The Washington herald., 1916-12-12
Seen and Heard
BY GEORGE MINER.


New York, Dee. 1.-THE food situ-
alton here is paradoxical. Everybody
is complaining about the high prices
of all kinds of edibles and the news
papers print columns about it every
day. A stranger from some foreign
land would suppose that this country
was on the verge of famine. At the
same time, the hotels were never so
crowded and the restaurants are do
ing a capacity business.
Although there is no visible sign
of any food scarcity. boycotts have
been started against the use of vari-
Gus kinds of foods with the idea of
bringing down the price by forcing
the reserve stocks that are now being
Yheld for speculation into the open
| market For instance, the boycott
was started with eggs, and was the
result of the fact that within the last
few weeks the price of eggs has
about doubled This boycott is to
last two weeks. Housewives are
asked to do without eggs entirely for
that period or at least to cut down
the use of them to the smallest pos
sible amount.
Following the egg boycott is to
be one against poultry, butter and
so on. Each of these boycotts is to
last two weeks and it is hoped there
! by to teach the wholesale dealers a
thing or two as to their iniquitous
manipulating of the market. Just
like that. OF course, if people swear
of on eggs for two weeks, it stands
to reason that they will eat some
thing else in their place, and, since
all. sorts of food have gone up, I
can't see that it makes very much
difference.
A really effective food boycott
would be one in which people stop
ped eating altogether. OF course,
this sounds like reducing the prob
lem to an absurdity, as very few of
US could stand two weeks fast, but
it is not as impracticablc as it looks.
We could all of US, except sick peo-
pie, go without food for twenty-four
hours without any great hardship,
and there is no doubt but that it
would do a great deal of good to at
least 90 per cent of the population
to fast for a day once in a while
Think of what the result would be
if for one day only there was no
food eaten in this city of six million
people! 1t would break the food
market in a thousand pieces and
prices would come tumbling down
around the SPECTATORS ears. Let me
recommend this day of fasting to the
philanthropists who are trying to
solve. the food problem.
Another way of solving the food
shortage is to eat new kinds of food
that, up to now, have been neglected.
There are several of these sources Of
supply. One of the most conspicu-
Gus and valuable is the ordinary sea
mussel. In England and France,
steamed musscls, with an appetizing
sauce, are very popular and are con-
sidcred great luxury. In America
they are almost unknown to bills of
fare. There are hundreds of ways in
which they can be served as food,
and their cheapness and the ease
with which they can be obtained
should certainly recommend them.
Prof Irving A. Field, of Clarke
University, says: "Thc flesh of the
sea mussel is actually the most valu-
able and nutritive of all shell fish,
and in palatability and digestibility
/ is second to none. AS a nation we
have been wasting one of our great
er national resources by failing to
make more extensive use of the vast
quantities of sea mussels annually
produced along our shores. The es-
innate is easily within the probabil-
ity that more than twenty million
pounds of this she'll fish on our At
lantic coast are available for the mar
ket annually.
The mussel is an interesting crea-
ture. A vast stretch of sand and
gravel over which the tides run back
and forth will suddenly appear as if
carpeted with blue black. What has
happened is that millions of minute
muscle embryos have been swept in
by the tides and attached themselves
to the stones. Prof. Field has count
ed as many as thousand of these
baby mussels to the square yard and
estimated that there were as many as
ten thousand bushels to the acre.
Fortunately mussels have enemies.
All sorts of fish and sea life live on
them. Otherwise, so rapidly do they
multiply and grow, that in a short
time the oceans bed would be COW
cred many layers deep with them.