The reporters saw in the arena long strings of tables, each six hundred and eighteen feet long, and benches to match. Each guest was allowed nineteen and one-half inches. The dishes were of water-proofed paper stamped S. A. S. A. Above each table were aluminum-painted pipes with faucets every ten seats for soup, milk, tea, and coffee.
"By keeping the tea, coffee, and soup in circulation wholesome warm drinks are secured," read the official statement, "besides obviating the assistance of eight hundred and sixteen waiters, who would have had to walk an aggregate of six hundred and seventy-seven miles from tables to kitchen."
The solid food was brought to the scores of small serving-tables by means of overhead conveyors and traveling-cranes, a sort of gigantic cash-carrier system operated by electricity. The food came in individual covered dishes, also of water-proofed paper. Everything was automatic. The S. A. S. A. system prevented spilling, waste, delay, inefficient waiters, and the dissatisfaction of the guests.
"You will observe," went on the official statement, "that for the first time in history the beneficiaries of the bounty of their fellow-men are treated as honored cash guests and not compelled to wait. The bread of charity is hard, but not when served by the S. A. S. A."
Leaflets containing much the same information had been placed in each of the thousands of seats in the Garden in lieu of programs. As each man entered he saw the pipes and the traveling-cranes and the mechanical waiters, and read the placard on the stage.
"Ain't it great?" inquired every charitable ticket-buyer. "In six and three-quarter minutes! No regiments of waiters. Everything automatic. Say, that H. R. is a wonder!"
It naturally took some time before they remembered to look at the starving people who were sitting at the long tables waiting to be fed.
They saw haggard faces, sunken-eyed, pale-lipped men and women and children. They saw trembling hands that fidgeted with knives and forks that were obviously unnecessary. They saw women at the tables trying to still whining children. They saw gray-haired heads fallen on soup-plates utterly exhausted from inanition.
They saw starving and penniless human beings by the thousand.
And the spectators, hosts of these guests, ran over the faces and the forms of the men and women and children—all alike in that all were hungry and all were penniless. And the same thought struck them all, and they expressed it audibly, with gusto, as though they were original thinkers, with the modesty of professional epigrammatists. All the spectators said: