Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1917-06-22
CASTORIA
For Infants and Children
I'm Use For Over 30 Years
s.sns ;Ss ., &zAzzzS<
BREAD OR BOOZE.
(From the Virginian.

tfrOm the SlrSlnlan,
Let the American citizen-and his
wife-consider the figures which APP
pear to the official mind so trifling
to % per cent. They are paying So
cents for 12-pound bag of flour
which ordinarily sells for 40 cents
the price Il week or SO ago was $l.l0.
The pound of sugar which cost IL
cents IL couple OF years ago now is
worth 8 l2 to 8 cents. Meanwhile
there is consumed every year in max
ing Intoxicating liquors.:
5G,000,000 bushels of barley.
15,000,000 bushels of corn.
100000 bushels of rye.
55,000,000 pounds of grape sugar.
l52,000,000 gallons of molasscs.
3,00O,0 900 gallons of glucose or Syr-
up.
Suspension Of whisltcy manufacture
will effect some saving, but of barley
and corn alone the breweries will
consume G6,000,000 bushels. The fig
ures are impressive enough, but let
us put them in Il more understandable
form. DR.. Irving Fisher, of Yale,
gives the result of an exhaustive
| investigation in these terms. The net
| food loss caused by brewing and
distilling is equivalent to about H.
000, 900 one pound loaves OF bread eV-
cry day.
Compared to the billions of bushels
of grain produced annually, the 1917
900, 900 bushels wasted in liquor man
ufacture constitute n small item-lcss
than one per cent, the liquor inter
ests say IN their advertisements. But
when the food situation is such that
there is need for the strictest econo-
\ Il t,Nt,, .tD,. -
age, it is preposterous to call Il waste
of l07,000,000 bushels insignificant.
Moreover, of the total grain yield,
only Il small proportion is used for
human food; many times as much
goes to the feeding of cattle. Profess
sor Fisher states the facts with strik-
ing emphasis:
The truth is that II 900 900 loaves
of bread daily is . . per cent of the
total food values consumed by human
beings in the United States; more
than 10 per cent. OF the total con-
sumption of brcadstuirs; Is per cent.
of the volume of wheat consumed,
% per cent Of the amount of wheat
| exported in 1916.
But it is whiskey. says the brewers
that uses most wheat and corn and
rye, the principal breadstutfs in the
American diet; malt il made from
] barley, which Americans do not eat.
If the manufacture Of spirits is s.opp-
ed by prohibitivc taxation, the other
waste is ncgliblc.
The fallacy OF this plea lies in the
fact that, under conditions now
threatening, barley will be an impor-
tant article in the American diet. But
even if this were not so, France and
Great Britain are using barley in
making flour for bread, and every
bushcl made here into beer reduces
the stocl; from which we must sup
ply those countries. If we cannot
give them all the barley they need
we must give them wheat and corn
from our deficient stores.
"rhis war;" President Wilson has
said, sis grim business on every side
of it," And among the grimmest fca-
lures of it, we think. are thesc-that
the government which tells American
citizens how muchm they shall eat,
and selects those who must risk their
lives in battle, eXempts from sacri-
lice the most useless and not the least
harmful of all industries; and that
while demandsing rigid economy rs
the only means of avoiding priva-
ton, it permits the waste Of enough
food to give every French and British
and Belgian and American soldier Il
loaf of bread Il day.-Philadelph
North American.