Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1917 — WHO SHOULD CONSERVE FOOD? [ARTICLE]

WHO SHOULD CONSERVE FOOD?

The Common People Must Not Be Expected to Do It All. One cannot pick up a newspaper or magazine nowadays but what he is confronted with the advice to “conserve food.” This is good advice anji strictly proper, and the common people are doing their full part, but they must not be expected to do it all. The common people, because of high prices, are prohibited from using more than is absolutely necessary, and the advice to conserve food should bd-. given to those wealthy classes whom prices do not affect. It is really amusing to note the effort on the part of some wealthy ladies to impress others with their self-sacrifice when they piously announce that instead of fifty new gowns this year, they shall content themselves with thirty-five. And, perhaps, likewise instead of giving fifty banquets, they shall reduce the number to thirty-five, and then go forth and preach conservation to the washer woman across the block whose children are happy and thriving on bread and molasses. And in the same class are those societies and gatherings at which banquets are served with double and triple portions for each participant. As we said before, conservation is right and proper, but the necessary consumption of the masses is not creating and fostering high prices, while the needless waste of the idle rich and others who are wont to make a show, are far more a direct cause. Apropos of this comes a letter from Ann Isabella Emmons of Lebanon, published in an Indianapolis newspaper, which places these need-

less- affairs in their proper class and truthfully points out the evil therein. The letter is as follows: The plea for the conservation of food by the American housewives is worn threadbare. A large number of women are tried of the subject. They say, "Why should we be singled out among all the wholesale prodigals of this country?” From pulpit, press and platform we have been nagged at until it has become a bore. The gnats of wastefulness in households are being strained at while the camels of extravagance in high places have been swallowed whole without a word.

It is not to be denied that there are many wasteful, extravagant women. No amount of expostulation could change their ways, nothing but actual want would bring them to their senses. There are other women who might profit somewhat by that which has been published and said about conservation, but by far the larger number of women are born economists. It is their nature to turn and save and manage with clothing as well as food, and also, in all other expenses. They are the backbone of the country. A woman of this class is fully and beautifully described in the Bible —the last chapter of Proverbs, beginning with the tenth verse.

Those in authority are respectfully referred to the enormous waste in food which we hear of at the different cantonments. The large hotels, restaurants and other eating places are those which need to be .looked into and compelled to make conservative use of food. And the banquets! The government should put a stop to banqueting. . . Think of the barbecue given by the "medics” at Fort Benjamin JHarrison a short time ago. The report says 2,000 people were served with 2,500 pounds of meat -—one and one-quarter pounds for each man—l,soo pumpkin pies, 400 doughnuts, ten barrels of sweet potatoes, six barrels jof apples, six large barrels of hot mulled cider, thirty-five cases of celery, 100 pounds of salted peanuts. Bread, butter and coffee were not mentioned, but undoubtedly they were there in large quantities. Now it would be impossible for the amount provided to be consumed by the number of persons mentioned, and doctors too! so that the garbage cans must have received gospel measure.

The food commissioner, or some' one should put a stop to such carnivals, especially in the present stress of affairs. So far it seems no I one has lifted a voice against such 1 doings, when, no doubt, there was as much wasted at the aforesaid banquet as was in all the conservative households, put together, in the whole state of Indiana for that daV One woman says—and she voices the sentiment of thousands of wornshe has been “Hooverizing” all summer, that she has worked and saved everything possible that she has laid up in sto f e plenty for her own family, and to divide with, the poor and that her conscience is satisfied and that she doesn’t care to be bothered any further about it. # Another woman writes in a letter to a friend that she had heard and read so much about • conserving (and by people who knew nothing at all about it) that she hoped never to hear any more of it. 1 naT now she remained away from any place where she might hear the subject discussed, and that for her part she would make no promises as to her future conduct. There are no people in tms country better informed or more intensely interested in all questions of public welfare than the women. Nor are there any more patriotic or loyal, they are giving their very heart of hearts for their country, what more could they do. It is not ignorance but good sense which govern women.