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ARLY in the Twentieth Century Tom Johnson, then Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, heard the cry of the people as they bewailed the high cost of living. And

Tom Johnson saw in private profits, public good. Why, if speculators grow rich preserving foods in cold storage, can a city not serve its own, thereby saving the profits to its own? Why should not Cleveland have its own municipal cold storage plant? To accomplish this, the people had to vote on the question, bonds had to be sold and, even more bothersome, the lawsuits of certain speculators, who called themselves "taxpayers", had to be fought and won.

To the superficial surveyor of events, Tom Johnson for many years gained public support through a campaign for three-cent fare on the street cars of the city. But Tom Johnson would have held the people without that main issue, which was both the stepping stone and the pitfall of his fame as Cleveland's great mayor. With the street railway lines he began a war that carried him into office. But Tom Johnson possessed a six-cylinder brain that created and carried to perfection hundreds of plans far more important to the public than riding on the

street railway for a fare of three cents. He saw the home needs of his fellow citizens. As a result, today at the corner of West Twenty-Fifth Street and Lorain Avenue, in what is known as the center of the West Side, a community of two hundred and fifty thousand, there stands a monumental pressed brick and steel structure, auditorium-like in appearance. In reality it is a public market and cold storage warehouse. It is the property of the people of Cleveland, a place to preserve the family supplies and to purchase from merchants whose rent and overhead expenses are at the minimum. It is the culmination of Tom Johnson's dream, not yet completed, but already serving the public.

Each week during the last year an average of sixty thousand of Cleveland's citizens have entered the broad doors of the municipal market to purchase foods at glass counters. Concrete floors, glazed-tile walls wainscoted with great slabs of glass, high, well-ventilated ceiling, and thorough sanitary conditions make this market a pleasant place in which to shop. And the cost to the merchants one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty dollars a year for a stall, including pipe-cooled counter re

frigeration at the butter and egg stands -makes it possible to the consumer to enjoy genuine reductions in prices.

But in the basement of this structure, two hundred and thirty-five feet long and one hundred and thirty-six feet wide, is the great opportunity, as yet but little used the municipal cold storage plant. It is here the housewife may store eggs, butter, or apples, when the prices are lowest, for use in the long winter when prices are almost prohibitive. Here, also, are cold storage lockers five by six feet, for which the retail merchants in the market house pay four dollars a month. Though it is not apparent, these lockers are one of the greatest sanitary features of the establishment. The market is open only four days a week. On the closed days, perishable stocks are stored in these lockers instead of being hauled about the city in insanitary wagons, through dusty streets, to ice boxes of doubtful cleanliness.

The lockers, however, take up only a small part of the storage capacity of the plant. Seven cold rooms with a total capacity of nearly fifty thousand cubic feet are devoted exclusively to storing foods for

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the public. Wholesale dealers who make a business of speculating in cold storage products were quick to take advantage of the excellent service and the first year stored three thousand barrels of apples, two thousand cases of eggs, one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds of cheese, besides a large quantity of bakers' supplies.

Tucked away in odd corners were a few cases of eggs, a few crocks of butter, and three boxes of apples-all the property of families. That was in the winter of 1913-1914. This year, however, the glad word has been spread and consignments of family supplies are coming in most gratifyingly. When the warehouse, with its single refrigerating machine, rated at thirty tons of ice a day cooling capacity, and seven public rooms, was opened, few people realized it was there for their use. Cold storage to the public mind was a vast undertaking only for the experienced and wealthy speculators. Joseph M. McCurdy, superintendent of the plant, had

been superintendent of the largest commercial plant in Northern Ohio for ten years. He had experimented with

CLEVELAND'S MUNICIPAL MARKET

small family facilities for years, but in at private venture the profits had been too small. In this public plant he began a campaign to educate the people, and it was quite by accident he obtained the first family consignment.

"We of the city administration wanted the people to take advantage of the opportunity we were able to offer, but they did not flock to us as we had hoped," says Mr. McCurdy. "As superintendent of the warehouse, the responsibility for its success was directly upon me and I went among my friends urging them to let me take care of their produce for them. I did everything I could think of to interest the people, but met with indifference.

"Early in April, 1913, a woman called me over the telephone. She explained she had known me for years and begged as a favor that I permit her to store a case of eggs in the municipal warehouse. I could not convince her that the warehouse was designed for just such people as she. The city has no provision for trucking, but I wanted those eggs so much that I made an excuse to get into her neighborhood that day and brought them here. That was our first family

A RETAIL MARKET IN THE CLEVELAND PLANT

It does not take so large an amount of capital to start a retail store in Cleveland because, as in the case of the butcher and the grocer, the refrigerator and the ice can be rented as easily as the store. The housewife shops where her goods are stored.

lot. As a result of that call the women of the neighborhood combined and stored. one hundred and fifty dozen eggs with

us.

"The butter storing season is the month of June. We had made a beginning with eggs and it was not so hard to get people to put butter away. The big difficulty was educating prospective consumers to buy butter in tubs and repack it in crocks or to buy one-pound bricks. These were then crated and received as crates containing a specified number of packages which could be removed one or more at a time. We have to have such produce crated to save room and to save loss.

"Apples were next in season. A woman who had no way of keeping a barrel of apples in her home was our first customer in this line. We never would. have gotten those apples if the woman had not placed a sentimental value on them. They were raised at her old home

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and she did not want them to spoil. She repacked them in three boxes and sent. them in. Toward spring she found she would need only two of the three boxes and came to me again. I went to one of the grocers in the market and sold the extra box, a bushel of apples, for enough to pay all expense of shipping, packing, and storing, together with the amount she paid for the whole barrel.

"We have not begun to develop the possibilities of private storage. Bakers store fruits used in making pies, but so far we have not been able to devise a proper package for family use.

"Poultry can be bought cheap in the spring and summer, dressed and stored in a cold warehouse for use in the winter. The best hotels and clubs making a specialty of broilers in January and February use only cold storage birds. They are less expensive and much improved. by freezing. This is true of all meats.

"Each article must be kept at a certain

temperature and no two kinds of food can be stored in the same room. We have only seven rooms, but as the plant is enlarged we shall be able to extend our facilities. In the meantime we are experimenting, learning, and educating. Eventually we hope to be closer to the public than the corner grocer and of infinitely more benefit."

Though Joseph McCurdy spoke enthusiastically of the possibilities and the future of the municipal cold storage warehouse, he failed entirely to mention. the long nights he spent in the engine room during that first year. Only one refrigerating machine and thousands of dollars of merchandise dependent upon it was a tremendous burden. A slight accident might have destroyed public confidence and spoiled the whole future.

This fall he will be able to rest easier, for a sixty-ton-a-day cooling machine is being installed. It will be large enough to furnish refrigeration for the present plant of

seven rooms

and twenty

one coun

ter refrigerators in the market house, and

seven new rooms of

nearly

ninety

thousand

cubic feet,

now near

ing completion.

The original machine will be for reserve, and will not be used after the apple storage season opens in September.

April 1 to January 1 for forty cents, one hundred pounds of butter from June 1 to February 1 for fifteen cents, one hundred pounds of cheese for a month for ten cents, and a barrel of apples (three bushels) from October 1 to April 1 for forty cents. Does it pay, when others charge from five to ten per cent more and refuse to handle family consignments?

During the first year the Municipal Cold Storage warehouse showed a deficit of $1,663.74. It was not ready for use all of that time and more than $2,200 was charged to operating expenses though actually belonging to construction

account.

And the market house? The site of the building extends from West TwentyFifth to West Twenty-Fourth Streets, from Lorain Avenue to an alley. Be

tween the market house and the sidewalk along the alley is

Thus has the city of Cleveland invested. almost one million dollars of the taxpayers' money. Does it pay? A crate

open space fully fifty feet wide and in the rear of the market house is a paved area seventy-five feet wide. It is planned to build a copper roof over the sidewalk on the alley and West Twen

ty Fourth

Street sides, five hundred feet in all. This outlay will

amount to forty thousand dollars, which profits will pay. Perhaps from at commercial viewpoint, with taxes to pay and stockholders to satisfy, it would be a failure. But in the saving to the people, in the comfort and cleanliness it assures, it is as Tom Johnson would say, "a gold mine to the