The Greasy Spoon isn't an appetizing name; not appetizing to men who
live a sedentary life. But it was meant as a lure to men who live by
muscular toil. It sounded good to us mill workers for, like Eskimos, we
craved much fat in our diet. We were great muscular machines, and fat
was the fuel for our engines. Muckraking was just beginning in those
days, and a prying reformer came to live for a while at the Greasy
Spoon. He told us that so much grease in our food would kill us. We
were ignorant of dietetics; all we knew was that our stomachs cried for
plenty of fat. The reformer said that our landlady fed us much fat meat
because it was the cheapest food she could buy. Milk, eggs and fruits
would cost more, and so this greedy cruel woman was lining her pocket at
the expense of our lives.
The landlady was a kindly person, and she took the reformer's advice.
She banished the fat pork, and supplied the table with other food
substitutes, but she was generous and gave us plenty of them. We ate
this reformed food and found we were growing weaker every day at the
puddling furnace. We got the blues and became sullen. Gradually all
laughter ceased in that boarding-house. We even felt too low to fight.
At the end of two weeks there was one general cry: “Hog fat, and plenty
of it!” Our engines had run out of fuel; and now we knew what we needed.
We were so crazy for bacon that if a hog had crossed our path we would
have leaped on him like a lion and eaten him alive.
Fat came back to the table, and the Greasy Spoon again rang with
laughter. How foolish that reformer was! He did no work himself and was
a dyspeptic. He tried to force his diet upon us, and he made us as weak
as he was. How many reformers there are who are trying to reshape the
world to fit their own weakness. I never knew a theorist who wasn't a
sick man.
To-day we understand that we can't run a motor-car after the gasoline
is played out. The burning of the oil in the engine gives the power. The
burning of fats in the muscles gives the laborer his power. Sugar and
starches are the next best things to fat, and that's why we could eat
the thick slabs of sweet pie. We relished it well and have burned it all
up in our labor in the mills. We came out with that healthy sparkle that
dyspeptics never know.
When we realized that the reformer didn't know what he was talking
about, and that in his effort to help us he was hurting us, we saw
he was our enemy, and we gave all of his ideas the “horse laugh.” His
theory that the boarding-house keepers were in a conspiracy to rob the
workers by feeding them pork instead of pineapples turned out to be much
like all the “capitalist conspiracies” in Comrade Bannerman's pamphlets.
I am glad I have lived in a world of facts, and that I went therefrom to
the world of books. For I have found there is much falsehood taught in
books. But life won't tell a fellow any lies.
A man who knows only books may believe that by writing a new
prescription he can cure the world of what ails it. A man who knows life
knows that the world is not sick. Give it plenty of food and a chance to
work and it will have perfect digestion.