The Great War demanded sacrifices in July 1918 -- from restrictions on when you could eat a beef sandwich in a restaurant to whether the market would or would not deliver your groceries, to how many times a proper woman was supposed to revamp the same old frock (infinite times).
Every day in some way the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat promoted the War Savings Stamps campaign, a national drive that raised money for the war through citizens' small loans to the Treasury Department. Failure to spend all your spare change on these savings products was tantamount to helping the Kaiser kill our boys -- you slacker.
Other patriotic duties lurked under every bush, especially the food-bearing bushes.
Advice from farm experts, home economics experts and the jacks-of-all-expertise experts who write newspaper editorials harped on the need to grow more food, save more food, use different food, stop eating such yummy food -- so the soldiers and allies had plenty to eat.
Advertisements followed the spirit of the hour, too. Example: Using Armour's Vegetole, a purely vegetable product, "helps you save fat for our soldiers."
With the whole choir of experts advocating thrift, the poor manufacturers and their advertising copywriters practically stood on their heads to portray buying their products as an act of patriotism.
Many ads warned that insects were the Kaiser's army, sent to starve Americans. Here's the bug-killing powder Hofstra, able to stop a deadly invasion:
The flying and creeping enemies of the home, the garden and the poultry house -- the disease-spreading and food destroying Huns -- are swarming to the attack. Stop them with Hofstra (pronounced HoffStraw).
Another bug killer put the "war" right on its label:
Flies are kin to the Kaiser. They carry FILTH and GERMS that cause typhoid, infantile paralysis, tuberculosis, Etc. WAR ON FLIES kills insects by the thousands. ...
Just 25 cents for the big bellows box.
Among their many, many patriotic duties, women should take something called Nuxated Iron. An informative ad for this product in the July 7 Gazette contrasted drawings of hatless females making art, embroidering, playing the pianoforte, with drawings depicting women wearing hats and doing a man's work -- using a hoe, driving a car, pulling the cable on a streetcar:
Physicians explain why women need more iron in their blood today than 30 years ago:
Less than a quarter of a century ago, little or no effort was expected of the average woman and her quiet pursuits demanded far less strength, energy and endurance than now. ... Today there is not a woman but who stands ready to serve her country and do a man's work if necessary. But to meet the strain she must be full of the life, vim and vitality that come from having plenty of iron in the blood.
Especially creative were the ad writers for the makers of upscale goods, which cost more than the downscale type and so would seem to be at odds with the patriot's desire to exercise a noncombatant's cardinal virtue -- "thrift."
From an ad for the Channell Chemical Co.'s O-Cedar Polish Mop:
You waste time when you clean, dust and polish floors and woodwork the old way. That is three operations.
With the O-Cedar Polish Mop you do these three things at one time. In addition, your floors are cleaner, brighter and prettier than ever before. As you save work, you save time and money.
In many homes, the O-Cedar Polish Mop has solved the servant problem. In others it pays for itself in the saving of brooms alone.
Here's a fine ad from the July 3 Democrat for men's sock garters, which, the manufacturer counsels, ought to cost 35 cents a pair -- or more.
Men of America: Follow Uncle Sam!
Uncle Sam is a shrewd buyer. He investigates, compares values, studies and experiments -- and then buys the best.
He willingly pays high prices -- demands standard quality -- and is too wise to stint on first cost -- knowing that "to save at the spigot and waste at the [fill] hole" is false economy.
In among the warlike propriety of editorials advocating duty we can detect a bit of tongue-in-cheek. Check out this gem from the Gazette's smart-alecky Here and There in Arkansas column of July 2:
A sow belonging to Dan Baker of Mountain Home gave birth to 19 pigs recently. The Baxter County Citizen, published at Mountain Home, praises the patriotism of the sow.
I wasn't able to find the Citizen's original story, but while searching stumbled over a surprising demand, from the June 1, 1918, Fayetteville Daily Democrat:
Don't forget the Baby Parade Monday. The parade will be headed by the Boy Scouts and include school children of primary grade. ... Uncle Sam wants the people to be impressed with the importance of his little folks. Participation in the parade is a patriotic duty. You are expected, either as a participant or an onlooker.
As it is today, the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service was busily promoting educated and thrifty habits across the land.
Make the Old Gown Serve Uncle Sam
Use brains and design your own clothes, says Miss Metzger
In reports carried by the July 6 and 7 Gazette, readers learned that Miss Evelyn Metzger of the University of Arkansas Extension Service, lecturing on "Wartime Economy in Dress and the Home" at the YWCA in Little Rock, had denounced the purchase of $15 gingham dresses the women might design for themselves for half the expense.
Fear of sewing up a shapeless, unflattering sack would be overcome by making the effort to study the body and learning what looks best. Don't lazily allow manufacturers to do for you what you can do for yourself -- you slacker gal.
She gave other advice, too, and I don't mean to imply it wasn't good advice, because it was and still is.
The well meaning housewife was warned in horrified tones not to buy pictorial rugs of dogs, sheep and playing children that must lie pasted upon the floor in unnatural positions. You have a picture instead of a rug then, she said, and should nail it upon the wall.
Why not go into the scrap bag and make a braided rug out of the discarded pieces if a new rug is needed? "A thing of beauty and service is in as good style now as it was 300 years ago," she said.
In the spirit of sharing education, I shall leave you with this:
Mrs. Ruth Peck McLeod of the U.S. Food Administration, director of Home Economies for Arkansas, writing in the July 1 Gazette proclaimed "a pound of cottage cheese is more nutritious than a pound of meat."
Shall the use of cottage cheese be confined only to the rural districts? The women of the cities should purchase skimmed milk and make cottage cheese to use as a meat substitute.
Of course she provides recipes -- cottage cheese loaf, cottage cheese sausage, cheese and potato croquettes. Email me if you'd like to see them.
Here I am:
ActiveStyle on 07/02/2018