h cost of living as it is the cost
of high living; and the use of meat is such an extravagant and expensive
thing it is very important that people should know how to get along
without meat.

The experimenters of the agricultural experiment stations have shown us
that it takes thirty-three pounds of dry digestible food substance to
make one pound of beef--31 or 32 pounds to make a pound of beef, and 33
or 34 pounds to make a pound of mutton. Seven pounds of digestible food
substance will make a pound of dry milk. So we can readily see that
there is an enormous waste of foodstuff. Only about ten per cent of the
corn raised is used for feeding human beings. The rest is fed to animals
and a large part of it is wasted.

So it is exceedingly important, it seems to me, that this nut industry
should be encouraged in every way. A half million acres of nut trees
well advanced and producing would produce all of the fat and more
digestible fat, and all the protein and more digestible protein, than we
are now using in the entire country. We are producing more than enough
food in corn and other foodstuffs to feed nearly three times our present
population, and most of it is wasted in the energy which the hog, the
steer and other animals use up in running around and keeping warm. That
is where the great loss comes. In nuts we have a choice foodstuff as
digestible as any other foodstuff, and Prof. Torrey and Prof. Mendel and
others who have recently made experiments have shown that the protein of
the nut and the protein of vegetables in general is not so putrescible
as the protein of meats. There are good reasons for it. It does not
undergo putrefaction so readily any way, and besides meat carries along
with it the bacteria which produce putrefaction.

Meat is the filthiest thing that goes upon our tables. If the number of
bacteria in milk was as great as the number of bacteria in meat, nobody
would think of eating it. If the bacteria in water were as numerous as
in milk, no one would be willing to drink the water. It is a very
curious thing that we permit in milk and in meat a condition of things
we would not tolerate in air or water for a moment. Every morsel of meat
a person eats contains some billions of the bacteria of the very worst
sort. Bacteria found in meat are those which produce colitis,
appendicitis, abscesses of the teeth and diseased conditions of the
tonsils. They predispose to a good many infectious diseases of the
i