Promoters of the school lunch often have as competitors the candy vender, the ice cream man and sellers of adulterated and low dietary wares of various kinds who stand even at the school gates to wean the children away from less exciting but more nutritious food. School lunches cannot be compulsory, or are not compulsory, and the child must be led to realize that good nutrition is fundamental and desirable. Then he can be led on to an interest in pure food laws and their enforcement, and kindred civic matters. The school lunch is therefore of high social utility and an invaluable adjunct to the work of the school medical inspector or nurse. Yet it has its critics. Mr. Joseph Lee of Boston is one of the more outspoken of these, claiming that school lunches will disrupt the family. Mrs. George B. Twitchell of Cincinnati gave a spirited defense of the school lunch in a letter to _The Survey_: I want to ask Mr. Lee how it is possible to disrupt a family when our social conditions are such that the mother has to go out to help make a living. Isn’t that family already disrupted? We are all working to bring about social conditions when it will be possible to have a home for all the people, when father will be able to earn enough to make it possible for mother to remain at home; but until such time the children must be given some good, substantial food, not candy, pickles and such trash as they can buy at the candy store.... The teachers of Cleveland proved that their pupils could not work on a diet of candy and pickles. The school lunch has proved so helpful that ten have been established in Boston, all but one in the poor districts. The one in the Mt. Auburn school was started by the Mothers’ Club because they wished to give their children better food than they could get at the candy store at recess time. The mothers report that since they have opened the lunch room and the children get good food at recess time they have better appetites and eat more than they did before. Many times children do not eat because they are too hungry and tired after the walk home and really have lost their appetites on account of that. Children often eat a very light breakfast and need a lunch at recess. They are like little chicks, they thrive best if fed every three hours. We believe there should be a lunch room in every school which should supply the children with good food, rather than depend on commercialism, as in that case we know the only interest is to make money.