Arizona republican., 1918-02-25
Some World
 Food Facts

WASHINGTON, D. C.. Feb. 24.-ln London you can buy a four pound ioaf of bread for eighteen cents; in the United States four pounds of bread cost at least thirty-six cents.
 This is a mystery of the interna- tional food situation which worries some people. and furnishes some paragraphers with material for 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 govern ment has adopted for supplying the people with cheap bread has some significance which seems to have been overlooked. 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 government a loss which is at present running about two hundred million dollars year. This wheat IS then made into a 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 government 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 interest | ing corollary of this fact is that the | English employer does not have tc | pay such very high wages to his | workmen in order to enable them to meet the cost of living in war times This means that after the war, wher l the great industrial struggle of na- tions is resumed, the British factories Will be on a cheap operating basis American factories will be on an ex- | travagant one, and will have to gc through a period of readjustment.
 The theory that we are slowly but surely starving Germany to deatl seems ito have been largely aban. doned by students of the internationa food situation. Germany is going t, get good crops out of Roumania ant Serbia this year, and she seems to b, l about to aid the rich Ukraine to tn farming lands available for her sup port.
 Compare this German situation with that of the allies. In Decem Der we had shipped to Europe ever, ounce of wheat that we could spare Then came from England word tha our allies must have an additiona seventy-fiv million bushels to ge through until the next harvest. Tha is why we are celebrating wheatles days.
 As to meats and fats, the allie are somewhat better off than tn Germans, of course. And yet tn British butchers are now allowed t kill only half as much livestock a they were killing in October, and tn English ration of meat is a poun per person per week.
 Frapce could raise a much large percentage of her own food than sh is. now raising if she could get me to do the work. But for lack of me her production of foodstuffs is stead fly declining. When the war broE out France had an agricultural popu lation of ten million people. She hs about five million farms, of whie four and one-half million are of le. than twenty-five acres.
 The first draft alone took three mi
 lion of her farmers, and subsequel drafts have left but a fraction them. Not only the labor, but tl
 skill and knowledge have been take away from her farms. And being
 nation of very small farms, workt
 each by one or two persons. Fran,
 had not the machinery that is nece
 sary for cultivating large areas with
 few men. That machinery is one va