NATIONAL FOOD ECONOMY.
[To ME ED/TOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—About a year ago you were kind enough to print a letter on the work of the National Food Economy League, which brought us much valuable support. We now venture to ask you to let us give your readers a short account of what we have done during the past year, in the hope that they will again help us in the name practical manner as before. The need of our campaign is, we believe, greater, not less, now that some measures of com- pulsion have been taken by the Government. As Marshal von Hindenburg has recently said in a letter to the German Chan- cellor : " There must be compulsion, but experience shows that very little can be done by preesnre from the State alone. . . . Rate regulation of consumption is doomed to failure if it is not supported by the voluntary and intelligent co-operation of all classes." It is to fostering this spirit of intelligent voluntary oo-operation that our efforts have been directed, and we think we may fairly claim to have contributed to the formation of a sound public opinion in the matter, and to have helped to create an atmosphere in which the Government measures of compulsion have been readily accepted by the nation. Our record of work since April, 1915, shows a continuous, and latterly very rapid, expansion. We have now held about a thousand largely attended 'demonstration-lectures in London and the Provinces; we have had stalls, or have otherwise taken part, in a great number of Thrift Exhibitions, and have sold nearly a third of a million of our publications. Our principal publications are: A Handbook for Housewives, at 2d., postage id.; Housekeeping on 25s. a Week or Tinder, price id., postage id.; Patriotic Food Economy for the Well-to-do, price 6d., postage ld.; and a Chart of Com- parative Food Values in two, sizes, price 3d. and 2d., postage ld., drawn by Mrs. T. B. Wood from the tables in Professors Wood and Hopkins's Food Economy in War Time. This Chart has been pronounced by experts to be the simplest and most easily under- stood thing of its kind ever published. It is especially intended for teaching purposes, and is being used in a number of schools, while a good many Education Committees are using the twopenny pamphlet as a text-book in their domestic economy classes May we earnestly beg that those, of your readers with are interested in onr work will help to keep it going by sending a donation, however small, to our Treasurer? We should not have had to appeal again for money but for the enormous increase in the cost of producing our literature; and we• are loth to raise the prices of this or the fees for our classes, as we fear that by so doing we should run the risk of seriously diminishing the number of people able to profit by them.—We are, Sir, &c., CHRISTOPHER Tunxoa, President and Chairman; Flames, Vice-Chairman; T. C. CHANCE, Hon. Organizer; WOLSELEY, Member of Committee.
3 Woodstock Street, Oxford Street, W.
[If the National Food Economy League deserved the help of our readers a year and a half ago, they deserve it ten times more to-day. Economy will go a long way towards winning the. war. Of that there can be no sort of doubt.—ED. Spectator.]
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