The consideration of the food supply from a national standpoint was forced upon Germany at the outbreak of the great war which is now in progress. Eminent scientists combined in a report upon the prospects of the sustenance of the nation. Imports from oversea had been restricted. Meat, butter, cheese, and fish formerly obtained from Holland and Denmark were no longer available. The North Sea fisheries which had yielded 179,000 metric tons (1 metric ton = 2200 lbs.) of fish were closed, trained farm hands were fewer, crops in East Prussia and Alsace had been destroyed, the situation appeared serious. It was estimated that the annual amount of food fuel necessary to support 68,000,000 Germans - men, women, and children - was 56,750,000,000,000 calories. This is the equivalent of 3000 calories per adult per day. The quantity of protein required in this fuel, if the human machines were to maintain themselves in self-repair, was estimated to be 1,605,000 metric tons per annum. It was calculated that a mixed population of 68,000,000 men, women, and children required the same amount of food as would 51,823,000 adults.

In order to increase the production of food and to diminish the waste the committee recommended increasing the crop of beans, with its large protein content, reducing the unnecessarily large meat supply, and increasing the intake of cheese and skimmed milk, which latter should no longer be fed to pigs, improving the yield of vegetables and fruits, and reducing the quantity of butter and cream produced.

1 The first pages of this chapter are a revision of a paper "published in the "Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences," 1916, vi, 387.

5S5

A reduction in the consumption of meat, butter, and cream was necessary because edible grains would be required for human food, and the maintenance of the usual number of cattle was no longer deemed possible.

The estimated savings as above enumerated would result in a total production of 81.25 billion food calories containing 2,022,800 tons of protein.

The conditions were thus summarized:

Table Showing The Annual Food Requirements Of 68,000,000 People In Germany

From these data it was concluded that the German people, through co-operation of millions of inhabitants, would be able to prevent suffering for lack of food.

The writer is informed upon good authority1 that the food produced during 1914-16 never attained the level of production in peace times, that the food requirement of the population was underestimated for the physical work to be accomplished and underestimated for those who were in the period of adolescence; furthermore, that the enforcement of the food laws was placed in the hands of farmers, middlemen, and politicians, who mismanaged the situation.

It is not unimportant to know something of the cost of these great quantities of food fuel.

If one takes as a basis the wholesale cost in the United States of food as purchased on account of the Commission for Relief in Belgium one can estimate in the terms of the cost of various simple food-stuffs the lowest wholesale cost of the yearly food fuel requirement of the German nation as follows:

1A. E. Taylor: Oral communication, quoted by permission.

Wholesale Cost In The United States Of Food Fuel

For 68,000,000 People.

The wholesale cost of sufficient food fuel exclusively in the form of beans to provide for 100,000,000 men, women, and children in the United States for a period of one year, computed on the basis of 3000 calories daily for each adult, would call for a sum of $2,500,000,000. Beans are more costly than rice and wheat, but have a larger protein content.

In this connection it is interesting to consider the living expenses of a poor family in New York City.

Family, two adults, three children, wages $60 per month:

To the man of large affairs the expenditure of $25 a month for food appears of little moment, and yet if the 100,000,000 inhabitants of the United States lived as this typical poor man's family lived the cost of food would aggregate $6,000,000,000 per annum. To any man of large affairs the maintenance at Boston of the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution with its budget of about $50,000 per annum appeals impressively to the imagination, and yet this work is accomplished at an expense of less than 1/1000 of 1 per cent, of what the American people would pay for food if each family of 5 had an income of $720 per annum. It may be further remarked that this estimated cost of food for the nation is twice the amount of the gross earnings of all the railways in the United States.

Is it not a little sad to think that the expenditure of thousands of millions of dollars annually for food, an expenditure frequently amounting to more than half of the income of the poor man, should take place without any real idea as to what the nature of. food is?

F. C. Gephart1 of the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology, has made a study into the food consumption of the boys at St. Paul's School at Concord, New Hampshire, one of the largest private boarding-schools in the country. The total annual food supply may be thus computed:

Supplies For Boys' Boarding School

This quantity of nourishment was taken by 355 boys and also about 100 adults (masters and servants). This quantity of food when computed on the basis of the individual meals served appears as follows:

* 70 per cent, of this is in animal protein.

The cost of this food per meal was 20 cents, or 13.8 cents per 1000 calories. The food, which was bought by a purchasing agent in the Boston market, was of the best quality, and included 193 separate varieties.

1 Gephart: "Boston Medical and Surgical Journal," 1917, clxxvi, 17.