May 9, 2016

Damn you all to hell

By Ken · Posted in Enterprise, Human spirit, Laughter, People · Tagged Brilliant letter writing

This story also comes from the excellent Letters of Note website,

In July of 2012, in an admirable attempt to secure him as a guest on his Nerdist Podcast, Chris Hardwick sent a beautiful 1934 Smith Corona to noted typewriter collector Tom Hanks and popped the question. Within days, Hanks responded with the charming letter seen below, typed on the Corona.

Unsurprisingly, the anecdote-filled podcast that resulted is wonderful. It can be heard here. And here’s the text of that splendid letter.

Dear Chris, Ashley, and all the diabolical genuies at Nerdist Industries.

Just who do you think you are to try to bribe me into an appearance on your ‘thing’ with this gift of the most fantastic Corona Silent typewriter made in 1934?

You are out of your minds if you think… that I… wow, this thing has great action… and this deep crimson color… Wait! I’m not so shallow as to… and it types nearly silently…

Oh, OKAY!

I will have my people contact yours and work out some kind of interview process…

Damn you all to hell,

(Signed, ‘Tom Hanks’)

Broken sandals, worth one more repair.

By Ken · Posted in Education, Enterprise, People, Travel

by Ken Burnett

This story sets out to answer every potential donor’s question about whether charities are really doing any good. I’ve included it because it shows even my broken shoes have a story to tell.
I took my broken sandals to the shoe-mender across the road from my London flat. ‘These are unusual,’ he observed as I handed them over. ‘They’re from Ghana’, I told him. ‘ I bought them from a street vendor in Accra for less than two pounds but they are the most comfortable shoes ever, leather throughout. Though, not stitched or glued very strongly.’ I saw that he’d noticed their earlier mends. ‘Yes, I responded to his query, one repair was done in Bangalore, India, the other in Kathmandu, Nepal.’  

‘They’re expertly done’, he said with respect. ‘How do you get to travel to such a lot of exotic places?’ I explained that, at the time, I was a member of the international board of trustees of ActionAid, the poverty fighting development charity. Each year at least two of our board meetings were hosted in different programme countries, so I got the chance to go somewhere far-flung and interesting. He looked at me incredulously, then a bit askance.  

‘That sounds like quite a game’, he said. ‘These charities seem to have no end of fun spending their donors’ money organising meetings all over the place.’ 

It’s a natural criticism, not an unreasonable observation. Sometimes, it’s best to leave people with their preconceptions. But I know this guy, so I was happy to enlighten him.  

‘You know,’ I said, ‘one of the biggest problems to overcome when fighting poverty is the often low standards of leadership and governance in developing countries. It’s a major cause of grief in many developed economies too, as we’ve all seen recently. But many poor countries lack the culture, capacity and traditions of good self-management. These are particularly essential characteristics in non-government organisations that are campaigning for human rights and lasting social change. So in ActionAid we’re investing in building governance capacity in all our countries worldwide.’  

‘It’s a huge task,’ I continued, ‘one that can’t be done on the cheap. Relative to other perhaps more tangible investments, such as delivering food aid, building schools, digging wells and such like, the outlay is small. But the effects are likely to be much deeper and longer lasting. Our aim is to create strong, competent, well-run, self-sustaining, independent national boards that are capable of determining their own local and national priorities within ActionAid’s broad strategy, Rights to end poverty. ’

ActionAid works in getting on for 50 countries around the world, from Afghanistan and Brazil to Zambia and Zimbabwe. In 2003 it was the first major international charity to shift its international headquarters from a base in the affluent North – London, to a capital in the global South – Johannesburg. Its chair of trustees when I was on the board was a Ugandan woman; its chief executive was an agriculturalist from Nepal. Seated around its top governance table you’d find representatives from national boards that ActionAid has created and is supporting in Malawi, Guatemala, India, Sierra Leone, Greece, Ghana, Denmark, USA, Australia, Uganda, Kenya, the UK and others. ActionAid’s international governance system enjoys all the colours of the rainbow and all the flavours of a Nepalese street market. Though it started in the UK, British trustees are determinedly and deliberately thin on the ground. At our most recent meeting there were more Indians and Brazilians than Brits.  

Experience to date seems to indicate that ActionAid’s board does its job rather better now too. In many countries the new ActionAid boards have been able to secure top brains and experienced campaigners for change of a quality that would have been hard to find and attract if we’d only been fishing in British local waters. These new, developing trustees include many academics, politicians, business leaders, legal specialists and opinion formers.  

But diversity brings better decisions by definition. In each country ActionAid’s new leaders know where the poverty is and what’s causing it, because they come from it and see it in their daily lives. It also brings credibility and acceptance too, as individual national ActionAids around the world are increasingly seen wherever they work as self-regulating independent members of a southern-led international family, not as agents of British or American influence. In today’s volatile international environment, this makes a huge difference.  

But will this move increase the impact that ActionAid’s donors will have on reducing poverty? Without doubt, it will. ActionAid’s response to poverty includes not just the traditional pillars of rights to education, health, land, food, water, livelihood, reproductive and women’s rights but also the right to sound democratic governance at all levels. By building exemplary boards at the country level ActionAid is sending a strong, consistent message to the people and political leaders of each country where it works – a message that proclaims the importance of sound, just and equitable governance. And will train new generations to recognise what good governance is, and does. 

Will this really help make poverty history? Not immediately, perhaps. Rather, as I endeavoured to explain to my friend the cobbler, it requires persistence and substantial investment, starting now. But as my shoe purchase and their repairs showed, value for money in these countries is often of a different order of magnitude than we’d find closer to home. Building better governance is a large and important step on the right path. And the evidence already shows it is working.

This article first appeared in 2008 when Ken was a member of the international board of the charity ActionAid, a role he relished for 13 years.

March 28, 2014

The President’s Task Force

By Ken · Posted in Enterprise, Fundraising, Human spirit, People

From Relationship Fundraising, by Ken Burnett, Wiley 2002.

This story is and example of supporter recognition par excellence. It’s included here because it shows that donors and volunteers want to be involved in their favourite causes and will happily go along with whatever creative ways we can find to make that involvement real. This story was first told to me by an eminent American database expert called John Groman.

Donors want to be involved in their favourite causes. Even if they clearly understand it as a device designed to secure their involvement, they appear not to mind at all. The joining of a structured scheme gets them in on the inside, usually at a very modest cost. Fundraisers and campaigners should capitalise on this compulsion to belong. Voluntary organisations have a clear and very desirable product in involvement schemes, one that is so far under-developed in many countries.

A classic example of how completely this can work in practice was the launching of the President’s Task Force, an elite donor group established by Ronald Reagan’s office shortly after his election in 1981 as president of the USA. Of course the qualification to join the President’s Task Force was that you should give a minimum donation – $10 each month – to campaign funds. Large numbers of patriotic Republicans rushed to do their duty, trading a small amount of their disposable cash for the recognition and reward that went with being able to tell friends and neighbours that they were a member of the President’s Task Force.

Various pieces of commemorative paraphernalia were produced and distributed in case members had to prove their status to doubting acquaintances who needed physical evidence of their friend’s important role in the affairs of slate. These included a ‘presidential medal of merit”, a presidential medal of merit lapel pin, a model American flag, which was dedicated en masse at a special ceremony in the White House, and inscription of the donor’s name on the ‘presidential roll of honour’. There was even an exclusive ‘members only’ Task Force telephone hotline.
Donors, of course, loved it. For just $10 a month this was real value for money. Most of all to encourage the authentic feel of the campaign the fundraisers had produced stationery that was the exact facsimile of the President’s writing paper. Colour printed and embossed, laser personalised and signed it looked exactly as it would had the President himself taken time out from his busy schedule to write a personal note to Elmer E Rosenblum, or whomever, to acknowledge his individual contribution and stress its importance to America.

More than a few of these letters were framed and hung in a prominent place in the family home so that visitors could be easily subjected to an hour or so’S dissertation on Elmer’ 5 sacrifice for his country.

Across the length and breadth of the entire United States, thousands of Republicans took their membership of the President’s Task Force very seriously indeed – and the dollars rolled into the President’s office as a result. Sustained by a brilliant direct marketing campaign of record and reward, the President’s Task Force gave its donors something beyond price – the prestige of practical involvement in something they believed in. As such it simply used the best of technique and technology, plus a forgivable amount of kitsch, to establish the ideal relationship fundraising proposition, an ongoing relationship where both donor and recipient could benefit in equal amounts, at the end of which a clear financial and practical target could be reached.

In relaying the case history of the ‘President’s Task Force’ at the International Fund Raising Workshop in Holland, John Groman of Epsilon Data Management provided an anecdote which summed up the power of the campaign.

Late one evening a motor-cycle patrolman flagged down a speeding motorist on one of America’ 5 interminable inter-state highways. With customary leisurely grace he strolled up to the driver, who appeared to be in something of a hurry, and proceeded to ask him to provide his driving licence and evidence of insurance. Without a word, but inwardly seething at the delay, the driver – it may even have been Elmer E Rosenblum – got out of his car and led the patrolman firmly by the hand round to the back of the car, to the enormous boot (or trunk) of his Cadillac. Still without a sound, but with a gesture of magnificently righteous indignation, he flung his hand dramatically down to point out the large and very official-looking bumper sticker which prominently proclaimed the ‘President’s Task Force’ and indicated that the driver was, in fact, nothing less than a member.

The patrolman was astounded. He stammered a fulsome apology, saluted, swore it wouldn’t happen again and waved his distinguished visitor happily on his way. I don’t know that the patrolman escorted Elmer across the state line with lights flashing and sirens wailing, but I like to think he did.

March 22, 2014

Two avoidable deaths, one sad, the other…well, less so

By Ken · Posted in Drama, Enterprise, Exploration, Human spirit, Life, Medicine, Science

The story of Robert Scott of the Antarctic
and Anna Bågenholm, from Norway.

This story borders on unbelievable. It shows unambiguously the dividends made possible thanks to advances in research usually funded through small, seemingly insignificant gifts made by private individuals acting alone.

Though, try telling Anna Bågenholm they’re insignificant.

I’ve included it because Scott was a childhood hero of mine, because such stories as Anna’s are rare and thrilling and because I like endings to be happy, at least some of the time.

It’s 29^th March, 1912. Trapped in his hut deep in the Antarctic wastelands at the bottom of the world a 43-year-old British adventurer is slowly freezing to death. The weather outside is dreadful. He’s been marooned for days, slowly starving. The last of his companions has already died and he is now alone. Frostbite has taken hold. Skin ulcers cover his emaciated body. As his body’s temperature falls, one after another its normal functions cease. Heartbeat, breathing rate and blood pressure all drop catastrophically. Speech becomes difficult. Shivering grows uncontrollable. Mental confusion steadily increases, amnesia too. Exposed skin stands blue and puffy. Muscles fail. Even his hair stands on end in a hopeless, involuntary action to preserve vanishing heat. Clinical death will occur soon after, though due to the extreme cold, brain death might be postponed for some time. It is a fearsome end.

Fast forward 87 years, to 1999. In the northern Norwegian wilderness an intrepid 29-year-old skier falls, twists onto her back and, out of control, slides into a ravine. In seconds she’s careened into a fast-flowing stream that sweeps her to where the flow vanishes under thick ice. She can’t move as her body is wedged tightly beneath the ice by the water’s fierce flow. Two friends racing behind catch her skis just in the nick of time to stop her from being swept away, but in the snow and the wild terrain they can’t haul her out from that icy mountain stream. Little by little she’s sucked ever more under. Now she too is slowly freezing to death.

Forty minutes after being trapped in the icy water her struggles slowly ceased. Minutes later her heart stopped beating. Her body now was completely still. By the time the rescue helicopter arrived her heart hadn’t beaten for nearly an hour and a half. By then, she was technically dead. Still paramedics in the rescue helicopter worked tirelessly against the odds, trying to revive her. By the time her body was handed into the care of Dr Mats Gilbert on the roof of Tromso University Hospital her heart had been stopped for well over two hours.

Both Anna Bågenholm and Robert Falcon Scott froze to death. But unlike Scott and untold thousands before him, more than three hours after her heart stopped beating, Anna Bågenholm was brought back to life.

How could this miracle happen?

Well, in part at least, because of you.

Here is Anna’s incredible story. As you read it, please say aloud to yourself, at the appropriate moment, ‘We did this. When in the past I supported medical research, I helped make this miracle possible. That’s what I, and others like me, that’s what we did.’

Say it now. Say it with pride.

Because it’s true. When you and thousands like you supported the development of those high-risk new research initiatives, this is the kind of thing you were making possible.

Amazingly, the very thing that was killing Anna also helped save her life.

The cold.

In that extreme cold Anna’s body, including her brain and all her life functions, effectively shut down.

How incredible is that?

But the cold alone wasn’t the only thing that saved her. This is the bit where you come in.

Three more modern miracles combined to bring Anna back to life. They’re all available now, even in the frozen north of Norway. Sadly, none of them were there for Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic, nor for thousands of others who died like him.

But they are there now.

The first of these advances has it roots in the makeshift ambulance wagon that appeared in 1795, during the Napoleonic wars, when medics first realized the value of getting to wounded soldiers quickly, before trauma and blood loss reduce survival chances. Anna’s equivalent though was very up-to-date – the flying air ambulance helicopter.

The second life-saver goes back to the last days of World War II, to pioneering experiments on the human heart that led to invention of the heart bypass machine which temporarily takes over the task of circulating blood so that surgeons are free to work on the no-longer-beating heart. In Anna’s case it was circulating her blood – all of it – through a gentle warming process via one of these machines that brought her lifeless carcass back to viability.

The third miracle owes its origins to the fight against polio; to the development of the iron lung and the ‘life support’ system which today routinely saves so many premature babies and others whose fragile bodies struggle just to survive.

Of course other qualities came together to play important parts in the saving of Anna’s life. Persistence, stick-ability, determination, courage, optimism in the face of hopeless odds. Not to mention professional skills that money can’t buy and the best medical facilities that money can.

But as Captain Scott and his colleagues showed such a short time before, in such circumstances human qualities alone, admirable though they are, are not enough. That’s why we promote the research that you support, that day in, day out is saving lives like Anna’s, even as you read this incredible story.

Robert Falcon Scott is presumed to have died on 29 March 1912, or possibly a day later. The positions of the bodies in the tent when it was discovered eight months later suggested that Scott was the last of the three to die. From the Antarctic wastes Scott’s last words echo down the ages with a pathos and resignation that moves us still.

‘We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last…

‘Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…’

Anna Bågenholm was very much more fortunate. Thanks to good luck, some brave and brilliant friends, some dedicated, wonderful medical staff and some quite extraordinary advances in medical science, she can tell that tale herself, in the flesh. It’s a triumph made not just possible, but effective, by all who have worked to properly fund research.

That includes you. Yes, you.

Anna has survived that ordeal now for more than 5,000 days. If Anna were able to, I’m sure she’d want to say to everyone who played a part in this modern miracle, ‘thank you for the days’.

Well done, you! Thank you for the days.

A tortoise crosses the road

By Ken · Posted in Enterprise, Life, Nature

From John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

This story is a metaphor in which Steinbeck compares the easygoing, patient, persistent land turtle, or tortoise, with the dirt-poor, downtrodden farmers of the dustbowl seeking a better life in the far West. I so admire the turtle and how it keeps going. And Steinbeck’s description of it, of course.

John Steinbeck, 1902 to 1968.

The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse’s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep’s wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man’s trouser cuff or the hem of a woman’s skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement,

The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects moved, ants and ant lions to set traps for them, grasshoppers to jump into the air and flick their yellow wings for a second, sow bugs like little armadillos, plodding restlessly on many tender feet. And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass. His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along.

The barley beards slid off his shell, and the clover burrs fell on him and rolled to the ground. His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead. He came over the grass leaving a beaten trail behind him, and the hill, which was the highway embankment, reared up ahead of him. For a moment he stopped, his head held high. He blinked and looked up and down. At last he started to climb the embankment. Front clawed feet reached forward but did not touch. The hind feet kicked his shell along, and it scraped on the grass, and on the gravel. As the embankment grew steeper and steeper, the more frantic were the efforts of the land turtle. Pushing hind legs strained and slipped, boosting the shell along, and the horny head protruded as far as the neck could stretch. Little by little the shell slid up the embankment until at last a parapet cut straight across its line of march, the shoulder of the road, a concrete wall four inches high. As though they worked independently the hind legs pushed the shell against the wall. The head upraised and peered over the wall to the broad smooth plain of cement. Now the hands, braced on top of the wall, strained and lifted, and the shell came slowly up and rested its front end on the wall. For a moment the turtle rested. A red ant ran into the shell, into the soft skin inside the shell, and suddenly head and legs snapped in, and the armored tail clamped in sideways. The red ant was crushed between body and legs. And one head of wild oats was clamped into the shell by a front leg. For a long moment the turtle lay still and then the neck crept out and the old humorous frowning eyes looked about and the legs and tail came out. The back legs went to work, straining like elephant legs, and the shell tipped to an angle so that the front legs could not reach the level cement plain. But higher and higher the hind legs boosted it, until at last the center of balance was reached, the front tipped down, the front legs scratched at the pavement, and it was up. But the head of wild oats was held by its stem around the front legs.

Now the going was easy, and all the legs worked, and the shell boosted along, waggling from side to side. A sedan driven by a forty-year old woman approached. She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up, two wheels lifted for a moment and then settled, the car skidded back onto the road, and went on, but more slowly. The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot.

And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. The truck went back to its course along the right side. Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright. The wild oat head fell out and three of the spearhead seeds stuck in the ground. And as the turtle crawled on down the embankment, its shell dragged dirt over the seeds. The turtle entered a dust road and jerked itself along, drawing a wavy shallow trench in the dust with its shell. The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little. His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust.

Billy Ray Harris and the ring of fortune: what happens when a homeless man does the right thing?

By Ken · Posted in Enterprise, Human spirit, Life, People

From NBC’s TODAY programme.

‘His spirit has been rejuvenated,’ said Sarah Darling, who accidentally dropped her engagement ring in Billy Ray Harris’ donation cup in February. Harris returned the ring and the story inspired donors around the world. Sarah Darling and her husband Bill have since formed a lifelong friendship with Harris.

Billy Ray Harris is no longer homeless, after returning a stranger’s ring.

A few short months ago, 55-year-old Billy Ray Harris was homeless. He lived on a street corner in Kansas City, holding out a cup and asking passers-by for spare change. But then, one day, his life changed.

Last February Sarah Darling passed Harris at his usual spot and dropped some change into his cup. But, unbeknownst to her, she also accidentally dropped in her engagement ring. Though Harris considered selling the ring — he got it appraised for $4,000 — he ultimately couldn’t go through with it, and a few days later, he returned the ring to Darling.

‘I am not trying to say that I am no saint, but I am no devil either,’ he said at the time.

‘I was so incredibly upset’, said Sarah Darling, who lost the ring, ‘because, I mean, more than the value of the ring, it had sentimental value,’

Realising her loss she had returned to the same spot in the Plaza where she had first encountered Harris. Squatting down beside him, she asked if he remembered her.

‘I don’t know.’ Harris replied. ‘I see a lot of faces.’ Darling then said she may have given him something very valuable the day before. Then Harris then knew exactly who she was.

‘I says, ‘Was it a ring?’ Harris recalled. ‘And she says, ‘Yeah.’

The homeless man then pulled the ring from his pocket and presented it to Darling.

‘It seemed like a miracle. I thought for sure there was no way I would get it back,’ Darling told KCTV5. ‘I think in our world we often jump to like the worst conclusion, and it just makes you realize that there are good people out there.’

Though Harris had lived beneath a bridge and begged for his living in the Plaza in Kansas City, Mo., he says, ‘my grandfather was a reverend. He raised me from the time I was six months old, and thank the good lord, it’s a blessing, but I do still have some character.’

So while Darling rewarded Harris with all the cash she was carrying in her wallet, perhaps even greater reward was the homeless man’s sense of pride that he had done the right thing.

Sarah Darling said her concern wasn’t the monetary value of the engagement ring, but its sentimental value.

As a way to say thank you, Sarah and her husband Bill started a fund to raise money for Harris, to help him get his life back on track. ‘We set a goal for a thousand dollars,’ Darling told TODAY in March. ‘We set it up because a lot of people who had been touched by the story expressed interest in helping Billy Ray.’

The fund raised far more than any of them expected — in just three months, people donated more than $190,000.

Harris talked to a lawyer, who helped him put the money in a trust. Since then, he’s been able to buy a car and even put money down on a house, which he’s fixing up himself.

And that’s not all: After he appeared on TV, his family members, who had not been able to find him for 16 years and had heard rumors he was dead, were able to track him down. They were happily reunited, and Harris is now working on his relationship with them, including nieces and nephews he hadn’t even known existed.

‘When I think of the past, I think, thank God that it’s over,’ he told TODAY. ‘I mean, I feel human now.’

And the Kansas City community hasn’t forgotten about Harris and his good deed. ‘I still see some of the same people,” he says, ‘but only now, instead of coming up and giving me change, they’re coming up shaking my hand and, you know, saying ‘hey, good job’.’

Since the fateful day that Darling’s ring landed in his cup, Billy Ray Harris’ life has done a 180. ‘This is what they call the American Dream,’ he says. ‘I want to thank all the people that helped me out. I want them to see where all their efforts, blessings and kindness is going.’ I got an air mattress now, it’s like living like a king compared to where I was,” he said.

Later the TV station reunited Billy Ray with his family, who he’d fallen out of touch with.

‘I never would’ve thought this,’ Billy Ray Harris said during a joyous reunion with his siblings on the TODAY show on Sunday. ‘This was a total shock.’

A modest proposal. Jonathan Swift’s enterprising solution to the growth of the urban poor

By Ken · Posted in Enterprise, Human spirit, Literature, People

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to The Publick.

by Jonathan Swift

Swift’s straight-faced satire of heartless attitudes to the poor and Irish political policy generally dates from 1729. No doubt many will have seen it as a creative, far-sighted solution to what was evidently an irksome problem of the day. Of course, he wasn’t being entirely serious. Because the original is so long I felt obliged to edit it in the interests of space, but do so with regret.

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation…

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. …

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us…

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

The End

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