South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1917-01-26
Food Skimping Really
False Economy
More and Better Food Fuel
We Put in Stomach Fur
naceS, More and Better
Work We Will Do.
BY Woods Hutchinson. VI. d.

Medical Subjects.
Thousands of careful studies of
the actual budgets Of workers fam
lilies by government commissioners.
by charity organization societies. by
settlement workers, have shown that
the wife of the average workingman
has 10 bring her food and cooking
expenses down TO about SI.4O per
week per member Of her family:
that is TO say, 20 cents per day in
stead of Chicago's triumphant 81
cents. incidentally. these same in
Vulnerable. labOrious and most in
telligent studies have shown that the
minimum amount upon which
working family of FIVE can keep
themselves properly fed and housed.
decently clothed and educated and
cared for in sickness, and recreated
in short. live like white people.
maintain even the most modest
form of what we are proud to boast
of as the American standard of liv-
ing-is SS41 year in the larger cit
les and S740 in country towns and
villages. While. from the best data
available. at least rs per cent of
them don't get it and 80 per cent get
less than two-thirds that amount.
This sounds incredible, but. UNI
fortunately it has a painful amount
of truth i'm il. Two things conspire
TO blind us TO the actual facts. one
is that wages are always counted
by the day. which is, of course. only
the working day, while expenses run
every day i'm the month and every
month in the year. Moreover. most
of us can remember when $3.50 a
day was considered a good wage
and men brought up families of six,
eight and 10 on less than that. so
that 81 a day sounds big and gener-
GUS forgetting how frightfully food
has gone up or money has gone
down, whichever way you like 10
put il, since then. But with the %
Sundays and four TO eight legal holi-
days, 81 day means only $500 a
year, and when we remember that.
as both board of health and sickness
insurance figures show. every man
averages from nine TO II days lay
off on account of illness each year
and il is a strange trade that has
no slack seasons or temporary clos
ures for repairs to machinery, etc,
or enforced lay-offs for a dozen diff
ferent Causes-even that slender
amount is morally certain to be re-
| duced by from $50 TO $40.
The other misleading element is
that the so-called non essentials and
apparently casual and trivial expen-
| ditures not only take up but abso-
lutely and inevitably claim so COM
! paratively large a share OF the bud
get. For instance. we have the feed
/ ing that if a family is once decently
| fed and housed and clothed it's other
necessary expenditures will be a
mere trifie. But, according to a per-
/ fectly definite and well worked out
standard schedule, no family can af-
| ford TO spend more than one-fifth
of its income upon rent and two
/ ffths upon food and one-tenth up
on clothing and shoes. So that these
main necessities of existence, which
we are inclined 10 suppose are all
/ that really matter. only take up
/ less than two-thirds of the income
And. what is even more difficult to
/ believe, these mere accessories and
apparent trfles are just as necessary
and important TO the maintenance
4 of health and well-being and decent
| -respect-including as they do
/ books. papers and magazines, medi-
| cines, lecture, concert and dance
tickets, laundry. church and club
dues, carfare and other Sunday and
vacation expenses. insurance and
| charity. From this il is clear that no
family with an income of less than
S4 a day wCJld be able 70 live on
the Chicago diet squads reduced
cost of meals.
Moreover. it must be frankly stat
ed in all friendliness that the expert
/ ment is in exactly the wrong direc-
ton. The aim Of the modern biologi-
cal engineer is not to lower food ex-
penditures but 10 raise wages. The
more and betted food fuel we can
put into our stomach furnaces the
more and better work we will do
and the higher wages we will earn
and get-if we insist upon il. All our
old bellypinching. appetite starving,
ascetic notions of dieting economy
are going the way Of the buffalo
and the dodo. The new doctors ad-
vice To his fellow workers is not
Economic on food" but Strike
for better wages" They not only
can but have earned them. and
T there il DIeutv of money aXai1a bl .
in sight already-in the hands of
the upper one percent on the
community alone-to pay them.