FOOD SAVING 
 ^^D SHARING 
 
 TX 
 
 V63 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 ^B 2M3 27D 
 
 m 
 
 7^ 
 
 PreparecL under ihe direction of 
 THE UNITED SX^ES FOOD ADMINISTRATION 
 
^u con 
 Kek), too, iru 
 ^emruf omers 
 fc do me soma 
 
 \oa c<an 
 Kelp io sccve ' 
 om fcnniive 
 
 EJx>l(iinimbers 
 your fiiends 
 loss fije'seo. 
 
 ■^ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/foodsavingsharinOOunitrich 
 
FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
FOOD SAVING 
 AND SHARING 
 
 Telling Ho^ {he Oldei 
 
 Cnildren of Ameiicia 
 
 May Help vSave 
 
 TKeir Comrades 
 in ABied Lands 
 Across the Sea. 
 
 Prepared, urwler ilie 
 
 direction, of 
 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 FOOD ADMINISTRAnON 
 
 in cooperaiion w^iik 
 
 THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT 
 
 OF AGRICULTURE AND 
 
 THE BUREAU OF EDUCATION 
 
 m 
 
 TTE<V YORK 
 
 DOUBLEmT^imCF £^COMfe\NV 
 
COPYRIGHT, 19 1 8, BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
 
 TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 
 
 INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 t' 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The National Education Association, at its annual 
 meeting, July, 191 8, adopted a resolution calling upon 
 the United States Food Administration to "prepare in 
 a form suitable for use in public schools, and particu- 
 larly in the upper grades, lessons and material supple- 
 mentary to existing courses, which will promote the 
 program of food conservation." 
 
 In response to this request this little book has been 
 prepared. It was written by Eva March Tappan, as- 
 sisted by Alice Peloubet Norton, editor of the Journal 
 of Home Economics; Henrietta W. Calvin, Specialist in 
 Home Economics, Bureau of Education; C. F. Lang- 
 worthy, Chief of the Office of Home Economics, Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture; and Sarah Louise Arnold, Dean 
 of Simmons College. It has been read and approved 
 by H. C. Sherman, Professor of Food Chemistry, 
 Columbia University. 
 
 The manner in which the book can be used most ad- 
 vantageously will be determined by the teacher and by 
 local conditions. It is believed that the information 
 contained in it may properly be included in the instruc- 
 tion of American children at the present time. This 
 information will enable the children to contribute intel- 
 ligently to the success of the government food cam- 
 
 388699 
 
vi FOREWORD 
 
 paign, and thus aid greatly in the relief of the millions 
 now dependent for their food upon the good will of 
 the people of America. 
 
 The United States Food Administration is grateful to 
 the teachers for their loyal cooperation. 
 
 Olin Templin 
 
 Director of School and College Activities 
 
 November i, 1918. 
 
To the Girls and Boys of America: 
 
 Now that the terrible war is over, 3^ou must be glad 
 that you helped to win it by saving food for our 
 soldiers and our unhappy friends across the sea. But 
 our work of feeding hungry people is now to be 
 greater than it has ever been. Many millions of peo- 
 ple have been made free by our victory, but they are 
 in the greatest danger of death from starvation. They 
 look to America for food until the next harvest. 
 
 We must go on saving and sharing with them as 
 faithfully as ever. And of course you will want to do 
 your part as you have been doing it. To save the 
 world from famine will be a greater task than any of 
 us can imagine, but we can do it if each of us does all 
 he can. I am counting on you. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Herbert Hoover. 
 
GRACE AT TABLE 
 
 1918 
 
 Here we gather^ dear All-Father, 
 
 Round Thy table to he fed. 
 
 ' Tis Thy gift, — our daily bread. 
 
 As we gather to be fed 
 
 Nations plead for daily bread, — 
 
 Fighting son and anguished mother. 
 
 Orphaned children, — all together 
 
 Pray to thee for daily bread. 
 
 At Thy common table. Father, 
 
 Ask we all for daily bread. 
 
 God, All-Father, hear our prayer! 
 Move our hearts and minds to share 
 With Thy children at Thy table 
 This, Thy gift of daily bread, — 
 Sacred gift of daily bread! 
 
 Lest they perish, swift and eager 
 Share we now our daily bread. 
 Give through us, great All-Father, 
 To Thy children, daily bread! 
 
 SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER ' PAGE 
 
 I. Food Saving and Sharing i 
 
 II. Food in General 9 
 
 III. About Fruit and Vegetables .... 13 
 
 IV. Foods That Help Build the Body . . 21 
 V. Cereals, Foods Rich in Starch ... 27 
 
 VI. Sugar and Sweets 37 
 
 VII. Fats and Fatty Foods 47 
 
 VIII. Hungry Europe . . 55 
 
 IX. Where Is the Food of the World? . . 65 
 
 X. What We Did About It 73 
 
 XL What We Have Yet to Do .... 91 
 
 XII. The Little Group of One 97 
 
Amerkamsm 
 eating less 
 
CHAPTER I 
 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 Not long after the outbreak of the war, it became 
 clear that unless the Allies and the neutral countries 
 could get food from North America, they would soon 
 find themselves hungry. We were glad to send food. 
 We put wheat substitutes in our bread; we ate less sugar 
 than usual; and we kept meatless days — all in order to 
 save food to send across the ocean. 
 
 The war is over, but the coming of peace does not 
 fill the empty plates of the hungry people of Europe. 
 For some time to come, this must be chiefly the work of 
 North America. We must do more than in the time 
 of war because there are so many more people to feed. 
 We must help not only the AlHes but also the starving 
 nations that we could not reach until they had been 
 freed from the German invaders. It is not the Amer- 
 ican way to leave any people to die of starvation. We 
 must do our sh?re, and a generous share. We shall 
 
2 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 probably have to eat less than we are accustomed to of 
 some of the things that we like, and we shall have to 
 be careful not to be wasteful. 
 
 Some of us have fallen into the habit of being careless 
 and extravagant in the matter of food. Compared 
 with the states of Europe, the United States is a young 
 country, and the food history of all young countries 
 is much the same. When colonists first come to a land,, 
 they usually find it for a time somewhat difficult to get 
 food, excepting wild meat. Before long matters im- 
 prove. The soil of a new land is rich and fertile, 
 and soon food of many kinds becomes plentiful. Nat- 
 urally, those who have not had all that they wished now 
 enjoy the abundance, and take great pleasure in loading 
 their tables with all sorts of delicacies. 
 
 That is the way it has been with this country. But 
 even before the war, people were beginning to find out 
 that this fashion of living was foolish and extravagant, 
 that preparing so many kinds of food in elaborate ways 
 was a great waste of time and material, and that an 
 overloaded table was in poor taste. In short, people 
 were beginning to think more wisely about their food. 
 
 When we began to send large quantities of food to 
 Europe, we had to look at food in a new and different 
 fashion. We had been in the habit of choosing what- 
 ever we liked, provided it did not cost more than we 
 could pay. We now learned that we ought rather to 
 choose what we needed for health and strength. 
 
 We had to send the amount of food that we could 
 
0) 
 
 a, 
 
 2 
 
4 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 safely spare. We had to send the food that could best 
 be shipped, and the kind that soldiers would like. No 
 loyal American was so selfish as to keep the best of the 
 foods for himself, and send the poorest and least appetiz- 
 ing to the Allies and to our own boys on the front who 
 were risking their lives for us. An American boy wrote 
 home, '*When I think that the food I eat in the trenches 
 was brought to me more than 4,000 miles by land and 
 sea, part of the way on new roads built by the United 
 States, that her bread has followed me wherever I have 
 been, I cannot tell you how proud I feel that I am an 
 American." To supply food to those who fight our 
 battles is a noble task, but a nobler lies before us. To- 
 day, millions of people have not sufficient food to keep 
 them in health. We must eat wisely and economically. 
 We must save and share. 
 
 The world is large. It produces a vast amount of 
 food, but there is also a vast number of people to eat 
 this food. We never have much food stored up ** against 
 a rainy day." Even in time of peace, if all produc- 
 tion of food should suddenly cease, the whole stock 
 would be gone in sixty days. The world really lives 
 from hand to mouth. The four years of war have les- 
 sened production in many places and destroyed many 
 fields. There is much less food in the world than usual, 
 and if people are not to go hungry, no one must be 
 wasteful. The whole world is like one vast family, 
 seated at one common table. There is only a certain 
 quantity of food, and if some people take too much. 
 
FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 5 
 
 others will have to take less or go without entirely. 
 This vast family is scattered over the world. The food 
 which they need is also scattered over the world. Did 
 you ever think how well arranged it is that we have 
 different zones and that when the North Temperate 
 Zone, for instance, is warmest, the South Temperate is 
 coldest, so that the autumn of one is the spring of an- 
 other .f* Even in places no farther apart than Idaho 
 and Missouri, there is considerable difference in the 
 time of harvest, so that the season for producing grain 
 is lengthened and a greater amount of necessary food. is 
 brought into the world. In time of peace, trade and 
 opportunity to make money by carrying products from 
 where they grow to the places where they do not grow 
 may generally be depended upon for the distribution 
 of food. That is why people in New England or Michi- 
 gan, for instance, can have early in the season peaches 
 from Georgia, then from Delaware and New Jersey, 
 and finally from their home orchards. 
 
 In time of war and for a long while after such a war 
 as we have just passed through, it is not enough to 
 raise food or even to send it wherever there is a food 
 market and it can be sold at a high price. We must 
 remember the "common table'' and reahze that too 
 much food carried to one place will leave too little for 
 other places. Transportation is disorganized; it is 
 easier to send to one part of the world or to one part of a 
 country- than to another. People must not use food 
 wastefully or too lavishly, and then have to go without 
 
6 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 later. In short, everyone, in order to do his proper 
 share of the work of the world, must have his proper 
 share of the food of the world. To increase the produc- 
 tion of food and to distribute it fairly needs a wise 
 brain and a strong hand. This is why every one of the 
 countries that were at war has needed a Food Adminis- 
 tration, and why even with the coming of peace there 
 will continue a need for careful economy in food. Rep- 
 resentatives of these countries have held conferences, so 
 this plan is really a world arrangement to provide for 
 a world table. 
 
 We did not go into this war because we were eager 
 to kill people, but because we were eager to save 
 people, to give freedom to those in bondage, and to 
 make the "world a safe and happy place in which to 
 live. We have helped our friends, and we must con- 
 tinue to help them. We must also see to it that those 
 who have been our enemies are enabled to help them- 
 selves. 
 
 This Httle book was written to tell, first, what we 
 did during the war to make sure that our own people 
 and the Allies had their proper share of food; and, sec- 
 ond, what we have yet to do as our share in providing 
 food for the common table. Before we can understand 
 this, however, we must know what kinds of food each 
 person needs to make him ready to do his work in the 
 world. That is why the book is divided into two parts, 
 namely : 
 
 I. The value of different kinds of food. 
 
FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 7 
 
 2. What the United States did to provide food for 
 ourselves and the Allies. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That people are thinking more wisely about food. 
 That we must choose our food for health and 
 
 strength. 
 That the whole world sits at a common table, and 
 
 food should be shared fairly. 
 That in peace, trade is the great agent of food 
 
 distribution. 
 That in war only a strong Food Administration 
 
 can make sure that all are treated fairly. 
 That to feed people wisely we must know the 
 value of the different kinds of food. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 FOOD IN GENERAL 
 
 Not many years ago, if the question had been asked, 
 **What kinds of food ought one to eat?" most people 
 would have looked a little surprised and replied, 
 "Whatever you like, if it does not make you sick." 
 People in general thought of food as something that 
 tasted good and made them feel more comfortable 
 when they were hungry. Very few realized that 
 different kinds of food served different purposes, and 
 the mistake was often made of using too little or too 
 much of some one kind. This was just about as reason- 
 able as it would be to buy two hats when you had no 
 shoes, or to go without underwear for the sake of a 
 new coat. 
 
 We are learning that our food is useful to us in three 
 ways. The first is to give us energy for work and to 
 keep us warm. When a room is cold, we make a fire. 
 The burning of the coal or wood produces heat. If the 
 
lo FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 fire were under the boiler of an engine, it would turn 
 the water into steam that would furnish the power to 
 run the engine. If you work hard, you need plenty of 
 the kind of food that gives energy; for if you do not 
 have enough food of this sort, the energy will have to 
 come from some of the fat that is stored up in your 
 body. Then you will become thin and lose strength. 
 On the other hand, if you work Httle and eat much, you 
 may grow too fat, or you may clog the machinery of 
 your body and so put it out of order and make it in- 
 capable of doing good work. 
 
 The second way in which our food should be of use 
 to us is as material for building up our bodies and keep- 
 ing them in repair. When a man is building a house 
 or repairing one, he needs wood or stone or brick; he 
 needs glass and putty and nails and plaster, and many 
 other materials. When a house is in use, something is 
 always giving out and must be repaired. If the proper 
 materials for repair cannot be obtained, then one part 
 of the house after another ceases to be useful, and after 
 a while the whole house becomes worthless. It is the 
 same with the body. The muscles, bones, nerves, 
 blood, and all the rest of it must have the proper sort 
 of materials to make them grow and to keep them in 
 good working order. We may eat entirely too much 
 food, but if it is not of the proper sort, our bodies will 
 become worn out and will refuse to do their work. 
 
 Besides providing fuel and materials for growth and 
 repair, food must also act as a sort of overseer of the 
 
FOOD IN GENERAL ii 
 
 machinery of the body. If you stop to think, you will 
 realize that in your body there is a great deal of ma- 
 chinery. To digest your dinner, for instance, is an 
 important business and not at all a simple matter. 
 To carry on this business the muscles and blood vessels 
 of the stomach and the whole digestive apparatus must 
 be kept in good running order. Machinery needs great 
 care. Each part must be kept in the proper position 
 to fit into the other parts and work with them. There 
 must be no friction, everything must work smoothly 
 and regularly and everything must be taken to the 
 place where it is needed. When a man sets out to 
 repair his house, he must not only provide the proper 
 materials, but he must see that they are set in the right 
 places and he must see that what is useless and worn 
 out is carried away as rubbish. 
 
 All this is the work of the food in the body, and it is 
 high time that we began to think more wisely about 
 it. 
 
 It is worth remembering: 
 
 That food is useful to us in the three following 
 ways: 
 
 1. Fuel food to provide power for work, and to 
 keep us warm. 
 
 2. Building food to provide material for build- 
 ing and repairing the body. 
 
 3. Regulating food to keep the machinery of the 
 body in good running order. 
 
Chart 12. Fruit and FrulT Pfod\xti& 
 
 ReviMd EditiMl 
 
 U.S Department of Agnculture 
 
 States Relations Service 
 
 A C.True: Director 
 
 FVepared by 
 
 C.FLANGWORTHY 
 
 Chief. Office of Home Econonmct 
 
 COMPOSITION or FOOD MATERIALS. 
 
 ■■I ■■ Fuel VdkM 
 
 RAISINS 
 
 R8t:3. 
 
 ■1 m ■■ 
 
 Fat Corbohydraas Ash 
 
 GRAPES 
 
 EDIBLE PWriON 
 
 (JtBLC PORTOI* 
 
 :2B 
 
 CANNCD 
 PRUIT 
 
 Water: 77 £ 
 
 PRUIT 
 ^RLJLY 
 
 Waten21.0 
 
 TutL VALUE 
 
 c 
 
 370 CALDPiES Carba 
 
 PtR TOmD hydr-^s-jaa 
 
 ''"'Wn^"^' hydrates: 21 J 
 
 M)5 CALDFIES 
 PCT POIWI. 
 
 NA5h:0./ 
 
 FutL 
 
 14-15 CAUJRIE5 
 PCR POIMD 
 
^>^^ ^'-e^ 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ABOUT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES 
 
 It is always interesting to visit a place where food 
 of many kinds is for sale. People who live in the 
 country are fortunate, for they can raise much of their 
 own food; but they always enjoy going to the state 
 and county fairs where food is on exhibition and prizes 
 are given out for the biggest potatoes and pumpkins^ 
 the best bread and cake and jelly and preserves as weil 
 as for the best sheep and pigs and oxen. In the city 
 there are often food fairs, and in the larger cities there 
 are generally great market buildings where farmers can 
 bring their produce, have the use of a stall, and sell 
 directly to their customers. In many of the smaller 
 cities the "market'' consists of a great room or hall 
 with many counters, and on these all kinds of food 
 are placed, carefully protected by glass from dust and 
 flies, but open to view, and with each counter given up 
 to some one kind of food. These counters are skill- 
 
 13 
 
14 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 fully arranged to induce customers to buy more than 
 they intended, the meat and vegetables farthest from 
 the entrance, because people will buy these anyway; 
 and luxuries near the door, so people will be tempted 
 by them when waiting for a car. 
 
 Such markets are arranged for the benefit of the 
 seller; but one might be planned for the benefit oi the 
 buyer, not the buyer who merely wants "something 
 good to eat, " but the intelligent buyer who knows that 
 each kind of food is of value for some special purpose. 
 
 Suppose there were such a market, or rather, a great 
 food fair, larger than any fair that was ever held 
 before, and that all the kinds of food that you ever saw 
 were brought together so people could walk about and 
 look and buy whatever they chose. They might find 
 the food arranged in five great booths, so that each one 
 contained the kinds of food that would do the same 
 kinds of work in the body. In the first booth would be 
 the fruits and vegetables, whose greatest value to us 
 is in regulating the body. In the second would be 
 milk, meat, cheese, and other foods that furnish pro- 
 tein, a very important building food. Milk is useful in 
 so many other ways that it might almost be put in 
 every booth. In the third there would be chiefly 
 cereals, such as wheat, oats, and rye. These, too, con- 
 tain protein, and they also contain much starch, the 
 cheapest kind of body fuel. In the fourth booth would 
 be sugar and different kinds of sweets, fuel foods that 
 we like for their flavor. In the fifth booth would be 
 
ABOUT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES 15 
 
 butter and bacon, oils, and other fats. These are 
 important fuel foods and they also make our food taste 
 good. 
 
 In a city small boys and girls are often sent to market 
 to buy the food for the family. "They know what 
 they are about,'* the clerks say, "and they get their 
 money's worth." Imagine, then, some of these children 
 with a market basket visiting each booth and selecting 
 the day's food for their home. 
 
 At the first booth, they would find all the kinds of 
 fruits and vegetables ever heard of. There would be 
 apples, pears, plums, cherries, oranges, lemons, and 
 pineapples, all the varieties of grapes that ever grew 
 on vines and all the kinds of berries that ever grew on 
 bushes — for in an imaginary fair Hke this there is no 
 reason why there should not be fruit from every country 
 and of every season. Of course there would also be 
 plenty of dried fruit, such as figs, raisins, apricots, and 
 prunes. 
 
 At the same booth, there would be vegetables of all 
 kinds. Green corn and carrots, spinach, celery, 
 salsify, lettuce, potatoes and sweet potatoes, onions, 
 string beans, green peas, okra and cabbages, and all 
 the other vegetables that ever grew in gardens or fields. 
 There would be dried ones, too, for people are beginning 
 to discover that they can dry vegetables as well as 
 fruits, and if ever such a fair as this becomes a reality, 
 there will be a great display of vegetables which will 
 need nothing but water to make them ready to be 
 
i6 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 cooked for the table. Boxes of dried carrots or potatoes 
 or peas do not look quite so warlike as a machine gun, 
 but they, as well as the gun, have helped to win the war. 
 The process of drying made it possible to preserve the 
 products of our gardens and farms, and dried vegetables 
 take up so little room and weigh so little that they 
 can be carried across the ocean far more easily than 
 fresh ones. 
 
 In these fruits and vegetables mineral matter is 
 found, especially lime and iron. These mineral sub- 
 stances are necessary to all the processes going on in 
 the body, and an important part of their work is help- 
 ing to make bones and teeth. If you leave a bone 
 in weak acid, such as vinegar, for a few days, the acid 
 will eat most of the mineral matter out of it. The 
 bone will look much the same, but if you take hold of 
 it, you will find that it will bend almost like rubber 
 and can actually be tied in a knot. This shows how 
 bones behave if they do not have enough lime to keep 
 them stiff. Children's bones have a hard time in one 
 way. They have not nearly so much mineral matter 
 as those of grown folk, and therefore they are far more 
 likely to be bent out of shape. If a little child walks 
 before the bones of his legs contain enough mineral 
 matter to strengthen them so they will hold up the 
 weight of his body, he may become bow-legged. In 
 another way, the bones of children have a great advan- 
 tage. They do not break easily, and if one does break, 
 it will soon knit, or grow together again, while if an 
 
ABOUT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES 17 
 
 elderly person breaks a bone, it may never knit at 
 all. 
 
 Mineral matter is often found in some one part of a 
 fruit or a vegetable more than in other parts. In the 
 potato, for instance, there is much of it in the layer 
 next to the skin. This is why potatoes ought to be 
 pared as thinly as possible or the baked skin eaten. 
 In any case, to throw away thick potato parings and buy 
 other starch and mineral food is behaving Hke the 
 woman who paid one man ten cents a barrel to carry 
 off her old fruit baskets and wooden boxes, and on the 
 same day paid his brother ten cents a barrel to bring 
 her bits of wood for kindhngs. 
 
 Not only do the fruits and vegetables supply us with 
 mineral matter, but they make our food more bulky, 
 and this is an aid to good digestion. Fruits and vege- 
 tables are useful, too, in giving us water, and we need 
 much water, more indeed than most people are accus- 
 tomed to drink. Sixty pounds of the body of a ninety- 
 pound child consists of water. This is passing out 
 constantly through the breath, as you can see by 
 breathing on a cold window pane, and through the 
 tiny pores of the skin, but more in summer than in 
 winter; and we need a large quantity to take its place. 
 When you are thirsty, it is not only your throat, but 
 your whole body, that is calling for water. There is 
 no water in sugar, starch, or lard, but there is in al- 
 most all other kinds of food, even where one would 
 hardly think of looking for it. In wheat flour, for 
 
i8 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 example, there is a good deal. If you should keep ten 
 pounds of wheat flour in a warm oven for a while it 
 would weigh a little less than nine pounds when you 
 took it out. The lost pound was water, and it has 
 evaporated. Any one can see, even without testing 
 the statement, that there is much water in fruit and 
 vegetables. Grapes are nearly four-fifths water, toma- 
 toes and celery more than nine-tenths. 
 
 It is because fruit and vegetables contain so much 
 water that they are difficult to transport, for not only 
 do they spoil easily, but they are heavy and take up 
 too much room. That is one reason why, in these days, 
 when there is double work for every ship, we are asked 
 to eat them as much as possible, so that the more con- 
 centrated foods may be sent abroad. Entirely aside 
 from the needs of the countries that have been at war, 
 however, they are an extremely valuable food. 
 
 In the old fairy tales, there was always one fairy who 
 was forgotten and who made everything go wrong be- 
 cause she was not invited to go to the wedding or the 
 christening. There is a class of substances called vita- 
 mines which are somewhat like the revengeful fairy. 
 They are present in certain kinds of food in minute 
 quantities. Little is known about the vitamines, but 
 what is known is of the utmost importance, for it is 
 certain that they are necessary to life and health. 
 There are two kinds. A good deal of one kind is found 
 in butter, the yolk of eggs, and in the leafy vegetables, 
 such as lettuce, spinach, and dandelions. The other 
 
ABOUT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES 19 
 
 kind is found in a great many kinds of food, especially 
 in vegetables, in fruit, and in whole cereals. Both are 
 found in milk. They, like the fairy, should never be 
 forgotten at the feast. 
 
 We know fairly well how much people should eat of 
 some kinds of food; but no one has as yet found out 
 just how much of the vitamines we need. One thing 
 is sure, namely, that fruits and vegetables which con- 
 tain them are a most valuable kind of food, and every- 
 body, except babies, should have at least one pound a 
 day. They are so largely water that there is very little 
 danger of any one's eating too much of them, but in 
 any case, it is better to eat too much of these foods 
 than too little and the children with the market basket 
 can hardly buy too freely at this booth. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That the first of the fiwe great groups is composed 
 
 of fruit and vegetables. 
 That we need, especially for the making of teeth 
 and bones, the mineral matter supplied by fruit 
 and vegetables, and milk. 
 That if we use fruits and vegetables and milk 
 freely we are quite sure to get enough of the 
 vitamines that are needed to make us grow. 
 That fruit and vegetables also help to supply us 
 with water, and add to our food the bulk which 
 is needed in digestion. 
 That fresh fruit and vegetables are so hard to 
 ship that we can help by using those that grow 
 near home. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 FOODS THAT HELP BUILD THE BODY 
 
 After the children with the market basket have se- 
 lected their fruit and vegetables they will next come to 
 a booth filled with eatables which look as if they had 
 never seen one another before and were surprised to 
 find themselves in the same company. Some are in 
 bottles, some in jars or in their own natural shells, 
 some are in wooden boxes or cartons and rattle around 
 whenever they are stirred, and some stand out boldly 
 in all sorts of shapes, ready to be sliced and sold. Per- 
 haps you have guessed that the bottles hold milk, that 
 the jars and shells hold oysters and clams, that the 
 boxes and cartons hold dried beans and peas and nuts, 
 and that the food all ready to be sliced off is great 
 pieces of meat — beef, mutton, pork, veal, and other 
 kinds. Besides these, there are eggs, cheese, and fish. 
 
 It is certainly a queer collection at this second booth, 
 for eggs and oysters, or pork and nuts, or beans and 
 
 21 
 
22 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 cheese, have not often much to do with each other. 
 In one respect, however, all these foods are aUke; 
 namely, they all contain a good deal of a substance 
 called protein. It is by no means easy to extract the 
 mineral matter from fruit and vegetables, but it is a 
 simple matter for any one to get protein. If you live 
 in the country, go to a wheat field, pick some grains 
 of ripe wheat and chew them. They will soon become 
 a gummy, elastic mass; and this is one kind of protein. 
 If you live in a city, far away from fields of wheat, 
 make a stiflF dough of some flour and work it with 
 your fingers in a dish of water or under a gentle trickle 
 from a faucet until the starch is washed out; and what 
 remains of the dough is the same kind of protein as 
 that obtained from the wheat kernels. Aside from the 
 water in them, lean meat, cottage cheese and the white 
 of egg are almost entirely protein. Dried beans and 
 peas, peanuts and lentils, although really vegetables, 
 contain so much that they belong in this group. The soy 
 bean, which first came to us from Japan and China, and 
 is now raised in large quantities in America, is more than 
 one-third protein. Fish contains almost as much as 
 meat, while milk and cheese are the best protein foods 
 we have. 
 
 The chief business of protein is to supply material 
 for growth and repair. A child who does not have as 
 much protein as he needs will become stunted. The 
 body of a grown person does not increase in height like 
 that of a child, but it is subject to constant wear and 
 
FOODS THAT HELP BUILD THE BODY 23 
 
 teats and if there were no way to replace what has been 
 worn out, it would not take so very long for an active 
 person to use up his body. A boy who goes barefooted 
 all summer does not wear out the soles of his feet, or 
 rather, what he does wear off is replaced; but he would 
 wear out more than one pair of shoes if he gave them 
 the same treatment that he gave his feet. Shoes wear 
 out, but feet are kept in repair by the body. 
 
 Protein is an absolutely necessary food. This is 
 what gives it its name, for the word protein means 
 of the first importance. Unluckily, most people make 
 the mistake of thinking that in order to get protein 
 food they must buy meat; and as meat is usually ex- 
 pensive, they spend much more money in buying it 
 than is at all necessary. If they only knew that cheese 
 and eggs and milk, as well as fish and other seafoods, 
 will take the place of meat altogether, and that beans, 
 peas, and nuts will do a great deal toward filHng its 
 place, they would come hom.e from market with fuller 
 purses. 
 
 There is one thing that the children with the market 
 basket should remember when they stand before the 
 protein booth — that not all proteins which the foods pro- 
 vide are alike. Some come from animals and some from 
 vegetables. Some can supply all the protein needs of 
 the body, some only part of them. That is why, if 
 we eat milk, cheese, eggs, or fish, we can do without 
 meat altogether; but if we depend upon beans and 
 peas, we need some milk, or eggs, or meat besides. 
 
24 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 Fish is an excellent substitute for meat; but it is a 
 pity that we have so many whims and prejudices about 
 it, and fancy that a new kind of fish cannot be good 
 because we have never heard of it before. If you make 
 a list of the kinds offish that you are accustomed to eat, 
 you will find it a very short one, and yet there are at 
 least seventy kinds of salt water fish and thirty of 
 fresh water fish that we might be using as food. A 
 number of these that we do not know are fully as good 
 as those that we are accustomed to eating. Besides 
 this we have salted, and dried, and canned fish. Many 
 other countries use much more fish than we. We eat 
 on an average only about one-third of a pound a week 
 each, and most of us eat it only one day a week. Cana- 
 dians average more than one pound, and English people 
 average one and one-fourth pounds. It is fooHsh and 
 narrow minded to be afraid to try new kinds. 
 
 Milk is one of the best protein foods we have, the 
 very best for children. People often think of milk as 
 a drink rather than a food because it is a liquid; but 
 they ought to learn that a glass of milk has as much pro- 
 tein as a large egg or one and one-third ounces of meat. 
 
 Many people look upon milk as merely a luxury, and 
 therefore they are ready to strike it out of their fare 
 if its price rises. It is a pity that they do not under- 
 stand how necessary a food milk is. Compared with 
 other protein foods it is not expensive. Do you know 
 that when milk is fifteen cents a quart and eggs sixty 
 cents a dozen, a quarter of a dollar will buy more 
 
FOODS THAT HELP BUILD THE BODY 25 
 
 protein in the form of milk than in that of eggs, and as 
 much as in beef at thirty-five cents a pound ? Milk, 
 too, contains fat and sugar and other things that the 
 body needs. It is a better source of Hme than any 
 other food, besides containing the substances called 
 vitamines that we have just begun to know about. 
 Every boy and girl ought to have at least a pint of 
 milk a day, and every child under six should use a quart, 
 while grown people should have some every day. Buy 
 milk and save money is a good slogan for the house- 
 keeper. 
 
 Even in skim milk and in buttermilk most of the 
 protein and milk sugar and the greater part of the 
 lime of the whole milk are found. Cottage cheese, 
 even when made of skim milk, is a good substitute for 
 meat. American cheese, too, may be used in place of 
 meat, and has one advantage over milk in that it is 
 not so bulky. A cube of cheese measuring one and 
 one-fourth inches will furnish about as much protein 
 as a glass of milk. Unluckily, we are not very sensible 
 in our use of cheese. We ought to remember that it is 
 one of the hearty foods and eat it in place of other pro- 
 tein foods instead of when we have already had enough. 
 
 Four large eggs contain about an ounce of protein, 
 and so does a quart of milk, or half a cup of cottage 
 cheese, or one and three-fourths cups of baked beans, 
 or one-third of a pound of meat. Certainly, there is no 
 monotony in protein foods and every taste ought to be 
 suited with one or another of them. When the house- 
 
26 
 
 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 keeper goes to buy protein foods, however, she must 
 remember that from day to day her family will need 
 variety, and that some of her daily supply of protein 
 should always come from milk. 
 
 A wise man has said that no family should buy meat 
 until at least a pint of milk has been bought for each 
 member. 
 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That protein is found in a great variety of food, 
 
 both animal and vegetable. 
 
 That protein supplies food for growth and repair; 
 
 and that it is therefore of the first importance. 
 
 That there are different kinds of protein and that 
 
 we need a variety, unless we get enough of the 
 
 one best kind of protein food, milk. 
 
 That meat is not necessary if we use the right 
 
 foods in its place. 
 That we ought to use more fish and to learn to 
 
 know more varieties. 
 That to buy milk is a cheap way to get protein. 
 That every child needs milk each day. 
 

 CHAPTER V 
 CEREALS, FOODS RICH IN STARCH 
 
 If the children are fortunate enough to live in the 
 country they will feel especially at home when they 
 come to the third booth, for here are the cereals, wheat, 
 rye, corn, rice, oats, barley, and buckwheat, most of 
 them ground into flour or meal. Of course, these are 
 not so interesting in their boxes and bags as when they 
 were growing in the fields, but they must be looked upon 
 with profound respect, for throughout the greater 
 part of the world people eat more cereals than any 
 other one kind of food. They are the cheapest of the 
 fuel foods, they are easy to raise, and they are con- 
 venient to store away because they are almost dry 
 and they do not spoil easily. A wise man once said 
 that he hated to see anything take up more room than 
 it was worth, but he would never have said that of 
 cereals. 
 
 From cereals we get most of our starchy food, and 
 
 27 
 
28 FCOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 the chief business of this is to supply us with energy. 
 It has been kindly planned for us that, even if we can- 
 not get food from the group best adapted to supply 
 some special need of our bodies, food of another group 
 may answer the purpose to some degree. The foods in 
 the second group are the best providers of protein, but the 
 cereal foods also will give us much of the protein that 
 we need. 
 
 The green things growing are a wise folk. 
 They act as if they understood just what was best for 
 themselves and also for the little plants that are to 
 follow them. If you look at a kernel of corn, you will 
 see, close to the end which clings to the cob, a small, 
 yellowish part which often slips out when one is eating 
 green corn. This part is called the embryo, or germ, 
 and it contains the life of the kernel. It is always in a 
 hurry to begin to grow, and if it is only given some water 
 and left quietly in a dark, warm place, it will set to 
 work promptly. Nothing can grow without food, 
 however, plants no more than babies, and the mother 
 plant has looked out for this very moment. The 
 embryo itself contains protein and fat; but she has 
 carefully packed this embryo into the kernel, and most 
 of the kernel is made up of starch and other materials, 
 which are just the proper food to give the embryo 
 energy to push out of the kernel, produce its little 
 roots and leaves, and set up for itself in the world. 
 This is the early Hfe not only of corn, but of all the 
 grains. 
 
CEREALS, FOODS RICH IN STARCH 29 
 
 In the olden times, beautiful stories arose from the 
 facts of nature, and gradually became part of the 
 religion of the people. They taught their children 
 that Mother Earth, or Ceres, brought forth grain from 
 the ground for them. They worshipped her and made 
 offerings to induce her to give them generous harvests. 
 They made statues of her as a kind and gracious woman, 
 bearing a horn of plenty filled to overflowing with golden 
 sheaves of grain. They delighted in the story that 
 Pluto, king of the underworld, once stole away her 
 little daughter to make her his queen. He gave her 
 jewels and all the precious treasures that are found in the 
 earth, but still she was sad and longed for her mother 
 and the sunshine of the upper world; and at length 
 the king of the Gods declared that the little daughter 
 might spend halfof every year with Ceres above ground; 
 that is, putting it into the language of to-day, the kernel 
 of grain spends part of the year underground and part 
 in the air and sunshine. It is perhaps because of this 
 myth of Ceres that we picture autumn, the harvest 
 time, as a woman bearing sheaves of grain or ears of 
 corn. Whittier wrote: 
 
 "Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! 
 Heap high the golden corn! 
 No richer gift has Autumn poured 
 From out her lavish horn!" 
 
 The grains take their name of cereals from Ceres. 
 To us corn means Indian corn or maize, but it is really 
 
30 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 another name for grain, and in other countries is often 
 given to the kind of grain that is most famiHar there. To 
 manyEngHshmen an "ear of corn "would mean ahead of 
 wheat; to the Scotchman, oats; to the Scandinavian, rye. 
 In the Old Testament story of Joseph's brothers com- 
 ing to Egypt to buy "corn" because there was a 
 famine in their own country, "corn" means wheat or 
 millet, and not the maize of America. Originally "corn" 
 meant kernel, and this is its meaning in the words of 
 Jesus, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
 die, it abideth alone." 
 
 Cereals are all good manufacturers of starch, but 
 they need sunshine, and our American corn especially 
 needs the sun. That is why hot, sunny days are 
 called "good corn weather." The starch in cereals is 
 closely packed into tiny cells with thin walls of cel- 
 lulose, the substance that gives plants their form and 
 stiffens their stems. The stems are older than the 
 twigs, and therefore, contain more cellulose; that is 
 why they are stifFer, just as young radishes are tender, 
 but as they grow older, they form more of this substance 
 and become tough. We do not digest cellulose readily, 
 but some things are useful even if they are not digested. 
 Cellulose is one of them, for it helps food to move on 
 through the entire digestive tract. 
 
 Cereals are easy to cook, but they do need to be 
 cooked a long time. This is because the little cells 
 must be swelled with heat and moisture till they spread 
 apart and their walls break down and set free the tiny 
 
32 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 grains of starch. To save time in cooking, many 
 people buy the prepared cereals that are half cooked 
 or entirely cooked before they are put on the market. 
 What are called "rolled oats" are oats steamed and 
 then crushed between heavy rollers, in order to break 
 down the walls of the cells and set the starch free. 
 
 There is very little difference in the amount of 
 starch or other materials contained in the different 
 cereals. We have fallen into the habit of using wheat 
 in its various forms more than the other grains, chiefly 
 because it makes lighter raised bread, but it is not at 
 all necessary, and the others will fill its place in the 
 work of feeding the body. 
 
 Some fruits and many vegetables contain starch, 
 though not in nearly so large quantities as the grains. 
 The legumes, for instance, peas, beans, lentils, and 
 peanuts, besides attending to their chief business 
 as makers of protein, also manufacture considerable 
 starch. Another name for the legumes is the butter- 
 fly plants, because their blossoms look like little butter- 
 flies with their wings spread. These pretty little 
 plants work hard to make food for us. They are no 
 "slackers." 
 
 Some of the fruits and vegetables which manufacture 
 starch as well as sugar contain both substances at the 
 same time, and sometimes one changes into the other. 
 Bananas and apples contain much starch when they 
 are young and green, and much sugar when they are 
 older. That is why they can be eaten cooked before 
 
CEREALS, FOODS RICH IN STARCH 33 
 
 they are ripe enough to eat raw. There is a pretty 
 experiment that can be tried with apples and a few 
 drops of weak iodine, showing the change of starch 
 into sugar. Cut a half-ripe apple in two at right 
 angles with the stem, and put a little iodine on the 
 surface. Whenever starch meets iodine, it turns blue; 
 and the surface of this apple will turn to a deep, rich 
 blue. Do the same thing later in the season, and 
 although the apple will be blue, it will not be of nearly 
 so deep a shade. By and by, when the apple is ripe, 
 you will find that the iodine will bring out hardly a 
 trace of color. That is, the apple has changed its 
 starch into sugar. 
 
 In the shortage of grain, the potato is an excellent 
 substitute. The potato is a tuber, that is, a part of 
 the stem which grows underground, thickens, and forms 
 a storehouse which is filled with starch. Every "eye" 
 is capable of becoming a plant, and in the first place, 
 the potato probably contained only what starch the 
 eyes would need for their own growth. We have 
 cultivated the potato, however, and so increased the 
 amount of starch that it is now of much value for food. 
 
 A potato is really very interesting, not nearly so 
 commonplace as it looks. The courtly Sir Walter 
 Raleigh thought potatoes a gift fit to bestow upon a 
 queen, and more than three hundred years ago he is 
 said to have taken some from America to give to Queen 
 Elizabeth. If you cut a thin slice crosswise from the 
 middle of a raw potato and hold it up to the light, you 
 
34 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 will see that it is not the same all the way through. 
 Next to the skin there is a layer half an inch thick or 
 less that is more nearly transparent than the rest. 
 From the middle of the potato, irregular rays stretch 
 out toward the skin in a sort of star. The sweet 
 potato contains much sugar, but the greater part of 
 both white and sweet potatoes is made up of little 
 irregular rooms or cells, the walls of which are made of 
 cellulose, and each cell is a tiny storeroom full of 
 starch. 
 
 Chewing even a raw potato will break open the cells 
 and set free much of this starch, but of course the potato 
 becomes far more palatable if it is cooked. There is 
 much water in a potato, and heat will expand it and 
 break the cells apart, and the Httle grains of starch 
 will swell; and now the tuber is more fit for food and 
 will give a generous supply of energy. If you happen 
 to be a Boy Scout, and know how to cook without a 
 stove, you can roast potatoes out of doors, but you will 
 not carry them on a mountain trip, because they con- 
 tain so much water that they are very heavy in pro- 
 portion to the amount of nourishment in them. That 
 is why potatoes are not so good to send across the 
 ocean as the grains, which contain little water and are 
 almost solid food. 
 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That most of our starchy food conies from cereals. 
 That cereals are the cheapest source of energy; 
 but must be thoroughly cooked. 
 
CEREALS, FOODS RICH IN STARCH 35 
 
 That there is little difference in the food value of 
 
 the various cereals. 
 That some fruits and vegetables manufacture 
 
 starch as well as sugar. 
 That the potato is a good substitute for grain. 
 That if you' eat more peas and beans you will not 
 
 need so much bread. 
 
 
 
Counting the Full Sap Buckets in Maple Sugar Time 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SUGAR AND SWEETS 
 
 The fourth booth in the great fair is the one that 
 many children will hke best, for here is sugar of every 
 kind that you ever heard of — cane sugar, beet sugar, 
 maple sugar, and even sugar of milk. There are also 
 substitutes for sugar, .such as honey, molasses, glucose, 
 and corn sirup. Besides these, there are preserves and 
 jam, and there are more kinds of candy than you ever 
 imagined even in a dream of fairyland. 
 
 Sugar is so agreeable that we are often inclined to 
 eat it in too large quantities or at the wrong time. 
 Children are often told that if they eat sugar before 
 dinner, it will "spoil their appetite." This is because 
 eating it makes you feel as if you did not care for any- 
 thing more, even though all the time your body may 
 be in need of other food. 
 
 We eat sugar quite as much because we like it as 
 because we need it. We can get from fruit and vege- 
 
 37 
 
38 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 tables, especially dried fruit, all that we really require, 
 though our food would not be so appetizing without 
 some Sugar. 
 
 In one way, however, sugar is of great value as a 
 food. You know that soldiers sometimes carry an 
 ** emergency ration," which is not to be used unless 
 their regular supply of food has given out. Sugar is a 
 sort of emergency ration. If you are climbing a moun- 
 tain, a lump of sugar or a few raisins now and then will 
 help you on. Soldiers find that they can stand a hard 
 march better if they have sugar. Of course some other 
 food, like bread, for instance, or a baked potato, would 
 answer the purpose; but they have no time to stop and 
 cook, and if they had, these foods would take a longer 
 time to digest and yield energy. Then, too, soldiers 
 like it, and it makes up to them in part for the sweet 
 dessert most of them have had at home. These are two 
 reasons why we have had to be as saving of sugar as 
 possible, in order to send it to them. 
 
 When people speak of sugar, they usually have in 
 mind a bowl of white granulated sugar, but this is by 
 no means fair to the other varieties. Nearly all our 
 sugar comes from plants. Until about a century ago, 
 all granulated sugar was made from the sugar cane. 
 This is really a kind of grass, but a grass that might 
 grow in a country of giants, for it is ten or fifteen feet 
 in height, sometimes even twenty. The juice or sap is 
 so sweet that children — and grown-up people, too — like 
 to suck bits of the stalk. 
 
SUGAR AND SWEETS 39 
 
 These stalks are crushed in a mill and passed between 
 rollers to squeeze out the juice. Solids are filtered out, 
 then the liquid is boiled several times, the sugar crystal- 
 lizing after each boihng and being removed. This gives 
 what is called raw sugar. It is brown, and to make it 
 white it has to be washed and filtered through a special 
 kind of charcoal made from bone, and then crystallized 
 again. This is what we call refining it. The refined 
 sugar is of a slightly creamy color, and sometimes it is 
 blued to make it look white. If you examine a few 
 grains through a magnifying glass, you will find that 
 each grain is a Httle crystal. Molasses is what is called 
 a "by-product" of sugar-making. It contains a large 
 amount of sugar, but to get all this sugar into a crystal- 
 lized form is a thing that the ordinary methods of 
 sugar-making have not yet succeeded in doing. Mo- 
 lasses is rich in lime, and so is better than sugar for 
 growing children. 
 
 Sugar is also made from large, sweet beets. These 
 are cut into slices, and the juice is extracted and puri- 
 fied. Then the Hquid is evaporated, and a sugar re- 
 sults which is exactly the same thing as cane sugar. 
 It will make jelly and do everything else that cane 
 sugar will do. Before the war, the French raised large 
 quantities of sugar beets; but France's beet-bearing 
 lands have been partly in the hands of the enemy or 
 within the fighting zone and now, even though they 
 have been recovered, they will be in no condition for 
 agriculture for a long time to come. 
 

 
 
 1' 
 
 
 
 _ ^ .; 4x.^ m. 
 
 * ■ 
 
 
 U£M 
 
 W' ■ ijt. -% 'Jl«l.ii.€>.. 1 v-J: -4 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 ^',%mxv 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^^ ^ for" "^ ' " ^ ^'^"^k--^^^^^^ 
 
 
 t5 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 e 
 
 
 ■X 
 
 === 
 
 Sugar Cane 
 
SUGAR AND SWEETS 41 
 
 The same kind of sugar comes from one kind of maple 
 tree that grows in many parts of this country. About 
 the maple there is a charming story that, when one day 
 the Lord of the Green Things Growing came to visit 
 his garden, the plants were all eager to make him some 
 gift. The rose and the lily gave their blossoms; the 
 apple and the orange and the nut trees gave their fruit 
 and were happy. The maple alone was troubled, for 
 she had neither blossoms nor fruit to give him. At last 
 she said sadly, "I have no beautiful blossoms and no 
 delicious fruit, but I will gladly give you my own 
 heart's blood." And that is the way, according to the 
 legend, that the first maple sugar came into being; 
 
 To make maple sugar, a hole is bored a little way into 
 the tree and a "spile" pushed in. Through this spile 
 the sap trickles down into a bucket, then is poi red 
 into a kettle or a modern evaporator, and some of the 
 water boiled out, leaving maple syrup. Evaporatmg 
 more of the water will leave a mushy — but delicious — 
 wet brown sugar; and what remains after still more 
 evaporating is poured into moulds, and soon cakes 
 of "new maple sugar" are for sale in the stores. Maple 
 sugar could be refined and made white, but it would 
 lose the characteristic flavor which people like so well. 
 
 Another kind of sugar is found in honey. In ancient 
 times, before people had learned how to get sugar from_ 
 plants, honey was very much prized because it was their 
 only sweetening, and a land "flowing with milk and 
 honey" was their way of describing a rich and fertile 
 
42 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 country. To offer a guest milk and honey was a special 
 courtesy. People of those times were very particular 
 where their honey came from, and the ancient poets 
 had much to say about the wonderfully good quality 
 of that»from a mountain in Greece named Hymettus. 
 Honey still comes from that mountain, and it is exceed- 
 ingly good; but persons who have tried it and also the 
 honey made in America from the blossoms of basswood, 
 or of white clover, say that the American honey is fully 
 as deHcate. 
 
 A kind of sugar called glucose is found in many fruits 
 and vegetables, and also in honey. There is so much 
 in grapes that it is sometimes called grape sugar. 
 One form of this kind of sugar is made from the starch 
 of corn, and is called corn sugar when it is sold in the 
 solid form, or corn sirup when it is liquid. It is of 
 common use in confectionery, jelly, preserves, and 
 in canning. It is used, too, as a table sirup. In many 
 countries the same sugar is made from potato starch. 
 
 In parts of our country a sirup is made from sorghum, 
 a plant that has been known in China for many cen- 
 turies. Many farmers in a community will grow a 
 held of sorghum cane, which is not unlike the sugar cane 
 m appearance. One farmer will set up the mill and 
 grind this cane for his neighbors. The cane comes to 
 the mill heaped high in large wagons and the product 
 is returned to the farmers in the large cans or vats 
 provided for the purpose. The mill is a simple affair 
 erected out of doors and turned by a horse or mule 
 
44 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 walking round and round, but it grinds the cane under 
 heavy pressure and forces out the greenish, strong- 
 tasting juice. The sirup is boiled in a series of large 
 pans supported on bricks over a fire, and so arranged 
 that the sirup as it boils runs over from the higher into 
 the lower pans, leaving behind the impurities and be- 
 coming clearer. When it flows from the last pan it is 
 clear and thick and ready for table use. Ribbon cane 
 sirup is prepared in many places in the south in the 
 same way. 
 
 Not only sugar cane and beets and maple trees con- 
 tain sugar in their sap, but many other plants and some 
 of the vegetables that we use commonly. The chief 
 difficulty is that there is not enough in them to make it 
 worth while to extract it for the market. Fruits, 
 especially sun-dried fruits, contain a good deal of sugar. 
 Raisins, for instance, which will often take the place of 
 sugar, are exceedingly sweet, and they are merely grapes 
 dried in the sun, and contain only the sugar that was 
 in them in the first place. Cakes and desserts that have 
 raisins in them do not need so much sugar. Dates and 
 figs are also good to use in place of sugar. 
 
 While most of our sugar comes from plants, some is 
 found in the animal kingdom. If skim milk or whey 
 is boiled till most of the water is evaporated, and is 
 allowed to stand quietly for a while, tiny crystals form 
 and drop to the bottom of the dish. This is milk sugar. 
 It is an expensive kind of sugar. To make one quart 
 of it takes at least twenty quarts of milk. It is 
 
SUGAR AND SWEETS 
 
 45 
 
 not so sweet as ordinary sugar. Sugar of milk is 
 used in dry medicines. If you are ever given small 
 pills that taste rather sweet, you may be almost sure 
 that they are made of sugar of milk mixed with what- 
 ever medicine is needed. It is used too for babies' food. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That sugar should be eaten in small quantities 
 
 and never before meals. 
 That sugar is of value chiefly as an "emergency 
 
 ration'* and to make other foods palatable. 
 That sweet fruits will give us much of the sugar 
 
 we need, and other important things as well. 
 That many fruits and some vegetables contain 
 sugar, but only a few of them in sufHciehtly 
 large quantities to pay for extracting. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 FATS AND FATTY FOODS 
 
 If children are asked if they Hke fat, they usually 
 say "no" very scornfully, for "fat" means to them 
 the fat which comes on meat, or the blubber of 
 whales that is eaten by the Esquimaux of the frozen 
 North; and yet the average amount of fat eaten, or 
 wasted, every day by people in this country is about 
 five and one-half ounces, more than a quarter of a 
 pound, and most children as well as grown people 
 would think it pretty hard if they had to do with- 
 out it. 
 
 When the children who are doing the marketing 
 come to the booth of fats, what will they see? They 
 will see a good supply of more appetizing articles than 
 pieces of fat meat and blubber. They will see rich, 
 sweet cream, golden butter, bacon, and nuts, as well 
 as suet, nut oils, lard, and dripping. Chocolate and 
 peanut butter and cocoanut will be here too. Surely, 
 
 4.7 
 
48 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 the children will find something for their market basket 
 which they will really Hke. 
 
 The most common form in which fat appears on the 
 table is butter, the fat of milk. Fat is Hghter than the 
 rest of the milk, so it rises to the top in the form of 
 cream and is skimmed off. Then it is poured into a 
 churn and kept in motion with a dasher or paddle-wheel 
 until the butter *' comes,'' that is, until the fat has 
 separated from the rest of the milk and is floating about 
 the buttermilk in tiny masses. The motion is what 
 causes the separation, and many a time a bottle of 
 cream taken to a picnic in a carriage or automobile 
 has reached the picnic grounds in the shape of butter. 
 A few years ago, there was in the Patent Office in 
 Washington a model of an odd sort of churn, on which 
 some inventive genius had appHed for a patent. It was 
 in the shape of a rocking chair which, instead of arms, 
 had cylinders. These were to be filled with cream; 
 then the butter maker was to sit down in the chair and 
 rock comfortably until the butter had come. 
 
 After the fat has separated from the rest of the milk, 
 it is worked and washed to make sure that the butter- 
 milk is out of it; then it is salted and is now ready to be 
 eaten. Of course creameries do all this work by ma- 
 chinery, but it is not at all difficult to make a Httle 
 butter with a bowl of cream and an egg-beater, and it 
 will taste just as good as if it came from the best of 
 creameries. 
 
 The things nearest like butter are oleomargarine 
 
FATS AND FATTY FOODS 49 
 
 and nut margarine. Oleomargarine is made chiefly 
 of the fat of beef mixed with extra pure lard and cot- 
 tonseed oil and churned up with milk. It is therefore 
 a mixture of animal and vegetable fats. Nut marga- 
 rine is made of vegetable oils, such as cocoanut, cotton- 
 seed, and peanut. 
 
 Some plants produce a large quantity of oil. Two- 
 fifths of the flesh of the olive is oil, and there is even 
 more than that amount in the kernel. Cottonseed 
 is one-fourth oil. Even corn and oat meal contain 
 some fat. The kernel of the peanut is nearly two- 
 thirds oil. Cocoanut contains a great deal. The nut 
 trees are so successful in their oil manufacture that if 
 they were men, they would surely make their fortunes. 
 If you put a thin sHce of almost any nut between two 
 pieces of paper and strike it lightly with a hammer, 
 the paper will show a greasy mark. 
 
 Nuts are usually eaten at precisely the wrong time, 
 for nuts, like all fats, are highly concentrated food, and 
 to eat a saucer of them as dessert after a hearty dinner 
 is almost as foolish as it would be to eat a dessert of 
 roast pork after a dinner of roast beef. Nuts should 
 not be eaten just for flavor after a meal, but as part ot 
 the meal itself, and as a substantial food. 
 
 Since fat is to be found in so many diflPerent places 
 and in so many varieties, any one whose taste cannot be 
 suited by one kind or another must be hard to please. 
 In a tablespoonful of butter there is about half an 
 ounce of fat; but if you do not care to eat the butter. 
 
50 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 you can get the same amount by eating an inch cube of 
 cheese, or twenty-nine peanut kernels, or better still a 
 pint of milk. Surely every one ought to be satisfied. 
 
 Fat is too concentrated a food to be eaten by itself. 
 We put butter on bread, cream on cereals, and salad oil 
 on lettuce; but not many people in a temperate climate 
 care to eat a whole mouthful of fat meat or to drink 
 a cup of oil. Often we cook our fats, using them for 
 shortening or in frying. Food that is fried has often 
 a particularly rich flavor, but frying needs more skill 
 than other methods of cooking if the food is to be readily 
 digested and palatable. Did you ever see a doughnut 
 that was soggy and would leave a big stain of grease 
 if laid on a piece of paper because it had not been 
 fried properly, or potatoes that were soaked in grease 
 instead of being dry and crisp .? 
 
 Fat is sometimes spoken of as "hearty food," since 
 it enables us to do hard work without a "gone feeling.'* 
 This is because it stays in the stomach a long time. 
 After the stomach has been empty a while, it begins to 
 make remarks on the situation, and the possessor of 
 the stomach feels a sensation of hunger. A sHce of 
 bread with butter on it keeps oflF this sensation much 
 longer than the bread alone. On the other hand, if 
 one has eaten too much fat, one's stomach feels un- 
 comfortable and overloaded. Most people make the 
 mistake of thinking that for a hearty food they must 
 buy meat, but this is far from being true, for it is chiefly 
 the fat in the meat which makes it a hearty food and 
 
FATS AND FATTY FOODS 51 
 
 this can be obtained in other ways. People who are 
 doing hard work need hearty or, as we sometimes say, 
 concentrated food. This is why we had to save fat as 
 much as possible in order to send it to the fighting men. 
 
 Whether fats are solid or liquid makes no difference 
 in their value as food. So far as that goes, a Brazil 
 nut or a little olive oil answers the same purpose. 
 There is one thing that makes a real difference be- 
 tween the different kinds of fat. One kind of the 
 vitamines that we talked about when we were visiting 
 the fruit and vegetable booth is found in connection 
 with fat, though only some fats contain it. This 
 is necessary for growth, so if we are not getting it in some 
 other way we must be particular about the kind of fat 
 we choose. Milk fat (butter) contains it and so does 
 egg yolk, and most animal fats, though lard does not. 
 It has not been found in most Vegetable oils, though 
 corn oil has it. If we have plenty of milk and of leafy 
 vegetables we do not need to think very much about 
 this, for we shall be quite sure to get enough. 
 
 By the time that the boys and girls with the market 
 basket have finished their buying, they will have col- 
 lected a good deal of valuable information about prices 
 and kinds of food. On their next trip, they can start 
 about their marketing in a more businesslike way, 
 keeping it in mind that in order to make sure of proper 
 nourishment for their family, part of their food for 
 each day should come from each booth. How much 
 money to spend is a question that affects almost every- 
 
52 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 one, and the best way to decide this is by making a 
 ** budget," as a well managed factory would, or just 
 as the British Government does for its expenditures. 
 After learning how much money can be spared for 
 food each week, this should be divided among the five 
 groups, not haphazard, but wisely and after careful 
 planning. Supposing that in a household consisting 
 of father, mother, and two children, it has been found 
 that $io a week can be devoted to food, a good plan 
 would be to divide this among the five food groups, 
 setting aside first a special share for milk. If the family 
 lived in the city and everything had to be bought, the 
 food budget might read somewhat like this: 
 
 Milk $ 2 . 20 
 
 Vegetables and fruit 2 . 20 
 
 Proteins — eggs, cottage cheese, American cheese, fish, 
 
 meat, dried beans, etc 2 . 20 
 
 Cereals, including bread 2 . 00 
 
 Sugar or other sweetening .30 
 
 Fats .80 
 
 Sundries .30 
 
 Total $10 . 00 
 
 If the father, mother and two children together re- 
 quire as much food as three men doing moderately hard, 
 muscular work, then their day's food supply might well 
 be something like this: 
 
 Fruit and vegetables (including potatoes) at least 5 pounds 
 
 Milk, at least 2 quarts 
 
FATS AND FATTY FOODS 53 
 
 Eggs, legumes, meat, cheese, about i pound 
 
 Cereals (including breadstufFs) about 3 pounds 
 
 or less of these and more potatoes 
 
 Sweets J to ^ pound 
 
 Fats ^ to ^ pound 
 
 A wise choice of food is always an important matter, 
 because upon this depends in so great a degree our 
 health and our ability to do our share of the work of 
 the world. It was especially important in the days of 
 warfare, because America had to provide so much food 
 not only for herself but also for those who, together 
 with her, were fighting for the freedom of the world. 
 It is even more important in these days of reconstruc- 
 tion, of building up the world anew, and of trying to 
 make it a better world than we have ever had before. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That fat exists in many forms. 
 That fat is a hearty food, too concentrated to be 
 
 eaten by itself. 
 That at least a part of our fatty food should come 
 fromrnilk or butter or from some other sub- 
 stance that contains the kind of vitamine found 
 with fat. 
 That to spend wisely we should make a careful 
 plan. 
 
American Clothes and Real Milk Have Been Furnished to Many 
 European Children 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HUNGRY EUROPE 
 
 In one of the magazines published during the war 
 there are some verses in which an American baby is 
 supposed to speak. He tells of the good times that 
 he had and at the end he says: 
 
 I'm fat and rosy and stuffed and pampered and happy, and maybe 
 There's anything you can think of better to be than an American 
 baby. 
 
 Then another little one speaks, a French baby, thin 
 and troubled, and with sad questioning eyes. His 
 father has been killed in the war, and he tells what a 
 lonesome time he has while his mother is gone to work 
 all day. He tells of the miserable grass tea that is 
 all she has to give him to eat. Then he says: 
 
 Once in a blue moon, there's a large, deep-voiced Person in Black 
 Called the cure, who brings me real milk — ^just a little, but, oh, 
 isn't it fine! 
 
 55 
 
56 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 And when I see it coming, warm and white, I'm in such a hurry 
 
 that I whimper and whine. 
 For pure joy, and the Cure smiles a bit, watching me, and says 
 
 Fm the hope of France; 
 But how can a chap be the hope of France when he can't get erjpugh 
 
 food to have a chance? 
 
 Before the war, the little French babies had enough 
 to eat, most of it raised at home and not brought in 
 from other countries. France contains a large number 
 of small farms, and nearly every one of them was culti- 
 vated by the family that owned it. These farmers 
 were anxious of course to have as good crops as possible. 
 They were in general wide-awake people, and had no 
 idea of carrying on their farms just as their grandfathers 
 had done. They kept their eyes open for new methods 
 and as soon as they found one that was an improvement 
 on their own, they adopted it. The result was that 
 France raised more of her own food than any other of 
 the western Allies. She raised more than one-third 
 as much wheat as the United States, and she cultivated 
 great quantities of sugar beets. She raised horses 
 and sheep, but grass land was not ample enough to feed 
 large numbers of cattle. There were, however, vine- 
 yards without number; there were peaches and cherries 
 and oranges and lemons, and wherever nothing elsewould 
 grow, there Were chestnut trees, and of the chestnuts 
 some of the thrifty French people made an excellent 
 flour. The French are never wasteful, and they do much 
 with a little. France was well-fed, busy, and happy. 
 
HUNGRY EUROPE 57 
 
 Then came the war, and everything was changed. 
 In 1917, France raised less than half as much wheat 
 as usual, less than two-thirds as many potatoes, and 
 only one-third as much sugar. Her numbers of cattle^ 
 sheep, and hogs had greatly decreased. How did the 
 war bring this about .^ 
 
 In the first place, there were no men to work in the 
 fields. All able-bodied Frenchmen were either fighting, 
 making munitions, or helping to transport soldiers and 
 guns and supplies. The men left at home were those 
 who were too old and feeble to do much work, the 
 wounded soldiers, and the sick. Then, too, there were 
 not so many fields as formerly. Some of the richest 
 land in the country was either in the hands of the Ger- 
 mans or had been overrun by them. 
 
 War always means destruction, but military com- 
 manders of other nations are proud of not injuring 
 non-combatants and of doing no harm to the country 
 through which they pass other than that which will be 
 of military value to them. Roads and railroads must 
 often be destroyed, wires and cables torn down, some- 
 times wells blown up; but the Germans set to work 
 deliberately to do as much harm as possible. They de- 
 molished famous buildings and works of art; they burned 
 villages and towns; they bombed hospitals; they cut 
 down fruit trees and vineyards; they poisoned wells, and 
 did many other cruel things. The result is that people 
 who struggled back to their old homes found only 
 cinders for houses and waste land for cultivated fields. 
 
58 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 These people shelter themselves as best they can, but 
 it is easier to put together something for a rough pro- 
 tection against the weather than to raise wheat in a 
 field that has been torn to pieces by shells. But. the 
 French women have done wonders. Wherever it was 
 possible, a woman has always been ready to take the 
 place of a man so that the man might help to defend 
 the country. The women have cared for their children 
 and the sick, they have toiled at all kinds of labor in 
 factories and workrooms, caring not what it was or 
 whether it was hard or easy, if only it would help 
 France. They have ploughed and planted and reaped. 
 Sometimes a few soldiers could be allowed to come 
 home to help in harvesting, and sometimes prisoners 
 of war have been of service in the farm work; but the 
 greater part of the labor of raising food has been done 
 by the French women with the aid of the aged and the 
 children. 
 
 France needed more food than before. The bravest 
 troops cannot do their best when they are hungry, 
 and whoever went without, the soldiers had to be fed. 
 And then there were the Frenchmen who had been 
 captured and who were starving in German prison 
 camps. Food had to be sent to them if" their lives were 
 to be saved. The weather was unfavorable and the 
 crops failed, but still the brave French women kept on, 
 weary and suffering, but not complaining. 
 
 In France to-day, butter, cheese, meat, and even 
 potatoes are enormously dear. The only food that 
 
HUNGRY EUROPE 59 
 
 everybody can afford to buy is bread. The Govern- 
 ment has kept the price of bread low; but it is rationed, 
 and a ten-ounce ration card does not always mean that 
 its holder can get in exchange the full ten ounces. In 
 some of the mountain districts, what bread can be 
 bought is black and has a disagreeable odor. It is 
 made of chestnut flour mixed with oats, barley, and a 
 Httle buckwheat. 
 
 There have been no invaders on English soil as on 
 that of France, but the British have been in the trenches, 
 or on warships in the North Sea, or convoying troops, or 
 making munitions in one or another of the 5,000 war 
 factories of England. Here, too, as in France, women 
 have stepped into the vacant places. They have acted 
 as conductors on trains, as porters at railroad stations. 
 They have toiled in munition factories. The petted 
 daughters of noblemen have worked twelve hours a 
 day side by side with women who have known nothing 
 but toil all their lives; and they have all lived together 
 in little villages built close to the factories. The beau- 
 tiful velvety turf of England has been ploughed up and 
 the great parks turned into potato fields; and here too, 
 women have been hard at work. In spite of the labor 
 shortage more food was raised on English soil the last 
 year of the war than ever before. 
 
 Nevertheless, food is not plentiful. One sort of food 
 after another has grown scanty, then disappeared. 
 Fats in general are scarce. There is only a little milk, 
 and that is saved for the children and the sick. Turn- 
 
6o FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 ing grass land into potato fields is better to supply food 
 for the people, but it is not good for the keeping of 
 cows, and many have been killed. 
 
 Everyone knows the brave and victorious struggle 
 that Italy has made at the front, but not everyone 
 realizes that her fight with hunger has been just as 
 brave. Even to-day, her bread and meat and sugar — 
 what she can get of them — are of poorer quahty than is 
 common in any other of the Allied countries. She 
 needs coal almost as badly as food, for part of the time 
 coal has cost $iio a ton; and even at that price, the 
 railroads could hardly get enough to keep running. If 
 she only had plenty of coal, what food there is could 
 be distributed over the country; but as it is, even if 
 there is sufficient of any kind of food in one part of the 
 land, there is often no way of getting it to the other 
 parts. 
 
 Belgium was far more helpless than were these other 
 countries. Belgium was what is called a neutralized 
 state. The little country is not one-fourth as large 
 as the State of New York, but it is so situated that 
 any country controlling it could, if she chose, do great 
 harm to England, France, or Germany. That is why 
 these countries, as well as Austria and Russia, all signed 
 a treaty declaring that, no matter what wars might 
 break out, no one of them would ever attack Belgium. 
 Belgium, on her side, promised that she would never 
 favor any one country to the loss of any other. 
 
 Everybody knows what happened when, in 191 4, 
 
HUNGRY EUROPE 6i 
 
 hundreds of thousands of German troops suddenly 
 swarmed out of the trains at Belgium's frontier and 
 demanded a passage through the country. But Bel- 
 gium refused to break her promises. She marched 
 out her little army, and how they did fight ! Of course 
 they could not drive the hordes of Germans back, but 
 they did delay them two full weeks. France and 
 England had time to get some troops into the field, 
 and Germany's plan to dash into France and perhaps 
 capture Paris before the French could get their troops 
 into position was spoiled. 
 
 Everyone knows, too, how the German armies be- 
 haved after they had made their way into Belgium; 
 how they murdered and tortured and looted and 
 destroyed; how they shelled magnificent old buildings 
 that had been for centuries the pride of the country; 
 how they burned village after village because some one 
 person was perhaps accused of firing a single shot at 
 them. They seized the railroads, telephones, and tele- 
 graphs, the canals, the cars, and the mails. Every 
 little village was cut oflT from every other. They 
 stopped all business; they carried off to Germany all 
 that there was in the country of oil, wool, copper, rubber 
 — anything they could make use of; and then they tore 
 away from their homes thousands of men, women, 
 boys, and girls and carried them away to toil in the 
 mines and factories of Germany, manufacturing articles 
 that would be used to help overpower their own people. 
 Of course the Germans wanted only the well and 
 
62 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 strong; the old and feeble were allowed to remain. 
 Little food could be left in Belgium after such treat- 
 ment, and this was quite according to the plans of the 
 Germans. They were not unwilUng that the Belgians 
 should starve. The more that died the better; then 
 the land would be free for them to occupy. 
 
 Americans promptly sent food to the Belgians, and 
 four months after the beginning of the war the Com- 
 mission for Relief in Belgium was formed. The wise 
 work of this Commission and the generous sympathy of 
 the American people and the AUies saved Belgium 
 from starvation. "Never has a country had such 
 friends,'' said the Belgian minister. But at best the 
 Belgians have had only just enough to keep them ahve. 
 More than half of them are still in soup hues. If means 
 of industry and happiness are to be restored to their 
 country, food must be provided in generous quantities. 
 
 Roumania, Serbia, and Poland are starving; so are 
 Armenia, Finland, and some parts of Russia. Ger- 
 many swept through Roumania, driving the Rouman- 
 ians into a small corner of their land, the least fertile of 
 all. They had no hope of resisting their foes, for 
 enemies were on all sides, and they yielded. But they 
 might almost as well have struggled till every Rouman- 
 ian had fallen, for here, as well as in Serbia and Poland 
 and Russia, the German troops seized everything in 
 the shape of food that they could find. They searched 
 not only storehouses and stores, but all the little cot- 
 tages, and carried away everything that could be eaten. 
 
HUNGRY EUROPE 63 
 
 The German governor-general of Poland commanded 
 that every able-bodied Pole should go to Germany to 
 work for his conquerors. This meant 'that for each 
 Pole one more German would be set free for the army. 
 If a Pole dared to refuse, it was forbidden for any 
 other Pole, even his own brother, to give him a mouth- 
 ful of food 
 
 War is always terrible, and some years ago representa- 
 tives of the different nations of the world met at The 
 Hague in Holland and signed an agreement never to 
 do certain things which added to its horrors. One of 
 these things was that no conquering army should take 
 supplies from the land it had captured unless it paid 
 for what it took and did not leave the country in want. 
 Germany signed this agreement, but, as every one 
 of the lands that she has overpowered has learned, 
 she did not keep it. In all these countries food for 
 man and beast was seized, horses were carried off, 
 and cattle and hogs either driven away or killed for food 
 to supply the invaders. 
 
 These are the reasons why so much of Europe is 
 suffering from, hunger, why the countries that have 
 been crushed by Germany are more helpless than coun- 
 tries have ever been before, and why they appeal to 
 those who are in comfort and plenty for a share at the 
 "common table." 
 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That France formerly raised more of her own food 
 than any other of the western Allies. 
 
64 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 That much of the fertile land of France was over- 
 run by the Germans. 
 
 That England, in spite of her labor shortage, has 
 actually increased her production of food, 
 though she still needs to import a great deal. 
 
 That Belgium, swept clean of food, raw materials, 
 and machinery, and with her people weakened 
 by captivity, is still in sorest need of a helping 
 hand. 
 
 That Italy needs food, and also coal to help dis- 
 tribute what food she has. 
 
 That many other countries of Europe must have 
 help to keep their people from starving. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 WHERE IS THE FOOD OF THE WORLD? 
 
 If people have not proper food they soon grow thin. 
 This is because the fat stored up in their bodies is being 
 used up to feed them. They can Hve on it for some 
 time, just as a bear is nourished by the fat in his body 
 during his long winter's sleep; but by and by, even 
 before the fat gives out, the protein is called upon. 
 By this time the person is not far from the point of 
 starvation. 
 
 Before the war most of the world got on fairly well 
 for food. Occasionally there was a famine in one coun- 
 try or. another, but other countries sent ships of pro- 
 visions or money to buy provisions. In those days 
 provisions could always be bought somewhere. 
 
 Why is the condition of things so diflPerent now.? 
 Where are the grain, the meat, the fish, the fats, and the 
 sugar that used to supply Europe.'' If a country can 
 raise the money, why can it not buy what it needs.? 
 
 6s 
 
66 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 One answer to these questions is that there is actually 
 less food in the world ; for millions of men who used to pro- 
 duce it were called into the armies or to work on muni- 
 tions, so that less food has been raised. Another answer is 
 that the ground on the Continent which has been fought 
 over is now unfit for agriculture. Still another is that 
 few countries, if any, are in the habit of supplying all 
 their own food, and if they are shut ofF from their usual 
 places of buying, they are as much at a loss as we 
 should be if all the provision stores should suddenly 
 disappear. In some of these countries the people have 
 been so busy manufacturing that they found it cheaper 
 and easier to import food than to raise it. In others 
 there are so many people in proportion to the area that 
 sufficient land to raise what they required could not be 
 spared. Often the soil or the climate is not adapted 
 to produce what is needed. 
 
 Then, too, there is the question of fertihzers. In 
 Europe the soil has been cultivated for centuries. 
 It will no longer do well without fertiHzers. The ni- 
 trates, which are used in fertilizers, are found chiefly 
 in Chile, and these could not be imported during the 
 war. Work animals have been seized by the contending 
 armies or killed because there was no feed for them. As 
 a result of all this, France has raised less than half of 
 the wheat that she needs for her people. Poor Belgium 
 has almost no wheat, and Italy only a part of what she 
 needs. Though England has increased her production, she 
 has raised only one-fourth enough to supply her people. 
 
WHERE IS THE FOOD OF THE WORLD? 67 
 
 Even before the war, Austria-Hungary raised only 
 enough wheat for herself, and had little for her neigh- 
 bors. As for Germany, she imported part of her wheat, 
 and even what she has looted from the lands that she 
 has overrun has not been as much as she requires. 
 Then, too, the crops in these two countries have not 
 been up to the usual mark. 
 
 Before the war England, Ireland, France, Italy, and 
 Belgium imported 750,ooo,cx)0 bushels of wheat in the 
 course of a year. Russia and Roumania were near at 
 hand, both of them fine wheat countries, and a large 
 quantity came from them. But Roumania was over- 
 run by the Germans, her farm-lands were ruined, and 
 she has no wheat or any other food to send to any 
 country, or even to break the famine within her own 
 boundaries. 
 
 During the war Turkey closed the Bosphorus; that 
 is, she allowed no ships to pass save those of Germany 
 and Austria, and therefore no wheat could in any case 
 be brought from Russia to the AUies. Russia is in a 
 turmoil; the once fertile Ukraine has been in the hands 
 of the Germans; but even if the whole country were 
 united, many of her own people would still be hungry, 
 for there is no way to carry food from one part of the 
 country to another. Russia in Europe is one-fourth 
 larger than all the rest of the Continent. She has mil- 
 lions of acres of the best wheat land in the world, but 
 few railroads. However, if the whole land were criss- 
 crossed with railroads, they would be of little use be- 
 
68 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 cause of the lack of coal. Russia's best coal is mined in 
 the extreme south or in Poland, which only the close of 
 the war released from the hands of the Germans. 
 
 Australia and India had hundreds of miUions of 
 bushels of wheat. Argentina can usually export part 
 of hers to Europe, but her 1917 crop was not so good as 
 usual. Moreover, it is a long way from Australia and 
 India to Europe, and not so very much nearer from 
 Argentina, and during the war the ships were needed to 
 transport soldiers. A ship could transport a good 
 many soldiers from the United States across the At- 
 lantic in the time that it would take to make a voyage 
 from AustraHa to England. 
 
 The Allies in Europe are lacking meat, for they have 
 lost many of their cattle. One reason is that in the 
 great need of meat, cattle have been slaughtered and 
 used as food. Sometimes this was done because there 
 was no one to care for them. Men who are fighting in 
 the trenches cannot come home at night to milk the 
 cows and feed them. Another reason is because much 
 land that has been used for pasture has now been 
 ploughed up in the effort to raise more grain for the 
 people. Even before the war much fodder was im- 
 ported, and now many cattle have had to be killed for 
 the lack of food. In Belgium and northern France the 
 invading Germans either killed the cattle or drove 
 them to Germany. Australia and South America would 
 have been glad to send more beef and mutton, if there 
 had only been some way of providing ships. The 
 
WHERE IS THE FOOD OF THE WORLD? 69 
 
 United States and Canada have been sending both 
 meat and wheat to the extent of their abiHty. 
 
 To lose cattle is of course a great misfortune for grown 
 folk, but it is particularly bad for the children, since 
 milk is the food that they especially need, as it gives 
 them protein, sugar, fats, Hme, and other mineral 
 matter, and both kinds of vitamines in abundance. A 
 pint of milk contains as much protein as two eggs, as 
 much fat as an ordinary serving of butter, and even 
 more sugar than fat. It also contains Hme enough for 
 one day. 
 
 If more fish could be obtained and if people were willing 
 to try new kinds, it would in some degree take the place 
 of meat. Fish contains considerable protein, some- 
 times as much as 22 per cent., and some kinds, such as 
 shad, mackerel, and herring, contain as much fat as is 
 in some cuts of meat, such as lean round steak. The 
 waters about England are swarming with fish, but the 
 country's supply is less than half the usual quantity. 
 One reason is that nearly all of her steam fishing vessels 
 have been taken over by the Navy, and the fishermen 
 of military age have been in service. Another reason 
 is that the North Sea has been so full of mines that it 
 was almost as dangerous as a battlefield; and still an- 
 other is that the Germans were just as ready to sink a 
 tiny fishing craft — even one belonging to a neutral 
 country — as a large ship. It is estimated that during 
 the first years of the war, about one-tenth of the food ^ 
 sent to the Allies was destroyed by submarines. If 
 
70 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 Kipling should write another "Captains Courageous," 
 he might tell a thrilling story indeed. 
 
 Pork is needed in Europe even more than beef. The 
 humble pig can no longer be despised, for he has become 
 a highly valued member of society. Pigs are easy to 
 raise. They are not particular about cHmate, and as 
 for food, they will eat almost anything they can get — 
 indeed, the people who eat the pig are really more 
 particular about his food than the pig himself is, 
 for of course the nature of his diet affects the quality of 
 the pork, and in this matter the pig has no concern. 
 
 An interesting question has arisen in regard to keep- 
 ing pigs and cattle, namely, whether it is better to eat 
 the grain ourselves or to give it to these animals and 
 then eat them. Protein is valuable, and the pig, for 
 instance, does not give back in the form of pork nearly 
 so much protein as was in the grain that he ate; that 
 is, the pig is not an economical machine for turning 
 grain into meat, and cattle are still less efficient. On 
 the other hand, in ordinary times more grain is raised 
 than is needed for human food. Moreover, pigs are 
 not fed on grain alone, but in large part on food that 
 would not be eaten by people. 
 
 Another point in favor of pork is that it contains 
 much fat, and all the world is in pressing need of fat. 
 Here the question of shipping comes in. Even if a 
 pig is not an economical machine for making pork, 
 he is the only variety of machine for that purpose yet 
 discovered, and pork is an economical food to send 
 
WHERE IS THE FOOD OF THE WORLD? 71 
 
 across the ocean. When economy in shipping is to 
 be considered, we must remember that one hundred 
 pounds of pork will take much less tonnage than would 
 be needed to carry the fodder to raise the hundred 
 pounds. After all, pigs really do their best for us. 
 Fat, as has been said before, provides energy; and fried 
 food, even when it does not "soak fat," contains a 
 great deal. A doughnut contains from 20 per cent, 
 to 30 per cent, of fat. The doughnuts that the lassies 
 of the Salvation Army fry for the soldiers rriust be 
 remembered with respect, for they have helped to fight 
 our battles. 
 
 Sugar is a good food to send, for it is concentrated 
 and takes little space, and if it does not get wet it 
 will keep indefinitely. Before the war there was a 
 "middle Europe" of sugar beet raising — Belgium, north- 
 ern France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and part of 
 Russia — which raised more than nine-tenths of the 
 beet sugar of the world, and England bought more 
 than half her supply from this source. France all 
 during the war h'as continued to produce some sugar, 
 but she has been able to raise only about one-fourth of 
 what she generally needs. Java has been ready to 
 furnish sugar and would gladly furnish it to-day, for 
 she has a large supply on hand; but, as in the case of 
 Australia, the lack of ships has made it impossible to get 
 the sugar from there. As soon as ships are available 
 Java will send it to these countries. France and 
 England and Italy have done their best and will never 
 
72 
 
 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 cease to do their best, but they need food and must 
 have it. 
 
 A Httle girl once listened to her mother reading a 
 
 pitiful story from a paper. As the mother was turning 
 
 the page, the Httle girl asked earnestly, "But mother, 
 
 what are you going to do about it .^ ' 
 
 It is worth remembering: 
 
 That one who is not well nourished cannot do his 
 
 work. 
 That there is less food than usual in the world. 
 That the world demands far greater supplies of 
 food from us than were needed while many peo- 
 ples were cut off from help by the battle lines. 
 
 
ThO^ai rv6^a-Tt' 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 
 
 "What are you going to do about it?'' was the ques- 
 tion that we asked ourselves when we heard of the suffer- 
 ings of the Belgians. We sent ships across the ocean 
 loaded with food, and we sent strong, wise men to dis- 
 tribute it among the starving people. Hundreds of 
 Belgian children wrote letters to us in the best English 
 they could muster — think of their courage in writing 
 a letter to 105,000,000 people! — and told how grateful 
 they were. One of these letters reads as follows: 
 
 Dear America: 
 
 I thank you because you sent great big boats over the great sea 
 — eat-boats — rice, corn, bacon, stockings, clothing and shoes. 
 
 I know that you like the little Belgians, and I like you, too. 
 
 AcHiEL Maes. 
 
 Then came the sinking of the Lusitania, the great 
 steamship full of people who had never struck a blow 
 
 73 
 
74 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 at Germany. Of the 1,154 drowned, 114 were American 
 citizens. Germany paid no attention to the protests 
 of the United States and went on sinking vessels of all 
 nations, ships carrying food to Belgium, Red Cross 
 hospital ships, and ships of neutral countries, making 
 no provision for the escape of the passengers, and some- 
 times firing at them if they succeeded in getting into 
 lifeboats. This was rank piracy, and the United States 
 now declared war. 
 
 There was another reason, and a strong one, for our 
 entering the war. The United States is a democracy — 
 CJhat is, the people rule. Germany was an autocracy 
 — that is, one man ruled and was answerable to no- 
 body. The Kaiser did not formally notify his council 
 that he had declared war until three days after the 
 declaration was made. As country after country 
 engaged in the war, it became a struggle between 
 autocracy and democracy. Moreover, Germany meant 
 to crush France, then England, and then attack the 
 United States. For two years and a half England and 
 France had been fighting our battles. It was high 
 time that we took a hand. 
 
 There were three things for us to do to help free the 
 world from the danger of autocracy. We must lend 
 money to the Allies; we must furnish an army to help 
 do the fighting; and we must send them food. The 
 United States is a rich country, and there was no trouble 
 about lending the money. It is a brave, earnest 
 country, and soon hundreds of thousands of young men 
 
76 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 were in the cantonments learning to be soldiers. To 
 provide food was a more complicated matter. 
 
 The first food that a hungry nation thinks of is bread; 
 and "bread" means to each one the grain to which 
 its people are most accustomed. We should think 
 we had no bread if we had only rice in the house; but 
 a Chinaman would think he had no bread if he had 
 only wheat. Some of the people in this country have 
 always been accustomed to eating more or less rye, 
 oatmeal, corn meal, rice, and buckwheat; but our 
 great dependence has been wh^at. Other flours will 
 make "quick breads," but wheat is the only grain that 
 will make the light white loaf of yeast bread that we 
 are used to eating. This looks well and keeps well, 
 and it has not so strong a flavor of its own as to spoil 
 the flavor of other food. 
 
 This is the kind of bread to which the Allies are 
 accustomed; but there was not enough wheat to supply 
 us and them, too^ with the usual quantity. The best 
 we could do was to "go halves," while both of us 
 made up what was lacking by using the other grains. 
 These grains will not by themselves make a loaf of 
 raised bread that can be baked in a bakery and kept 
 on sale, and it is bread Hke this which is necessary in 
 France. French women always buy their bread. 
 They have no ovens, and if they had, fuel is too dear 
 for them to dream of doing their baking at home, while 
 the baker can with a small amount of coal bake many 
 loaves at the same time. 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT -^j 
 
 It is not easy to change one's habits of eating. Every 
 one has whims about his food. For instance, Italians 
 fry in oil, but many Americans still feel that the frying 
 material must be soUd like lard when it is put into 
 the kettle, even though they know that in three or 
 four minutes it will become liquid. If potatoes should 
 suddenly turn blue and bread scarlet, it would be a 
 long time before we should relish them. Those among 
 us who found it difficult to use less wheat and more of 
 the other cereals are the ones who ought to understand 
 best how hard it was for the Allies to become accus- 
 tomed to putting other grains into their bread. They 
 made no complaint, however, but were grateful that 
 the American supply did not fail them. There was 
 wheat in Australia and New Zealand and in Argentina, 
 but ships could not be spared to carry it to Europe. 
 From the United States to England is not only the 
 shortest route, but it was also the best protected from 
 submarines. In the time that it would take a ship to 
 go from Argentina to England, it could carry two loads 
 of soldiers from the United States to France. It was 
 just plain arithmetic. The shorter the voyage, the more 
 free ships; the more free ships, the more food and 
 soldiers carried to Europe; the more food and soldiers 
 carried to Europe, the sooner we could win the war; 
 the sooner we could win the war, the fewer of our own 
 boys and of the Allies would be wounded or killed. 
 It was worth our while to send food. 
 
 As in the case of wheat, meat could not be carried 
 
78 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 to Europe from distant countries for lack of ships. 
 Meat is the best protein for transportation. Beef 
 contains much protein, keeps well, and is condensed 
 food. Pork is particularly valuable because it provides 
 both protein and fat. In Ireland people used to 
 call the pig "the gentleman that pays the rent." 
 "The gentleman'* does more than that in these 
 days, for he has been trying his best to support the 
 country. 
 
 In i9i7.not nearly so many pigs were kept as usual. 
 This was alarming, because pork can be raised more 
 quickly and easily than other meats. Hogs multiply 
 rapidly, and have sometimes ten or twelve little pigs at 
 a litter. The "keep-a-pig" movement had been started 
 some years before, and now it took a new life. An 
 effort was made to make people understand that a 
 pig-pen need not be a bad-smelling place, that a pig 
 likes to wallow in mud on a hot day, not because he is 
 naturally dirty, but because the mud is as great a com- 
 fort to him as a cool bath is to people. The pig is by 
 nature a cleanly animal, and he appreciates fresh water 
 and good food. 
 
 Boys on farms became interested. "Have you 
 bought a pig?" became almost as common a salutation 
 as, "How do you do.?" Before long the magazines 
 began to print pictures of remarkably small boys 
 grouped with remarkably large pigs. The problem 
 was solved; and in March, 191 8, we sent across the water 
 six times as much pork as our ordinary export. 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 79 
 
 The men going "over the top" needed fat not only 
 for energy, but because it would keep them from feeling 
 hungry so soon, and that was an important matter 
 when the time of their next meal was a question that 
 no one could answer. In this country we use a great 
 deal of fat, and if you should make a list of all the food 
 that you eat during the day, and then cross oflF every 
 article that contained fat or was cooked or eaten with 
 fat, very few would be left. Before the war, England 
 used, according to her population, nearly as much fat 
 as the United States. Quantities of butter were sold 
 to her by Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. 
 The Russian supply soon failed. Holland, Denmark, and 
 Sweden were neutral countries, but they needed Ger- 
 many's coal, and Germany would not send it to them 
 unless she could receive butter in return. England 
 made much oleomargarine, but even with this her 
 ration of fat was only one-fourth of a pound per 
 week; and often this small amount could not be 
 bought. 
 
 As to sugar, this is to us an agreeable luxury in a 
 convenient form. A bright man once said, "Give me 
 the luxuries and I will dispense with the necessities:'* 
 and when we were asked to use less sugar than was our 
 custom, it really seemed to trouble us more than saving 
 fats or wheat. Sugar has been very cheap, and we had 
 fallen into the habit of using much more than we need 
 and more than is good for us. Even in 1917, when we 
 all thought ourselves so economical, we used an amount 
 
8o FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 that the AlHes would have looked upon as luxury. 
 What was used in preserving, however, was "good 
 business," for much fruit was saved that would other- 
 wise have gone to waste. There was no danger of our 
 suffering for sweets, since we had honey, molasses, 
 corn sirup, and maple sugar, to say nothing of our 
 sweet fruits, like plums, peaches, apples, and berries. 
 We had dried fruits, like raisins, dates, and prunes, 
 that are even sweeter. When you feel hungry for 
 candy, eat some one of these, and candy will not seem 
 half so attractive. On an average every person in this 
 country spends about four cents a week for candy. 
 In six months enough money goes into it to feed the 
 hungry people of Belgium for a whole year. That 
 looks as if we could get on very comfortably with less 
 than our usual amount. 
 
 One year before the close of the war, our Food 
 Administration was formed. It is not easy to realize 
 the full meaning of a statement whose numbers go up 
 into the milHons, but sometimes it is worth while to 
 try. Here is what the Food Administration has led 
 us to accomplish in that one year. 
 
 It was at first calculated that we must export to 
 Europe 100,000,000 bushels of wheat. Then the wheat 
 failed which we had expected could be carried to the 
 AUies from other countries. The Food Administration 
 explained the difficulty and asked us to use only two- 
 thirds of our usual amount. By doing so we were able 
 to send to Europe 141,000,000 bushels of the year's 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 8i 
 
 crop. Of beef we had been accustomed to export 
 one or two million pounds a month; but during this year 
 our largest export in any one month was more than 
 96,cxx),ooo pounds. Our export of pork increased from 
 50,cxxD,ooo pounds a month to 308,000,000 pounds in 
 the month during which we sent most. Before the war, 
 the United States and Canada together were accus- 
 tomed to send to the countries of the Allies 5 per cent, 
 of their food. During the closing year of the war we 
 sent across the Atlantic eleven and three-fourths 
 miUion tons of food, that is, 50 per cent., or one-half 
 of their food deficit. This was done "by the willing 
 service of a free people," but some one had to tell us 
 how. Some one had to learn what were the best foods 
 to send, to ascertain how much food was in this country, 
 how much could probably be raised within the year, 
 how much we needed to keep us and the Allies well and 
 strong, how much we wasted, and how much we could 
 save if we tried. We could not wait quietly till a 
 starving country should say, "I need wheat, or meat, 
 or fats;'* we must learn the needs of the hungry lands 
 and, just as far as possible, keep a steady stream of 
 supplies flowing to them. 
 
 This was not easy. It is true that any one who goes 
 through our markets or sees our wide-spreading fields 
 of grain might fancy that we had food enough for at 
 ieast one world; but as a matter of fact, we have not, 
 even in ordinary times, so very much more than we 
 ourselves use. Yet the Allies must have their grain. 
 
82 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 their meat and other protein foods, their fats and their 
 sugar. We must have ours, too. There would be no 
 fairness in sending our troops "over there'' only half 
 fed; and it would take the courage out of the bravest 
 of our soldier boys to know that their families at home 
 were needing food. Here was a puzzle that demanded 
 brains and wisdom, a wide view of every question that 
 might arise, and a big supply of good practical common 
 sense. That is why our Food Administration was or- 
 ganized. Its prime object was to make sure that more 
 food was produced, that it was fairly distributed, and 
 that our soldiers, the AlHes, and we ourselves, would have 
 enough to eat. Its aim was not to make food cheap, 
 for if food is too cheap, less will be produced. No one 
 would buy cows, for instance, have all the trouble of 
 feeding and caring for them and disposing of the milk, 
 unless he could count upon a fair profit for his labor. 
 No farmer would plough and plant and cultivate 
 and gather in crops, unless he was reasonably certain 
 that he would receive a fair price for what he had 
 done. 
 
 Our wheat crop of 1917 was one-third below the nor- 
 mal quantity, and the Food Administration set to 
 work energetically to see what could be done. In the 
 first place, the Food Administration and the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture worked together — and worked 
 hard — to induce the farmers to plant much wheat. 
 They sent agents through the wheat country to make 
 addresses at granges; they helped the farmers select 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 83 
 
 the best seed and fight the insects and diseases that 
 might lessen their crop. The newspapers worked 
 loyally and gave up column after column of their 
 valuable space. 
 
 But the farmers had a good reason for hesitating. 
 It was possible that the war might come to an end 
 somewhat suddenly, leaving more wheat on hand than 
 would be needed; prices would go down and they would 
 lose. To prevent this, the Government promised 
 them a minimum price of $2.00 a bushel for the crop. 
 The President, however, increased this price to $2.26 
 a bushel at the Chicago market, whether the war ended 
 in 1918 or not. For this purpose the Food Administra- 
 tion Grain Corporation was formed which became a 
 buyer and seller of grain. It either bought wheat or 
 arranged for its purchase for the Army and Navy, the 
 AUies, and some of the neutral countries that depended 
 upon us for food. 
 
 The Food Administration also organized a plan by 
 which the buying for all the AlUes was done through 
 one source. To buy a few pounds of meat, for instance, 
 is not difficult, but to buy millions of pounds is a differ- 
 ent matter. At first each country bought for itself. 
 Each of the buyers was afraid his own country would go 
 hungry, and they sometimes bid against one another. 
 A better arrangement was now made. Never was so 
 much attention paid to beeves and hogs. Men who 
 knew the meat business through and through decided 
 how much the man or boy who raised the hog ought 
 
84 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 to have, how much the packer, how much the storage 
 warehouse, and finally how much the Allies should pay. 
 This plan made sure that every man who had anything 
 to do with the meat should have good pay, but that 
 no one should make exorbitant profits out of the 
 needs of his countrymen or the AlHes. 
 
 Of course much more food had to be exported from 
 the United States than ever before, nearly twice as 
 much. Could this be done? In an autocracy the ruler 
 could say to his subjects, "Raise more food and eat 
 less," and they would have to obey. All the Allies 
 were rationed; but in a democracy, and especially in a 
 land as large as ours, to enforce such a law would need a 
 whole army of officials and would be exceedingly ex- 
 pensive. Moreover, although it might be done in the 
 cities, it would be almost impossible in the country, 
 where people raise so much of their own food. The 
 Food Administration beHeved that just as soon as 
 Americans understood the situation, they would **play 
 fair," and would use in their households only a fixed 
 amount of the foods of which we had not a large supply. 
 It explained the situation and asked every American 
 to help. 
 
 "Don't waste," it said, "and don't hoard. Even 
 if there is plenty of some one kind of food and you in- 
 tend to use it very economically, don't store up more 
 than you need at the time. If you do, more will have 
 to be brought for other people, and our railroads have 
 all they can do to bring what is absolutely necessary. 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 85 
 
 Use food that is nearest and save transportation. Plant 
 a garden and raise your own food." 
 
 The people of the United States responded most 
 willingly to these requests. Clubs of all sorts were 
 formed whose object was either to increase the produc- 
 tion of food or to save food. There were pig clubs, corn 
 clubs, and canning clubs; there were war gardens and 
 school gardens. Everybody who had a bit of land did 
 his best to raise vegetables to supply his own table and 
 to sell. Long before the war, the Garden City move- 
 ment began, and now the boys and girls set to work 
 with double energy. Many of them canned their 
 spare produce. In some places these "young citizens'' 
 gave a Thanksgiving dinner of their own raising to a 
 group of children who had had no opportunity to make 
 gardens of their own. "And I tell you it was some 
 dinner," said one of the boys enthusiastically. 
 
 An even wider movement than the Garden City is 
 the School Garden Army. The name tells in part 
 what it is; but it does not tell that it is recognized by 
 the President of the United States as a real army, 
 which has already more than 1,500,000 enlisted soldiers. 
 "They really will be soldiers, although not old enough 
 to fight," says Secretary Lane. Every "garden sol- 
 dier," boy or girl, is entitled to wear a little bronze 
 bar with the letters "U. S. S. G. A." on it; and any one 
 can guess what that means. The Army was organized 
 early in the spring of 191 8, and in its first season it has 
 produced millions of dollars' worth of food stuffs. 
 
86 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 One of the slogans, or rather, the war cries, of this 
 Arniy is. 
 
 Uncle Sam's in need, 
 
 Pull the weed, ^ 
 
 Plant the seed. 
 
 So it was that Americans justified the confidence of 
 the Food Administration and, what is more, they did it 
 good-naturedly. Everybody knows the merry little 
 rhyme beginning: 
 
 My Tuesdays are wheatless, 
 My Wednesdays are meatless, 
 I'm getting more eatless each day. 
 
 The Germans got hold of it and translated it, leaving 
 out the fun, and pubhshed it as a bitter complaint of 
 the Americans because of the rapidly increasing short- 
 age of food ! 
 
 In war time prices always rise, sometimes because 
 for one reason or another there is a smaller supply; but 
 sometimes because the fact that one thing rises is 
 made an excuse for increasing the price of others. 
 Suppose there was only one bicycle in a place and 
 ten boys wanted to buy it. The one who could pay 
 most would be likely to get it. The price of wheat' 
 was fixed by Congress. The result was that, while 
 in the Spring of 1917 flour cost ^16.75 a barrel whole- 
 sale, flour from the 1917 wheat crop was sold at ^9.80; 
 and the farmer received a much larger share of the 
 price than the previous year. The Government has re- 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT ^7 
 
 quired men who dealt in food for people or animals to 
 any extent to take out a license. If they did not do 
 this, they had to pay a penalty. Dealers who charged 
 more than the lawful price were severely punished by 
 fines or by having their stores closed for a certain 
 number of days or weeks. People who buy in large 
 quantities know what they are paying; but people 
 who buy in small quantities do not always stop to 
 reckon what a barrel of flour would come to if paid for 
 at the rate that they pay for a few pounds. For in- 
 stance, it was found that a dealer who had been selling 
 flour a few pounds at a time was charging at the rate of 
 $20.00 a barrel. He was punished by being forbidden 
 to open his store till the end of the war. The Govern- 
 ment issued licenses to dealers in certain foods, and 
 the Food Administration was sometimes able to control 
 prices by making agreements with those who sold them. 
 During our Civil War, sugar cost at one time thirty 
 and one-half cents a pound wholesale; and it would have 
 surely gone as high as that during this war if the price 
 had not been fixed and dealers forbidden to go beyond it. 
 The Food Administration kept in touch with all 
 changes of situation and told us what was necessary 
 to be done to meet every emergency. Supposing, for 
 instance, that 100,000 hogs were ready for market and a 
 heavy storm put the railroads in difficulties for a number 
 of days, telegrams flashed over the country would ask 
 people to use less pork. When the railroads were 
 again in running order, there might be for a httle time 
 
88 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 too much pork for the storehouses and ships; so people 
 were then told that they did not need to do without 
 pork. There were constant changes in the requests of 
 the Food Administration; but this was not because its 
 "forethought came afterward," but because it watched 
 the changing conditions of the country so closely and 
 advised so wisely. 
 
 The Food Administration was of course looking out 
 as carefully for us as for the Allies. Our railroads were 
 overwhelmed with war work. They had enough to do 
 in time of peace, but during the war they were called 
 upon to transport ammunition, guns, machinery, food 
 for "over there," all sorts of suppHes, and the troops 
 themselves. Each of the countries had to receive, as far 
 as possible, its proper share of the various kinds of 
 food. Even if this food had been safely put up in store- 
 houses, the question would still have been a large one; 
 but when plans had to be made, much of it was still 
 growing in the fields or running about on four legs. 
 The probable amount of it had to be estimated, and 
 crops are rather uncertain things to deal with. Too 
 much rain, too little rain, or some new species of insect 
 may easily make a difference of millions of bushels in 
 the harvest. 
 
 Not guns only, but guns and work and food were 
 what won the war. "Fm tired of using substitutes 
 and hearing so much about saving food," said a thought- 
 less woman; but did it tire her to hear that we were vic- 
 torious.^ The Germans hoped that we should all get 
 
WHAT WE DID ABOUT IT 
 
 89 
 
 "tired of using substitutes" and so help them to win; 
 but that is not the American way. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 That in an autocracy one man rules; in a democ- 
 racy the people rule. 
 That the work of feeding the Allies fell largely 
 
 upon North America as the nearest country. 
 That the Food Administration was formed to 
 make sure of greater production of food and a 
 fair distribution of it. 
 That under the guidance of the Food Adminis- 
 tration our exports of food to Europe were al- 
 most doubled; and that this was done ''by the 
 willing service of a free people." 
 
With All Able-bodied Men at the Front French Women Have Had 
 to Raise the Crops for Their Homes and Their Armies as Well 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 WHAT WE HAVE YET TO DO 
 
 When the armistice was signed, we promptly cele- 
 brated in all sorts of ways. These ranged from long 
 processions and the firing of great cannon to the method 
 of one man who, as a sign of the return of peace and 
 plenty, joyfully dropped into his coffee two lumps of 
 sugar instead of one. 
 
 At the very first, most of us thought of nothing except 
 that the war was over and the boys would come home. 
 There would be no more "substitutes," and the sugar 
 bowl would again hold the place of honor on our table. 
 But the more thoughtful among us realized that, al- 
 though we need no longer fight to free the nations 
 crushed by Germany, we had still to wage a battle 
 with hunger. If you should learn that one person in the 
 house next to your own had died of hunger, it would 
 seem to you a terrible thing. You can hardly imagine 
 the horror of learning that one out of every four among 
 
 91 
 
92 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 your neighbors had been starved; but in Poland one 
 person out of every four has died for lack of food; in 
 Serbia one out of every two; and in Armenia more than 
 half of the people have perished of hunger. 
 
 Peace has come, but it has not brought food to the 
 hungry. Look at the Hunger Map (see Frontispiece) and 
 remember that every little country on the page is not 
 merely an outline, but represents millions of people 
 who are suffering from hunger. Those still alive in 
 Poland, Roumania, and Serbia, in Armenia and Finland, 
 are starving. So they are in large parts of Russia which 
 were shut off from our help before the Germans were 
 forced to depart from them. Not one country in 
 Europe has food enough to keep its people from going 
 hungry. France, Italy, and the British Isles have not 
 as much as they actually need. Norway, Sweden, 
 Denmark, Holland, Spain, and Portugal have to get 
 on with much less than their usual supply. We have 
 helped to rescue the people of Belgium from starvation, 
 but even the Belgians have had only just enough to 
 save their lives. Surely, the coming of victory ought 
 at least to bring them food enough to make their lives 
 endurable. Then, too, there are the people of Bul- 
 garia, Turkey, and other conquered nations. Many of 
 these will starve unless given help. They have had to 
 make an unconditional surrender, and we are in honor 
 bound to make it possible for them to buy food. 
 
 There is another reason why we must send food to 
 Europe. We Jiave sacrificed the lives of thousands of our 
 
WHAT WE HAVE YET TO DO 93 
 
 men, and we have spent many billions of dollars that 
 the world might be made safe. We are longing for a 
 world of peace and ordei, a world in which a man shall 
 be free to do his best work under the best conditions. 
 Starving people have Httle regard for law or the rights 
 of others. Lawlessness spreads rapidly. Two or three 
 selfish, disagreeable boys will spoil a whole playground; 
 and in the same way a few millions of hungry, unhappy, 
 discontented people will spoil a world. To protect 
 ourselves, we must do our best to protect those who are 
 in need of our help. To refuse would be to undo the 
 good work already done. 
 
 The people of the hungry countries will do for them- 
 selves all that any one could do. They will be saving 
 of food of course; but they must have food to save. 
 They will cultivate the ground, but they must get their 
 ground into proper condition to cultivate. Just im- 
 agine trying to make a war garden in a field that had 
 been torn up by shells and shrapnel, a field that was 
 "nothing but a network of holes," as one of the soldiers 
 said. And it is in such fields that hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people will toil to produce their bread. It is no 
 wonder that they need help. 
 
 There is still another difficulty. Many of the men 
 who would have done their best to cultivate these shell- 
 torn fields have been killed or wounded. All who re- 
 turn will be more or less weakened by the long struggle. 
 There will be a shortage of workers, and there will be 
 a vast amount of work to be done. Think what you 
 
94 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 would have to do if you had come back to your home 
 after four years of war and had found the house, and 
 perhaps the whole village or city, nothing but a mass 
 of stones and ashes and cinders. Think of coming 
 back to a farm and finding the fields torn up, the build- 
 ings burned and the cattle gone. Then you will realize 
 what so many people in Europe have to meet, and you 
 will see why they must have good nourishing food and 
 plenty of it in order to reconstruct — to build again — 
 their homes and their lives. 
 
 In this splendid work the United States must have a 
 generous part. Now is our opportunity to prove that 
 we are more eager to give than to gain. The people of 
 Europe will do their best, and next autumn they will 
 perhaps be able to provide the greater part of their 
 own food. Meanwhile we must help them as we should 
 wish to be helped if we were in want and there were a 
 great land of plenty just across the ocean. 
 
 What we shall need to send will vary from time to 
 time. Wheat will soon be brought to Europe from In- 
 dia and AustraHa. In less than a week after the signing 
 of the armistice Australian ships were already on the 
 way. Both wheat and meat will come from Argentina. 
 Sugar will come from Java. When there are more 
 refrigerator ships, we can send more meat. Some 
 countries will need more wheat, some more fat, and 
 some more sugar than others. To learn beforehand 
 what kinds of food each will require will be in the hands 
 of the Food Administration; and we shall look to it 
 
WHAT WE HAVE YET TO DO 95 
 
 for guidance, as we have done ever since it was estab- 
 lished. 
 
 Many people have questioned, "After the war is 
 over, shall we go back to our old careless, extravagant 
 ways of living? Shall we begin again to leave sugar 
 in the bottom of the cup and fill the garbage can to over- 
 flowing? No. Surely, after having once learned a 
 better way, we cannot go back to the old fashion. While 
 we may not need to put substitutes into our bread or 
 to go without meat or to divide our teaspoonfuls into 
 halves and quarters, we shall need to live simply. We 
 shall have plenty of food to keep us well and strong, 
 but we shall not have any to waste — if any of us are so 
 fooHsh as to desire to waste. 
 
 Another part of the work of the Food Administration 
 will be to see that food is properly distributed both 
 here and abroad. The old way of distributing food was 
 to send it wherever the highest price would be paid, and 
 sometimes to destroy it rather than sell it for a more 
 reasonable price. The new way, the way of kindness 
 — and of good sense, too, for that matter — is to send 
 it where it is needed to enable people to do their share 
 of the world's work. 
 
 So it is that we willingly bear the burden of aiding our 
 brothers across the sea. Long ago it was said that the 
 United States is 
 
 The hope of all who suffer. 
 The dread of all wrong. 
 
96 
 
 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 We may well be proud of our country because she is 
 powerful; but we love her because she is kind and gener- 
 ous and thoughtful of those who without her help would 
 surely perish. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 
 That even the coming of peace has not brought 
 
 food to the hungry. 
 That no country in Europe has enough food. 
 That for the hard work of reconstruction nourish- 
 ing food will be especially necessary. 
 That the United States will share generously in. 
 providing food for those who are in need. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE LITTLE GROUP OF ONE 
 
 Did you ever notice that when anything is given to 
 a little child, his first thought is to put it into his 
 mouth as fast as he can ? When he is a few years older, 
 he is ready to share his good things with his family, 
 and after a while he likes to think that his city or state 
 or his whole country is faring well. Some day perhaps, 
 we shall learn to think of the whole world as one great 
 family, and we shall be glad if we can help even a little 
 in bringing it about that every one has his fair share 
 of the good things of life. That is the deeper meaning 
 of the Food Administration. Its present work is to 
 feed hungry nations, but the meaning of the work is 
 the "brotherhood of man." 
 
 The Food Administration can only ** press the 
 button;" we, the people of the United States, must 
 **do the rest." Germany marched forward with a 
 chip on her shoulder and a challenge to knock it off 
 
 97 
 
98 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 if we could. The "chip" was a "dare" to keep the 
 Allies from starving, and we helped to do it. Wars 
 used to be won chiefly by bullets, but this war was won 
 by bullets and work and bread. We were obliged to 
 have enormous armies and great factories and food for 
 millions; but after all, it was the Httle group of one 
 that brought success. One man fired one gun, one 
 man helped make munitions, one man cultivated the 
 ground; that is the way the mighty armies, the great 
 throngs of factory workers, and the countless bands of 
 farmers were formed. We shall never get far beyond 
 the verse that little children sing: 
 
 Little drops of water, 
 
 Little grains of sand, 
 Make the mighty ocean 
 
 And the pleasant land. 
 
 We could not make a "mighty ocean," but we did help 
 to make the ocean mighty in its freedom for all man- 
 kind. We could not make a "pleasant land," but we 
 helped to make all lands pleasant by driving away the 
 robber hordes that sought destruction and ruin. 
 
 With the conquered nations we must deal wisely and 
 justly, aiming at what will be for the highest good of the 
 world. We must do our best to help feed and reconstruct 
 the countries that have suffered because of the war. 
 
 It is only by "a long pull and a strong pull and a pull 
 all together" that we can do these things. You know 
 the game called the "tug of war," in which half the 
 
THE LITTLE GROUP OF ONE 99 
 
 boys pull at one end of a rope and half at the other. 
 There is no chance for any one in the middle; every- 
 body must pull one way or the other. That is the way 
 it is now; everybody in America is pulHng in one way 
 or the other, either to help the country or to hinder her. 
 Not every one can buy Government bonds or many 
 thrift stamps, but faithful work is just as helpful as 
 money. Not long ago a newsboy carelessly neglected 
 to deliver a paper. The subscriber telephoned to 
 the office; the clerk reported the matter to the head of 
 the delivery department; the head of the delivery de- 
 partment sent another boy by the electric car to deliver 
 the paper. It was quite Hke "the house that Jack 
 built," and it took the time of the subscriber, the tele- 
 phone operator, the clerk, the head of the delivery 
 department, and the second boy, and cost two carfares 
 — ^just because one boy was not faithful. Time and 
 faithfulness are all fully as valuable in this period 
 of constructing the world anew as they were in the days 
 of barrage fire and machine guns. 
 
 Did you ever realize what an honor it is to be asked 
 to work for our country .? A little child is always pleased 
 if he can feel that he is doing something to help his 
 father or mother. Even a little dog will try his best 
 to understand what his master wants and is delighted 
 if he can do it. Here is a mighty country — wide- 
 spreading, prosperous, and powerful — and she says to 
 every man and woman and to. every child, "Will you do 
 something for me .? " 
 
loo FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 Now what can every little group of one do for the 
 country? The Food Administration has shown us 
 some ways in which we can help. We know that every 
 garden helps to produce food to make up for that 
 which has been destroyed or prevented from growing. 
 We know that we ought not to waste even a mouthful 
 of food. On the wartime bill of fare of a luxurious 
 hotel there was printed, "Help us to observe the Gospel 
 of the Clean Plate; please order only what you will 
 eat." 
 
 We need this motto just as much now. We must 
 content ourselves with simpler ways of living, and so 
 save not only food, but also gas and coal and time and 
 labor. 
 
 Transportation can be saved. If every family could 
 raise all that it eats, the railroads would be immensely 
 relieved. A garden saves transportation, so does buy- 
 ing food from the nearest farmer. So does shopping 
 in your own town or even village instead of going to 
 the nearest large city. Save express and mail. Save 
 man power and the expense of carrying goods from the 
 grocery or market to the house. Our grandmothers, 
 if they happened to live in the country, would have 
 thought it wonderfully convenient if a delivery wagon 
 had called at their doors once a week. But now! 
 **Some people order one-fourth of a dozen cookies in 
 the morning and a yeast cake in the afternoon," said 
 a grocer. To have no deliveries would be exceedingly 
 wasteful, because it would take the time of hundreds 
 
THE LITTLE GROUP OF ONE loi 
 
 of customers rather than of one or two delivery men; 
 but we can reduce their work by carrying packages 
 home, by never ordering more than once a day, or, even 
 better, once or twice a week, and by trying never to 
 order anything but perishable food just before a Sun- 
 day or a holiday. Grocers usually have to employ 
 extra help at such times, and a bit of thoughtfulness 
 on the part of the customers would make this unneces- 
 sary. 
 
 During the last few years boys here at home have had 
 such chances as boys never had before, because places 
 left vacant by men were given to them. They received 
 high wages, and they had splendid opportunities to 
 rise. But did you ever watch them in working hours ? 
 Some of them thought they were big folk just because 
 they had dropped into big places. Others were trying 
 their best to fill the big places. You could almost see 
 at a glance which ones would rise in the world and which 
 ones would never hold such high positions again. 
 
 The verses about the hungry little French baby who 
 couldn't be the "hope of France,'* because he couldn't 
 "get enough food to have a chance," end as follows: 
 
 I wish I had a father. If I couldn't have that, then I wish some 
 other babies* fathers would give me a place to stay — 
 
 A warm, light place, with persons in it while the Person in Skirts is 
 gone all day. 
 
 And maybe they'd give me some food that wasn't as bad as grass tea. 
 
 Do you think, if their babies have plenty and some left over, the 
 other babies' fathers would do that for me? 
 
I02 
 
 FOOD SAVING AND SHARING 
 
 This is what we are trying to do; to feed the children 
 and the grown folks, to help the nations that are at 
 last set free from tyranny and cruelty, and to make 
 the world safe and happy for them and for us. 
 
 "I don't believe you know wh'at *U.S.' means," 
 some one once said teasingly to a very small American 
 boy. The little fellow drew himself up to his full 
 height, looked the man in the eye, and said, "*U.S.' 
 means us." We are a firmly united people, striving 
 for the right. We have a big piece of work on hand, 
 but "*U.S.' means us," and with the help of God we 
 will carry it through. 
 It is worth remembering: 
 
 That the work of the Food Administration is to 
 control and to save food so that every one may 
 share it. 
 That in the work that lies before us each person 
 
 must either help or hinder. 
 That it is an honor to be asked to work for our 
 
 country. 
 That "*U. S.' means us,** 
 
c^=: 
 
 — -r:.... ..,., - ^ 
 
 : THIS BOOK IS DUE ON n^AST DATE _ 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS : 
 
 tlUI. BE ASSESSED FOR TAII-URE TO RrrURN ^ ., 
 OVERDUE. _ f^r^ 
 
 m 7 19+ ^ 'CAl 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 . — xmzrm^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 j^ 
 
 
 
 ^r 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 II 
 
 
 ffi " 
 
 ^ 
 
 Vl 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 m " 
 
 
 ffik 
 
 
 ik 
 
 
 M ' 
 
 
 M ^ " 
 
 __________ 
 
 am 
 
 
 I 
 
 LD21-100m-7,'39(402s) 
 
ofyDmi 
 ioss 
 
 388699 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY 1 
 
 «^ 
 
THE 
 
 u. s. 
 
 RETAIL PBICE OF THIS BOOK 
 IS FIXED AT 
 
 24 Cents 
 
 BY CXDNTRACT WITH THE 
 
 FOOD ADMINISTRATION