CONSERVATION" OF FOOD 116 CONSERVATION OF FOOD of the available water power in a few hands has been checked. During the Wilson administration Congress passed laws for the development of the water powers of the national forests and of the public domain which gave fair terms to the interests desiring to exploit them and also protected the public interests. The National Conservation Commis- sion discovered that agriculture in the United States had decreased the fertility of the soil instead of increasing it as had been the case in most European countries. To meet this evil, exper- imental stations were opened by the Department of Agriculture, and an exten- sive campaign of education of the farm- ers in better methods of tilling the soil was undertaken. At the same time the Department of Interior took up the task of irrigating and reclaiming for use vast desert areas of the West. From 1902 until June, 1919, the Reclamation Serv- ice had spent nearly $150,000,000 on projects designed to reclaim land for use. When all the projects under con- struction are completed 3,200,000 acres of formerly waste land will be irrigated. 1,120,000 acres were already being irri- gated in 1919. CONSERVATION OF FOOD, an economic problem which first became the object of serious consideration by gov- ernments during the World War. The axiom that "every army fights on its stomach" was suddenly found to be as true of the nations at war as a whole. Tv/o important causes were be- hind this increased significance of the food supplies of the civil populations of the belligerent countries. First of all, the tremendous increase in transporta- tion facilities between the countries dur- ing the past half century had made the peoples of those countries more mutually dependent on each other, because of the ease with which the products of labor could be exchanged, and more especially foodstuffs. Whereas in earlier times each country was naore or less eco- nomically self-sufficient, they now de- pended on each other for certain food products, in some cases almost com- pletely. As an instance, England was dependent on foreign importations for almost all her food supplies. To a lesser extent, this was also true of Gei'many. The war, naturally, by severing commer- cial relations between the two sets of belligerents, and making it extremely difficult between the countries that were allied together, forced each country back into a position of being again dependent on its own food resources. Another reason for the need of food conservation was the number of coun- tries involved in warfare, and the great percentage of the laboring population which must be drawn into the military establishments. In no previous war had there been such a drain on the laboring population for fighting purposes, and never before had this drain been so universal throughout practically all of the civilized world. This seriously ham- pered the production of food, even in countries which had large sources of food supply within their own boundaries. Such was especially the case in Germany and Hungary, possessed of large areas of grain producing lands, but where each was compelled to draft its peasants into their respective armies. Germany was the first to feel the pres- sure, for, though she had the wheat fields of Hungary behind her, the demands for transportation of men and military sup- plies made on the railroads seriously hampered the transportation of food- stuffs. Having anticipated this situa- tion, however, the German Government had made full preparations, and at once systematized her food conservation pol- icy from the very beginning, with such a high degree of scientific efficiency that it is probable that the German civil population did not suffer from scarcity so soon as did those of belligerents more favorably situated. An Imperial Food Control Board was at once estab- lished, which took over all the food stored in the country and assumed the responsibility of distribution, regardless of the purchasing power of the units of the population. Heads of families, of all classes, v/ere supplied with food ra- tioning cards, by means of which they were enabled to receive only so much food as was necessary for physical main- tenance. A national food inventors? was kept by the Imperial Board, with the same accuracy with which the quar- termasters' department of an army keeps a record of its food supplies, and when the stores decreased, the rations were diminished in proportion. Thus, the German population was often hun- gry, but there was no famine. This same system was installed in Austria and Hungary, but was not administered with the same high degree of efficiency, with the result that the civil populations of those countries, especially in the larger cities, suffered more severely. In France and England, whose gov- ernments and populations were more taken by surprise by the war, such elab- orate preparations had not been worked out. At a later period the rationing system was partially applied, in certain commodities, but both these countries were more fortu^inte in that they were
