AXD WHERE TO FIND ONE. 165 



period. The child is initiated and instructed in one of the 

 fundamental principles of social science when he discovers 

 that he cannot purchase a cake and also keep his penny 

 that he must forego the one or part with the other. As a 

 corollary from the proposition, he then comprehends that, 

 to keep his pennies, he must deny himself cakes ; and thus, 

 by involuntary deduction, he arrives at a fundamental prin 

 ciple of economy, viz. : self-denial in expenditures for per 

 sonal gratification. The limit to which it is possible to 

 carry this self-denial without injury to health, or diminution 

 of power for production, is somewhat remarkable. The 

 cost of what are absolute and actual necessaries of life is, in 

 most countries, comparatively little as is evidenced in cases 

 where stern necessity affixes the bounds of possible expen 

 diture. In France, for instance, there are tens of thousands 

 of peasants and of operatives whose daily earnings do not 

 exceed ten cents, and yet they contrive to live gayly on that 

 sum. As a consequence, in no other country has the art of 

 cookery made equal progress. In Paris, an enterprising 

 woman, Madame Robert, furnishes a dinner daily to six 

 thousand workmen for two pence each, her bill of fare be 

 ing cabbage soup, a slice of boiled beef, a piece of bread, 

 and a glass of wine. In our Southern States, the food of 

 the chief laborers the men who at one time produced an 

 export value of over two hundred millions of dollars per 

 annum in cotton, sugar, tobacco, and rice did not probably 

 cost their providers ten cents per day. 



&quot; The full allowance for a laboring man and woman one 

 that toils all the hours of daylight in the field is a peck 

 and a half of corn meal, and three pounds of fat bacon. In 

 the Cotton States, the average price of the corn is about 

 seventy-five cents a bushel, and the price of bacon eight 

 cents a pound. This w r ould make the week s rations cost 

 fifty-six cents. At still higher rates it would not be a 



