Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-08-26
! MYSTERY EXPLAINED
How Young Men on Small Salaries Manage to
Live and Dress Finely.

How Young Men ON Small Salaries Manage to
Live and Dress Finely
To work-a-day folks, who toll and sweat
year in and year out and barley make
both ends meet, even on salaries above
the average, it is always something of a
mystery, says The New York Mail and
Express, how so many young men, on
salaries of $12 a week, or from that to
SIS at the outside, manage at all times to
keep dressed in the height of fashion and
find leisure to air themselves and their
clothes in conspicuously public places.
There is a good-sized world of these
butterfly young men in New York. 1t
takes in over half the young men of the
city. They are bill clerks or messengers
or underbookeepers in the big merchan-
tile houses, or ladies men" in the dry
goods houses, or young men who do any
thing that passes for work without inYolV-
ing actual manual labor. They are always
rugged out in the latest cut of clothes.
They never seem in hurry. They loiter
through the avenues and the parks, which
are their favorite resorts on Saturday
afternoons and Sundays, and hover about
the theater doors at night, like gnats
around the electric lights. To all appear
duC6S buSy are yOuuS 1leu VI eISS
leisure and unlimited resources. How
do they manage it on 81 week?
II will show you; COM p-stairs a mo-
ment,'' said a renter of rooms on Eighth
avenue near Forty-eighth street the other
day. She is matronly person, and has
a dozen or more young men for roomers
in her flats. She led the way to the
fourth story. At the head of the stairs
she opened the door to a ballroom. The
room was small but clean. Its furniture
consisted of a bed, plain washstand,
and two chairs. A row of hooks on the
wall opposite the bed did service instead
of clothes press, and the washstand
drawer supplied the absence of bureau.
In the corner of the room behind the
door was plain pine box, like an Ordin-
airy soap-box. On it stood a small oil
stove.
''The young man who rents this now,"
said the old landlady, sis clerk in one
of the most fashionable retail dry-goods
houses on Sixth avenue. In personal
appearance you couldn't tell him from a
millionaire; but he gets only $11 so week.
He pays me So a week for his room.
Out of the other SIS so he boards himself
pays for his washing, buys his cloths
and he always wears the latest styles
fact, his entire living expenses come out
of the IS so. What is his secret? It is
contained in thin pine box"
She removed the oil-stove and lifted the
box lid. Inside were small frying pan,
miniature cOffee-pot, cup and saucer,
two spoons, a knife and fork, and several
paper packages.
"Here, you see," continued the landlady,
sis housekeeping outfit. With it and
the oil-stove the young dry-goods clerk
practically boards himself-that is, he gets
his own breakfast and supper every day,
and no one is wiser. Those PACKAGES in
the box contain what he eats. In the
morning he makes a cup of coffee for
himself, which is an easy matter with the
Oil-stOye. He also cooks little rice, an
egg, a piece of bacon, or, sometimes
small piece of steak. Either makes
palatable and sustaining meal. That is
before he goes to work. In the evening
when he returns from the store he cooks
his supper in the samo way. He does his
little marketing himself, too, and he has
become so good at it that he can do fully
as well as I can at the stores. He will buy
a piece of bacon, enough for three meals
for 6 cents; rice for six meals, 10 cents; a
can of condensed milk, which will last not
half pound of cheese, which will last
week, 1212 cents; coffee enough for ten
days, half pound for 1219 cents: sugar
for week, 10 cents; potatoes, nine or ten
big ones, that will suffice for not less than
four meals, for nickel. If you will figure
the cost of one meal out of this list you
will find that, with variety limited only
by the articles on hand, the expense will
not exceed 10 cents-that is, 20 cents a
day for the two meals, to which add 10
cents that he spends downtown for lunch,
and you have 80 cents day, or So 10
week, as the cost of his board. His wash
ing costs not over 25 cents a week, as he
is neat and careful; so that his actual liv-
ing expenses, including the S. room rent,
are $3.50 a week, or, allowing the odd Is
cents for oil to burn in the little stove
q cents worth vii, last nine hours in it,,
his total expenditure is S. so week,
which leaves Sc from his salary to be
spent on clothes, or whatever he chooses.
That, sir, is the way hundreds, I might
even say thousands, and thousands, of
young men in New York live and manage
to keep up appearances"