Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-06-25
MERIT and MERTZ CO.
goo F Street
NECESSITY FOR CANNING
PRODUCTS OF GARDENS
Possibilities of Home Conservation
of Foods Explained by National
Geographic Society.

The gigantic possibilities of the
home-canning industry in the United
States this summer, when ii il SO
eagerly hoped that the production of
the vegetable gardens everywhere will
output, are set forth in a bulletin is
sued by the National Geographic So
ciety from its Washington headduar-
tiers. The bulletin is a part Of COM
munication to the society from William
Joseph Showalter.
'One-fourth of our country's diet
consists of neutrality-suspicious. OF the
truck gardens-and yet. next to Aus
tralians, Americans are the worlds
greatest meat-eaters. Our census re-
turns show that we produce, exclusive
of potatoes and sweet potatoes vege-
tables to a value Of $21S.00o.0oo.
THE tomato takes first rank. with .
it's credit; the onion contributes exactly
one-half as much to the total as the
tomato, while corn makes q successful
bid for third place: watermelons get
ued at $4,000. 900. and Jcantaloupes add
$4,000, 900 moro to the total. Green
beans and green peas are three-mill1on-
dollar crops These figures deal almost
entirely with the production that gets
to the city market and not with the
vegetables raised for consumption on
the farm.
The food administration Of the. gov
eminent Is now pleading with the
women everywhere to increase their
amount of vegetables which ordinarily
goes to waste may this year Is never
before be decreased to positively
irreducible minimum.
Rxrvft md
tables come to us tn their natural
state or canned. the country annually
produces millions Of dollars worth or
dried fruits production which figures
more largely in other parts OF the
world than in our own.
TT is only q little more than Gems
fury since the fruit jar came into usA
Before that the only way Of keeping
the fruits and vegetables that are now
canned was to dry than or put them
of the modern process Of canning il
credited to Nicholas Appert . French.
man. His method WIS - put the food
to be preserved in glass lara. set thsR
in boiling water. and. when the cons
tents were thoroughly heated. seal The
ALTHOUGH Napoleon gavs Appsre
1900 francs for his work. he simply
had built ON foundations well Laid BY
Spallanzi nearly half . oentury before
canning processes was vary crude. but.
his discoveries laid the foundation for
one Of the most important tnAu061o4,
Of modern times, one which has pfove4
a boon to the urban populatiodae3 the,
earth, and one which. Ia the pfe0eQAI
emergency. is being dspendSd npon. -
large extent, to prevent the wo@A
from starving.
only the first. centennial has passed
Of William Underwood's invention Of g
process of canning tomatoes. Ind Il =
only seventy-eight years since lsaAd1
Winslow learned how to can cora a.
Portland, Me. Today the glass jars eli
Appert have been succeeded. except ~
the household canning Art, By the t11I
can. and many wonderful machinsAI
have been devised to save labor in ths]
canning industry. There are hullinoI
machines. which win take green peaa|
out of the pods at the rate Of t,eoaI
bushels a day; there are separatoral
which Will grade the peas according
to size; there are corn-cutters which
remove the grain from the cob at the
rate of 1000 ears an hour. and silkin9'
machines which will work at equal
speed, and there are automatic ma
chimes which will I'LL 1900 cans Q day.