U.S. At War: Kitchen Sweepstakes

The nation's grocers have been pushing the sale of peaches for the past three weeks. Next week they will ask customers in a concerted chorus: "How about a pound of cheese?" This teamwork is the result of an extraordinarily successful plan to distribute surplus commodities (technically: "gluts"). The Department of Agriculture asks patriotic citizens, through their more than 500,000 U.S. grocers, to buy Victory Specials. Thus the grocers sell immediately, in peak seasons at good prices, the superabundant harvests that would otherwise rot on the ground, or sell for less than cost.

Nine surplus commodities...