Norwich bulletin., 1922-07-28

They can't make both ends meet" on any such picayune amount.
 Seems to me I've Oltoe before told you the story of my former neighbor;> An thOuy Cavanaugh. Even so, 1t will bear telling again. He was a young Irish man. sober, hard-working, faithful to his trust, and thrifty. Soon after his arri- val in this country he secured employ ment or a big farm. At first taken ''on probation" he soon proved himself so useful that he was made permanent employee. He continued working on that farm for somewhere near fifty years. He married bought a little house on two-acre lot of land, brought up fam fly of three or four children, and died at a ripe old age respected by all his neiEhbors of whatever descent. He never received more than $500 year wages. Yet he managed to live on that. Not only to live on 1t but to give all his children a fair education. Not only that but to save something out of his wages every year. These small savings he invested shrewd1y and re-invested the income. When he died he left his family a home wholly paid for and
 somewhere from $10,000 to sf2,00o in | money.
 | What the striking Pennsylvania min CTS say they can't possibly live on is three tlmse as much as the sum which
 Anthony Cavanaugh not only lived on but saved from. Just what gross sum would you fix as an equitable "living wage" for these two cases?
 i Don't you see that there isn't any such thing? It all depends. It depends on outside conditions in a measure. It | depends even more on the wage-earner himself. No two have an identical idea | of what is needed for "a living" For no two desire exactly the same sort of
 living"
 One wants silk stockings at least for i Sundays and holidays and B. V. D.'s for
 every day. Another is content with
 cheap cotton socks and no undershirt at all. One wants phonograph in the parlor and a flivver in the garage. An other makes music with his bucksaw by the woodpile in the backyard and goes to his work on "shanSs mare" The
 wife of one can't get up a satisfactory dinner without sirloin steak, green peas and hot-house cucunbers; another's
 wife concoots a savory and nutritious
 meal from a piece of stew1ng meat, some
 cheap vegetables and few herbs. On'
 has to go to the ball game whenever h.
 can get an afternoon off and to the nov les whenever he feels dull of an even
 ing. Another finds more solid enjoy
 ment in tending the potatoes and cab
 bages and sweet-corn Tn his little bael
 garden.
 One spends dollars; another save
 dimes.
 heard the other day of a married
 couple in this very town who, at theil
 first meal together, agreed upon a cer
 tain rule of life. It was siRply this
 ''No matter what our income, we vii save one-tenth of it every week" The!
 have done so, ever since. The hushanl Is industrious; the wife Is economical Their income has never been large
 never in the same class with that of tn striking miners or railroad men, bu they have always put by that tentt 3 even if 1t wasn't more than a nickel. r they couldn't have what they wante and still save, they have denied them l selves, got along without the thing de - sired, but saved that tenth, anyway { Naturally, such a man Is in demand. H l Is rarely out of a job. Indeed the job ? hunt him, not he the jobs. And, wie 7 he and his wife grow too old to wer g longer, they are in no danger of "comin t on the town" for support. The stead a weekly savings have grown, into SC
 cure insurance against that comin v rainy day. He has sometimes had | 1 work for small wages, smaller than h l y never knew him refuse to work be n cause the pay offered wasn't ia Twin Il wage" He has always taken the bes Q he could get, lived off it, saved from 1 !, and made the best of even bad jo
 till better presented itself. d "As man thinketh, so is he" Per }, haps As a man earneth, so he livet1
 might be added.
 l. The simple truth Is that to talk abou V fixing "a living wage" for large bodie . of dissimilar men and women whic [. shall be the same for all and wor 5, equitably with all, is to talk utter nor E. 1 sense.
 r As little Billy said of the gyascutu o There ant no sich animile."
 We working farmers aren't averagin . s2,6oO a year, nor $1,766, nor $1,20 s We doubtless wish we were. But, unt l. We do, we shall continue to make tF - most of the little we get. And I don 2 ] happen to know any who are or wh : think they are in imminent danger ( e starvation.
 n THE FARMER