Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 258, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1918 — All Talk of Food Famine Is Mere Hysteria and Beyond Real Point [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

All Talk of Food Famine Is Mere Hysteria and Beyond Real Point

By HERBERT HOOVER.

United State* Food Admnmtrttor

There is an abundance of food accessible to the seas, but there are not" the ships to carry it from every point and to still conduct the war. - There are today abundant stoics of food in Australia, the East and in South America. Ours and Canada’s are the nearest supplies to the allies, and better protection from submarines can be given to ships od the Atlantic lane than on other sea routes. Roughly, every 5,000 tons of food to the allies requires 15,000 tons of shipping from Australia, 10,000 tons from the Argentine and 5,000 tons from North

America Every steamer we can save from these long journeys means the possibility of an additional shipload of soldiers and, munitions to France. If the allies were compelled to go to these more remote markets for their whole food supply today it would require over 2,500,000 tons more shipping than at present in use for this purpose. If North America could next year provide the whole of allied necessities we could save 1,500,000 tons of shipping. Every ship we save is a ship built. The weight of our blow against the Germans will be limited not alone by the ships we build but by the ships that we save. If the allies were forced to rely wholly on the remote markets for their food we would have no soldiers in France today. Nor will the burden grow less in the near future, for every ship we build will be needed to replace losses and to increase our army at the front. Therefore the whole war-food problem is simply and solely a determination of the amount of food that can be spared from North America. The marginal amount must be drawn from the more remote markets. Our ability to supply the allied world with food lies in four directions: First. The United Stages usually produces a small surplus of food for export over and above our normal consumption. This surplus we can export without economic disturbance. Second. We have for years exported to other countries than the allies. By partial or complete embargo of these shipments we can slightly increase the supplies available to the allies. Third. We can expand the area planted, and if our harvests are normal we can thereby enlarge the surplus for export through increasing production. Fourth. Our normal consumption and waste of food are anywhere from 15 to 20 per cent more than is necessary to maintain our own public health and strength, and we can in an emergency restrict the national consumption to our need and thereby increase our exports. We have thus, so far as the allies are concerned, four marginal resources —our small normal surplus, the embargo, an abnormal surplus to be created by stimulated production and a further surplus to be created by a reduction in our consumption. Our resiliency of resources in these four directions, principally the latter, is such that we can, if we have the will to do so, maintain the strength of the aUies and our own people, and •all talk of famine is mere hysteria. Our world food situation is not to be interpreted as famine; at worst it is to be interpreted in terms of soldiers to France, or alternatively it can be interpreted in terms of larger shipbuilding programs.