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225 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1943)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0225 and id is 1 raw text is: Food: War and Postwar By JOHN D. BLACK I PRAISE God, and pass the nutrition is the parody of a popular war song some soldier boy wag is said to have sung out to his pals waiting in line with their mess plates. Probably the incident is somewhat apocryphal, but whether it is or not is beside the point. The cir- cumstance that such a version of the theme took hold of the prevailing fancy and was passed on from camp to camp, and reported in newsreels and vaudeville skits, indicates that the public has been made aware of nutrition as a part of this war as in no war before. To be sure, we had a food scare in the last war. The United Kingdom became desperately aware of what the subma- rine might do to her food supply. And after that peril was averted and the United States entered the war, there arose a fear that the Allies would not produce enough food to keep the armies in the field. In this country a compre- hensive food producing and distributing organization was set up with a food ad- ministrator in every county, and an emergency county food agent to help the farmers to plant and harvest a full crop. There were specialists in the serv- ice who gave thought to the composition of the diet and its qualitative adequacy, but the general public knew little of this. AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR In contrast, this war broke upon Europe, and later upon this country, in a period of food surpluses, in the popu- 1 In the assembling of this volume, in the editorial work on the various articles, and in the preparation of the several sections bearing his name, the Editor had the assistance of the Committee on Research in the Social Sciences of Harvard University, and especially of. its Secretary, Miss Althea MacDonald. lar connotation of that term, with our own agricultural statesmen still trying to figure out ways of keeping stocks at levels that would not unduly depress prices. We knew that blockaded Eu- rope might suffer, and that what reached the British Isles would have to run the U-boat gauntlet; but we had no thought of any gross shortages at this end of the supply line. Secretary Wallace, in a press release of September 1, 1939, spoke as follows: ... present supplies of cotton, wheat, corn, meat animals, and many other commodities are large. There is little likelihood that any substantial increase in production of the major crops will be desirable, certainly not in the immediate future. In any case the need for increases in supplies can be anticipated in ample time to make any necessary increases in acreages. The pro- duction of large quantities of agricultural commodities for which there is no satis- factory market could prove just as de- moralizing in wartime as in peacetime. ... These facts must convince farmers that it will be possible to meet all demands for farm products; that it will be possible to avoid an overexpansion of our farm plant such as occurred during the World War period; and that it will be possible to cush- ion the shocks of the readjustment which will be inevitable if the present conflict continues over any lengthy period and on any large scale. ... So, again, I urge our farmers not to be swayed by the developments overseas. Their greatest contribution right now to their own welfare and the national welfare is to carry on just as before. Even at that early date, however, much discussion developed over the quality and composition of our diets, and as to how well fed were the lower- income groups in our population. On October 24, 1940, the writer addressed 1

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