Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1915 — Penny Lunch for Poor New York School Children [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Penny Lunch for Poor New York School Children

NEW YORK.—The “penny lunch* furnished by the school lunch committee of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, of which Edward F. Brown is superintendent, is probably the most wholesome

event in the life of half the children on the lower East side. Seventeen schools now have this penny-an-article lunch service. In 1915, and in time to provide lunches this winter through the municipal aid granted, this service will cover 28 schools with a register of 44,000 pupils. The board of education provides facilities for serving the lunches—idtchen and place for the children to

eat —but the maintenance of the work

is entirely from private contributions. Every article on the menu is the result of scientific study. The bowl of soup the wee urchin carries so careSfUlly on his tin tray is of concentrated strength., The two slices of bread he buys for his penny ate made with milk and the best flour. The “water roll” be probably had for breakfast was of the two-for-a-eent variety, but contained leu half the nourishment of the "school bread." For two cents the average poor mother of the tenements provides a wretched apology for a meaL For two cents at the “school lunch” a kiddie gets a percentage of calories that will keep him going for six hours. Pennies, to be sure, are scarcer than ever this winter. The lunch committee served on an average 406 children a day last year, against SSO this. The answer? Unemployment, business depression, war, high prices. And so, back of each hatchet-faced, thin-legged child who brings hla penny tc school for a howl of sodjpi there is a distinct nodal and economic .' : '' "■ * -