it does not ration
the country.

Rationing may come yet, but any such system bristles with
difficulties. The cost to the Government has been variously estimated
all the way from $10,000,000 to $45,000,000 a year. Fifty per cent
of the population could not be restrained in their consumption by
rationing, for they are either producers or live in intimate contact
with the producer. A wheat ration which would be fair for the North
might actually increase the consumption in the South. Finally, the
burden of a bread card would fall largely not on the well-to-do, who
eat less wheat already and can easily cut down further, but on those
with little to spend, who might have to change their whole food
habits.

The success that is meeting our method of voluntary reduction of
consumption "will be one of the remembered glories of the American
people in this titanic struggle."

CHAPTER IV

THE MEAT SITUATION

Meat shortage is not a war problem only. We had begun to talk of
it long before the war, and we shall find it with us after peace
is declared. Great production of beef can take place only in sparse
settlements. As the tide of increasing population flows over a
country, the great cattle-ranges are crowded out, giving place to
cultivated fields. More people means less room for cattle--a relative
or even absolute decrease in the herds.

WHERE EUROPE'S MEAT HAS BEEN PRODUCED

In spite of their crowded territory, the majority of European
countries have raised most of their meat themselves, though usually
they have had to import fodder to keep up their herds. They have been
less dependent on import for meat than for wheat. Great Britain is the
only country which has imported much meat--almost one-half her supply.
Her imports, and to a lesser extent those of other European countries,
have come chiefly from Denmark and Russia in Europe, and from six
countries outside--the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay,
Australia, and New Zealand.

THE WAR AND THE EUROPEAN MEAT-SUPPLY

Imports of both animals and fodder are interrupted. With meat as with
wheat, the great shortage is due to lack of ships. Australia and New
Zealand, and to a lesser extent South America, are cut off. Fodder
such as cottonseed press-cake cannot be shipped in large amounts as
it takes three times as much shipping to transport feed as it does the
meat made by the animals from it. Denmark's supply of animals to Great
Britain has practically