In view of the numerous statements made by writers on economic topics, that there are vast numbers of people in this country who are actually starving, many may consider the information in these articles as contradictory and misleading.

While it is not unlikely that, for the sake of greater emphasis, the condition of starvation is over exaggerated, it is not the purpose of the author to deny that starvation exists, nor in any way to minimize the work of writers who are striving to eradicate the unjust economic conditions leading up to this most undesirable situation.

My position is this, that a man may actually starve to death when his stomach is full of what is misnamed "food."

I remember an incident about a horse. A man once bought a nice horse. He did not know much about horses, but he wanted to be good to that horse, so he fed him twelve large ears of corn regularly. The horse got along nicely for a time, but finally he com menced to run down, his hide got tight and his hair bristly, and he had a gaunt and hungry look in his eye. One night the master inadvertently left the empty bushel basket, from which he had fed the horse, in the manger. The next morning he found the horse had consumed the greater part of the basket, all that he could possibly masticate of it.

Now no one will maintain that twelve ears of corn three times a day is not sufficient food for a horse, but any horseman will tell you that without abundant "rough stuff," such as hay or fodder, that amount of corn will burn a horse's "insides" out. When the horse ate the basket, he was after "rough stuff," and he got it, but just a little too rough.

The point I wish to impress is this: it is not the quantity of food that nourishes and builds up the body, but the kind, and that a little good food is much better than a lot of food, either good or bad.

One's body may be starved by eating too much rich food as well as by eating too little or poor food, food that is adulterated, - and the extent to which food is adulterated, in spite of all the "startling exposures" that have been sprung on an unsuspecting public in the past few years, is little understood.

So great has been this practice of adulteration that even the capitalistic lawmakers have tried to check it, fearing, perhaps, that they themselves will be poisoned if they don't. But when it comes to the ordinary working man's "grub," this question has not yet been considered seriously, and it is here in the "cheap food" that the adulterations are the most flagrant.

I have taken the position that a very little good food will properly nourish the body. When the body has to consume a large quantity of "material" to get a little "food," the material that is consumed that is not food is injurious and destroys the organism and incapacitates it to assimilate the little real food that is contained in the "conglomeration," which is perhaps as good a word as can be employed to designate the average diet.

To paraphrase the horse incident, there are thousands of people who are eating "bushel baskets," in an effort to satisfy an inner craving for something that the system needs and can not subtract from the other material with which it is supplied.

Then here is another point that must be seriously considered, if you want to travel this road to Wellville. The body may be, from previous abuses, so put out of order that it can not assimilate properly even the very best and purest of food, supplied in the exact amount needed in a normal state.

Millions of people are troubled with chronic constipation. So common is this grievous disorder that but a very few really understand its symptoms or give any special thought to the question, and yet there is nothing of more importance.

You would not leave a dish of spoiled and stinking food on your table or in your cupboard, and most of you know better than to throw it out in your back yard. But many of you are actually carrying around inside of you food that is in a badly spoiled state, and some of it has been with you for weeks and months even, and is in such a state of decomposition that it is infested with worms, nature's scavengers.

Some of you have a bowel action regularly, - about once a week, - and some have an action each day; the fact is, that you must throw out the waste material sooner or later, and the fact that you seem to be doing this, satisfies many who have no specific knowledge of their internal anatomy or how and when it should be done.

Now put this down as an absolute rule of health: unless the bowels act regularly and normally, good health is an impossibility.

The fact that you have an action each day is not sufficient, that action must be a proper and normal one, and must cleanse the colon of its contents, not merely eliminate an "instalment" in the shape of dry, hard, blackened fecal matter that comes out only with much straining and even painful distension.

The full process of food digestion and assimilation is one that requires scientific explanation and the author hasn't any desire to tackle it, nor is it necessary to do so. Suffice to know that in some way nature takes the food that is put in the stomach and does her best to manufacture it into bone, muscle, blood, and physical energy. That the job is quite an important one must be admitted; and that by intelligent selection of what goes into the stomach we can very greatly assist nature, must also be admitted by thinking people, though most people seem to take it for granted that any old thing will do, only so the stomach is filled.

One thing is certain: the stomach is very often filled with undesirable material from which Nature has great difficulty in selecting for the use of the body such particles as will build up the tissues, replenish the blood, bones, and flesh, and leave a surplus reserve energy stored in each organ of the body.

Once in the stomach, whatever food is placed there is apt to stay until the stomach, through its digestive process, is able to pass it down into the small intestines. Sometimes Nature rebels before this point has been reached and "passes up" the contents of a much-abused and insulted stomach; and in such a case you can be thankful, no matter how disgusting and painful the ordeal, for this "conglomeration" is better outside of you quickly than left inside to go through the rest of the process and poison the system in every department, as is usually the case.