Noticing that much is made of providing milk for children and invalids whenever a general strike is in progress, it seemed worth while to see how the best thinkers propose to deal with the matter in the new world they propose to give us. Remembering that a college president to whom I had mentioned the matter had given me Prince Kropotkin's "Conquest of Bread," I turned to it for information regarding the subject of milk. As might be expected he deals with it in the vague way of people who have no personal knowledge of cows. Just because wheat can be produced by spurts of labor at the proper seasons and requires no care while growing and maturing, he apparently assumed that the milk supply could be secured in the same way. Dealing with the provisioning of the city of Paris under the anarchistic Commune, he sums up the whole matter as follows:
"A population of three and a half million must have at least 1,200,000 adult men and as many women capable of work. Well, then, to give bread and meat to all, it would need seventeen and a half days a year per man. Add three million work-days, or double that number if you like, in order to obtain milk. That will make twenty-five work-days of five hours in all—nothing more than a little pleasurable country exercise—to obtain the three principal products: bread, meat, and milk, the three products which, after housing, cause daily anxiety to nine tenths of mankind. And yet—let us not tire of repeating—these are not fancy dreams."
One night before leaving home, I had to milk the cows, owing to an impending ball game, and while attending to this chore I fell to thinking of the milk supply under Communistic or Soviet rule. These poor people overlook the fact that the cows must be milked every day and twice a day. Under the five-hour-a-day rule the milkers would be different every morning and evening, and if the necessary twenty-five days of work were distributed over the year, it is probable that the milkers would be changed every few days. Any dairyman will tell you that with such treatment the cows would probably go dry in a few weeks. Even if they didn't object to the frequent change of the milkers, their flow of milk would be greatly diminished, as they are not fond of strangers fussing with them. The truth of this was brought home to me by the fact that the red cow kicked at me when I sat down beside her and came to rest with her foot firmly planted on my big toe. If that happened to me, what would have happened to some one taking "a little pleasurable country exercise." But perhaps Prince Kropotkin had in mind some strain of cow that I have not yet heard of. He must know of some kind of cow that will give up her year's production of milk in a pleasurable round of five-hour milkings. Yet it is on the teachings of such men that the workers of the world depend for plans to right their wrongs and make the world an ideal place to live in. That the condition of the workers should be improved every thinking man must admit, but they will find experience more helpful than the theories of dreamers. Their present plans not only assume that human nature can be changed by a revolution, but that cow nature can also be changed.
[CHAPTER XIII]
OLD HOME WEEK
Isn't it about time we had an "Old Home Week" for ideas? For the past few years our thoughts, quite naturally and rightly, have been abroad, and we have been grappling with world problems because they were more vital to us than the problems of our every day lives. But a time has come when we can safely come back to our individual interests.
Just now I am inclined to sympathize with the plain citizen who recently found himself obliged to spend an evening with a number of high-thinking friends who were having an improving conversation about world affairs. While the high talk was in progress the plain man was examining his rough and toil-gnarled hands, and he took advantage of a lull in the conversation to ask: