101 
CoLp STORAGE IS PRACTICAL CONSERVATION. 
H. E. BARNARD. 
Cold storage is essentially the application of scientific temperature 
control in the solution of an economic problem, a practice that regulates 
prices without increasing them and prevents deterioration while eliminat- 
ing waste. 
But to the average consumer there is no hint of conservation in cold 
storage and little reason for the practice except that born of greed. June 
butter in January, spring chicken at Christmas, fresh eggs months after 
they were taken from the nest, summer fruit in winter weather—do these 
reversals of the season’s horn of plenty, this carrying the products of flush 
markets over the time of scant production, increase the cost of food to the 
consumer, reduce its value to the producer or in any way injure the masses 
of the people who by its consumption and in its production find health and 
wealth? 
The world’s development has been along the lines of easy and abund- 
ant food production and the most progressive nations have been the best 
fed. No people living in a hand-to-mouth fashion have lifted themselves 
above the poverty of their surroundings; no man can be an efficient mem- 
ber of society whose life is an alternate feast and famine. That is why the 
savage, ignorant of methods for conserving his food supply, is still a 
savage. 
The food supply is perishable. Fruits and vegetables are seasonable ; 
that is, for the most part suitable for use only during the months in which 
they reach maturity. Meats cannot be kept after slaughter except by 
special treatment; even the cereals deteriorate with age and the store is 
depleted by vermin. And so we have a season of plenty when food fresh 
from the fields and orchards gluts the markets and later seasons of scarcity 
when natural causes have destroyed the surplus of earlier months. These 
seasonal variations in the food supply are also subject to yearly fluctua- 
tions, for the abundant crop of one year may be succeeded by the scant crop 
of another. The fact that foods are perishable makes it necessary, if they 
