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 
