ADVERTISING NEW PLANT FOODS 



War Conditions Make Evident Necessity of Forming Food Habits of People Along 



Right Lines — This Work Should be Especially Directed by Department 



of Agriculture — Incessant Hammering of Modern Advertising Has 



Created a Vast Market For Many Commercial Products. 



David Fairchild 



Agricultural Explorer in Charge of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, Bureau of 



Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agricidture, Washington, D. C. 



THE days of the helter-skelter of 

 democracy are (Irawing rapidl)^ 

 to a close. "The method of 

 leaving the development of so- 

 ciety to the confused welter of forces 

 which prevail within it" must give way. 

 ^^'e have "discovered the necessity and 

 value of a conscious direction of its ac- 

 tivities." The war is making this great 

 change evident to everyone. We must 

 know what we are doing as a people, 

 and our habits — our likes and disHkes — 

 must form the study of our most bril- 

 liant minds. The results of these studies 

 must be taken to all the people with 

 the same certainty as the advertisements 

 of the great corporations are ham- 

 mered home, until they become brain 

 patterns on the mind of every man, 

 woman and child, patterns as clear as, 

 or clearer, than Coca Cola, Cascara, or 

 Quaker Oats. 



FOOD HABITS OF VAST IMPORTANCE 



Our food habits — why should they 

 not form one of the very first and most 

 important problems with which this 

 conscious direction should concern it- 

 self? "Food will win the war" is now 

 on every stamped envelope. If this is 

 true, then the food habits of the people 

 form one of the most vital problems at 

 the present time, and are likely to do 

 so for some years to come. 



To the generation just past, pater- 

 nalism was considered a great error, 

 something that would undermine the 

 morals of the people. My first experi- 

 ence in the introduction of plants into 

 America was with this mistaken buga- 

 boo of democracy. 



I was asked, by the head of the Di- 



vision of Horticulture of the Federal 

 Department of Agriculture, to secure 

 for a pioneer, who was trying to estab- 

 lish the citron industry on his place in 

 the foothills near Los Angeles, some 

 cuttings of the citron of Corsica. After 

 the negotiations had proceeded so far 

 that I was on my way to Corsica the 

 matter came to the attention of the Sec- 

 retary. "I would just as soon give a 

 man a set of Plymouth Rock eggs as 

 to get for him, at government expense, 

 a lot of cuttings of the citron," was 

 his reply. (And as a result I got the 

 cuttings with my own money, and it 

 was a long time before the Government 

 ever paid me back.) This is a bit of 

 department history that has never be- 

 fore been published. 



Today the Office of Foreign Seed and 

 Plant Introduction is expending a hun- 

 dred thousand dollars a year in getting 

 and handing over to just such pioneers 

 as Smith, of Monrovia, Calif., new 

 plant material from foreign countries. 



PRODUCTS SHOULD BE MADE KNOWN 



It is now twenty years since this work 

 was begun, and we have arrived at still 

 another step in the progress towards 

 paternalism which it is evident to me 

 is necessary. This step is the conscious 

 direction of the people in acquiring new 

 food habits. 



We have been aiding the new indus- 

 tries to get the material with which to 

 begin ; and the pioneers have been put- 

 ting their lives and their money into the 

 growing of the trees and the plants, and 

 the acquiring of the necessary infor- 

 mation with regard to their cultivation 

 and the handling of the product, and 



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