FOOD FOR ALL--THE FOOD DEPÔTS.
In England, owing to the severity and uncertainty of the weather, the
food and shelter questions go hand in hand. This is not the case in
India, where the shelter is not so important as the food, and there is
no such urgency in dealing with the former as with the latter. For
instance during nine months out of twelve it is not such a very great
hardship to sleep in the open air in most parts of India. I have myself
done it frequently and so have many of our Officers. It is true that we
should not like it as a regular thing, and still less perhaps, if driven
to it by absolute want. Still I am perfectly prepared to admit that the
circumstances are totally different to that of England, and that the
question of shelter is of secondary importance as compared with food.
The time will come when we shall be obliged to face and deal with it. If
our scheme meets with the success that we anticipate, having first
satisfied the gnawings of these hunger-bitten stomachs, we shall
certainly turn round and think next what we can do to provide them with
decent homes for themselves and their families.
But we can safely afford to defer the consideration of this question for
the present, in order to throw all our time and energy into the solution
of the infinitely more urgent and important problem of a regular and
sufficient food supply for these destitutes.
At present as I have already pointed out, they are dependent solely on
the help of relations and friends and on the doles of the charitable;
or on the proceeds of vice and crime. The insufficiency of these to meet
the needs of the case I have also, I believe, proved to demonstration.
Therefore one of the first parts of our City programme will be the
establishment of cheap food depôts, at which food of various kinds will
be supplied at the lowest possible cost price. These depôts will be
dovetailed in with other parts of our scheme, which have yet to be
described, and the one will help to support the other.
It may be objected that if we undertake to sell food at lower than the
ordinary market rates, we shall interfere with the legitimate operations
of trade. But to this we would answer that the same objection would be
still more true in regard to charitable doles, which are given for
nothing. And further, we shall fix our prices with a view to covering
the actual cost of the food, so that there will not be any probability
of our interfering with ordinary market rates. Besides, should there be
any very serious difficulty of the kind, we could always make a rule
limiting the food sold at these depôts to those who came under the
operation of the other branches of our social reform.
At the outset it would probably be wisest to avoid all caste
complications by confining ourselves entirely to uncooked food, leaving
the people to do their own cooking, but it is very probable that before
long we should be forced to undertake the preparation of cooked food. We
should of course pay due regard in this respect to the customs of the
various castes, religions and nationalities concerned. To a Hindoo for
instance it would be extremely disagreeable to eat out Of the same dish
as others, while Mahommedans, as one said to me the other day, only
enjoy the meal the more, when others are sitting round the platter.
These, however, are subordinate details which would largely settle
themselves as we went along. Food in some shape or form, the destitute
must have, good in quality and sufficient in quantity, and if they
prefer it uncooked this will save us trouble, whereas if cooking becomes
necessary we shall have another industry for the employment of many
hands. Meanwhile the fact that nearly every native of the poorer castes,
be it man, woman, or even child, knows how to cook their own food, is
likely to be of no little help in settling the question of the food
supply.