148 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



September, 1906 



Monthly Comment 



jTATISTICAL publications are not often of 

 abounding general interest, but numberless 

 valuable facts can often be extracted from 

 them. A recent Bulletin published by the 

 Bureau of Labor might profitably be studied 

 by a much larger class than the compara- 

 tively limited number of specialties to which it appeals. It 

 contains an elaborate study of the living expenses of nineteen 

 poor families living in the District of Columbia, expenses 

 itemized down to the last cent and detailed in the most 

 minute manner possible. The families in question are 

 avowedly poor. In one of ten the only wage-earner is the hus- 

 band, who brings in from $9 to $12 per week; in another 

 of seven the husband earns $2 per day when he has work, but 

 loses many days; a daughter brings in a small weekly amount; 

 in another the husband and oldest son — the family num- 

 bers seven — each earns $1.50 per day in good weather; in 

 another of eight the father earns $12 per week at irregular 

 labor, and a boy $4.50 per week. The rents paid vary; some 

 pay $5 per month, others $10, another $4, and so on. Most 

 of the places in which these people live are unsanitary. They 

 are not only poor, but are typically poor, representing the 

 financial circumstances of a large portion of our population. 



The chief object in life to all these people is to obtain food. 

 Everything else is subordinated to this vital necessity. Yet 

 the figures show a very wide divergence in the expenditure 

 included under this head. One family spent $5.31 in the first 

 week investigated, and $8.57 the last; another spent $5.86 

 in one week, and $3.91 the next; a third, $6.77 the first week, 

 and $2.45 in the last. The differences were found to be easy 

 of explanation, being due partly to lack of work during a 

 portion of the time, partly to the fact that in the week of least 

 expenditure the rent was due, partly because debts had to be 

 met. In other words, while the obtaining of food was the 

 chief business in life for these people, even that important 

 matter became secondary when other vital expenses were abso- 

 lutely unavoidable. 



It must not be hastily concluded that it is possible to bring 

 up families on any such amounts as these in any degree of 

 comfort or even with satisfaction. In purchasing food it is 

 not only important to bear in mind the quantity, but it is much 

 more necessary to purchase with a view to its nutritive power. 

 Many nutritious foods are cheap, but the present investiga- 

 tion does not show that the families under examination 

 bought their food chiefly for its nutritious value. One family 

 which in five weeks spent an average of 98 cents per adult 

 male, paid out, in the same time, $1.80 for pies, and $2.21 

 for cake and candy. These people bought $7 worth of 

 baker's bread, 60 cents worth of flour in 10- and 20-cent lots, 

 consumed half a peck of potatoes, and used no rice or oat- 

 meal, and only 10 cents worth of cornmeal. In the week of 

 lowest expenditure it purchased 37 cents worth of meat, and 

 spent 25 cents for pies and 55 <;ents for cake and candy. In 

 another family 55 cents was spent for meat in one week, when 

 90 cents went for pies and 5 cents for cake. These are 

 offered as extreme cases, but it is probable that they are 

 largely typical. 



Even when, as is actually the case, from forty to sixty per 

 cent of the total family income is spent for food there is 

 little variety. The staples are bread, meat, potatoes, coffee 



and tea. The quantity of bread used seldom varies, a fall- 

 ing off of income being immediately followed by a lessening 

 of expenditure for other sorts of food. Home-made bread 

 is little used, dependence being placed on the baker, with a 

 preference for stale bread, which is always cheaper than the 

 fresh. Only the cheapest kinds of meats are used — sausage, 

 cheap stew-beef and pork, with an occasional cut of round 

 steak. Three families alone used chickens, and but two had 

 oysters, although fish was frequently purchased. Five fami- 

 lies bought no eggs whatever, and milk is used irregularly, 

 sometimes not at all. Butter is used to a greater or less ex- 

 tent, but sometimes weeks pass without it, dependence being 

 placed on syrup and cheap preserves. The total expenditure 

 of sixteen families for fruits for the five weeks amounted to 

 $8.09; three families used no fruits at all. 



The pleasures of the table can not, of course, be known to 

 people compelled to partake of such a regimen, nor to those 

 who live under such restricted conditions. Yet small as these 

 expenditures are, they are accompanied with even more press- 

 ing deprivations in other directions. The rent question at 

 times equals the food supply in importance; while there is a 

 limit below which the expenditure for food can not be pushed, 

 else starvation will ensue; there seems to be no bottom limit 

 for rent. This investigation shows a variation in rents from 

 $4 to $14 per month, and it was clearly established that, with 

 diminished income the family moved to cheaper and cheaper 

 places, each one more wretched than the preceding. But 

 even such economies give little relief, for food must still be 

 bought, and there are other unavoidable expenses. We all 

 know what they are — clothing, fuel, furniture, insurance, 

 medicines and the doctor. As little as possible is spent in 

 carfare, and not one weekly budget shows as much as a cent 

 spent for amusements. It is true, there is the candy, the cake 

 and the pies; these are unwise expenditures and careless liv- 

 ing; but of comfort there is hardly any; of the conveniences of 

 modern living scarcely a suggestion, and of freedom from 

 care, bother and worry, none at all. Of the exceeding dis- 

 comfort, of the grinding poverty, of the lack of enjoyment, 

 of the real difficulties of life, these reports show little enough. 

 To a man who will pay $10 for a single dinner for himself it 

 will appear incomprehensible that a family of ten could exist 

 on $5.31 for a whole week. 



And so it is. There is nothing truer in the world than that 

 the one-half does not know how the other half lives. This 

 Washington investigation throws a flood of light on a topic 

 that most people — most people in ordinary and well-to-do cir- 

 cumstances — know nothing about. To the laboring man, 

 whose greatest income in the most favorable times is but $12 

 per week, the problems of house-ownership and house-build- 

 ing do not exist. His first object in life is to get something 

 to eat; then to have some sort of a shelter, then some wearing 

 apparel; if there is any money left it goes so quickly he does 

 not remember he ever had it. Yet a year or two ago the 

 magazine world was treated to an extended series of articles 

 showing how homes were built or purchased on incomes not 

 much greater than those cited here and on savings made from 

 such incomes. Photographs of the houses were offered, seem- 

 ingly in proof of these statements. The contrast between the 

 two exhibits — that of the Bureau of Labor and that of the 

 magazine — are nothing short of amazing. 



