A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

The full name is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.  It's a bit of a mouthful, though.  I've known about A Modest Proposal for quite some time, but reading Three Worlds Collide brought it to the forefront of my mind.

A Modest Proposal offers a cure for overpopulation and the horrible condition of the poor.  Whenever the author walks through a poor area, there are always women begging on the streets with several children attached to them.  Without all of those annoying children, they might be able to get out of begging and do something useful to society.  Also, those children cost a fair amount to raise after their first year.  Swift's proposal is that once the babies have been around about a year, when they are nice and plump, they could be sold for a nice sum to the dinner tables of rich people.  He even gives a number of recipes!  Almost every aspect of the economy would benefit from this new item going on the market.

When A Modest Proposal was written, pretty much every scheme under the sun had been proposed for getting rid of those pesky poor.  Many didn't treat the poor as people or made some impressive leaps of logic.  A Modest Proposal is a parody of these, as well as off many other attitudes of the time.