Mayor Lauds Straus As Milk Drive Opens

With Nathan Straus Jr. as chairman of the Mayor’s committee in the Statewide drive to induce more milk drinking, Milk Month got under way yesterday in New York at a meeting at City Hall of the city committee for the drive.

In launching the “Drink More Milk” campaign in New York City, Mayor LaGuardia yesterday, addressing the city committee of eighty or more distinguished citizens, paid tribute to the late Nathan Straus, Jewish philanthropist, and father of the committee’s chairman by pointing out that the first movement in America to teach mothers the values of milk, as the perfect food for children, was organized, directed and financed by Mr. Straus, who, the Mayor said, evinced a most noteworthy humanitarianism and public spirit in indicating the necessity for rigid inspection to ensure the sale of only pure milk and in making that valuable food product available to the city’s poor and needy.

“And so it is no mere accident that Nathan Straus Jr. is chairman of this committee. It is appropriate and fitting,” the Mayor concluded.

Mr. Straus outlined the objects of the drive to make New York City milk conscious, citing Governor Lehman’s espousal of the campaign for the State.

Dr. John L. Rice, New York City’s Health Commissioner, who addressed the committee, said that the consumption of milk in New York City was below the health standard fixed at a daily consumption of one quart for every child and one pint for every adult. Dr. Rice said that the city’s estimated consumption of 3,200,000 quarts a day should, to reach the health standard, be stepped up to 4,000,000 quarts or more daily.

Mrs. David E. Goldfarb, representing the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations, announced that one of the first demonstrations of the campaign this month would be the appearance of speakers in the drive before the meeting of the Federation on October 17 in the Emple Emanu-El Community House.