Dust to eat

Who has given to me this sweet
And given my brother dust to eat?
and when will his wage come in?

William Vaughn Moody, "Gloucester Moors," Gloucester Moors & Other Poems, 1910. Quoted by Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl, in her letter to Henry Wallace, then-Secretary of Agriculture, July 1935.

This snippet of poetry really struck me when I came to it in Henderson's Dust Bowl letters. So full of agony, really, especially in the context of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

But wait; read it again while holding in your mind the abundance and over-consumption in the developed nations but especially the USA, and the subsistence living of much of the rest of the world.