4
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SEMI-WEEKLY JOVBSAL, Atlanta. Ga.
Georgia's Food Markets:
Georgia’s progress as a food-producing State is
strikingly shown in the recent development of
grain elevators and warehouses for farm staples
other ■ than cotton. At Thomasville, Moultrie,
Cairo. Fitzgerald and Quitman elevators capable
of handling thousands of bushels of corn have
been built or are nearing completion; and con
nected with most of them are plants for crushing
velvet beans. At Moultrie, Pelham. Boston, Bar
wick. Pavo. Jackson City, Sale City and Doerun
there has been established in the past month or so
a chain of sweet potato warehouses, each equipped
for storing from six to twelve thousand bushels
of potatoes and all under the direction of a single
company. At Valdosta, a thoroughly modern stock
yard with a capacity for several thousand head of
cattle has been opened, while plans are being per
fected for a new milling and canning concern of
extraordinary proportions. It is to be noted, more
over, that the meat packing houses, which have
sprung up with astonishing rapidity in the last few
years, are all thriving and in some instances are
doubling their capacity.
These items, gathered from a recent investiga
tion by the agricultural bureau of the Southern
Bell Telephone Company, are noteworthy because
they show that one of the most Important of the
economic problems with which Georgia is con
cerned, the problem of convenient and adequate
markets for food crops, is being happily solved.
While these storage and marketing facilities rep
resent the effect of a great increase In both the
volume and the variety of food crops, they will
prove to be also the cause of Incomparably greater
production. War conditions, together with the
boll weevil menace, compelled thousands of farm
ers who formerly staked their all on cotton to
raise foodstuffs; and therein lies one of the chief
reasons for Georgia’s present prosperity. But sup
pose this extraordinary output of grain, beans, po
tatoes and kindred staples had found no profitable
channels of sale? Suppose that instead of netting
the grower a goodly cash return for his faith in
diversification, they had remained on his hands or
had sold at beggarly prices? The result would
have been a five-year backset to the cause of food
production, instead of the five-year forward push
which actually has come.
The establishment of storage warehouses for
sweet potatoes will save millions of bushels which
otherwise would spoil, and will enable the farmer
to sell his crop gradually as prices warrant in
stead of dumping It on a glutted market. In the
system -of South Georgia warehouses to which we
have alluded space is sold just as in cotton ware
houses and valuable assistance is rendered in
grading and crating. It scarcely need be said that
in every district where such a warehouse is estab
lished potatoes will be a permanent and impor
tant crop. In like manner the grain elevators,
the flour and grist mills, the velvet-bean crushers,
the peanut-01l mills and the canning plants which
are multiplying so steadily will sustain and pro
mote food production by assuring the grower a con
venient and dependable ket.
The consequent good to Georgia’s material in
terests. those of commerce and industry as well as
of agriculture, will be Incalculable. Vast sums of
money that have been drifting to distant regions
for the purchase of food supplies will be kept at
home for the development of new industries and
fresh resources. Prosperity will no longer eibb and
flow with the uncertain fortunes of a single crop,
but will move with steady vigor, for there will be
hardly a month without its profitable crop income.
Business no longer will lean on cotton, but will
dAw strength from a wide range of harvests.
Georgia no longer will lean on the West, but will
be a royal contributor to the nation’s needs.
The New America,
“The trouble with the American manufacturer,”
said a shrewd and symapthetic student of our ex
port trade, "is that while he ships his goods to
foreign markets, he keeps his mind at home.’’
That has been a long-standing limitation to the
American point of view, not only in matters of
trade but in the entire range of international
interests.
As a people we nave oeen so absorbed in our
own affairs and so blest in our spacious freedom
that the lands and lives across the sea have con
cerned us but idly except in their sharply dramatic
moments. Even toward South American countries,
our neighbors in democracy, we were until rather
recent years almost as indifferent as toward Eu
rope and the Orient. There was no considerable
effort on the part of our merchants and manufac
turers to learn the peculiar needs and tastes nor
even the language of the South Americans whom
they wished to win and hold as customers; where
fore it is not to be wondered that we were out
distanced in those markets by the more far-seeing
and more adaptable exporters of Europe. Time
was. Indeed, when our Latin-American neighbors
regarded the United States quite coldly, if not with
downright distrust, simply because we had not
taken the pains in either diplomacy or in business
to convince them of our wish and our ability to
serve them. And fdr much the same reason other
nations thought of us as provincial and money
grubbing. Established in ocean-bulwarked su-
THE ATLANTA SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, ATLANTA, GA.. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6.-1917
premacy on a continent whose vast resources sup
■Ued our every material need, we lived our na
uonal life wholly aloof, without anxiety and with
scant concern! for the rest of the world.
How the war has challenged and changed that
indifference! No longer can it be said that Ameri
cans ship their goods to foreign markets bat keep
their minds at home. Not only their minds but
their hearts also, not only their fortunes but their
souls’ dearest interests are bound up, in the grim
world-cpnflict that centers three thousand miles
across the sea. All the efforts of a peace-loving
and marvelously patient Government to keep
America out of that conflict were unavailing. All
preconceived ideas of our secure isolation and of
our duty to hold forever aloof from European al
liances crumbled and fell before the brutal fact of
Prussianism. Our remoteness, our neutrality, our
long-suffering, our abundantly manifest desire to
keep peace meant no more than did the interven
ing zicean to the German militarists bent upon
dominating the world. At last Americans realized,
not simply as individuals but as a peo
ple, that their nation was a vital, inseparable rlart
of that w’orld and, therefore, could not live unto
itself alone; that the affairs of Europe far from
being of no especial concern to us, involved our
safety, our liberty, our all; and that far from be
ing permitted to continue standing aloof, we must
rally to the defense of the world's common civiliza
tion or stand in deadly peril of losing our national
existence.
By virtue of its unsought but inevitable part
in this w r ar, the United States has become truly a
World Power. And a World Power it will remain.
Henceforth it will play its great part in inter
national affairs, not as a seeker of selfish dominion
but as a watchful guardian of law and right and
peace. It will be not a whit less coutious than be
fore of what President Washington meant by “en
tangling alliances,’’ but it will not hesitate to take
its place and do its duty in what President Wilson
means by "dlsentagllng alliances.’’ Americans are
drawing too close to the world’s larger life and are
entering too deeply into its great emotions ever to
be narrowly provincial again. Rather, they will be
true citizens of an international community of
freemen, and for that very reason better citizens
of their own beloved republic.
Increased Productiveness ‘
Through Farm Machinery,
By the use of motor tractors, of which it has
ordered approximately nine thousand, the British
Food Production Department topes to add two
million acres to England’s arable land in time for
next year’s crops. Commenting on this great proj
ect, the Albany Herald observes that farm trac
tors are becoming much more numerous in South
west Georgia, “partly on account of the scarcity
of labor and in a measure as a result of the high
prices of horses and mules.’’ There are Dougher
ty county farmers, the Herald adds, who are de
pending entirely on tractors for breaking their
land and who will use mechanical power for vir
tually all their planting and harvesting operations.
In time, machinery will effect almost as com
plete a revolution in agriculture, as it has in in
dustrial affairs. Already, indeed, farm life has
been wonderfully changed by mechanical inven
tions, their constant tendency being toward econ
omy of labor and increased production. Until
rather recent years, however, the South has been
slow to avail itself of motor tractors and similar
machines, largely for the reason that labor was
plentiful and cheap. But as that condition con
tinues to alter, our planters will turn more and
more to machinery, and the result will be a pro
gressive gain in efficiency and productiveness.
Given enough proper machinery, a farmer can
cultivate a large acreage on an Intensive plan. It
is easy to see how much this will mean to States
like Georgia where intensive methods are impera
tive and the farm labor problem increasingly
serious.
The war is teaching many a lesson of economy,
and of heightened productive power, particularly
in those basic industries which have to do with
the output of foodstuffs. We may expect, there
fore, a distinctly more efficient agriculture in the
South as well as in America at large, and a prime
factor in the improvement will be a wider use of
farm machinery.
A Desperate Bankrupt,
If anyone thinks of Hohenzollern Germany as
being in a penitent or even conciliatory mood, ready
to restore the lands it has pillaged and renounce
the huge indemnities it set out to win, let him
mark this semi-official utterance of the Berlin
Deutsche Tagezeitung:
A peace without indemnities would spell
ruin for Germany. Before the war the wealth
of the German people amounted to between
three hundred thirty and three hundred ninety
billions of marks ($82,500,000,000 and $97,-
500,000,000), of which nearly half has ac
• tually been spent on the war. Without an in
demnity there is no hope of carrying on during
the first ten years after the making of peace.
Germany would have to bear extra taxation
amounting to twelve billions of marks
($3,000,000,000), as compared with prewar
taxation of three and one-half billions of
marks ($825,000,000). How can a country
in a state of ruin in which it w-ould find itself,
and in view of the enormously increased cost
of living, shoulder an added burden of that
magnitude when the sum of six billions
($1,500,000,000) would be a maximum load,
• and even that could only be endured with
the greatest effort? •
This admission of bankruptcy by the criminal
adventurers whose mingled greed and ambition
led them to precipitate the war must bestir strange
thoughts in the minds of Germans who do any
political thinking of their own. The militarists
promised the people a short, victorious war that
w’ould gain vast amounts of booty and be paid
for entirely by taxes wrung from the vanquished
foe. But the people find instead as the war’s
fourth winter draws on, that the Allies are more
than ever invincible, while German resources are
ebbing swiftly to shallows and to miseries. What
will the people say to their Kaiser and his war
lords when the last of the illusions are swept
away and the grim reckoning comes? It is largely
the fearful thought of that time that constrains
the German militarists to fight desperately on,
even though they realize the inevitableness of
their defeat. They’ feel that they must play out
the tragic game they began. They must be con
quered before peace worthy the name will be
possible.
Food Conservation Campaign.
It is peculiarly gratifying to note that the food
pledge campaign throughout the United States so
\
far is attended with brilliant success, more than
four million pledge cards having been signed up to
Friday by patriotic housewives in various states.
It also should be highly pleasing to Georgians to
know that our state leads any other state in the
South by more than two to one. By tonight the
number of signed cards should be well above the
six million mark.
The point has been made in several states that
if wheat substitutes are necessary why is it our al
lies are not made to use these substitutes Instead
of ourselves. In answering this objection the food
administration calls attention to the fact that the
European nations already are using from twenty to
fifty per cent of corn, potato and other equivalents
in the making of their daily bread. The British
government allows the aduleratlon of w r heat bread
to the extent of fifty per cent, but beyond this figure
it is found that it does not make a healthful loaf.
While this and other objections may be well
within the rights of every citizen it should be ap
parent to all that our government has not shown
the slightest disposition to act arbitrarily in any
conservation plan, whether food or fuel, and that
the paramount alm of our government Is to fill
every home need before even venturing to assist
our Allies. Georgians and citizens everywhere may
be assured that this policy will be followed through
out the w-ar.
Washington government heads know the situa
tion at home and abroad much better than we pos
sibly can know it, and whatever has been asked of
American citizens is premised upon what is best for
Uncle Sam’s big family now and hereafter.
WHY TO SAVE FOOD, AND HOW.
2. —onservation —National Task and
Personal Duty.
By Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur.
Sometimes it actually seems as if there were
people—and lots of them, at that —who regard
conservation not so much as a principle as a sort
of miraculous formula which will work a magic
spell whereby food enough for all may be created
out of thin air.
They are perfectly well aware that no whisker
ed alchemist ever did change lead to gold, that no
patient inventor ever has discovered perpetual mo
tion, and that no explorer has yet penetrated the
jungle wherein bubbles the Fountain of Eternal
Youth.
But have they learned from this —these people
whose motto in life is “Let George do it”? Appar
ently not, for they still assume that the creation of
a food administration In Washington will solve all
food problems automatically. They expect to have
a nice front orchestra seat where they can sit back
and watch a magician named “Conservation’’ step
out upon the stage, wave his wand, mutter an
“Abracadabra!” or two, and then extract from the
previously empty gilt urn all sorts of good things
to eat.
Unfortunately that isn’t the way life works —
nor food conservation either. The only magic
there is in it is just precisely what you yourself put
there. The only thing In the urn will be what you
put in, and leave In.
In a democracy like ours there is just one way
to save a vast store of food, and that is by the un
remitting and concerted voluntary effort of all.
This applies to groups as well as individuals.
There must be co-operation, and it must come
from those bodies in the democracy which are al
ready onganized. Fraternal organizations must
do their share. Patriotic societies must not lag be
hind. Associations of labor must show themselves
not wanting In that hour when the very co-opera
tion which Is their watchword and aim can be em
ployed for the good of the commonwealth.
Most of all, the churches must prove worthy
of their high calling. ’ The keystone of such an
arch of organized conservation as is necessary is
formed by sustained effort and self-denial for the
good of others. To the churches this aspiration
toward service for others is nothing now. Theirs
is now the great opportunity of proving that they
are capable of practising what they preach.
But —you are probably saying to yourself—
why neglect that organization which is at once
most directly connected with food and which leads
most directly to personal effort? That organiza
tion is. of course, the family. And this means the
women of the land.
For in the main it is they, the home-makers
and housewives, upon whom the saving of food de
pends. It Is upon their foresight, their suscepti
bility to advice, and their individual ingenuity and
devotion that national economy rests. Food ad
ministration is a convenient term to designate
those who counsel or guide, but such effort can be
no more than a rope of sand unless it is supple
mented by the food administration of the home.
That is where the largest personal chance
comes in.
For a family is like a company of soldiers;
w r hat it accomplishes as a whole depends in the
final analysis upon what each member accom
plishes. It is all summed up in that phrase, to
any thinking one of the finest that the war has
coined, of “doing your bit,” or, better still, of "do
ing your utmost.”
And if you do your bit—YOUR utmost —and
the next man does his, and the next woman hers,
and the boy and girl theirs, w’hat will be the prac
tical result?
It needs no gift of imagination to see The
human mind demands no charts and tables to grasp
the idea of food. Carloads of wheat, thousands of
ton# of fats, millions of other tons of foodstuffs in
general, will be released for tfie use of those who
might otherwise go hungry. The ounces and
pounds of nutriment that are saved will become
the tons which will balk the threat of starvation.
That is why the food administration is asking
that such conservation be a self-imposed task, to
be so accepted.
Such a task, to be truly national, must also be
truly, personal. And to be successfully personal it
must have the inspiration and impetus of being na
tional. The two interlock and fuse. Neither can
succeed without the other.
For, when all is said, the only sort of achieve
ment which can be genuinely national is the sort to
wliich every one can contribute. And that oppor
tunity—at once a duty and a privilege—is before
the American people today in its task of food con
servation.
“How can I make the most of this oppor
tunity?” you are asking.
And the answer—the thousand and one ways
and means, the manner in which others are solving
the problem—this answer is precisely what I am
going to tell you.
QUIPS AND QUIDDITIES
Two Irishmen got work in a quarry. The
first job given them was to pick up all the loose
tools. Presently they came across a keg of blast
ing powder. “Whisky,” said both. They both
tried to get the bung out, but could not.
“Mick!” says Pat.
“Phwat?” said Mike.
“You keep a lookout for the foreman while I
go into the hut and heat the poker.”
“Right,” says Mike.
Pat sat on the keg with a hot poker and bored
a hole. In goes the poker and up goes Pat and
keg with a loud bang. Out runs the foreman,
who sees Mike alone.
“Where’s Pat?” says he.
“Sure,” says Mike, “he went out with the
whisky. I expect he’s gone for the glasses.”
KEEPING FIT FOR WAR—By Frederic J. Haskin.
N. B. —The valuable table of “Food Ele
ments” for use in planning a balanced diet, re
ferred to in the article below, is contained in a
food administration publication called "The
War Cook Book.” A copy of this book can be
secured free from The Journal. To get your
free copy, send your name and address with a
two-cent stamp for return postage to The At
lanta Journal Information Bureau, Frederic J
Haskin, Director, Washington, D. C. Ask for
the “War Cook Book.”
WASHINGTON,, Oct. 30. —An athlete entering
an important contest is careful to work
himself into the pink of condition. The
nations of the world today are engaged in a gigan
tic field meet, with the issue in doubt and the
prizes the highest for w'hich man ever strove. What
can be said of an athlete who enters such a contest
without screwing his physical mechanism to the
last notch of efficiency? Yet that, according to
many authorities here, is exactly what the United
States is in danger of doing. The .nation is not
giving sufficient thought to the Importance of in
dividual health in wartime. The national health is
nothing but the sum of the healths of 100,000,000
individuals.
One of the slogan’s of Mr. Hoover’s office, the
federal food administrator, is “Go back to the sim
ple life.” The food administration enlarges on
this text somewhat in this fashion: “Be contented
with simple food, simple pleasure, simple clothes’
Work hard, pray hard, play hard. Work* eat,
recreate and sleep. Do it all courageously. We
have a victory to win.”
In certain features, this sounds more like the
gospel of the strenuous than the simple life, but
it is a practical war creed none the less. Some of
the admonitions are primarily designed to piece
out the food supply, but if the whole were fol
lowed religiously from the most selfish motives, it
would result in a considerable improvement’ in
the national health and a corresponding increase
in the national efficiency.
The fact of the matter is, we have hardly gotten
down to a war basis in our daily lives yet. We
are part of the war, but not in the war. Our
training camps, our military pieparations are still
of our lives a thing apart, instead of being, as with
the nations of Europe, our w-hole existence. As
the war goes on, this will change. A more Spartan
ideal will permeate the land, and it will improve
the national health. War will meet us half way.
But we will have to go the other half, and in order
to wage war with a maximum efficiency we will
have to put our lives on a more hygienic basis.
Take the matter of food for an example. A good
deal of surprise was occasioned by the manner in
which the people of Europe throve on short ra
tions. Germany today is in sorry straits, accord
ing to both official and unofficial advices, but she
is facing, not a rationing system, but certain forms
of actual starvation. For the first year of the
war, the overfed German burgher was actually
benefited by being fed under government super
vision. Government rationing In France and Eng
land has had many beneficial effects on the pub
lic health. *
There is no indication today that the American
people will ever be put on rations. We have plenty
of food and our food conservation campaign is
largely an effort to induce the public to substitute
certain kinds of food for certain other kinds which
are needed .for export—corn for wheat, honey and
syrup for sugar, chicken and fish for beef. Though
we may never be put on rations, there is no rea
son why we should not study the rationing ques
tion with a view to finding out where its good ef
fects originate.
The benefits of the system seem to spring
largely from the fact that any government super
vision of food puts the matter in the hands of
experts, who understand the proper combinations
of food elements and the needs of the body. The
human body may be likened in somd ways to the
vessel of the chemist’ in the laboratory. The chem
ist puts certain chemicals into his vessel to pro
duce a certain reaction. Man puts certain foods
into his body with a view to producing the com
plex series of reactions that constitute healthy ac
tivity. The chemist does not expect to get the
reaction in his test tube unless he puts in the right
combination of chemicals, but the average man
LIFE AND MOTION
By H. Addington Bruce
LIFE loves motion. Every living thing craves
motion of some sort. To be absolutely at
' rest, totally inert, is repugnant to the living.
Indeed, motion is a basic characteristic of life.
Total inertness can come only with death. Even
in sleep motion continues, as the internal organs
continue to do their work.
Motion being thus indissolubly united with life,
to experience sensations of movement gives a real
satisfaction to the mind. This is a fact worth
knowing, for it helps to explain many things
otherwise puzzling.
It helps, for example, to answer this question,
recently put to me:
• "Why is it that women, having taken up the
business of knitting for the soldiers, are able to
knit hour after hour without feeling any ill ef
fects?”
In part, this is to be accounted for by the patri
otic enthusiasm with which the knitting is done.
Interest in any occupation heightens the resistance
to fatigue, and often heightens it to an astonishing
extent’.
But partly also the explanation should be
sought in the universal craving of human beings
for sensations of movement.
The sight of the flying needles and the “feel”
of their movement in the hands satisfy this craving.
Hence the interesting circumstance that many
women, previously discontented and "nervous,”
have actually improved in health through taking
up knitting.
Hence likewise the fact that automobillng has
in not a few cases proved helpful to nervous pa
tient's. The steady motion of the car satisfies their
instinctive craving for sensations of movement.
To the satisfaction of this craving, again, may
correctly be attributed part of the enjoyment many
men find in smoking.
They smoke not simply for the sedative effect
of tobacco, but also that they may let their eyes
subconsciously feast on the moving tobacco smoke.
Which accounts for the fact that blind men sel
dom are smokers.
Tobacco chewing and gum chewing are other
modes of satisfying the movement craving.
Many have marvelled at the prevalence of the
tobacco chewing and gum chewing habits. They
cannot understand how- anybody can acquire these.
Nor can they understand the difficulty of breaking
these habits when acquired.
In the subtle relationship between movement
and life lurks part of the explanation.
So, too, we find in this relationship, in the in
stinctive craving for sensations of movement, the
explanation of the delight little children take in
being rocked in their cradles and later in swing
ing through the air.
And partly the same psychological fact accounts
for the passionate devotion of older boys, and of
many older girls, to the outdoor games of the play
ground. Through these games they gain movement
sensations to an extent otherwise unattainable.
To the end of life, if in varying measure, the
craving for movement persists.
Often obscurely, but none the less surely, it is
a determinant of human behavior. No one can
afford to overlook it who would gain real insight
into human behavior.
(Copyright, 1917, by The Associated Newspapers )
v
Hoover’s doctrine of diet may also injure the
stomach specialists.
seems to have, a sublime faith that he will get the |
health reaction if he shovels down almost any
combination of foods in almost any way.
The other day a scientist who specializes in
the principles of right eating came into a Wash
ington restaurant. Washington today is crowded
with war workers; the restaurants are full of young
men from the various departments, until there is
practically a bread line around the hat check
stands. The food specialist watched a few of
these young men order and eat their evening meal,
and shook his head. "They have been taught to
read Latin and French, to analyze the gases of
the atmosphere and the minerals of the earth, to
plan bridges and engines, to solve the problems
of accountancy, to test the strength of materials,
but apparently not one in ten has ever been taught
to order a meal,” said he. “There is a man I
happen to know, from an engineering bureau of
an important office. He is something of a genius
as a mathematician, and his bureau chief probably
thinks he is lucky to have him. Yet this young
genius has just paid for a dinner consisting of
heavy soup, fish, roast beef* with side orders of
potatoes and beans and a dessert of Camembert
cheese and hard crackers witn coffee. Tomorrow
he will function at about 50 per cent efficiency,
and he will probably tell himself that’ he has been
working too hard for his government.”
K A good many factors of the diet, such as the
amount of food eaten and the number of meals a
day, are matters that each individual must deter
mine for himself by experience, but the proper
food combinations are rfiaVters of chemistry, w’here
the scientist can help. Every traditional food com
bination, such as meat and potatoes, bread and
butter, bacon and eggs, has a sound chemical basis,
and science can suggest many others, as well as
prevent wrong combinations. It is in this way
that government’ food supervision abroad has often
benefited the health of the people. In this country,
while there is no food supervision, the food ad
ministration has dohe its share by working out.
in tollaborution with the department’ of agricul
ture, a simple but comprehensive table of
"Food Elements,” which can be used as a basis
for planning proper combinations of all sorts of
food.
Another element in the national health, which
is probably more peculiarly an American problem
than any other, is the factor of worry. There is
no other mental or physical habit which can arise
on a fairly healthy and normal soil, which cuts
into efficiency to the same extent that worry does.
Worry is distinctly a war problem.
War does away, so the experience of Europe
shows, with a goodly part of the groundless and
slenderly rooted worries that characterize super
civilization. Hypochrondia« melancholia, all tbo
morbid results of too much introspection, are dis
sipated by the touch of the grim realities of war.
The old saying of the medleaval physician that
melancholy humors are "mightily helped by a dead
man’s touch,” was based on the same law. But
if war does away with a certain class of worries,
it brings a train of new ones. \
For example, there is the worry of those who
have loved ones in the army, the worry of those
who hold responsible position or of the one who
looks forward to service in a time of grimmer
need, and has the fate of his dependents to con
sider. To all these ■worries, Americans are more
prone than any other nation. The machine-like
discipline of the Germans, the burning patriotism
of the French that was kindled by an actual vio
lation of their soil, the characteristic phlegm of
the English, were all factors militating against
undue worry. America has always been the home
of worry, anyway.
Worry saps national efficiency. It is a dutv
to put it aside. Most of it is groundless. The
United States public health service compares the
man who worries to the chauffeur who lets his en
gine run on neutral all the time the car is stand
ing still. Says the public health service, “Not all
worry is preventable, but for the most' part it can
be avoided. Most of our fears are never realized.
Worry undermines the health to a certain
extent. It really weakens the mental forces by
tiring them out while doing nothing. Usually the
relief from worry rests with the victim of the
unfortunate habit himself.”
Since almost every American is more or less
a "victim of the unfortunate habit,” the last phrase
ia worth pondering.
PREPAREDNESS
By Dr. Frank Crane
THIS is a free country. And of course that lays
the road wide open to the cantankerous
gentry whose creed is that whatever their
country does is wrong.
When the Class A Soreheads stop for breath,
which class includes those who think we should
not have gone to war at all, the Class B Soreheads
begin to croak, this class holding that we didn’t go
to war soon enough, we didn’t prepare in time, and
are now bungling the job.
Hence it might be well to see what the old
U. S. A. has done in the last half year or so.
There has been organized a social and economic
revolution greater than ever was in any country
in the world, while this greatest democracy has
transformed Itself into a war machine.
Congress has voted $21,000,000,000 to the
business in hand, an amount about equal to Great
Britain’s three-years’ expenditure, and equal to
one quarter of the allies’ total outlay.
When the war broke out our army contained
approximately 275,000 officers and men; now we
have around 1,700,000 rehdy to fight in a few
months.
Then there were 6,600 men in the medical de
partment; now 70,000.
We used to spend $100,000,000 a year for
ordnance; this year congress spent $3,000,000,000,
and authorized another $2,000,000,000.
Our program provides for 20,000 airplanes,
with 100,000 enlisted men and 10,000 fliers in this
service.
Though details may not be given, thousands of
American soldiers have quietly gotton to France to
join the forces under General Pershing. They are
not only learning the peculiar fighting tactics of
this war, but are building railroads, felling trees,
sawing lumber, flying airplanes, and working in
hospitals abroad.
One month after we declared war the first
division of American destroyers reached European
waters. Since then our navy has made good; it
has put the punch in submarine warfare, it has
taken over the patrol of this side of the Atlantic,
releasing British ships, and has so safely convoyed
our troops to France that, at the hour of this writ
ing, no transport has been lost.
We are building ships faster than the most
optimistic ever dreamed possible.
We have loaned the allies $2,516,400,000.
The ablest business men of the country have
left their private affairs and co-operated with the
president and his cabinet In organizing the whole
gigantic productive, manufacturing and transporta
tion industries of the nation.
Under Mr. Hoover, the farmers, the millers, the
packers, the fish industry, the cold storage plants,
the dairies, and all the foodstuff industries are fall
ing in line.
The fuel producers are being co-ordinated un
der Dr. Garfield.
The railroads have placed themselves under the
leadership of Daniel Willard, at the service of the
government as a unit of efficiency.
Steps have been taken to tighten the food block
ade around Germany.
With the $100,000,000 nest egg the Red Cross
is doing magnificent w'ork among the wounded and
helping to rebuild the devastated towns‘of France
and Flanders.
Quietly, efficiently, and with grim purpose this
greatest democratic nation on earth is doing its
share.
One hundred million intelligent freemen are
seeing to it that their president’s words shall be no
idle bluff.
Copyright, 1917, by Frank Crane.