The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-10-29
THE STAFF OF LIFE.
How "Old Hutch's" Corner Has Affected
Mulberry Bend.


NEW YORK, Oct. 2z-There are more
than 5000, 900 souls in New city and its en-
virous who to-day are consigning "Old
Hutch" and his crew to a very warm and
sulphurous hereafter. They are the work.
ing people whose weekly incomes run under
$40 week. A majority of them are for
eigners, Italians. Polaks, Hungarians, Bo-
hemians, Russians, Slavaks and Rouman-
ians. The minority is made up of unfor-
tunate Americans. In the awful tenement
districts of the East Side, life is a matter
not of dollars but of cents. Quantity and
not quality is the object of every one of the
thousands of women who daily sally forth
from their unpreposseSsing tenements to buy
the food for themselves, their husbands and
their little ones. Bread is their staple.
They cannot afford to make it; they can
not even afford to buy it fresh. This costs
D ceats small loaf and 10 a large one, or
rather it used to cost these figures. For
since tae great Chicago corner in wheat the
small loaf and the large have gone up in
price and gone down in size one-fifth. They
buy stale bread, the subject of one OF the
great industries of Gotham. Ii they pur-
chased it from the bakeries, wholesale or re-
tail, they formerly paid 212 or 3 cents a
small loaf; if from the peddlers who buy
their stock from hotels and restaurants or
2l8 cents: if from the itinerant Italians and
Russians who buy it heaven knows where,
IL to pa cents apiece. This lowest grade
would be curio, were it not 50 pltiable and
monstrous. 1t is not only stale, but it is also
semi-decomt oSed and often mildewed and
mouldy. In some instances the dealer
scrubs it clean with scrubbing brush and
then reheats it in an oven. This operation
increases its cost half a cent per loaf.
An average family of the type described
uses from three to twelve loaves per diem
according to its numbers. 1t is the chief
food for breakfast; it is the lunch OF the
husband in whatever trade he may be and
with tea of the family, aud is the piece de
resistance of the dinner in the evening AZ
21} cents or cents per loaf the family Is
able to invest the remainder in tea, coffee,
sugar, milk, a little meat OF fisl and few
cheap vegetables The increase in the price
of -four has upset all these conditions. Last
week fresh bread increased in price and dl-
miniShed in size. This week stale bread fol-
lowed the example and advanced from half
a cent to ! = cents per loaf. The result was
to increase the food expense of a family
from ? to 20 cents day.
Already the change is beginning to ex-
press itself in popular indignation and out
cry. IL In the Italian quarter, where nine
tenthS of all the bread used is stale, the
name of the great Chicago operator under
the romanesque pronunciation of "Olda
Hucha" is heard everywhere coupled with
maledictions. In the neighborhood of
Avenues A, B and G and Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth and Seventh streets, the very hotbed
of New York socialism and anarchism, it
would be very unsafe for that distinguished
bull to be seen. In the Jewish quarter the
philosophic resignation which has so long
characterized tlat race has again come to
the front and apparently stitied stronger
feelings.
One consequence of the corner is pecu-
liar. The demand for stale bread has in
creased at least third while the peddlers
who formerly did a thriving business are
making little or no money, or else are being
driven into other vocations Two weeks
ago there were at least 600 stale bread ped
dlers in the tenement Districts while to-day
there are not more than 400, women and
men. The bakers and hotels can no longer
sell stale bread so as to allow a margin of
profit to the peddler. In Mulberry and
Bayard streets the bakers are now exposing
stale bread both in their windows and on
the sidewalks in front of their stores. On
the East Side nearly every baker now sells
stale bread directly from his counter some
going so far as to put a small sign IN the
window announcing the fact.
FALES- CURTIS.