With all of the news flooding the media lately regarding organic foods, additives, high fructose corn syrup, and truth in labeling, it may seem as though the concern over what we are eating is a fairly recent phenomenon. And yet, if you look back into Cranford history, and the history regarding one of its own, you’ll find out that this is not the case at all.
Consider Alice Lakey. Born in Ohio in 1857, she grew up in Chicago and Europe, and later made Cranford her permanent home, where she quickly immersed herself into the community and became very active in various organizations.  She helped bring to fruition numerous ordinances, including placing trash receptacles throughout town, garbage collection, obtaining town snow plows, establishing the first grade school, the first fire department, senior citizen housing, a program to fight drug addiction, and the censoring of public movies. She was one busy chick. And way ahead of her time. Who knew these things even existed at the turn of the century?
What she became best known for, however, was being a forceful leader in the campaign for food purity. A member and president of The Village Improvement Association, Lakey gained fame, locally and nationally, as an outspoken leader in the “Pure Food Movement.” She made it her personal mission to communicate with and work through women’s clubs across the country to organize a huge flood of letters and petitions regarding the issue and send them to Congress, and even meeting personally with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. Her work and persistence was instrumental in the U S Senate’s ultimate passage of The Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906, something which still greatly touches our lives today. She was also instrumental in securing the enactment of the Federal weights and measures law. Perhaps the most impressive part of all of this? Lakey and her women’s groups accomplished this impressive task a full fourteen years before women even had the right to vote.
Alice Lakey’s name was inscribed in the National Archives. She was ultimately the first woman to be listed in “Who’s Who”, and became the first Cranford woman to be named a member of the National Academy of Social Sciences for her groundbreaking work. She did Cranford proud until her death in 1935. Kind of makes me feel guilty that I can’t even get myself to a PTA meeting.