That this plan of campaigning is altogether feasible the writer can personally attest from actual experience. Years ago, as a mere boy, I became intensely interested in the principles of the New Democracy and starting without money, without friends or any organized assistance, impelled merely by enthusiasm for humanity and hatred of that tyranny through which my race and family had suffered, I traversed in this way every county in the State of Kansas, circulating thousands of pamphlets in which were pointed out the way to a nobler civilization. While still a boy I also walked or rode with friends through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. I was often interfered with by persons disposed to disagree, but at every village and town and city through which I passed, I stood up in the open street in a carriage, on a dry-goods box or a chair and proclaimed my faith that the poor people need not suffer as they do if they would but unite in behalf of their own interests and use the ballot against oppression and tyranny.
Very often I was without money, and I then discovered that my early study of hygiene could be turned to good account. I found that the great capitalists, aided by Edward Atkinson and the soup house reformers, in trying to devise a diet for the poor that might enable them to work for less wages, though failing in this, had at least given me a pointer. I found that their bill of fare lacked but one ingredient to make it very endurable, and that was enthusiasm and youthful hope and fire. I added this ingredient and was independent of the world.
HYGIENE AS A WAR MEASURE.
Those Volunteers who intend not only to try to speak for the cause during the next four years, but have determined to fight for the continuation of our Republic in spite of all obstacles, should learn how independent the body really can be of what are usually termed the necessaries of life.
As an invalid child I attended a course of lectures delivered by one Dr. O'Leary. This distinguished gentleman, with the theatre stage, which he used as his platform covered over with polished skeletons, manikins, human heads in chloroform and colored pictures of the various parts of the human frame, impressed my young mind deeply. At that time, I remember I had been "given up" by my parents and the doctor, as a child who could not possibly be raised. I was accustomed to thoughts of death and for years constantly expected a visit from the dreaded monster. No memory is more distinctly engraven on my mind than the nights when, with eager eyes fastened on this wonderful man and his mysterious skulls and manikins, my heart throbbing, my face aglow, I listened in rapt attention, that possibly I might catch some secret that would help me defeat death and add strength to my frail body sufficient to do battle with life's hardships.
After describing a boy who died at about my own age because his nervous system had been deprived of the proper life-giving elements which had been taken from his food by modern processes, the Professor took up a handful of wheat letting it fall repeatedly through his fingers, stating that each grain of wheat contains in it all of the elements required to sustain human life. He said that civilization, by taking away the outside, the most nutritious part of the wheat, had struck a blow at the physical development of our race. He declared that man can live for years on whole wheat requiring no other article of diet, and that the outside of the wheat especially, now thrown aside as bran and fed to the cattle, contains the elements of bone and nerve fibre, that, while the lady who eats only the choicest white bread, made of the finest flour, has to substitute gold for parts of her teeth, the teeth of the cattle that eat the bran are perfect. He gave as an illustration the march of Caesar and his legions through Gallia, when Caesar's soldiers often for weeks at a time were without provisions and were compelled to feed on whole wheat alone which they would snatch in handfuls from the fields as they marched, thresh in the palms of their hands and grind with their molars. The crushing of the hard wheat grain gave the teeth exercise while the crushed bran and surface of the grain supplied those elements required in the construction of bone and teeth. "At the present time, nineteen centuries after," so this doctor said, "there are numerous skulls of these same soldiers of the great Caesar to be seen in the London Museum and as a result of their wheat mastication, every tooth is as sound in these skulls, as whole and free from decay as when heathen Rome was Mistress of the World and Caesar was King."
A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
Whether this astounding statement of the learned doctor has any basis of truth or not I do not know, but that the lesson he sought to impress by it is true, my own experience can attest. During a period of several years, with another young enthusiast, I subsisted on a diet of bread and apples except when these could not be had, when we repaired the waste of our bodies by eating whole wheat, a bag of which we constantly carried with us for "emergencies." Often we have subsisted on whole wheat and clear water alone for several days, and even a week at a time. During these periods we did not notice that we lost flesh. Of course we had very little to lose, but our vigor and the intensity of our enthusiasm and faith in our powers, all of which depend largely upon the amount of nutriment carried from the stomach to the brain, and various nerve centers, were not in the least diminished. Later on we found that when convenient, we could obtain more nourishment from the wheat with less chewing by having it boiled, but when boiled, we could not carry with us a week's rations without fatigue, and boiled wheat will become sour in the summer time while whole dry wheat will keep for years, and, like feminine beauty, remain ever fresh. It is the most condensed form of digestible food known to man.
Of course where men have dissipated and their powers of digestion have been undermined by intoxicating liquor, tobacco, or the habitual use of highly spiced and over-prepared foods, any coming down to a natural diet like this is a severe hardship. But for a young man with firm faith and good health, NOT TO BE IMPEDED IN HIS DESIRE TO BECOME AN ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN THE GREATEST MOVEMENT OF HISTORY BY THE MERE FACT THAT HE HAS NO MONEY WITH WHICH TO PAY CAR FARE AND BUY GOOD FOOD AND CLOTHES, the suggestions here given will be found helpful. I would not advise others to do, what I have not done or am not willing to do myself. The fact is, however, that any young man, in good health, and formed of the right kind of "dust," can travel, without any money from one end of the country to the other speaking daily, and accomplish much for our cause, even if he does not meet more than one true friend in a thousand miles. But the comforts and vices and follies of civilization he must be able to do without.