MIA > Archive > Mary Marcy
The International Socialist Review, Vol. 14. No. 5, November 1913, pp. 267–268.
Transcribed by Matthew Siegfried.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
WHEN one of the great Chicago fruit companies had a carload of bananas dumped into. the Chicago river in order to force the price up at a time when thousands of people were applying to the Bureau of Associated Charities for aid, someone wrote:
“It has remained for the Twentieth century to produce a race of degenerates which will ACTUALLY DESTROY FOOD in the face of its starving brothers and sisters. The most barbarous savage tribes never sank so low as that."
A little later we read the glowing reports of the Coffee Planters’ Association, boasting of the rise in the price of coffee consequent upon the destruction of a few cargoes of coffee. The loss of a small part of the product one season had enabled the association to RAISE THE PRICE several cents a pound, instead of lowering it, as would have been the case if a few extra cargoes had been thrown on the market.
Now comes the rice outrage.
Everyone knows that rice is one of the most nutritious articles of food. Recently the swamp lands in Texas have been drained and an area of over 800,000 acres has been added to the Southern rice fields.
Now it is impossible for American rice growers to dispose of their rice in Asia. The Asiatic raise it cheaper at home. A larger crop of rice in America ought to mean cheaper rice and more rice for us.
If rice were raised for FOOD, instead of for PROFITS, a large crop would mean a more comfortable living for human beings in America. With the bumper crop has come a fall in the price of rice.
So here is what the Southern Rice Growers’ Association proposes to do with the surplus. We quote from the Grocery World and General Merchant:
“The association proposes that every rice grower in the United States set aside one-fifth of his crop to be entrusted to the Southern Rice Growers’ Association, to be marketed outside of the country to the best possible advantage.”
Then the rice growers’ organ goes on to say: “The balance of the crop will bring more money than the whole crop would have brought if kept at home.”
IF WE COULD DESTROY A MILLION AND A QUARTER SACKS, GETTING NOTHING FOR IT, THE BALANCE WOULD BRING MORE THAN THE WHOLE WOULD HAVE BROUGHT. BUT BY THIS PLAN WE GET. SOMETHING FOR THE MILLION AND A QUARTER SACKS, AND WE GET IT OUT OF THE WAY.
THIS PLAN HAS THE CORDIAL APPROVAL OF BANKERS WHO HAVE LOOKED INTO IT, AND BIG INTERESTS OUTSIDE THE ASSOCIATION HAVE PROMISED TO COME IN. For this plan to be effective must have EVERYBODY IN IT.
It is a case where we’ve got to do something, and the only feasible thing proposed is to get the rice out of the country. IT’S A PLAIN, SIMPLE, LOGICAL BUSINESS PROPOSITION, NOT A THEORY.
You may lose a dollar a barrel on one-fifth of your rice, but you certainly will MAKE A DOLLAR A BARREL MORE on the remaining four-fifths.
Think this over. Workingmen RAISED the rice crops. The bosses who own the land APPROPRIATED these crops. Now these bosses find that the laborers have produced more rice than ever before – enough more to feed a million children during the sharp bite of the winter’s cold.
The workers who planted the rice and tended it through the seasons have received nothing for their labor but a meagre wage. The bosses, who have produced NOTHING, possess all the rich bounty of grain.
And there is so much rice that the price of rice is falling and the Southern Rice Growers’ Association is asking that one-fifth of the life-giving crop be DESTROYED in order to force prices up and INCREASE PROFITS.
And yet – food for a million little ones shall be destroyed in this, the Twentieth century, in the name of the Great God Profits.
And there are, in this broad Land of the Bosses, hundreds of thousands of men and women out of work; there are children who never have enough to eat. And this is why the song of Revolution is swelling around the world in ten million throats: DOWN WITH THE PROFIT SYSTEM!
Last updated on 31 May 2022