of it! What could our fleet do against Russia and the United States? If it were ten times stronger than it is it could only blockade the American ports for a time, and make some of their defenceless towns pay money instead of bombarding them or threatening to do so; it could only shut up the Russian fleet in its own fortified harbours. |