MILK SUPPLY : OPENING ADDRESSES 159 



appointed in the United Kingdom. Its appointment came 

 about in this way. The lecturers and organizers of the 

 Women's National Health Association of Ireland who 

 attended meetings, or who lectured in connection with our 

 travelling Health and Tuberculosis Exhibitions, have always 

 been careful to emphasize the importance of right food in 

 building up the constitution to resist the onslaught of 

 disease, and of course in particular the value of porridge and 

 milk, as opposed to white bread and stewed tea, was insisted 

 on. But as time went on the reports sent in by our staff 

 as to the difficulty of obtaining milk at all in many-parts of 

 the country, especially during the winter, and the question- 

 able purity of the supply in many cases, and of the manner of 

 handling it, became more and more insistent. Our Associa- 

 tion therefore approached the Lord Lieutenant with the 

 petition for the appointment of a Viceregal Milk Commis- 

 sion, and the petition was granted with the hearty support 

 of the Department of Agriculture and the Local Government 

 Board. It is a very representative Commission, and very 

 ably presided over by Mr. P. T. O'Neill, the Chairman of 

 the General Council of County Councils in Ireland. It has 

 travelled in every part of Ireland, has held fifty-six meetings, 

 examined 281 witnesses, and has also taken evidence from 

 Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow; and we 

 understand it is now about to issue a unanimous report. I 

 am not in a position to forecast the substance of that report, 

 but I am authorized by the Chairman to make a few general 

 remarks, and to bespeak your study of the report when it 

 appears, as bearing upon a problem which is interesting the 

 whole country, and which we earnestly hope Mr. John 

 Burns's Milk Bill is to solve in large measure. The question 

 of the scarcity of milk into which the Commission was 

 directed to inquire was found to vary very much in different 

 districts, still more the reasons for that scarcity. Strictly 

 speaking there is no scarcity in the towns but scarcity is 

 created by poverty and consequent inability to obtain milk, 

 by ignorance of the value of milk as a food, and by the 

 difficulty of obtaining an uncontaminated supply. Evidence 

 was given showing that in some districts children scarcely 

 understood what milk was, and when taken to hospital had 

 to be taught to drink it. The teapot stewing on the hearth 

 has been too apt to supply the drink for the children return- 

 ing from school, and in Ireland the custom has been for the 

 children's school hours to continue from 9.30 to 3.30 with 

 scarcely any drink. It is but lately that half an hour's break 

 has been introduced, and in some districts cocoa and milk 

 lunches provided. We have no Provision of School Meals 



