For a long time, whenever food was given the managers of the school funds simply issued coupons, or orders upon some restaurant, entitling the holder to so many meals at a given cost. Usually some teacher or charitable worker was deputed to accompany the child to see that it actually got what it was intended to get. There was no system. But in 1877 the Prefect of the Seine appointed a commission to study the question, raised by some Socialists, of how good a warm meal might be provided in the schools at a low cost. Most of the managers of the school funds treated the matter in a very lukewarm, indifferent sort of way, and the commissioners reported that all they had been able to ascertain was that good meals could be provided at an average cost of twenty-five centimes (five cents) each. So the matter dropped and was not again heard of until the trying winter of 1881. Then it was suggested that, purely as an experiment, the children of school age whose parents were receiving poor relief should be fed. The managers of the Montmartre school fund at once volunteered to undertake the experiment, and their example was soon followed by others. They did not long confine the meals to the children of pauper parents, but at an early stage of the experiment extended it so as to include all children. The example of Montmartre was very soon followed, and within a year there were fifteen canteens which had served between them 1,110,827 “portions.” One-third of these “portions” were meat, each weighing twenty grammes, one-third were bowls of soup, and the other third portions of vegetables, these varying with the season. The number of portions paid for by the children was 736,526, and the number given to children too poor to pay, 374,301. It should be said, perhaps, that a most searching investigation was made to make sure of the inability of children’s parents to pay. The total cost of the meals was 59,264 francs, of which amount the children paid 36,776 francs. After a while, when they had gathered experience in the management of the canteens, the managers found that it was possible to increase the size of the portions of meat and, at the same time, to cut down expenses by nearly 50 per cent.