twelve out of the twenty million households of the country to follow the requests and suggestions of the Food Administration, resulting in wheatless and meatless meals, limited sugar and butter, the "clean plate," and strict attention to reducing all household waste of food—all these are the well-remembered happenings of yesterday. The results gave the answer, Yes, to Hoover's oft-repeated questions to the nation: Can we not do as a democracy what Germany is doing as an autocracy? Can we not do it better?
These results are impossible to measure by mere statistics. Figures cannot express the satisfied consciences, the education in wise and economical food use, and the feeling of a daily participation by all of the people in personally helping to win the war, which was a psychological contribution of great importance to the Government's efforts to put the whole strength of the nation into the struggle. Nor can the results to the Allies be measured in figures. But their significance can be suggested by the contents of a cablegram which Lord Rhondda, the English Food Controller,
sent to Hoover in January, 1918. This cable, in part, was as follows:
"Unless you are able to send the Allies at least 75,000,000 bushels of wheat over and above what you have exported up to January first, and in addition to the total exportable surplus from Canada, I cannot take the responsibility of assuring our people that there will be food enough to win the war. Imperative necessity compels me to cable you in this blunt way. No one knows better than I that the American people, regardless of national and individual sacrifice, have so far refused nothing that is needed for the war, but it now lies with America to decide whether or not the Allies in Europe shall have enough bread to hold out until the United States is able to throw its force into the field...."
I remember very well the thrill and the shock that ran through the Food Administration staff when that cable came. It seemed as if no more could be done than was already being done. The breathless question was: Could Hoover do the impossible? I suppose his question to himself was: Could the American
people do it? He did not hesitate either in his belief or his action. His prompt reply was:
"We will export every grain that the American people save from their normal consumption. We believe our people will not fail to meet the emergency."
He then appealed to the people to intensify their conservation of wheat. The President issued a special proclamation to the same end. The wheat was saved and sent—and the threatened breakdown of the Allied war effort was averted.
Hoover felt justified in July, 1918, in making an attempt to indicate the results of food conservation during the preceding twelve months by analyzing the statistics of food exports he had been able to make to the Allies. It was, of course, primarily for the sake of providing this indispensable food support to the Allies that food conservation was so earnestly pushed. The control of these exports and the elimination of speculative profits and the stabilization of prices in connection with home purchases were the special features in the gen
eral program of food administration that were pushed primarily for the sake of our own people.