Rich people taking all their profits off the top-leaving nothing for the 99%—We've heard this before

[kpete]

The debate was whether they should “allow” the Irish to eat the food that they themselves had worked to grow on the landlord’s farm:

In History Ireland magazine (1997, issue 5, pp. 32–36), Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor, relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped under British military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland; Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed. The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 gallons. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to Liverpool which correlates to 822,681 gallons of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the Famine.The poor did not have sufficient money to obtain the food produced and the British government facilitated its exportation

more:
http://ighm.nfshost.com/exports-in-famine-times/

[postulater]

1. Excellent book.

I had family that came during the Great Starvation.

They were married in Ireland in September, were in New York with a new baby in March, the he enlisted and went to fight in the war against Mexico. He fought the entire war start to finish, got a land grant, came to Wisconsin and pioneered along the Wisconsin River. Had a slew of kids, 3 girls died of scarlet fever within 3 weeks of each other. He became demented, died in the poorhouse of hepatitis that he caught in Mexico.

Life was hard.

[reformist2]

2. The rent must be paid!!!

[LiberalAndProud]

3. This brings to mind the PBS series "The Farmer's Wife"

in which Mr. Buschkoetter got in trouble with his bank for butchering a hog for his family to eat. The bank owned the hogs. Not Mr Buschkoetter. Nothing new under the sun, I guess.