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WORKS OF ELLEN H. RICHARDS
PUBLISHED BY
JOHN WILEY & SONS
43-45 EAST I9TH ST., NEW YORK.
The Cost ofLiving as Modified by Sanitary Science.
By Ellen H. Richards, Instructor in Sanitary
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. i2mo. 124 pages. Cloth. $1.00.
Air, Water, and Food ; Prom a Sanitary Standpoint.
By Ellen H. Richards, with the assistance of
Alpheus G. Woodman, Instructors in Sanitary
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. 8vo. 230 pages. Cloth. $2.00.
PUBLISHED BY
HOME SCIENCE PUBLISHING CO.,
485 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
The Chemistry of Cooking: and Cleaning.
By Ellen H. Richards and S. Maria Elliott.
Cloth. 158 pages. Price $1.00.
Pood Materials and their Adulterations.
By Ellen H. Richards. Cloth. iBj pages. Price
$1.00.
Home Sanitation.
Revised Edition. Edited by Ellen H. Richards
and Marion Talbot. Paper. 85 pages. Price 25c
Plain Words about Pood.
Edited by Ellen H. Richards. The Rumford Leaf-
lets. Illustrated. Cloth. 176 pages. Price $1.00.
THE COST OF LIVING
AS MODIFIED BY
SANITARY SCIENCE.
BY
ELLEN H. RICHARDS,
Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry
in the Massachusetts Institute of T'chnology.
SECOND EDITION', ENLARGED.
FIRST THOUSAND.
NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SONS.
London : CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited.
1900.
^^^'
'<\^
Copyright, 1899,
BY
ELLEN H. RICHARDS.
ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
While appreciating the many kind words vouch-
safed by the reviews in regard to this little book, the
author began to feel somewhat disheartened as to the
chief purpose of the work. The broad view of sanitary
science, that it means a knowledge of all that physical
and mental environment which leads to the highest
utilization of man's powers for the progress of civiliza^
tion, and not a mere study of germ diseases, seems to
be lacking even in the educational world.
It was especially gratifying, therefore, to find that
the meaning was not so blindly expressed but that it
could be read, and the author desires to thank the
unknown critic who so clearly expressed the purpose
of the discussion that the quotation is here given in
full.
"The 'Cost of Living' represents a departure from
former methods oi teaching hygiene. The teaching of
hygiene as a natural science has not accomplished
what was prophesied for it two decades since. The
sanitarian is beginning now to treat hygiene as one
phase of a social science. To that end the author of
the book under discussion presents nine lectures on
domestic economy. Starting with the assumption
that half our income is wasted, or, in other words,
iif
QOOUQ
IV PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
that present incomes go only half as far as they
might, the author concludes that reform may be
effected through improvement in consumption as well
as through an increased share in the results of pro-
duction. In fact, permanent improvements in the
standard of life depend rather upon wise spending
than upon large earnings.
** Sanitary Science furnishes the criterion of wise ex-
penditure in the selection of a diet, of a building site,
and household furnishings. The lectures go further
and suggest model budgets for the households depen-
dent upon modest incomes. Many economies are
discussed whereby the small incomes may be made to
raise materially the standard of life, without sub-
tracting any real or supposed essentials in the exist-
ing standard." (Annals of the Am. Acad., May 1900,
p. 448.)
In regard to the Division of the Incortie necessary
or best adapted to produce the desired result, not until
more actual budgets from different parts of the country
and from families living under a variety of conditions
are received can general laws be deduced. From the
young people who have numbered this little book
among their wedding presents, and- from those who
have started housekeeping with its suggestions in mind,
will come the most valuable criticisms.
The author will be grateful for these and for any
suggestions which will help, those who are finding
more and more difficult the struggle for a civilized
life.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Standards of Living i
CHAPTER II.
f
The Service of Sanitary Science in Increasing Pro-
ductive Life i6
CHAPTER III.
Household Expenditure. Division between Depart-
ments according to Ideals 28
CHAPTER IV.
The House. Rent or Value and Furnishing 40 •
CHAPTER V.
Operating Expenses: Fuel, Light, Wages 50
CHAPTER VI.
Food 65
CHAPTER VII.
Clothing in Relation to Health 82
CHAPTER VIII.
The Emotional and Intellectual Life 89
CHAPTER IX.
The Organization of the Houshold 100-^
THE COST OF LIVING
AS MODIFIED BY SANITARY SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
STANDARDS OF LIVING. ^
"Apart from religion, the end of man is to secure a plenty
of the good things of this world, with life, health, and peace to
enjoy them." — John Locke, 1690.
"Education is that organizing of resources in the htiman
being, of powers and conduct, which shall fit him to his social
and physical world." — William James, 1899.
In these days of consolidation for the purpose of
cutting down expenses, days of close calculation of
cost, when everything is reduced to a money basis in
production, it is not surprising that discussion should
have arisen over the great waste involved in the
keeping up of fifty kitchen-fires to do the work that
five would do; in the time given to the marketing
for one family which might serve for fifty. Many
students of social questions have predicted the
speedy appearance of a housekeeping trust, by which
2 THE COST OF LIVING.
living is to be made more economical and less bur-
densome.
It must be acknowledged that for economy the
home of the well-to-do cannot at present compete
with the best-managed hotels and boarding-houses.
It is worth while to examine the causes for this state
of things and to be prepared to accept such modifica-
tions as are inevitable.
In the first place, a family in boarding occupies
one half or one third the space it would require in a
house of its own. That means less rent.
In the second place, most persons will put up with
less service in such quarters than they would expect
at home.
In the third place, the cost of the food, its prep-
aration and serving, is far less per person than in a
small family.
In the fourth place, the economy of time in having
most of the details of the daily routine cared for
without personal oversight and direction reconciles
many persons to the hotel and boarding-house life.*
While we acknowledge the attractive side of the
care-free condition of the members of the '' Home
trust,** I think we also look forward with a secret
dread to the time when we may realize a Bellamy
dining-room or a Wells nursery.
It is with the intention of starting a discussion of
certain questions by the intelligent young people
STANDARDS OF LIVING. 3
just about to begin life on fifteen hundred to three
thousand dollars a year that these pages have been
written.
Much investigation has been made of cost of exist-
ence of those who earn four hundred to five hundred
dollars a year, and many accounts have been given
of those who spend ten thousand to fifty thousand
dollars a year on the family living, but the majority
of the most intelligent American families, students,
professors, business men, and professional men, are
obliged to do the best they can on from two thou-
sand to five thousand dollars a year. It is from this
class that we may most confidently expect a great
advance in the next generation in a knowledge of
how to make the best use of life and how to get the
greatest pleasure from the money expended.
The discussions which have called public attention
to the status of housekeeping have assumed the
problem to be one of ecoitomics^ brought about by
the industrial situation, and have looked for the solu-
tion along purely material lines. This is to consider
the human being as a machine, as a passive object of
revolutionary action, without power to direct his own
destiny.
It' has been said: *' Natural progress and physical
cind intellectual advancement are not the whole of
human progress. The real advancement of the race
is to be promoted by the cultivation of our emotional
4 THE COST OF LIVING.
and aesthetic nature, and altruism must replace
egoism."
While granting the presence of the economic and
industrial factors, the author holds that the ethical
discussion must precede any attempt to adjust these
factors to the ideals of the twentieth century.
Man as an uplifting, compelling force in the world
does not live by bread alone, but in all ages has won
his place by the ideals he has placed far ahead and
above him and for which he has valiantly striven.
The man without a conscious aim slowly but surely
degenerates.
The Englishman's house is not only his castle, it is
a small world in itself; in its management he has
learned to rule larger things: and it is conceded by so
able an observer as Edmond Demolin that this is the
secret of Anglo-Saxon superiority. The Englishman
easily leads because he has organizing ability. The
young boy who by his father's death becomes the
head of the household, develops those qualities which
afterward show in statesmanship or in generalship or
in engineering professions.
When these daily affairs are conducted on prin-
ciple, the experience gained in this small world of
human interests is the best preparation for the larger
world of charity and of public work.
If we accept the conclusion of the thoughtful
students of human evolution and assume that what is
STANDARDS OF LIVING. 5 >(
represented by the term ''home" is the germ of
Anglo-Saxon civilization, the unit of social progress;
that no community rises above the average 'of its
individual homes in intelligence, courage, honesty,
industry, thrift, patriotism, or any other individual
or civic virtue; that the home is the nursery of the
citizen; that nothing which church, school, or state
can do will quite make up for the lack in the home,
then we must acknowledge that no subject cart be of
greater importance than a discussion of the standards
involved in home life.
A clever writer has shown how often the family is
a mere unorganized herd, with as little regard for
individual rights, for privacy, for likes and dislikes,
as is shown by any crowd. Whenever this is the
case it is because of wrong standards. A home
means a place that one can call one's own, into which
no one else can intrude. Each child, each member
of the family should have a room, or at least a
screened corner where safety from interference may
be counted upon. Even a chalk-line on the floor
contented the two who were obliged to live in one
room in the old ladies* home.* Quiet hours have a
great influence in the development of character. A
love of the crowd betrays a poverty of individual
resources. The constant presence of the nurse is,
« I
* " Castles in Spain," by Alice Brown.
6 THE COST OF LIVING.
after a certain age, bad for the child ; the constant
direction to do this or that stultifies it.
Independence of character, personal resourceful-
,, ness, is what is at present needed in the social world;
it is what the evolution of the past three or four
centuries has been cultivating in the development of
the individual, in freeing him from despotism and
tyranny, but it has been done within the home. Is
the office of this nursery of character gone ? Do we
not see signs of decadence in strength of purpose, in
that which goes to make for the best citizenship as
the power of the home wanes ?
Is it not time to ask ourselves '* What is life for ? "
** What is the office of the home ? " Is not the pur-
pose of the family education in all that makes for
character, for citizenship; are not all the qualities
that serve the highest purposes in the world developed
in the family life when it is taken seriously ?
We admit that the very existence of the individual
home cannot be justified on ordinary economic
grounds. Trusts and combinations have wonderfully
cheapened the common articles in daily use. A
nursery trust would as wonderfully lessen the cost of
raising children. Mr. H. G. Wells'^ has given us a
vivid picture of such a nursery where one maid may
replace ten.
_*" When the Sleeper Wakes.**
STANDARD^^v^ UVINa. >' J^
The same economic tendency is going on in the
public schools. They are doing by the wholesale
much of what the home did individually fifty years
ago, and it must be acknowledged that on the surface
they are doing it more cheaply because large classes
are taught at once, but there is less opportunity for
individual development, and if this tendency is to
increase and finally all men are to be placed on
one level with no special individuality, where are the
leaders of the next century to come from ?
The school has its place as a corrective of the
deficiencies of the home. At any given time the
leaders of education should be able to foresee the
needs of the future citizen, and by the school training
to influence quickly a whole generation. It is this
ready adaptability to changing conditions which
makes the school such a potent factor whenever it is
allowed to use its preventive power in ** doing away
with the inconvenience of ignorance," as John Eliot
expressed it. Conservatism has always opposed, and
is to-day opposing, the economic tendencies of the
school. The early struggle came in 1817, when it
was proposed to teach reading in the school instead
of requiring it for admission. Each new departure
has been fought on the same ground — that training of
all but the purely intellectual faculties was the busi-
ness of the home, and that the school was usurping
its duties. The same battle is now going on over the
8 THE COST OF LIVING.
still more evident home occupations, cooking and
sewing, but, as in 1817, when reading was not taught
in the home, so now when cooking and sewing are
not taught by the mother, the school must prepare
the next generation to bring these arts* back or to
teach it the means of doing without them.
The union of several persons in a group having a
common end, the welfare of the family, leads to a
consideration of others, to suppression of gross selfish-
ness, and offers a stimulus to that industry which will
advance the common interest. Human life is so
short and human endeavor so weak that the incentive
to provide for his own personal future would not be
sufficient to urge to the full capacity any man's
power. For his child, his grandchild, he will strive
and thus gain the reward that comes with striving;
for it is not the possession of a given thing which
yields the most satisfaction; it is the contest which
precedes possession.
Our premises are, then, that the individual family
group must be maintained, but in a manner consistent
with modern progress. It is the ideal which is to be
preserved, not the mere shell.
At first sight what could be more unlike the
dainty, gauze winged butterfly, dancing at will in the
sunlight, than the slow-creeping, clumsy and often
repulsive caterpillar or the hard-shelled chrysalis
buried in the ground or idly swinging from a twig ?
STANDARDS OF LIVING. 9
And yet each form is only a stage in the life-history
of the same organism.
The form of home life familiar in the early part of
the nineteenth century, in which all industries were
carried on under the collection of roofs called the
homestead, and in which each member of the family
contributed, by the daily work of his or her hands,
to the stock of linen, wool, implements, etc., which
have been handed down even until now, may be
likened to the caterpillar stage with its many feet, all
contributing to the forward movement. The present
condition may be considered the chrysalis stage, in
which the useless feet are being absorbed and the
internal organs, even, are being transformed to suit
new uses not yet recognized. *
Home life at the close of the nineteenth century"*'^
has lost nearly all the industries it once possessed ; it
is no longer the progressive element in society; it no
longer devours voraciously whatever offers in the way
of stimulus and development; it is stationary or even
retrograding in many ways. The family ** resides"
now here, now there; they hire a '* place,'* and the
children, instead of adding each day some improve-
ment, hack the trees, if there are any, bang the
furniture, tear the paper, and dig up the walk. No
care or responsibility for property or for the future
seems to rest upon parents or children. So far has
this gone that owners of property recognize it and
lO THE COST OF LIVING.
either refuse to rent to families where there are
children or charge a correspondingly higher rent.
What a commentary on the decadence of the ideal
of home life, and what a pitiful picture of the moral
degradation which has gone with it! It is destruction
in the shortest possible time, not construction, bit
by bit, of that which is to last.
The century-long struggle for personal freedom has
invaded the home. The father feels no care for the
child beyond paying the bills. The mother's respon-
sibility ends with food and clothes. Education is
left to the school, and manners to the street. In the
rented house there is little sense of possession; fre-
quent movings render clothes more important than
furniture, and cause books and pictures to be looked
upon as troublesome. It is easier to move than to
clean house. The result is social ferment and discon-
tent and family discord.
Housekeeping has become a burden and not a
delight; every dollar spent on the home is grudged;
the responsibilities of keeping up a separate family
abode are more and more irksome and are readily
thrown off ; the time and money so saved are frequently
spent in communal pleasure rather than in individual
development. This is a serious phase in American
social life and deserves the attention of all thoughtful
persons, especially since it is doubtful if '' health and
peace ** are increased by the so-Cc^lled improvements.
I
STANDARDS OF LIVING. II
** Man advances when his comforts keep pace with
his intelligence."
It is customary to lay the blame on economic con-
ditions and on them alone, but the whole trouble lies
in the lack of ideals and standards which should con-
trol even social tendencies. Habits of life have been
allowed to lapse into those of savagery where the
present only guides action.
There are many elements entering into the forma-
tion of the required standards. At present the dis-
cussion will be limited to the influence of sanitary
knowledge and ideals upon the economic considera-
tions which are too apt to be unduly emphasized.
This is only applying to home life the principles
governing public health.
It is more economical, from a money point of view,
to discharge all wastes into the stream running
through a town and to take the water-supply from
the same stream; but it is recognized that there is an
economy of health as well as of wealth, and that it
actually pays in the end to spend thousands of dollars
on sewers and reservoirs. Let the public once
become convinced that the economy of life in the
home is to be measured, not by the cost in dollars and
cents, but by the product of this life, — healthy,
happy men and women, — and we shall hear less
grumbling over the cost of living.
Man is a gregarious animal^ but in pma^f^i^a^s he
OF THE
T T KT T ^r T "R ClT TV
12 THE COST OF LIVING.
becomes a ** living soul " is he capable of the highest
joys and the best individual development when he is
not crowded and jostled and drawn along without his
own volition.
The more communal pleasures increase and demand
a greater share of the income, the more cheerless the
home becomes and the more indifference is mani-
fested toward the joys of family life. The house
becomes only a place of shelter and storage, to be
left behind when real enjoyment is desired. With it
is associated only the drudgery of the daily routine,
not the delight of living.
This tendency is shown not only by the nightly
crowds at all popular pleasure-resorts, but by the
equally large crowds of women seen daily on the
shopping streets. The estimation in which the home
is held by those who make the purchase of a twenty-
five-cent collar an excuse for three trips to the city
cannot be very high.
If there is to be an aristocracy in America, let it be
an expression of the real American character which,
as Hugo Miinsterberg has pointed out, is beginning
to be very evident to the student of history. Let it
be shown in the higher ideals of living, in the stand-
ards of health, of manners, and of aesthetic surround-
ings. The material is at hand. Who will shape it ?
Who better fitted to mould it aright than the young
men and young women trained, in the higher institu-
STANDARDS OF LIVING. 1 3
tions of learning, to separate the true from the false,
to appreciate the real and to disregard the sham ? If
they cannot begin this work, then the colleges have
missed the mark in the education they have given.
The educated woman longs for a career, for an
opportunity to influence the world. Just now the
greatest field offered to her is the elevation of the
home into its place in American life. The home and
the school are the two pillars upon which American
institutions stand. The proper correlation of these
is the work of the coming years if there is not to be
a collapse of democratic institutions. The school
can do much, but it cannot undo all the mischief done
in the home.
If, as all recent writers on the subject of social
economics seem to be agreed must be the aim of the
twentieth century, the Anglo-Saxon ideal of home
life is to be maintained, the housekeeper, man or
woman, whichever it may be, must take the conscious
direction of the home life and so order it as to secure
not only the most economical but the most efificient
results, not in lavish display, not in a large bank-
account, but in the best-developed men and women,
the product of that home.
No words are more misunderstood or misused than
thrift and frugality. In popular estimation a thrifty
person is stingy, a frugal man is a miser, whereas
history shows that these traits are those which are
14 THE COST OF LIVING.
essential to the preservation of the race. They are
the reasonable restraints which make for health of
body and mind.
Wise expenditure of money, time, and energy in
daily living, how shall it be determined ? The fol-
lowing pages offer no panacea for existing evils, only
a few suggestions as a basis for future study.
The need in household organization is for a com-
plete readjustment in accordance with modern condi-
tions^ an adjustment which may be made without
losing that which is essential if a serious study is
undertaken of the various elements which go to make
up the daily routine. Without this basis of knowl-
edge any effort will be likely to cause confusion.
I am well aware that it is useless to attempt to
change a race tendency, but are we so sure that this
ignoring of home duties, this attempt to bring the
home into line with certain economic trend, is a true
progress, or is it one of the retrogressions which
accompany all progress, and only a phase, a result of
unthinking imitation or of ignorant carelessness ?
Charles Kendall Adams in the Atlantic of August,
1899, writes: ** Education by the press, education
by the family, education by the church, education by
the schools; it is by these institutions alone that the
people are to be safely guided, for it is these alone
that are the * ever-burning lamps of accumulated wis-
dom * that are able to light the pathway of progress."
STANDARDS OF LIVING. 1 5
If, as Patten says, " There is no tyrant like a
home; nothing else demands such implicit obedi-
ence," shall we throw off the yoke and so lapse into
anarchy, or can we modify the government of the
home to suit the freedom within limits which the
social trend of the time recognizes as essential ?
The home has survived the shock of losing most of
the intellectual and religious education of the chil-
dren. Will it bear the amputation of the material
industries represented by the kitchen ? We answer.
Yes, if the home is that place of moral education
where the mother is, the mother to world-children, if
not to those of her own flesh and blood. The home
still means the perfection of the child-life for which
it exists. It is this ideal which will preserve the
Anglo-Saxon superiority if anything is able to do i-t.
1
CHAPTER II.
THE SERVICE OF SANITARY SCIENCE IN
INCREASING PRODUCTIVE LIFE.
"A tendency to underestimate the future remains as a relic
of savagery." — Bullock.
"Those nations that have attained the highest civilization
and wielded the greatest influence over their contemporaries
are those that have exercised the most careful guard over
health."— Quoted by B. W. Richardson.
"Man, whatever else he may be, is essentially and primor-
dially a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in
adapting himself to his environment." — William James, 1899.
The great complexity of modern life causes such a
diversity of types that the old proverb ** What is one
man's meat is another's poison," is more than ever
applicable. Therefore, no rules for the expenditure
of the income can be given which will suit all condi-
tions; only certain principles may be stated along
the lines of which each must work out his own rules
of conduct. The one fact standing out clearly is
that if man is to be an efificient, productive being, an
** economic man" and not a ** social debtor," then
he must be in that condition of body and mind whicl
16
SANITARY SCIENCE AND PRODUCTIVE LIFE. 1 7
will enable him to do his work in the world, whatever
that may be.
Instead of a purely economic basis, let us consider
the standards of living from the point of view of y
health, both physical and moral; of efficiency, not
only as a mechanical machine, but as a creature with
intellectual and aesthetic possibilities, as the highest
product of civilization.
It is most difficult to draw the line between those
comforts in daily life which increase the uplifting
tendencies of civilization and those luxuries, those
forms of indulgence which degrade the soul and
debilitate mind and body.
Increased facilities for personal cleanliness, more
comfortable beds, larger rooms, greater variety of
food, better pictures on the walls, all help to raise the
level of daily life, above mere animal wants and mere
existence; but when an individual becomes so refined
and delicate that existence becomes impossible with-
out the luxurious surroundings common in modern
days, he is in a fair way to become eliminated from
the factors of race progress. Unless such persons go
into camp life or yacht life for a few months each
year, debility is sure to follow.
Again, the introduction of running water, of sew-
ing-machines, of servants, into the homes of hard-
worked women would seem to be an unmixed blessing,
but typhoid fever and diphtheria, backaches and
1 8 THE COST OF LIVING.
injured spines, soured dispositions and endless bicker-
ings have resulted in a lower stage of civilization
instead of a higher. What is the matter with the
so-called advance in life ? Why is it that better
wages, shorter hours, more physical comforts do not
lead to happiness or refinement ? Why is it that
social questions seem more hopeless than ever before,
so that the student of philanthropy dreads to awaken
a happy, dirty, lazy family to the possibilities before
it, lest the last state shall be far worse than the first ?
Because by thrusting the implements of the highest
culture into the hands of those not strong enough to
hold them safely, we have given sharp-edged tools to
children. '* When civilized man has more privileges
than he deserves or requires, he lapses into practical
barbarism."
The so-called improvements are seized upon not
because of their value, but in imitation of others.
The houses, furniture, food, ornaments of the great
mass of the people are chosen because some one else
has them, not because of any need in one's own con-
sciousness which they satisfy.
Is not this trait of mere imitation without the use
of thought or reason a most serious menace to real
progress ? Go through a great department store,
note-book in hand, and check off the articles which
are valueless either for use or ornament and those
which, with a semblance of either, will lose the little
SANITARY SCIENCE AnD PRODUCTITO^LIFE. IQ
value they have with the first day of use; then go
into the home for which the articles are destined and
note the amount of money spent for these things in
comparison with that spent for the essentials of good
living and for the things which make for moral and
mental advancement.
The only practicable remedy yet proposed is edu-
cation in true standards of living, in what constitutes
better homes, more comfortable conditions, and in a
clearer perception of those tendencies toward mere
imitation and luxury which lead to degeneration of
mind and body.
What better method of determining these standards
than by measuring them with the measure of health
gained, — physical, mental, spiritual health ? Any
comfort, any expenditure of money which will increase
health is legitimate, for health is not only the work-
man's capital, it is the essential factor in the success
of the author, the business man, and the pleasure-
seeker. But it is equally true that all above what is
needed for healthful development is luxury and tends
to debasement.
An increased food-supply would be conducive to
the health of the laborer, while the very abundance
on the tables of those who take no thought in the
matter may lead to over-indulgence and undermined
health.
Relief from daily drudgery will render the life of
-A
^O THE COST OF LIVING.
many a woman more tolerable, but when it only
results in idleness, dissatisfaction, and a mania for
shopping and the bargain-counter, such relief is not
in the line of higher standards of living, but is in the
nature of luxury, which undermines the health of the
body politic and leads to sure decay.
But it must be borne in mind. that standards are
not the same for all; that which is luxury for one
family may be a necessity for another, so powerful is
habit and education, but each should have only that
standard which proves conducive to the best health,
and in this the development of sanitary science is of
the greatest service. Standards of living should be
regulated, not by money spent, not by servile imita-
tion of others, but by that which will produce the
best results in health of body and health of mind.
At first sight this might seem to be pure material-
ism, but nothing is better recognized to-day than that
health includes contentment of mind and serenity of
soul; that an environment of pictures, books, and
pleasant society will bring relish to the plainest food
and serve to maintain the highest ideals.
It is, then, not in the material portion of the daily
living that we are to look for improvement so much
as in the ideals^ standards, aspirations, by which the
uses of the materials are governed. And it is just in
this particular that most of the recent discussion of
household economics and woman's work, and the
SANITARY SCIENCE AND PRODUCTIVE LIFE. 21
conditions of living, seem to fail. It is taken for
granted that if the material conditions of the home
are ameliorated, if the kitchen is taken out of the
house, if the charwoman lives outside, if the artistic
decorator has been allowed free scope in the drawing-
room, if the school teaches cooking and sewing, if
the college teaches business law and economics, or if
women receive the same wages as men and have the
right to say how taxes shall be spent, — that when any
one or all of these things are obtained, then life will
be all sweetness and light.
But these material conditions, while having their
value, do not in themselves go to the root of the
matter. Their chief function is in the influence they
have on race ideals, on individuals or group standards.
It is in the perfection of control of matter by mind
that higher civilization consists. The savage is
dominated by nature; the man is civilized in propor-
tion as he dominates nature and bends hitherto un-
conquerable natural forces to minister to his needs.
The housewife who is worried by her servants,
cheated by her tradesmen, and is helpless before her
furnace and her cook, is still a savage, has not grasped
the meaning of the ennvironment which we call home.
A certain degree of exertion, bodily and mental,
self-control and conscious direction of powers of
mind, are essential alike to bodily health and indi-
vidual development. When release from the necessity
22 THE COST OF LIVING.
of toil brings such bodily indolence and such mental
indulgence as to result in lack of stimulus to useful
activity; when the throwing off of religious trammels
renders moral questions difficult of decision, then this
freedom tends to disease of body and mind. In
other words, the moment ease of living lowers vitality
and lessens resistance to disease, that moment the
boundary between comfort and luxury has been
passed.
To have pleasure in living implies an ideal to live
for, a goal to reach by strivings Where no incentive
naturally exists, as is sometimes the case with those
who have the traditional golden spoon, artificial prizes
are offered, tournaments, yacht-races, millions to be
made, and for the women some hobby of collecting,
of travel, of self-culture.
In humbler life, to gain a home for wife and chil-
dren, to secure an education for a loved son or
daughter, is incentive sufficient to sweeten toil and
shorten long hours of labor.
To ** rise in life," as indicated by size of house,
number of servants, or price of bric-k-bric, has been
the unworthy motive of many a household, and in
that way lies death to all the better ideals.
It has been clearly brought out by several recent
writers that the prevailing economic, political, and
social ideals have been profoundly influenced by the
acceptance of that law of evolution in the organic
I
I
SANITARY SCIENCE AND PRODUCTIVE LIFE. 23
world which counts the individual as nothing except
as a factor in race progress; which demonstrates that
only the fittest survives; that through the strongest
are race characteristics passed on.
The ideals governing the thought of intelligent
persons a century ago were development of the in-
dividual and protection of the weak. This indi-
viduality is now threatened by trusts and great
corporations, crushing to the wall all weak competi-
tors. The methods of education, even, bring a whole
class or school up to the same standard without refer-
ence to individual preference, and both tend to reduce
to a communistic level all but the very few.
Moreover in family life, as in political, irresponsi-
bility has come in with the going out of the religious
ideal. Self-sacrifice and menial toil are despised in
the light of -the economic ideal of the present. The
home has ceased to be the glowing centre of produc-
tion from which radiate all desirable goods, and has
become but a pool toward which products made in
other places flow — a place of consumption, not of
production.
Instead of a nursery of good citizens, teaching
obedience, thrift, self-denial, self-helpfulness, the
home has become for many a place of selfish ease, of
freedom amounting to license, a receiving all and
giving nothing.
The family as a unit stands between the socialist
W Y^ rva -fa -a r
24 THE COST OF LIVING.
ideal of the individual as a unit and the economic
ideal of the community as a unit.
So long as the anticipated joys of a future world
could sweeten daily toil and flavor daily bread ; so
long as the pleasure of giving to the missionary cause
made an extra hour's labor pleasant; so long as saving
for the children was a high ambition, little was heard
of housekeeping troubles or of overdrawn incomes.
When, however, the ethical and altruistic point of
view became changed and from childhood each one
considered his own wishes as of more consequence
than those of the family, and when temptation was
offered in the form of unheard-of luxuries on the in-
stalment plan, and when food became abundant,
representing high-class living, then a general reckless-
ness possessed the household as well as the coal-miner
or the lumberman. The housewife has but followed
their example and paralleled the waste of small-coal
in the mining region and the wholesale destruction of
forests, by her garbage-pail and overfurnished rooms.
She is not primarily to blame for the fact that average
American housekeeping costs twice as much as is
necessary; it is due to the general reckless extrava-
gance in the air.
It becomes important to ask, *' What are the stand-
ards, not of bare existence, but of good living — of
physical comfort, mental health, and spiritual satiS'
faction ? "
SANITARY SCIENCE AND PRODUCTIVE LIFE. 2$
If your ideal, gentle reader, is that of the sleek
tabby cat, plenty of food and sleep, the softest
corner and no duties, then we have no message for
you. To live is to appreciate the joy of being a part
of the world of action, to share in the joy of work,
and work for mankind; this joy includes an appre-
hension of the possible meaning of it all.
Most human actions are prompted by the desire to
escape pain or to procure pleasure. These efforts
will be successful in proportion as knowledge controls
these actions.
Human welfare includes health of mind as well as
health of body, and sanitary science, in its broadest
sense, includes all that relates to either. It is a
knowledge of the practical standard of sound health
for the community and of the means of securing it.
Sanitary science not only teaches the means of in-
creasing the productive power of the wage-earner by
lessening his days of sickness, by so nourishing his
body that it may serve him longer and with more
efificiency, but it also furnishes the rules of conduct
which make any man capable of the highest enjoy-
ment of life by teaching him self-control in the use
of all that goes to make up the sum of human happi-
ness.
** Children are workers in preparation, are future
citizens. The state cannot afford to allow them to
grow up inefficient." Therefore public welfare
26 THE COST OF LIVING.
demands that the home life shall be governed by the
best knowledge which science has been able to gather
with reference to health and efficiency.
It is man only who has the power to see beyond
the present and by resistance to its alluring tempta-
tions to secure future gain.
Each human being has a money value to the state in
proportion as he is a productive individual with either
hands or brain. Not only death but sickness lessens
the usefulness of an individual, since the care of one
sick person means loss of work to others, expense for
drugs and physicians, and it means even more loss by
the weakening effect of sorrow and anxiety.
The higher the standard of living, the more costly
do the accessories of sickness become and the greater
the blighting effect upon the higher intellectual facul-
ties.
It has been estimated that on an average each
death in a community means 720 days of sickness with
its attendant cost in money and anxiety.
For the standard of income we are now chiefly con-
sidering this may bring an actual expense amounting
to even five thousand dollars. It may mean the
crippling of the family as to the children's education,
perhaps loss of position of the father, perhaps years
of wearing invalidism for the mother, and a loss to
society of the benefit which an efficient family always
Qonferst
SANITARY SCIENCE AND PRODUCTIVE LIFE. 27
When it is considered that the death-rate in
America is nearly double that which is estimated as
necessary, and that ten in every thousand needlessly
die, half of them perhaps in the prime of life, that
for a city of one hundred thousand this means five
hundred deaths annually of persons who are most
valuable to the community, it will be seen why the
study of sanitary science is so strongly urged and
why the cost of the various departments of household
expenditure should be considered not only in the
light of economics and aesthetics, but of hygiene.
If the requirements for healthful living can be once
understood and an ideal held up to the young student
while his habits are yet plastic, a great advance is
possible in the pleasures of life and especially in the
beauty of living in conscious obedience to the laws of
life.
CHAPTER III.
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE. DIVISION BETWEEN
DEPARTMENTS ACCORDING TO IDEALS.
" National prosperity depends less upon the amount of wealth
than upon the utilization of the national possessions in deriv-
ing the annual income." — Bullock.
" Economy of time, effort, and materials, and therefore of
expense, is in essence scientific."
"With a progressive people, the satisfaction of existence
wants serves merely to arouse new desires and to stimulate
men to satisfy them."
The sum of ten billions of dollars, more or less, is
spent in the United States for household expenses,
and yet very little attention has been paid to the
rational division of the annual income between the
different departments. The business man has found
it easier to make money than to save it; the econo-
mist has been fully occupied in finding out how
money was made.
That the results of this outlay are not satisfactory
there is abundant evidence. That the money is not
economically used is seen in the rapid changes in
habits of living due to economic pressure.
28
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE. 29
Hence, before it is too late, a careful study of the
conditions of life affecting the household expenditure
should be made.
The cost of living in any given case depends upon
the ideas and standards of the person spending the
money; that is, it is a mental rather than a material
limitation; a result of education rather than of loca-
tion.
In America the typical family of the economist, of
father, mother, and three children under the earning
age, can live very comfortably on ten dollars a week
or five hundred dollars a year for the necessities of
material existence. Moreover, if its members will
avail themselves of the education of the libraries, of
the art museums, of the lectures and classes, of the
baths and parks, pleasure-grounds, the non-material
pleasures, and of the opportunities provided for the
children at the public expense in most cities, their
actual income is equivalent to double that sum.
The real struggle in living comes in the case of
those whose character and principles demand that
they shall pay for the pleasures as well as the neces-
sities of life, and in whom the desire for ownership
demands the personal possession of books, and
pictures, for which they are willing to deny them-
selves even comforts. An income of sixteen dollars
a week or eight hundred dollars a year admits of
this gratification in a fair degree provided that the
30 THE COST OF LIVING.
fines exacted for the disobedience of nature's laws are
not too heavy.
Therefore, for the sake of argument, we may say
that our present discussion begins with that sum, or
the lower limit of choice, and from that to an upper
limit of four or five thousand dollars — since above
that sum, as a rule, quite different elements enter
i.e., either much is given in charity or in the sus-
taining of public institutions, clubs, societies, or in
collecting books, pictures, etc., or in promoting sport
or industries. While the same general and high-
minded ideals should govern the expenditure of the
larger income, there is not that need of close calcula-
tion on some points; also, in general, there is a far
better business management of the larger in-
come.
In the present condition of American society prob-
ably the greatest difficulty is felt by those who have
from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars
a year for all expenses, because their tastes are edu-
cated and their habits acquired in such a way that
twice that amount would be needed to make any
approach to satisfaction, for each step only opens the
door to another want, and also because they are
rarely skilled in the use of money.
A writer in the Fortnightly Review * has cleverly
* Joseph Jacobs, Fortnightly Review, 1899.
1
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE. 3 1
sketched the **mean" Englishman as distinguished
from the ** average" of the economist. This man
earns about six dollars a week. The ''mean"
American will earn at least ten dollars a week, and
with the rapid rise made possible by better industrial
conditions and the greater opportunities for earning
money the "mean" American family should have
fifteen dollars a week, with twenty in sight as a stim-
ulus to exertion. From this class of intelligent, self-
respecting, self-supporting, industrious persons rises,
in the very next generation, thanks to free schools
and democratic plasticity, a group which are typical
Americans whatever their grandfathers were. These
are the educated persons in the community, young
college graduates in business, professors and teachers
in schools and colleges, clerks, small tradesmen, and
skilled workmen. And the income of this typical
family is from fifteen hundred to three thousand
dollars a year. Such are the possibilities in the in-
dustrial conditions of America that it is not uncommon
for it to rise to thirty thousand dollars before the
children are grown.
Under the pressure of nineteenth-century condi-
tions, it has been found that the home as at present
conducted is not managed on an economical basis so
far as money value or outward semblance of luxury
is concerned. That it fails in the more important
essentials of comfort is proved by the great increase
32 THE COST OF LIVING.
of clubs and of hotel life. On what grounds, there-
fore, can the justification of individual homes bd^fl
based ? Only on the conceded fact before stated
that the home is the germ of Anglo-Saxon civiliza-
tion. If the income is to be used so as to give the
fullest satisfaction of human wants, there must be
classification of those wants in order of importance
and some restraint of unreasoning impulse. '* Style
in living" has no ** standards," no basis in morals,
religion, or economics. The fashion of the day or
the whim of the moment is indulged without a
thought of the consequences to the next generation.
This absence of safeguards, this letting down of
ethical barriers brings countless temptations to ex-
travagance.
To reconcile the uplifting tendency of the struggle
to ** better one's condition " with the degrading
result of striving to seem richer than one really is and
to avoid the debilitating effect of luxuries is America's
problem for the twentieth century. As has already
been said, it is for those educated persons with one
thousand to three thousand dollars annual income to
lead the way in the studies necessary to be under-
taken before any authoritative statements can be
made, and to show what the public ought to have; not
always to cater to what the pubhc likes.
The cost of living should be so balanced as to
secure the greatest comfort and convenience possible
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE. 33
without sacrificing anything necessary for health,
physical, mental, or moral.
A few examples of actual budgets will be instruc-
tive as illustrative of methods of attacking the
problem. That very little variation is allowable until
the lower limit of choice is reached is seen in a com-
parison of the expenditure of the ** mean " English-
man and of a New York family in about the same
walk in life.
Nos. I to 5 illustrate the variety of choice. One
family economizes on rent, another on clothes,
another on other expenses. No 4 is, it is to be
feared, a very common American budget. No. 5 in
the table shows what may be done by a thrifty family
who will do their own work, and live in the suburbs
where the garden reduces the food expense. No. 6
shows how many families of women economize. A
widow, with a mother and two children, is a dress-
maker and has her noon meal and most of the cloth-
ing for the family from her customers.
Nos. 7 and 8 are most instructive as showing types
in different localities, but illustrating what must be
paid for the necessities of life. It is doubtful if
either family could safely cut down on food.
Dr. Engel has formulated four laws confirmed daily
more and more. As Dr. Nitti says: '^ Laws of which,
in all the family budgets I have examined, I have
myself been able to prove the absolute exactness."
34
THE COST OF LIVING.
TYPICAL BUDGETS.
Family Income.
$3098, three adults, two chil-
dren
$2500 (Mass.), three adults, no
children
$2500 (Mass.), two adults, one
child, much company
$1980 (St. Louis),, four adults,
two children
$950 (Mass.), two adults, three
children . :
)00 (Boston), two adults, two
children
Percentage for
$535 (N. Y.), two adults, three
children
$312, " mean " Englishman:
two adults, three children . .
$300, Dr. Engel's estimates. . ..
27 5
25
32
36.3
20
23
55.2
55.2
62
rt o
21. I
25
18
24.2
19
26
22.4
15.5
12
o
16.8
13
18
20.9
16
5.3
8.9
5
)-) bo
18
5^
I
9.4
I3-I
16
24.6
25
22
60
30
26.1
15-9
7.7
7-3
5-0
** The Jirs^ law is that the proportion between ex-
penditure and nutriment grows in geometric progres-
sion in an inverse ratio to well-being; in other words,
the higher the income the smaller is the percentage
of cost of subsistence. The second is that clothing
assumes and keeps a distinctly constant proportion in
the whole. The third is that lodging, warming, and
HOUSEHOLD EXfe;El^DlTURE.^^^\^/^ 35
lighting have an invariable proportion whatever the
income. The fotirth is that the more the income
increases the greater is the proportion of the dif-
ferent expenses which express the degree of well-
being.
'' The less a worker gains the more he invests in
food, renouncing out of necessity all other desires."
{Bull, de r Institut International de Statist,^ 1887, PP«
50, 55, 57.)
From the examination of various budgets and from
observation of many families, as well as from twenty-
five years' experience in housekeeping, I am con-
vinced that the tendency to extravagance in the
American household comes in the two columns Food
and Operating Expenses — if the latter include the
incidentals or sundries and unexpected outgoes, which
count up very fast. Individual extravagance may
frequently occur in clothes.
In food I believe the trouble is largely one of
waste. Twice as much is ordered as is really neces-
sary, and in small families where there is no separate
servants' table, unless very great care is taken, large
portions of the most expensive food are left to be
served in the kitchen, so that the total cost of food is
very high. If the ordering is left to the cook, this is
sure to be so. It is for the interest of the grocer and
butcher to have the bills large, and the tips they give
to secure this would astonish many a man who now
36 THE COST OF LIVING.
wonders at the size of his bills. Only an accurate
knowledge of how much is really needed, and a close
watch over the amounts ordered, can keep the food
cost down. It is policy to allow the common, in-
expensive articles such as flour and sugar and potatoes
to be used freely, but the quantities of meats, high-
priced vegetables, and confections should be carefully
calculated. One remedy for the extravagance and
consequent debt resulting from this excess of expen-
diture in one or more directions may be found in a
system of strict account-keeping as a check to the
impulse to purchase which is often repented of when
too late.
In order to render the accounts of value there must
be certain recognized standards of possible attainment
to serve as a guide to the young people in establish-
ing the traditions of the new home.
The following table showirLg a theoretical division
of the several incomes may be helpful in some cases
and may stimulate the family provider to keep
accounts so systematically as to be able to give the
several percentages along these division lines.
I hear the protest arising from three fourths of my
readers that life would not be worth" living under
these circumstances; it would be bondage. I reply,
not after the habit is once formed. Bagehot said,
** There is no pain like the pain of a new idea " ; but
on the other hand Mark Twain wrote, " You cannot
1
I
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE.
SUGGESTED BUDGETS.
37
Family Income.
Two adults and two''or three
children (equal to four
adults) :
Ideal division
$2000 to $4000
$800 to $1000
$500 to $800
Under $500
Percentage for
2S
25
30
45
60
20 JZ
20 ±
20
15
15
a-'
be ,
c in
15 ±
15 ±
10
9
o o c
^ 3 >
15 ±
20 ±
15
10
10
25
20
25
20
ID
throw habit out of the window; it must be coaxed
down-stairs one step at a time." New habits may
be difficult to establish, but once fixed they maintain
themselves. The moral of which is that it will pay
in the end to establish a custom of looking after the
small details which will cease to be a burden after a
few months. This is especially necessary if the help
is constantly changing. Let the rules of the house
be known when engaging any servant, then there will
be no difficulty. Much of the confusion so prevalent
arises because there are no rules — no accounts.
Again, the temptation to spend for things pleasant
but not needful, or even beautiful, either for the
household or for personal gratification are many, and
1
38 THE COST OF LIVING.
it requires some moral support, such as an account-
book or some great ideal to strive for, to keep the
pocketbook closed. What the liquor saloon is to the
drinking man the bargain-counter is to the aimless 11
woman. *
The reason a young man fears to marry is not
because of the present cost of a house, but because
he cannot estimate the future cost of running it. He
has no rule to go by.
In most newly established homes there is no gov-
erning principle at the foundation to which both man
and wife are committed and for which both are will-
ing to make sacrifices.
How far shall be carried the habit of saving, of life-
insurance, etc., is an open question. Certainly each
family should be able to take care of itself under all
circumstances, — such as sickness, lack of work for a
reasonable time, etc.
The best investment is in the education of the
children to be self-supporting, and all should try to
** better themselves " as the phrase goes, because the
whole community will rise with the elevation of indi-
vidual homes. That a certain amount should be put
by each year for an emergency fund goes without
saying; how much depends upon circumstances. If
life-insurance is the best, then in that; if saving-
banks or bonds, or if in small amounts of cash, then
in them, This question will bear study; but in all
HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE. 39
cases each child of rich or poor should be so devel-
oped mentally and physically as to be capable of tak-
ing care of himself if he is ever called upon so to do.
If a family has learned to lead a dignified, comfort-
able life on fifteen hundred dollars, it will not be
difficult to spend more. It is only when the life has
been badly adjusted that increase of income brings
with it no answering response.
If, on the other hand, the socialist limit of eight
hundred dollars a year is to prevail, then the family
that has had fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars
has a better chance of being happy than the one that
has felt pinched on ten thousand dollars.
It must be said for tho^e who advocate the eight-
hundred-dollar limit that they assume that much of
pleasure, that all of the education, and many of the
expenses now borne by private means will then be
provided for by the state.
At present we may, I think, take eight hundred
dollars as the limit below which a family can only
take care of its physical needs, — rent, food, clothes,
life-insurance, etc. For amusement, recreation, edu-
cation, instruction, it turns to the means provided at
public expense.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING.
" Science has little power to alter national thought by direct
means, but it has great power in creating new economic con-
ditions, and these modify national thought." — S. N. Patten.
"Public opinion is changed by economic conditions — not
by creeds."— S. N. Patten.
" The most judicious use of money is to form for one's self
first of all as pleasant and comfortable a home as is consistent
with one's means. Money thus spent is money safely in-
vested." — Edmond Demolin.
The factors governing the per cent of the income
paid for housing are:
1. Sanitary requirements.
2. Social requirement; location; architectural ap-
pearance.
3. Standards of living.
The house is one of the most serious difficulties in
the way of ideal living, for we have inherited the sins
of our ancestors in tangible form and, in addition,
those of conscienceless contractors and greedy cap-
italists.
The family whose needs we are considering — one
40
THE HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING. 4I
with an annual income of fifteen hundred to three
thousand dollars — finds the greatest difficulty in secur-
ing the conditions given above either for purchase or
rent. Neglect of sanitary precautions by the owners
of houses has been so flagrant that the expense of
putting a place in condition to live in is often nearly
equal to that required to build anew. The rapid,
irresponsible growth of many of our towns, whole
streets being built up before any system of grading
or of sewerage has been established, has done much
to keep the death-rate high. The frequent changes
in streets or section due to the putting in of railroads
or factories or to the intrusion of business neces-
sitates as frequent removal, and to this is largely due
the habit our typical family has acquired of renting
instead of owning a house.
The rent is a definite and certain expense, and a
place of one's own is, in the shifting condition of the
modern town, a most uncertain asset and not the safe
investment it has formerly been, and besides it is a
continual source of unexpected expense. For in-
stance, a change in the city regulations as to plumb-
ing may entail an expense equal to a year's rent.
At present this feature of the cost of living cannot
be ignored, but must be reckoned with in any discus-
sion of family expenses. It must be acknowledged
that although some families do sufTer exceeding dis-
comfort in order that, judged by the house they live
42 THE COST OF LIVING.
in, they may be supposed to have reached a higher
rank, yet an increasing proportion of intelligent
young people are looking for better sanitary condi-
tions as well as for social standing.
Nevertheless the instability of the material home,
the fact of renting instead of owning an abode, has
made possible much of the retrograde movement in
home manners and customs. While there should be
an ideal which is independent of the mere material
surroundings, as a fact results seem to show that it is
lacking to a deplorable degree.
It is for this ideal, this sense of the sanitary and
educational value of the home cosmos, that education
is demanded, that public sentiment needs to be
created. An insistent demand would soon produce a
variety of house better suited to the wholesome living
which sanitary science demands.
A home means four walls and, in this climate, a
roof, into however many compartments the space so
enclosed may be divided. Sanitary rules say that
the space for each person should be not less than
300 cubic feet; that light and air shall have access
freely; that water shall be freely supplied and quickly
removed when used; that the soil on which the
structure stands shall be clean, dry, and porous.
These requirements must be met at whatever cost of
money is necessary to procure them, and yet how
many of the thousands of house-hunters in the cities
THE HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING. 43
and towns ever think of these things, or, if they do,
weigh them in the balance with the style of the porch,
the number of bay windows, or with fashion as to
street ? It is not only in the slums that there is in-
sufficient air-space. So long as ignorant men and
women will rent these closets under the name of
rooms, so long builders will put them up. So long
as the dining-room is of less consequence than the
front hall, so long will the showy part of the house be
emphasized.
Economy of labor has not been thought of in the
construction of houses. In what other business would
the coal-supply be dumped on the sidewalk to be
shovelled and wheeled into the cellar, only to be
brought up again; the ashes carried down, only to be
again brought up and carted away? How few of the
really valuable mechanical appliances are found in a
house! How little attention is paid to the saving of
labor! The heaviest kettles are always on the lowest
shelf, and articles of daily use are so placed as to
require miles of travel. House-architecture is fifty
years behind shop-building and factory-construction.
It goes without saying that the ignorance of the
housewife as to what is possible, and her traditional
conservatism, are the causes for this state of things.
The attention of students of social science should
not be wholly absorbed in the so-called tenement-
house problem ; the needs of the higher-cl ass w age-
/ ^ wthk ^y^
44 THE COST OF LIVING.
earner should be considered, and by this means the
other object will be soonest accomplished. Example
is more powerful than precept.
I can think of no greater missionary work possible
than that some philanthropic individual should offer
a competition in house-architecture which should
illustrate the possibilities of modern science, unless it
might be the offering of a prize for the best essay on
the living in such a house to be written by a college
woman of five years* experience in housekeeping.
A house should be comfortable inside, capable of
pleasing arrangements, and so planned as not to re-
quire excess of work to care for it. Here is true
economy. The ideals and standards of life are what
should rule.
A home must mean more than four walls and food:
it must stand for one's self; it must be an outer
garment as it were, showing the taste and cultivation
of its occupants.
Exclusive of land, the cost of housing with the
demands of modern life, water-supply, drainage, hard
finish, etc., is about one thousand dollars per person,
or four thousand dollars for the typical family of five.
It may be halved or it may be doubled in many
instances without serious difificulty, except in respect
to location. It may be quartered or it may be
quadrupled, but these are the two extremes of re-
quirement. One thousand dollars will build only
rut HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING. 45
two rooms (renting for ten dollars a month, one
hundred and twenty dollars a year) of a tenement, or
five rooms of a suburban cottage, giving a minimum
of light and air. Sixteen thousand dollars should
build all that any family could use for themselves
alone, so far as essentials go. Of course sentiment
enters into rent, desirable locality, and the reverse,
but too often cheapness means lack of water and air
and cleanness, and dearness means bad taste in orna-
ment or lavish expenditure for mere show. Our
houses in America are mere extension of clothes;
they are not built for the next generation. Our
needs change so rapidly that it is not desirable. It
is far better to spend less for the mere house and
more for what goes on in it — the real life.
Certain questions should be considered by each
family. First, what is the object of the house ?
What are its essential features ? There is great need
of economic and domestic education among architects.
It would be possible to add beauty to most family
residences without detracting from their utility.
Second, what proportion of the income should be
paid for rent ? Sufficient to secure the requirements
of health, even to half the income. This is not
necessary if the family will avoid fictitious values due
to supposed superiority of neighborhood or to mere
pretension in building. Without heat and light,
twenty per cent of any income between five hundred
46 THE COST OF LIVING.
and five thousand dollars a year should secure safe
shelter for a family. If it does not, there is work for
a social-reform club in that community as well as for
the board of health. The fact that many families
pay twenty-five per cent is the first evidence ofj
unsound economic policy, but it may often be inter-
preted as a tribute to higher ideals provided the
increase here is met by a decrease elsewhere so that
the sum total shall keep its proportion.
The needs of the family should be carefully set
down and the plan of life in the house made out
before it is rented or built. Some measure of privacy
should be secured to each one, and yet there should
be one common meeti«g-place. The pretentious
custom of a large drawing-room furnished for show,
occupied only when receiving callers and consequently
in which hostess and visitors alike feel the chill of
dead things, not the warmth of daily emotions, is
responsible for much of the housekeeping misery of
the time. Unless the family is large enough and
with a combined income amply sufficient to entertain
frequently, this habit of keeping a large room for a
possible wedding or a funeral is a vicious one. The
space may be utilized for the comfort of the family
in many other ways, either in separate sleeping-rooms
or in a large living-room.
All the mechanical arrangements of this shelter
must be under control, that is, they must be under-
THE HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING. 47
stood by the one in charge of the house in order that
the cost of living in the house may not be in great
excess of the comfort and health resulting. This is
just as essential as a knowledge of the machinery he
is to run is for the engineer who is obliged by law to
have a license. If each householder were obliged to
pass an examination on the mechanical arrangements
of his or her house and show a knoA^edge of furnace,
battery, and flue before being allowed to occupy it, a
cry of state interference with private rights would be
at once raised ; but in that day when it is clear that
the carelessness of men threatens to extinguish the
race it will doubtless be done.
The office of the house is ^lot only as shelter from
the elements, not only as shelter from the curiosity
and interference of the outside world, but as an ex-
pression of the persons in it — of their ideals, tastes,
education, and needs of soul as well as of body.
Besides the number, size, and arrangement of the'
rooms, there is to be considered the color of the
walls, the harmony of decoration, the arrangement of
the furniture and pictures. This is not a matter of
little consequence or of outside taste. A home is an
expression of family ideals, else the place is a board-
ing-house. That women who are nominally at the
head of households take the ready-made plans of
landlords and decorators and only stipulate that all
shall be as stylish as Mrs. So-and-So*s is proof of
48 THE COST OF LIVING.
their low ideals of what a home means and of their
unfitness to preside therein. Ignorance and in-
efificiency in the home are not good recommendations
for the opposite characteristics in the business life for
which they long.
In no one item of expenditure is there so much
room for the exercise of ideals, for the development
of character, as in this one of providing the best sur-
roundings for the family life. In no department are
knowledge and taste of so much money value — for it
is not the most expensive but the most appropriate
and harmonious article which is the best. The
beauty of cleanliness is not sufficiently appreciated
by the ordinary purchaser. Here again it is what
others buy and not what appeals to one's own need
that leads to the spending. of money for a multitude
of articles which catch dust and become grimy or else
require an undue proportion of time in a vain at-
tempt to keep clean.
It is certainly wiser to pay higher rent for a modern
house than to spend much on furnishing an old one;
and if the house is so finished as to need little care,
there is an additional gain: less paint to clean, fewer
stairs to go over, gas instead of coal, — all these things
are to be considered in the total of this part of the
living expenses.
If the rent of a given house is low compared with
others, one of three things is the probable cause —
THE HOUSE. RENT OR VALUE AND FURNISHING. 49
undesirable neighborhood, an old house out of repair,
or simply cheap construction.
The householder must balance well the different
elements of the problem.
Fashion should not be allowed to rule — only sani-
tary conditions and moral health of the children.
The following are some of the questions which
should be propounded by every householder:
Is the soil dry ?
Is the cellar dry and light ?
Are the drain-pipes in sight ?
Are the drain-pipes sound ?
Does the furnace or the steam-boiler warm the
house ?
Has the bath-room an outside window for sunlight
and a double door ?
Has every room some means of cross-ventilation ?
Will it be possible to keep the rooms clean without
inordinate work ? Is there much cut, painted, or
ornamented woodwork, etc.? Are there many stairs,
and inconvenient ones ?
How many servants, if any, will be needed for the
care of the house ?
CHAPTER V.
OPERATING EXPENSES: FUEL, LIGHT, WAGES,
AND INCIDENTALS.
" Few women when they assume the care of a household
know the exact value of the household plant; the amount to
be deducted each year for wear and tear ; the relative propor-
tions expended annually for rent, fuel, food, clothing, and
service; the number of meals served and the approximate cost
of each ; the amount of profit, waste, or unproductiveness that
results from all expenditures made." — Lucy M. Salmon.
" Enjoyment depends on state of mind, comfort on habits."
" The complaint of one's assistants is a boomerang. It writes
the complainant down in large letters as himself poorly fitted
for his responsibilities."
Having secured a comfortable, healthful house in
a satisfactory locality, the daily life is to be estab-
lished in it. It is to be warmed, lighted, and kept
clean and in repair. In short, it is to be operated for
the benefit of the family as a railroad is for the bene-
fit of the public; and the same far-sighted business
sense should govern these expenses if the family is
to find profit in the life such as the stockholders of a
well-managed railroad secure as a result of their
knowledge.
50
OPERATING EXPENSES. 5 1
The ideal of health and comfort, mental as well as
bodily, should be held constantly before the eye of the
household manager, and no ignorance or parsimony
ought to peril either. A maximum of efficiency
must be maintained at a minimum of cost.
The compartment of the family purse from which
these expenses are paid is usually like a sieve, retain-
ing nothing for emergencies. No portion of the
income can bring so much comfort, and none is so
difficult to expend. Waste of money elsewhere is
compensated by crowding down the wages or by
cutting off items small in themselves but affecting the
family happiness.
This department also suffers from the lack of care
in details which is required to keep any business at
its maximum efficiency.
The present only is considered; nothing is used as
if it were to be needed again. The common habit
of handing down to the next generation valuable
heirlooms having been lost, with it has gone that
forethought in small daily duties which preserves for
one's own use one's belongings, personal or house-
hold.
It is this carelessness extending to children and
servants which causes so large an outlay for the
running expenses of the house.
Before a purchase is made, the labor involved in
caring for it, or in cooking it, should be considered.
52 THE COST OF LIVING.
When a standard of living is once set, the cost ol
maintaining that standard should be considered. Al
this point our modern housekeeping is weakest.
How much does it cost to keep a house of eight oi
of fourteen rooms ?
How many hours of efficient service are needed for"
a family of five ?
How much fuel should suffice for a suburban house
of twelve rooms or a city house of the same cubic
contents with fourteen rooms ?
The reader will at once raise the question, is this
not just that individual freedom, that variety of
choice for which the earlier pages plead ? Are we to
bring all our methods to one measure, and is each to
pattern after the same standards ? By no means;
only each must have his own standard and ideal to
aim for, and must not Live from hand to mouth as do
savages, or servilely copy one's neighbor all unknow-
ing of the exact conditions.
Because we acknowledge that there is more than
business in the idea of home, let us not make the
mistake of assuming that there is no business side to
household affairs.
No man in his senses will set up any other manu-
facturing establishment with as little regard to the
purpose of it all and to the future success of its
operation as he will allow in the inauguration of his
household.
OPERATING EXPENSES. 53
Light should be regulated on hygienic principles
as far as possible, and should not, as is often the case,
be allowed to vitiate the air beyond reason.
The way in which ignorance on the part of house-
keepers blocks social progress is seen in the difference
between the development of electric transportation
and domestic gas consumption. The use of gas for
fuel was proposed before the trolley line was devel-
oped, but at each step in the introduction of gas
obstacles due to ignorance of the relations of heat
and of the management of mechanical apparatus have
so far prevented the extension of this convenient and
economical fuel. The manufacturers of domestic
utensils have not shown that grasp of scientific prin-
ciples which is expected of other trades, and small
wonder that it is words, not deeds, upon which they
rely to catch their ignorant customers.
The opportunity for the application of business
principles to household management lies in the strict
account-keeping which will check unrestricted expen-
diture on unessentials to the detriment of the funda-
mental needs. The engineer may design and put up
an entirely satisfactory pumping-engine, but if an
incompetent man is put in charge of it, or a com-
petent man is allowed too little time to look after it,
the machine rapidly deteriorates and finally breaks
down.
It is a common experience that after an occupation
54 THE COST OF LIVING.
of a year or two a house becomes unsanitary, battered,
saturated with odors of cooking, or that on trial it
proves to be inconvenient for the family h*fe.
If all the complex collocation which we call living
gave real and lasting happiness, we might say that it
was in the line of evolutionary progress. Since it
frequently does not, but, on the contrary, is produc-
tive of discomfort and early death, why should we not
consider the possibility of greater happiness through
simplicity and consequent perfection; of greater sat-
isfaction through the. assurance that we have used
our resources to the best of our ability ?
I am told that the people of culture in New
England fifty years ago paid one third their income
for rent, but the annual expenses of the establishment
were not in proportion what they are now. Life was
much simpler, and the actual amount of work done
was far less. The sanitary requirements of to-day
were unknown. The handsome, simple furniture was
more easily cleaned; the dust-catching bric-a-bric was
absent; the laundry work was far less; and while the
service of the table was dignified, it was not so
elaborate as now.
There were no telephones, no gas, no lamps (most
time-consuming in care), fewer callers, more true
hospitality, few brass pipes to clean, on the whole less
sickness. We have gained in conveniences, but have
lost in real ease and comfort of life. It is true cer-
OPERATING EXPENSES. 55
tain comforts have greatly increased: soft rugs have
replaced the sanded floors; easy chairs, the straight-
backed settle. But the knocker which announced the
entrance of the visitor directly into the living-room is
replaced by the electric bell, which calls a maid up
one flight of stairs to the door, only to send her up
another flight to announce the caller.
Has any one ever calculated the foot-pounds of
energy and the time consumed in answering the door-
bell and the telephone in a modern house ? Has
any housekeeper taken into account her increased
demands as, year by year, these calls increase ?
There is a constantly growing temptation to un-
necessary expenditure for things small in themselves
and pleasant enough, but not worth while, as would
be seen if any effort were needed to obtain them.
One of the gravest objections to the telephone in a
house is the atrophy of all forethought which it per-
mits. Why should careful account of the larder or
work-basket be taken each morning if a yeast-cake or
a spool of thread may be ordered by telephone ?
Refinement of living has benefited by the intro-
duction of courses at meals instead of serving all the
food at once, but the cost in time has been increased
by more than the number of courses. Yet the
average housewife will maintain that the expense is
no more.
Let us try a readjustment of the different house-
56 THE COST OF LIVING.
hold expenses before we give up the maintenance of
the individual home.
To-day it would be suicidal for a young couple of
the professional class or of any class to pay one third
of any income between fifteen hundred and three
thousand dollars for rent, because the accompanying
expenses of those things that make modern life are
so much greater than they were fifty years ago.
There is so much more moving about than formerly.
Car-fares count up. The woman goes shopping
daily; the family go to the park to see the fireworks.
The ice; the tax on hose and faucets; the cleaning
of the furnace; the cleaning of sidewalks, — all swell
the monthly bills.
There is no mystery about the increasing popu-
larity of the apartment house. The trouble of
estimating these expenses and of making repairs is
shifted to the business man's shoulders, and the
woman has so much the less money to be responsible
for. For those who are busy with other duties, who
travel or who are getting on in years and who can
afford to pay for relief from care,- a well-built apart-
ment house may be a blessing, but as a family home
for children it is a most extravagant luxury, and like
other luxuries causes deterioration in the race.
Perhaps we shall be obliged to give up the family
home for a time in order to find out how much it is
worth, but it would be better for a few intelligent
OPERATING EXPENSES. 57
women to first experiment scientifically, in order to
put the subject on a practical basis, and then to
publish their results for others to study. A social
settlement for the study of the domestic questions
pertaining to the life of those whose incomes are
three thousand dollars a year would, I believe, be
more valuable than one for the study of the annual
expenditure of three hundred dollars.
The reader will say it all depends on standards.
True; but sanitary standards cannot be so far different
for different towns.
One railroad does not differ so widely from another
in cost of running its cars that no estimates can be
made from known facts.
How long should it take to clean a chamber or to
do the chamber-work of the family of three or five ?
It would not be difficult to settle this if women were
amenable to reason or if they had any training in
mechanics, so that they could tell whether the person
were wasting time and strength in passing to and fro
ten times where once would serve.
The following estimates are given for the purpose
of a definite point of departure for the study, which
the writer hopes and believes will come.
For instance, with an annual expenditure of $3000,
$500 for rent, S500 for wages, $500 for operation,
$700 for food, $300 for clothes, $500 for the higher
life may be allotted. If this does not prove to be
58 THE COST OF LIVING.
enough, then either wages or food or clothes must be
cut down or a cheaper house taken. In deciding
these problems, there is ample variety to keep up
interest in life and to prevent all persons from falling
to a dead level.
If two teachers, clerks, artists, desire an independ-
ent home life, a place of their own to come to after
the day's work, it is quite possible to secure it in the
following manner:
Assume the income of each to be $750 a year.
$1500 will be the sum to be expended. Set aside for
rent $300, for food $375, for service $150 (since there
are no children and each will take care not to make
unnecessary work), for clothes $250, for savings or
emergency fund $200; leaving for travel, books,
church, charity, lectures, and amusement $225. The
last three items, amounting to $337.5 dollars each or
45 per cent of the total income, may be varied
according to the individual choice without affecting
the other items.
The insistence on each family living within its
income and saving enough to prevent it from becom-
ing a state burden is an ideal or a standard which
must be cultivated. The happy-go-lucky way brings
debt, disgrace, and that dependence which is debas-
ing.
The ratio between rent and wages must be made a
study in economics interpreted in the Hght of sanitary
OPERATING EXPENSES*2^£ALlF2^-^59
science before a rational settlement of the service
question can be secured. And no great advance in
housekeeping can take place until this is done.
Agricultural labor suffers because when a boy is
man-grown he receives man's wages whatever the
quality of his work. There is no opportunity for dis-
crimination in values and for rise of wages.
So in house service good work is not appreciated
or rewarded, and the same wages are paid to a slow
or slovenly maid as are offered to a quick, neat worker.
No reward in the way of release from duty is offered
for the quicker work, but only more and often un-
necessary work is added in order to fill the time, in
the same spirit in which the hotel guest tries to get
his money's worth by eating through the bill of fare.
When the stage-coach carried its passengers and
the mails over dangerous roads the driver was per-
force a man of energy and resolution, of shrewd
observation.
The horse-car with its guiding rails required less of
its driver, and the position fell to those who could do
little else.
Now the electric motor has changed the require-
ments, and in the suburban motorman we find many
an old stage-driver and the same type of quick-to-act,
capable man.
The moral is plain: change the requirements of
household service by inventions and arrangements
6o THE COST OF LIVING.
which demand skilled labor, and the labor will come
to it.
The unexpected forms a large part of life, the
larger, the more complicated it becomes. No good
manager is without a fund to draw upon for emergen-
cies. In the household, debt usually comes because
the fund has not been reserved. This one principle
if insisted upon would lessen the nervous wear of
housekeeping by an incalculable amount.
In many respects the average housewife is yet a
savage, instead of the up-to-date woman she thinks
herself, but in none more than in this failure to
estimate correctly the future possibilities in the small
household expenses.
Dr. Miinsterberg maintains that the one thing an
American does not economize is time, and as regard
the household I think he is right.
There is rarely any system by which the maids are
taught to carry out one thing when they go for
another, to do the thing first upon which all the rest
depends, to accomplish the most for a given number
of steps.
It will be at once said, " But they do not wish to be
told, they like to spend time in trifling." Possibly;
but it is human nature to enjoy results, to see some-
thing done and not forever doing.
My point is that the cost of living is greatly in-
creased by the neglect of the householder to estimate
I
OPERATING EXPENSES. 6 1
carefully the amount of time it should require to
accomplish the end arrived at and the waste at every
step of the day's work. Until better habits, business
habits, are brought into the household we must allow
about twenty per cent excess over a rational estimate
in actual labor, and at least as much more for in-
efficient labor.
For the ordinary city household where cosmopoli-
tan standards are adhered to, and where there are
children and social duties, it is estimated that the sum
paid for wages should be one half that paid for rent
or what would be paid if the house were not owned.
In many cases, in fact in a majority of houses renting
for three hundred to eight hundred dollars per year,
two thirds the rent is usual; and if the mistress does
nothing herself and is not a systematic business
woman, the rule should be that the wages paid for all
the work about the place, temporary as well as per-
manent, should be equal to the rent. This may be
lessened in two ways — by greater simplicity, or by
the members of the family sharing in the duties.
It is hoped that statistics may be gathered on this
point as a basis of confirmation or refutation of the
charge that too much of the income is spent on furni-
ture and bric-a-bric and too little on the care of
them.
Sanitary science demands freedom from dust, quick
removal of all refuse, and absolute cleanliness. This
62 THE COST OF LIVING.
means time and strength as well as constant watchful-
ness.
The other operating expenses, — fuel, lights, ex-
press business, fares, stationery, water-tax, and news-
papers, — those things that are not permanent, but go
to make the comforts of life, — should be kept in
amount equal to wages, for the more servants there are
the more some of these expenses will increase without
corresponding increase in satisfaction. A large part
of the present cost of this class of household expendi-
ture is due to an increased speed in running. In the
test of the new British cruiser*' Highflyer" it was
found that with a speed of 12 J knots per hour 2135
horse-power was required, but when she was run at
20.1 knots the horse-power was 10,344, or nearly
five times for an increase of less than two times.
The greater the speed the more rapid the increase.
For instance, it required more coal to drive the
cruiser 20.1 from 19.4 knots, an increase of only .7,
than to drive her the steady rate of 12^^ knots. In
our household life we are living at the rate of 20
knots an hour, with the consequent wear and tear on
the machinery and without realizing the necessity of
increased outlay if the machine is to be kept effi-
cient.
Much of the expense complained of in modern
plumbing is caused by the neglect of the most
obvious precautions.
OPERATING EXPENSES. 63
In no other department of household life than in
the care of details is the contrast greater between the
old-fashioned housewife and the mistress of the
modern apartment, and in no other line is there so
great need of applied science, — that science which
cannot be learned from books, but which women must
acquire or resign their position.
In engineering science a careful study is given to
reducing friction in order that a given amount of
power may yield the calculated force. In the house-
hold the ** running " of the house is the place where
the friction is greatest and where it will pay most to
give thought to the reduction of the wear and tear.
In regard to fuel the sanitary view must be the
first to be taken. The house must be so evenly and
thoroughly heated as to preserve the health of its
inmates; and since their circumstances vary as to age,
habits, occupations, clothing, etc., each must be
governed by these requirements, only there must be
a recognition of these needs and not an ignoring of
them. The heating-plant is the heart of the house
for eight or nine months of the year, and must be
looked after by the most intelligent and responsible
person in the house, — one who understands the chem-
istry of combustion and the mechanics of draft. The
coal-bill might be reduced by one half in most house-
holds and the health doubly secured under these cir-
cumstances.
64
THE COST OF LIVING.
One hundred dollars should be ample for heating
a house which rents for a thousand dollars, and two
thirds that sum for one which rents for five hundred
dollars. The tenement at twenty dollars a month
should be made comfortable with twenty-five dollars
a year.
I
CHAPTER VI.
FOOD.
" Half the cost of life is the price of food."— Atkinson.
" Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which satisfieth not ? " — Isaiah Iv. 2.
" Courage, cheerfulness, and a desire to work depends mostly
on good nutrition." — MOLESCHOTT.
"The removal of the predisposition to disease is the most
thorough-going way of making all infectious disease impos-
sible."— Hueppe.
Not all other influences put together can equal
in profound effect upon the welfare of the household
that exercised by food and the attitude of mind
regarding it. The well-nourished child is a happy,
strong little animal, making brain and muscle and
nerve for future use. The well-nourished adult is a
hearty, efficient member of society, contributing his
share to the common stock of public good as well as
enjoying his own work and pleasure. There is little
fear of disease for either child or man, since the best
prophylactic is a generous store of blood-corpuscles
both red and white. The human body in normal
condition has a well-drilled army of "phagocytes"
(white blood-corpuscles or leucocytes) to which the
65
66 THE COST OF LIVING.
man needs to give no directions. But if he neglects
to take suitable food or to keep himself warm, if he
becomes frightened or takes drugs, his faithful army
is paralyzed and the enemy finds easy entrance. The
condition of this army, like that of any other, depends
on its commissariat. If the food-supply is just right,
the soldiers are vigorous; if it is wrong in any partic-
ular, they are weakened. Nothing can take the place
of food in the human economy. Therefore the poor
man is justified in spending two thirds of his income,
if need be, for food. But over-nutrition is as danger-
ous as under-nutrition. The protecting army may
be incapacitated by indulgence in food, may be
poisoned by ptomaines or narcotized by alcohol or
tobacco. The body tissues may become weakened
under the strain of excess, and irritability, disease, and
death may follow. Food habits should be formed by
young children under careful guidance. Until there
is a generation which is well trained in this matter
very little progress in the use of food as a means of
securing human efficiency can be made. So long as
food is looked upon either as a disagreeable necessity
or as a means of merely sensuous pleasure the child
will grow up with whims and fancies which will pre-
vent the best physical development.
For the human race as a whole it has been shown
that at least half the cost of life is the cost of food.
Food is the essential condition of life, and the race
I
FOOD. (ij
instincts in regard to it are so fundamental that as a
rule only stress of circumstances affects any sudden
change. The growth of new food habits is a gradual,
almost an imperceptible one in all nationalities, be-
cause of that instinct of self-preservation by avoidance
of the unknown which was essential in the early stages
of race development. Only since knowledge has
replaced instinct, and readiness of adaptation to
environment has produced cosmopolitan man, can
there be said to exist a science of nutrition which has
been founded on a study of the food habits of a great
variety of peoples under a great variety of circum-
stances and on the results of experimental feeding of
animals.
As a result of these studies it may be briefly stated
that a condition of complete nutrition should be
aimed at but not overstepped. It is the belief of
most students of economics and sociology that it
is the overfed among the nine tenths not sub-
merged who are being eliminated by the various dis-
eases of modern life, — apoplexy, heart-disease,
Bright's disease, etc., — and that the sterility of the
better-placed portion of the community is largely due
to the plethora of food and drink which induces
the eating of more than the system can stand and
vitality is consequently reduced. "" Our appetites
are stronger than they need to be under existing con-
ditions."
v*^ OF THE ^
UNIVERSITY
68 THE COST OF LIVING.
Unless some form of restraint is imposed in place
of that asceticism and frugality with which religious
ideals safeguarded the more intelligent classes in the
past, the present type is likely to die out and *' a
more primitive man will come forward to try anew
to solve the problem of the highest civilization."
Self-evident propositions may be stated as follows:
Food is that which supplies the body with such
substances as are necessary to preserve it in health
and to supply it with energy for daily work or play.
Food materials as a whole should contain those
substances in sufficient quantities and in suitable
proportions.
Food materials should not contain anything in-
jurious, nor be so prepared as to develop any injurious
qualities.
Food materials should not be so stored or packed
as to produce by their decomposition any secondary
substances which are in the least degree detrimental.*
Good health is essential to efficient production of
energy and to the enjoyment of the good things of
this world.
Standards of living must include the idea of effi-
ciency if man is to live up to his opportunities.
Food is not only the workingman's capital, it is
the cultivated man's bank-account.
* In addition, the mode of preparation, combination, and serv-
ing should be such as to increase the enjoyment of the food with-
out rendering it less suitable for its purpose.
I
I
FOOD. 69
It is because I believe in the possibility of control
of even economic conditions by ideals firmly held by
a sufficient number of fathers and mothers (who alone,
according to Patten, count for much in race progress)
that I urge so strongly the dissemination of what
scientific knowledge we have, and the importance of
gaining yet more facts about food and its part in
human welfare
The moment when a family is released from the
bondage of race instincts and habits as to food, in
that moment danger begins for them. Unrestrained
appetite in this as in other directions leads to loss of
efficiency; therefore education must come to the
rescue.
If the proper study of mankind is man, then the
study of that which makes him a capable, efficient
member of society and not a wretched dyspeptic or a
shell of walking contagion is worthy a place in any
curriculum.
In no other department of household expenditure
is there so great an opportunity for the exercise of
knowledge and skill with so good results for pocket
and health. No item of expense is so fully under
individual control. The house stands out for every
one to see. Clothes are scrutinized and commented
upon; if attempt is made to economize in fuel, light,
and wages, it is sure to leak out and be put down to
a niggardly soul. But in most families there is ample
70 THE COST OF LIVING.
margin in food from which to take a respectable sHce
without harming any one. If the family is a close
corporation, no one will be the wiser for the time and
thought which the mistress puts into an aesthetic as
well as nutritious table. If the typical servant is
required to follow the same plan, she will probably
rebel and give warning rather than live with a mistress
who measures the sugar and counts the potatoes, so
hopelessly wasteful have our habits become.
It is not the food actually eaten that costs so ex-
cessively, it is that wasted by poor cooking, by exces-
sive quantity, and by purchase out of season when
the price is out of all proportion to its value. Good
judgment as to the amounts to be prepared, as to the
harmony of the meal, the blend of flavor; as to the
right appetizers; and good humor and cheerful con-
versation, with the most attractive setting and perfect
serving, will cut down the cost of almost any table one
half. Many seem to hold the idea that hospitality
requires the setting of a double portion before the
guests, and this alone doubles the cost of food in some
families. It may be rightly said that the knowledge
of this perfect table involves expensive training on
the part of the mother or mistress, and that it will be
cheaper for the family to go to a hotel where the
chef, IS paid to do this for a thousand people. True,
this is what a large number of American citizens
think, and if it were not for the increased death-rate
FOOD. 71
and the alarming prevalence of nervous breakdowns
and insanity we might allow the mere economic con-
ditions to rule. But there is another side: fancies
and flavors'and combinations may be better provided
for by one who has had long experience of the tastes
of the family than by the chef \vho suits the average
of a thousand. Also the health and manners of
children may be more carefully watched at home.
And if bright faces and merry hearts gather about
the home table in fresh cool air, sweet with the
favorite flowers, will not the quiet, the restful atmos-
phere soothe the tired nerves more than the strange
faces, the glare of lights, the rattle of dishes of the
restaurant or well-ordered bote' — even though the
noise is drowned in music ?
In sociological work is it not considered a great
step when a family is persuaded to gather as a unit
about the table instead of each taking from the
bakeshop or the cupboard that which will serve to
keep soul and body together ? No other symbol of
comfort and well-being has been so universal as the
family table, and yet many intelligent women are
advocating a reversion to primitive ways, thus doing
away with a civilizing agency.
The home cannot be looked upon as an eating-
house, as a laundry, as a sleeping-place; it is the
school of life, and anything which renders it more
efficient is worth paying for. The cost in money or
72 THE COST OF LIVING.
time is not to be for a moment grudging!)' cut down.
What if the parents spend all they can earn, is it not
well invested in the next generation ? The cost of
living must be measured by the results in flesh and
blood and brain, not in houses and lands. Hence we
say: the ideals toward which the family is striving
come first into discussion before the expenditure can
be rightly judged. The home is for the children, not
merely for their nutrition, but for development of
character; and that must be the only criterion of its
true economic value, not in dollars and cents, but in
the character of the men and women which are the
product of the homes just as truly as the cloth is of
the loom. And it is this point of view which must
justify the maintenance of the small group, which we
call the family, as the unit of the social state.
Everything about the home must be judged by its
bearing on character. An experienced charity-worker
objected to the New England Kitchen on the ground
that she could not replace the educational and dis-
ciplinary value of cooking for her poor women.
It is in the deeper meaning that excuse must be
found for keeping up the custom of eating at home,
for it cannot be justified on economic grounds. The
family table is an educational factor of greatest im-
portance to the children. There, as nowhere else,
are inculcated the virtues of self-control, self-denial,
regard for others, good temper, good manners, pleas-
FOOD. 73
ant speech. The children's table presided over 'by
the ignoiant maid and the hurried service of the
adult has much to answer for in modern life.
Whatever it may cost, however uneconomic it may
seem, — in the wider view of the aim of all living, let
us keep the family table even if much that is set upon
it comes from outside; enough should remain to
permit of its educational, aesthetic, and ethical value.
When housekeeping is reorganized on a business
basis the present waste and drudgery and dirt in the
house-kitchen will be abolished, and along with the
soap-making will go the soup- and bread-making —
the heavy kettles and greasy dishes. The cleaning
of fowls, the trimming of vegetables will be done out
of the house, and that bete noir^ the garbage-pail will
be reduced to manageable dimensions. More refined
ways of doing the necessary tasks will make the work
a pleasure and yet, as I believe, will keep the family
circle intact.
I do not wish to be understood as relegating food
to the realm of mere necessities, but I do maintain
that the relation of the food-supply to health must
not be overlooked or thrust out of sight.
The difference between food as an animal need and
as a source of pleasure as well may be likened to that
other process of combustion and source of heat, the
fire on the hearth. The black air-tight stove gave
the necessary heat and was more economical of fuel
\
74 THE COST OF LIVING.
than the wood-fire against the chimney-back, but with
the latter comes a sense of cheer, of companionship,
of worship, that is worth all it costs.
It is this same sense of pleasurable comfort, of an
actual accession of strength, which is given by a suit-
able meal in a harmonious setting.
As the useful heat of the fire is not wanting, how-
ever great its beauty, so the useful ^lel-value of the
food must be considered under all the accessories.
There is here the additional variable, the power of the
body to utilize the bountiful gift. The very charm
of the surroundings helps to this provided there is
not positive harm in the ingredients or their com-
bination. ,
Much of the present cost of food is in the exceed-
ing cleanliness necessary in dealing with the animal
foods which are so liable to harmful changes.
The right attitude of mind toward food will make
its choice, preparation, and serving that which in
earlier times it was — a worship, — and the office that
of a priestess. It was not by chance that so many
religious rites were connected with eating.
It served to impress the importance of the right
view of food upon primitive peoples.
It is just as wrong to ignore food or to hold it of
little value as to consider it too much. The health
of the human body means sufficient food if the indi-
vidual is to do his or her work in the world.
I
FOOD. 75
Mrs. Bosanquet writes: '' Women are supposed to
be able to live on a much less wage than men of the
same social standing, and this is largely because they
accept a much lower standard of living. That is,
they are content with less food, less comfort, narrower
interests, and less recreation ; and this reacts through
their impaired vitality by making them less efificient.
* The woman ].ieeds less * it is always argued as a
reason for woman's lower wages, but she needs less
only in the sense that it costs less to maintain a low
physical standard than a high one."
Bullock"^ says there are five ways in which fully
one fifth the money expended for food is absolutely
wasted, while the expenditure often fails to provide
adequate nutriment. In this manner ten per cent of
the income is squandered in —
1. Needlessly expensive material, providing littl;
nutrition.
2. A great deal thrown away.
3. Bad preparation.
4. Failure to select rightly according to season.
5. Badly constructed ovens.
This waste if checked would give an increase of
income which would appreciably lift the family to a
higher plane of efificient life.
I am so often asked for definite menus and for a
list of articles of food which can serve a family for a
* Economics.
"J^ THE COST OF LIVING.
given sum that I am forced to the conclusion that
there is very little knowledge as to what good food is
or what it costs; that the decision as to what to
furnish to the table rests upon what other persons are
known to buy rather than on any individual judg-
ment. This is either childish imitation or foolish
following of fashion.
Even the writers of cook-books and teachers of cook-
ing have too often followed instead of led the public.
Scientific investigation is needed in this respect as
much as in any other. Before we can make definite
statements we must have definite knowledge. Most
of the work done by the United States Government
has been among those supposed to waste most in food
materials, those with an income less than five hundred
dollars. What is more needed is information as to
\vhat it costs to live well for a family with fifteen
hundred to three thousand dollars a year; for health-
ful, appetizing food at a sum not exceeding twenty-
five per cent of the income.
When we get budgets from a large number of these
families we shall be able to formulate much better
than now the rules for the expenditure of this part of
the income.
Extensive studies of the composition of food ma°
terials and of the amounts consumed by man under
widely differing conditions show that sufficient raw
food material for health and production of energy
FOOD. 77
may be secured anywhere in America within reach of
a railroad for nine to ten cents per day per person,
provided the appetite is strong and natural and not
influenced by whimsical fancies. Thirteen to fifteen
cents furnishes good fare for intelligent workmen
whose wives understand both buying and cooking, and
also serves for large establishments kept at public
expense, such as prisons and almshouses.
Eighteen to twenty-five cents per day per person
is the most which, according to our estimates in
Chapter III, should be spent by those whose incomes
are one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars per year.
And the knowledge now available for the housewife
will allow her to do this satisfactorily, provided
that the aims of the family rise above the pleasures
of the palate.
This sum is sufificient for collections of three
hundred to five hundred persons under one roof, —
schools, hospitals, and institutions supported by
charity, — again provided that the right spirit of
cooperation exists and that a scientific attitude of
mind can be maintained.
Twenty-eight to thirty cents is the maximum limit
for such institutions and for families who are eager
for the higher pleasures of living and have not money
enough for both.
Thirty-five to forty cents spent with discretion is
ample for colleges, paying hospitals, private schools,
78 THE COST OF LIVING.
and private families if the purveyor, cook, and serv-
ing maid, each and all, do their duty after they are
furnished with the proper appliances.
Only when the income of a family of five indi-
viduals, including servants, rises above four thousand
dollars a year should an expenditure of fifty cents
per day per person for raw food materials be looked
upon with complacency, unless the momentary pleas-
ures of the palate are preferred to the lasting pleasure
of health and the satisfaction of the higher nature.
From what has been said it will be seen that the
aesthetic value of the table cannot be realized unless
the highest intelligence in the house makes it his or
her care. I must say that some of the most perfect
examples I know are those in which the man of the
house ** puts his mind on it." I believe it would be
greatly to the advantage of the health and happiness
of the world if this part of the housekeeping were for
a time done by men, for then they would systematize
it as they have systematized the various industrial
pursuits which were once household occupations.
The difficulty would be that they would not be
satisfied with the economic waste of using as much
effort and time to prepare food for four as is needed
for fourteen or forty, and the common dining-room
would prevail.
The American woman has been much slower than
the American man to grasp the meaning of the
FOOD. 79
proper setting by which to increase the enjoyment of
food. The club table is often a model feast, while,
since she no longer cooks the meal herself, the house-
wife has washed her hands of all care for the essentials
and wasted her energy on the foolish abundance of
entries, sweets, and bon-bons; she has not learned
to keep the air of her dining-room cool and fresh and
has not taken pains to make the meal an intelligent
feast; above all, she has not trained the children to
eat for life and health, but allowed them to sacrifice
both to mere habit and whim. As a result her ex-
penses art large, her health poor, her children peevish,
her husband makes any excuse to dine at his club,
and she longs to give up housekeeping and board.
Most of the women who have written upon house-
hold economics have shown how smoothly life would
run if there were no kitchens, and have advocated
caravansaries where a common dining-room should
serve as an amusement-hall.
If it were only the drudgery of preparing the three
meals a day, this would be a safe solution, but the
eflRciency of the individual depends almost entirely
on his food. It matters little whether his house has
a Gothic window or a Mansard roof, whether the
lining of his coat is of silk or of cotton, as to the
number of miles he can walk or ride, or the business
he can transact, but it does matter whether he is able to
extract the full number of calories from his breakfast.
8o THE COST OF LIVING.
Let food and its accessories be once established on
a standard of health which means latent power, and
not upon fashion, and the college president will be
no longer able to include cooking with millinery in
the same ignoble category.
The dressmaker and the milliner are chosen with
great care, and many visits are made to the shops to
select fabrics and trimmings; but the cook who is
responsible for the upbuilding and preservation of the
body is chosen haphazard and th.e food ordered by
telephone. •
Not until it is generally known how much the food
has to do with human welfare will it receive the
attention it merits.
Let the housewife once grasp this idea and she will
fit. herself to o»rry it out.
Let the young woman who has longed for a career
in medicine turn her attention to keeping sickness
away, and so devote herself to bringing up the sum
total of human happiness.
Patten says: ** We now have a fair chance to test
the theory of the dominant influence of scientific
habits of thought on public opinion. Dyspepsia is
becoming prevalent. A dyspeptic is in the same un-
certainty with regard to the effect of what he eats
that the primitive man was in regard to his ability to
get something to eat. The result is the same — a
victim of superstitious fancies and a user of nostrums.
^
*' ( •JN1VER5XTY
If all men became dyspeptics, superstition would be
as rife as it was in the middle ages." The race is to
be helped, not by argument, but by a relief from dis-
ease, and this sanitary science is trying to accomplish
even against the will of the victims.
The following table taken from No. i6 of the
Rumford Kitchen Leaflets rpay be helpful to those
desiring to study the cost of food.
TABLE I.
FOOIi SUBSTANCES RICH IN
b
Nitrogen,
Starch.
•Fat.
Cheese
Rice
Cheese
Beans
Wheat
Meats
Peas
Corn
Eggs
Eggs
Oats
Milk
Meats
Barley
Corn
Milk
Rye
Oats
Beans
Wheat
Peas
Rye
Potatoes
Barley
Sugars.
Salts,
^ Acids, Flavors.
Molasses
Syrups
Preserves
Vegetables
Fruits
Green Relishes
Fruits
Condiments
TABLE n.
FOOD MATERIALS IN RELATION TO COST.
For S to IS cents per For ij to jo cents per For jo to loo cents fer
person, dailv, the food person, daily, the food person, daily, the food
may be choset^froin may he chose ti from may be chosen from
Potatoes Beef and Mutton or any Choice cuts of Beef, Mut-
Rye Meal meat not over 25 cents ton, or other meals
Corn Meal per pound Chickens
Wheat Flour Wheat Bread (purchased Green Vegfetables, Garden
Barley at the baker's) Stuff, and Vegetables out
Oats Suet of season
Peas Butter Preserves
Beans Whole Milk Confections
Salt Codfish Cheese ' Cakes
Halibut Nape Dried Fruits Tea
Any meat with little bone, Cabbage and other vege- Coffee
at 5 cents per pound tables in their season
Oleomargarine Sugar
Skimmed Milk Fish
Bacon
Some Fruits in their season
CHAPTER VII.
CLOTHING IN RELATION TO HEALTH.
"The pursuit of things fashionable for the sole reason that
they are fashionable is not an exalted occupation and is, indeed,
I think a somewhat sheeplike attribute.— Frederick Treves.
" One of the strongest human wants is the society of one's
fellows."— Bullock.
The cost of the clothing, like that of the house,
depends more often upon what impression it is
desired to make upon the outside world than upon
the true ofifice of clothing, namely, to preserve the
health by protecting the body from sudden changes
of temperature. Whatever may be the cut and color
of the outside layer, the real garments should fulfil
this requirement, and the money necessary to secure
this should not be used for other purposes.
I In our present views as to the nature and causes of
disease, temperature plays an important role.
We believe that a well-nourished body kept at its
normal temperature is exceedingly resistent to if not
proof against ordinary forms of disease. Bodily
temperature is chiefly maintained by food and cloth-
82
CLOTHING IN RELATION TO HEALTH. 83
ing, and the one supplements the other. The one
furnishes fuel, and the other saves it.
Insufficient food or insufficient clothing may permit
of a lowering of the temperature of a part or all of
the body so that disease may gain a foothold.
The first office of clothing, hygienically speaking,
is to furnish an outer layer over the body skin which
shall protect that organ, made delicate by generations
of protection, from sudden changes of temperature,
so sudden as not to give the stored food-supply time
to respond to the stimulus. It is evident that this
layer should be spread evenly over the skin, and so
lightly as not to interfere with free bodily movement,
and that it should be quite pervious to air, since the
skin is more than covering and has offices to perform
in the body economy akin to those of lungs and
kidneys. It is not the insufficiently dressed person
who catches cold, but the superabundantly dressed.
And yet direct access of cold air should be pre-
vented upon such exposed blood-vessels as occur at
wrists and knees.
Recent experiments indicate that several layers of
different substances and a loosely woven texture are
most advantageous.
Love of display, of that color which will attract
attention, is an instinct inherited from our savage
ancestors. An attribute of the early man, it has in
the course of evolution reached the woman. As was
84 THE COST OF LIVING.
natural when women were left without the home
industries which served as absorbing occupations for
them, they began to turn their attention to themselves
and to allow free play to an untrained fancy in the
clothing of themselves and their families. With the
factory cheapening fabrics and becoming unscrupulous
in the use of evanescent dyes, nearly all articles of
clothing used for outside display have degenerated,
and waste of money in this direction by those who
need it for other things has become shocking. No
other form of sense gratification seems such a mania
with women; their freedom from household occupa-
tion has certainly not been well used for the most
part. It is not uncommon to find a woman who has
sacrificed the well-being of herself and her family to
a love of display.
Here again the school must come to the rescue and
prevent the next generation from making the same
mistake.
The argument is used that it makes business to
cater to this mania; but it were better that business
should not be made for the aggrandizement of the
few than that the many should have their ideals
debased.
Whatever may be said of the morality of a factory
for the making of idols for sale in the East, or of
printing cloths of barbarous designs and color for
savage islanders under the pleas that they want them
CLOTHING IN RELATION TO HEALTH. 85
and will have no other, in a civih'zed country those
who cater to the wants of its own citizens should be
forced by public opinion to use their capital and their
skill in ways which will elevate and not degrade the
ideals of the people for whom they work.
No great or sudden revolution can be expected, but
a strong pressure can be exerted if intelligent persons
will give time and thought to the study of these
things.
Protection by clothing from the rigors of climate is
a distinct advance, as it enables more energy to be
used for other purposes; but excess of clothing leads
to tenderness of skin and delicacy of appetite, which
ill prepare the individual to surmount the obstacles
nature has interposed.
Clothing in excess of physical needs must meet
sesthetical needs which are as real; when a garment
does neither, but is a source of discomfort to the
wearer and displeasure to the observer, it may be said
to have little value.
The habit of balancing the various utilities of
clothing would save many a weary hour of stitching
and shopping.
This is not a treatise on hygiene, but a discussion
of certain points in sanitary science which bear on
cost of living; and in the cost of clothing we must
include the aesthetic side, just as was done in the case
of house-furnishing and of food. In this there is an
86 THE COST OF LIVING.
unlimited range of possibility, and only certain ideals
rigidly held will save the exchequer from being
unduly depleted on this account.
Each family has ample room for choice which
aesthetic sense shall be gratified after the hygienic
essentials are satisfied.
It may be clothes, it may be food, it may be
pictures, it may be furniture, it may be travel, but in
our families it cannot be all of them. When this
choice is guided by principle and not by fashion the
family will rest secure in their reasons for a given
action, and not be troubled by outside opinion.
With increase of knowledge it will be possible to
combine the requisite of health and beauty in such a
way as to lead to economy of time and money.
The proportion of the income which is due to this
part of life may be estimated at from five to fifteen
per cent for the wage-earner whose income is ten to
twelve dollars per week (six hundred dollars). Thirty
dollars will go a long way in providing raw material
for the family if it is made up at home and if a wise
selection is made of durable materials of true bargain
or mark-down sales. For the clerk or teacher on a
salary of twelve hundred dollars ten per cent will keep
the family in tidy condition for school and church
and holidays.
The most difficult case is that of the family who
are striving to keep in society and who must spend
CLOTHING IN RELATION TO IIKALTII. 8/
for gloves, carriages, and the costly trifles which
make solely for appearance and the absence of which
is not forgiven. Unless the income rises above
twenty-five hundred dollars, fifteen per cent will go
with the greatest rapidity, and home-made clothing
will not pass muster. Nothing is more humiliating
than to be obliged to stay away from a pleasant
occasion because no suitable clothes are on hand.
Here again knowledge pays; for if there is an
aesthetic touch, a personal atmosphere, an ideal, not a
slavish following of fashion, a person may be well
dressed with very small expense. Fashion herself
will approve, and society not shrug her shoulders. It
is the thoughtless dowdy she disapproves, or the
purchased, ready-made air. It is not money but
knowledge and care which tells. One color is not
much more expensive than another, and one style
does not require much more cloth than another. It
is the perfection of detail, the fit, the perfect work,
the care far more than the money-cost which shows
taste. The decadence of the use of the needle, the
lack of comprehension of what makes dress an
ornament, result in the hideous combinations seen on
our streets, and in a waste of money which might be
spent on better things.
Clothing from the standpoint of health is shelter,
protection from heat and cold, and is a corollary to
food. In cold climates the warmer the clothing the
88 THE COST OF LIVING.
less food is required. A layer light in weight spread
evenly over the body so as to protect, not impede, so
loose in texture as not to prevent free circulation of
air, soft enough not to irritate the skin several layers
of different rather than of the same materials, will
accomplish the purpose.
These are the essentials which the devotee of
hygiene will secure first. Outside is the layer which
we show to the world with an idea of enhancing our
attraction to others. We can add pleasure to use by
appearing in harmonious colors and graceful forms,
and we can by the right selection add to our appear-
ance. This is right and proper if, as is the case in
the architecture of the house, it does not cripple the
more important life of the soul.
But worse than all else in its effect on the morals
is the same lack of care in preservation of material
and garments which is seen in furniture and food.
The tendency is to use everything as if this were the
only time it would be needed.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE; SAT-
ISFACTION OF OTHER THAN MATERIAL WANTS.
" The education of the near future will focus upon the feel-
ings, sentiments, emotions, and try to do something for the
heart, out of which are the issues of life. It is this side of our
nature which represents the human race." — G. Stanley Hall.
" It is not what we lack that makes us discontented, but
what others have."— Horace Annesley Vachel.
The intellectual and emotional life includes the
exercise of those faculties which distinguish man, and
the cultivation of which is held to advance what is
known as civilization.
The barbarian sees mountain and stream, the ten-
der green of spring, the rich red of autumn, but he is
not moved to action by the emotions they excite.
The holiday crowd in a picture-gallery sees the colors
and forms on the canvas, but the meaning so clear to
the art-lover is not for them.
Great thoughts of great men have power to move
only those in whom there is an answering vibration.
If the tendency to wider separation of the extremes
^ " OF THK '^
UNIVERSIT"
90 THE COST OF LIVING.
of society is to be checked, and a more general diffu-
sion of comfort and aesthetic ideals is to be seen, the
advance must come from that portion of society which
we are considering, those to whom the treasures of
past ages are more valuable than present luxury; to
whom the possible ideals of the human race are
dearer than probable wealth for their children.
When money ceases to be the most valuable pos-
session, its baleful power will be gone and it will
become only a means of satisfying the needs of the
emotional and intellectual nature, instead of minister-
ing to base passions and ignoble desires.
The fixed determination to set aside one quarter
of the income for the satisfaction of the needs of
man's higher nature, either in the present or in the
immediate future, would go far toward cutting off the
arms of the octopus which threatens to squeeze the
life out of the American republic.
If only the college, the university, the school, will
give the right direction to this movement and not
remain so hypnotized by the past as to neglect the
present opportunity!
The intellectual and more refined expressions of
the emotional nature are those most in need of culti-
vation in America to-day; a more truly American art
and literature, more refined living, with more thought
given to the meaning of life, to the object for which
all exertion should tend, more thought for the manner
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE. 9I
[of accomplishing a given result, less for the money
fvalue of it.
For an ideal, any sacrifice is pleasure. For an
lideal, men will strive and win success, when otherwise
they will sink into inaction. Ideals, then, men must
have, and in the division of 'the income a place must
be given to them and a portion set apart to minister
to that side of human nature.
One great advantage of this recognition is that the
young couple, whose interests we are considering
will pause, before buying an ornament, or a picture,
or a piece of furniture; and will have a chance for
decision as to the permanent value of the object and
its meaning to them. Anything purchased with
thought and care and placed to meet a need of the
person has a value, even if better taste and wider
knowledge would have discarded it.
It is the caterer to these blind instincts who should
be the object of our wrath, the man who, to make
money, deliberately manufactures frail articles, flimsy
imitations, not worth the carrying home. If some
wave of reform could cover this class of goods and
remove temptation, an immediate improvement in the
condition of the masses would be seen.
To those who should know better, whose college
education should have (alas, how seldom it has!)
jtaught them to know the best, we must appeal to
Lspend this part of their income on principle, no
92 THE COST OF LIVING.
matter what the object may be: books, pictures,
ornaments, church or charity, let it be a conscious
effort toward a higher and a fuller lifcy toward what
we believe may be the highest civilization.
Entire freedom of choice should rule in this as in
other departments, only let it be choice and not drift.
Let it be what we desire with conscious longing and
not what we happen to see in the possession of others
that animates our endeavor.
It is the attitude of mind toward the objects with
which we surround ourselves, rather than the objects
themselves, which makes or mars our welfare. For
this reason, the teaching in the public schools should
include right ideals of life from the material point of
view and right notions as to values. A whole genera-
tion could be elevated with one concerted effort
through this powerful agency.
If we read the history of the rocks and seas aright,
each animal race has risen to a culmination when the
food-supply and general environment became such as
to permit of it and then has declined and passed
away.
The conditions under which the human race are at
present living lead us to ask most seriously if such is
to be its fate. There is, however, one difference
between animals and men. Men have a power of
choice, of looking into the future, to which reference
has so many times been made. There is a possibility
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE. 93
that by this power of conscious choice, of present
restraint for future good, man may rise to a greater
height and persist for a longer time.
** Evolution,* therefore, seems to be under better
control in regard to the human race. No longer is
eywironuient everything, it is now dominated largely
by intelligence and choice, and this appears the only
hope that man may escape the fate that has so far
befallen each dominant species which has left foot-
prints on the sands of time. . . . This faculty of
choice may enable us to resist the appetites and in-
clinations which, although raising us in the animal
scale, tend to bring us to the brink from which we
shall fall."
The feeling of oneness, the altruistic movement so
evident all over the English-speaking world, is evi-
dence of the check upon the selfishness of individual
freedom and that the time has come for a larger race
development. Therefore this portion of the income
must have a larger share in the twentieth century
than in the nineteenth.
It is true that the same element of conscious choice
lies in all the other directions of expenditure; never-
theless this division is made for the purpose of em-
phasizing and calling attention to the importance of
recognizing it. Certain it is that selfish gratification
brings its own punishment even if it is not immediate.
* " Evolution and Effort," by Edmond Kelly, pp. 270-280.
94 THE COST OF LIVING.
One of the moral advantages of the family life is that
of suppressing this one-sided development. The
freedom of the individual has its bounds set by the
good of the race.
Altruistic instincts, the possibility of giving of
one's own to others, can only be satisfied when the
income yields more than enough for bare existence.
As in nutrition and all other factors of living, there
is the golden mean if we can only find it. Saving for
no purpose is niggardly; saving for a possible future
and pinching in a real present is unwise and unpro-
gressive; but saving to be independent of charity is
essential to true manliness of character, and furnishes
the incentive which keeps two thirds of mankind
alive. This saving may not be in the form of stocks
and bonds and a bank-account. It may be in the
form of valuable works of art, of which the enjoyment
may be taken as the days fly by; of investment in
house and furniture, if only that which is truly valu-
able is chosen, and not that which is sham and flimsy
in construction or of passing fashion.
The best investment any family can make is in the
health and education of the children; in surrounding
them at the impressionable age with those forms and
colors and objects which shall lead them to choose
the best things life has to offer, in making possible
for them a better life than the parents have had.
At the same time there is danger that the incen-
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE. 95
tive to effort will be withdrawn; and one clear fact
stands out through all ages of organic evolution —
that through effort alone has progress been made.
The massing of the population in cities has made
possible the provision for communistic amusement
and recreation to an extent somewhat startling to the
moralist. Each suburban trolley-line has its park or
lake with vaudeville attractions. The things which
make for the satisfaction of the aesthetic, the sensu-
ous, the ethical education or enjoyment of the
masses, are now provided in nearly all cities by muni-
cipal appropriation or private benefaction. Parks,
libraries, picture-galleries, museums, music, baths,
have all been added to schools, free classes, and
public lectures.
The difficulty is to arouse an appreciation of the
advantages given, to educate the taste of the people
so that they will use aright the things provided.
Judged by the amount of money spent, the mass
of people have far more of what stands to them for
comfort and the good things of this world than ever
before, but it is questionable if '* health and peace to
enjoy them " have correspondingly increased. But
they take both their ordinary life and their pleasure
in large groups, after the fashion of the primitive
communities; they follow the crowd; even when the
income permits wider choice, the attraction of num-
bers is not lost.
96 THE COST OF LIVING.
** For a large number of men and women who are
not devoid of taste and who are capable of serious
thought, the first necessity of life is not to think, but
to live. The pleasure of looking at a play is one of
the secondary pleasures; the pleasure oi going to it
one of the primary. . . . The pleasures on which
they spend the most money are not those which they
think the highest, but they are certainly the pleasures
which they practically feel to be the most neces-
sary. * * *
The question confronting us is, shall the same con-
ditions of receiving the pleasures of life from the
hands of the state be carried on into the more pros-
perous families, or is there a good and sufificient
reason why each family should retain in its own con-
trol the needs of the intellectual life as well as of the
animal ? Why is it, indeed, that it is held so essen-
tial that the unintelligent masses should have certain
pleasures, even though they may not be able to
provide them ? Is it not that through them they
may be roused to greater exertion, to a desire for
more than it is in the power of the state to give,
or than it is for the welfare of the citizen that it
should give ?
What then is the ** something " behind it all ? Is
it not possession, individual ownership, which in all
* " The Incongruities of Expenditure," frora Saturday Review^
in LittelVs, June 24, 1899.
\
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE. 97
races marks an advance — mine to do with as I will ?
Mine if I will work hard enough to get it — mine own
home, mine to control, to experiment with, mine for
success or failure ? This individual ownership seems
to have been the incentive which has led to the
building up of our civilization; are we to throw it
away and go back to the communal life of primitive
peoples ?
That it is a fundamental race instinct is shown by
its appearance in the second year of every child's life.
It is the dawn of the higher intelligence to be followed
by imagination as to what may be done with the
things possessed. As soon, therefore, as the family
income reaches eight hundred dollars a year, if not
before, the principle of paying for pleasure and edu
cation and comforts should be made a rule if for no
other reason than because of the value of necessary
cultivation of choice, of self-denial in one direction,
of gratification in another.
So wide is the range that there is ample oppor-
tunity for the cultivation of all the faculties possessed
by man.
Health of mind depends upon conscious effort just
as truly as health of body. Children should be
trained early in this direction, and in their purchases
be made to feel that objects contribute to the fund
of mental enjoyment.
Life-insurance and savings may well come in this
98 THE COST OF LIVING.
portion of the income, since they are the means of
that sense of independence which the race has been
striving for; only let not the mania for saving go so
far as to cripple the present life; let that fund grow
from the unexpected surplus. A nest-egg should be
always retained if a sense of security and that peace
of mind which John Locke was thinking of is to be
continued.
The spirit of helpfulness toward a less fortunate
neighbor belongs in this class and has existed in
various forms, religious, charitable, and just simple
help which one poor family gives to another. This
spirit of true altruism exists far more than one who
has not been brought into contact with it would
believe.
A family with troubles enough of its own will help
a friend to the extent of its last dollar. I am more
often called upon to advance money to my erriployes
to help some other person in distress than for their
own needs. Nor do I grudge the bicycle to the boy
who had much better walk, according to my notion ;
nor even the piano to the girl who should be doing
housework. It is all a part of the evolution of a love
of the beautiful and the pleasing, which can be rightly
cultivated under wise direction.
I do feel, however, that those who have learned to
be wise owe it to their less fortunate neighbors to
give them the means of education, which can best be
THE INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL LIFE. 99
done in the public schools. These buildings should
be models in form, in color of walls, in decoration, in
pictures and casts, and copies of these should be
made available for the homes to which the children
go-
Above all, the beauty of cleanliness, the most
costly of all beauty, should be exemplified in school-
houses, and the means for attaining it fully shown.
Each householder has a duty in this respect also
to the employ^ under his roof. Space and oppor-
tunity should be given and requirements made which
can be carried out in the humbler households which
they will eventually form. Only no special method
of personal gratification must be forced ; allow them
to choose, but guide the choice. The school is,
however, the agent of the first consequence in exert-
ing a profound influence upon the homes of the next
generation.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
" It is the present duty of the economist to magnify the office
of the wealth-expender, to accompany her to the very threshold
of the home, that he may point out with untiring vigilance its
woful defects, its emptiness caused not so much by lack of in-
come as by lack of knowledge of how to spend it wisely." —
Edward Devine.
"A woman has courage in great things and fails in small
crises." — Katherine De Forest.
"The greatest of all obstacles to social progress is lack of
directive intelligence, of skill in management. " — Lucy M.
Salmon.
"Education is no doubt a process both long and toilsome •
but it is withal a hopeful process and forms the basis of mod-
ern democracy." — A. F. Weber.
The great industrial and economic questions of the
twentieth century centre about household manage-
ment, and the expenditure of half the income is a
vast sum to be in the hands of any one class of per-
sons. Just as soon as the home is raised to its proper
position and is recognized as a business, its director
■will be required to have knowledge and skill in some
measure commensurate with the interests at stake.
r
THE ORGANIZATION OF .T^E HXXUSE^iQLlX: : Ypl
The higher purposes of home life must come into
sight and be the dominating factors unless the present
civilization is to pass away and to give place to a very
different order of things.
Certain it is that if the full effect of the present
lines of human development is to be seen the wave
of progress must lift the household out of the slough
of despond into which it has sunk, and put it upon a
level with the other elements of progressive civiliza-
tion.
Before the ethical development can take place a
material advance must come. None of the higher
virtues can thrive in an atmosphere of so much
wrangle, worry, and disorder as the house-roofs cover
but do not hide, any more than fine physical bodies
can be produced by such carelessly prepared food and
such selfish indulgence of momentary impulses as are
seen at most tables.
The maintenance of the household demands money
for rent, food, and clothes, time and intelligence for
the decision of how that money shall be spent and in
what form the goods shall be presented and a spirit
of unity and helpfulness in all directions to make the
whole successful.
If there is a common aim in the life of the group,
one sufficiently strong to bind them together, the
small self-denials necessary will not be irksome.
Each will do his part toward the attainment of this
I02, r/S>2* *> •n!HE COST OF LIVING.
I
common end and not try to make as much work as
possible for the other members or to frustrate their
endeavors.
It is this loss of unity of purpose which has per-
mitted the family to fall apart and has caused the
collection of individuals under one roof to assume the
character of a boarding-house in which each member
feels at liberty to complain of every other and to
exact service of every other without giving in return.
If there is not to be found some ideal which will
again serve for the binding cord, then we may as well
take up life in single cells or in huge caravans.
If women are unwilling to acquire that knowledge
of scientific and business principles needful for the
organization of the twentieth-century household, then
the extension of the apartment house where the men
do most of the real housekeeping (the janitor, the
choreman, the elevator-boy) is inevitable, and possi-
bly, when the woman becomes quite passive, engineers
will turn their attention from bridges to stairways,
from tunnels to cellars; the chemists from patent
medicines to food; the architects will think less of
mere outside ornament and more of inside arrange-
ments for useful purposes.
Then the work of the household will be a knowable
quantity and can be planned for. The housewife
now says it cannot be known, that it is the emergen-
cies, the unexpected, which cannot be counted upon,
^
THE ORGANIZATIOxN OF THE HOUSEHOLD. IO3
ut I maintain that the unexpected happens in all
mundane affairs, and that the most substantial struc-
ture, the most intricate factory, takes it into account.
There is no way out except the frank acknowledg-
ment that the present household is for the most part
run on an antiquated plan where there is any plan.
The burning question is, wher€ is the Moses who
will lead us from this wilderness into the promised
land where no one shall slave all day that others may
eat and drink, where those who plan and those who
execute shall at least understand each other, and
where the efforts of all shall bring health and joy
instead of misery and death ?
Housekeeping no longer means washing dishes,
scrubbing floors, making soap and candles; it means
spending a given amount of money for a great variety
of ready-prepared articles and so using the commodi-
ties as to produce the greatest satisfaction and the
best possible mental, moral, and physical results.
The very variety of choice is a danger unless knowl-
edge comes with liberty. The ease with which
money can be spent, and the habits of living for
to-day which that fact fosters, have taken away the
incentive to thoughtful foresight and have blinded
the purse-holders to the inevitable consequences of
savage-like recklessness.
The economic changes which took all interesting
occupations out of the home came too rapidly for a
104 THE COST OF LIVING.
readjustment of habits; women were freed too sud-
denly and have not yet recovered a proper balance.
It has been said, until it seems not worth saying
again, that the reason why the routine of daily living
has become so distasteful is because it consists of
clearing away debris with no constructive work; that
there is nothing to show at the end of the day for all
the labor expended. Consider for a moment the
work in an ordinary house. Some one rises at half-
past five or at six, builds a fire if there is no gas-stove,
and proceeds to ''get the breakfast." Other mem-
bers rise at various times; perhaps the parlor and
dining-room are dusted and put to rights before
breakfast, which drags on until nine o'clock; then
dishes are washed, beds made, sweeping and dusting,
washing and cleaning and cooking until afternoon ; at
best it is eight or ten hours before the house is
presentable, and then comes dinner or supper, as the
case may be, and more work for dining-room and
kitchen, and what is there to show for it ? Only
healthy, happy lives! Fortunate indeed if that is
the net result; but how often, alas, does disease or
restless fretfulness reward the workers !
In the golden age of household occupation the
serving maids as well as the mistress had the pleasure
of seeing piles of snowy linen and wool or stores of
yarn and candles attest their industry, besides the
mere food and cleanliness. The pleasure of seeing
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. I05
the woik of their hands was added to the pleasure
of action. As the farmer has his barn of hay, the
manufacturer his goods, his money in the till, so they
had tangible material.
Not enough account has been taken of this differ-
ence in result in the discussion of the reasons why
housework is distasteful in the end of the nineteenth
century; only those who can appreciate the value of
cleanliness and who can look upon a swept floor or a
washed dish as a result worth while, who can feel
that a meal well digested is of more value than a reel
of yarn, can come to feel the interest and delight of
the daily routine.
It is like the case of the child at school who will
work harder on that which he is to carry home to
show than on something which goes into the waste-
basket. It is only when childish things are put away
and men can look toward the goal and think abstractly,
not considering to-day's result, that this element is
overcome.
If we could examine into the lives of the house-
holders we know, I believe we should find that those
which have contented workers are those in which some
results remain of the day's work — fruit put up, aprons
made, new curtains, etc., — and in which the spirit of
the mistress has made the cleaning of the brasses, the
washing of the windows a fine action, a sort of
religion, a step in the conquering of evil, for diftis- -~-.:^
lo6 THE COST OF LIVING.
sin. The households where constant change and dis-
content rule are those in which this spirit of fighting
an enemy and laying up stores for the future does
not exist. Can we spare the educational, nay, the
ethical value of work done in the house ?
Not unless we can place our women in the advanced
class where they may be able to put aside the merely
childish way of looking at things and see the end to
be attained as a sufificient incentive. That is why we
plead for the right education of the housewife; not
that she shall dust her house, but that she shall know
how to infuse into the work that interest and en-
thusiasm which it has lost owing to circumstances
over which she has no control. What must be her
aim is the health and happiness of those in her care,
for happiness means health.
Dirt means disease, therefore the warfare with dirt
is incessant. Our wise housekeeper will make this
fight as surely successful as possible. Instead of
frankly accepting the situation and furnishing with
washable material and easily cleansed furniture the
housewife in a dusty smoky city is in the habit of
using heavy draperies and deeply carved wood as
freely as she would if she lived in a clean city. She
looks upon plush and velvet as fabrics and not as
catch-alls for dust. It is not business economy to put
obstacles in the way for the sake of overcoming them.
No thought of the end, of clean wholesome living
p
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. I07
to dignify the work, no care for the things one has
used! A chair mended by one's own hands has far
more value than one from the shop. The old furni-
ture of which we are justly so fond bears the essence
of many loving hours in its grain.
Human labor, human thought leaves an impress on
inanimate things. Unless one can put this loving
touch upon the house, and can breathe into the
otherwise dry bones this breath of life, one should not
cross the threshold, but betake one's self to a caravan-
sary boarding-house where one can grumble to one's
self or to the boarding mistress who is paid to hear
it, and not make five or six people suffer for one's
own ignorance and criminal negligence.
It is not what we do but what we find pleasure in
doing that makes or mars our days; hence if some one
can devise a means of giving to the housewife an
interest in the daily ordering of her household, that
one will confer a benefit upon humanity. That was
what Count Rumford essayed one hundred years ago.
Women must take their places as organizers and
superintendents of the economic consumption of
wealth, for when the household ceased to be a manu-
facturing centre it became a focus of consumption.
The factory acquired an economic organization and
employed not only day-laborers but highly paid
superintendents. The house in losing its industrial
importance has degenerated into an unorganized
I08 THE COST OF LIVING.
dependency, and its detailed care has fallen into
menial drudgery.
The later writers on economics are beginning to
call attention to the misconception exemplified by
this state of things, and to define the use of money in
the household as productive consumption, and to
show that supervision and organization are as valuable
adjuncts of labor and as worthy of high esteem in this
as in factory manufacturing.
Since the object of all endeavor to get wealth is to
use it, and the use of the most of it is in connection
with the home life, it is evident that the household
and its management is the most important factor in
national prosperity^
It is due to the blind conservatism of the average
man that he has left so long the consideration of
what became of the money he worked so hard to
gain. Most of the economic theories and statistics
have dealt with the incomes of the poor man where
there was little choice, but the real test is with the
class which corresponds to the plastic middle layer,
the fermentable mass of humanity, out of which rises
the cream of society or from which sink the dregs.
A recent French writer is quoted by Bullock as stat-
ing that ** The human race could increase its welfare
almost as much by a better ordering of its consump-
tion as by an increased production of wealth, and this
without any real retrenchment in consumption."
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE II0USP:H0LD. IO9
And this " better ordering " means the wise manage-
ment of the household, so that the satisfaction of the
human wants as well as the animal needs shall be as
complete as possible.
To obtain this result requires that the superintend-
ent, the manager, shall be a person with a knowledge
of the utilities of the various substances used, with a
standard by which to measure the relative values of
the commodities to the given family, and the strength
of character to resist specious temptations to spend
for that which is only temporarily gratifying and not
permanently useful.
In no department of human activity would an
application of the laws of economic utility be more
productive of immediate gain than in the conduct of
the household.
That the shrewd business man so long neglected
this most important factor in social progress seems at
first sight unaccountable, but it has been easier to
earn than to give time and thought to wise spending
of money. That he understands in a measure what
is needed is seen in the economical management of
large hotels and of ocean steamers, which give a better
return for the money expended than does the average
household of the same class of persons as those who
patronize them. The single house seems to the
expert in organization too small an affair upon which
to expend his energies; for the same effort he can
no THE COST OF LIVING.
supervise the comfort of one thousand persons.
Hence the tendency to herd together lessens the value
of the individual home, just as the cheaper production
of the factory tended to kill the home manufacture.
Individual establishments are going the same way,
and only one thing will stop the march of events, and
that is a belief in the greater value of the single
family home in the production of men and women,
and with this belief must come a recognition of the
importance of the organization and management of
the affairs of the single household.
In any manufacturing establishment the cost of pro-
duction and distribution far outweighs the cost of the
raw material ; the economy of the great industrial com-
binations is in the administrative departments, just as
in the economy of the large hotel over the small one.
If the expenditure in any given family is, for
example, five thousand dollars a year, fully half this
sum is due in salary to those who administer the other
half, who keep the accounts, who study the markets,
who spend time and strength in keeping informed as
to the values and aesthetics of the articles purchased,
and who give time to the carrying out of the plans
thus formed.
If the man and woman share alike in the work,
then twelve hundred dollars apiece should be consid-
ered a personal share to use upon personal needs and
upon the higher social and ethical claims.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. Ill
In the average family where the income is twenty-
five hundred dollars, and the man gives no thought
whatever to the expenditure of the household, then
twelve hundred dollars should go to the woman to
spend for these same needs as she chooses, provided
she can satisfy the family with the rest, and prove an
efficient manager.
If this principle of a responsible position were
recognized as a fundamental one in twentieth-cen-
tury housekeeping, we should hear no more of the
interference of women in economic industries: we
should see instruction in household management
demanded in order that success might follow, as in
any other position; and even if a competition arose
with men who might prefer to keep the management
in their own hands, it would soon settle itself, for
most men prefer to earn a thousand dollars by hard
work to attending to the careful details required to
save a hundred dollars, while women take kindly
to the regular systematic oversight which this home
economics demands, if once they see the value of it.
Let once the dictum go forth that for every dollar
spent in the material wants of the household there
shall be a dollar put into the hands of the manager for
higher purposes, and a revolution in living would
result.
If my readers have had the patience to follow me
thus far, I am sure they are asking who is to have the
112 THE COST OF LIVING.
knowledge and wisdom and time to carry out the
ideals and keep the family up to these standards.
Who, indeed, but the woman, the mistress of the
home, the one who chooses the household as her
profession, not because she can have no other, not
because she can in no other way support herself, but
because she believes in the home as the means of
educating and perfecting the ideal human being, the
flower of the race for which we are all existing;
because she believes that it is worth while to give her
energy and skill to the service of her country and
age.
The greatest disqualification for this position to-day
is woman's lack of knowledge of and respect for
science and the laws of nature.
Let her once acquire these and she will come into
her kingdom. Let her once gain perfect control of
her machinery, feel it yield under her hand, know
her power, and we shall hear no more of domestic
difficulties so great as to cause hundreds of house-
wives to turn their backs on home life and retreat into
hotels and apartment houses.
The organizing ability which has won such signal
success in the engineering world cannot all be con-
fined to one sex; it has been developed by education,
by contact with the world. Give women a chance
to spend as wisely and economically as men have
learned to manufacture and produce.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. II3
Give her an education in the laws which govern the
processes of daily life, in chemistry, in physics, in
biology, in mechanics, and then develop her taste in
art and music as well as in literature. Teach the
girls in school the principles of form and color and
certain elementary economics of expenditure.
The present education of woman is not tending to
fit her for this higher office of spending wisely the
money earned by herself or any one else; dense
ignorance of the fundamental principles of sanitary
science prevails even among so-called educated
women, those who should set an example.
That women have minds capable of grasping busi-
ness principles is proved by the success of many in
professional callings; but the majority have yet to
learn what it means to subordinate the present to
the future; they have yet to submit to the action of
law.
As Mary Tillinghast expresses it: ''I find that the
stumbling-block to women is their unwillingness to
go to the bottom of things. They shrink from pay-
ing the price of hard study."
The gradual displacement of women in various
salaried positions in government and corporation
offices is a sure proof of this failure on the part of the
majority to accept strict business principles. This
lack in character will not be remedied until education
is brought to bear and science is made an essential
114 THE COST OF LIVING.
part of every woman's training, so that she may
acquire a respect for science and for economic law.
Meanwhile let her serve in the home an apprentice-
ship which will make the further study easier and
which will more sensibly advance the welfare of the
community than any outside work can do.
Let her not grasp for the reins of business until she
can master the running of one home.
That the household is held by popular opinion to
be a place of menial service and petty, degrading
duties and not the centre of all social impetus, of high
and lofty ideals of health and happiness, is proved by
the scant courtesy which home economics as a branch
of woman's education receives. That the household
is not run on economic principles is acknowledged
by the neglect of it in the study of economics.
The woman's province is degraded by her own
connivance, since knowledge is at her disposal and she
does not avail herself of it. She persists, ostrich-
like, in ignoring the movements in other departments
of social life. She should make the home an expres-
sion of her individuality, but she has none to express.
Neither will traditional education help her to adapt
herself to others. Social training in ethical ideals a* d
the inculcation of a belief that home-making must be
the woman's profession for which she requires a power-
giving knowledge, must become accepted factors in
the education of every woman, rich or poor.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. II5
The term ** managing woman" has been a re-
proach rather than an epithet to be sought for, but it
was because the manner of the person rather than
the management was offensive.
If the house-mother can so manage the finances of
the family as to secure the safe rearing of a group of
children with such refined but strong characters as
will enable them to become capable, forceful men
and women, why should she not have all praise ?
What can pay better for the effort than this manu-
factory of brain and muscle power, the home ?
The time has come for a radical change in methods.
I have no hesitation in saying that no man is justified
in giving over the housekeeping to a woman because
she is a woman; that unless he is satisfied that she
knows how to use money, or that she can learn, he
should keep the accounts and pay the bills himself.
As I see the situation, the most pressing needs of
to-day are:
1st. A knowledge of what it is essential to keep
in the home. Must bread be made in the house ?
must the laundry work be retained ?
2d. A knowledge of how much time is required to
perform the various services demanded, with, of
course, a certain allowance for the unexpected. How
many rooms can a chambermaid put in order in an
hour ? This depends upon a comprehension of eco-
nomic use of human power.
Il6 THE COST OF LIVING.
3d. A knowledge of the relative values of the
goods consumed in the house and of the services
demanded in causing this consumption.
If service must be economized, then the trifles on
the bureau, the carved ornaments on the mantel-shelf
must be put away in order to save the time of dust-
ing. One course at meals must be sacrificed rather
than the temper of the whole family be tried past
endurance in the vain endeavor to make one pair of
hands do the work of two.
4th. A comprehension of the inexorable laws of
power and energy when the maid is required to
answer the bell or the telephone once in five minutes,
and go over tw^o flights of stairs to do it; \t often
involves the same expenditure of energy as if she were
required to climb rapidly a monument 2400 feet high.
There is still too much of the element of slavery in
the work of the house, a disregard for the mechanical
eflficiency of the human machine.
I do not in the least blame young women for going
into the factories, where their work is measured by
law and not caprice.
5th. An acceptance of the fact that woman cannot
emancipate herself from nature's laws, that she must
inform herself in regard to them and accept their
bondage, making for herself within limits a world of
freedom, lies at the bottom of all household reform.
I am aware that some one will say, '* But all the
r
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 11/
poetry of life is destroyed by the insistence upon a
cut-and-dried plan, and life will not be worth living
if each day and hour must be accounted for." True,
if the plan is allowed to show through its covering.
A skeleton, unclothed, is not a thing of beauty, but
does not detract from the grace and charm of the
perfect body to which it is essential.
In the same way the skeleton of purpose and prin-
ciple must underlie and define the well-ordered and
truly delightful household life. Saving for its own
sake is niggardly and hardening to the soul. Saving
for a high and noble purpose raises the art to the
level of heroic endeavor.
So much depends upon the point of view. The
casual observer delights in the hectic bloom of the
young consumptive, but the physician sees beyond
the fair cheek to the deadly cause beneath and has
no joy in the sight. The apparent freedom from
care and tyranny of custom shown to a chance
visitor by many a household conceals the canker of
debt and disgrace which is sure, sooner or later, to be
revealed.
The present disorganized condition of the house-
hold is only a phase which may pass as quickly as it
has arisen. One generation has seen it develop,
another may see it a matter of history. Men have
been too busy subduing the obvious obstacles of
nature to look under the surface of their daily life,
Il8 THE COST OF LIVING.
but the very fact that the problem of living is begin-
ning to press home will stimulate them to the applica-
tion of those scientific principles which have spanned
continents, controlled rivers, and tunnelled mountains
to the building of houses that may be lived in safely
and economically. The art which has given fine
churches and museums will decorate and beautify the
homes. The outlook is full of hope and not of
despair. The only need is knowledge (science) of
what the demands are and a determination to meet
them. The love of conquering obstacles has not
died out of the Anglo-Saxon race.
The twentieth-century household demands of its
managers, first of all, a scientific understanding of the
sanitary requirements of a human habitation; second,
a knowledge of the values, absolute and relative, of
the various articles which are used in the house, in-
cluding food; third, a system of account-keeping that
shall make possible a close watch upon expenses;
fourth, an ability to secure from others the best they
have to give, and to maintain a high standard of
honest work.
If the housewife cannot and will not apply herself
to the problem, let her not stand longer in the way
of progress as she is surely doing to-day.
\
APPENDIX,
20
APPENDIX.
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Kitchen utensils, etc.
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Books
Periodicals
Daily papers
Pictures
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Lectures
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M
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124
APPENDIX.
ADDITIONAL BUDGETS.
Average $3000 Income.
Professor (Mass.), 2 children. The birth
of a third and an accident to the
father increased incidentals and
lessened clothing
Young instructor (Mass.), i child,
Average of 5 families living in apart-
ments in New York
$2000 AND LESS Income.
3 adults (Central N. Y.)
2 adults (Mass.)
Not given (Albany)
2 adults (Albany).
2 adults, T child born during the year
(Albany)
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19 01
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11.92
23.30
25.96
17.10
16.66
5.88
35- 00
20.00
8.00
10.00
20.00
20.25
18.50
12.00
7-50
20.40
18.00
12.60
1J.50
5.8
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10.00
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18.00
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2 1 . 30
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exp.
with
32
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food
11.00
12.00
17.06
21-75
31.40
28.00
25.80
As bearing on some of the teachings of the book it will be noticed that the
proportion devoted to the higher life has a tendency to decrease as the income
rises; that is, the demands of social custom require an undue expenditure on
externals.
^ OF THE '^
NIVERSITI?
«SLCALIFOn!^
r
INDEX.
PAGHS
Accounts, keeping of 36, 37, 53
Apartment house 56, 102
Attitude of mind g2
toward food 74
Budgets, actual 33, 34
, suggested 37
Choice, power of 92, 93, 97, 99
Clothing 82-88
Cost of existence 3
living ." 29, 32, 41, 60, 65, 66, 72, 85
Death-rate 27,70
Disease 106
, resistance to 22, 82
Diseases of modern life 67
Economic conditions ii, 14, 69, 71
consumption 108
Economics 3, 108, 114
, household 20, 79, in
of expenditure 113
Economy of combination no
labor 43, 115
the home 2
time. 2, 28
125
126 INDEX.
PAGES
Education 6, 13, 14, 15, 19, 23, 38, 42, 69, 89, 91, 94, 98, 99
100, 106, 112, 113, 114
Emotional life. 89. 99
Engel's laws 33. 34. 35
Expenses 28, 30
, household 50-64, 69, 100, loi, 103
, readjustment of 14, 55, 56
Family, cost of lO
, purpose of 6, 8
, table 71, 72, 73
Food 35, 65-81
, attitude of mind toward 74
cost per day 77
tables 81
, waste of 75
Fuel 50, 52, 63, 64
Health 20, 25, 68, 97
Home 6
, definition of 5, 13, 15, 44, 71, 115
, economical management of 31
, estimation of 12, 23, 71
life 9, 10, 114
House, cost of 44
furnishing 47
, office of 6, 47
rent 39, 45, 48, 54, 61
, sanitary requirements of 49-54
Household expenditure 28, 34, 36, 50, 57, 69
management 53, 108, 109, iii, 118
organization 14, 100
reform 116
service 59. 60
twentieth-century ii3
Ideals 4, 8, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 44, 48, 69, 91, 102, 112
INDEX. 127
PACKS
Ideals, sanitary 11, 27
Income, amount of 29, 30, 31, 39
, division of 45, 57, 58, Ci, 86, 90, 100
Intellectual life §9-99
Operating expenses 49-^4
Organization of the household 100-118
Ownership. . . - 9^) 97
Sanitary conditions 42, 54. 64
science 16, 25, 27, 58, 81, 85, 113
Schools 5, 7,8, 13, 84, 90, 92, 97, 99
Science for women 112-1 13
Standards 5, ii, 21, 32, 36
of living 17, 19, 20, 24. 26, 39, 52, 57, 68
of health So
Wages 58, 59, 61, 75
Waste 35, 70, 75
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