Norwich bulletin., 1917-03-03
IGNORANCE OF VALUES CAUSE FEAR AND
 DISTRESS
DISTRESS

Cwritten Specially for The Bulletin.)
 I suppose you've all read more or less about the food riots" in New York city. during the last week or so.
 It's a strange sight. that of bowling mobs of frenzied women kicking over push-carts. smashing store windows shrieking and screaming their way into already over-crowded halls
 tramplinE and being trampled on. in fury of anger and fear over the inn nninent danger of starvation to them selves and their children-in the rich est city of the world.
 Such scenes have been enacted in European cities where the ordinary \ sources of supply have been stopped Nby cruel war end the ordinary earners
 have been forced out of the lines of wssteful destructiveness at the trench fronts.
 1uf that they should happen Tn New York city,-a town untouched by wars ravage, a town with all it's us- uaI earners at their usual tasks and the demand for labor so great that not 8. single man in 1t who really wants work need go without one day. a town with all its ordinary means of trans portation from the interior intact and unthFeatened. g, town admittedly today the richest in all the world. town which for months has been bragging about it's tremendous increase of wealth a town where endless rows of sumptuous palaces fairly jostle them selves along miles of aVenues.-that such scenes should transpire fn such g. place zs more than strange. It Is next door to the incredible. It is an enormity, a horror. fearfu1iy signi- fcant portent.
 At the very outset, it must be admit ted that there has been no absolute necessity for any man or woman who Is able to work starving or even go- ing hungry in New York city The very stories of these rfotfng women show the needIessness of their own sufferings. Several who talked with Investigating reporters, the other day, right after they had Joined in a mad rush through the streets to pillage a deiicatessen shop, declared, weeping, that they had eaten nothing but bread and tea for so many weeks they could remember the taste of nothing else. Bread and tea! Yet. during all those weeks, the retail price of rice had us- ua1ly been five cents a pound. had never risen above six cents. The same ten cents which they had spent for bread and tea for single unsatisfy- ing lunch would have bought rice enough to make two or three substan- tia1, satisfying and nutritious r1eNS.
 Another woman complained because she had to pay fifteen cents pound for cabbage. Cabbage at it's best is ninety-one per cent water and even the remaining modicum of solids con tain about as much waste as nutri tion. The pay forty-f1ve cents for a oray, when half that money would have bought in oatmeal or corn meal ten times as much real food.
 Still another woman told how she had been forced to pay five cents for three small potatoes and another five cents for one turnip. Her potatoes were seventy eight per cent water and her turnip almost ninety. At that very date when white potatoes, such as she bought, were who1esaling for ten and eleven dollars a barrel, sweet pota- toes were similarly wholesaling at two dollars a barrel or even less.
 Ignorance, dense, thickheaded isnor- snce, coupled with even more repre- hensfble unwfllin gness to learn was at the bottom of the real or alleged suf- 1 ferings of these particular women: whose cases seem to have been about typical. Each one of them had an in come from her husbands earnings of more than ten dollars a week.
 Now this is not a sum to insure Iux- ury. But it is a sum adequate to pre- vent starvation.-if only it be spent 1 1udiciously and economically. There l are other things to eat beside potatoes at a dollar peck or cabbages at 1 fifteen cents pound. For years and i years the national government, the | state governments, the city govern ] rnentsr even many of the schools have | been broadcasting knowledge concern ing the real values of food and point l ing out the needless wastes of aver l age purchasers.
 It has done, apparently, about as l much good as watering a stone hitch | inE-post to induce growth!
 Just at present there seems to be a | shortage of certain food supplies, such | as potatoes. cabbage. and some few I others. Most people like" potatoes, l cabbage, etc. When they were cheap l there was no reason why those who | liked" them should not buy and eat | them, if they could afford to. But in | an emergency it is always possible for l really intelligent and foreseeing peo- pie to do. temporarily. without what 1 they like" in order to secure what 1 they need
 know farmers who are living and i maintaining families on a good deal | less than ten dollars a week. whe are l now deliberately cutting potatoes out ] -