public crib

Here is further advantage without the thought of service in return, something for nothing--the open end of the public crib.

No demagogue bipeds were permitted to fatten at the public crib—no droning sinecures were lounging under the mantle of government.

Subsisting at the public crib was unpleasant business under such conditions, but there was no way out.

It is not difficult to imagine what that class did to a population which had been reduced to subsisting at the public crib.

In the United States such men are described as "feeding at the public crib."