Chapter XIV: Fifteen Dollars a Week

My first thought when I received my advance in pay was that I could now relieve Ruth of some of her burdens. There was no longer any need of her spending so much time in trotting around the markets and the department stores. Nor was there any need of her doing so much plotting and planning in her endeavor to save a penny. Furthermore I was determined that she should now enjoy some of the little luxuries of life in the way of better things to wear and better things to eat. But that idea was taken out of me in short order.

"No," she said, as soon as she recovered from the good news. "We mustn't spend one cent more than we've been spending."

"But look here," I said; "what's the good of a raise if we don't use it?"

"What's the good of a raise if we spend it?" she asked me. "We'll use it, Billy, but we'll use it wisely. How many times have you told me that if you had your life to live over again you wouldn't spend one cent over the first salary you received, if it was only three dollars a week, until you had a bank account?"

"I know that," I said. "But when a man has a wife and boy like you and Dick--"

"He doesn't want to turn them into burdens that will hold him down all his life," she broke in. "It isn't fair to the wife and boy," she said.

I couldn't quite follow her reasoning but I didn't have to. When I came home the next Saturday night with fifteen dollars in my pocket instead of nine she calmly took out three for the rent, five for household expenses and put seven in the ginger jar. I suggested that at least we have one celebration and with the boy go to the little French restaurant we used to visit, but she held up her hands in horror.

"Do you think I'd spend two dollars and a half for--why, Billy, you wouldn't!"

"I'd like to spend ten," I said. "I'd like to go there to dinner and buy you a half dozen roses and get the three best seats in the best theater in town," I said.

She came to my side and patted my arm.

"Thank you, Billy," she said. "But honest--it's just as much fun to have you want to do those things as really do them."

I believe she meant it. I wouldn't believe it of anyone else but for a week she talked about that dinner and those flowers and the theater until she had me wondering if we hadn't actually gone. Dick thought we were crazy.

And so, just as usual, after this she'd take her basket and start out two or three mornings a week and walk with me as far as the market. She'd spend an hour here and then if she needed anything more she'd go down town to the big stores and wander around here for another hour. But Saturday nights was her great bargain opportunity. If I couldn't go with her she'd take Dick and the two would plan to get there at about nine o'clock. From this time on she often picked up for a song odd ends of meat and good vegetables which the market men didn't want to carry over to Monday. In fact they _had_ to sell out these things as their stock at the beginning of the week had to be fresh. I suppose marketing at this time of day would be a good deal of a hardship for those living in the suburbs but it was a regular lark for her. Most everyone is good natured on Saturday night if on no other night. The week's work is done and people have enough money from their pay envelopes to feel rich for a few hours anyway. Then there were the lights and the crowd and the shouting so that it was like twenty country fairs rolled into one.

After the excitement of coming home Saturdays with so much money wore off, I began to forget that I _was_ earning fifteen instead of nine. If Ruth had spent it on the table I'm sure I'd have forgotten it even more quickly. I was getting all I wanted to eat, was warm and had a good clean bed to sleep in and what more can a man have even if he's earning a hundred a week? I think people are very apt to forget that after all a millionaire can spend only about so much on himself. And after the newness of fresh toys has worn off--like steam yachts and private cars--he is forced to be satisfied with just what I had, no matter how much more money he makes. He has only his five senses and once these are satisfied he's no better off than a man who satisfies these same senses on eight dollars a week. Generally he's worse off because in a year or so he has probably dulled them all. Rockefeller himself probably never in his life got half the fun out of anything that I did in just crawling into my clean bed at night with every tired muscle purring contentedly and my mind at rest about the next day. I doubt if he knows the joy of waking up in the morning rested and hungry. The only advantage he had over me that I can see is the power he had to help others. In a way I don't believe he found any greater opportunity even for that than Ruth found right here.

For those interested in the details I'm going to give another quotation from Ruth's note book. But to my mind these details aren't the important part of our venture. The thing that counted was the spirit back of them. It isn't the fact that we lived on from six to eight dollars a week or the statistics of how we lived on that which makes my life worth telling about if it _is_ worth telling about. In the first place prices vary in different localities and shift from year to year. In fact since we began they have almost doubled. In the second place people have lived and are living to-day on less than we did. I give our figures simply to satisfy the curious and to show how Ruth planned. But no one could do as she did or do as we did merely by aping her little economies, or accepting the result of them. Either they would find the task impossible or look upon it as a privation and endure it as martyrs. In this mood they wouldn't last a week. I know that people who read this without at least a germ of the pioneer in them will either smile or shrug their shoulders. I've met plenty of this sort. I met them by the dozen down here. As I said, you can find them in every bread line, in every Salvation Army barracks or the Associated Charities will furnish you a list of as many as you want. You'll find them in the suburbs or you'll find them marching in line the next time there is a procession of the unemployed.

But give me true pioneers such as our own forefathers were, such as the young men out West are to-day, such as every steamer lands here by the hundreds from foreign countries every week and I say you can't down that kind, you can't kill them. I don't say that it's right to raise the price of necessities. I don't think it is, though I don't know much about it. But I do say that if you double the cost of food stuffs and then double it again, though you may cruelly starve out the weaklings, you'll find the pioneers still on their feet, still fighting.

It seems strange to me that men will go to Alaska and contentedly freeze and dig all day in a mine--not of their own, but for wages--and not feel so greatly abused or unhappy; that they will swing an axe all day in a forest and live on baked beans and bread without feeling like martyrs; that they will go to sea and grub on hard tack and salt pork and fish without complaint and then will turn Anarchists on the same fare in the East. It seems strange too that these men keep strong and healthy, and that our ancestors kept strong and healthy on even a still simpler diet. Why, my father fought battles--and the mental strain must have been terrific--and did more actual labor every day in carrying a rifle and marching than I do in a week, and slept out doors under a blanket--all on a diet that the average tramp of to-day would spurn. He did this for four years and if the sanitary conditions had been decent would have returned well and strong as many a man did who didn't run afoul typhoid fever and malaria. Men who do such things have something in them that the men back East have lost. I call it the romantic spirit or the pioneer spirit and I say that a man who has it won't care whether he's living in Maine or California and that whatever the conditions are he will overcome them. I know that we three would have lived on almost rice alone as the Japanese do before we'd have cried quit. That was because we were tackling this problem not as Easterners but as Westerners; not as poor whites but as emigrants. Men on a ranch stand for worse things than we had and have less of a future to dream about.

So I repeat that to my mind the house details don't count here for any more than they did in the lives of the original New England settlers, or the forty-niners, or those on homesteads or in Alaska to-day. However, I'll put them in and I'll take the month of May as an example--the first month after I was made foreman. It's fairer to give the items for a month. They are as follows:

Oatmeal, .17
Corn meal, .10
About one tenth barrel flour, .65
Potatoes, .35
Rice, .08
Sugar, .40
White beans, .16
Pork, .20
Molasses, .10
Onions, .23
Lard, .50
Apples, .36
Soda, etc., .14
Soap, .20
Cornstarch, .10
Cocoa shells, .05
Eggs, .75
Butter, 1.12
Milk, 4.48
Meats, 1.60
Fish, .60
Oil, .20
Yeast cakes, .06
Macaroni, .09
Crackers, .06
Total $12.75

This makes an average of three dollars and nineteen cents a week. With a fluctuation of perhaps twenty-five cents either way Ruth maintained this pretty much throughout the year now. It fell off a little in the summer and increased a little in the winter. It's impossible to give any closer estimate than this. Even this month many things were used which were left over from the week preceding and, on the other hand, some things on this list like molasses and sugar and cornstarch went towards reducing the total of the month following.

This left say a dollar and seventy-five cents a week for such small incidentals as are not accounted for here but chiefly for sewing material, bargains in cloth remnants and such things as were needed towards the repair of our clothes as well as for such new clothes as we had to buy from time to time. I think we spent more on shoes than we did clothes but Ruth by patronizing the sample shoe shops always came home with a three or four dollar pair for which she never paid over two dollars and sometimes as low as a dollar and a half. The boy and I bought our shoes at the same reduction at bankrupt sales. We gave our neighbors this tip and saw them save a good many dollars in this way.

On the whole these people were not good buyers; they never looked ahead but bought only when they were in urgent need and then bought at the cheapest price regardless of quality. They would pay two and two and a half for shoes that wouldn't last them any time at all. Whatever Ruth bought she considered the quality first and the price afterwards. Then, too, she often ran across something she didn't need at the time but which was a good bargain; she would buy this and put it away. She was able to buy many things which were out of season for half what the same things would cost six months later. It was very difficult to make our neighbors see the advantage of this practice and their blindness cost them many a good dollar.

We also had the advantage of our neighbors in knowing how to take good care of our clothes. The average man was careless and slovenly. In a week a new suit would be spotted with grease, wrinkled, and all out of shape. He never thought of pressing it, cleaning it or of putting it away carefully when through wearing it. The women were no better about their own clothes. This was also true of their shoes. They might shine them once a month but generally they let them go until they dried up and cracked. In this way their new clothes soon became workday clothes, their new shoes, old shoes, and as such they lasted a very few months.

Dick and I might have done a little better than our neighbors even without Ruth to watch us, but we certainly would not have had the training we did have. Shoes had to be cleaned and either oiled or shined before going to bed. If it rained we wore our old pairs whether it was Sunday or not or else we stayed at home. Every time Dick or I put on our good clothes we were as carefully inspected as troops on parade. If a grease spot was found, it was removed then and there. If a button was missing or a bit of fringe showed or a hole the size of a pin head was found we had to wait until the defect was remedied. Every Sunday morning the boy pressed both his suit and mine and every night we had to hang our coats over a chair and fold our trousers. If we were careless about it, the little woman without a word simply got up and did them over again herself.

These may seem like small matters but the result was that we all of us kept looking shipshape and our clothes lasted. When we finally did finish with them they weren't good for anything but old rags and even then Ruth used them about her housework. I figured roughly that Ruth kept us well dressed on about half what it cost most of our neighbors and yet we appeared to be twice as well dressed as any of them. Of course we had a good many things to start with when we came down here but our clothing bill didn't go up much even during the last year when our original stock was very nearly exhausted. She accomplished this result about one-half by long-headed buying, and one-half by her carefulness and her skill with the needle.

To go back to the matter of food, I'll copy off a week's bill of fare during this month. Ruth has written it out for me. You'll notice that it doesn't vary very much from the earlier ones.

Sunday.

Breakfast: fried hasty pudding with molasses; doughnuts, cocoa
made from cocoa shells.

Dinner: lamb stew with dumplings, boiled potatoes, boiled onions,
cornstarch pudding.

Monday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, baked potatoes, creamed codfish, biscuits.

Luncheon: for Billy: brown bread sandwiches, cold beans,
doughnuts, milk; for Dick and me: boiled rice, cold biscuits,
baked apples, milk.

Dinner: warmed over lamb stew, baked apples, cocoa, cold biscuits.

Tuesday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, milk toast, cocoa.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, doughnuts;
for Dick and me: warmed over beans, biscuits.

Dinner: hamburg steak, baked potatoes, graham muffins, apple
sauce, milk.

Wednesday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, griddle-cakes with molasses, cocoa shells.

Luncheon: for Billy: sandwiches made of biscuits and left over
steak, doughnuts; for Dick and me: crackers and milk, hot
gingerbread.

Dinner: vegetable hash, hot biscuits, gingerbread, apple sauce,
milk.

Thursday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, fried hasty pudding, doughnuts, cocoa shells.

Luncheon: for Billy: hard-boiled eggs, cold biscuits, gingerbread,
baked apple; for Dick and me: baked potatoes, apple sauce, cold
biscuits, milk.

Dinner: lyonnaise potatoes, hot corn bread, Poor man's pudding,
milk.

Friday.

Breakfast: smoked herring, baked potatoes, oatmeal, graham
muffins.

Luncheon: for Billy: herring, cold muffins, doughnuts; for Dick
and me: German toast, apple sauce.

Dinner: fish hash, biscuits, Indian pudding, milk.

Saturday.

Breakfast: oatmeal, German toast, cocoa shells.

Luncheon: for Billy: cold biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, bowl of
rice; for Dick and me: rice and milk, doughnuts, apple sauce.

Dinner: baked beans, new raised bread.

To a man accustomed to a beefsteak breakfast, fried hasty pudding may seem a poor substitute and griddle cakes may seem well enough to taper off with but scarcely stuff for a full meal. All I say is, have those things well made, have enough of them and then try it. If a man has a sound digestion and a good body I'll guarantee that such food will not only satisfy him but furnish him fuel for the hardest kind of physical exercise. I know because I've tried it. And though to some my lunches may sound slight, they averaged more in substance and variety than the lunches of my foreign fellow-workmen. A hunk of bread and a bit of cheese was often all they brought with them.

Dick thrived on it too. The elimination of pastry from his simple luncheons brought back the color to his cheeks and left him hard as nails.

I've read since then many articles on domestic economy and how on a few dollars a week a man can make many fancy dishes which will fool him into the belief that he is getting the same things which before cost him a great many more dollars. Their object appears to be to give such a variety that the man will not notice a change. Now this seems to me all wrong. What's the use of clinging to the notion that a man lives to eat? Why not get down to bed rock at once and face the fact that a man doesn't need the bill of fare of a modern hotel or any substitute for it? A few simple foods and plenty of them is enough. When a man begins to crave a variety he hasn't placed his emphasis right. He hasn't worked up to the right kind of hunger. Compare the old-time country grocery store with the modern provision house and it may help you to understand why our lean sinewy forefathers have given place to the sallow, fat parodies of to-day. A comparison might also help to explain something of the high cost of living. My grandfather kept such a store and I've seen some of his old account books. About all he had to sell in the way of food was flour, rice, potatoes, sugar and molasses, butter, cheese and eggs. These articles weren't put up in packages and they weren't advertised. They were sold in bulk and all you paid for was the raw material. The catalogue of a modern provision house makes a book. The whole object of the change it seems to me is to fill the demand for variety. You have to pay for that. But when you trim your ship to run before a gale you must throw overboard just such freight. Once you do, you'll find it will have to blow harder than it does even to-day to sink you. I am constantly surprised at how few of the things we think we need we actually _do_ need.

The pioneer of to-day doesn't need any more than the pioneer of a hundred years ago. To me this talk that a return to the customs of our ancestors involves a lowering of the standard of living is all nonsense; it means nothing but a simplifying of the standard of living. If that's a return to barbarism then I'm glad to be a barbarian and I'll say there never were three happier barbarians than Ruth, the boy and myself.