Norwich bulletin., 1918-12-13

jam. The list also includes over 7,500, ,000' cans of jami
 Now # this statement didn't come right from an authorized board of the treasury department with Treasury Department, Washington" printed in big letters at the head of the page, should feel inclined to doubt its abso- lute accuracy and plenary inspiration If had been called upon, off hand, to submit list of the necessaries of life, l don't believe I should have thought of evaporated peaches, or vanilla choc- olate, or canned pineapples, or pickles -four kinds of them, viz: chow chow, cucumber, gherkins and mixed-or of jam. AS a coffee lover I should have included coffee. Also tea for those who are as fond of that as I am of coffee. But there are five different and separate sorts of tea listed, viz: '.E. B., black gunpowder, Oolong, Y. H., and Japan" And only one kind of coffee. Now there are just as many kinds of coffee as of tea. There are at least a half dozen kinds which are fit to drink and dozen or more which are not. I should sort O like to know whether the coffee slightingly punched in one contemptuous lot was Java" grown in Brazil, or Mocha" grown in Porto Rico, or mixture of all sorts, like most of that commercially sold.
 But the most amazing thing in this official list consists in it's omissions.
 For instance, it confesses that the army consumed over 2,000,000 cans of molasses. but doesn't even mention sugar. Does this mean that molasses is a necessary and sugar is not? It includes fresh beef and bacon and pork-and beans and salmon; but not a word about mess pork or dried beef or canned beef or codfish or eggs. It mentions pickles and chocolate and jam, bNk avoids all reference to ham or oatmeal or tripe. It spreads itself on tea and coffee, while there isn't a word about tobacco Yet not even the most incorporate tea guzzlers or>coffee swillers will con- tend that these drinks are any more necessary" to them than his pipe or cigarette is to the tobacco fiend. Altogether after looking this official list over, right side up and bottom side up, sideways and endways and all other sort of ways, I don't, for my self, seem to get much nearer to any clear idea of what the necessaries of life are than when I started
 Do you?
 Once a rich Boston phiIanthropIst came into possession of big lumber | job up in Maine. His first move was l to run up there and look the thing over. He stayed a week, living with his men, and the one fact most forcibly impressed on him was that they had pork and beans every day, with never a taste of fresh meat. He returned to | Boston determined that this hardship l should no longer continue. Men work | ing for him should not be compelled | to live on just pork and beans, even | though the fodder was .cheap-as it was at that time. His first act after l his return was to send 8 generous ] consignment of fresh meat to that l lumber camp with orders to the cook | to see that the choppers got it, with | fresh vegetables besides.
 l And he glowed all over with gener- ous joy as he thought of the treat those hard-working lumberjacks were i long, however.
 Within a week he received "round robin from that lumber camp signed hy everybody in it except the cook, , begging him to take home his fresh |! 'r.eat and give them back the diet they | liked and could work on, viz: pork ! 9nd-beans every day and twice Sun days!
 There doesn't seem to be much use i trying to make up list of what. everyobdy would agree to as neces- ; sary.
 { These men in Maine limited the list l to porkan- beans. Castaways on des- 1 ert islands have been known to live on mussels and raw fish and seaweed The Bulgarians, according to travellers l live mostly on sour milk. The red Indians used to do big stunts on a diet
 of parched corn.
 The things absolutely needfuI for mere existence are very, very few, in-
 deed
 But-are the things essential to q mere existence the only necessary"
 things in food list?
 Doubtless a vegetarian diet confined to potatoes tomatoes, onions and beans would sustain some sort of life.
 But are such things as green corn and green peas and asparagus and spinach
 and beets and turnips and carrots and |. parsnips and squashes and lettuce and
 celery mere luxuries, then?
 As trucker, l, for one, hope that won't be asseretd. For such an agree
 ment would be a knock-down for my
 business.
 Perhaps that Official" list may he like some other official" outpourings,
 just leetle incomplete around the
 edges. For the sake of the soldier
 boys, hope so.
 THE FARMER.
 NNNTrAT