132 State Horticultural Society. 



This seems vastly encouraging to those of us who find the begin- 

 nings of economics so difficult. The way to results so long, bristling 

 with difficult chemical symbols, or barred with words which are new, 

 and to the casual reader unintelligible. 



If we might but let down these bars, rake out some of the thorns, 

 smooth the pathway, making it so very plain that "he wlio runs might 

 read" should we not aid a good cause ? 



The health of our bodies and the economy we would like to teach, 

 demand intelligent action; we can not enter this study with hope for 

 improving our own homes, or those about us, without knowledge of chem- 

 ical laws; we must know how it is food builds up, how active exercise 

 tears do^vn; how food heats the body, how heat is spent, the kinds of 

 food that generate heat, the ones that repair waste, and those that 

 store away fat. AVe must know the laws which govern supply and 

 demand. We must make the acquaintance of food elements in order 

 to select the most nutritious; we must know their kind, their differing 

 proportions, their comparative cost, since our poor economy in purchas- 

 ing is largely ignorance and still further because our erroneous habits 

 of eating for, lo ! these many years, spring from the same cause, habits 

 which have become so fixed we can never expect to eradicate them until 

 we begin at foundation principles to manage the educating process, so 

 that it will filter through the upper stratum of society, and reach the 

 masses of the very poor. The problem is how to manage that this 

 result may be achieved. It is in furtherance of this filtering process 

 that many golden words have here been strained of their symbols, their 

 terrorizing technicalities, and put in simple form. The facts are none 

 ■of them new; we are indebted for some, to a compilation made by a mem- 

 ber of the Mothers' Clul) in Kansas City, to Atkinson, Helen Campbell 

 and others. Bishop Foster says, ''If avc care for men's souls most effect- 

 ively, we must care for their bodies also." ''Half the struggle of life 

 is a struggle for food," says Atkinson, while Sir Henry Thompson seema 

 to "point this moral and toll a tale" when he says "I have come to the 

 -conclusion that more than half the disease whicji embitters the middle 

 and later part of life is due to avoidable errors in diet and that more 

 mischief in the form of actual disease, and of impaired vigoi, and of 

 shortened life accrues to civilized men in England and throughout 



