101 



Cold 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 

 froin 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 



