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Show Economical Buying Cuts Costs for Homemakers By BAUKHAGE ISeics Analyst and Commentator WASHINGTON According to a recent poll, the topic In which the people are most interested today is the high cost of living. This despite competition with communism, Taft, Dewey, the weather, and why who jumped out of a hotel window clad only in a filmy nightdress. I managed to get myself into the middle of a controversy on that subject. It all started when the wife of a machinest in York, Pa., wrote me of her difficulties in making- ends meet on her husband's net salary of $53.40 a week (incidentally, bureau of labor statistics informs me that 50 per cent of the workers employed in manufacturing industry earn less than this York machinist.) Her family includes a boy of 15 and a girl of 6. Sh outlined her weekly budget as follows: Insurance $ 4.57 Food 30.00 Gas and Electricity . 3.00 Taxes 1.54 who are fed frozen horsemeat. She spends between $21.80 and $31 a week, and with prices lower, expects ex-pects her costs to go down. My first thought was that probably prob-ably she shopped at a navy commissary, com-missary, but she does not. She saves money by buying apples by the bushel, oranges by the crate, flour by the 100 pounds and cheese by the five-pound brick. She also "puts up" fruit, jams, jellies and preserves. My assistant is prone to scoff whenever I receive one of the I-can't-manage - on - what - my - husband -makes letters. She's been keeping track of monthly food bills for herself her-self and her husband since September Septem-ber of last year. She spent $31.28 in the month of September; $31.54 in October, $37.56 in November; $53.36 December (she had a dinner din-ner party for 14 people, and another an-other Christmas day dinner with turkey, et cetera for seven people, and that upped the bills); $45.39 in January, and $29.69 in February. She says the February food bill dropped significantly because they Withholding 1.60 Union Dues .50 Water Rent (they own their own home) 36 $41.57 She pointed out that this total left very little for clothing, dentist and doctor bills, and nothing for the new stove, washer, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator and furniture they would like to have. And "Don't forget," for-get," she admonished, "there are a lot of people worse off than we are." I used her story in a broadcast, and this is the reaction I received from other women correspondents: An Oakland, Calif., housewife wrote: "When you mentioned that family who spent almost three-quarters three-quarters of his salary for food, I just had to "sound off" or bust. Either this is an exaggeration by the wife or she is guilty of woeful ignorance ignor-ance of proper dietary requirements. In these days of shortages, I'd like to ship folks like these over to England where we have relatives, who could (perhaps!) 'lam 'er' a thing or two about the wanton selfishness self-ishness of such extravagance." This woman goes on: "My husband and I manage nicely on $10 a week for two. I enclose '. ' It ! i 1 v X USDA Photo "We don't very often buy any food," says Mrs. Walter G. Briggs of Fresno, Calif., as she gathers vegetables in the farm garden which produced fruit and vegetables for the family during the growing season with enough left over to can more than 300 quarts for winter use. took advantage of the price dip and bought cheaper butter, eggs, flour, et cetera. Her food bills do not include their twice-a-month "eating out" which costs roughly $10. They also do not include her husband's lunches downtown which come to $1.60 per . week. y She explains that her monthly food costs are low because: (1) They buy milk at stores instead of having it delivered; (2) don't eat much butter; (3) her husband hus-band doesn't demand meat at every meal, so they have dinner dishes like souffles, baked beans, hearty soups, baked eggs; (4) they shop once a week, going perhaps to five or six different stores to take advantage of special sales items (of course persons without a car couldn't do this) ; (5) she uses canned milk for coffee, and to make puddings and cream sauces; and (6) shes says she never wastes ANYTHING. (I can believe that!) With such a variety of figures 1 choose from, there isn't much bas.s for getting into a stew about budgets. bud-gets. What it seems to boil down to it that the bill-of-fare is a fair subject sub-ject for argument, but doesn't leave a man too much to get his teeth into. A good deal seems to depend on where you are willing to draw the waist-line. ! And she adds: "I can remember ! no evening in years when my j husband failed to compliment ; me on his dinner." She suggests that women who r can't cook should attend classes to i discover that the "chemistry" of j food preparation can be "fascinating am., oh, so rewarding." She herself r gained knowledge in public school I night coooking classes that enabled i her to run a small tearoom in the lean years from 1930 to 1935, and which, from 1941 to 1945, helped her to save 40 per cent of her husband's salary. Another woman writes concerning y a Dearborn, Mich., homemaker who t fed "and fed well" her family of six on $75 a month last September. B Now, since food prices went down, "J this woman planned to revise her J budget downward. She spent $71.82 1 for food in November, $58.85 in i December and $55.35 in January of this year. ! As a sample of her meal planning: ' On a Saturday noon, (she writes) she may feed her three girls, aged t 11, 4 and 2 years, egg sandwiches on bread spread with oleo (mixed with canned milk), a whopping big fruit salad made from pears, plums 3 and peaches she canned last summer, '"; and big glasses of milk. A supper io: menu might be macaroni and cheese, e a vegetable salad, home-made choc olate cookies and fruit for dessert, A woman from Detroit, Mich., whose family is the same size as that of the York woman's, writes w, that it costs her only $20 a week to al feed her family. And that, she says: ' "Includes a carton of cigarets for my husband, all soap supplies, pol-: pol-: ishes, cleansers and additions to my J pantry shelf. We average one pound ; of butter a week, two dozen eggs, a 10 to 14 quarts of milk, steaks and chops once a week. My husband takes his lunch two or three sandwiches, sand-wiches, one or two pieces of fruit, lettuce, sometimes another raw vegetable, veg-etable, cakes and cookies. The children child-ren (aged 2 and 5) have a hot breakfast break-fast and lunch each day. "I think," she says, "that we get well-balanced meals. At least we're all in good health and rarely have colds. It can be done easily if you apply yourself 1 and figure ahead." ( And this is accomplished, mind you, in Detroit, where ac-y ac-y cording to bureau of labor sta tistics, it costs upward of $3,293 a year for a family of four to live modestly. m Wife Achieves Near Miracle Even more impressive is the food-budgeting food-budgeting record of a homemaker here in Washington, D; C, where, , says BLS, it costs more to live than fc it does in 33 other major cities of Qjj the country. This woman, wife of a navy cap-a cap-a tain, has a family of seven to feed W, herself, her husband, her mother ' and father, and three strapping boys aged 18, 16 and 13. Also two cats |