for Children at Lakewood Township, New Jersey (later it was moved to Farmingdale, New Jersey) in 1909. Their book, Disease in Milk: The Remedy Pasteurization: The Life Work of Nathan Straus records that unclean, unpasteurized milk fed to infants was the chief cause of tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria and other diseases that were the main cause of a 25% infant mortality rate in the U.S. in 1890, 15% in 1903 (but 7% in New York in 1900, where pasteurized milk had already become the norm) (it is now below 1% in the U.S.). Straus is credited as the leading proponent of the pasteurization movement, which eliminated the hundreds of thousands of deaths per year then due to disease-bearing milk. During the economic panic of 1893, Straus used his milk stations to sell coal at the very low price of 5 cents for 25 pounds to those who could pay. Those who could not received coal free. He also opened lodging houses for 64,000 people, who could get a bed and breakfast for 5 cents, and he funded 50,000 meals for one cent each. He also gave away thousands of turkeys anonymously. At Abraham & Straus he noticed that two of his employees were starving themselves to save their wages to feed their families, so he established what may have been the first subsidized company cafeteria. In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, Straus donated an ice plant to Santiago, Cuba. He was appointed by President William Taft as the sole United States delegate to the International Congress for Protection of Infants, in Berlin 1911, also delegate to the Tuberculosis Congress, in Rome, Italy, 1912. Straus retired in 1914 to devote his time to charity. During the winter of 1914–15, he served 1,135,731 penny meals for the unemployed from his milk depots in New York City. In 1916, as American entry into World War I loomed, he sold his yacht Sisilina to the Coast Guard, and used the proceeds to feed war orphans. Later he fed returning American servicemen at Battery Park. Shortly after World War I, Straus traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, to lay a wreath at the Confederate Vance Monument as a "debt of gratitude" for Zebulon Baird Vance's opposition to antisemitism. Straus paid for a "suitable fence" to be built around the monument. Straus donated money to the New York Public Library, specifically targeting young people. The Young