Montana labor news., 1939-07-20
BY the Monitors Washington Bureau

Better Times.
BY the Monitors Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON, D. C.-Mrs. Alice
S. Belester of Chicago, a determined
little woman reminding n a bit Of
Beatrice Lille but without her sly
humor, was the first witness in the
consumer hearing before the mon
opoly committee yesterday and in
two minutes had the men leaning
out of their chairs in interest in the
i~ntricacies of the Belester family
budget.
Mr.. Belester, it developed, is a
carpenter upholsterer and cabinet
maker who earned $500 last year
while Mrs. Belester got $40 by rent
ing room in the house she and her
husband built with their own hands.
The Belesters have no children and
live in the basement and sleep in the
attic. 1t turned out that the Beles-
tiers spent $1,642 last year, so they
ended 1888 with a $500 deficit, COM
parable for them to the $4,000, 600, 900
deficit of the Federal Treasury. Like
MIR. Morgenthau, Nh. Belester hopes
for better times in 1899.
If the Belesters seem unimportant,
it should be recalled that the median
American family income is about $22
a week, or just the Belester level.
In other words there are as many
families who earn less than the
Belesters as earn more. 1t is hard
for people who pay income taxes
and associate with other comfortably
off folk to visualize this circum-
stance.
Average Family Typified.
Mrs. Belester typified the average
family. There was poignancy as she
told of efforts to make ends meet,
and to patch up the 1892 sheets to
make them last another year or turn
them into pillow cases; of the hus-
bands struggle with the 1927 car,
for his tools and ladders (t cost $73
to run last year, and of the emer-
gency that sent him to the hospital.
The Belesters spent $3.50 for food in
1888. The men on the monopoly
committee followed with keen in
terest Mrs. Belester's adventure in
buying a new suit ($10-marked
down from $25) and her efforts to
make her money count.
Mrs. Belester's complaint is that
advertising and labelling isn't help
ing her as a consumer, and that the
government should step in to grade
products. She showed advertisements
on which she was forced to rely in
making purchases.
I'VE have to be so careful" she
explained, 80 very, very careful"
There was that So dress. She read
to the committee the advertisement,
and Mr.. Montgomery, AAA Con-
sumers' counsel, had it enlarged. The
department store proclaimed that the
So dress had tiny shepherd checks
with its spanking white sharkskin";
that it "flatters the figure" and that
it carried a pert kerchief that adds
to its smartness." But it didn't tell
whether it would wear or not; what
its tensile strength was; how it
would wash. Mrs. Belester wanted
facts; facts in clothes, foods, and
commodities that are vital to mil
lions of American families who must
pinch every penny.
So Many Factors Omitted.
The Belesters aspire to a new"
secondhand vacuum cleaner, but the
advertisement in this case seemed
to discuss everything except COM
parative costs and electric require
ments. Then there was the beverage
advertisement. This particular bev-
erage was Endorsed by James Stew
art, motion picture star.
But" protested $22-a-week Mrs.
Belester without irony, him being
a movie star-we have different
things in common"
She didn't want Hollywood adver-
tisements-she wanted facts.
Mrs. Belester seemed to a good
many persons present to symbolic
something important. Although there
was poginancy, there was also grim
determination in her testimony. Con-
sumers, it appears, are getting or
ganized. Mrs. Belester herself is an
official of such a group in Chicago.
This weeks testimony is designed to
show what is being done nationally,
whether in government grading, con-
sumner standardizing, or the securing
of truth in advertising. Mrs. Beles-
ter is a sort of portent; the writers
of silly advertising copy-which has
demolished more American trees
than forest fires-had better watch
out. For there is no more explosive
force in nature than a determined
housewife, on a limited budget, set
ting out to get the facts.-Richard
Strout, Christian Science Monitor,
May II, 1889.
A man complained to the manager
of the New York Worlds Fair Ford