A tragic story of the scarcity and cost of ice in summer has come from more than one large city and the machinations of ice trusts have been among the most scandalous of business revelations. Here and there in the United States sporadic attempts have been made to establish municipal ice plants. Women have been prominent in the agitation for cheaper and more plentiful ice. An instance of this agitation is afforded by the following clipping from the _New York Times_, May, 1914: More than one hundred mothers attended a meeting yesterday afternoon in the offices of the East Side Protective Association, No. 1 Avenue B, and discussed plans for the establishment on the east side of a municipal ice plant whereby ice could be distributed to mothers during the coming summer for their infants. At the conclusion of the meeting a letter was forwarded to Mayor Mitchel, signed by Harry A. Schlacht, Superintendent of the Association, asking the Mayor to do all in his power to aid the project, pointing out that through it lives of hundreds of infants would be saved. A report on Municipal and Government Ice Plants in the United States and Other Countries was prepared last winter by Mrs. Jeanie W. Wentworth, who has been assisting Mr. McAneny, president of the New York City Board of Aldermen, to study the question of ice. CHILD WELFARE The reduction of infant mortality is only one phase of child welfare. However imperative it is to save little babies, unless they are watched over and safeguarded physically during the after years of growth and nutrition, the earlier work is wasted. It is this conception of the unity of health work that has resulted in the formation by women of child welfare associations and of such committees within women’s associations all over the country. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs voted several years ago to work for the following five universal needs of the American child: 1. For better equipped, better ventilated and cleaner school buildings. 2. For more numerous, larger and better supervised playgrounds. 3. For medical school inspection and school nurses. 4. For physical education and instruction in personal hygiene. 5. For instruction in normal schools in wise methods of presenting the essentials of personal and sex hygiene. Every medical inspection of the poor children in the public schools of large cities reveals a state of anæmia from undernourishment. A hungry child cannot learn rapidly, if at all. Teachers are the ones to see the connection between hunger and mentality, and the first school lunch in Cleveland was therefore started by teachers in a neighborhood where many of the mothers of the children were forced to go out of the home each day to earn all or part of the family income. Everywhere women have been largely instrumental in initiating and defending the school lunch.