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THE IKR1GATION AGE. 



KEEPING FOOD IN SUMMER. 



The Department of Agriculture has issued the 

 following practical suggestions in regard to keep- 

 ing food and drink in hot weather, with a view to 

 helping the public to avoid sickness from eating 

 spoiled articles of diet : 



"While people should be careful about the con- 

 dition of the food they eat at all seasons -of the 

 year, they should be particularly watchful during 

 the summer months. In hot weather, bacteria mul- 

 tiply far more rapidly than in cold weather and 

 produce chemical changes in some foods which 

 greatly lessen their nutritive value and often make 

 them unfit for human consumption. Unfortunately, 

 there is no quick, absolute, simple, practical way 

 of determining the presence of hurtful bacilli in 

 foods, or of obtaining positive evidence of the ex- 

 istence of ptomaines. The average family does not 

 have the delicate apparatus needed for these tests, 

 nor the skill to detect these micro-organisms. 



"The housewife wi-11 find eyes and nose the 

 safest practical detectives of bad food in hot 

 weather. If any article has any suspicion of an un- 

 usual odor or looks abnormal, it should be avoided. 

 People eating in doubtful restaurants should be 

 particularly careful about meats or fish cooked with 

 a highly spiced or aromatic sauce which might dis- 

 guise a bad taste or warning odor. Only sweet 

 smelling, clean food should be eaten. Spotted, 

 green, slimy or frothy raw meat, or meat which is 

 soft in spots also should be regarded with suspi- 

 cion. Taste of course is a supplementary test, but 

 one to be used after eyes, nose and fingers. A 

 mother before she allows her child to eat anything 

 should examine it carefully in a good light, smell it, 

 and finally taste it. 



"Milk particularly deteriorates rapidly under 

 summer heat, especially if it already contains bac- 

 teria. Housewives, therefore, should see to it that 

 their milk after being left by the milkman does not 

 stand for any length of time on a hot back porch 

 or stoop before it is put in the ice box. Milk bottles 

 should be kept closed, both in the ice box and out 

 of it. If there is any doubt at all as to the excel- 

 lence of the local milk supply, pasteurize all milk. 



"All foods should be kept covered or wrapped, 

 and always out of the reach of flies, which are 

 deadly carriers of typhoid. All vessels, pitchers, 

 etc., in which food is to be stored should first be 

 scalded. Food should be handled as little as pos- 

 sible. The ice box, especially its drain pipe, should 

 be cleaned thoroughly and frequently with boiling 

 water and washing soda, and given an occasional 

 airing. A persistent battle should be waged against 

 flies in all parts of the home. 



"Uncooked foods as a general proposition 

 should be avoided. Children should not be allowed 

 to eat the skins of fruits, especially fruits which 

 have been exposed to flies or street dirt on un- 

 screened stands or push carts. 



"Those who go away for vacation should not 

 get the idea that everything in a summer resort or 

 strange city is necessarily pure and wholesome. 

 The danger of typhoid fever in country resorts is 

 very great. Many of the cases of typhoid fever 

 recorded in the fall in cities where the water is pure 



had their origin in water or contaminated substances 

 drunk or eaten at some summer resort. Insist on 

 boiled water. If you absolutely cannot get .boiled 

 water, make very sure about the reputation of 

 springs, wells, or tap water. Refuse absolutely to 

 take any water that comes from a source near an 

 outhouse or stable, or in a neighborhood where 

 fever is at all prevalent. 



"Boiled water can be made just as palatable as 

 unboiled water. The flat taste which boiled water 

 has soon after it has been boiled is due to the 

 fact that boiling drives out of it the air which it 

 held in solution. If the water after boiling is put 

 in scalded shallow open pans and allowed to stand 

 for 24 hours where flies or dirt cannot get at it, it 

 will regain its air and have its usual taste restored 

 by the second day. 



"Finally, it is particularly important in summer 

 that people should not be misled into believing that 

 the label 'Guaranteed under the Food and Drugs 

 Act' on cans and packages means that the govern- 

 ment has tested these foods and pronounced them 

 pure and desirable. The government does not make 

 the guarantee. The guarantee is made wholly by 

 the manufacturer, and means no more than when 

 your own corner grocer guarantees that the sugar 

 he weighs out for you is all right. Examine goods 

 labeled 'guaranteed' just as carefully as any other 

 kind." 



CORRESPONDENCE 



Editor Irrigation Age: 



I have noticed, in a recent issue of the AGE, an ex- 

 cerpt from an Idaho journal containing sentiments that I 

 most heartily applaud and which certainly deserve the com- 

 mendation of every fair minded man. In a consideration of 

 this subject it would appear as though the newly appointed 

 "Irrigation Securities Commission" of Idaho could profitably 

 direct its attention to certain long neglected phases of the 

 situation. This state, in common with certain others of the 

 arid land commonwealths, is suffering severely has been do- 

 ing so in fact since 1911 from the inevitable results of the 

 errors of "omission and commission" of former days. The 

 commission is certainly confronted with an Herculean task 

 and while the purpose of its creation may have been good, 

 its activities, in my judgment, will have been thrown away, 

 unless it decides in a wholehearted manner, to lay bare some 

 of the evils of irrigation finance. Everyone at all familiar 

 with the subject knows why irrigation securities are dis- 

 credited. Some of the reasons most generally made clear I 

 exploited in a series of papers published in the Financial 

 World_ of New York in 1911 and 1912; at bottom the fault 

 lies with the states themselves ; in their criminal and reck- 

 less disregard of the most elemental obligations: (1) Prop- 

 erly to safeguard their water resources, vide, the outlived 

 "systems" only recently discarded by some of the states and 

 still in existence in others; (2) To exercise any form of 

 control over the operations of organized irrigation, whether 

 "private," "irrigation district," or "Carey Act"; (3) (And 

 this applies to Idaho's Carey Act projects and Colorado's dis- 

 tricts with particular force), the extent to which the states 

 in the past have permitted these classes of enterprises to be 

 conducted by all manner of incompetents or freebooters con- 

 stitutes the severest possible arraignment. I called attention 

 to the situation in a number of signed articles, the latest 

 appearing in the Denver Republican last December, and my 

 statements have, so far, gone unchallenged, all of the states 

 have adopted, within the last two years, more Carey Act stat- 

 utes and regulations which, had they been in operation a few 



