The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-04-27
Wall About Food Substitutes Is
Stacker Wall!
Recall PrivatiOns of FOrefa-
theirs and Be Happy.
REVAMP HOUSEHOLD PROGRAM
War Hits Us All, but Don't For
get Patriotism.
Oatmeal Substitutes Fine If the
Cook Knows How.
BY LILA DAY MONROE.

Everybody resents being called a
Stacker, and the real Stacker resents
TT most of all Yet is it not strange
that the Stacker is condemned out
of his own mouth? When the govern
ment clamped down upon the food a
wall went up that is echoing around
the world-it is a Stacker wall. And
those who started it are going to be
mighty sorry as time goes on. In
looking into this l am much afraid
that the chief slacker~is going to be
"a woman. OF course, she is going
to try to justify herself. She will say:
But l am the purveyor for my fam
lily, 1 have just SO much to buy with,
am expected to feed them not only
wholesomely, but cheaply, and in the
preparation of my meals time is one
great factor. If / must cook all day
then I have less time to sew, to mend,
to clean and do the general super
vision to say nothing of cost of fuel.
What I cannot do must be either hired
out, or the family do without, per-
haps to the letting down of the fam
lily status
Keeping Your Pledge?
To all of this we answer: That is
very true. But is not this the time
of letting down, or perhaps letting up
on many of our ideas of what are the
absolute essentials of housekeeping?
And again if the matter of time is i'm
portant in your work, what about the
government work? You have hung
the food-card up in the window. Did
you mean it? Everything that it
says, when you hung it up? 1t should
have been your absolute utterance as
much as if you had said it first to your
family and your neighbors.
If you feel that you are doing too
much for your country will you not
hunt up some person who can tell
you some of the prices and privations
of the Civil war time.
Forefathers Ate Corn.
Pardon a personal recollection: My
upon the sick wife of pretty we'll
TODD landed man of her acquaintance.
The children were just at supper
around a long bare table-no cloth.
There were no linen showers in those
days-unbleached muslin made many
a table cloth. But this table was
bare. In the center was large
earthen bowl full of ground parched
corn-parched in q skillet and ground
in the coffee mill Each child had
a saucer and a spoon; a pitcher of
milk and a pitcher of sorghum stood
meal-and they were not complain
ing Because sister had had unusual
luck and the corn was SO nicely
parched. and the milk was so good,
ana sorghum SWeelenlnS was SO Tine,
if they liked it sweetened, and they
were having quite a riotously happy
time. They had gotten home from
school, were all together, mother was
better and the new baby, the tenth
child, was a wonder and its name was
Maurice.
What About the Soldiers?
But you. why you are SO set in
your ways that you could scarcely
Oh Ia R,If
youth has business as well as age1so
many people cannot get that into
their heals-that youth must have
business-and that business is growth,
play, work and ideals looking to the
future of a .workaday life. Then what
about the disarranging of the bust
ness of millions of our Youth? What
of the college education that has been
interrupted? What of the business
deals that have been lost, of the work
that was planned? And the profit of
it all will be reaped by those who stay
at home.
How can you look an olive drab
clad figure in the face and complain
because you have to take unusual
thought in order to use the flour sub
stituteS?
And that is just about what 1t
amounts to, after all the hue and cry.
1t is going to cost thought to revamp
our household plans, to provide va
riety at meals to live up to our food
card pledges; but let's not howl about
the cost. How many of our lives
have as yet been laid on the altar of
the food-oard? How many of US have
died of mal-nutrition and lack of
proper food? Now let US stop and get
right down to brass tacks and see what
about this bugaboo of substitutes.
Think of 1t, Mr.. Farmer?
The farmer says: Here I am 'steen
1oy r, 1xy 70.
feed hired men, too, and only thirty
day ration allowed to me!
Granted. and you haven't told half
of the things. Your wife is already
overworked, help is hard to get for
the woman; it is making it harder for
farmers had laid more stress on the
woman side of it than to talk about
the bad roads, can't use ears, etc. But
against that, what about the dough-
backs and wade mud to knees-and
not a mud-chain or mud-guard in the
whole company Think of it. Mr..
Farmer! And say. maybe your father
during the Civil war walked more than
'steen miles fetching a few groceries.
because roads were impossible for
horseback riders, and with his weight
on his shoulders he jumped from one
corduroy cross-1og to another; yet he
reached home alive, and you are iiv-
ing and doing well.
And the small wage-a-day man is
going to suffer. To be sure he is.
And it ought to be sweet to think that
he is not compelled at his time of life
to begin to learn a foreign language as
they did in JAlsace and Lorraine when
those two French countries were stol-
en- by the Germans from France in
1871. How would you like to be go
ing about with a German phrase book
in your pocket. compelled to make
your wants known in German on pain
Of punishment or death if you per-
sisted in speaking your own tongue?
But this was to be a talk on recipes
"a help to the use of substitutes, be-
cause a young housekeeper said to
ne, DO tell me how to fix the hom-
my to make them eat it,