But if the Food Administration was limited in what it could effect by legal authority, there was no limit to what it could do by calling on the voluntary action of the people of the country, except by the possible refusal of the people to help. So there was set in movement a nation-wide propaganda for food-production and food-saving which resulted in the voluntary acceptance of wheatless and meatless days, voluntarily modified hotel and restaurant and dining-car meals, and the adoption of household pledges, taken by more than 12,000,000 American homes, to follow the Food Administration's suggestions for food-saving. All this, and the many other things which the Food Administration asked the people to do, and which the people did, resulted in accomplishing a very necessary thing. It enabled America not only to meet all those ever-increasing absolutely imperative calls of the Allies for food for their armies and people through 1917 and 1918, but to supply its own army and people sufficiently well to carry on the war effectively. The more food sunk by submarines, or prevented from coming to Europe from distant food sources, as Australia and Argentine and India, the more we provided by saving and increasing our production.
A few figures will illustrate the actual results of the call for food conservation. We entered the crop year of 1917 (July 1, 1917, to July 1, 1918), with a wheat supply which gave us only about 20,000,000 bushels available for export. By December 1, 1917, our surplus had gone overseas and an additional 36,000,000 bushels had been shipped to the Allies. In January we learned of the further imperative need of the Allies of 75,000,000 bushels. We responded by sending 85,000,000 bushels between the first of the year and the advent of the new crop. When the crop year ended we had sent in all about 136,000,000 bushels of wheat to Europe. We were assisted in these operations by the importation of 28,000,000 bushels of wheat from Australia and the Argentine to supplement our domestic supply, but the outstanding fact was the saving in our domestic consumption, most of which was accomplished in the six-months' period from January 1 to July 1, 1918.
AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
But the cessation of the war did not produce food for the war-ravaged countries of Europe. The newly liberated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe found themselves, at the time of the Armistice, facing a period of starvation until their 1918 harvest could come in. Something to save these peoples had to be done quickly and on a large scale. The situation was met by the establishment of a new American governmental organization called the American Relief Administration which, with Mr. Hoover as director-general, worked in connection with the Inter-Allied Supreme Economic Council. Representatives of the A. R. A. were sent at once into all the countries crying for help to find out the exact food situation, and to arrange with the respective governments for the immediate beginning of the importation and distribution of staple foodstuffs. Programs for a food supply sufficient to last until the 1919 harvest were determined on a basis of minimum necessity, and provision for sufficient shipping and rail transportation was arranged by international agreement.
Modern war has thrown the spotlight on food. It has partly realized that famous prophecy of the Polish economist, Jean Bloch, who wrote, twenty years ago: "That is the future of war, not fighting, but famine." In the World War of 1914—18 there was fighting on a scale never before reached, but there was also famine, as never before dreamed of.
IX THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
A Study of the Extraordinary Conditions Subsequent to the Armistice
By THE DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE
On August 9, 1919, Grosvenor B. Clarkson, Director of the Council of National defense, submitted to the Secretary of War, a report entitled "An Analysis of the High Cost of Living Problem." This report was the result of much careful study and investigation. It is non-academic in form and by omitting details presents a "panoramic view of the problem." It laid chief stress upon conditions since the armistice.
In the report the problem of the high cost of living is viewed as a permanent one. It was, in other words, not peculiar to past war conditions. Careful investigation by the Council has resulted in the following analysis of the problem.