THE EXPECTATION OF PLENTY 33 



value of the butter is equal to the amount of 

 money I have saved the household in the purchase 

 of store butter? In today's market that would be 

 $1.38. Ninety-two cents an hour is pretty good side- 

 line money for otherwise idle time. 



Women have been the greatest victims of the 

 time-saving racket. Thirty years ago, admittedly, 

 the average housewife was viciously overworked. 

 If she is today it is because she does not know how 

 properly to manage her time. Yet the time-saving 

 arguments that legitimately apply to the sale of 

 automatic household machinery and other labor- 

 saving equipment break down when it comes to 

 the serving of those ready-made foods which appar- 

 ently constitute the nation's biggest current busi- 

 ness. I have costs on the home-made materials 

 as well as the store-bought that go into a dish of 

 cream of tomato soup. The store-bought stuff is, 

 of course, more expensive. But it is so much more 

 so that if we take the difference between store- 

 bought and home-made as the measure of the 

 value of a woman's time then, by using a can 

 opener on commercial soup instead of making her 

 own with home-canned tomatoes and real cream, 

 any housewife can fix an up-set value on her time 

 of more than fifteen thousand dollars a year. . . . 

 So much for the value of time. 



Early in our occupancy Medlock Farm was 

 struck by a tornado. Fortunately it involved no loss 



