Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1917 — A HUNGRY WORLD [ARTICLE]

A HUNGRY WORLD

No such food situation as that, which prevails this; spring has been seen within t’he memory of any living man. Usually the United States and Russia are the two great exporters of foodstuffs; but of late there have been food riots in" New York- and in Petrograd and Moscow. Not only are the big belligerents... on short rations but there is shortage of edibles in nearly every neutral country' in Europe. No fully satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon has yet appeared. Out-turn, of tlie chief food

crops last year was below normal, 1 but not to such a degree as would, ; of itself, account for putting two.-* thirds of Europe on short rations! , Interruption to transportation, as by the blockade of the Black sea. I plays soine part. A good deal of food has been sunk at sea. Perhaps 35,009,000 men under arms have been consuming more food than they would have consumed when engaged in their usual civil occupations. It remains for statisticians to appraise all these causes "and explain -in detail why pretty much the whole world is now deeply exer<j ■ cised over its supply of daily- bread, for the -first time within memory of living man. - It has- been assumed that the world would never again be so exercised; that with harvest in progress somewhere every month Of the year and with modern transportation a deficiency- ’ here would always be made good by a surplus there; so. that no extensive and serious shortage of foodstuffs could occur in most civilized countries. The present situation shows that the world lives closer to the margin than most people have realized. Submarines running amuck might at any time reduce the modern Western world to the .condition of Asia and medieval Europe, where famine was always a cheerful possibility.—Saturday Evening Post. A third of the telephone operators become brides before they have worked five months, company statistics show.