(Pic: Recipe of Rumford soup in the cookbook of Sophia Juliana Weiler, in 1810)

When the government noticed unemployment creeping up again, it engaged as many workers as possible in military supply. Cobblers were set to making shoes for the army, so long as the shoes were of good quality; hat makers' skills were enlisted to make shakos (military headwear); and other unemployed workers fabricated baggage carts. When even those measures could not better the condition of the unemployed and disadvantaged, Napoleon called for the expansion of soup kitchens for the distribution of Rumford soup. Created by an American-born inventor-scientist, it was free to indigents and sold at low cost to others.

According to reports, Rumford soup was a miracle broth requiring no flour in its preparation, and it was allegedly as nutritious as bread. While communes could, in all likelihood, manage their own distribution, Napoleon contracted out the building and maintenance of these agencies of social welfare in Paris. By 1812, in Paris alone 30,000 pounds of bread and 40,000 bowls of soup had fed the population. The work had been so successful that Napoleon reported, “We may fairly boast nowadays that not a single inhabitant of Paris suffers from lack of food.”

Source: Susan P. Conner, The Age of Napoleon

Morning Skies Rumford, Maine

As he says in his Pocket History Of Mars:

"Any Man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usuall follows bloodshed."

The Sirens Of Titan

MEC train 226