This Famishing World

By Alfred W. McCann

§ 82 -- Physicians Seek in Vain

PHYSICIANS have sought in vain for substances that can renovate the broken human body. Failing to find them they have explored other fields and we have, as a result, antitoxins, serums, and germicides.

Commercial scientists know that they cannot put back into bread from the hands of chemists those things that come only from the hands of God.

Colostrum, the first food of the human being, is as we have seen the first food of all mammals, yet its exact role is not fully understood by scientists. From the nature of its composition, its corpuscles, salts and colloids, fats, sugars, proteins and anti-bodies, it is inferred that it furnishes to the new-born child, during its adjustment to its new surroundings and the full expansion of its lungs and the awakening of its digestive processes, an adequate nourishment of a character similar to that which it received from the placenta as a foetus.

Commercial scientists might as well try to produce synthetic colostrum, synthetic blood, a synthetic spinal cord, a synthetic nervous system, a synthetic brain, and a synthetic soul as synthetic bread. The most colossal impertinence now visible in this world of confusion is the effort of man to duplicate in ignorance and presumption, by a process of extravagant theorising, the handiwork of the Creator.

An army of investigators has proved that artificial mineralisation with respect to food is impossible.

The extensive research conducted by M. S. Maslow at the Institute for Experimental Medicine at Petrograd, with regard to the biologic importance of phosphorus for the growing organism and its action on the intracellular ferments, would alone be sufficient to confound the plaster of Paris scientists if they had ever heard of it.

Apparently really scientific experiments, proving that synthetic phosphates cannot be substituted for the highly complex organic phosphorus compounds of natural food and that synthetic phosphates should not be given for therapeutic purposes, have no meaning for men who by adding calcium sulphate to bread would have the world believe that they transform its inadequacy into the wholesomest of human foods.

The scientist responsible for the plaster-of-Paris bread ingredient has given to the press this interview:

"In the milling of flour more and more of the outside of the grain has been taken off in order to get absolutely white flour, thus accounting for the contention that flour is not as nutritious as formerly.

"By the addition of lime and other beneficial salts the qualities removed in the effort to get white flour have been restored to the wheat and other advantages have been noted.

"My associates in the laboratory work maintain that our findings have resulted in the most important food discovery in years.

"The so-called secret process was kept so only because of a desire to have world-wide patents on the invention before courting publicity."

In his testimony at the attorney general's inquiry, 199 Broadway, Tuesday, March 2nd, 1915, the vice-president of the Blank Baking Company declined to reveal the process which he claimed as his, being content with saying that it had accomplished great good for humanity.

There is other testimony, dating from the year 1490 B. C., on this subject of white flour destruction, which the attorney general's inquiry did not record.

In the twenty-sixth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus, or Vaicra, as the Hebrews call it, it is written that as punishment for the crimes of man their bread would undergo degeneration; that the staff of life would be broken; that no matter to what extent it might be manipulated, even to the extent of having ten women oversee its baking in the same oven, and no matter how carefully it might be weighed out, the people would eat only to find it a worthless and foodless food.

Food that does not fill is not food. These are the exact words of the prophecy:

"After I shall have broken the staff of your bread, so that ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by weight and you shall eat and shall not be filled."

Uttered 3,408 years ago, this prophecy has been fulfilled. Its fulfilment stole in upon humanity quietly, stealthfully, unnoted. Twentieth century science has demonstrated its truth. The microscope and the test tube have confirmed the description of Leviticus of the white bread of 1918.

§ 83 -- Dollars Dictate to Science

The work conducted, 1914, 1915 and 1916, to determine the ravages of a demineralised diet, by Goldberg, Warring, Willets and Wheeler, at orphanages in Jackson, Mississippi, and at the farm of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, was not designed to disclose truths which the millers would at once confine in a commercial straight jacket.

But their power over science is complete, and so when the United States Public Health Service, April, 1916, published a warning bulletin by Voegtlin, Sullivan and Myers, they had no difficulty in silencing it.

That Government bulletin declared that the roller mill system deprived flour of valuable food constituents. That if animals are fed on highly milled wheat and corn they will die within a month or two, whereas they will live in perfect health for many months on an exclusive diet of unmilled wheat or corn.

It also described the dangers incident to the excessive use of baking powder, which destroys the vitamines of the grain.

The flour millers immediately swooped down upon the United States Public Health Service, whereupon in September, 1916, a "correcting" bulletin was issued. The government had been terrified into acquiescence by the dignity and power of the industry offended.

This "correcting" bulletin, for the consolation of the millers, told the people to be sure to obtain an adequate mixed diet to supply sufficient of the essential dietary components outside of the refined cereal contained in the diet, but not to be worried over the dangers of white flour as previously described.

The millers asserted that the Government bulletin had occasioned so much alarm that the production of highly milled flours had fallen off nearly 25 percent, and the flour industry had been hit hard in a financial way; hence the effort of the government to re-establish the prestige of refined highly milled wheat and corn.

No wonder Assistant Secretary Vrooman of the Department of Agriculture declared, May, 1917, "The most powerful food lobby ever assembled at the Capitol, is here stimulating press agents and commercial scientists to promote the interests that gamble in human health and that seek by every means in their power to prevent the government's control of the grain elevators and patent flour mills of the country."

No wonder the Life Extension Institute declared in a bulletin: "Destruction of food is an injury to our country just as positively as destruction of munition or arms, and the commonest and most inexcusable destruction of food is the milling of wheat."

No wonder Professor Alonzo E. Taylor, Herbert Hoover's assistant in the Food Administration, asserted, "A 76 percent flour represents the peak of the curve of utilisation; the other 24 percent of the grain would be wasted if consumed by the human being."

No wonder the millers released for publication this "peak of the curve of utilisation" story to newspapers and magazines. The sophistry of this desperate effort to save patent flour for the multitude is as transparent as it is false.

In 1889 G. Bunge, professor of physiological chemistry at Yale University, demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of whole wheat bread was 30 percent. Of course this unabsorbed protein was not utilised, but Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of lentils was 40 percent, of carrots 39 percent, of potatoes 32 percent, of cabbage 18 percent.

If "the peak of the curve of utilisation" were applied to other food as the millers would have it applied to patent flour, we would not eat lentils, carrots, potatoes or cabbage without refining them as patent flour is refined.

Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of milk ranges from 7 to 12 percent, for which reason we should refine milk also before permitting our children to consume it.

"We must see," declared Bunge, "that the diet of human beings does not lack woody fibre, bran or cellulose. The excessive fear of 'indigestible' foods which prevails among the wealthier classes leads to debility of the intestinal muscular walls."

Whole wheat contains 2.5 percent cellulose.

"Do not eat cellulose," cry the millers and their scientists. But strawberries contain cellulose to the extent of 2.3 percent, radishes 2.8 percent, beans 3.6 percent, grapes 3.6 percent, pears 4.3 percent, raspberries 6.7 percent, raisins 7 percent, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and hickory nuts between 3 and 7 percent; asparagus, canteloupe, watermelon, mushrooms, apples, and celery contain as much cellulose as whole wheat.

Let us therefore eat none of these foods if we would bask under the shadow of "the peak of the curve of utilisation."

We must eat no more fruits or vegetables, and particularly must we avoid spinach, and lettuce, if we accept the warnings of men upon whose successful efforts to protect us from cellulose depend their fortunes.

The scientists know that the ability of the body to absorb every atom of the various nutritive elements of any given food does not and cannot determine the value of that food.

They know that the truck horse, the dairy cow and the beef steer are unable to absorb any more of the wheat, the corn or the oat than is man himself.

"The peak of the curve of utilisation" suddenly loses its power when they sell cattle feed to live stock men. They know that the unabsorbed percent of grain foods is so heavy in the case of animals that the droppings of a single steer are sufficient to sustain a hog.

They know that the United States Government recommends to farmers the raising of hogs in this manner as an economy. They tell us that even a 76 percent flour will not keep indefinitely and that the loss through decomposition would greatly exceed the gain secured by milling all of the wheat.

Again, as we have seen and as we shall continue to see, they lie, but all commercial lies will reveal themselves to our children when their chicken feeding experiments are conducted in the schools.

§ 84 -- The Awakening of the Teacher

Through the awakening of the teacher the children will learn why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins; why all nature is conspiring to teach them the folly of trespass against the natural law in respect to food; why there is something erroneous about the popular conception of gluttony when it is looked upon as the act by which an African entering a watermelon-eating contest succeeds in so distending himself with watermelon that he can't walk.

They will learn that gluttony is the deliberate and wilful act based on ignorance, indifference, or sloth, whereby an otherwise rational human creature refuses in his selection of food to recognise the fact that the laws of nutrition which apply to the health and success of the stock farm also apply to him, by reason of which he thoughtlessly eats and causes his children to eat things he would not feed to poultry, horses, cattle, sheep or hogs.

They will learn that it is quite impossible as a regular daily occupation to eat too much of the right kind of food; that the right kind of food nourishes and invigorates; that the wrong kind of food tears down; that true invigoration is reposeful and normal, and is never tempted to excess.

In recalling the experiences of the Kronprinz Wilhelm poison squad they will contrast the facts developed by feeding 500 men throughout an enforced experience that endured for 255 days with the nonsense of the short-time nutritional experiments such as those conducted in commercial laboratories and by the referee board, in which after a few short weeks' diet on some one suspected food or food adjunct a whitewashing report, which means nothing, is given to the world.

They will grasp the fact that at the end of 150 days a clean bill of health could have been given to the food of the sailors of the Kronprinz Wilhelm, thereby reducing that now classic episode to a resultless short term "scientific" experiment.

They will grasp the fact that the ordeal suffered by the German sailors went beyond the 150-day limit, and that even if it had ended at the termination of 200 days a complete whitewash of the food of the men, while still possible under the so-called scientific methods usually employed, might have had some curious doubts to explain away.

They will grasp the fact that at the end of 255 days there was no further room for doubt.

When school children begin, as a matter of classroom duty, to look into their own mouths the facts concerning their teeth will be correlated with their own chicken-feeding experiments and interpreted to the physical betterment of the nation.

§ 85 -- More Testimony

The natural bond between the chicken feeding experiment of the school children and the school children's teeth is not difficult to locate.

Dr. Louis Goldstein, New York City, says:

"After examining the teeth of not less than 400 school children in my home neighbourhood here in the Bronx I have yet to see a perfect set of six-year molars (first four permanent teeth to appear in childhood). These teeth in nearly every instance were entirely decayed. I have never observed a perfect set of teeth in any American child and have but one adult patient showing extremely good teeth. She is a young woman."

Dr. Burtice E. Lawton, New York City, declares: "Our faulty teeth are undoubtedly the result of an impoverished diet. We see many defective teeth among those in the best walks of life. Heredity does not seem to greatly increase the condition, for at present I have a patient undergoing treatment -- a girl -- who is the child of strong, robust parents.

"For the past three years I have observed her teeth on an average of once a month. Her teeth have virtually been starved and are suffering from the absence of a sufficient quantity of lime salts. Had she been fed on good, old-fashioned whole grain breads and breakfast foods when a youngster she would not be compelled to come under my care now.

Dr. E. A. Crostic, New York City, declares: "No one in New York City is eating the proper food these days. Foreigners who come here with a history of natural foods behind them possess solid tissues.

"Thirty years ago when the occasion arose people could sit in a dentist chair and have several teeth extracted without wincing. To-day, so lacking in nerves, energy and vitality are our women, that almost any of them after the ordeal of one or two extractions is on the verge of collapse."

Dr. Robert W. Taggert, New York City, declares: "The six-year molars are decayed and in many cases completely gone by the time the child attains the age of seven or eight years. It is almost impossible to save these teeth in any instance.

"German parents, who grew up on the whole wheat and rye bread of their native land, prior to the introduction of refined bread, have better teeth than their children."

Dr. Samuel C. Newman, New York City, declares: "You cannot beat the Italians for good teeth. They rarely have more than one or two teeth missing, the others being perfect and as hard as rocks. To drill into their hard tooth substance means to dull burr after burr in the attempt.

"Among the city children of my locality I find soft and sensitive teeth. The six-year molars are usually gone and in some instances I have observed that they do not last longer than six months after their eruption."

Dr. I. H. Knopf, New York City, declares: "The Italians, who do not eat dainty food, have fine teeth. This fact is significant."

Dr. Anton J. Haecker, New York City, declares: "Twenty-five years ago I had the opportunity of examining the teeth of the school children of Worms, Germany; 250 families, existing entirely on whole grain and vegetable foods, were living within a school district at that time.

"I could pick out the children of these families from among the others readily for the reason that their cheeks were rosy and they were the picture of health. The fine condition of their teeth as compared with the others was little short of amazing.

"Their diet consisted exclusively of whole grain bread, vegetables and fruit. The inhabitants of the famous Black Forest district of Germany and the lumbermen of the Vogelsburg mountains have wonderful teeth and are in rugged health.

"On Sunday quite often one pound of meat must suffice for the appetite of eight people, the main foods being black bread, potatoes and rye flour soups.

Dr. W. E. Andrews, New York City, declares: "The teeth of Slavs, Bulgars, Russians, and Poles are ordinarily perfect. I have lately seen the grinders of an old Slav, 61 years of age, who works in a nearby coal yard. Not a tooth was missing. His childhood diet of black bread and fish had given him an indestructible tooth structure."

Dr. C. R. Kelly, New York City, declares: "Periods of disease in children marked for general nutritional disturbances in which tooth nourishment is for a time completely shut off leave their traces like sign-posts on developing teeth."

Dr. Charles A. Dubois, New York City, declares: "The elimination of starch and sugary foods, including candies and syrups, from the diet is essential to the treatment of pyorrhea. There is no such thing as local tooth disease. The condition that leads to decay is always systemic."

Dr. F. A. Sterling, New York City, declares: "Natives of Africa whom I have examined have possessed teeth in perfect condition, due entirely to their living on coarse, natural foods. I have observed that the nearer people are to primitive nature the better are their teeth. Savages all have good teeth. The coloured race, particularly those living on whole corn meal and the unrefined sugar cane diet of the southern plantations, have good teeth.

"In one generation, in advancing from the southern corn fields and cane brakes, the teeth of our coloured children become very poor."

Dr. J. Archambeau, New York City, declares: "The people of the British West Indies (Jamaica), subsist on yams, vegetables, bananas, sugar cane, in abundance, a little salt fish and very little meat. Decayed teeth among these people are very rare. Most of their teeth look as though they were fashioned from ivory. Only poorly nourished people develop pyorrhea. "Since the natives of the British West Indies have begun to import American delicacies I have had much fear for the future condition of their teeth."

§ 86 -- Courage of Senior Surgeon Banks

In 1917 the corn flour millers ardently supported the recommendation of the Federal food authorities to mix from 15 to 30 percent of denatured corn flour with 85 or 70 percent of denatured wheat flour.

The millers of denatured wheat flour vigorously opposed these recommendations of their corn rivals and employed chemists to combat them. These two opposing trade interests thus provoked a bitter controversy over the mixing of two products, both denatured, both of them used on an ever-increasing scale.

Into this controversy crept no hint of the warnings of the United States Public Health Service and the Life Extension Institute.

Testifying for the millers, Robert M. French of the French-Pancose Laboratory employed by the New York Produce Exchange, went before the Senate and House Committees on Agriculture, telling them corn and wheat ought not to be mixed; that whole wheat would not keep; that whole corn meal would not keep, and that all the advantages obtained by eating the whole grain would therefore be offset by losses due to spoiling.

Finally the campaign of the millers of denatured flour to force their standards upon the army, navy and civilian populations of the United States became so scandalous that Senior Surgeon Charles E. Banks of the United States Public Health Service issued a statement which, notwithstanding its withering force, has been consistently disregarded by all American authorities.

Undaunted by the war emergency pretexts which ever tend to silence even the voices of outspoken men, Dr. Banks courageously and valiantly said:

"I read with considerable amazement but not with surprise the statement made by Robert M. French, a chemist in the employ of the Produce Exchange, evolving another of the various forms or THROWING A SCARE into the public mind lately adopted by the patent flour interests.

"French says, 'If the quacks and jingoes who preach whole wheat flour were to have their way bread of any kind would become a rarity."

"This is his special form of scare. Another scare recently appearing in the Northwestern Miller, a journal devoted to the interests of patent flour manufacturers, amounts in effect to the statement that whole wheat flour will produce typhus fever.

"Again, a large miller in a public interview threw another scare into the people by declaring regretfully that he was afraid if whole wheat were used for bread it might cause dyspepsia.

"Still another contemptible insinuation published in a flour trade journal was that the Belgians were starving because they could only get whole wheat bread -- contemptible, I say, because this sorely stricken people can scarcely obtain anything to eat, and their tragedy is being exploited to frighten the American public into swallowing henceforth the only material the millers intend to make, unless compelled to do otherwise, a starch flour -- just starch and nothing else of consequence.

"The present milling percentage reached in producing this patent flour does not exceed 75 percent of the grain, thus discarding an entire quarter of the crop as a tribute to the white flour fetich. This quarter of the crop, containing the rich elements of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, iron and the other mineral salts and vitamines of the grain, is sold by the millers as 'feed' for animals. The tissue-building elements of the grain thus go to the animals while the millers sell for human consumption the starch as flour.

"It is not necessary to confuse the lay public with the physio-chemics of the digestion of starch except to say that starch is not an element of the body and to get anything out of starch for the body it must be converted into something else.

"The end result is what is the matter with the American people to-day, physically forty inches around the waist at the age of forty and so on, an inch for every year, a puff for each eye, and a bag for each cheek. The present milling methods are only thirty-eight years old and were devised for mechanical reasons solely because the old stone grinding was too slow. There was nothing of a dietetic or hygienic character which demanded this improved roller process to take care of the rapidly increasing size of our crops.

"Not content with this new process, which simply got out the starch more readily, the millers later invented an artificial bleaching process for the purpose of further refining the already deathly pallor of their product. This is refinement run mad and the housewives of America have been led through ignorance to believe that the whiter the flour the better or purer the product.

"A pale, anemic generation of people has grown up under its continued use, as any medical man can testify who has had extended opportunities to examine hundreds and thousands of American boys physically, comparing them with the youths of the nations of Europe who have a whole grain diet.

"Our forefathers ate whole wheat bread for nearly three centuries, and if the absurd shrieks of the patent flour prophets of disaster were worth controversy it would only be to say that our hardy ancestors, men of brawn and vigour, who knew nothing of the bled-white wheat flour sold to-day, ought to have starved or died of typhus fever, and the lucky survivors should have built a museum to exhibit the last loaf of the old, deadly bread for their descendants to gaze upon.

"These athletic grandsires of ours who got the elements from the wheat which produce muscle, blood, bone, and nerve tissue, enabling them to do pioneer work and to live to old age, might well ask the starch contingents what sort of tissue starch makes, advising them that if starch has any advantage in this line it would be well to present evidence of its superiority instead of abusing the champions of whole wheat as quacks.

"These patent flour people are not quacks. They are rather apostles of the doctrine of frightfulness, and if they are successful in forcing the American public to live on denatured cereals, America will eventually become a race of physical degenerates."

§ 87 -- The Trade Challenge Trade Lies

Dr. Banks thundered in vain. At Hotel Sherman, Chicago, May, 1917, the American Master Bakers, at a convention assailed all proposals to mill a larger percentage of whole wheat. They went so far as to send a message to Herbert C. Hoover, disapproving of any official action to compel the milling of a higher percentage than 81.

At the convention Solomon Westerfeld, vice-president of the New York Retail Grocers' Association declared: "The American stomach will not stand whole wheat bread."

The convention then passed resolutions declaring, "Whole wheat will not keep; it spoils." Yet during the four years preceding that extraordinary resolution the quantity of whole wheat bread baked weekly in New York City and Brooklyn had increased to 50,000 loaves.

The American stomach not only stood this whole wheat but the whole wheat did not spoil.

The irony of all these sordid, selfish and unpatriotic protests against the physical welfare of the American people is disclosed when we learn that while the millers were lobbying not only in Washington, but all over the country, in their desperate efforts to perpetuate the old profitable system, the Washburn-Crosby Company were circulating hundreds of thousands of booklets, advertising the merits of its Wheat-A-Laxa Whole Wheat Flour, containing 100 percent of the wheat.

As if to rebuke the hypocrisy of the millers, the Washburn-Crosby Company declares: "Our whole wheat flour fulfils to the letter the requirements of the United States Health authorities. Being the whole of the wheat it contains all the life-sustaining elements of wheat in sufficient amounts to supply the proportion of the daily requirements of the body in readily digestible form.

"It represents what our great instinctive food and dietetic experts through all ages have affirmed -- that whole wheat flour is a complete food for the human body."

Here was another kind of commercial voice crying in the wilderness, but America's food authorities could not hear it.

The Washburn-Crosby Company by its own confession does not believe that whole wheat bread killed Belgians, as reported by Herbert Hoover, or that American stomachs will not stand whole wheat, or that whole wheat produces typhus fever, dyspepsia, and will not keep.

At the same hour W. K. Kellogg, advertising "Krumbles," made of 100 percent whole wheat, published the following advertisement:

"Krumbles makes sturdy boys because it is made of the whole of the durum wheat with all its mineral salts, the thing that doctors say all children need."

The Shredded Wheat Company declared at the same time that whole wheat was an ideal food, easily digested, containing all the salts necessary to the health of the human body.

The Postum Cereal Company, manufacturing Grape Nuts, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to exploit what it calls a whole wheat product.

The H-O Company, manufacturing thousands of tons of "Force," made of whole wheat, denies that whole wheat will kill Belgians, produce typhus fever, or cause dyspepsia.

The Bennett Biscuit Company, manufacturing Wheatsworth Biscuits, made of whole wheat, stands like another tower of might against the selfishness of industries whose hearts remain hard even under the lamentations of war.

The Pillsbury Company, putting one of its by-products into fancy packages, and spreading the truth concerning its medicinal qualities through the advertising pages of newspapers, magazines and medical journals, contradicts sweepingly all the statements of the commercial scientists and flour millers, whose treacherous and flimsy arguments, based on stubborn disregard of truth, stand forever against them as an indictment and a conviction.

§ 88 -- Calcutta and the Rice Plague

As if to contribute to the confusion of America's war efforts to solve the bread problem of her allies as well as her own, the Indian Medical Gazette, published in Calcutta, first quarter 1917, in an editorial, "The War and Burmah Rice," declared that polished rice, the counterpart of patent wheat flour and corn flour, is not fit to eat.

"Dr. T. F. Pedley, health officer of Rangoon, points out that the craze for polished rice (deprived of its germ and mineral cells) is a pernicious mistake. The more highly polished the rice the less valuable it is as a human food," asserts the Indian authority.

"Pedley shows that the brightly polished white rice sold in grocers' shops in England, is neither nutritious nor tasty, and that this accounts for the very poor opinion entertained by English people of the value of rice as a food.

"Pedley advocates the pushing in the home markets of natural whole Burmah rice, which is both tasty and nutritious.

"The fancy trade names 'Patna,' 'Bassein,' 'Carolina,' have no geographical significance. They merely designate the whiter, more tasteless, more unnutritious and higher priced rice.

"In Bengal bazaars much Rangoon rice is sold. It is generally whiter than the home-grown Burmah rice made in the Denkhi, but still not the highly polished stuff sold at high prices in Europe.

"In Calcutta it is only too clear to judge by the pernicious smoke chimneys that rice mills are multiplying in the land, and are doubtless paying concerns, but the public should be taught that polished white rice is inferior in nutritive value to the rougher reddish or brownish rice, unpolished.

"Whole brown rice is as superior to polished rice as was the old-fashioned oatmeal made by the local village miller, to the oat food with fancy names now sold in every shop.

"This unnutritious polished white rice is the main cause of malnutrition among the rice eaters of the East."

While America stood in bewilderment over her bread policy, from every quarter of the globe came these significant contributions to the literature of decay and death now being compiled by millers the world over.

The governments of many nations at war filed away the truth, and the commercial interests, fattening on the anemia of the world, kept it filed away.

Food commissioners, administrators, directors, bureau chiefs, secretaries and under-secretaries had no word to say on the subject except that they were afraid to kill people by feeding them with food as it came from the hands of God.

None of them seemed to believe that God might be trusted in His scheme of providing for the nourishment of the world. But of this they were sure; the boards of directors, the mill proprietors, the stock owning banks and the advertising agencies knew more about the laws of nutrition than the Creator who formulated them. Yet July 27th, 1917, Senator Borah publicly referred to God as if God really had existence, saying: "This is a time for prayer."

It would be prayer indeed that would smite the creatures who, sending from their advertising agencies plates and matrices to every country newspaper in the United States, urge the people not to abandon their white flour diet.

These corrupting lies are as contemptible as the lie which informed the world that whole wheat bread killed a thousand Belgians.

A war of sacrifice should include in its plans the wiping out of special privileges at home. These evils may pay huge dividends to a few, but they perpetuate a cold, bloodless, conscience-less scheme of presumption which collects tribute from the helpless masses.

§ 89 -- A Paradox

As if to laugh at the facts, the February, 1918, number of the Forecast came out with a repetition of the statement of Herbert Hoover, discouraging the use of whole grain bread because he believed that "the whole grain bread fed by the Belgian Relief to the unhappy subjects of King Albert killed at least a thousand of them."

This story, which refused to die, followed closely on the heels of a statement published by Professor Alonzo E. Taylor over a preface written by Herbert Hoover himself, urging the use of whole grain foods because they contain substances which when not present bring about serious conditions of malnutrition resulting in death.

This strange paradox disclosed a condition of official vagueness in the Food Administration, where sharply outlined truth alone should have existed.

"Much more mineral matter is contained in grain offal than in patent flour," says the Hoover-Taylor statement. "Individuals who prefer bread made of patent flour must therefore secure their mineral salts from fruits and vegetables, and this is entirely practicable. If, however, it is not possible to secure fruits and vegetables then the diet must contain flour made of the whole grain in order to obtain the necessary mineral matter.

"Cereals contain the water soluble vitamine in the outer layers, and it is therefore not present in patent flour, but is present in whole wheat flour."

The authorities at Washington knew according to the most reputable authorities that at the outbreak of the war 2 percent of the people of the United States owned 60 percent of the wealth; 33 percent of the people -- the middle class -- owned 35 percent, and the remaining 65 percent of the people owned 5 percent of the wealth.

They knew that war activities had sharply accentuated this concentration of wealth and further reduced the holdings of the many whose war incomes, although inflated, did not keep pace with the rapidly advancing prices of foodstuffs.

They knew that the immigration commission which reported in 1909 upon the incomes of nearly 16,000 families whose bread winners were engaged in industrial pursuits found the incomes of 64 percent of them below $750 a year, and the incomes of 31 percent below $500 a year, the families averaging 5.6 members each.

Even then 8,000,000 women were industrially employed in America, two-thirds of them receiving less than $8 and nearly one-half receiving less than $6 a week.

Two million of these women were described as "adrift" from home. They were entirely self-supporting.

Five million, four hundred thousand women who lived at home contributed largely to the support of parents and other dependents by pouring their earnings into the family purse.

A hundred authorities had told us in the most emphatic terms of the necessity of putting into the bodies of these people the important substances withdrawn from so much of their food. Professor Taylor himself says that 55 percent of their food consists of bread, and by that he means denatured bread.

As if to accentuate these truths as a preparation for America's entry into the war, the Association of American Physicians met at Washington, May, 1916, with Dr. Henry Sewell of Denver in the chair.

At that convention, the 31st, Dr. E. J. Wood of Wilmington, N. C., presented long neglected evidence to show the deadliness of the deficiency diseases which he declared have been far more specific than is thought.

The theory that the people were getting their offsetting minerals and vitamines from fruits and vegetables had long been battered down, but as a theory it still persisted in high places, as in the Food Administration.

Dr. Wood declared: "Refined corn meal, polished rice and patent flour are deadly foods. We have proved this by experiments in which we provoked outbreaks of disease by feeding highly milled meal to our victims, and in every instance promptly correcting the disease by feeding whole meal."

Dr. Alfred S. Hess at the same convention declared: "Whereas Dr. Wood has found the germ of corn, always bolted out in making refined corn meal, to be a sure cure for deficiency diseases, I have found the wheat germ always bolted out in making white flour, a sure cure for malnutrition in infants."

Yes, confusion rests upon the multitudes. Their scientific leaders, who have no political, state or federal authority, seek to lead them out of their perils. Their scientific leaders who do possess authority are strangely content to let them rest where they are.


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