When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with
rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of
a new grain that they called _mahiz_. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found
this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for
making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce
prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout
the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved
worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for
the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the
delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London
stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American
Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful
appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with
a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in
Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as
an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they
would rather die than eat it--and some of them did. Our Department of
Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with farmers and millers
as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the
propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat
more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken
region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at
potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford,
attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.