Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

lowest figure. The local people could not appreciate all that was involved in the problem of keeping demand from exceeding supply. An echo of their dissatisfaction regard- ing the methods of the A.M.R. on this point came back from America to Russia, and makes an explanation to the point necessary. The A.M.R. had, to begin operations in the Ukraine, about $10,000 per month, which would feed about 13,000 people. How keep the lists down to that number, and still save as many people as possible? It was soon evident to the committees that the original feeding lists, hastily prepared, would have to be revised. The A.M.R. as- sumed: (1) that those who were giving the money were interested primarily in saving lives—not, as some liked to put it, in making love gifts to particular groups; and (2) that the only way to fulfill this primary obligation of the organization was to begin at the bottom—with the very poorest and neediest—in the places where feeding was being done. On this basis the first instructions had been ORGANIZING FEEDING OPERATIONS 219 to put into the first category—which was to be fed as far as possible—only those families that had no food, no possibility of procuring any, and not more than one cow. Even in these families, one person was shut out for the possession of any one of the following: each horse fit to work, each quart of milk received, each sheep, every ten chickens. A man with two cows was for the moment considered wealthy, because he still had the possibility of exchanging one of those for bread. The man with neither cows nor horses was poorer than he. Some of the people protested against what seemed to them an arbitrary rul- ing, and one that militated against the possibility of their getting on their feet again later. ‘Shall we dispose of our horses and cows, now that spring is nearly here?” they asked. The A.M.R. was forced to reply, ‘Choose for yourself. We cannot possibly keep you all alive.’’ One man who had two cows and several sheep, on which ac- count he was not admitted into the kitchen, preferred lying in bed, his feet swollen from the effects of hunger, to parting with his livestock. Another man permitted his ten-year-old son to die of starvation, rather than to sell one of his cows. Another situation that developed as a result of keep- ing the lists as low as possible, was that the A.M.R. was soon feeding all of the thieves, vagabonds, the shiftless, the lazy poor, while the good people who had struggled and saved and put themselves on rations, had to go on eating their black bread. Some of them felt “What is the use of my saving? It only keeps me out of the American kitchen a while longer!” One well-to-do man said, ‘‘My relatives in America write that they are send- ing money to help us, and hope that we are enjoying the nice white bread. Why do we not get any of it?” One group of people thought that we ought to help those who knew how to help themselves