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Pure Food

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Being principally responsible for the food of the family as well as the children, women have joined with spirit in what is known as the pure food movement. In many a city, large and small, women’s associations have taken up the question of the proper food supply and by concerted efforts wrought marvelous results. An illustration of an active municipal campaign for pure food carried on by women is described in the American City for June, 1914, by Katherine G. Leonard, secretary of the Pure Food Committee of the Civic League of Grand Forks, North Dakota:

What has been accomplished by the Pure Food Committee of the Civic League of Grand Forks may be equaled or surpassed by any group of determined women in any small city. To be sure, it is somewhat easier to keep clean in a climate which has no excessive heat and moisture and with a population made up for the most part of Americans and Scandinavians. However, vigilance and education will more than make up for differences in climate, but efforts must be ceaseless if results are to be forthcoming.

When this committee was organized under the able leadership of Dr. May Sanders, chairman, the work was new to all, and methods had to be devised. The first step was a consultation with Prof. E. F. Ladd, State Pure Food Commissioner, who was of great assistance in suggesting just and reasonable methods of dealing with the subject of sanitary inspection of foods so that the interests of both merchant and consumer might be safeguarded.

A general educational campaign was inaugurated. The state pure food and drugs act was printed in folder form, and a copy, together with a personal letter calling attention to the provisions of the law and asking coöperation in its enforcement, was mailed to each of the 128 food merchants then doing business in the city. The portion of the law applying to a special class of stores or goods was red-lined when sent to a man selling that article. For example, sections relating to bakeries were red-lined when sent to bakers; those applying to groceries were marked for grocers. Ten days were given the merchants in which to clean house and prepare for state inspection.

The state inspection continued five days, of eight hours each, and the inspector was accompanied by Mrs. R. A. Sprague, who later became local officer. Each merchant was rated on a score card provided by the state commissioner for the purpose.

It became evident that the only way to secure sanitary inspection of food at intervals frequent enough to make the city food supply reasonably clean was to have a regular city official for the purpose. To that end a second petition was presented to the city council, with the result that an ordinance was passed providing for the office of food inspector. Mayor Murphy was fortunate in his choice of Mrs. R. A. Sprague, as she had proved her ability in the work of general inspector for the Civic League. The ordinance is an excellent instrument and answers many questions that arise in the work of inspection.

Since her appointment as local food inspector, Mrs. Sprague has also been made resident food inspector by the state pure food commissioner.

The work of the food inspector showed conclusively that the education of the public had only begun and that in order to make her labors most efficient the pure food committee must devise means of keeping the subject before the people. The greatest menace during the late summer and autumn is the house fly, and no work along the line of sanitary food supply can be effective that does not emphasize the necessity of doing away entirely with the breeding places of this deadly pest. Grand Forks has a garbage ordinance which, if strictly enforced, would go far toward accomplishing this end.

However, no matter how good the law, public opinion must be back of it to make it effective, and education must be administered in large and frequent doses. The newspaper and motion-picture theater are excellent teachers, since they reach the largest audience, and the one most difficult to interest. Through the courtesy of the Grand Forks Herald, a fly-page was edited by the pure food committee in August, when the fly season is at its height and the dread of typhoid is strong with the parents of the less fortunate classes. Yellow journalism of the most lurid type was resorted to, and so black was the little pest painted in both prose and verse that the public seemed roused to the situation.

Closely following the press exposé of the fly came the climax of the season’s campaign for pure food and sanitary conditions. The public-spirited proprietor of one of the motion-picture theaters gave the pure food committee the use of the theater with all proceeds for one day for the presentation of the fly-pest film. …

As a result of complaints from dairymen and confectioners that bottle and ice cream cans were returned in bad condition, cards with hints to housewives were printed and distributed by milkmen to their customers.

The subject of a municipal slaughter house was brought before various organizations and committees were appointed to coöperate in a city-wide effort to solve the problem. The subject of a city incinerator for the disposal of garbage was also agitated.

The pure food committee, through the courtesy of the Minnesota food commission, secured the pure food exhibit of the commission, placing it in a conspicuous place on the grounds during the state fair, with a lecturer in charge. This proved a great attraction, and the space in front of the exhibit was crowded with people from the rural districts who had heard little of the new gospel of pure food. The local food inspector visited each food concession as it was being placed, and explained the pure food law, with a hint that it was to be enforced on the grounds during the fair. Several later visits were made to the concessions, and suggestions were made and many bad practices discovered and stopped. For example, lemonade must be made from lemons rather than from acid powder was one order enforced. It was noticeable that the eating places having screens were the most popular.

The second season of pure food education is naturally less strenuous for the committee, but not so for the inspector, who, if she be the woman for the place, continually finds new problems to be solved. No small part of her time must be devoted to receiving complaints and assisting merchants in planning ways of complying more completely with the law. She should be kind, tactful, firm and resourceful, with a touch of the Sherlock Holmes quality.

It is well to invite the members of the city council and board of health to take an early spring drive to the city dumping grounds and slaughter houses—early enough to find conditions at their worst.

No one factor can make for the health of a community more surely than a strict enforcement of the pure food laws. This enforcement by a special officer makes it possible for bad practices of all kinds to be traced and eliminated, either by persuasion or fine. It makes it possible for the poor to be supplied with clean, pure food, and this is really the greatest good that can come of the law, since the well-to-do, who buy at large, well-kept stores on main business streets, where neatness is an asset, can more easily influence the food merchants. The poor, buying in small quantities, patronize the small, ill-kept store in the vicinity of the home, and have little influence. With food inspectors, one store is as rigidly scrutinized as another, and the small buyer at the small, out-of-the-way store has equal protection with the large buyer at the large store in the center of business.

In response to an inquiry the following report comes later from Mrs. Leonard:

The municipal abattoir was built in Grand Forks, and, by dint of all the pressure the Civic League could bring to bear, it was put in working order after being carelessly constructed. After working for years to get the abattoir and telling the Council what features were necessary to make it efficient and sanitary, not one of the women was put on the advisory committee, even, when it was being built. It is still far from perfect and yet scarcely a week passes that the food inspector does not receive inquiries for plans and advice from towns all over the West, such is the interest in the smaller Western cities in doing things for themselves. With all the bad management, the abattoir has some months paid expenses, which is an excellent showing for so new an institution.

The activity of Indiana women was a large factor in the establishment of a state laboratory of hygiene under the Board of Health charged with the examination of food and drugs and assistance in the enforcement of health laws. The chief of the food research laboratory in Philadelphia is a woman—Dr. Mary Pennington.

Missouri women pledged their efforts to a pure food crusade some time ago, while the excellent laws in Texas reflect the interest of the women of that state. In 1906 the women of Iowa drafted a pure food bill which they presented to the legislature. In Ohio where fair legislation existed, the women worked to have it enforced.

In Kansas State Food Commissioner Fricke appealed to the club women to aid him in enforcing food regulations of that state by acting as volunteer inspectors. Where they have not been asked by city and state officials to act, women have often proceeded to act on their own initiative. An official inspection and report on dairy products were recently undertaken by Chicago Club women during the session of the National Dairy Show. Women in Louisiana are active in the inspection of bakeries, meat markets and dairies. It is largely due to the work of women that fruit stands and markets are screened in New Orleans, a city in utmost need of such care. This is true of many other cities. Louisiana has a woman as state health inspector—Agnes Morris.

In Wheeling, West Virginia, the club women have been asking for a woman food inspector. Tacoma, Washington, is one of those cities which already have a woman serving in that capacity. Such a clean food supply is reported from that city that other communities in the state are imitating its example. The women of Seattle, Washington, transformed some old plants into five large modern sanitary bakeries.

Mrs. Sarah Evans was in 1909 Inspector of Markets in Portland, Oregon, and her publication of clean market requirements was the inspiration of more than one organization of women for better civic conditions.

The Housewives’ League, organized and directed by Mrs. Julian Heath of New York, has the twofold aim of securing pure food uncontaminated by dust and flies and of securing it at a lower cost. In the general pure food war, Mrs. Heath and her assistant, Miss M. E. McOuat, have, among other things, sought to interest girls in their teens in the purity and cleanliness of the candy and soda water they buy. Open-air meetings in the poorer districts of New York City, where cheap and dangerous wares are on every hand, have been held to warn young children against poisons of various kinds. At the same time this organization has assisted those officials who have sought to induce storekeepers to carry better varieties. They have also reported violations of the law as they have been discovered.

The Women’s Health Protective Association of Philadelphia had a Bakeshop Committee which visited bakeries and consulted with the bakers themselves over conditions. The state of affairs that was revealed to the women led to a public agitation and legislation controlling the most unsanitary features of these places.

A new bakeshop code secured by the women of Cleveland requires absolute cleanliness and a ten-hour day for employees. A “White List” is published showing those bakers who best observe the code.

Mrs. E. E. McKibber, chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the General Federation of Clubs, has sent a letter to the clubs of each state to this effect:

“Do you as club women keep yourselves informed and discriminate against poor food as you do against poor clothing?

“Have you helped pass an ordinance looking to a better food supply, to the better handling of food?

“Have you any organization in your town that looks after the food supply?”

This pressure by the chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the clubs indicates that hundreds of committees representing thousands of women are instituting a constructive campaign for better and cleaner food.

The Women’s Municipal League of Boston has been very active. “The cleanliness and hygienic condition of markets seems to me to belong peculiarly to woman’s province,” writes the chairman of its market committee, “and I confess it gives me a certain feeling of shame that a comparatively small and new city like Portland should be more civilized in this respect than Boston. It is, however, encouraging to think that Portland has been brought to this standard from a lower condition than Boston’s by the efforts of a few women.”

The Boston League in connection with its market work made a study of oysters last year in their relation to the transmission of infectious diseases, and cold storage.

For an investigation of provision shops, twenty-four Radcliff students were used who conducted the investigations “with enthusiasm and success, bringing to the committee papers of decided ability. Could this plan, modified perhaps in some details, be extended successfully over the whole city there would result from it such a mass of information respecting the small shops as would cast a very strong light upon the whole problem of the proper marketing of the food supply in a big city. As far as we know no such investigation has been undertaken before.”

The Boston League has very positive ideas about legislation and enforcement, as the analysis in its 1913 report indicates.

Sometimes despairing of securing the sanitary conditions that they deem essential in the handling of food, women seek to establish public markets under stricter surveillance. In Pasadena, California, for instance, the Shakespeare Club sought to persuade the City Fathers to establish a free public market under conditions satisfactory to intelligent housewives. The City Fathers ignored the plea and the women are raising money with which to finance the enterprise themselves. The Pasadena Elks have donated a lot and the women will pay an overseer and make rules for the sale of foodstuffs.

Market conditions in New Orleans are being closely studied by a committee of housewives, headed by that very able woman, Mrs. J. C. Matthews. Among the recommendations are:

The repeal of all restricting ordinances which militate against healthy competition in the handling of produce—game, fruits, fish and meats.

That the city maintain two or three model sanitary central markets for the wholesale and retail handling of supplies.

That a market commission composed of men and women be appointed to coöperate with the commissioner in charge of the markets, so as to secure the best possible sanitary and distributing conditions.[11]

Woman's work in municipalities

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