reliance of the human race. A shortage is always extremely serious.

Not only is an abundance important, but an abundance of the accustomed
kind. In parts of India, the inhabitants use rice as almost the only
cereal. When the rice-crop failed some years ago, thousands of people
died of starvation with a supply of wheat available. They did not know
the use of wheat as food.

Countries like France, which use their cereals chiefly for bread, are
the most dependent on wheat, since wheat is the most easily made into
bread.

In the United States cereals make up almost one-third of our food.
Although wheat in most parts of the country has been the main
dependence, we have used a much greater variety of cereals than most
people, so that it is comparatively simple for the majority to make
increased use of them.

The very poor must depend largely upon cereals because they can get
more for their money from them than from other foods. Cereals, to most
of them, mean bread. It is such a large part of their diet that doing
without it means a far more fundamental and difficult change in their
food habits than for the well-to-do with greater freedom of choice.
Besides, the already overburdened working woman must get her bread in
the easiest possible way--a ready-made loaf from the baker. The burden
of scarcity or high prices falls on those least able to bear it.

Europeans eat even larger amounts of wheat than we. Over half the
food of the French is bread, so if the wheat shortage were near the
danger-line, it might lead to a serious weakening of the marvellous