Food and freedom

Previous to the outbreak of the Great War, food thrift, recognized as a national asset, had been more or less consistently practised in Europe, particularly, perhaps, in Germany, France, and Italy. Intensive production and elimination of household food waste had been reduced to a science and almost raised to a fetish. In spite of this fact, however, the master importance of food, in the event of war, was not completely realized — even by otherwise thoroughly prepared Germany. Man-power, arms, strategy, and gold have always been the factors emphasized and counting in the history of past wars. No sooner had the titanic storm broken in the summer of 19 14, however, when the quick and full realization that food plenty or lacking would win or lose the war came home to the fighting nations like a knife- thrust, and the accommodating storehouse doors of America were well-nigh battered down. And then America, too, perhaps for the OUR EMERGENCY 3 first time in many years of a spendthrift existence began to think. Although the United States produces more food than any other country in the world, ^ for a period covering, approximately, twenty years preceding the outbreak of the war food production in the United States did not entirely keep up with the increase in population; in the more important staple products — wheat, meats, milk, and allied foods — statistics prove a definite decline.^ At the same time the United States has always been looked upon as an ever reliable source of food for many of the nations of Europe. England, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany had been in the habit of coming to us for food which they needed in excess of that which they were able to produce in their more limited territory. This demand was made largely against grain foods, fats, meat, and, to an extent, sugar. For a corresponding period, due to the normal shifting and evolution of economic conditions — which are all growing-pains, as it were, of progress and development — there was a definite and seri- ous rise in the United States in the price of all foodstuffs, and making the ends of the household food budget meet has been an increasingly dif- 1 See Kellogg and Taylor, The Food Problem, chap, i, p. 9. 2 Cf. Report from United States Department of Agricult- ure, December, 1916, 4 FOOD AND FREEDOM ficult task for the American housekeeper. To complicate conditions further, we have been con- tent to go our way commonly without knowledge on the entire question of food materials, nutritive values, economical living, marketing. We have even been charged, and to an extent rightly, with a very general national lack of thrift, with over- consumption, with shameful waste and extrava- gant tastes in our methods of living.^