Organization of Voluntary Conservation

ORGANIZATION OF VOLUNTARY CONSERVATION.The general plan is to ask every person in the country who presides over household and public eating of food to join the Food Administration as an actual “member”. All members to sign a pledge to follow the advice and directions given, in so far as his or her circumstances permit. Each member to be issued a certificate, a house tag, and some form of insignia to indicate membership, and to be given concise instructions as to saving, substitutions, and domestic economy generally. These instructions to be formulated by the committee on Domestic Economy, Food Utilization, Alimentation, and Public Health, under the guidance of the departmental heads.
It is proposed to use the services of the Press, all the women's organizations, Boy Scouts, Hotel Associations, etc. of the country in recruiting this membership and to use the State Food Administrations and various other associations in its management. While it is intended ultimately to decentralize the administration into the states, it is nevertheless considered vital that in recruiting membership the organization should be national in character and thus better appeal to the imaginative side of national service.
It is imperative that no time should be lost, because:(a) It should be possible to reduce national food expenditure at least to the extent of $1,000,000,000 per annum, i. e. - the individual expenditure by 3 cents per diem.(b) The wide propaganda and the service implied will contribute very largely to bringing the realization of war and the self-sacrifice required into every home.(c) The growing season is now rapidly drawing to a close and if we are to save the surplus of vegetables by urging their consumption in substitution of staples and their preservation, we must act at once.Herbert Hoover enclosed this memorandum in a letter to President Wilson, dated June 12, 1917.