PLUS SHIPS. Not a single ship must go farther than is absolutely
necessary. A glance at the map shows why wheat for Europe should come
from North America rather than from Australia or India, or even the
Argentine. The trip from Australia is three times as long as from
North America, so it takes only one-third as many ships to carry food
to Europe from the United States as from Australia. The Argentine is
twice as far from Europe as the United States, and therefore twice
as many ships are needed to carry an equal amount of Argentine food
to Europe. If this continent could produce and save enough next year
to provide the whole of the Allied food necessities, we could save
1,500,000 tons of world shipping to be used for other purposes. EVERY
SHIP SAVED IS A SHIP BUILT TO CARRY MORE MEN AND MORE AMMUNITION TO
FRANCE.


WHEAT IN THE UNITED STATES

The United States has never had a large wheat surplus to export, and
the last few years it has had an unusually low supply to meet the
extraordinary demand. The 1916 crop was small. The 1917 crop was
only four-fifths of normal, little more than we ordinarily consume
ourselves. We entered the last harvest with our stocks of wheat and
other cereals practically exhausted. Hence to feed the Allies until
the 1918 harvest, we had to send wheat which we should ordinarily have
eaten. All that we could send under normal conditions from July, 1917,
to July, 1918, has usually been estimated at about 20,000,000 bushels,
but in the first eleven months of this time we actually did send
120,000,000 bushels, six times as much as we could have shipped
without conservation. One-half of the total output of our flour-mills
in the month of May, 1918, went abroad.