Throughout much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many state and local school districts provided food for their students to promote learning. The idea of whether the federal government ought to play a role in child nutrition was not raised until the Great Depression, when Congress began to appropriate federal dollars to assist states facing severe economic distress. In the 1930s the federal government began to distribute surplus food to states for use in local schools. Later, when food distribution became difficult during the war years, the government awarded cash grants enabling states to purchase food at local markets. Not only did these programs help states feed poor children, but they also created a market for farm goods, which worked to the benefit of the farmers.

By the 1940s, however, it was still painfully obvious that too many of America's youth, especially in the South, remained grossly undernourished. This lack of nourishment was especially problematic and notable when a number of young men failed armed forces physicals after being drafted for World War II.

Richard B. Russell, a senator from Georgia, proposed a school lunch program in March 1944 to combat the problem of malnutrition. Senator Russell, although not personally touched by poverty, was well aware of the plight of many of his fellow Georgians, especially children. He also represented a rural state, where farmers had suffered for years from chronically low prices for their goods. Russell proved well positioned to champion a federal program that could address both problems.

The school lunch proposal was very popular and its main opponent, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, felt compelled to say that while providing school lunches to poor children was a good idea, it was not something in which the federal government should be involved. Taft, a traditional conservative, believed the federal government should have a very limited role in the lives of its citizens; the states, he believed, should provide the bulk of any services or assistance Americans needed. His view of American federalism allocated a very small role to the federal government, while Russell and others saw the federalist structure as essentially a cooperation between the two jurisdictions of state and federal government.

In passing the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (79 P.L. 396, 60 Stat. 230), Congress relied on its constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare. The primary stated purpose of the act was to promote adequate nutrition among school-aged children, but a secondary purpose was to encourage domestic consumption of American agricultural products. The act did this by allocating surplus food and grants-in-aid to states so local school districts could provide lunches for children who might otherwise go hungry. In the legislation's words:

It is hereby declared the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children and to encourage the consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the states, through grants-in-aid and other means, in providing an adequate supply of foods and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation, and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs.

Although litigants have not directly challenged the school lunch program, the issue of federal grants-in-aid to states with conditions attached has been litigated many times and has been firmly established as a constitutional power of the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution gives Congress broad powers to expend funds, as in United States v. Butler (1936), and to attach conditions to those expenditures, as in Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980).

Over the years Congress has amended the act dozens of times to increase its scope and funding. The program that cost $70 million in 1947 grew to cost over $6.4 billion at the turn of the twenty-first century, when it provided lunches to twentyfive million students nationwide. Perhaps just as important, the school lunch program led directly to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, an act that empowered the Department of Agriculture to expand nutrition programs. With this increased scope, the government also created the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in 1972. So what started out as a clever way to use surplus food, became a national commitment to nutrition for all American citizens.

Bibliography

Fite, Gilbert C., and Richard B. Russell, Jr. Senator From Georgia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Gay, James Thomas. "Richard B. Russell and the National School Lunch Program." In Georgia Historical Quarterly 80, no. 4, Winter (1996).

Internet Resource

The School Lunch Program. .