per cent of those in the country are in this class. A wide campaign was carried on to secure the co-operation of these unlicensed dealers. With the help of travelling salesmen who were made special representatives of the government, more than 250,000 of the 350,000 small retail grocers of the country enrolled as members of the Food Administration. They signed pledges to give their customers the benefit of fair and moderate prices, which they could do because the government controlled the prices until the products reached their stores. Every retailer who joins the Food Administration receives a certificate, which every customer in his store can see. Any retailer who does not live up to the pledge or who charges unfair prices is likely to receive no more supplies from the wholesale dealers, for they are forbidden to sell to violators of the regulations.

By all these means the prices of staple foodstuffs have been held within reasonable bounds, but coincident with this work it was necessary to carry on a campaign of conservation. The Food Administration became a great department of our government, spreading its power into the

remotest sections of our country. In every state there is a federal food administrator, and under him in nearly every county a subordinate food official. These men are charged with the enforcement of the law, and have, besides, to conduct a campaign of education, to encourage production and conservation. The work has been carried on largely by patriotic volunteers. The food-saving movement quickly assumed wide proportions. The co-operation of the people was asked in limiting their consumption and using those foods of which we have abundance in place of those of which there was a scarcity, in order that we might send everything needed to our soldiers overseas, and to those who were fighting with us. The people responded willingly. Within a year after the administration began its work, more than 12,000,000 persons signed cards pledging themselves to adhere to the rules laid down in the conservation programme, as issued from time to time by the government. These pledges called for certain wheatless and meatless days every week, and for an endeavor to prevent waste and to save sugar and fats.

To carry out successfully so great a campaign of education has required an army of workers. Through the churches, women's clubs, fraternal lodges, and commercial travellers' organizations the administration obtained thousands of volunteers. Sixty thousand commercial travellers have enrolled as special representatives, and their reports on conditions as they find them on their trips about the country have proved exceedingly valuable. Through the efforts of these various organizations fully half the people of the United States have been reached personally and appealed to to do their bit in raising food and in saving it. An important element in the saving of food has been the spreading of the knowledge of food values, the teaching of economical methods of cooking, and the use of substitutes having equal nutritious value. Along these lines the Home Economics Division works. This division has its representatives in every State, and it works in close co-operation with the county representatives of the Women's Council of National Defense, through whom it keeps in touch with hundreds of thousands of housekeepers. Under its direction courses in

household economics have been established in 485 colleges and 236 normal schools, from which women trained in food uses and values have gone into field-work to spread their knowledge. Through the work of the Food Administration, with the co-operation of the vast majority of the people, the battle for food is being won.

CHAPTER X

HELPING OUR ALLIES

HEAT is the basic ration of all civilized

WHEAT

nations. It forms 39 per cent of the total diet in the United States, 67 per cent of the diet of France, and of Italy's a still larger percentage. America uses in its ration a great deal of corn, but our allies are not accustomed to this food. They have but few mills where it can be ground and the meal deteriorates so rapidly as to make it not good for export. In 1917, as we have seen, our allies were calling on us and on Canada for more than twice the amount of wheat that was in normal times available for export. They had reduced their pre-war consumption of wheat more than 25 per cent; of sugar, fats, and oils 50 per cent. Our own 1917 wheat-crop was 150,000,000 bushels short of the average of 800,000,000, and by March, 1918, there was left in the country only enough for the normal needs of the people. The entire surplus had been exported.