A very great deal has been done in demonstrating how to conserve fruit and vegetables all over the country and this has been done to an extent hitherto quite unreached.  Co-operative work has been done and most interesting experiments made.  The glass bottles necessary have been secured by the Department, and are sold by them to those doing the conservation at a fixed price.  Last summer the Sugar Commission also arranged to sell sufficient sugar for making preserves to those people who grow their own fruit.  This they succeeded in doing to a very large extent—­which was a most valuable conservation.

The Ministry of Food is the other great body dealing with all food problems of supply, price, regulations, and propaganda.

Lord Rhondda is our Food Controller.  Our first Controller was Lord Devonport.  Food control is the most unpopular work in any country and a Food Controller deserves the help, sympathy and support of every good citizen.  No Food Controller, no matter how able, and no matter how great and comprehensive his powers are, can do his work without the co-operation of the people.

Lord Rhondda’s powers are very great as to control of supplier prices and regulations.  The price of the four pound loaf (and it must be four pounds) is fixed by our Government at 18 cents and the loss is borne by the Government.

The prices of meat, beans, cheese, tea, sugar, milk, and the profits on other articles are regulated by the Ministry.  When Lord Devonport was Food Controller we had courses at lunch and dinner limited—­a policy most people felt to be stupid as it meant a run on staple foods—­and it was abandoned by Lord Rhondda.  We had meatless days, which also have been stopped.  We found it difficult to do, and impossible to regulate.  We had many potatoless days last spring—­by regulation in the restaurants—­perforce by most of us in towns where they were almost impossible to get, but this year we have the biggest potato crop we have had.

In restaurants and hotels now supplies are regulated.  No one can have more than two ounces of bread at any meal, and the amount of flour and sugar supplied is strictly rationed to the hotels, according to the number served.  Not more than five ounces of meat (before cooking) can be served at any meal.  These regulations are strictly enforced, and the duty of seeing all the regulations are carried out, and all the work done, devolves upon the Local Food Control Committees which have been set up all over the country under the Ministry, by the local authorities.  On every such Committee there must be women.  They fix prices for milk, etc., and initiate prosecutions for infringements of the laws regulating food.