have been stretching their meagre wheat-supply to the limit and are enforcing the most stringent regulations.

The flour is required to be of high extraction—ordinarily from 81 per cent to 90 per cent, decidedly higher than our 74 per cent. Even with this coarse, gray flour a large percentage of substitute must be mixed, usually 25 per cent. In England there are local regulations on the use of mashed potato in bread. Their bread must be twelve hours old before it is sold, so that people will not be tempted to eat too much. The result is seldom palatable. In France no flour at all may be used to make the delectable pastries and cakes which have long been the delight of the French people and their guests. In Italy, macaroni, which in many regions is as much the "staff of life" as bread, must contain 43 per cent substitute, and in some places may not be manufactured at all.

Both England and France have subsidized bread; the Government has set a price below cost and itself makes up the difference to the baker. England has appropriated $200,000,000 for the purpose.

Bread rations are in force in both France and Italy. France has recently put her whole people on a rigorous ration which limits them to two-thirds of the amount of bread that they have been accustomed to. Remember that bread is a far more important part of the French diet than of ours. Even children under three have bread cards allowing them 3½ ounces a day. Rations are not a guarantee that the amount mentioned will be forthcoming; they only permit one to have it if it can be obtained. One interesting result of the stringency, according to an American officer writing from Paris, is that guests even at formal dinners, may be asked to bring their own bread, finding this postscript on their invitations: "Apportez un peu de pain si vous le voulez."¹ In Italy the very limited bread rations are fixed locally.

England has compulsory rations for meat and butter or margarine and sugar, but not for bread. Her bread system is voluntary like ours, but much more detailed. The voluntary ration allows one-half pound of bread a day for sedentary and unoccupied women and larger allowances up to a little over a pound for men doing heavy labor. Waste of any kind is very heavily punished—one woman was fined $500 for throwing away stale bread.

"Why not send corn abroad?" One hears the question over and over again. The answers are many. In the first place, we are sending corn over—our exports of corn during March, 1918, increased 180 per cent and of corn meal 383 per cent over the pre-war average. This they are using as we are using it in our Victory bread. But they must have enough wheat to make a durable loaf of bread at the bakeshops, where for generations all the baking has been done. The French housewife has no facilities for bread-making and the French woman does not know how and has not the time to learn. She is doing a man's work and her own woman's labor besides, and the extra unaccustomed labor of bread-making cannot be added to her burdens.

WHY WE IN THE UNITED STATES DO NOT HAVE BREAD CARDS

Some people, disturbed either selfishly or patriotically by the failure of a neighbor to conserve wheat, have asked why the Food Administration trusts to voluntary methods, why it does not ration the country.

Rationing may come yet, but any such system bristles with difficulties. The cost to the Government has been variously estimated all the way from $10,000,000 to $45,000,000 a year. Fifty per cent of the population could not be restrained in their consumption by rationing, for they are either producers or live in intimate contact with the producer. A wheat ration which would be fair for the North might actually increase the consumption in the South. Finally, the burden of a bread card would fall largely not on the well-to-do, who eat less wheat already and can easily cut down further, but on those with little to spend, who might have to change their whole food habits.

The success that is meeting our method of voluntary reduction of consumption "will be one of the remembered glories of the American people in this titanic struggle."

CHAPTER IV

THE MEAT SITUATION

Meat shortage is not a war problem only. We had begun to talk of it long before the war, and we shall find it with us after peace is declared. Great production of beef can take place only in sparse settlements. As the tide of increasing population flows over a country, the great cattle-ranges are crowded out, giving place to cultivated fields. More people means less room for cattle—a relative or even absolute decrease in the herds.

WHERE EUROPE'S MEAT HAS BEEN PRODUCED

In spite of their crowded territory, the majority of European countries have raised most of their meat themselves, though usually they have had to import fodder to keep up their herds. They have been less dependent on import for meat than for wheat. Great Britain is the only country which has imported much meat—almost one-half her supply. Her imports, and to a lesser extent those of other European countries, have come chiefly from Denmark and Russia in Europe, and from six countries outside—the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand.

THE WAR AND THE EUROPEAN MEAT-SUPPLY

Imports of both animals and fodder are interrupted. With meat as with wheat, the great shortage is due to lack of ships. Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent South America, are cut off. Fodder such as cottonseed press-cake cannot be shipped in large amounts as it takes three times as much shipping to transport feed as it does the meat made by the animals from it. Denmark's supply of animals to Great Britain has practically stopped, because of her own shortage, and because much of what she has goes to Germany.

The European herds have been cut down. Every one of the warring countries has fewer meat animals now than before the war. There were roughly 100,000,000 animals less in Europe at the end of 1917 than in 1914. Many of those left are in very poor condition, so that the shortage is even more serious than is indicated by the falling off in numbers.

Belgium, Serbia, and Roumania are in the worst condition. Practically all the animals in those countries have been killed or confiscated by the invading German and Austrian armies. This is one cause of their terrible famine conditions.

The United Kingdom, France, and Italy have also lost seriously. France is the greatest loser of the three, with more than one-fifth of her herds gone. The enemy has driven off large numbers of her cattle. She, like the others, is in difficulty not only for meat, but for milk. Her situation is complicated by the fact that she has no great cold-storage plants like ours, and so must get meat-supplies at frequent intervals.

Before the war Germany was much better prepared than the Allies in that she had many more animals in proportion to her population than they. But she was more dependent upon imports of feed, and as her commerce has been cut off, she has had to kill her animals faster. Counting up all her animals in terms of cattle according to the amount of meat they would yield, shows a loss of over one-third. For Austria, there are no available figures, but her decrease has probably been larger than Germany's.

Meat shortage is not a problem by itself, but is closely connected with the shortage of available grain. When cereals are short,