550 



people at home would realise that the utilisation of home-grown 

 products is worth a very considerable national effort. By making 

 this country able to turn its own to the best advantage, we place 

 ourselves beyond the need of depending upon foreign supplies. 



In 1914 the then Board of Agriculture appointed a special Com- 

 mittee, one of whose objects was to carry out experiments on a 

 factory scale in order to improve the methods of preserving and 

 drying fruits and vegetables. This object was sacrificed to some 

 extent by giving over the factories at Dunnington and Broom in 

 Warwickshire to increasing the food supply for the fighting 

 forces by the manufacture of dried vegetables and jam. Since 

 the close of the War the experimental nature of the work has 

 received more attention, and the existence of many problems has 

 been recognised. For example, shortage of sugar led to careful 

 inquiry into the conditions under which the housewife makes 

 jams, and it was found that she was using far more sugar than 

 is required and producing far less jam than is needed. It 

 was discovered, too, that certain classes of fruit and vegetables 

 lend themselves much more readily to treatment than others, 

 and that to obtain the best results a period of patient research 

 was called for. The laboratory and the trained chemist must be 

 available all the time, and fortunately there is at Long Ashton, 

 near Bristol, a Government Besearch Station, directed by 

 Professor Barker, that is at work on many of the problems which 

 have assumed an almost national importance. With "this 

 Institution the Experimental Station at Campden is particularly 

 concerned. 



The Development Commission, to which this country is 

 indebted for so much invaluable work, considered, when the War 

 was over, the position of the establishments concerned with the 

 preparation of fruit and vegetables for the Army, and came to 

 the conclusion that, while some should be closed, the station at 

 Campden in Gloucestershire might well be maintained and 

 developed in order to demonstrate to traders, small holders and 

 housewives the most economic methods of preserving vegetables 

 and fruit, and to show all concerned how a surplus of any kind 

 can be most usefully handled. In these days of great trading 

 combines it is possible for a group of merchants to establish a 

 laboratory and to employ skilled chemists, but it is, of course, 

 unreasonable to expect that they will communicate the results of 

 their work to the small man who desires to set up in business 

 and is a potential rival. They are likely too to be more con- 

 cerned with science as applied to commerce than with science as 



