Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-04
No Wonder Germany Quit
By MAJOR FRANK G. MAHIN
or the Army Recruiting Station.

Tables of statistics are apt to be
t:resome affairs" said Major Frank
c. Mahin, of the Army Recruiting
Station, 325 Market street, Harris
burg, but in the annals of the War
Department, as part of the record
of the American Army in the Great
War, there is a table of statstiCS
that IS replete with human inter
est. This is the table which de-
picts the activities of the salvage
operations of the Army, both at home
and abroad. Until the war came TO
America and brought to us the ne
cessity of being provident, thrift
and economy could not be called
chara American qualities.
AS virtues in the individual we were
apt to despise them. Paris can live
on what New York throws away,
runs the old saying. For the pru-
dent man we invented opprobrlo IS
names. Such names and phrases
were but the surface outcroppings
of a national tendency to be waste
full. But the war came along to put
a stop to waste and to raise thrift
high in the esteem of America.
Partly because of the mounting
prices of food and clothing and
partly because of well-organized
and well-conducted propaganda on
the part of various agencies of the
government, America began to prac-
tice economy in the use of materials.
Ho wmuch of the credit for this
change can be claimed by the gov
ernment itself we may never know;
but this may be said-in Urging the
people to save materials in their
own homes, the government did not,
L, 4 t., -f,,.,E ,,l
| low the traditional wastes of Mill
tary campaigns. The government
| practiced what it preached. II
| cleaned up it's own back yard and
utilized every scrap of useful mo-
| ter:al. 1t mended the shoes and
| clothing of the Army; it darned the
socks, it tinkered the tin cans: it
starved the garbage pals by econ
omy in the mess kitchens and re-
| covered the valuable components Of
garbage at rendering plants; it col
| lected the junk; it swept the stables
/ and put the manure on the land,
and then produced crops from The
| increased fertility. All of these ad-
ventures in conservation and recla-
nation were known to the Army
simply as salvage; which, after all,
was but the scientific attention
which the Army paid to the "p's"
| and "q's" of military housekeeping
| it was household economy on the
scale of a family of 3,500,000 men,
| bers. The figures of the Army's
| thrift are most impressive. A con-
! solidation of these figures shows
| that the total amount returned to
! the government in money value by
| the savings of the salvage service of
| the Army for the single calendar
year of 1918 was S101, ,1S0,151. With
! this figure some interesting CON-
| PARSONS may be made. In 1912, to
meet every expense of the American
standing Army, Congress approprI-
ated S99,676.43; in 1913 the appro-
priations were S100,292,S55.04. Sal
! wage, retaining the materials ince
wasted and using them over agail4,
saved enough in 1918 to have main
! tanned the entire military establish
ment IN 1912 or 1913. But there Is
even a more striking comparison.
During the fiscal year of 1S9S-the
| SpaniSh-Ame erican war year-tie
entire appropriations for the sup
port of the Army amounted to $70,-
394,739.96. Salvage in 1918 saved
100000 more than was appro-
priated to fight the Spanish-Ameri-
can War up to July 1,,1S9S, at
which date the fighting was nearly
| over. Germany did wonderful things
in the way of salvage, substitutes.
etc. Yet it was reduced to the point
where it had to feed it's soldiers
food substitutes; filled their aching
voids but did not give them nour-
ishment required. Our men, at oil
times, ate of the best and had
plenty, and had the war continued.
our salvage methods would have
beaten Germany on that score alone,
if we had been unable to win a de-
| cision by fighting"