Part II.] FOOD CONSERVATION. 119 



of milk to the amount of money available for food. Before we 

 have been able to teach the tenement-house mother that milk 

 is still the most valuable food obtainable for the price, she has 

 cut down the supply below the amount required for the family's 

 health. There is no adequate substitute for the milk. The 

 children must have it; mothers who are nursing their babies 

 must have it. It is the simplest and most grateful food for the 

 sick, and somehow it must be made available. This is as we 

 all know a big and complex problem of food conservation, and 

 concerning this problem it behooves us all to become com- 

 pletely intelligent and to share common responsibility for 

 establishing right conditions. 



From the above it seems evident, then, that the food con- 

 servation message must be presented with care to those among 

 us who are fighting to keep the wolf from the door. For 

 them it is of prim.e importance to buy that food which will 

 nourish and sustain the body at the least possible cost. For 

 the great majority of our population this is the important ques- 

 tion. It is most difficult of solution for the city dweller, who 

 must live from hand to mouth, who is dependent upon trans- 

 portation with all its present difficulties, and who is at the 

 mercy of the fluctuating costs of living. The farmer, in the 

 separate country home, has bins filled with potatoes and other 

 winter vegetables; he houses barrels of apples and the indis- 

 pensable pork barrel; he keeps hens and cows to increase the 

 food supply; and he can live off the land. To his family food 

 conservation has a difi'erent aspect. Those who have always 

 been accustomed to a private store which has always proved 

 more than adequate are with difficulty persuaded that economy 

 is necessary for them, or that the covimori endeavor to save is 

 essential to fulfilling our pledges to the Allies and forwarding 

 the necessary food supplies. 



We must therefore subtract from the immediate working 

 army in food conservation two large groups, — first, the city 

 dweller of very limited means, and these make up a large 

 group of our population; and second, any isolated dwellers in 

 the country, accustomed to reserves of food and to independent 

 living, who fail or learn but slowly, to recognize themselves as 

 needed in the essential armv of food conservation. 



