Within five months after its entry into the war the United States, profiting by the experience of the Allies, took steps toward the organization of a branch of the army which would devote itself to the conservation and reclamation of articles and materials which would otherwise be wasted. Pursuant to this policy there was established in October, 1917, the Conservation Branch of the Supplies Division of the Quartermaster-General’s Office with a personnel of two officers and a stenographer. Within less than a year this little nucleus had expanded into the huge Salvage Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage, with 500 officers, 20,000 enlisted men, and 2,000 civilian employees. The work of this division has consisted, generally speaking, in cleaning, laundering, repairing, renovating, and otherwise looking after the uniform and equipment of the American soldier, and in those cases where the uniform or equipment was too badly damaged to be worth repairing, the service has devised means of using the sound material for other purposes. During the six months beginning April 1, 1918, the service salvaged nearly 9,250,000 articles of clothing and equipment. The value of these articles when new was something over $41,000,000. After their repair it is estimated that their value was in the neighborhood of $29,000,000. The total cost of repair was a little more than $2,500,000, leaving a net saving due to this salvage operation of about $23,500,000. Quite a tidy sum. During four months of 1918 the Salvage Service collected approximately 43,000,000 pounds of junk, including old metals, iron, rubber, cotton and woollen rags, rope, paper, leather, and horsehair. About 3,000,000 pounds of this material, having an estimated value of $769,000, was reissued for army use, while 19,000,000 pounds was sold for $508,000, leaving 23,000,000 pounds still to be disposed of. Had it not been for the Salvage Service, practically all this would have gone to waste. In addition this division collected a great quantity of lumber, mostly odds and ends, of which $25,000 worth was reissued for army use and $475,000 worth was sold, leaving approximately 1,750,000 board feet on hand. From May to November, 1918, the Salvage Division collected and sold $300,000 worth of garbage, and nearly $200,000 worth of manure and condemned hay and straw, to say nothing of dead animals to the value of $5,000, thus netting upward of $500,000 from the swill-pail, the manure-pile, and the bone-yard alone! The American soldier likes to sit down to his meals with a heaping plate before him, and as he rarely eats everything on his plate, an enormous amount of perfectly good material finds its way to the garbage-barrel. It is estimated that prior to July, 1918, every man in the camps in the United States wasted approximately two pounds of food per day in this fashion. Then the machinery of the Salvage Service was set in operation, it being estimated that in five