THE COMMUNAL KITCHEN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 200, 13 May 1918, Page 6

THE COMMUNAL KITCHEN

ENGLAND'S SCHEME

MEALS BY MOTOR

(By Judson C. Wellivfcr, in New York "Sun."}

The Utopians have always hail to face, a good deal of worry about how they wouid ostablisli their ideally efficient and comparatively worMoss state of society without interfering with the sential character of the homo. Folic who do uot boliovo in Utopia, anyhow have triumphantly demanded to knowhow the home is to bo kept alive if II didn't contain a kitchen and a scullery. London, in fact all Britain, finds itself suddenly asking these questions and doing a. deal of soul searching in the quest for an answer. For the Food Controller, tlio agricultural production authorities,, and the municipal governments are getting serious about 'he business of abolishing the home kitchou. The diningroom is to Ijo left, but the kitchen is to be abolished. Perhaps ultimately the dining-room will go and the family cat outside at a communal dining establiekmentj but for the present the diniuL'room is to be preserved and the meals, brought in from pie communal kitchen. This raises the grave question of whether the soul of the household really resides in the dining-room or in the kitchen; whether iho eoul can bo really warmed and cheered and developed without the savours and the perspirations and the backaches incident to culinary processes. Anyhow, unless the food situation gets botter very fast, and there is nothing to indicate that it is _ likely, the home kitchen is going to bo in danger of extermination. It is charged with being wasteful of both food and energy, with dissipating great quantities of fuel, which is only less precious than foodstuffs; with absorbing tlwfc we needed for manufacturing munitions and other things which at the moment are required.

Prepare Meals in Central Stations. The newest proposal from the Ministry of Food involves nothing less than the abolition of poking in the home, the preparation of meals In great central establishments and their delivery fromhouse to house by motor vehicles. Wo are assured that the firelsss cooker has solved the problem of delivering; them hot, ami that the nost of delivery will be less than tho present expense of delivering supplies from the retailer lo the home in tho haphazard fashion til which it has always been done. The big wholesale cooking c»lablwh. ments are to be called national kitchens. Already a director of national kitchens lias been endowed by ilie Food Controller with important powers under which ha proposes to go ahead with 'Iris (jcheme. Investigation hns convinced him that tho entire habits of the community in regard io feeding must and can be changed, that once the new system :e in effect the people will like'it, and that it will become a permanent establishment of community habi's. Under it waste will bn eliminated in food, fuel, and effort. The actual cost of meals can be greatly reduced. Perhaps the >no?t important of all results, except in times of acute food shortage, will be improved quality of v cooking, tho greater wholesomeness oi food and the effect on national health. In this last regard tho project associates itself intimately with LordEhonu- , da's pet tlieorv of improving the publio health. His lordship is convinced and has said a good many timis that the national health wr.uld be improved to an almost unbelievable degrco if everybody , were .veil fod with plenty of good, properly prepared food. Thow is no doubt that as to a very large proportion of the people this is .iteclutely Uue. Beaido* all these desirable results, hundreds of thousands would'be released from the arduous lanks of domestic life to engage in work of national importance., Of course the Miration nromntly rises who: (her the woir.M want to be relieved of (heir hous«hoM duties in order that they may no outside and Jo work nf national importance. The advacnlos of communal cooking or, a natiowu iwlo nave a. ready reply. They point tut first that the average young woman nowadays if willing to do almost anything except dojnwtie eerviw. If <*c en"ices in domestic service she prefer* almost any department of it to tho work of the kitcheii and the scullery. lt,w fairly axiomatic that onco a young woman" learns lo earn her Hying by some other method than domestic service the possibility of her ever becoming a servant is at an end. Indeed, so great has this aversion to domestic drudgery become that the privilego of nainww own household under the ud-faehioneA methods is no longer esteemed by the average voung woman as an inducement to matrimony; rather it is observed that young woiae:i who manage to make themselvel self-suywrting through some occupation Quite unrelated to domestic manOn (itoi?cther, then, the proponents of national cooking insistthat theyhav. a very strong case. They claim gieater economv, greater efficiency, the release of a grit amount of labour now more o • less warfeftilly employed, and in addition thev boldly proclaim ror the hrst me hat their whera? will conserve and pZote rather than menace the home life ot the country.

Difficult to Get Food Supplies. U the moment the immediate Justification for such * sweeping « Isation of course lim m the diflicutty Buro that every one would get its little Kinrn everv day would bo< ended in a moment; tie Gordian knot vrould be cut of their meals as the rich. One of the curiously fetching arguments in favour of this programme u Sβ «*nomv in the use of paper and nitchfcß 'These two necessaries have "reels would instantlv;.re)iev? the wpoi sassSffes scheme.