, 1919-07-10

munity cooking. Notwithstanding the high
prices of food and the scarcity of cooks,
the American people like good things to eat just
as well as ever. The question is where can these
good things be had? A large proportion of twen-
tieth century married women cannot cook accept
ably and would not cook if they could. A modern
city woman who can cook can hardly be blamed
for unwillingness to spend all her time in home
work. 1t is an age of inefficiency in restaurant
cooking as in most other things and menu prices
are even higher in proportion than raw material
prices.
Iva Lowther Peters, Phi. D., of The woman's divi-
sion of the council of national defense, made in
1918 a complete survey of the various cooperative
and community food enterprises of this country.
1t was then believed that if the war continued COM
munity kitchens would have to be established in
our larger cities to save food and fuel.
England was already running q great many of
them, with encouraging results, and Doctor Peters
not only studied these, but undertook a thorough
investigation of the cooperative movement from
the time it was born in the eighteenth century.
As it happened, the signing of the armistice came
just in time to make the survey useless to the
United States food administration, but it is going
to be of great assistance to those individual Amer
leans who are thinking of cooperating with other
individual Americans in bringing down the price Of
eating.
An object lesson is a community kitchen that
WAS opened In 1907 in Carthage, Mo. 1t was 10
Gated in a private residence and the various fennL
lies of the neighborhood came to It for their meals.
Each family furnished its own table, chairs, dishes,
linen, silver, thus maintaining its own tastes and
standards. To provide the original equipment for
the kitchen an assessment of So per adult and $1.50
per child was made. In the beginning there were
60 members, including 10 or IL children. For the
first three months the price of meals was SO for an
adult and S1.50 for n child per week. After the
third month several families stopped coming.
When the number decreased to 80 the price OF
board was advanced to $3.50 per week. AS the
Kitchens patronage decreased and the cost of food
increased the price of board kept advancing until
finally, in 1911, four years after its opening, the
kitchen went quietly out of existence.
Most of the community cooking enterprises sur
veyed by Doctor Peters for the council of national
defense tell practically the same story-a brief
popularity, a brief decline, then extinction.
But the community cooking enterprises tell one
other story and 1t is this:
The only community cooking enterprises showing
unmistakable signs of success are those where the
central kitchen delivers the cooked meals to the
homes. These kitchens are now being established
in several cities.
Chicago and many of its suburban cities have
their attention on Evanston, Ill, just now. Evans
ton Is n few miles north of Chicago on Lake Mich
igan. 1t has about 10000 people. 1t is a city Of
homes. Many of the men do business in Chicago.
Evanston Is called the CITY of Churches is the
seat of Northwestern university and is what may
be called a high-class American small city.
Yes, Evanston is a city of homes. There are
streets of dwellings and comparatively few flats
are in evidence. There are trees and lawns. The
houses look as if they had kitchens-good big,
roomy, old-fashioned kitchens, where things were
cooked-"pies like mother used to make" and
doughnuts TO compare even with those of the Sal
walton Army.
But the Imagination that sets you to shifting In
the hope of catching delectable odors from these
old-fashioned kitchens in these old-fashioned