A GRUB REFORMER PUTS US OUT OF GRUB
The Greasy Spoon isn't an appetizing name; not appetizing to men who live a sedentary life. But it was meant as a lure to men who live by muscular toil. It sounded good to us mill workers for, like Eskimos, we craved much fat in our diet. We were great muscular machines, and fat was the fuel for our engines.
Muckraking was just beginning in those days, and a prying reformer came to live for a while at the Greasy Spoon. He told us that so much grease in our food would kill us. We were ignorant of dietetics; all we knew was that our stomachs cried for plenty of fat. The reformer said that our landlady fed us much fat meat because it was the cheapest food she could buy. Milk, eggs and fruits would cost more, and so this greedy cruel woman was lining her pocket at the expense of our lives.
The landlady was a kindly person, and she took the reformer's advice. She banished the fat pork, and supplied the table with other food substitutes, but she was generous and gave us plenty of them. We ate this reformed food and found we were growing weaker every day at the puddling furnace. We got the blues and became sullen. Gradually all laughter ceased in that boarding-house. We even felt too low to fight. At the end of two weeks there was one general cry: "Hog fat, and plenty of it!" Our engines had run out of fuel; and now we knew what we needed. We were so crazy for bacon that if a hog had crossed our path we would have leaped on him like a lion and eaten him alive.
Fat came back to the table, and the Greasy Spoon again rang with laughter. How foolish that reformer was! He did no work himself and was a dyspeptic. He tried to force his diet upon us, and he made us as weak as he was. How many reformers there are who are trying to reshape the world to fit their own weakness. Inever knew a theorist who wasn't a sick man.
To-day we understand that we can't run a motor-car after the gasoline is played out. The burning of the oil in the engine gives the power. The burning of fats in the muscles gives the laborer his power. Sugar and starches are the next best things to fat, and that's why we could eat the thick slabs of sweet pie. We relished it well and have burned it all up in our labor in the mills. We came out with that healthy sparkle that dyspeptics never know.
When we realized that the reformer didn't know what he was talking about, and that in his effort to help us he was hurting us, we saw he was our enemy, and we gave all of his ideas the "horse laugh." His theory that the boarding-house keepers were in a conspiracy to rob the workers by feeding them pork instead of pineapples turned out to be much like all the "capitalist conspiracies" in Comrade Bannerman's pamphlets. I am glad I have lived in a world of facts, and that I went therefrom to the world of books. For I have found there is much falsehood taught in books. But life won't tell a fellow any lies.
A man who knows only books may believe that by writing a new prescription he can cure the world of what ails it. A man who knows life knows that the world is not sick. Give it plenty of food and a chance to work and it will have perfect digestion.
