, 1885-10-15
How MOI 10 LIVE oasAPLY.


49,
Philadelphia Press
The leading French and English jour.
nails have given lately several articles
on the art Of living. or, rather, the art
of living cheaply. They are addressed,
tain examples are held up for imitation.
NJ. Rousseau, for instance, working file
maker, receiving about 40 cents per
day, spends 10 cents for food,
and so limits his expenses for
clothes, rent, etc, as to save
nearly $3.50 in three months. lnstan-
ces of admirable managers among the
wives Of English laborers are cited who
have reduced their oxpensee for food TO
the lowest amount of pennies on which
n human being could subsist. The les
son which all these articles enforce is
that the poor should study how TO do
without meat, and other savory morsels
in their daily food, to live on oatmeal.
milk, soup, etc, and that the rich
should combine to enforce this lesson,
and so help the poor to help them
selves, instead of giving blankets,
Christmas dolls and grants to sick
women and children
The tone and animus of these reform
atory articles agree precisely with those
which appear every six months in the
American papers, and which are aimed
at the woes of laboring men. They are
told that the average American menage
is the most extravagant in the world;
that two French families would subsist
on the waste in one of our kitchens,
etc, etc. The remedy is invariably a
system of economy in food; 10 or 10
cent dinners, compounded chiefly of
beans and bones, soups made of nigh
flayors and much water.
Now we do not advocate the waste of
q crust. But we do question the wis.
dom of %stinginess in providing food for
family. The man and woman who use
their bodies for hard manual labor must
nourish them. Let economy begin
somewhere else. Let the rooms go
without carpets and dresses without
trimming, but let the meals be substan-
tial and solid.
Practically the system of underfeed-
ing never has answered. If a man does
not get the amount of nutriment which
his body requires he will take stimulant
instead. Wine makes up TO Jacques for
his soupe maigre and whisky to Sandy
for his oatmeal. The nervous Ameri-
can, with his h%uctuating extremes OF
climate, requires a variety Of food, and
nature has provided it for him. The
economical housekeeper, whose praise is
in all the papers, who saves out OF her
market money enough to buy books and
magazines, is committing a fatal error,
to which half the female reformers
thoughtlessly egg her on.
1t is worth our while, too, to look
squarely at this question of economy.
All English speaking people believe
Though they may not practice it, that
strict economy is the chief practical vir-
ture-a good and helpful thing to a
man and a family. The Scotch taught
this faith to Great Britain and the Puri-
tans to America. 1t was true to them
both in their hard struggle with pow
erty and %niggardly soil.
But is it always true Is stern, pinch
ing economy a good thing Is it a help
full thing Does not the child become o
more liberal, generous, happier man,
healthier in body and mind, who has
not from his birth been nagged and
rasped by petty economies, by the per-
petual gnawing of stomach and brain
for food that was denied themi Has
not the penny wise system pushed to
extremes produced in individuals and
races a morose and gloomy temper, in
tolerance, narrow, bigoted habits of
thought and action Would the Amer
lean have his characteristic large, care
less good nature, his sweet, tolerant
charity for all men and creeds if he had
been Systematically starved and stinted
in material goods in his childhoodl
Again, the American or English eco
nomist, who, sitting in his luxu-
rious home after II comfortable meal,
plans how the workingman must first of
all be taught how to live on so many
pennies per diem for food, so many for
Goals, so many for clothes, etc, the
whole representing the EXTREMIST con
ditions of poverty. forgets that no hui
man being ever did or could run this
hard, unvarying round Of work and
bare necessity, month after month, year
after year. There must be an outlet
the amusement, the excitement,
the extravaganza ~ the step be-
yond bodily necessity, which
makes live worth living. Man
cannot live by bread alone, even when
his bread is of the finest. 1t is among
the laboring class in England and Scot
land who are forced down to their
barest, hardest conditions OF work and
pay that there is the most gin drunk,
that intemperance and unchastity are
most common. Human nature will and
does break over somewhere. Cheap,
wholesome amusements provided for
the poor are the most effective, health
full form of modern benevolence. They
are beginning to supply in England and
in this country what the Frenchman
or Italian finds for himself in his dances
and frequent fetes.