Evening star., 1923-01-28

q foreign family has secretly offered
moro than double what she is pay
ing! Landlords are making q lot, but
they might make moro IL permitted.
But Nine. D and all her kind
are eking out a painful but proud
existence on the income of pre-war
investments. 1t was (and is) a great
French class. the little" and the mod
crate RENTER. who represent family
economies for generations They
were the virtue and the justification
Of France. They saved France with
their foreign gold investments in 1914.
France has not ruined them with
paper money.
They are winged, but not shot
down.
ERENCH farmers are making good
l. thing. 1t is In cities that theScost
Of living weighs upon US. Between
1914 and the present time the cost of
living among wage earners' families
in the United States has run to 81
per cent cor course, 1t has been
higher in between.) 1t is 81 per cent
higher now.
Now. in the same awy, a middle
class French family finds its cost of
living at this moment up to 300 per
cent OF that in 1914.
A family Of three, with one servant,
eating meat at two meals, lived for
IL francs per day in the market
book OF the maid-of-all l-work. To-
day. with meat or fish at one meal
and eggs. rice and cooked fresh fruit
in the evening. the daily marketing
bill averages 33 francs
No use 70 reduce these francs to
dollars. France is on her own sound
monetary basis, however painful the
exchange may be against her. Francs
are francs. These people know but
francs-which some day will be worth
their 20 cents apiece again in foreign
lands-and today are just plain francs
In France. For Frenchmen living at
home the franc has not gone down;
the cost Of living has simply gone up
Workingmen. like farmers, are hav-
ing good thing. Their wages have
been boosted again and again to meet
the cost of living. Yet even work
ingmen feel the cost of meat In
spite Of vast efforts, France is only
slowly bringing up her cattle stock,
so depleted in the war.
At the time of the American revolu-
tion two pounds of wheat were worth
one pound of meat in France. H.
normal times before the war, say. fif-
teen years ago. it took seven pounda
Of wheat to buy one pound of beef
Today it takes twenty pounds of wheat
to buy one pound of beef. 1t In true
"a nrtN 80
to a certain maximum by the French
| government which is not the case
with beef. But the argument cuts
no Ice with 3 French family which
sees meat cost such and such q price
ITO show how minutely they struE-
gle TO portion out justice to ali.
the city of Paris has jus, decided that
the maximum allowance il can give
to old people is 80 francs per month,
handed out in cash to all on. the lists
Of its public assistance living in
their own houses'-that Is to say
the houses of their children, grand
children, family connections, etc, or
in rented rooms. when they are earn
ing little something. This has
nothing to do with the poorhouse.
whose expenses are in this way kept
down considerably. These old people
helped France all their working time.
France hates not to stand by them
now.
/ know such a one. who lives with
his son. barber. Now, my barber
had a good life up to the armistice
He earned enough to make the little
70 mil lu- -xxrff
live in honorable comfort with those
French economies which were their
natural habit
Now the time is past" the old
man quavers, when leisurely men
came to the barber shop in France to
chat politics and prolong the time
with cologne friction after a shave.
The shave no longer feeds the
family-or, rather, feeds it very
scantily. 1t takes one-fourth of an
hour to shave a client, and we get 75
centimes per shave It would be 3
francs per hour If we had uninter-
rupted strings OF clients But we
haven't. The idle hours eat up the
profits"
"Why?' I ask.
Since the American Army came to
France" the old man tells (the
barber's father). "Frenchmen have
learned to use safety razors Mil
lions OF those safety razors were let
loose on our land in the liquidation
Of the stocks. There are safety
razors in so many families"
The old man blows his nose with
sorrow.
"Frenchmen find that they can
shave for nothing?" say.
"Huh-uh!"
YES; but what about hair cut
ting?" ask him (the barber's ancient
father).
wives and daughters" he says
dsrkly, lots of them have learned it,
smelled hair burning in this very
house the other day. Huh-uh.
They're capable of anything, those
women!"
They're French women.