Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1918 — WASTE OF SUGAR AND WHEAT [ARTICLE]

WASTE OF SUGAR AND WHEAT

Writer Think* Thl. I* Tim. to -Cut Out" Berv'zg Refreshments at Social Functions. By BETTY TANSEY of The Vigilante* I do not believe that sugar and wheat are used to any better purpose In providing “refreshments” for social functions than they would be in ordinary meals for families. I do not think that ice crettm is less likely to deplete our resources in a way unfair to our soldiers and our allies when served by charming girls to their mammas and the mammas of other charming girls than if purchased at the sordid marts of the Ice cream 'trade, retail. Little cakes with pink icing on them appear to me to be as free from all patriotic traits or even from a natural .tendency of the human race to selfpreservation when served in drawing rooms to women thrilled by bridge or books as when noted through shop windows and taken home in a paper sack. You may if you desire give a little dinner to friends without in any way abusing the rights of others to food or infringing upon the requests of our government for conservation of resources. This is the way the people of the British isles have kept up a tiny bit of social life. But “refreshments” In the middle of the afternoon to a lot of well-fed women! It is not right.

Months ago it was announced that certain organizations of women had agreed to refrain from serving any foods at their meetings. This was heralded as being patriotic. It was plain, self-preservative common sense of course. But it was the right thing to do. Yet our club women, women many of them affiliated with organizations which stand for Intelligence and the better things of life, seem in many instances not to have followed this course but to be pursuing the even tenor of their ways before the war, not for a few of them once in a while but for all of them every week. We object to patronizing hotels and restaurants at which the food regulations are Ignored, and rightly so. How about the social functions at which “refreshments were served”? Rich food in the middle of the afternoon for a group of already well-fed women! Their very food cards ought to climb down out of their windows in shame at such Inconsistency.