UNITED STATES AS FOOD PRODUCER
"It is hard to realize that the United States was in 1917 much less favorably situated for producing a huge food surplus than it was thirty years before. In the interim industrialism had made huge strides in the land, and a great urban population has risen to eat up a large part of the surplus of food produced by the farms. This change is indicated by a growth of the urban population in the twenty years from 1890 to 1910 from 22,720,223 to 42,625,383, or more than 80 per cent., while rural population during the same period increased from 40,227,491 to 49,348,883, or less than 25 per cent. If the same ratios have been maintained since 1910 urban population has now become one-half of the whole. In terms of food production decidedly more than one-half of our population now produces a very insignificant part of the food which it consumes, for the rural population includes all who live in towns of less than 2,500. The significance of the change is indicated by the following figures of the production, export, and consumption of typical food products. The comparison is between the average of the five-year period ending in 1895 and that ending in 1914. The average production of wheat per year for the former period was 476,678,000 bushels; for the latter 697,459,000 bushels, an increase of 46 per cent. Between these periods domestic consumption increased from 310,107,000 to 588,592,000 bushels, or about 90 per cent., while exports decreased from 166,571,000 to 104,945,000 bushels, or 37 per cent. The average production of corn for the former period was 1,602,171,000 bushels; for the latter 2,752,372,000 bushels, or an increase of 72 per cent. Consumption increased from 1,552,003,000 to 2,790,962,000 bushels, or 79 per cent., while exports decreased from 50,168,000 to 41,509,000 bushels, or 17 per cent. The figures upon sugar, beef, pork, and other staples lead to similar conclusions. The growth of industrial centers has given us an increasingly urban population which has been consuming a larger and larger part of the food surplus."
THE FOOD CONTROLLER
No policy of laissez-faire for handling the food situation was possible. The need of direction was paramount and required administrative talent of a high order. Fortunately the United States met this demand.
The work of Herbert M. Hoover was one of the main factors in securing the Allied victory. This was recognized by as conservative an organ of public opinion as the London Economist, which speaks of him as an unimpeachable authority and as the organizer of the Allied victory. His experience is a tribute to the wonderful readiness and self-sacrifice shown by the Americans in the matter of food consumption and to the untiring and increasing success of our fleet in combating the submarine.
How much success in the war depended upon food supplies may be gauged from the panicky feeling prevailing in Government quarters in England when it was reported in the winter of 1917—18, that the American wheat surplus had been used up. Lord Rhonda, the British Food Controller, cabled to Mr. Hoover—"We are beaten, the war is over." Then began the era in the United States of wheatless days and war bread. The result of this period of national abstinence enabled the exportation to Europe of about 150,000,000 bushels of wheat. A British member of the Allied Food Commission said it was very remarkable to see a whole nation denying itself of all wheat products, "not because it was short but because it wanted to assist." This rationing was accomplished with very little exercise of authority, and the peril of the defeat of the Allies by famine was averted.
Centres of Live Stock Production Throughout the World
AMERICA'S CONTRIBUTION IN FOOD TO THE ALLIES
Mr. Hoover in a letter to President Wilson stated that the total value of American food shipments to Allied countries for their armies, for the civilian population, Belgium relief and Red Cross, amounted to about $1,400,000,000 for the fiscal year, 1918: