“There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy”

“There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy”

• 
  Alfred Henry Lewis’ observation dating back to 1896 still rings true. 
• There is a thin line between society and anarchy. 
• It’s thinner than we want to admit.

So I saw this comment on Facebook:

Dear city dwellers, google the 9 meal rule and then think about why its a terrible idea to piss off the people who deliver your stuff. and could you do me a favour and not collapse the supply chain until I get home next week? that would be super. thanks.

Here we go. Just like Mass Formation Psychosis, another term I had not heard of, the “9 Meal Rule.”

...I thought it might be one of those phrases that really had no provable attribution, but nope, I found it in the digitized archives of Cosmopolitan maintained by various universities, in the March 1906 issue in an article titled, The Day of Discontent...Read all!

There it was.