The Prosperity That Wasn't: Bread Lines, Rising Prices and a Pellagra Warning
The Courier takes its critics to task: bank clearances may be soaring, but with the cost of living nearly doubled, the government itself is warning of hunger-driven disease.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Two or three times we have been taken to task for saying in the issue before Christmas that more people were close to the bread line than for many years, and the wonderful growth of bank clearances, the enormous trade balance in our favor, the lack of unemployment, and many other indications of prosperity have been pointed out to us. Still we maintain that while many are making money, most families are finding living harder than ever, for the cost of living has almost doubled while their incomes have increased very little, if any. Now we find that the department of agriculture bears out our assertion, for in a bulletin issued January 2d, wherein the statement is made that pellagra is largely due to insufficient diet, a warning is issued from which we quote: "It is feared, however, that pellagra may increase in 1917 by reason of an increase of food cost out of proportion to the prosperity now enjoyed in this country. The great rise in the cost of forage is causing the people in many localities to sell their cows and thus there is danger they will deprive themselves of milk, one of the most valuable pellagra prevention foods. The high cost of living has further served to bring about a reduction in many families in the quantity of meat, eggs, beans and peas consumed, all of which are pellagra prophylactics." When a wide-spread epidemic of disease is so feared on account of insufficient food that the government issues special warnings about it, we can't help wondering where all the prosperity is.
“While many are making money, most families are finding living harder than ever, for the cost of living has almost doubled while their incomes have increased very little, if any.”
The Courier's argument — that headline prosperity figures hide the reality of families skipping milk and meat — is almost word for word the debate over today's grocery bills and 'the economy is fine' messaging. A 1917 warning that high food prices could cause disease reads eerily like modern alarms about food insecurity in a wealthy country. The gap between the aggregate numbers and the family table has never closed.
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