this expenditure as high as $127 a year with an income of $1,200. In many families the amount carried is a real burden. "Insurance keeps us poor," I have frequently been told, and yet they will be dispossessed or go without food or clothing in order to keep up the insurance.

The insurance is almost invariably spent on the funeral, the larger the policy the finer the funeral. Undertakers are often unscrupulous, obtain possession of the policy, and make the cost of the funeral equal to the whole amount of the insurance. Where there is no insurance, the family is plunged into a debt which it takes years to repay. In spite of the burden it is to many and the excessive rate that is paid for this form of insurance, the knowledge that this provision has been made for sickness or death, fosters a pride and a spirit of independence, and a horror of pauperism and burial in the potter's field, that are commendable. Thirty-five dollars would be considered by our wage-earner's family a fair and necessary provision to make for insurance.

There is now only $143 left for all other expenses, which I have classed in my report as sundries. These expenditures naturally and invariably increase with the income. I will venture to suggest some of the expenditures which a normal family on an income of $850 would consider essential to their happiness and comfort. I base these estimates on my knowledge of wage-earner's standards, and on the averages for similar families in my investigation and have endeavored to underestimate rather than overestimate them, giving them as suggestions, not as scientifically proved facts.

This typical family would probably buy a penny paper several times a week, or only the Sunday edition, and a few of the more popular magazines-in all not more than $5 a year for this purpose. For recreation, summer excursions, dances and theatres, they would consider $20 a moderate allowance; for drink, if they occasionally had a pint of beer for supper, and the man was not a hard drinker, $20 would be a low estimate; for furniture, kitchen utensils, etc., $15 would be a fair average; for church dues, $5; for spending money for the father, $50 (this would include shaving money, tobacco, car-fares to work, union dues, and drink outside the home); for occasional sickness, $10 or less, depending how much free dispensaries and hospitals are used; and for miscellaneous expenses such as domestic service in time of sickness, soap and washing materials, writing paper,

stamps, moving expenses, etc., another $18 would soon be used; total for sundries, $143. If there was no expenditure for drink in the family outside of the man's spending money, as was the case in more than half of my families, that allowance could most acceptably be applied on more and better clothing and furniture or for the education of the children. It will readily be seen that these estimates may overlap, but on the whole I think it will be admitted that they are barely enough to make life worth living for a normal workingman's family. They do not allow for much "expansion of the soul!"

Our wage-earner's family has spent every cent of its income, nothing has been saved, and no allowance has been made for any exceptional expenses, such as continued illness, nor any provision for a long period of unemployment, nor anything for the education of the children; and an income which does not provide for these things, as well as a moderate standard of comfort and well-being, is not sufficient for a normal wage-earner's family. Thrift or extravagance may modify these expenditures somewhat, in individual cases. We find the characteristic German thrift, Italian economy, Irish lavishness and American extravagance. If we define thrift as saving in order to provide for future ease or emergencies, it is frequently impossible in the average wage-earner's family. With a variable income a systematic housekeeper can never get ahead. She may set aside $20 to $100 during the busy season, but it must be used when work is slack and income irregular. There is a limit or danger-line below which this kind of thrift is a menace. It is not the right kind of thrift which crowds six persons in two rooms, or ten persons in three rooms. It is not a wise economy which tends to lower the vitality of any member of the family in order that provision may be made for the future. As Mr. Rowntree says: "There is frequently no margin for thrift, money saved means necessary food foregone.'

If however we define thrift as good management, as getting the most for one's money, and as lack of waste, then it is as highly desirable among wage-earners as elsewhere and thanks to the native intelligence and common-sense of the mother, it is frequently found to make adequate an income otherwise insufficient for the necessities of life. A sympathetic study of the economic and social environment of city wage-earners will find among them an encouraging amount of this kind of thrift.

These facts are only representative, perhaps only indicative of the social economy of wage-earners. It is evident that most families must live from week to week, that the amount of comfort attainable on a given income depends largely upon the ideals and ambitions of the mother, but that even a provident and capable housewife can make very little provision for the future and keep her family in health and comfort, unless her income is of moderate size and fairly steady. Higher incomes, without a corresponding increase in prices, are desirable, but beyond the question of wages and income, is that of the practical and domestic education of the women in whose hands lies the distribution of the household income. In spite of educational and industrial limitations, thousands of women do manage admirably, but to bring expenditures down to an ideal economy is not within the ability and training of the ordinary wage-earner's wife. If the native intelligence and ambition of the average housewife could be supplemented by systematic and universal instruction in marketing, food values, cooking and sewing, in our public schools and civic centers, the increased efficiency in their homes would be apparent. In education for household efficiency lies one of the most important means of bettering the social and economic condition of our city wage-earners.

SOME UNCONSIDERED ELEMENTS IN HOUSEHOLD

EXPENDITURE

BY MARGARET F. BYINGTON,

Associate Director, Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York.

Now that the theorists have effectively laid at rest the ghost of the economic man, there seems to be danger that the cost-of-living statisticians will create a new bogey, that of the economic woman; the woman who, without waste or extravagance, can on 22 cents per man per day for food, and 400 cubic feet of air space per adult, create a real home life and preserve the physical efficiency of her family.

Grasping eagerly at the first signs of a scientific or at least an arithmetical standard of living, we often fail to give due consideration to the personal and psychological elements that influence expenditure. Many factors interfere with the carrying out in life of any such limited definite scheme of living. In attempting to formulate any standard out of the wide variations revealed in individual family budgets, investigators have willingly accepted definite figures such as Professor Chittenden's formulation of the minimum cost of food. Before we become hypnotized by these figures it seems worth while to consider briefly some factors that appear to require modification of the standards so far worked out. To tie up these considerations to the general subject of discussion, what waste must we assume to be inevitable and especially what extravagance must we consider justified in maintaining merely the physical efficiency of the workers?

Take first the current figures as to the cost of food. In Professor Chittenden's study of Professor Chapin's budgets, we have a painstaking effort to formulate a standard based on the cost of food as purchased by housewives in the open market. His statement has been widely quoted that enough food to provide the requisite number of calories and grams of protein for the adult man at average labor can be purchased for 22 cents per day. The varying amount of food needed by people of different ages has been formulated by Professor Atwater; that a woman needs eight-tenths as much food

as a man, a child of twelve, six-tenths, and so on down till we reach the child of two who needs three-tenths as much. If we do this arithmetic we find that this allows 6.6 cents a day to provide adequate nutrition for a child of two.

The dietaries prepared by Dr. Pezek for the New York milk committee require for a child of two a quart and a half of milk and one egg a day besides bread, cereal, fruit, etc. The milk and egg alone would cost at least 15 cents a day, so that 20 cents is probably the minimum on which reasonable diet could be provided. With all the emphasis laid by infant mortality and tuberculosis prevention campaigns on the absolute necessity of providing proper nourishment adequate to build up the child's power of resistance, we have been solemnly allowing it in our budget studies two glasses of milk and a little bread each day. What is the difficulty?

These ratios are doubtless accurate when applied to the number of calories and grams of protein that the individual needs but do not hold good for the cost of providing the required amount of nutrition; they fail to take into consideration the relative strength of the digestive apparatus and the power of assimilation of people of different ages and occupations. A child of two will not flourish on pork and beans, cheap and nourishing though they may be; it needs milkan easily assimilated but expensive form of food. Here economy in the purchase of food would obviously result in decreased physical efficiency. This conclusion seems elementary but so far, I believe, has not been taken into consideration in building up our figures as to the cost of food?

The same query applies to the lessened per cent allowed for women and those in sedentary occupations. May it not be that these less active people if they are to assimilate the necessary amount of food may have to have more delicate, and this is frequently synonymous with more expensive, food?

Professor Chittenden's experiments as to the actual results of living on certain diets have been made under special circumstances. Before we are in a position to be very emphatic about the cost of nutrition, not of food, further experiments might well be made as to the effect of age and occupation on the power to assimilate different grades of food.

It would also be interesting to know exactly the effect on this power of assimilation of having appetizing as well as nourishing food. I am told by medical men that appetite has a distinct effect on the