294 J.-A. PEMBERTON
a draft resolution concerning such a study. Wendy Way points out
that collaboration between the International Labour Office and the
Health Organisation ‘was rapid and effective’ and that League officials
endorsed the office’s draft, albeit adding a specification that the Health
Organisation should cooperate in producing a study with the LON’s
Economic and Financial Organisation and the International Institute of
Agriculture (IIA) in Rome.^186 At the nineteenth International Labour
Conference in June 1935, the attention of participants was drawn to
the question of nutrition in the report of its director and by statements
made by Sir Frederick Stewart and Ada Paterson, delegates of Australia
and New Zealand respectively, and by Grace Abbot, the head of the
American delegation. Rajchmann informed McDougall that Abbot had
expressed interest in The Agricultural and the Food Problems.^187 Against
this background, the following resolution was unanimously adopted:
Seeing that nutrition adequate both in quantity and in quality is essential
to the health and well-being of the workers and their families; And seeing
that, in various countries, evidence has been brought forward to show that
large numbers of persons both in town and country are not sufficiently or
suitably nourished:Seeing, moreover, that an increase in the consumption of agricultural
foodstuffs would help to raise standards of life and relieve the existing
depression in agriculture:The Conference welcomes the attention drawn by the Director in his report
to the problem of nutrition and requests the Governing Body to instruct
the Office to continue its investigation of the problem, particularly in its
social aspects, in collaboration with the Health and Economic Organisations
of the League of Nations, the International Institute of Agriculture and
other bodies capable of contributing to its solution, with a view to present-
ing a report on the subject to the 1936 session of the Conference.^188(^186) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 167.
(^187) League of Nations, Report on the Physiological Bases of Nutrition, 8. For Grace
Abbot’s interest in the McDougall memorandum, see Way, A New Idea Each Day, 166–67.
(^188) League of Nations, Report on the Physiological Bases of Nutrition, 8. Pursuant to the
International Labour Conference’s resolution, the International Labour Office in May
1936 published a general report under the heading of ‘Workers Nutrition and Social
Policy.’ The Mixed Committee found the report to be of ‘the greatest value.’ League of
Nations, Nutrition: Final Report of the Mixed Committee of the League of Nations on the
Relation of Nutrition to Health Agriculture and Economic Policy, 12–23.