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SHOULD
HE world is short of food. Your child at the dinner
table knows it. He sees rice where only the other day
his huge steaming baked potato melted a generous lump
of butter. Af the breakfast table creamed toast takes
the place of a former generous serving of bacon and
eggs. And—miracle of miracles in this prodigal generation!—he is
admonished if he leaves a crust of bread upon his plate.
This nation is short of other important materia 1 resources—timber, and
timber products, such as paper; dyes, leather, woolens, and a thousand and
one other commodities the careless American but yesterday regarded as
free, almost, as water, air, or sunshine.
Labor, skilled or otherwise, also is scarce. Manufacturers will tell you so.
Farmers repeat the tale. Office managers add their story in corroboration.
Shortage of labor in the United States has been due to a condition we
can readily understand. In the years immediately preceding the Great War,
Europe fed us its raw labor to the extent of a million human beings annually.
By August first, 1917, or on the completion of the third year of conflict, we
shall be short three million immigrants, mostly workers.
The impoverished nations—now our allies—too busy fighting for very life
to attend to the ordinary needs of existence, must have our foods. They
must have our steel, our coal, our manufactures of all kinds. And now their
latest demand is for our men in the trenches as well as in the factories.
Under these circumstances, to waste in any way the thinnest slice of
potato; to wear high leather boots or shoes; to utilize the services of workers
in furthering our purposeless extravagances—all these things are a wanton
misuse of the nation's restricted resources.
England laughed at such ideas as this and commercial London proudly
boasted, "Business as usual." But that was back in 1914. The forests that
have been Great Britain's pride for a thousand year.s today are falling before
the axe of the lumberjack imported from western Canada. The cherished
private game preserves of her landed classes are given over to raising the
food that may save the nation from starving.
The pernicious slogan, "Business as usual," has already begun to be raised
in the United States. The argument is advanced that business will prosper
if money is freely in circulation. There is a vast difference, however, between
buying carefully as our needs demand, and buying extravagantly according