FOOD VALUE OF FIllHTS. 137 



every two years. With all of the preparation and all of the examina- 

 tions, she just teaches three terms and then goes into a home of her 

 own, with not one day spent in fitting herself for that work, and not 

 one cent of money spent in fitting her for the responsibility she is to as- 

 sume. And so I say in a very general way, when men realize this fact 

 they will realize the need of long training to make the girls proficient in 

 any particular profession they are to take up in the future. 



The men and the women have not realized this, but have felt that as a 

 result of living centuries and centuries in the four walls of a home, that 

 would make them proficient to assume all the responsibility that they 

 would need for that work. 



Perhaps you are saying, "What has this to do with the value of 

 fruits as food?" Just this: that when the training of women to make 

 a real profession out of the work they will undertake in the proper 

 handling of their duties in their future home is a realization, they will 

 realize the food values and so understand that varieties are to be placed 

 upon the table in the average home; they will so realize the need of all 

 of these things from the training they have received in the school, and 

 from the actual experience which they have received, that they will 

 know how to care for and to preserve that fruit, and that they will 

 know that certain foods are essential to the family. You say that you 

 do not believe that. The only thing you have to do is just to display 

 some apples before these men, and make their mouths water, and they 

 will get up the appetite, and as soon as they see that they have a qua;r- 

 ter they will go and buy apples. 



It will do all right, to have those apples on display, but create the 

 demand and then you gentlemen will be able to spend all your time at 

 home satisfying this demand. And this demand must be created in the 

 home, and it is up to the housekeepers to do it. It is up to the house- 

 keepers to see that there is a demand for fruits. Just to get enough to 

 eat, or as the small boy says, "Until he is full," that sort of a thing has 

 long gone past. Our American families are spending too much for doc- 

 tor's bills, and then later on realizing that there is too great a loss of 

 life in this country. 



There is too great a loss of life in this country, to keep on feeding 

 families in the old slipshod way, giving them anything that happens to be 

 at hand, when it is there, and all they want. When we stop to con- 

 sider the average length of life in this country, and the number of 

 children who never live long enough to go to school, then I think we will 

 realize there is something w'rong with the practice we have been using 

 in the feeding of our families, and that there is something to be done 

 in the way of preparing a diet for the table. For instance, the average 

 length of life in this country is thirty-six years and two months. In the 

 state of Iowa, I am quoting Iowa because it was my pleasure to w^ork 

 in that state last year, and because conditions are so nearly the same 

 as they are right here in this state, or in the eastern part of this state, 

 the records showed the same condition existed there. One-fifth of the 



