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Show THIS BUSINESS & jg JjA)' IIP J SUSAN THAYER HLH. OUR BIGGEST INDUSTRY it was the women of the coun- try who began what has now be--come our biggest industry. All through the summers of long ago our great-grandmothers preserved and pickled and dried the extra vegetables and fruits that came from their gardens and orchards. In the fall came - the butchering, and the smell of hickory stole from those old smokehouses where the meats were hung to cure. Eggs were put down in brine and such things as potatoes and turnips were buried under heaps of earth in the cellar. However, as the American industrial in-dustrial system grew and men discovered better ways of processing process-ing foods, one after another of the jobs great-grandmother did regularly, regu-larly, went out of the home and into the plans. So today the food industry is the biggest in the country and as important to our war effort as those industries that supply the machines and munitions muni-tions for fighting. Never before in the history of the world has a nation faced a food situation like the one that confronts America today. We must not only keep our home front strong and send the best possible provisions to our armies all over I the world. We must send huge shipments of food to our allies and, I as we win them, to the countries that have been occupied and half-starved half-starved by the Axis. There are about 50,000 factories where foods are salted, smoked pickled, canned, frozen, and dried. And the number is growing with the need for still more food. The dehydration industry alone ' has grown by leaps and bounds since the war began, and millions of tons of these lightweight foods are being shipped abroad. Still more foods are being frozen, many of them for the armed, forces. New methods of packaging foods are being developed every day. But most of the foods we eat this year were grown in 1942, and the foods from this year's planting plant-ing will be consumed a year from now. So it takes long-range planning and planting as well as skillful processing if we are to meet our obligations. The food industry is doing a stupendous job. When the planning and administration ad-ministration of food control are equally efficient we shall be able to feed a large share of the world. |