In Jonathan Swift's satirical essay "A Modest Proposal" the speaker proposes that infants in Ireland, whose parents have no means of feeding them or clothing or housing them other than by begging (or stealing) and who are most often not children produced in a marriage, should, at the age of one year old, be sold as a food commodity.
He states that a 28 pound one year old should be able to feed a family for four nights. Furthermore, the skin could be sold as a separate commodity for gloves and such. He proposes that this would have benefit for the parents as they would have something of value to trade with and may perhaps then be able to pay their rent.
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