War News: Food Will Win the War

February 28, 2018 

Proponents of wartime food rationing would have felt their efforts worthwhile if they had read the February 28, 1918, edition of The Dothan Home and Farm Journal. Marketed as “The Oldest, Best Established, and Largest Circulated Weekly Newspaper in the Wiregrass Section,” editors L.S. Deal and R.H. Ferguson knew their target audience well. Setting aside politics, religion, and sports, The Journal focused exclusively on agricultural matters of interest to the region’s thousands of yeoman farmers and their wives. For these men and women, their livelihoods so tied to the land, food conservation was a patriotic act, indeed.

The eight-page February 28 edition includes rationing-related news on virtually every page. Recipes to make “meatless Mondays” and “porkless Saturdays” a bit easier, like pea soufflé, kidney bean stew, and Calcutta rice occupy most of the front page. An advertisement on page five entitled “The Housewife and the War” offers up a surprisingly robust menu for young children, which includes a breakfast of baked apples, lamb chops and rice for lunch, and stewed prunes, milk, and break for dinner. Subsequent articles reinforce the conservation of wheat and sugar by offering recipe substitutes like “egg bread” and sweet fruits.