The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-02-20
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORMATION BUREAU
FREDERIC J. HASkIN, Director,
Washington, D. c.
SOME WORLD FOOD FACTS.
Washington, D. c.

This is a mystery of the interna-
tional food situation which worries
some people, and furnishes some para
graphers with material tor caustic
comment. Why does bread cost twice
as much here as it does in England,
when we are sending to England the
materials of which bread is made?
The method the English government
has adopted for supplying the people
with cheap bread has some signifi-
canoes which seemto have been over
looked. The British government BUYS
all of the wheat that comes into port
and sells it to the millers at fixed
price. This price nets the British gov
eminent a loss which is at present run
ming about two hundred million dol
lars a year. This wheat is then made
into war bread, which is from fifty
to sixty per cent real wheat flour, the
rest of it being various substitutes. IN
a word, bread sells in England to the
consumer for half what the consumer
pays in this country because the gov
eminent pays part of the difference.
and because the English bread is
worth less.
The result of this English practice
is that the poorest man in England
can buy enough bread to keep him
alive The danger of starvation for
thousands is removed. An interesting
oorollary of this fact is that the Eng
lish employer does not have to pay
such very high wages to his workmen
in order to enable them to meet the
cost of living in war time. This means
that after the war, when the great in
,,ustrial struggle of nations is resumed,
the British factories will be on a cheap
operating basis. American factories
will be on an extrava CANT one, and viii
have tc go thru a period of readJust-
nlent.
The theory that we are slowly but
seems to have been largely abandoned
by students of the international food
situation. Germany is going to get
good crops out of Rumania and Serbia
this year, and she seems to be about
to add the rich Ukraine to the farming
lands available for her support.
Compare this German situation with
that of the allies. In December we
had shipped to Europe every ounce of
came from England word that our
allies must have an additional seventy
five million bushels to get thru until
the next harvest. That is why we are
celebrating wheatless days.
As to meats and fats. the allies are
somewhat better off than the Ger
MANS of course. And yet the British
butchers are now allowed TO kill only
half as much livestock as they were
killing in October, and the English
ration of meat is pound per person
per week.
France could raise a much larger
percentage of her own food than she
is now raising if she could get men to
do the work. But for lack-of men her
production of foodstuffs is steadily de-
clinins When the war broke out
France had an agricultural population
of ten million people. She has about
five million farms of which four and
one-half million are of less than
twenty-five acres.
The first draft alone took three
million of her farmers, and subse-
quent drafts have left but fraction of
them. Not only the labor, but the
skill and knowledge have been taken
away from her farms. And being
nation of very small farms, worked
each by one or two persons, France
had not the machinery that is neces-
sary for cultivating large areas with
few men. That machinery is one
valuable thing that we can supply her.
We have already sent her 1900 trac-
tors Perhaps if the war goes on long
enough, American brains and ma
chinery will make the farms of France
yield as they should.
The men we are sending to France
will help her food supply, too. One
reason she wants soldiers-eVen rev
hundred thousands of them-from
America, is that every one OF these
soldiers will enable her to release a
French farmer from the trenches and
put him back on the land A few
hundred thousand soldiers will not go
far toward beating Germany on the
western frort. but few hundred
thousand experienced French farmers
can get a lot of food out of the soil
of France. This was one of the
strongest arguments that the French
made last September when we decided
to hasten all of our war preparations
in order to get men to France quickly.
From these facts it will be seen that
the allies have no great advantage
over Germany in the matter of food.
England is cultivating her soil to the
last acre, but evenNSo, she can pro-
duce only about a fifth OF what she
needs. while France, which might pro-
duce a goodly part of her own food,
cannot keep her land under cultiva
ton. That leaves America as the only
hope of the alliance.
This makes it our most imperative
duty. if we are going to see the thing
thru, to save wheat We have the
substitutes which would enable us to
do this without suffering. Our pro-
duction of corn is something like
thirty bushels per capita per year. If
each of Us would eat a bushel of corn
this year in place of that amount of
wheat, enough wheat would be saved
to see our allies thru until the next
crops.
Facts like these point to rationing
as the logical solution of the problem.
The idea of being put on compulsory
rations is distasteful to the American
people. Yet a reasonable rationing
system, combined with more rigid
control of prices, which rationing
would probably make necessary.
would be the cheapest and surest way
to accomplish the thing we have set
out to dc.
But if it is impossible to sta rye Ger
many, what is to be the outcome of
this world fasting?
Pointing out the weaknesses of Ger
many has become rather disappoint-
ing business. First she was to starve,
but now it is conceded that she is not
going to starve- Then she was to have
a revolution, but the way the iron
hand crushed the recent strikes has