prevention of waste. Of the thousands of pounds of perishable vegetables and fruit which are brought each day to the produce piers, much is prohibited from being sold to retailers because of injuries received in transportation. When more than 20 per cent has been injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the uninjured portion. As a result, a ruinous quantity of produce has gone to waste, often being dumped in the harbor for want of better disposal. The loss as estimated by the board of health has been 225,000 pounds a week.

To save this food by making quick use of it, in July, 1917, Mayor Mitchel's Committee of Women on National Defense opened a conservation kitchen in a disused school building in the Williamsburg Bridge section. Here the uncertain quantity of vegetables salvaged from the produce piers was brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized, partly by paid labor, partly by the volunteer labor of members of the Women's University Club and other organizations, or city women who were willing to contribute their labor in the cause of food saving. This work was aided by the State Food Supply Commission and New York's board of health, one of whose inspectors passed judgment on the food used in the canning and drying experiments. The salvaged food was brought from the piers to the kitchens by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in any public undertaking. If it had not been that the kitchen was opened in vacation, the school population would have had its share of work to do. To this kitchen any woman might go to be taught processes or actually to can produce.

While it was not possible to use all the produce brought in, even by keeping the kitchen as full of workers as space would allow and cooking as much as 480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this old school building is illustrative of what can be done in community centers to eliminate waste, and is a vital example of the efficient use of a school building in vacation. The cost in this case was met by special contributions of organizations and individuals. But in smaller places this work might be maintained by the town itself on a less elaborate scale. Such work should not be limited to the war period. It is a practical and efficient plan for all time.

The continued war will undoubtedly increase not only the price but the scarcity of cotton and woolen goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to make over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness and ease with which new garments and children's wear have been procured, it is now important to understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics and apparel.

Home-economics women of Berkeley, California, aided in collecting and making over old clothing. In Portland, Oregon, a cleaner and dyer took as his bit of service the cleaning and disinfecting of all the clothing which was remade by the school children.

In England's county schools there have been held exhibitions of thrift, to show children when and how economies can be practiced. Some of the examples shown under the heading of "Utilization of Waste Material" were as follows: old linen collars and cuffs made into baggage labels, window cleaners made from pieces of old gloves, house slippers made from old felt hats, mops made of bits of rags fastened to a nail. Ways were shown of making use of scraps of wool left over from knitting, the wasting of an inch of wool being regarded as treasonable in the country's shortage; methods of refooting stockings were also displayed, as well as many uses for pieces of worn table and bed linen and old carpets.

In times of normal plenty such exhibitions would not attract attention, but no greater evidence of the reduced state of a nation at war can be had than the seriousness with which these exhibitions of household thrift have been viewed by the population. A clipping from a newspaper of rural England requests that children go into the pastures and pick from the bushes the bits of wool which the sheep have rubbed off.

For several years, at least, there will be high prices and scarcity of materials. Our children must be taught the necessity of preventing waste of fabrics as well as of food. Millions of dollars worth of cotton and wool have been destroyed in military and munition use. But it is not only because war conditions have made material scarce and high that thrift in their use must be insisted upon in every household; we must remember that billions of dollars will be required to pay for this war and each household will be required to make its contribution. Expenditures in every direction must be curbed and the wise disposition of every dollar must be made. A year or so ago the Bankers Association of America launched a campaign for thrift teaching. We were then told that, as individuals, we must save for the future. The present high cost of living shows that we are obliged to save in the present in order to live in the present, but the future will tell us to save in order that we, as a nation, may pay for the war.