When I first started reading A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, I was not entirely sure of the point of the essay. During the initial paragraphs, I started to get an idea of the purpose of the essay at the mention of an “easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth” and the idea that the children would “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousand”. It was at this point that I guessed Mr. Swift’s proposal involved using the young impoverished children of Ireland as a food source. I was shocked that the author would suggest eating year-old children. However, as I read on, I soon realized that the essay was a joke for no sensible person would take Mr. Swift’s suggestion seriously.
His first suggestion is that by the age of 12 months a child can weigh up to 28 pounds if nursed right and at that age is a delicious morsel. This is, of course, completely absurd. The average weight for a baby of 12 months is 21.5 pounds and at the average weight gain of .56 pounds per month, it would take another 12 months for a baby to weigh 28 pounds. Another fact that must be taken into account is that a year-old baby does not have much muscle and that the majority of the weight of the baby would be fat. The baby’s head takes up a large portion of its total body mass. This means that in a baby of 12 months, there is very little wholesome meat to be found and consumed.
I believe that if you were to allow the children to develop more we would be able to get more for our worth than if we were to use babies of one year of age. For the first two years they could be nursed by their mothers and if any of the crop were to die, their carcass could either be sold or they could contribute to the feeding of their fellows. By the age of four, the children would weigh, on average, from 35 to 40 pounds. Also, by keeping these children active during their youth, the percentage of muscle could be greatly improved. Instead of raising a crop of one year olds that would be able to produce 5 pounds of meat, I suggest keeping the children alive up to the age of four, where if the child is in shape, he/she would be able to produce five or six times that amount. Also, as the children grow, they gain more skin which could, as Mr. Swift states, be used for leather. Although it would take longer to have a full crop ready for sale, it would be a much better path to take in the long run.
In conclusion, I believe that Mr. Swift had a very good concept for his proposal, but because of a gap in his logic and knowledge, it ended up being criticized and mocked. If we made my corrections to Mr. Swift’s proposal, we would almost certainly have solved the problems of hunger and over population.
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