lost by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by
the Board of Health. She secured permission to have the sound and
unsound fruits and vegetables separated and with a large committee of
women saved the food for consumption by the community by dehydrating and
other preserving processes.

This was not as mother used to do.

Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world
round. At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed
through municipal kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued
by Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to
open kitchens as food distributing centers. The central government is to
bear twenty-five percent of the cost of equipment and lend another
twenty-five percent to start the enterprise.

Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies.

Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship with
men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world.

XI

A LAND ARMY

Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women;
will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have
as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why
should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and
they have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment
the minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to
the possible contribution of women to land service.

The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national
dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States.
In part, it is as follows:

"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers
of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under
existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less
surpass it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control.

"The chief causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next
year, unless promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of
which the first is the shortage of farm labor.

"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there
is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there
are men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the
high wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their
places remai