HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF LUNCHES IN 
 
 HIGH SCHOOLS 
 
 With a Discussion of the Elements of Cost in School 
 
 Lunch Expenses 
 
 BY 
 
 J ULIA PULSIFER 
 
 Superintendent of School Luncheons for Women’s Educational and 
 Industrial Union., Boston, Massachusetts. 
 
 '“The story of the beginning of lunches in the High Schools of Boston 
 is the story of the beginning of the school lunch movement in America.” 
 In 1894 the Boston Schobl Committee passed an order to the effect 
 “that only such food as was approved” by them “should be sold in the 
 city school houses.” The order was the result of an agitation begun 
 under the leadership of Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, whose interest had 
 been aroused by a realization of the educational value that lay in placing 
 properly prepared food before young people. She was also keen to see 
 the menace to health that lay in the “goodies” the children were pur¬ 
 chasing at recess from the corner stores, and in some cases from the 
 lunch counters installed by janitors in the school buildings. After the 
 passage of the above-mentioned order, the New England Kitchen, then 
 in the early days of its food experiments, was asked to provide the food 
 for the school luncheons. The original menus were carefully worked 
 out under the supervision of Mrs. Richards, and the whole scheme was 
 not only excellently -planned from the point of view of scientific nutri¬ 
 tion, and of social service, but it was also on a good business basis. 
 All the food was manufactured at the Central Kitchen and distributed 
 to the serving centers at the schools. Here the city provided the space 
 for serving, the stationary equipment, and the fuel for reheating. This 
 is practically the organization that exists to-day, nearly 20 years after, 
 except that the work is under the management of the Women’s Educa¬ 
 tional and Industrial Union, and the general supervision is in the hands 
 of an advisory committee composed of three representatives from the 
 Union and three High School Head Masters, elected annually by the 
 Association of Head Masters of the Boston High and Latin Schools. 
 The business has doubled in the past seven years, and luncheons are now 
 being served to upwards of 5,000 children at 16 different High Schools. 
 The deficit in the smaller schools is made up by the profit in the larger 
 ones, so that all get the same service. During the past winter the manage¬ 
 ment of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, realizing that 
 the next point in progress must be along educational lines, and feeling 
 
 From the Transactions of the Fourth International Congress on School Hygiene, Buffalo, August, 1913. 
 
2 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON, SCHOOL HYGIENE 
 
 l 
 
 that to accomplish this the School Committed itself must be responsible 
 for the lunch work, has endeavored to turn over its stewardship to that 
 body. This change has not yet been accomplished, but we hope for it 
 soon as the next point in the development of the High School Lunch 
 System of Boston. 
 
 In the meanwhile the development of luncheons in High Schools 
 all over the country has been rapid and noteworthy. From tables in 
 dark basements where janitors dispensed candy and stale cake we have 
 advanced to huge light airy lunch rooms on the top floors of new buildings 
 with all that is modern and up-to-date in equipment, and with a menu 
 varied and tempting. This is especially true of the newer High School 
 buildings of the West. Back in the Last we are still struggling with the 
 dark, congested lunch room in the basements of old outgrown buildings. 
 
 An investigation during the winter of 1910-11 in the State of Massa¬ 
 chusetts showed that in 67 cities and towns lunch was served ir\ High 
 Schools. Ten of these lunch rooms were under the direct control of 
 the school authorities, forty-three were money making enterprises, 
 six were managed by women’s clubs, one by a church society, five by 
 the students themselves, and two by the Domestic Science Department 
 of the school. In schools where the lunch rooms are run for the profit 
 of the managers little or no attention is paid to the laws of hygiene and 
 nutrition. The young people are provided with the food which they 
 are most likely to buy—sweets and pastry. In lunch rooms run as 
 social service enterprises by women’s clubs, definite effort is made to 
 provide nourishing food at a low price, and usually high food standards 
 are maintained. This is true also of lunch rooms under school control, 
 and in addition in these schools some connection is occasionally made 
 with the school curriculum. 
 
 Another investigation during the past winter has shown that in six¬ 
 teen of the larger cities of this country the lunch work has been placed 
 under the control of school authorities after various experiences with 
 outside management. This investigation also revealed the fact that 
 there is a general tendency toward centralization—the management 
 of the several lunch rooms of a city by one director, the natural and 
 most frequent method of organization being under the Domestic Science 
 Department. The benefits resulting from school control are obvious. 
 So far very little advantage has been taken of the educational oppor¬ 
 tunities latent in lunch work. Yet there is a growing feeling every¬ 
 where that the lunch room plants may be used in connection with the 
 courses in chemistry, hygiene, domestic science, decorative art, social 
 training, business methods, etc. To come to a full utilization of these 
 educational possibilities of course teachers and school boards must 
 have full responsibility for the lunch work. 
 
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF LUNCHES IN HIGH SCHOOLS 3 
 
 The financial status of school lunch rooms has been the object of 
 much attention with us, apd we have been requested to devote a con¬ 
 siderable portion of our discussion to this phase of the subject. We have 
 f found in our investigations that almost never are two school lunch 
 rooms on the same financial basis. The term “covering all expenses” 
 requires careful definition, and for the purposes of this paper I shall take 
 the phrase in its literal meaning. To cover all expenses means to pay 
 not only for food and service but for superintendence, equipment, fuel, 
 heat, rent, light, water rate^—in brief all the expenses which a commer¬ 
 cial lunch room must meet, It is obvious that if a school restaurant 
 had to meet all these charge^ the prices would be prohibitive—especially 
 in small schools where the overhead charge per capita would be very 
 high. Since the School Bodrd requires the attendance of the child at 
 an hour when he is in need of food, that Board should make it possible 
 for him to buy that food cheaply by providing a comfortable room in ' 
 which he is to eat it, free of rent, and at least simple equipment for pre¬ 
 paring it. Some school boards go much further. It is in this matter 
 of subsidy from the Board that school lunch rooms vary so greatly. 
 
 In our investigation of last winter we found no High School lunch could 
 properly be said to be “paying all expenses.” The centralized lunch 
 system of Boston comes nearest to this status of any, because the School 
 Board there provides no place for the cooking of the food. The rent, 
 heat, light, fuel, etc., at the central kitchen are paid for out of the receipts 
 from the luncheons. These overhead charges in Boston during the 
 winter of 1911 and 1912 amounted to upwards of $4,000. That the 
 system can carry such large additional costs, and still maintain prices 
 as low as other High School lunch rooms not so burdened is undoubtedly 
 due to the saving in food costs and supervision that accrue under a 
 centralized system of cooking. It is also somewhat due to the use of 
 the less expensive forms of food, which affect not the wholesomeness 
 and nutritive value of the lunches, but possibly to some extent their variety 
 and attractiveness. At the other extreme as regards subsidy from the 
 School Board was a school restaurant where the receipts were required 
 to cover only the cost of the raw material. All other expenses were 
 met by school funds. The majority of school lunch rooms, however, 
 were in a class between these two extremes—almost no two being exactly 
 alike. Some pay for their own fuel, more do not. Some pay superin¬ 
 tendent’s salary, others do not, and so it goes. In many there is prac¬ 
 tically no book-keeping at all, and it is impossible to discover their actual 
 financial status. As a general rule, the lunch rooms in small schools 
 where the patronage is small, receive the most help in the way of subsidy 
 from the Board. In a city where there are both large and small High 
 Schools and a centralized management, the profits of the large schools 
 
 \ 
 
 UNIVER^ iTY ( 
 ILLINOIS lIBR/- 
 AT URSANA-CHA.V 
 
 
4 
 
 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON 
 
 iCHOOL HYGIENE 
 
 pay the deficit in the small ones, and all get hqual service. In cities, 
 however, where there is no centralized system, the large schools are 
 very apt to be exploited by business firms whd draw considerable profit 
 from the enterprise, while the small schools sfiffer from high prices and 
 poor food. j 
 
 A study of the elements of cost in our own/system, and a comparison 
 with these same elements in other systems has been very suggestive 
 to us. First we compared the Boston financial statement with that 
 of Bradford, England—the only other school lunch system having a 
 central kitchen like ours which we have personally investigated. We 
 found that the food in both Boston and Bradford amounted to 54% of 
 the total expense. The delivery in Boston was 4% of the total, in Brad¬ 
 ford 17%; the wide difference being due to the fact that in Boston there 
 are only 16 serving centers, in Bradford 25; also, in Bradford the dishes 
 are carried back and forth each day, the cleansing of them being done 
 at the central plant. The labor item, however, is much higher in 
 Boston, being 32%, while in Bradford it is 18%. This is partly due 
 to the higher wages paid generally in this country. It is also much 
 more economical of labor to concentrate all the heavy work of dish 
 washing at one point and to do it with up-to-date apparatus. However, 
 it is significant that the labor and delivery together in each city amount 
 to 36% of the total expense, showing that there would be apparently 
 nothing to be gained in Boston if we adopted Bradford’s method of 
 sending the dishes to the central plant each day, the extra delivery 
 costing as much as the saving in labor. We have grouped all other 
 expenses under the head of “general;” in Boston they amount to 9% 
 of the total, in Bradford 9^2%. The similarity of all these costs made 
 us feel in Boston that we had a system equal at least in economy of admin¬ 
 istration to that of Bradford which had been held up to us as a model. 
 Our next comparison was with the High School lunch system of St. Louis. 
 We found that food costs there were 67% of receipts, and during the 
 same time 53% with us. After studying the situation in the two cities 
 we realized the reason for this divergence. In St. Louis most of the 
 bread stuffs are purchased as well as the ice cream, so that the cost 
 price includes the labor and the manufacturer’s profit. In Boston all 
 the bread and rolls are manufactured at the central kitchen, and there 
 the cost price represents only the value of the raw material, the cost 
 of the labor on these goods showing up in our labor item which is 3% 
 more than in St. Louis, no manufacturer’s profit being included at all 
 because we do our own baking. Another reason for the higher labor 
 cost in Boston, it being 32% there and only 29% in St. Louis, is the 
 division of the business into 16 centers where $5,000 less was received 
 than in the six centers of St. Louis. Of course a system where the sales 
 
HISTORY AND' DEVELOPMENT OF LUNCHES IN HIGH SCHOOLS 
 
 5 
 
 amounted to $57,000 at six centers would be more economical of labor 
 than one where the sales amounted to $52,000 at 16 centers. This 
 comparison is interesting because it is of two systems receiving very 
 different amounts of subsidy from their respective school boards. Boston 
 could not afford to bring its food costs up to 67%, because it has $4,000 
 of overhead charges to meet, items of expense which do not appear at 
 all in the St. Louis budget, being borne indirectly by the Board itself. 
 (There the Board provides kitchen space in the schools free of rent, 
 heat, light and fuel charges, thus relieving the school lunch system of 
 the expense of a central plant.) 
 
 Another comparison of va|ue to us in Boston is that of our own annual 
 statements year by year. We have found, as would naturally be expected, 
 the food costs steadily rising from 49% in 1907 to 54% in 1912—a dif¬ 
 ference which would have necessitated the raising of prices if it had 
 not been for the fact that along with this increase came a corresponding 
 increase in the volume of business, almost doubling in six years. This 
 lowered our service cost per capita and made it possible to maintain 
 our old prices for food which was costing us much more. 
 
 These points which I have tried to make merely go to show that as 
 regards the business side of the High School lunch room problem, it is 
 like any other business—centralization goes for economy of administra¬ 
 tion, and the higher the costs the more must be received for the product 
 unless sales increase in proportion. 
 
 In conclusion I want to point out again that it is with the School 
 Board itself that the responsibility for the school lunch work must 
 ultimately rest; in many cities the Boards have shouldered this respon¬ 
 sibility, in others they are planning to do so, and I wish to lay before 
 this meeting the discussion of the question which we have found settled 
 so variously in the different cities of this country. Should the school 
 lunch restaurant pay all expenses, including charges for rent, heat, 
 light, etc., or is it legitimate that the School Board should lower the 
 price to the students by taking upon itself some of the financial burden? 
 In the latter case to what extent should the school lunch be subsidized? 
 Is it possible to set a standard? 
 
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