Amador ledger., 1905-09-15
TASTES AND INCOME.
HARD TO MAKE NECESSITIES
CONFORM TO SALARY.

The Inexorable "Must'i Is Every
where in These Days of Growing
responsiveness and Cannot
Be Avoided.
Il have the tastes of a millionaire
and the means of tramp" is a say
ing of our friend the Sanscrit pro-
lessor. Of course, he meant the tastes
which only millionaire could afford
to crafty, for the making of most
millionaires depends not little on
the absence of tastes. This wide con-
tradiction which yawns between large
desires and limited incomes counts for
a good deal of the interest of life and
society and helps to keep the world
going, says Ellen Olney Kirk in the
Philadelphia Ledger. Everybody
orter have $4,000 and not a cent
more" said the Nantucket man. L
that were possible it would make a
dull world; but it is not possible. For
divide the worlds wealth equally to-
day and by tomorrow some will be
richer than others. Thoreau tried to
prove that a man of education and
ideals could build his own home, raise
his own beans and live on almost moth
ing year. But he lived only for him
self, without wife or child, and his
liked books and leisure to read them;
nature and ample time to study and
observe it and friends to meet with and
discuss the knotty problems then Of
fered to New England philosophers
He could afford to be the most exclu-
sive of men. His saying, 81 would
rather sit on a pumpkin and have it
silken cushion" contains the essence
of the aristocratic idea.
A recent writer in the Atlantic
Monthly takes up the subject on its
more practical side, and from the
point of view that most college pro-
fessors are paid too little makes a
careful survey of the necessary ex-
penses of man with wife and two
children, obliged to live in a style that
is sufficiently creditable to the uni
verslty to which he is attached. His
summary of the needs of such a fam
lily is most comprehensive, even taking
into account a possible operation for
appendicitis lis. it not time, by the
way, to begin to insure against ap.
pendicitis?) Nothing is left out, and
in the list of actual expenses moth.
ing seems excessive. The family Of
four keep one servant, and for the five
there is grocery bill of $25. This,
with SIS for meat. SIS for milk and
$40 for fruit, vegetables, butter and
eggs, makes a monthly tctal of $55
for the table. The item of $3.50 year
for the dress of four persons is so
moderate as to call for admiration.
Still, counting everything, insurance,
charities, amusements, outings, the
annual sum total reaches the amount
of $3.50, while the average salary for
professors is but $4,000. The writer's
conclusion is: 1--WE and our wives face
an impossible problem" the only solu-
ton being the possession of some pri-
yate means.
''The must is hard" says Goethe,
'but only by the must can we test our
| powers. To live by caprice requires
no particular effort" and accordingly
the professors wife would, we trust,
be able to reduce her husbands sched
ule and bring it within the prescribed
| limit. Indeed, the old-fashioned idea
would have been to live on less than
| 800 a month and save the rest for a
P11t hn Of
aires are with us. Everybody has q
piece of cut-glass or blue china to live
up to. Every brides paraphernalia is
suitable for a princess, and there is
something tragic in falling below the
scale which such elegancies impose.
Going without might seem the best
| remedy when one wishes to adjust exz
penses to means, but we are all so in
terlinked with other people that our
possible economy is the deprivation of
those who depend on us. Let us de-
eide to cut off the fruit supply, and
the agony depicted in the face of the
| Italian who brings us bananas and
oranges convicts us of cruelty-almost
meanneSs. Authors complain if peo-
pie do not buy their books; so do
painters if the public does not buy
their pictures, but all the time the an
guish of soul of the fruit vender,
whose fruit spoils because no one will
| purchase, goes unspoken. And think
of what an accumulation of bitterness
there must be in the heart of the cab
drivers who tout" for faret With
what scorn they must resent our igno-
Bile economy, which deprives them of
just that needed margin of income.
Such heartbreaks lie on the other side
of silence.
In spite of the growing expensive
ness of everyday life, the inexorable
''must'' is everywhere, and it may as
well be remembered that it is frugality
and not luxury which keeps the world
wholesome; also that in the question
of tastes versus means the people of
taste have endless consultations and
revenges which make them compara-
lively independent of means.
Truth in Error.
n Kansas exchange has an editorial
entitled "The TWine Plant Doesn't