MEAT AND MAIZE.
(To TEE EDITOR OF TEO "SPECTATOR.") -
Sia,—The meat problem, which has been in full view for ten years past, can best be relieved, as you pointed out in your final issue of the year hull down, by drawing more on " the harvest of the ocean." It is inexcusable that the boundless resources of the waters off Newfoundland, where fishing can be carried on with entire safety, are neglected utterly at this time of crisis. But kir beef, pork, and bacon there is promise of relief after May as a result of the very bounteous maize harvest of the United States. The crop this year is well over three thousand million bushels : this is six hundred million bushels more than the 1916 harvest, itself a fair harvest. Such figures convey little meaning: it assists judgment to point out that the entire United States wheat crop of this year is six hundred and fifty million bushels. The value of the United States maize harvest for 1917 is over eleven hundred millions sterling. Beef, pork, and bacon are in America just maize incar- nate. It used to be reckoned that ten pounds of maize were a pound of beef. At this rough reckoning the difference represented by this year's over last year's maize crop is some million eight hundred thousand tons of meat. The Allied nations will not lack meat next May when the ships now building commence to carry abroad the cattle and pigs now fattening, and there is much comfort in these bald statistics.—I am, Sir, &c., MORETON FREWEN.
Previous page
