The poorest family in New Jerusalem is headed by Silas Miller (a pseudonym). Miller is never too sure how many people live in his house, or even how many children he has. It doesn't matter; it's obviously too many. Usually there are about 23 people--half of them Miller's children, the rest an assortment of relatives, neighbors, and "little fellers we just couldn't turn away"--living in the one-room house.

There is one bed in the Miller's house; Miller and his weary wife sleep there. Three of their children fill the floor space of the single room. Everyone else sleeps outside. Sleeping outside--usually under the house--can occasionally be pleasant, especially during the hot summer nights. Then the only discomforts are the rats and insects. But during the winter it's hard to find enough clothing to keep the cold out. Each winter since 1963 someone in the family has died under the house on a cold night.

Pork Fat

Other people die in the household. Four weeks ago, a three-month old baby died, lying alone on the parents' bed. The little girl had eaten nothing but pork fat in her short life; Mrs. Miller had no mild of her own to give the baby, and there was no money to buy milk from the store.

The Millers are an extreme case, Not many other families in the Black Belt make much more than Mr. Miller (about $12 a week), but not many families have 23 people to support. Miller himself didn't use to be in such bad condition--it wasn't until 1963 that he started losing children from cold and hunger. Before 1963, the family planted 25 acres of cotton and had enough money to have regular meals and to clothe the children for school.

But in 1963, the state Cotton Office cut off Miller's cotton allotment. Cotton is one of the nation's surplus crops, and each farmer can plant only as many acres as the Cotton Office allows him. Unfortunately, the Cotton Office is run by white Alabamians, and that often means there is discrimination. Miller's allotment went to a white planter in the country--a man who already had more than 300 acres allotted--and Miller's appeal to the Cotton Office brought no results.

The Miller's problems, again, are extreme. Not many families in the Black Belt have seen children starve to death. But malnutrition is nearly universal. Many black families know about children who "can't think right" because of the wrong kind of food; a Dpeartment of Agriculture worker said last summer that somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent of all black children in central Alabama suffer brain damage by the time they are five years old because of protein deficiency. Adult Negroes show the effect of another kind of malnutrition. A diet based on fat and carbohydrate produces bloated, formless women, and men who die twice as often of heart disease as whites do.

Part of the nutritional problem is caused by ignorance and custom: the black Southern diet is based on the pig. Southern pigs yield some meat, but that doesn't last long. At pigkilling time--usually near the beginning of fall--families have a few meals of bacon and pork loin. From then on, dinner consists of the other pig parts--the ears, the tail, the chittlins (intestines), and--worst of all--the fatback.

Nobody Starves Here

Fatback, or "white meat," is the layer of fat between the pig's skin and its viscera. It is usually three or four inches thick, and it makes up the majority of a pig's bulk. It has, of course, a high caloric value, and is great for keeping human bodies alive at low cost. But steady meals of fatback, grits, and vegetables swimming in melted fatback are guaranteed to produce lethargy, ill health, and braindamaged children.

America clings to its belief that Nobody Starves Here, based principally on the government's programs to help hungry people. It is a painful awakening for a white liberal to see that the two food programs--the older Surplus Commodities program and the newer Food Stamps plans--do little to solve the problem.

Surplus Commodities is a simple program based on a simple concept. The Department of Agriculture, realizing that the problems of farm surplus and rural hunger can theoretically be solved in one great swoop, gives out its extra food to families who don't have enough.

That sounds good. Unfortunately, Surplus Commodities has several built-in problems, both in concept and execution. Poor families learned quickly that there was no way to get enough commodities to feed the family; the supply of free food usually lasts ten or twelve days into the month. But that was more forgiveable than the program's more basic sin--its orientation to farm needs rather than the needs of hungry people.

When families went in to get their commodities, they found that the Agriculture workers were giving them whatever happened to be overproduced by American farms that month. When the surplus was corn or flour or other relatively wholesome staples, things worked out. But sometimes, the surplus items didn't happen to match with what the families needed to eat. One month two years ago, families walked away from the Commodities office with 25-pound sacks of peanuts. Another time in 1964 the total monthly distribution consisted of beets and celery. Even in the best months, there is an obvious lack of meat and other protein-rich foods. Department of Agriculture tables reveal that a diet based on commodities provides about 3 or 4 per cent of the protein needed for healthy development, and about 350 per cent of the fat and carbohydrate requirement.

Three Dollars