The system of compelling their peoples to limit themselves to a fixed quantity of various foods was never carried out as fully in the allied countries as in Germany and the other Central Powers. By the late summer of 1916, for instance, Germany had rationed bread, pota toes, sugar, milk, meat, butter and fats, cheese, cocoa, tea, rice, macaroni and other articles, while in Great Britain in the spring of 1918 national rationing had been extended only to sugar and meat, although before that time local rationing of butter and margarine had become almost general throughout the British Isles ex cept in the agricultural districts. Germau's first experiments were with butter tickets. Re duction of consumption in the allied countries was accomplished for the most part more largely through other methods and by popular appeals and voluntary conservation. Actual food control did not take a very definite •form until toward the end of 1916, although much had been done long before that time, of course, both to increase production and to provide for proper distribution and con sumption. It was not until 5 Dec. 1916, for instance, that the public meals order was issued which limited the number of courses at lunch eons and dinners in hotels, restaurants and clubs. Shortly after this Lloyd George became Prime Minister, and one of his first acts was the appointment of a Food Controller.
The problem of increased production did not begin to present itself in a pressing form in Great Britain and France until the submarine warfare of Germany assumed serious propor tions and began to take toll of many commerce carriers and precious cargoes of food. With the labor left at home heroic France was doing all it possibly could to keep the yield large, but between 1914 and 1917 there was a decrease of about 50 per cent in the production of that country. Great Britain was still depending to a large extent on supplies from the outside world; and in 1916-17 the United Kingdom raised only enough of its own foodstuffs to last for about ten .weeks. This was increased in the following year through the plowing up of much hitherto unused land, although not by a great amount; but by the season of 1918-19 it had grown to such proportions that England and Wales were producing within their own borders wheat, oats, barley, corn and potatoes to care for the food demands for forty weeks, or four fifths of a year. Improved methods of farm ing, the use of tractors and other labor-saving machinery; the addition of many millions of acres to the farm territory; the patriotic and unselfish work of women in going on the farms; and the cultivation of hundreds of thousands of small tracts in and around the cities and towns, were among the principal means by which this enlarged home grown supply was brought about.
The United States, which in the meantime had been supplying an increasingly growing amount of wheat, beef and other foods to the Allies was also devoting itself intensively to the problem of turning out vaster quantities of food stuffs. It was not until the United States en tered the war in the spring of 1917 that any unusual help was required by the farmers in this direction. Even before that time they had lost some of their help which had been drawn off by munition factories that were manufacturing guns, ammunition and other material for the Allies. After the entry of the United States into the war the question of production here took on a different aspect. It was realized what the effect of the draft would be on the farmer; and so the government did all it could to help him and to make the drawing off of so much labor bear as lightly as'possible on the producer. The call was made to him to plant as much as he could; emergency help to aid in gathering the harvests was secured for him through the employment service of the United States De partment of Labor and the United States Boys' Working Reserve; and the use of much new machinery was advocated. At the same time another new factor in production was intro duced. This was the appeal to the people liv ing in cities, towns and villages to cultivate all the idle land, the back yards, vacant lots and open 'spaces and turn them into war gardens. A national organization known as the National War Garden Commission was formed by Charles Lathrop Pack, president of the Amer ican Forestry Association, to stimulate this form of food production; and the results were eminently satisfactory. As to what England was doing in the same direction, a report pub lished in August 1918, says : <