OCR Text |
Show Pi Released by Western Newspaper Union. FOOD CONSERVATION . . . AND CONVERSATION THE MOST POPULAR SUBJECT of conversation is food. Everybody talks about it either from the viewpoint view-point of the producer, the processor and dealer or the consumer. There is no more agreement among the general public than is found between the nine separate and distinct bureaus, bu-reaus, departments or administrations administra-tions that are attempting to direct the production and distribution of food. It Is my belief that the one man who knows more- of the need, production pro-duction and distribution of food than any other is Herbert Hoover. From him I learn that the scarcity program pro-gram took 47 million acres of American Amer-ican farm land out of production in an effort to raise farm prices. Of that acreage only nine million has again been put under cultivation, leaving 38 million still idle. That is more than an acre of tillable ground for every family in the nation. na-tion. More ground per family than is used to support many a European Euro-pean family. When the war in Europe Eu-rope is over we must feed the starving starv-ing people of the nations Hitler has despoiled. That 38 million acres would feed all the people of Norway, of Holland, or of Belgium, and we will be called upon to feed those people if there is to be a real peace. There are too many cooks at the food pot. The edicts and decrees from nine Independent bureaus, each of them staffed by a group of theoretical theo-retical economists, all of them issuing issu-ing instructions and regulations, many of them not easily Interpret- . able and many of them contradictory contradic-tory has made for confusion. Congress Con-gress has not been able to find out , what it is all about. Three different congressional committees are investigating inves-tigating the food problem as presented present-ed by these nine bureaus. These nine bureaus or departments depart-ments are employing 120,000 people, while in World War I the employees of the food administration and the department of agriculture combined numbered only 23,000. The effort to keep that 120,000 employees busy is keeping the American people in a state of confusion on the food question, ques-tion, but it is not providing an answer to the problem. We are actually actu-ally exporting less food than we did during World War I. LOYAL FARM BOYS MAKE SACRIFICE TOO AN ACQUAINTANCE of many years has a farm of 320 acres of the best of midwestern soil. He has passed the three score of years point, and is far from physically strong. He has four sons, one married, mar-ried, and three others who have in the past operated the farm. The married son is a captain of infantry in Africa. The third son is in an army training camp, the fourth, a boy of 20, is in the marines in the South Pacific. The second son, 24 years of age, is alone operating that 320 acre first-essential warplant, the farm. I know that young man. I know there is no small particle of the coward or the slacker in his mental or physical system. His father fa-ther asked for his deferment, and he accepted the obligation with a full realization of what it means to him now and will mean throughout his lifetime. He, too, would like the acclaim of friends and associates that wearing a uniform would bring. I know how he wishes for the privilege privi-lege of following his brothers. To me he is displaying the greater heroism hero-ism of any of the four. He is making mak-ing the greater sacrifice. There should be a way of acknowledging such sacrifice, and there are many thousands of similar situations. WHEN THE WAR ENDS, it is estimated es-timated we will have some 56 million mil-lion people wanting jobs. That is 10 million more than had jobs in 1940. The need of peace time commodities com-modities will take care of the 56 million needed jobs provided the government gives industry an opportunity oppor-tunity to accumulate sufficient capital capi-tal to supply the needed tools. If the government must do the financing financ-ing it will mean the government in business and our free enterprise system sys-tem will be gone. That is not an impossibility, but it is not what our soldiers want to find when they come home. It would mean the end of individual opportunity. A FEW YEARS AGO John H. Perry Per-ry told me it cost 25 cents for each pea produced in the garden of his home in a New York suburb. Today the Victory gardener does not figure on what each pea costs his problem prob-lem is to get enough for a serving for the family. LESSON FOR BUREAUCRATS WHEN THE STARVING FRENCH people demanded bread of their king, he told them to eat cake, and in the end the king lost his head. When the hungry workers doing the heavy jobs of war production demand de-mand more meat, the theoretical bureaucrats at Washington tell them to eat chicken. The bureaucrats should read the story of Louis XVI of France. THERE IS SOME WRATH a soft answer will not appease. |