148 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



With such an average reduction in bulk, the space 

 required for transportation and storage is far less than 

 that required for either fresh or canned products. In 

 certain instances the reduction is very great. It varies 

 with the percentage of water in fresh products. One 

 carload of dried tomatoes, for example, is equivalent to 

 thirty carloads of canned tomatoes. 



Especially are dried products adapted for our military 

 camps, fleets, and overseas fighting force. Army officials 

 estimate that two men are needed daily to prepare 

 potatoes and other vegetables for every one hundred 

 soldiers. Dried vegetables are already prepared and 

 are ready to cook, after soaking in water. In an army 

 of 2,000,000 men their use would release nearly 

 40,000 men for other tasks. As the original prepara- 

 tion of vegetables for drying is done largely by simple 

 and inexpensive machinery, there is thus a tremendous 

 saving of man-power. The shrinkage in bulk makes 

 dried products acceptable and fitting naval stores, and 

 trans-ocean freight. 



Germany's stores of dried vegetables greatly helped 

 her in carrying on the war. During the last year of 

 which the United States government has any official 

 record, Germany dried, in potatoes alone, more than 

 twice the entire quantity raised in this country. She 

 more than doubled the number of her plants after start- 

 ing the war, and has now more than two thousand. 

 There are in Germany fifty-six firms supplying complete 

 drying apparatus, and thirty-seven other firms which 

 supply auxiliary machines and parts. The drying is 



