CHAPTER XXVIIFEEDING THE NATIONS
In April, 1917, the long and bitter struggle had so drained the food supply of the Western Allies that they were dependent upon North America for the food that would enable their armies to continue the battle for civilization, prevent the starvation of their civilians and the wholesale death of their children. To this country the neutrals of Europe had also to look for sufficient food to save their people from suffering. There was much grain in Argentina and Australia, but ships could not be spared for the long and dangerous journeys to and from those countries. Submarine warfare had destroyed so much of the shipping, not only of the Allies but of the European neutrals as well, that every available ship was needed for use on the Northern Atlantic. Therefore, North America was the last reservoir of food, the last producer of food, to which the hungry populations of Western Europe could turn for the sustenance of their armies and civilians or the neutral nations and such of the subjugated peoples under the German yoke as could be reached look with hope for any help. All Europe was on the verge of starvation and only North America, which meant chiefly the United States, could give assistance. For this country to produce and conserve vast quantities of foodand send them to Europe had become one of the fundamental necessities for the winning of the war.
The United States Food Administration was created, under the Food Control Act passed by Congress in August, 1917, for the purpose of handling this situation in such a way as would give the nations with which we were associated the food they needed and would at the same time protect our own people against food scarcity and excessive prices. A Food Administrator, acting under the informal request of the President, had already been at work for three months, securing data and working out tentative plans, and had opened the way and accomplished much by appealing to the people for voluntary coöperation. The work of the Food Administration throughout the war was another example of the splendid team-work of the whole nation and of the highly efficient coöperation of all the agencies of the Government. In coöperation with it the Department of Agriculture bent its energies to the stimulation of food production, the War Trade Board controlled food movements between this and other countries, the War Industries Board saw to it that such manufacturers as produced goods needed in the production, storage, conservation and movement of food supplies received the necessary raw material. Leaders in the grain trade, familiar with all its phases, gave up their connection with enterprises of profit and at great personal sacrifice volunteered their services to act as managers of the corporation through which the Food Administration purchased its immense grain supplies and controlled the grain situation. Dealers in food stuffs of every sort, both wholesale and retail, willingly deprived themselves oflarge possible profits and obeyed the requests of the Food Administration. And the people all over the country voluntarily pledged themselves to the necessary program of food conservation. The task of feeding the nations of Europe and the armies of America, England, France and Italy became the task of the whole nation, and the whole nation, guided by and functioning through the Food Administration, took up the task with eager hands.
We entered the war with our national stocks of cereals at a lower level than they had been for many years, due to the heavy demand made upon them by the Allied nations during the previous year. There had been also, for the same reason, a considerable lessening in the number of food animals.
Beginning in the spring of 1917 and continuing through that and the following year the stimulation of production was carried on by setting before the farmers of the country and, indeed, before all the population, the urgent need for more food than the nation had ever before produced. The appeals to grow food went to the owners of back-yard gardens in cities and towns and villages, to all who had or could obtain the use of a few square feet or a few acres of soil, to farmers all over the land. The Agricultural Department used all its avenues of reaching the farming population, agricultural colleges aided the movement, newspapers and magazines published discussions of the subject and advice for the amateur. It has been estimated that during the first year of the war at least 2,000,000 “war gardens” were planted, over and above the usual garden planting, and that number was considerably increased during the second season. Most of them bore good resultsand their products added immensely to local food supplies and so lessened the drain upon exportable foods. The “war garden army” included men, women and children. Business men spent leisure hours hoeing and planting, thousands of women, in addition to those who worked in home gardens, turned their attention to agricultural labor and did what they could in the lessening of the serious problem of help on the farms. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts did efficient work, school boys who were old enough and strong enough to make their labor right and worth while went by the thousands from cities and towns to country districts to work upon farms.
Guaranteed prices for wheat, established in accordance with the conclusions of the Food Administration and its committee of expert advisers, prevented the sky-rocketing of prices and assured the farmer a staple return for his labor. This, in addition to what the farmers already knew of the need for food, resulted in the planting of immense acreages. In 1917 there were planted 35,000,000 acres of leading crops beyond the average of the five-year period immediately preceding the war, and 22,000,000 acres in excess of the previous year. But 1918 exceeded even this vast acreage with a planting of 289,000,000 acres, an increase over the preceding record of 5,600,000 acres. The bitter winter of 1917-1918 killed much wheat and the next summer drouth withered much corn. Nevertheless, the aggregate yield of the leading cereals in each of these years exceeded that of any preceding year in the nation’s history except that of 1915, when unusually favorable weather produced a more bountiful harvest from a smaller acreage. With the expectation that the war wouldcontinue until at least well into the next summer, the Government appealed in 1918 for a still greater production of wheat for the following year. The farmers responded with a planting of winter wheat amounting to over 49,000,000 acres, which, it was calculated, with average winter weather and an average crop of spring wheat, would insure for 1919 a wheat production of over a billion bushels, an excess over that of 1918 of probably 200,000,000 bushels.
All the principal kinds of live stock—horses and mules, in spite of the big exportation to Europe for army needs; milk cows, other cattle, hogs, and even sheep for the first time in many years—were increased in number by from one to twelve millions. Meat, milk and wool production showed signal increase, that of beef of a million pounds and of pork twice that amount.
The zeal of the whole country for increased food production appeared not only in the multiplied thousands of war gardens, the desire of every one who had access even to a few feet of soil to make something eatable grow upon it, and the immensely increased acreage devoted to the sorely needed cereal crops, but also in a striking growth of interest in agricultural matters of all sorts, whether of farm or garden. To all such subjects newspapers and magazines began devoting much more than usual attention, while for books dealing with them publishers noted a sharply increased demand.
The Food Administration was so organized as to decentralize its operations as much as possible and bring them into direct touch with the people. Under the United States Food Administrator, and also appointed by the President, was a food administratorfor each state who selected one for each county in his state. These county administrators in turn appointed special committees or committee chairmen to keep track of and solve local food problems and to keep each locality in touch with the aims and operations of the national organization. Upon these local committees were representatives of local grain and food trades, of hotels and restaurants, of clubs and associations of various kinds and directors of educational work. Through these assistants educational campaigns were aided and directed, close watch was kept to prevent both hoarding and profiteering and a nation-wide survey of the food situation was in constant progress. It was all voluntary service, from that of the United States Food Administrator down to the county chairmen and the local committees, given with enthusiasm and the best ability each could bring to the service, with the single-hearted hope of helping the nation to win the war.
The primary purpose of the Food Administration was to make sure that there should be sufficient food to meet the needs of our fighting men on land and sea both at home and abroad, to provide such a supply for our people at home as would maintain them in health and comfort, and to furnish to the nations associated with us for their armies and civilians as much of our surplus as they might need. To make that surplus as large as possible called forth its most strenuous endeavor. In addition, it aimed to maintain an even supply of the essential foods and to stabilize prices by preventing, as far as possible, hoarding, speculation and profiteering.
The problem of food for the Entente warring nations was reduced in the spring of 1917 to the determinationof the amount of food that could be drawn from North America, of which, of course, the chief portion would come from the United States. The surplus over our normal consumption, in all classes of food, which we usually exported, had always been small and would have to be multiplied many times over in order to meet pressing needs, in order, even, to win the war. Moreover, we had diverted from eight to ten million men from their usual productive activities and set them to the making of war and supplies for war.
The situation could be met only by a nation-wide program of conservation which would save vast quantities of the sorely needed food out of the usual prodigal consumption and waste of our own people. With complete confidence that the American people would respond of their own good will the conservation measures were all made voluntary. People were asked to eat more carefully, to waste nothing, to use less wheat, meats, fats and sugar, to combine flour from other grains with wheat flour and especially to use more corn. Grocers were directed to see that their customers purchased pound for pound of these other materials and wheat flour. The nation was requested to reduce its sugar consumption by fifteen per cent and housewives and other buyers of food were told that it was necessary to limit their purchases of sugar to three pounds per month for each individual. Homes and hotels and restaurants were counseled to institute wheatless and meatless days. Appeal was made to all who had charge of the providing of food for others and to every individual consumer to waste no food of any sort.
Pledges sent out by the Food Administration whichbound every signer to observe its requests and rules were distributed by many thousands of volunteer workers, men, women and children, who saw in the work of securing signatures opportunity for patriotic service. Pamphlets and leaflets setting forth the reasons for what was asked, giving expert advice on the use of foods, analyzing the food situation, and urging compliance with the requests of the Food Administration were sent all over the country. Posters contributed by well known artists were hung on hoardings, in windows, and on home and office walls in cities, towns, villages. There was hardly a newspaper or a magazine of any sort in the whole United States but freely gave space to the always cogent and interesting articles furnished in great quantity by the Food Administration in support of the purposes it had set itself to achieve. Speakers who could present in living words the urgent need of food and the crucial test laid upon the country of producing and saving immense quantities of meat, fats, wheat and sugar addressed general and special audiences in many cities. Experts in home economics gave lectures and demonstrations and conducted classes that were attended by thousands of women, rich and poor alike. Especial effort was made to furnish this sort of education to the women of poor and ignorant families in order that they might learn how to provide food that would give equal nourishment at less expense.
Colleges and schools aligned their vast educational equipment with the food production and conservation movement and gave important service. When the colleges and universities for women or admitting women were asked, at the end of 1917, if they wouldundertake to give special instruction looking toward the aiding of the Food Administration’s purposes seven hundred of them, practically every such institution in the country, replied within a week asking to be supplied at once with the necessary material. Courses were outlined and supplied, prepared by experts upon the subjects, which dealt with the world food situation and the part the United States should take in it, with food values and the principles of nutrition. During the winter and spring of 1918 40,000 young women took these courses, which were repeated at summer schools in nearly all the colleges of the nation and were offered again in the autumn. They were also opened to men students, who saw in them a means of patriotic service. Under a secretary for each state appointed by the Food Administration, the graduates of these classes were organized and their services directed by the State Food Administrator. They gave to local administrators and committees efficient service of varied sort, depending upon the locality and the need of the moment.
So successful was the initial work of the collegiate section of the Food Administration that its activities were soon enlarged to include the schools also and several text-books were prepared for use in both high and lower grades that would show to the pupils the relation of food to the war and the part they might play in the winning of the conflict and would inculcate the ideal of service. The National Educational Association asked especially for such a text-book to be used by children below the high school grade and by means of an advisory committee coöperated with the Food Administration in its educational program in the schools. So important and enthusiasticwas the work of the schools and colleges that a state director of their activities was appointed in each state to correlate their efforts with the other undertakings of the state food administrator and so make team-work for the production and conservation of food more thorough and efficient.
The central offices of the Food Administration in Washington expanded amazingly as the country leaped to its support and asked for instruction, advice and guidance. It began, a month or more after our entrance into the war, in two rooms, with a Food Administrator, whose office was informal and tentative until Congress in August authorized the program of food control, and two or three assistants. By the first of January it filled a huge structure holding over a thousand employees and in the following summer it crowded both this and another building of equal size. It finally had in its service nearly 8,000 employees and under its coördinating hand were the purchase and control of food-stuffs whose value amounted to $300,000,000 per month. To its staff came men and women of expert knowledge from all over the country, many of them giving voluntary service,—university professors who were specialists in food and other economic subjects, journalists, magazine editors, office experts, scientists whose specialties would throw light upon one or another phase of the food problem.
The Food Administration dealt with prices in the food trades, which were prevented from sky-rocketing above the levels caused by war conditions, and with speculation and profiteering by means of a system of licenses applying to all persons engaged in the importation, manufacture, storage and distribution ofcertain staple foods and including retailers doing more than $100,000 yearly business. The purpose of the system was to stabilize prices by limiting those charged to a reasonable amount over expense, by preventing the storing of food in large quantities in the hope of speculative profits on a rising market, by keeping all food commodities moving from producer to consumer with as little delay from unnecessary business transactions as possible and by limiting as far as practicable dealings in contracts for future delivery. Every licensee was required to make reports of his dealings once a month and none was allowed to keep on hand or under control food-commodity supplies for more than a certain term in advance, set, with some exceptions, at sixty days. Retailers doing less than $100,000 business annually were exempt from the licensing system but were forbidden by the Food Control Act to hoard or waste food or to charge excessive prices. In the neighborhood of 100,000 licenses were taken out and of all these only an insignificant percentage were ever found guilty of breaking the provisions of the law. Equally rare were attempts to break or evade the law by retail dealers. Nearly all of even these small numbers were brought back to right feeling and right action merely by confronting the violater with proof of his wrong doing. As punishment, if punishment was necessary, his license was revoked or suspended, or there was forced sale of his hoardings, or his place of business was closed for a period, or he was required to refund excess profits or to make a contribution to some patriotic organization. But the whole hearted desire to aid and coöperate with the Food Administration in its efforts to solve the food problem andmeet the food necessities of the time was so nearly universal that the few exceptions were noteworthy chiefly because they were so few.
Under war conditions it was inevitable that prices for all food commodities should rise far above their level in pre-war years. But the control of the situation which was kept by the Food Administration and the carefully organized and consolidated buying of our own and other governments, enormous beyond comparison with any market situation in all the history of the world, reduced prices below what they were when we entered the war and kept them down to a level much lower than they would otherwise have reached. When we had been in the war for a year the Food Administration estimated that during that time the price of food commodities had decreased twelve per cent to the consumer and increased eighteen per cent to the producer. For instance, the price of flour, which reached a maximum in 1917 of $16.50 per barrel at the mill-door, at the end of April, 1918, stood at $10.50. Without the stabilizing influence of the Food Administration it would have mounted in that time, in the opinion of experts, to $40 or $50 per barrel.
The plea to conserve food met with enthusiastic response. In the spring of 1918, when there was dire need of more wheat for export, whole towns and counties, in some of the states, pledged themselves to use no wheat until the new crop should be available. A conference of 500 managers of first-class hotels and restaurants voluntarily gave their pledge to one another and to the Food Administration to use no wheat flour in their kitchens until the next harvestwas ready. Households innumerable throughout the land did the same thing.
We entered the war with only 20,000,000 bushels of wheat available for export. The need grew sharp in England and France and Italy and we sent them 141,000,000 bushels, having saved 121,000,000 bushels out of what we would ordinarily have eaten ourselves. Because the armies and the peoples across the ocean needed sugar, the request was sent forth that individual consumption of sugar should be limited to three and later to two pounds of sugar per month. Its consumption was voluntarily reduced by about one-third. In four months in the summer of 1918 we saved and sent abroad, out of our usual consumption, 500,000 tons of sugar. Increased production and conservation were responsible for 1,600,000,000 more pounds of pork products ready for export in the fall of 1918 than were available the previous year, while for the three summer months of 1918 the records showed an increase of 190,000,000 pounds of dressed beef.
An illuminating instance of the temper of the people in general toward conservation is afforded by the reports of railway dining cars for two months in the autumn of 1917, in which they saved out of their ordinary consumption 468,000 pounds of meat, 238,000 pounds of wheat flour and 35,000 pounds of sugar. During that time hotels and restaurants reported savings of 17,700,000 pounds of meat, 8,000,000 pounds of flour and 2,000,000 pounds of sugar. That there was a very general attempt to lessen waste of food in cooking and eating was shown by the fact that nearly all cities reported a considerable decrease, amounting in most of them to from ten tothirteen per cent, in the amount of garbage collected.
Unloading Wheat Upon a Lighter at a French Port
Unloading Wheat Upon a Lighter at a French Port
Unloading Wheat Upon a Lighter at a French Port
Because at the very beginning of our participation in the war we recognized the value of food, mobilized our food forces, enlisting the whole nation in voluntary service, and kept their operation under control for efficient war use, we were able to pour into Europe the food without which the Allied armies could not have continued their necessary effort and the populations behind them retained their health and morale. In the years before the war the United States sent an average of between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 tons of food to Europe each year. In the crop year of 1918 we doubled that amount, sending 11,820,000 tons, and were prepared in the following year to send between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 tons. In the midst of these bountiful harvests there were no food cards and the only rationing that was necessary was that prescribed by the individual conscience. But that conscience, with the universal enthusiasm for increasing production, enabled us to send to Europe in 1918 an increase over 1917 of $504,000,000 in the value of meat and dairy products and of $170,000,000 in breadstuffs. Our total contribution in 1918 to the food needs of Europe amounted approximately to a value of $2,000,000,000.