It may be urged that community canning has its place outside cities of the first class. New York City certainly cannot be held to be the center of an agricultural district, and yet valuable experiments in food conservation are being made there. One is concerned primarily with the prevention of waste. Of the thousands of pounds of perishable vegetables and fruit which are brought each day to the produce piers, much is prohibited from being sold to retailers because of injuries received in transportation. When more than 20 per cent has been injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the uninjured portion. As a result, a ruinous quantity of produce has gone to waste, often being dumped in the harbor for want of better disposal. The loss as estimated by the board of health has been 225,000 pounds a week. To save this food by making quick use of it, in July, 1917, Mayor Mitchel's Committee of Women on National Defense opened a conservation kitchen in a disused school building in the Williamsburg Bridge section. Here the uncertain quantity of vegetables salvaged from the produce piers was brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized, partly by paid labor, partly by the volunteer labor of members of the Women's University Club and other organizations, or city women who were willing to contribute their labor in the cause of food saving. This work was aided by the State Food Supply Commission and New York's board of health, one of whose inspectors passed judgment on the food used in the canning and drying experiments. The salvaged food was brought from the piers to the kitchens by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in any public undertaking. If it had not been that the kitchen was opened in vacation, the school population would have had its share of work to do. To this kitchen any woman might go to be taught processes or actually to can produce. While it was not possible to use all the produce brought in, even by keeping the kitchen as full of workers as space would allow and cooking as much as 480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this old school building is illustrative of what can be done in community centers to eliminate waste, and is a vital example of the efficient use of a school building in vacation. The cost in this case was met by special contributions of organizations and individuals. But in smaller places this work might be maintained by the town itself on a less elaborate scale. Such work should not be limited to the war period. It is a practical and efficient plan for all time. The continued war will undoubtedly increase not only the price but the scarcity of cotton and woolen goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to make over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness and ease with which new garments and children's wear have been procured, it is now important to understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics and apparel.