The Women’s Health Protective Association of Philadelphia had a Bakeshop Committee which visited bakeries and consulted with the bakers themselves over conditions. The state of affairs that was revealed to the women led to a public agitation and legislation controlling the most unsanitary features of these places.
A new bakeshop code secured by the women of Cleveland requires absolute cleanliness and a ten-hour day for employees. A “White List” is published showing those bakers who best observe the code.
Mrs. E. E. McKibber, chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the General Federation of Clubs, has sent a letter to the clubs of each state to this effect:
“Do you as club women keep yourselves informed and discriminate against poor food as you do against poor clothing?
“Have you helped pass an ordinance looking to a better food supply, to the better handling of food?
“Have you any organization in your town that looks after the food supply?”
This pressure by the chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the clubs indicates that hundreds of committees representing thousands of women are instituting a constructive campaign for better and cleaner food.
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston has been very active. “The cleanliness and hygienic condition of markets seems to me to belong peculiarly to woman’s province,” writes the chairman of its market committee, “and I confess it gives me a certain feeling of shame that a comparatively small and new city like Portland should be more civilized in this respect than Boston. It is, however, encouraging to think that Portland has been brought to this standard from a lower condition than Boston’s by the efforts of a few women.”
The Boston League in connection with its market work made a study of oysters last year in their relation to the transmission of infectious diseases, and cold storage.
For an investigation of provision shops, twenty-four Radcliff students were used who conducted the investigations “with enthusiasm and success, bringing to the committee papers of decided ability. Could this plan, modified perhaps in some details, be extended successfully over the whole city there would result from it such a mass of information respecting the small shops as would cast a very strong light upon the whole problem of the proper marketing of the food supply in a big city. As far as we know no such investigation has been undertaken before.”