THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



34c 



TfiE PR/CE OF FLOUR PER BARREL 



/S.00 



-zoo 



UUAJ£ JULY " A i G 



THIS CHART ILLUSTRATES HOW THE FOOD TAW, ENACTED IN AUGUST, 1917, HAS 



NOT ONLY SERVED TO STABILIZE, BUT TO LOWER, THE PRICE OE FLOUR 



IN THE FACE OF AN EVER-INCREASING DEMAND 



sentially an extra ship for our European 

 service, as the haul from Argentina to 

 England is twice as long as that from the 

 United States to England. The require- 

 ments of England and France in grain, 

 as well as beef, however, call for every 

 atom of exportable surplus now in Ar- 

 gentina. 



PARING FOOD SHIPMENTS DOWN TO THE 

 BONE 



Because of the difficulty in reaching 

 India and Australia, and on account of 

 the shortage of shipping, the Allies' ce- 

 real requirements, of which they declared 

 the irreducible minimum to be 25,000,000 

 tons, were arbitrarily reduced at the Al- 

 lied Conference in Paris to 17,000,000 

 tons. We are planning to supply them 

 with these 17,000,000 tons of foodstuffs, 

 or approximately 25 per cent less than 

 the Allies themselves considered their 

 actual minimum requirements ; to satisfy 

 even this reduced schedule will tax the 

 peoDle of the United States severely. 



Every family in the United States with 

 any available land should endeavor to be- 



come as nearly self-supporting as possi- 

 ble in foodstuffs. Thousands of acres 

 along railroad rights of way should be 

 made available for planting to those liv- 

 ing near, and the farmer must be pro- 

 tected and encouraged by State and Fed- 

 eral aid in prices, labor, and machinery 

 to make the earth yield its maximum. 



We must feed our associates in the 

 war, their civilian population and ours, 

 their armies and ours, while they fight to 

 liberate civilization from the death grap- 

 ple with a nation gone mad; and after 

 the struggle is over and all the nations of 

 Europe are depleted, the United States 

 may be the only nation able to relieve the 

 appalling needs of the innocent victims 

 of the war now being waged by the ruth- 

 less Hun. 



We were late in entering the war ; f or 

 this reason we owe what we have saved 

 to those who suffered while we delayed 

 Not only must we help them now, but we 

 must lighten their burdens of reconstruc- 

 tion. 



Such relief could be organized and ad- 

 ministered in the form of huge govern- 



