Browning chief., 1944-05-05
WNU Service, Union Trust Building
Washington, D. C.

WNU Service, Union Trust Building
Washington, D. C.
You have often heard the lament
when guests came and the larder
was bare: "If we only had some
ham and had some eggs, we could
have ham and eggs"
If we had the man power and the
machinery, equipment and distribu-
ton, we could step up American
food production until, by 1854, we
could feed $50 million people. That
is what the Department of Agricul-
ture says. Last year, we raised
enough to feed ITO million.
Today, Washington is worrying
over two problems brought into
focus by that little "if.''
This time we have over-produc-
tion of one food product: eggs.
Government agents are hurrying
around trying to find a means of
absorbing them. America has more
eggs than were ever laid on these
fair shores in our history, enough to
have rolled some on the White
House lawn on Easter Monday if
the President had permitted such
a wastage, which he wouldn't.
The government is buying eggs
right and left (600 thousand cases of
shell eggs, 13 million pounds of pow
dered eggs since January y to sup
port the farmers price, and giving
some away - and here is where
problem number two, which I said
Washington was worrying about,
comes in. We are giving away eggs
to state and federal institutions and
also for school lunches. After July l,
school lunches, supported by the
federal government, will be no more
if the senate follows the action of
the house and refuses the appropri-
alton for that purpose. And re-
gardless of eggs, there is develop
ing the other situation over which
certain people in Washington are
worried. I'll 60 into that later, but
first, let us look at the egg glut.
We are told that we could feed
lot more people if we had the man
power, equipment and machinery to
produce the food. In the case of
eggs, we could consume far more
if we had the man power to run
the drying equipment to produce the
powdered eggs for the military
forces and lend-lease although those
institutions now consume 400 million
pounds of egg-powder year, and
eggs run about three dozen to one
pound of powder.
About Hen PoJDer
In this case, the man power
doesn't match the hen power. A con-
traption called a cyclone drier dries
eggs. All you have to do is to crack
the egg and drop it into a container
and let the artificial breezes blow,
but it's hard to get crackers. One
Kansas City drier who has wage
ceiling of so cents an hour for his
crackers, has to compete with an
airplane plant in the neighborhood
which has so cents an hour cell
ing, for work no less attractive to
young ladies than breaking eggs.
Right now, the country boasts the
biggest hen population it ever had
and egg production is 80 per cent
higher than it was just before the
war. Ever since March, something
has gotten into the hens that has
made them step up their produc-
tion - feed was supposed to be
hard to get so it couldn't have been
something they ate. Maybe it's
just patriotism. Anyhow, the War
Food administration is buying all
the eggs it can, and now it is giving
eggs to schools for school lunches
and to state and federal institutions,
not entirely because it has a gen.
erous heart but because it wants to
support the price to the farmer who
(as usuaD hasn't been getting the
benefit of the retail prices which, in
many places, have stayed up even
in the face of the greater supply.
Washington, however, was able to
buy eggs for the Easter rabbit this
year, l8 cents dozen cheaper than
they were in March.
This egg glut has brought into
sharp focus the school-lunch ques-
ton which is of considerable con-
cern to the Office of Education as
well as the War Food admins
tration.
The present laying spree of the
hens will not last forever, and there
will be no eggs to throw around
later on. And anyhow, the house of
representatives has decided that
even if there were a surplus of eggs
and other food products, it does not
approve of spending the taxpayers
money on school lunches even if