Self-Denial & Self-Respect

The President took steps to accept his vast responsibility for the world's food supply. As the Government moved to speed wheat shipments overseas (see BUSINESS), Harry Truman called World War I's famed food expert, former President Herbert Hoover, and a Famine Committee of twelve other prominent citizens* to the White House. Their job: to formulate a program through which the U.S. public could voluntarily practice self-denial as the price of national self-respect.

Said the committee, after its first meeting:

"The facts as presented, showed deficiencies in food supplies that threaten death by starvation to untold millions in other lands. The facts show this country to be the principal hope for salvation. The facts also show an increase in food consumption in this country of substantial proportions above the prewar years.

"Americans of good will can do more and do it faster than any system of government rationing orders. Speed is vital. ... A reduction of 25% in the present consumption of wheat and wheat products is needed.

"The committee, therefore, urges that . . . our people reduce their consumption of bread and wheat products. Conservation of food oils and fats now going on should be increased in every possible way. The committee appeals for cooperation ... to every individual American and to every American home. . . .

"It was the unanimous and strong feeling that our people, knowing the facts, will want to stop all wastage of foods and to deny themselves a substantial proportion of their daily consumption of certain foods, so that millions may survive who are otherwise doomed to death by starvation."

* Sheldon Clark, chairman of the executive committee of the Sinclair Oil Corp.; Justin Miller, president of the National Association of Broadcasters; Clarence Francis, board chairman of the General Foods Corp.; George Gallup of Young & Rubicam; Henry R. Luce, TIME Inc.; James W. Young of J. Walter Thompson Co.; Dr. William I. Myers of Cornell University; Chester C. Davis of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank; Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post; Anna Lord Strauss, president of the League of Women Voters; Mrs. La Fell Dickinson, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs; Eric Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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