The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1914-09-04

uOlIl, CIlcIc Has Dcell d 1AldIhcu uSpd1 y"
ure from the practice, once so COM
mon, of keeping on hand large guam
titles of food. How long could any of
our American communities live if cut
off from outside communication Not
very long. The United States as a
whole is more than self-sustaining in
the matter of food supplies, but if
the communications were cut, while
we might get enough of certain things
to eat for a long time, we would very
soon be sadly in need Of something
with which to balance the ration, for
in our own country each community
is more and more dependent from day
to day on other communities for many
of the things which it. eats.
Our parents, or at any rate our
grandparents, followed a different
practice. Every cellar everyone
had cellar-was great storehouse
of food. There were bins of vege-
tables and apples; shelves groaned be-
meath their weight Of preserved fruits
strings of dried applies fringed the
attic lafters; pickles there were by
the score of gallons and kraut by the
barrel; meat, sufficient often for a
years consumption, was sailed in the
fall, and dried, picked or smoked for
future use. 1t would take long time
to starve out family so supplied.
These things were done as matter
of course by every farmer, and the
same practice was carried on in the
cities on a smaller scale by thousands
of families. Today these practices
are practically things of the past. Our
cities, because of their great size, the
character of their activities and the
immense foreign immigration that has
poured into them, have got far out of
touch with the spirit and the customs
of country life, and the farmers them
selves have adopted different customs.
Even in the East, where population
is relatively stable and customs change
slowly, very large proportion of the
supplies for the table comes from the
shelves Of the grocery store, and the
great store of provisions formerly al
ways on hand, has dwindled to insig-
nificant proportions. In the cities the
practice of having enough food in the
house to last two days is probably the
exception rather than the rule.
All of this has much to do with the
cost of living, Of which we hear so
much. The modern family buys
enough at time for single meal, a
can of this and a spoonful of that and
couple of ounces of something else,
instead of a supply for weeks and
months at time. And in one way or
another the customer must inevitably
pay the price of the additional labor
which the handling Of these infintesi-
NAL orders involves. Living in that
manner must be costly.
Just now, with war conditions tend
ing to enhance the price of all foods,
these conditions are about to be en-
phasized still further. And the SIM
pie, easy and obvious method of coun-
teracting, in very large measure at
least, the effect of this tendency is
being ignored, and will be ignored
even by those who can quite convent
emily avail themselves of it. Potatoes
are cheap today, but instead of buying
and storing them we will buy them by
the peck in the winter and pay four
prices for them. Vegetables of all
kinds are cheap and abundant, and a
little later they may be stored conven-
iently and safely, or preserved in var
ious forms for later use. But they
will be bought by the dimes worth as
usual. Eggs can be bought all through
the summer at about 20 cents dozen,
and they can be preserved with
absolute safety and certainty for two
cents a dozen. In the winter time new
laid eggs are about as scarce as rocs'
eggs, but we will buy, at 40 or 50
cents dozen, the eggs that other
people have preserved, and think our
selves fortunate to get them. House.
keepers do still preserve some fruit,
but the sudden jump in the price of
sugar has almost put stop to that.
This is the only item in the whole list
in which there is as yet any real
change, but during the winter people.
who need to save their pennies will be
paying double prices for the things
which they could buy within the next