more than common intelligence under our existing conditions; it would be almost impossible to attain with the use of the cooking apparatus now in common use; yet at this standard, witness to what incomprehensible figures we are led when dealing with the whole mass of our population. Whoever is right as to the enumeration of the census year, we now number sixty-five millions. If we make the utmost reduction for children of ten or under, keeping in consideration the larger need of growing children from ten to seventeen, also bearing in mind the great proportion of all who get their living by "the sweat of their brow," and who must have ample nutrition, we cannot estimate the present consumption of food at less than what would be required by fifty million adult men at active or moderate work or women at active work. We may compute our total consumption on a basis corresponding in requirements to a standard of nutrition somewhat under class two and a little over class three, costing fourteen and one-fourth cents a day, or one dollar a week for food; to which we may add a quarter of a dollar a week for eggs, tea, coffee and fruit. At $52 per year the food necessary to sustain 50,000,000 adults comes to $2,600,000,000; at $13 per year, the eggs, tea, coffee and fruit come to $650,000,000; total for food and wholesome drink, $3,250,000,000; the most conservative estimate of the cost of beer, wine and spirits to the consumers is $750,000,000; total, $4,000,000,000. The problem with which we are dealing is the mere alphabet. We are at the beginning of an attempt to apply the same science to the nutrition of man that we have so long been attempting to apply to the nutrition of the soil, the plant and the beast of the field; our problem is how to cook not less than three billion dollars' worth of meat, fish, grain and vegetables a year. I think you will admit, gentlemen, that it is quite time to apply science in the kitchen, and to develop a true and simple art of cooking. At what price will you measure the waste of labor, the waste of fuel, the waste of heat, the waste of comfort, the waste of temper, the waste of health, the waste of morality and sobriety due to the waste upon whiskey, which is again due to lack of well-cooked food? Is this waste a billion dollars' worth of potential energy a year? Is it not a great deal more? Perhaps you will come to the conclusion that the potato gospel will bear a great deal of preaching. Ought there not to be a cooking laboratory attached to every agricultural experiment station? Would one be out of place even in Columbia College? But, gentlemen, there is another aspect of this case. True economy does not consist in living on shin of beef or halibut nape. Very few people can afford to use up the time that would be required to live at a cost of a dollar a week, or at fourteen cents a day, unless obliged to do so. There is a certain horse sense in the reply of the workman to some of these suggestions when he says "We don't want your bone soup," and "We won't have your pig-wash." Give us something better, or what we are used to, better cooked than we now get it. Suppose we double the price, put up the prices of the animal food to rates which would be paid for good solid meat, free of bone, of good quality; add a pint of milk, an excess of butter and one egg every day. I think this ration corresponds closely to the average consumption and expenditure in the families of well-to-do people, if we add to this food ten cents a day for tea, coffee, condiments and fruit, making the total fifty cents for each inmate of the household per day. TABLE 3. Four Pounds Food at 1,200 Calories per pound equals 4,800 Calories; One Pound Milk added, 310 Calories, makes 5 pounds, 5,110 Calories. pound clear meat at an average of 20 cents per pound, pound fish at 16 cents per pound, $0 10 04 09 This would be an excessive allowance for a man at very hard work; if it were all cooked in such a way that it could be assimilated, with water added, it would weigh as much as seven pounds. Few persons really consume more than half such a daily ration. You will find that fifty cents' worth a day per inmate comes into your houses, even if you think you live rather simply. It cannot be consumed. How much is wasted? I myself eat about three and a half pounds a day, including soup, but not including fruit or beverages. At my standard about three-fifths of that ration, or twenty-four cents' worth, suffices. If proper methods of cooking were adopted and right methods of utilizing what is now wasted in the ordinary method of buying and preparing this food material, all the potential energy in this dietary could be enjoyed by the average adult at twenty-eight cents a day, or in round figures at two dollars per week. At two dollars a week the food bill of fifty million adults comes to five billion, two hundred million dollars a year ($5,200,000,000). By statistical analysis of our crops and food products, projected from the gross valuations and wholesale data to their points of ultimate consumption, I am fully satisfied that the food bill of this country is in fact as much as five billions of dollars, and is probably more ($5,000,000,000). I am also satisfied that one-fifth part of this huge volume of good material is converted into bad feeding for lack of science in the economy of the kitchen, one billion dollars' worth a year of wasted potential energy ($1,000,000,000). Life is but a conversion of force which takes the form of clothing, food and shelter; that is all that any of us get out of the material products by which we are sustained, sheltered and clothed. If this misdirection of force of one billion dollars, which is represented by these huge figures, were converted by the saving of that part of the potential energy in the food consumed which is now wasted, or if that energy now wasted were given a new direction into the work that would be required to provide house room, nearly twice the shelter now enjoyed would ensue. The worst problem with which we are called to deal would then be solved. The family now in one room could have two. The destruction of the poor is their poverty and the worst waste of food is among them. The family now in three rooms might have five, and those who now have as many rooms as are required could direct the force now wasted to greater comfort and to the higher plane which only in the long run makes life worth living. Have my figures led you away into visionary conceptions, such as any one may find in the dry columns of statistical science, if only he has the eye to see what is written between the lines or is inscribed behind the columns? |
