beef and mutton; but when the price is from 15 to 25 cents, the cost of the protein is from one to two dollars a pound. In cod and mackerel, fresh and salted, the protein varies from 30 to 80 cents a pound. Salt cod and salt mackerel are generally, fresh cod and fresh mackerel often, and even the choice fish, as blue-fish and shad, when abundant, cheaper sources of protein than any but the cheapest kinds of meat. Among meats, pork is the cheapest; but salt pork or bacon has but very little protein and consists mostly of fat, which, though rich in

VOL. XXXV.-61.

potential energy, and very useful for people who have hard work to do or are exposed to severe cold, is not so appropriate in warm weather or for those whose time is spent within doors and whose muscular labor is light. The comparative cheapness of cheese is well worth noting, and the great economy of oleomargarine as compared with butter deserves of more than a passing remark.

The comparison between wheat flour and potatoes is especially interesting. The protein in the wheat flour, at $6 a barrel or 3

cents a pound comes to 11 cents, while in potatoes at 50 cents a bushel it costs 15 cents a pound. Estimated in terms of potential energy, 25 cents pays for about 14,000 calories in wheat flour at $6 a barrel, and 12,000 in potatoes at 50 cents a bushel. The potatoes would have to be reduced to 40 cents a bushel to make their nutrients as cheap as those of wheat flour at $6 per barrel. Adding to this the fact that the protein of wheat is the more valuable, weight for weight, because that in the potatoes is apparently less digestible and certainly of inferior chemical constitution, the showing against potatoes, even at this price, is very decided. But in the eastern portions of the United States, at any rate, people are very apt to pay 75 cents or $1 a bushel for their potatoes, while the finest wheat flour now sells at $6 a barrel; and if they are contented with flour of the coarser grades, they can have it for less.*

In the United States the tendency to extravagance, combined with the mistaken notion as to the nutritive value of costly food, causes exceptions to the rule. Taking the world through, however, the poorer communities and classes of people almost universally select those foods which chemical analysis shows to supply the actual nutrients at the lowest cost. But, unfortunately, the proper proportions of the nutrients in their dietaries are often very defective. Thus in portions of India and China rice, in northern Italy maize-meal, in certain districts of Germany and in some regions and seasons in Ireland potatoes, and among the poor whites of the southern United States maize-meal and bacon, make a large part of the sustenance of the people. These foods supply the nutrients in the cheapest forms, but they are all deficient in protein. The people who live upon them

* At first thought this cheapness of wheat flour as compared with potatoes is a little surprising. The natural law of supply and demand of such staple materials, in the long run, shapes the price more or less closely to the actual value for use, and we should expect that the price of potatoes and flour would naturally gravitate to points which would make them more nearly equal in actual cheapness. At $10 a barrel, the price of wheat flour a few years ago, its protein would cost not far from 13 cents a pound, which would correspond to potatoes at about 60 cents a bushel. If the price of flour should remain where it now is, we may perhaps expect that of potatoes to come down gradually to a point where the actual expensiveness of the two will be more nearly the same. Of course this is a matter outside of chemistry, but the little study I have given it leaves me with the decided impression that the prices of such staple food-materials tend to adjust themselves

to the nutritive values.

This statement is apparently in direct contradiction with a fact which these computations bring out most forcibly, to wit, the wide difference between the prices of foods and their values. But these differences have, really, a very simple explanation. The prices we pay

are ill-nourished, and suffer physically, intellectually, and morally thereby.

On the other hand, the Scotchman, as shrewd in his diet as in his dealings, finds a most economical supply of protein in oatmeal, haddock, and herring; and the thrifty inhabitants of New England supplement the fat of their pork with the protein of beans and the carbohydrates of potatoes, and supplement maize and wheat flour with the protein of codfish and mackerel; and while subsisting largely upon such frugal but rational diets, are well nourished, physically strong, and distinguished for their intellectual and moral force.

THE FOOD OF THE POOR.

THAT the rich man becomes richer by saving and the poor man poorer by wasting his money is one of the commonest facts in daily experience. It is the poor man's money that is the most un-economically spent in the market, and the poor man's food that is worst cooked and served at home.

I can refer only to a single phase of this subject here, repeating for the purpose a few statements from the article on "Food Consumption" in the Report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau above mentioned:

"The agents of the Bureau in collecting the statistics of dietaries have made inquiries of tradesmen as to the kinds of food the poor of Boston purchase and the price they pay.

66

By poor people is meant those who earn just enough to keep themselves and families from want. When a grocery-man or market-man is asked, 'What is your experience in dealing with your poor customers in regard to the quality of food used by them? the answer is, in almost every case, 'Oh, they usually want the best and pay for it, and the most fastidious are those who can least afford it.'

"In the matter of beef, for instance, the cuts most

used for steak are the face of the round, costing from

for many of our food-materials are regulated rather by their agreeableness to our palates than their values for nourishing our bodies. The sirloin of beef which we buy for 25 or 30 cents a pound is really no more nourishing than the shoulder which we get for 10 cents, or the neck at 8 cents a pound. In general, only a part, and often a small part, of what we spend for meats and sweetmeats goes for the nutriment they contain. The rest is the price of flavor, tenderness, and other things that make them toothsome. Nor does the disparity between animal and vegetable foods conflict with the principle I have ventured to lay down. Meats, fish, and the like gratify the palate in ways which most vegetable foods do not, and, what is perhaps of still greater weight in regulating the actual usage of communities by whose demand the prices are regulated, they satisfy a real need by supplying protein and fats, which vegetable foods lack. People who can afford it, the world over, will have animal foods and will compete with one another in the prices they give for them. These facts put the choicer animal foods outside the action of the law, if it be a law, that price and nutritive value tend to run parallel.

eighteen to twenty cents per pound; the tip of the sirloin, at from twenty to twenty-five cents; and ribroast, at from eighteen to twenty cents. They do not use the flank-piece for steak and would feel insulted if it were offered them. The flour they use is the best. For butter they pay from twenty-eight to thirty cents per pound at present prices. All their other groceries

are such as are sold to first-class customers.'

I took occasion to make some inquiries myself among the Boston market-men, and one very intelligent butcher, in Boylston Market, said:

"Across the street over there is an establishment which employs a good many seamstresses. One of them comes to my place to buy meat, and very frequently gets tenderloin steak. I asked her one time why she did not take round or sirloin, which is a great deal cheaper, and she replied, very indignantly, 'Do you suppose because I don't come here in my carriage I don't want just as good meat as rich folks have?' And when I tried to explain to her that the cheaper meat was just as nutritious, she would not believe me. Now Mr. and Mrs., who are among the wealthy and sensible people of this city, buy the cheaper cuts of meat of me. Mr.- very often comes and gets a soup bone, but I have got through trying to sell these economical meats to that woman and others of her class." I am told that the people in the poorer parts of New York City buy the highest priced groceries, and that the meat-men say they can sell the coarser cuts of meat to the rich, but that people of moderate means refuse them. I hear the same thing from Washington and other cities. A friend of mine, a man of wealth, who, like his father before him, had long been noted as one of the most generous benefactors of the poor in the city where he lives, and with whom I happened to be talking about these matters, remarked, "For my family I get the cheaper cuts of meat because they are cheaper. My children are satisfied with round steak and shoulder, even if they are not quite as tender and toothsome as sirloin. They are strong and healthy, and understand that such food is good enough for their parents and is good enough for them." I question whether his gardener or his coachman would be so entirely ready to accept such doctrine; and if the poor people to whom in times of stress his money is given without stint are like many others of their class, not a few of them would be ill content with some of the food-materials that appear regularly on his table.

WASTE OF FOOD.

BUT our popular food-economy is at fault in other ways as well as in the purchasing of needlessly expensive kinds of food. Results

of examinations of dietaries, to be given in a subsequent article, will show that, unless the inferences from a very large amount of experimenting are entirely at fault, many people buy a great deal more food than they need. The excess is generally of the most expensive kinds of foods, meats, and sweetmeats. In a number of dietaries that have come to my notice, including those of sensible people who really desired to economize, if half the meat, dairy products, and sugar had been left out, and the rest of the food economically used, it would have supplied considerably more nutriment than accepted standards call for. We buy needless quantities of these things because they taste good, and we have got in the way of thinking we must have them. Part of the excess is eaten, to the great detriment of the health, and the rest simply thrown away.

In the course of some studies in physiological chemistry, Mr. C. S. Videon, a student in this laboratory (Wesleyan University), took occasion to examine the dietary of a students' boarding-club, for which purpose accurate determinations of the quantities of meat consumed were necessary. In a piece of roast beef weighing 16 pounds, the "trimmings," which consisted of the bone and the meat cut out with it, and which were left for the butcher to sell to the soap-man or get rid of as he might otherwise choose, weighed 41⁄2 pounds, so that 111⁄2 pounds of meat went to the customer, who, of course, paid for the whole. The butcher said that he sold this sort of beef largely to the ordinary people of the city,mechanics, small tradesmen, and laborers; that many of his customers preferred not to take the "trimmings"; and that they were not exceptionally great in this case, either in amount or in proportion of meat and bone, for that "cut" of beef, which was the "rib-roast." Inquiries of other meat-men brought similar information. The 41⁄2 pounds of "trimmings" consisted of (approximately) 24 pounds of bone and 1⁄2 pound of tendon ("gristle "), which would make a most palatable and nutritious soup, and 134 pounds of meat, of which 1 pound was lean and 34 pounds fat. Mr. Videon estimates that the nutritive materials of meat thus left unused, saying nothing of the bone and tendon, contained some 15 per cent. of the protein and 10 per cent. of the potential energy of the whole. The price of the beef was $2.24. Assuming the nutritive value of the ingredients of the "trimmings" to be 121⁄2 per cent. of the whole, 28 cents' worth of the nutriment, besides the bone and tendon, was left at the butcher's.

Dr. S. A. Lattimore, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Rochester, New York, tells me that, while a member of the Board of

Health of that city, he directed the officer in charge of the collection of garbage to note the character of the waste material gathered. It was ascertained that from the streets inhabited by the well-to-do classes, where the culinary affairs were largely left to the servants, the amount of waste thus collected was enormous, and that a considerable proportion of the food purchased was literally thrown away by careless servants. A surprisingly large amount of this waste consisted of good bread. Among the people in moderate circumstances this waste of food was less.

Still, people of moderate means do not save as they might. A gentleman from Pennsylvania, who has for years been in the way of employing hundreds of mechanics and other laborers, tells me that in passing the houses where his employees live he is constantly pained to notice the evidences of waste of food which would not occur in his own household.

Is not the American, of all civilized men, the most wasteful, and is not his worst wastefulness in his food and drink?

SHALL WE ECONOMIZE?

THIS brings us back to the theme with which we began, the American indifference or aversion to food-economizing. I have never observed any special development of this notion on the Continent of Europe, but have heard a good deal about it in England, where it is said, for instance, that the "workingmen with small wages buy the most expensive beef." I judge the disorder to be essentially AngloSaxon, quite prevalent in England, and epidemic in the United States. Perhaps it is only part of the more general tendency, inherent in human nature, but dependent upon the opportunity which material prosperity brings for its development. It certainly could not prevail under the straitened conditions of living which exist in most countries of Europe; and the comparative opulence which prevails with us, unrestrained by either habits of saving or understanding of the facts, would naturally tend to its wide development. Possibly part of its explanation lies deeper, and is to be sought in the impression which the older philosophy and theology inculcated in men's thinking, and which is not yet entirely gone. The philosophy which dealt chiefly with abstractions, and the theology which regarded the body as only a burden of earthly clay and concerned itself merely for the soul, both considered the material details of life beneath their notice. I believe it was Hegel who, expressing his dissent from the practical ideas current in England in his time, said, "Socrates brought

philosophy from the clouds, but the Englishmen have dragged her into the kitchen.” And it is not long since a man in one of our highest educational positions assured me that such studies as those of food and nutrition which have been described in these articles were not in consonance with the intellectual dignity of a university. Is not our impression that attention to the little economies of life is beneath us the natural outgrowth of this same idea,— a weed which the conditions elsewhere have kept down but which here has grown rank?

But whatever may be the genesis of this notion, I am persuaded that, in the form in which we have to deal with it, it represents only a phase of a far more complex problem, the importance of which is coming to be felt in our time as never before, and which the many-sided effort to improve the material condition of the masses is really an effort to work out. We are learning that the best way to help men is to help them to help themselves, and that to help themselves they must be freed from ignorance and prejudice and must understand the principles that underlie the right practice of the arts of life. We are learning that for intellectual and moral elevation improvement of physical condition is necessary; that to improve mind and heart we must look out for the body also; that before people can attain to highest intelligence and righteousness they must be properly clothed and housed and fed. We are learning too that not merely increase of income but husbanding of resources are conditions of better welfare; that people need to save as well as to earn; that wastefulness is the cause of poverty and economy the way to comfort.

While the thoughtful man sees these things and feels their force, the average man does not. In the older countries, with exhausted fertility of soil and overcrowded population, the alternative of partial starvation has made close economizing a necessity. But with us, whom the abundant product of the virgin soil, far in excess of the demand of a still sparse population, and the superadded advantages of wonderful material progress, have placed in comparative affluence, the circumstances of our coal-heaver's family were positively luxurious in comparison with those of the bulk of the population of Europe. With us false pride and wastefulness have far too largely usurped the place of care and saving.

As a people we have not learned the art of getting the most out of what we have. With our larger incomes and better opportunities we often enjoy far less of comfort and contentment than our foreign brethren, who with their limited resources have learned how to husband and to make the best of the little that

falls to their lot. Those who have seen the inside of life in France and Germany know how true this is. I well remember how it impressed me in my first experience in Germany. Living in a private family, my breakfasts, which, though consisting only of the usual rolls and coffee, were nevertheless ample, were always brought to my room. With the coffee there came invariably a little jar of milk and some lumps of sugar. During the whole six months of my stay in that house, the number of lumps was never more nor less than five. An American lady living in another family in the same city was wont to aver her conviction that her landlady counted the grains of coffee for every potful she made. Every scrap of food was utilized. Like economies were manifested everywhere; indeed, they were a part of common education, not only at home but in school, where, for instance, the girls were taught to sew and mend as they were to read and write. And when I went about with the people and saw how they lived; how contentedly and pleasantly they took the affairs of life; how much they made of simple and inexpensive pleasures; how little they were beset with false pride of show and the petty ambition to go ahead of their neighbors, which are such corrosive influences in American and English society; how much of human kindness and home joy and social satisfaction they had with incomes and prices which would make life for average Americans of similar station a torturing struggle with want- I could not avoid the conviction that in their ways was a lesson which it would be a blessing for us to learn.

We waste at the store, at the market, and in the house enough to make us wealthy if we would only save. The fathers and the mothers do not understand the little arts of economizing, and the sons and the daughters do not learn them. We think it incompatible with our dignity as free-born and well-to-do Americans to devote our attention to them.

This is especially true as regards our food. The common saying that "the average American family wastes as much food as a French family would live upon" is a great exaggeration, but I hope to cite statistics in a succeeding article to show that there is a deal of truth in it. We endeavor to make our diet suit our palates by paying high prices in the market rather than by skillful cooking and tasteful serving at home. We buy much more than we need, use part of the excess to the detriment of our health, and throw the rest away. And, what makes the matter worse, it is generally those who most need to save that are the most wasteful.

population denser, and the virgin fertility of our soil gradually exhausted. We must reform or retrograde. Unless we mend our ways the future will bring loss instead of gain in material prosperity, and fearful falling away rather than improvement in our morais.

The remedy for the evil, so far as it applies to the chief item of our living expenses, our food, must be sought in two things,- popular understanding of the elementary facts regarding food and nutrition, and the acceptance of the doctrine that economy is respectable. Here, I believe, is an opportunity for a twofold propagandism of incalculable usefulness. A very large body of people in this country say practically, though not in words, for such principles are not formulated by those who follow them: "To economize closely is beneath us. We do not want to live cheaply; we want to live well."

The true Anti-poverty Society is the Society of "Toil, Thrift, and Temperance." One of the articles of its constitution demands that the principles of intelligent economy shall be learned by patient study and followed in daily life.

Of the many worthy ways in which the charity that we call Christian is being exercised none seems to me more worthy of that appellation than the movement in industrial education, of which teaching the daughters of working-people how to do housework and how to select food and cook it forms a part.

If Christianity is to defend society against socialism must it not make such homely, nontheological teachings as these part of its gospel? If the old dispensation with its somber doctrine makes the earning of man's bread in the sweat of his face part of the primeval curse, does not the newer dispensation of religion and science make the gaining of support by earnest toil, and the economizing of resources by careful study, a substantial joy of life?