Food and Provisions.
I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.
Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer.- Conditions of the operation. -Available resources. - Cases in which these are not available. -Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them.
Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly.
But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert. - Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,[1]
the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete starvation.
Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute.
Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce. - And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen. - Otherwise, it would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn.