THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Reviving a Lost Art
Photographs by Charles Martin and David Fairchild
In no other field of endeavor have German efficiency and German science been so eminently successful as in the conservation of that country's limited resources to such a remarkable degree that even after three years of isolation from world markets, on which formerly it depended so largely for sustenance, the nation is not yet faced with the alternatives of surrender or starvation.
The United States can profit by this economic success of its enemy.
One of the most important features of the food conservation movement in Germany since the outbreak of the war, and one which has been of material aid in maintaining the physical fitness of the German industrial worker and his family, has been the practice of drying fruits and vegetables.
In the great cities all over the empire the government, following the establishment of an effectual blockade of food supplies, put into operation the scheme of collecting from the markets all unsold vegetables and fruits at the end of each day. Those foods which would have spoiled if “held over” were taken to large municipal drying plants, where they were made fit for future use at a negligible cost. These drying plants thus became great national food reservoirs, saving immense quantities of food which otherwise would have gone to waste.
But the activities of the German Government did not end here. Community driers were established in the smaller towns and villages, and the inhabitants were instructed to see that all surplus vegetables were brought in and subjected to the drying process, which insured against the great extravagance of non-use.
A third method of conservation by drying was inaugurated with the itinerant drying machines. These vegetable dry-kilns on wheels were sent through all the rural communities, and the farmer was admonished to allow no fruit to grow over-ripe in his orchard, no vegetable to spoil ungathered in his garden. It was an intensive campaign for the saving of little things, in so far as each individual household was concerned; but it has totaled large in the story of the nation's economic endurance.
Not only does the drying of fruits and vegetables increase the supply in the winter larder of the people at home, but much of the dried product can be included with the wheat, which must be sent in a constant stream across the seas to feed our own soldiers in France and our Allies on the battle fronts of the world.
The practicability of sending dried garden and orchard products to the fighting men has been demonstrated already in Canada, where fruits have been preserved in this manner and shipped to Europe.
While the process of saving surplus summer vegetables for winter consump-
