IN RELATION TO THE WAR. 509 



How can we guarantee the bread supply? There is of course 

 always corn, which we do not like, and which we have never yet 

 eaten very heavily. The real substitute established in our kitchen 

 habits is the potato, and it is running straight toward ruin, if we 

 depend only upon normal average production. The potato is the 

 real substitute for bread in the American dietary. Properly dried it 

 can be quickly made into much more of a substitute, as has long 

 been the case in Germany. Professor Laughlin states in his recent 

 book on war credit that in the food of the United States the potato 

 is half as important as wheat and rye confined. In France it is an 

 equal of both grains, while in Germany the potato is three to four 

 times as important as these two bread stuffs. Germany has a real 

 potato industry on an industrial basis. Ours is based on a gamble. 

 A bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture shows 

 that the German potato supply is guaranteed at an amount far above 

 needs for human food because of industrial uses such as alcohol, 

 starch, stock food. These things have a fairly constant price, so the 

 Germans have all the potatoes they want at a price which has fluctu- 

 ated only 27 cents in a period of five years. Chicago meanwhile had 

 a price fluctuation of $1.34 per pushel. It is on the potato that Ger- 

 many has thus far won her campaigns. Without it she would have 

 perished any year. Our potato is a peril because it is a gamble. We 

 have not developed a stable outlet for a surplus crop such as is 

 afforded by the German starch, alcohol, flour, and forage products. 

 Accordingly if we have a slight surplus they are thrown away, the 

 market is glutted, as at the present moment, and the farmer is dis- 

 couraged. The next year (as at the present moment) he plants a 

 light crop and that potato season ends in shortage with high prices 

 to stimulate the farmer to plant a large crop, and so on. The cycle 

 has run with little variation for thirty years. Last year we had an 

 excellent demonstration of the scanty end of it. This year even in 

 our flour shortage we have an excellent demonstration of the glut 

 end of it. Next year, unless there is a failure in all the signs of the 

 past, aggravated by the conditions of the war, we are sailing straight 

 into a potato shortage and also the possibility of a flour shortage. 

 And the government is doing nothing about the potato question. 



For a year we have needed a potato high minimum guaranteed 



