within ten days furnished with the complete amount of seed and live stock wanted by farmers and for sale by farmers; with the statements of the transportation difficulties; with the itemized needs of labor, fertilizer, and spray materials; and with the complete enumeration of the state,—people, land, and live stock.

Such work by pupils might well become an established yearly activity. The practice of gathering and tabulating information has an obvious arithmetical value; and the interest developed in investigating the resources of the community has an educational significance which should keep us from limiting it to emergency periods.

The comparative table on page 26 (one of thirteen developed out of the census) not only illustrates facts which the children obtained, but also shows the magnitude of the work they undertook.

One of the best community uses of the school is as a center for instruction in conserving food products. With the absolute shortage of the world's food supply, Americans must anticipate this shortage in coming seasons and revert to the preserving methods of their grandparents,—measures fallen into disuse in crowded cities because of lack of storage room and the ease with which the fresh products have been obtained, whatever the season.

ACRES OF CROPS IN 56 COUNTIES IN NEW YORK WITH COMPARISONS FOR THE SAME COUNTIES IN 1909

Even villages which have no gas supply may follow the example of cities and towns in using the school kitchen, already installed as part of a domestic-science equipment or newly supplied by popular subscription, as a community canning center. Certainly schools are as well adapted for the purpose as department stores and Young Women's Christian Associations, which have been leaders in the movement.

The teaching of methods of preserving is primarily the function of a school, and every suitable school building should be employed for it. The old-fashioned preserving meant time, drudgery, expense, quantities of sugar, and doubtful results. A demonstration of the newer methods and the opportunity for community canning should be given by the school to the neighborhood. Community canning induces a far more effective conservation of food than is possible for the individual kitchen. Few households can afford to buy and store the vast kettles, the perfected drying and dehydrating ovens, which can be included in the equipment of a school teaching the scientific preserving of food and vegetables. As this is done almost wholly in the summer, it would not interfere with the term's work of the pupils and, in fact, offers the high-school girls an excellent opportunity to assist in civic service of a most practical nature. In the summer of 1917 Seattle maintained 20 centers for home-economics teaching for adult women, the government bulletin "How to Select Food" being used as a textbook.

There have been wholesome experiments in community canning in Lakewood, and in Bernards Township, New Jersey. In the latter in each school was an experienced teacher to supervise the work of preserving performed by high-school girls of the neighborhood, the fruits and vegetables being sold by the townspeople to the school or brought by them to be conserved by coöperative canning for their own use in the future. This service of the girls was on an equality with that of the boys who belonged to the agricultural army. In Kansas City the surplus garden products canned by schoolgirls were used for the school lunches.

England's schools now have "open days" on which parents may be admitted to receive the instruction given to the children in the economical cooking of the food which the food controller's instructions show is likely to be available for general consumption; also (quoting from a letter from Sir Robert Blair of the London County Council, May 30, 1917) the responsible mistresses of the evening schools and the domestic-economy staff employed in these schools are organizing traveling kitchens in 29 boroughs within the county. These traveling kitchens form practically a demonstration set of apparatus by which the simplest forms of cookery can be shown to 100 or 200 people. The demonstrations are well attended, and the people in small villages thus have the opportunity of those in larger settlements to learn from experts methods of making palatable the food products less well understood.

It may be urged that community canning has its place outside cities of the first class. New York City certainly cannot be held to be the center of an agricultural district, and yet valuable experiments in food conservation are being made there. One is concerned primarily with the