New Homes for Old Part 8

[28] _Ninth Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor on Building and Loan a.s.sociations_, p. 56.

[29] _Ibid._, pp. 12-13.

[30] Kemmerer, _Postal Savings Banks_, pp. 100-104.

[31] _Thrift by Household Accounting and Weekly Cash Record Forms_, published by the Committee on Household Budgets, American Home Economics a.s.sociation, 1211 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, Maryland.

V

THE NEGLECTED ART OF SPENDING

Saving is the problem of _over there_, and of the future. Spending is the problem of _here_ and _now_, and in the expenditure for present needs as well as in saving for future wants the foreign-born housewife meets with special difficulties. She is handicapped by the kinds of places at which she must buy, because of language, custom, and time limitations, as well as the grade of article available. Through the complicated maze of choices open to her she must steer her way to obtain for her family the highest returns for an all too small expenditure. The art of spending, too often neglected by her native-born sisters, takes on added difficulties for the untrained immigrant woman.

From the point of view of the housewife the desirable thing is that the transaction of buying her household goods and food and of selecting her house, shall be as simple as possible. It should be made easy for her to know the quant.i.ty and to judge the quality of any article she considers, so that she may the more easily compare its possible use to her with the use of other articles that might be secured for the same amount of money. It is also important that she have as definite ideas as possible as to the range of the demand for different kinds of goods, so that she may buy as few as possible of the goods on which the price of special risk is placed. In many cases she needs really expert advice. In the absence of such help she may do her buying in either of two states of mind. She may think that all merchants are cheats, there "to do her and to do her first," or she may think that she has a right to expect from the dealer frank and kindly advice.

In the present state of the retail organization she may find either att.i.tude. In shops kept by her co-nationals she will naturally have the utmost confidence. This puts the small neighborhood stores in a position of peculiar privilege, and makes it doubly easy for them to take subtle advantage of the unwary customer. Even when the dealer takes no special advantage of his customer, in following the general practice of the trade, he can create innumerable situations in which her problem is rendered more, rather than less, complicated. The indefinite package is subst.i.tuted for the definite weight or measure.

The "bars" of soap vary in weight and in composition. The trade _mark_ used to tell her that X made goods whose quality she knew; the trade _name_, based on incalculable sums spent in skillful advertising, tells her nothing that is of intrinsic use to her. It connects a name with a repeated suggestion that she buy. By the trading stamp, the premium, and the bargain counter the merchant tries to persuade her that she is getting more than she pays for. He appeals to the gambling instinct and introduces into a drab life something of the excitement of the roulette table.

THE COMPANY STORE

In mining communities and other places in which there are "company stores," there is the pressure exercised by the employer to force the employee to deal only with the company store, even when there are other stores in the neighborhood.

The United States Immigration Commission had something to say on this point. It made it clear that, while there are instances of an employer giving his employees a fair deal when he becomes merchant and they purchasers, the combination of employing and merchandising functions is often perilous. Even if the employee appears to have a choice, he fears the loss of his job if he does not buy at the company store. The evils connected with so-called "truck payments" have long been recognized. They change only in form when the company check replaces the old payment in kind.[32]

In some states this evil has been recognized by legislation prohibiting the combination of industrial and merchandising functions.

Where such is the case, as in Pennsylvania, the statute is evaded. A separate corporation is organized by the same individuals, or a store is conducted by an individual who is a member of the mining corporation. Where there is a "store" administered in any of these ways, "company checks" may be issued between pay days. Or "store books" may be issued, the items purchased being recorded, and deducted on pay day from the wages of the employee.

The Immigration Commission published a table[33] of the expenditures at such stores, the amounts deducted from the wages, and the proportion of earnings left to be collected at the end of the month, ill.u.s.trating the confusing effect of these practices on the housewife whose income should be a settled and regular amount. While some of the Croatians and Magyars spent hardly a fourth or a third of their earnings at the company store, others in the same national groups collected on pay day less than a fifth or even less than a tenth of their earnings. From this balance must come the payments for rent, medical service, entertainment, school, for all things other than food, clothes, and furniture.

It may be that in some cases the employee is able to secure at the company store as good articles as he can obtain elsewhere and for the same prices, but this is by no means common. In West Virginia it was found necessary to enact legislation forbidding a company which ran a store to charge its own employees higher prices than the employees of other companies were charged.[34] The Immigration Commission found not only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high, but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost impossible to adjust income and needs.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of balancing what one gives with what one gets.[35]

A similar objection may be raised to payment of wages by check. In the old days, before the world went dry, one service the saloon was frequently called on to render was that of cas.h.i.+ng checks. Either payment in "lawful money" or an opportunity to exchange at once for lawful money is the only method of paying wages that gives the housewife her full opportunity.

SHOPPING HABITS

The immigrant housewife is restricted by her ignorance of places and methods of marketing, and so feels the necessity of buying in the immigrant neighborhood. Among the 90 Chicago families from whom schedules were obtained, representing Bohemian, Croatian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian groups, 72 purchased all their food in the neighborhood stores, 2 kept their own stores, and only 16 were seeking bargains in other localities. Among these 16, 5 were going to larger business centers near their neighborhood, 4 bought in downtown department stores, 1 used a mail-order house, 1 went to a well-established "cash and carry" store, 2 bought in the wholesale markets, and only 2 took advantage of the co-operative a.s.sociation of their own group.

The 72 families who were marketing exclusively in their own neighborhoods were patronizing for the most part stores owned by foreign-speaking people or those employing foreign-born salesmen to attract the housewives of particular groups. A Croatian woman says that when she tries to do her marketing downtown she sees many new things and would like to ask what they are used for, but she does not know how to ask. In her neighborhood store the grocer can easily explain to her. One Polish woman reads the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the papers and buys where there is a sale. She thinks that an alleged Polish co-operative is expensive and prefers the large department stores, but for the first few years she bought everything in her neighborhood where the clerks speak Polish.

The prevalence of the immigrant store may be ill.u.s.trated by a detailed study that was made of the Sixteenth Ward in Chicago. The population of the ward is predominantly Polish, with an intermingling of Jewish, German, and Slovak in the southern portion. In the twenty-five blocks there are 113 retail stores, 44 of which are grocery and delicatessen stores, meat markets, and bakeries. In one block there are 5 grocery and delicatessen stores, and at least 1 in every block which has any stores. Most of these shops are small and crowded, with family living rooms in the rear. For the most part, the nationality of the proprietor is that of the majority in the block, and there are only 14 proprietors of all the 113 stores who are not Polish.

The difficulty with the language, however, extends beyond merely talking in the store. A Ukrainian mother, who admits being afraid to go beyond her own neighborhood, is perhaps typical of many foreign-born mothers to whom a trip to the central shopping district is a strange and terrifying adventure.

There is also the question of the means with which to buy. An Italian mother says that she buys at the chain store when she has the cash, and at other times in the Italian stores where, although the prices are higher, she can run a charge account. The system of buying on credit at the local store is spoken of as practically universal in all the foreign-born groups. The purchaser carries a small blank book, in which the merchant enters in large figures merely the sum charged, with no indication of what was bought or the amount. The account is settled on pay day by the man of the family. There is, of course, every chance for inaccurate entry. It is not surprising, then, that one hears from many sources that buying food is generally extravagant.

Women often do the buying. Whether or not it is the more common among foreign-born families than among native born for the children to be sent to the store, we cannot say. Since the marketing is done so largely in immigrant stores, there is perhaps not the need for an English-speaking member of the family to do the purchasing. We find among 89, 43 mothers who still do all their own buying, 32 who allow the children to do part, 4 who share the task with the father, and only 10 who never do any of the buying. In this last group of 10 families there are 7 in which the children do all the marketing and 3 in which it is done by the father.

Even the skilled housekeepers have little experience in buying. At home they were used to storing vegetables in quant.i.ties; potatoes in caves, beets and cabbage by a process of fermentation, other vegetables and fruits by drying. In the United States this sort of thing is not done. There is, in the first place, no place for storage, and the initial cost of vegetables is high and quality poor, and the women know nothing of modern processes of canning.

It is difficult to discover the general practice with regard to the quant.i.ty of food bought at one time, since it must necessarily vary considerably. Meat, milk, bread, perishable fruits and vegetables must usually be purchased daily. As for staple food, the thrifty housewife will buy in as large quant.i.ties as she can afford in order to save both money and time.

Reference has been made, however, to the lack of storage s.p.a.ce and the consequent necessity of buying very little at one time. Thirty-three, or two fifths, of the 81 foreign housewives who were interviewed on this subject report that they buy food in daily supplies; 1 buys twice a day and 1 for each meal. Forty, however, buy in larger quant.i.ties.

Twenty-nine for the week and 11 for a month at a time. Six say that they buy whenever they have the money. It must never be forgotten that among the lower-income groups, to have more in the house is to have more eaten, and that cannot be afforded.

Besides the high prices, one of the other limitations of the foreign-born neighborhood store is the low quality of the food. This may be ill.u.s.trated by a description of the markets in one Lithuanian neighborhood back of the stockyards, where men are working at low-grade labor in the yards, and the women are keeping lodgers, where few speak English and not many ever go more than a few blocks from home. The typical market in this neighborhood--and there are sometimes as many as ten in a block--is a combined meat market and grocery store. Such stores are found in the poorer neighborhoods of every settlement.

Stock in all these stores is the same; there is a great deal of fresh meat, apparently the poorer cuts, sc.r.a.ps, etc.; shelves are filled with canned fruits, canned vegetables, canned soups, and condensed milk; there is much of the bakers' "Lithuanian rye bread," and quant.i.ties of such cakes as are sold by the National Biscuit Company.

No fresh vegetables are to be seen in any of these stores. The reason given by shopkeepers is that they are little used in the neighborhood and that the truck wagons supply the demand.

Women who actually depend upon these stores and the truck wagons for all their supplies find them very unsatisfactory. No really fresh vegetables are to be found in either stores or wagons, they say. In commenting upon this situation, several persons have expressed a belief that the restriction of diet among Lithuanian immigrants was largely due to the fact that the markets afford so little variety, and that an effort to extend the stock in the stores would find a response in the community.

These stores, however, are widely different from those found in Italian neighborhoods. Practically all the food used by the Italian families of one such neighborhood is bought in these stores. In this district the population is as dense as back of the stockyards, and the families have comparable incomes, the men being engaged in unskilled occupations and their earnings being supplemented by the earnings of women and children. The number of food stores in a block is about the same as in the other district, but the stock carried differs greatly.

Here, in place of shops that carry only meat, canned goods, and potatoes, cabbages, and beets, the greengrocery stores largely predominate.

There are four or five greengrocery shops to one meat market, and these stores have a surprising variety of fresh vegetables and fruits all the year. The variety of salad greens is remarkable. More Swiss chard, mustard, dandelion leaves, endive, squash blossoms and leaves, escarole, are to be seen in one little Italian store than in a half dozen American markets. Legumes are in stock in great quant.i.ty and variety--there are some little stores that do not handle greengroceries, but carry large stocks of legumes. Every store has a large case of different varieties of Italian cheese, and the variety of macaroni, spaghetti, and noodles is amazing to an American. Fish is frequently sold from stalls along the street, and on Friday fish wagons go about through the district. Sometimes meat is sold from wagons, but less to Italians than to other nationalities living in the neighborhood.

Certainly one effect of the organization of these shops on the basis of nationality is to prevent the members of one group from gaining the advantage of dietetically better practices followed in other groups.

The Lithuanian and Italian neighborhoods described happened to be in widely separated districts of the city, but often similar differences may be observed between two shops within the same block that serve different national groups.

It is clear that the retail trade, being unstandardized, gives no help to the immigrant woman in the matter of efficient buying. There is as yet no fine art of service in this field based on careful accounting of cost and service. Obviously there is great waste in the number of stores, in the number of persons engaged in conducting them, in the needless duplication of even such meager equipment as is found in them. This waste will reflect itself in needlessly high prices which, while they mulct the buyer, bring the seller little gain.

Evidently, then, little or no help is given through the system of retail trading to the foreign-born housewife in the matter of adapting the diet of her family to American or dietetic requirements. Yet food demands a large share of the income. In the latest report on the cost of living in the United States, in only 8 out of 45 cities were the food demands met by less than 40 per cent of the entire expenditure in the group whose incomes were between $900 and $1,200.[36] Those cities were:

Pana, Illinois 39.4 Buffalo, New York 38.9 Wilmington, Delaware 38.9 Dover, New Jersey 38.8 Indianapolis, Indiana 37.6 Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota 37.6 Steubenville, Ohio 37.3 Fort Wayne, Indiana 35.6

The lowest proportion was in Fort Wayne, where over a third of the income was required for feeding the families in this income group.

MODIFICATION OF DIET

No extensive study of the dietary practices of the different groups, either here or in the old country, has been undertaken, but considerable evidence has been secured in substantiation of the fact that their old-country practices are being modified in this country.

This is not being done consciously in response to dietetic requirements, but often blindly in response to what seem to be American customs or necessities. There has been some conflict of testimony with regard to the changes in the Czecho-Slovak and Croatian groups. The Italians are said by all to have made very slight changes in their diet in this country. The Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians, on the other hand, are said to have made very radical changes.

The modification that is spoken of most frequently and that is of gravest concern to many of their leaders, is the increased use of meat. Attention has already been called to the explanation of this in the fact that the price of meat was prohibitive at home, and that fruit, vegetables, and dairy products were enjoyed without expenditure of money. The large number of stores in which meat is offered for sale, although undoubtedly reflecting the general wishes of the group, offers constant suggestion to the individual purchaser to buy meat. The nave belief that much meat must be eaten by men doing manual labor is said to be another factor.

Excessive use of coffee is said by visiting housekeepers and others familiar with dietetic problems to be one of the most serious faults of the diet of many groups, especially the Slavic groups. It is a general custom to put the coffee pot on the stove in the morning and leave it there all day for any member of the family to help himself to coffee when he wants it. This is entirely a new habit which has been learned in America, as coffee was almost unknown in the poorer groups in the old country. One explanation that was given by a foreign-born woman was that these families were used to a diet of soup at home, and that as they gave this up in this country they felt the need of some liquid to replace it. One Polish woman who was asked if she had changed her diet in this country, replied, "Naturally, at home everyone had soup for breakfast, and here everyone has coffee and bread."

Another change that was reported over and over again was the use of more cakes and sweet rolls. This seemed to be considered a peculiarly American change, as was evidenced by the families who reported that they had not changed their diet, as they didn't like the American diet of cakes. Some of them, indeed, were very scornful of what they considered the American diet, saying among other things that they could not afford to eat steak and chops every day, that they did not like sweets, that their "men" would not eat "out of a can," that they did not like fried things. Their ideas of American diet were gained in part from the food in restaurants, in part from what the children learned in cooking lessons in school, and in part from general suggestions that they have picked up.

Undoubtedly misguided social workers who have tried to give advice on diet without themselves knowing much about it, are responsible for some of these ideas. In a certain mill town in Ma.s.sachusetts, for example, a social worker employed by the mill discovered what she thought was the cause of the paper falling off the walls in the fact that the people boiled their food. She therefore went in and taught them to fry meat and other foodstuffs.