Adventures in Thrift/Chapter 2
MRS. LARRY sat at the old mahogany secretary which had been Great-aunt Abigail's wedding gift, her elbows planted in a litter of papers covered with figures and her despairing gaze fixed on a row of small manila envelopes.
It was the second day after the lecture at the Kimbell store on "What Do You Do With Father's Money?" Mrs. Larry had attacked her account book and budget envelopes in a fine spirit of enthusiasm. With an intelligent knowledge of true fabric values, she would be able now to transfer from the two envelopes marked "Operating Expenses" and "Clothing," to the one marked "Luxuries," at least ten dollars a month.
But, alas, she found that the fund for luxuries amounted to exactly one dollar and thirteen cents, while there existed no immediate need for renewing linen or clothing at the promised reduction. On the other hand, a month's rent was due, and a dentist's bill had arrived that very morning. Both expenses were imperative and non-reducible. She shook out the dimes, nickels and pennies from the envelope marked "Luxuries" and arranged them in a geometrical design.
"It can't be done!" she groaned, and shook a rebellious fist at the smug-looking envelopes. Then suddenly she swung round in her chair, startled by an unexpected yet strangely familiar sound.
She glanced sharply at the clock. Its tick was strictly businesslike and the hands pointed to twenty minutes past two. Yet surely that had been the click of Larry's key in the front door, and now Larry's never-to-be-mistaken step coming down the hall.
Only an emergency, very bad news or very good, would bring Larry home in the middle of a crisp autumn afternoon.
Now he was in the doorway, looking quite commonplace and natural, except for a sharp frown above the eyes which usually smiled at sight of her.
"Hello, little woman," he said, drawing her close with that little air of proprietorship which never failed to thrill her, "I'm leaving for South Bethlehem at five—back Thursday—wonder if you could pack my bag while I take a nap? Head aches."
He was out of his coat and shoes with the last word.
"Put in a soft shirt," he added as he sank on the couch and reached for the rug.
"Has anything happened?" asked Mrs. Larry, adjusting the rug to his feet in the way he liked best.
"I should say so," he answered drowsily. "Directors couldn't declare any dividend this quarter. Had all of us on the carpet this morning. Seems up to me and Duggan to reduce expenses. I've got to cut about ten thousand dollars in my department this year. Call me at three-thirty, will you, dear?"
And he was off!
Mrs. Larry stood like a statue, staring down an this wonderful creature who, confronted by the task of reducing expenses by ten thousand a year, could fall off asleep in a few seconds.
That's what came of being a man, she decided—a man, privileged to deal in big figures, hundreds, thousands, instead of dollars, quarters and dimes! Her glance traveled back to the hated sheets of papers and the accusing envelopes, labeled: "Rent," "Operating Expenses," "Food," "Clothing," "Savings," "Care and Education," "Luxuries."
Something very like hysterical laughter rose in her throat. Larry could sleep with a weight of ten thousand on his mind, and she would lie awake nights figuring how to save ten dollars a month. She looked down at her husband.
How strong and capable, even in his sleep, this man who worked day after day, year in and year out, for her and the babies, who turned over to her all that he earned. The beauty of his unquestioning trust brought a different sort of choke to her throat. Of course, she would find a way to save that extra ten each month—for Larry's use or pleasure.
Then she tiptoed out of the living-room, closing the door behind her, lest the children, coming in from their walk, should fall upon their father like the Philistines they were. But as she packed his bag and laid out his clean linen, her mind turned over and over the troublesome question, and the lines reappeared in her broad white forehead.
She was tabulating the luxuries which they denied themselves. First, there was Larry's love for music. From the day of their engagement they had subscribed annually to a certain series of orchestral concerts. When it had come time this year to renew the subscription, she had had to tell Larry that the family budget would not admit of the expenditure. Larry, Junior's, measles, her dentist's bill, and the filling out of their dinner set from open stock, had overdrawn the envelopes marked "Care and Education" and "Operating Expenses," leaving a vacuum in the one labeled "Luxuries."
She did not care so much for herself—twice during the last season she had been too tired really to appreciate the symphonies, but Larry rested and recuperated through music. He had pretended not to care, and had suggested that they might buy an occasional ticket for the very best concerts; but she knew that giving up the subscription tickets had marked the biggest sacrifice of Larry's married life.
Then for herself there was the day when Belle Saunders had told her that, being in mourning, she would sell her blue fox set for fifteen dollars. And Mrs. Larry, looking into the envelope marked "Clothing" had realized that one must go without furs—as well as subscription tickets, but a fox set at fifteen dollars was an opportunity.
It was utterly absurd, she agreed with the lecturer, that a husband and wife with two babies could not enjoy an occasional luxury of this sort on an income of two hundred dollars a month. It was unthinkable that on this income she might not take advantage of an opportunity like Belle Saunders' fox set. She was tired of skimping and saving, tired of self-denial in this city of New York, where at every turn was the temptation to buy that which would beautify one's home or brighten one's life. And then suddenly a sharp pain shot through her heart.
If she were dissatisfied with what they were getting out of life, how must Larry feel? If she irked at spending everything on stern necessities, how must he, who earned it all, rebel?
There was no doubt about it! She must reform her management of their income. A new envelope marked "Larry" must be started and filled—ten dollars a month, one hundred and twenty dollars a year—her little labor of love for Larry's pleasure, no, not selfish pleasure, but for both of them a little joy in living that would lift them above the mere sordid effort to make both ends meet and to educate the children.
"Larry," she inquired, as he brushed his hair with the vigor of one who has enjoyed a well-deserved nap and is the better for it, "why are you and Mr. Duggan expected to save all the money for the company?"
"Because we have the two departments where it can be done. Duggan is superintendent of employees. He must reduce the force or the wages, or increase the output of his workers. This will lessen the cost of production, through better management—efficiency, we call it. I must buy to better advantage, for less money, and still give the firm the same quality of raw material to work with."
"But you can't do that, Larry. If you get cheaper material it's bound not to be so good."
"Not necessarily," said Larry, slipping on his coat. "It's up to me to study the market more closely, to find new markets, if I can. That's why I'm going to South Bethlehem—if you'll let me."
He smiled down on her, loosening the hands that clasped his arm so closely.
"Don't take it so seriously, little woman. I've been up against stiffer jobs than this, and always found a way out. Kiss the kiddies for me. If I don't get through to-morrow night, I'll wire."
The door banged behind him and Mrs. Larry shook herself impatiently. What in the world had she started to call after him? That the wire would cost a quarter and he must not waste the money!
The thought of it made her dizzy and faint. No matter where Larry went, how long he was gone, he had always kept in touch with her by night lettergrams, and she had come to begrudge him this comfort! Could it be that she had taken the lecturer at Kimbell's too seriously? Or was there something radically wrong with the plan of her budget, with her household management; she had tried so hard to be thrifty.
"Thrift!"
What did the word mean?
She reached for her dictionary.
Thrift—care and prudence in the management of one's resources.
Well, Larry's salary was their one resource—and there was no increasing it. The seven little envelopes were as inevitable as the rising and the setting of the sun.
What had Larry said? It was up to Duggan to reduce the force of workers or cut their wages. She had long since parted with a general housekeeper who represented waste in the kitchen. Now she was doing her own cooking, with Lena, a young Swedish girl, at three dollars a week to help in the kitchen, wash dishes and take the children for their daily airing on Riverside Drive, and a laundress one day in the week. No, there was no reducing the force or wages.
And what had Larry said about the purchasing department?
"Buy to better advantage. Find a new market."
She shuddered at the thought. Had she not bought a lot of canned goods at a department store sale, only to find that they were "seconds" and tasteless? Hadn't Aunt Myra induced her to buy poultry, eggs and cheese from the man who ran Uncle Jack's farm on shares, with the result that one-third of the eggs were broken through poor packing, and they had to live on poultry for days interminable—or have it spoil on their hands?
And Mr. Dorlon, the grocer, was so clean and convenient and obliging. She simply could not change, she told herself firmly. And yet, the lecturer insinuated that a housewife wasted money when she did not know food values. She had decided that the very foundations of her household management were shaking, when the telephone bell rang and she hurried down the hall to answer it.
"Can't you and Larry come over to dinner to-night?" Teresa Moore inquired. "The Gregorys are stopping over on their way to California."
"Oh," sighed Mrs. Larry. "Larry's just left for South Bethlehem. I'm so sorry."
"Well, you can come. I'll telephone Claire Pierce and Jimmy Graves. Jimmy met the Gregorys last summer."
"Claire might come, but Jimmy's gone back to Kansas City. Invite Claire and I'll drop out."
"Not for a minute," answered Mrs. Moore. "I'll phone my brother to fill Larry's place. It's all very informal. We'll just make it seven instead of eight. We'll all take you home and stop somewhere to trot a bit. Do come. Larry would want you to."
"All right," said Mrs. Larry, almost blithely. She stopped at the secretary long enough to thrust the bothersome envelopes into a drawer. At Teresa Moore's there never seemed any question about giving a little dinner or going to the theater, and yet George Moore earned only fifty dollars more a month than Larry did. To be sure, the Moores had only one baby—and Teresa's mother gave her an occasional frock. Still, some day she would ask Teresa for a little inside information on budget-building.
It was Teresa's bachelor brother who made the opening for Mrs. Larry that very evening at dinner. He looked with undisguised admiration upon a baked potato which had just been served to him by the trim maid.
"Teresa, I take my hat off to your baked potatoes. There isn't a club chef in New York who can hold a candle to you when it comes to baking these."
"It isn't the baking, my dear boy, it's the buying of them. A watery potato won't bake well."
"Ah—and how, pray, do you know a watery potato from a dry one?" inquired her brother with something akin to respect in his voice.
"By breaking them open, silly boy," she answered with a gay little laugh. "As runs one, so, generally speaking, runs the whole basket. I don't look at the size or smoothness of the skin, but at the grain of the broken potato."
"Are they Maine or Long Island potatoes?" asked Mrs. Larry suddenly.
"Maine," answered Mrs. Moore. "There isn't a Long Island potato on the market to-day."
"But, Mr. Dorlon—"
"Told you so! Yes, and they always will, if you ask for Long Island potatoes. I don't take any one's word for food. The only safeguard is to know your market for yourself and ask no information of the dealer."
"Then you think there are no honest dealers?" asked Mr. Gregory.
"Lots of them," replied his brisk hostess, "but we women put a premium on misinformation and trickery by demanding what the market does not offer. We demand fresh country eggs when only the dealers in certified eggs can furnish them, and so we get cold storage eggs labeled 'country,' We demand Long Island potatoes when the market is sold out, and we get Maine potatoes at a slightly higher figure than they should bring, because the dealer does not dare tell us the truth. If he does, we go to another dealer who knows us better."
"In Boston," remarked Mrs. Gregory, "we have a little marketing club and study prices and market conditions. It takes time, but it saves us all quite a little."
Mrs. Larry ate mechanically, hardly knowing what was served. This was what the lecturer had meant about studying food values—what Larry had meant by finding a new market. But both of them had missed the mark. She would combine the two, study the old markets and find new ones.
Mrs. Moore was warming up to the topic and everybody was interested. "New York is headquarters for the National Housewives' League. We have district branches and leaders, and we are shaking up the dealers just beautifully. Last week our district leader announced that there had been a drop in bacon and ham. One of the nationally advertised brands of bacon in jars was selling at several cents less a jar. I asked my grocer why he had not reduced the price. He said this was the first he'd heard of it. The next day he started a sale on this particular brand, and I bought a dozen jars. He knew all the time that the firm had cut the price, that ham and bacon were down, but he did not give his customers, who did not know the same thing, the advantage of the wholesale cut. Other grocers gave it and announced it as a special or leader.
"That's why I belong to the National Housewives' League. Grocers and butchers may argue with an individual woman who has read about food prices in the papers, but when a committee bears down upon them, they listen respectfully and admit the truth about prices."
"Then you believe that the old ogre H. C. of L., otherwise known as the High Cost of Living, can be reduced by an organization of housewives who agitate for lower prices?" inquired Mr. Gregory.
"I believe in education first, and organization afterward. An organization of women who do not know food values or market conditions will start a sensational campaign against cold storage eggs or poultry, and then subside. What we need under existing food conditions is women educated as buyers, not as cooks. It's no use to economize in the kitchen and waste in the market."
Mrs. Larry glanced round the table. Even the bachelor brother was listening intently. Of course—she had heard rumors of his attentions to that pretty Murray girl. As for Claire Pierce, her face bore the expression of one who sat at the feet of wisdom and understood.
"What does it avail a woman to have thirty-five recipes for utilizing the remains of a roast, if she does not know how to buy a roast in the beginning? Our grandmothers, yes, and even our mothers, used to devise means of making what was grown on the farm go as far as possible. To-day, our men folks grow nothing. We women in the cities and the towns and the villages must go out and buy so wisely that we rival in this new housekeeping the frugality of our ancestors. It's all in the buying."
Mrs. Larry, nibbling a salted almond, thought of her own burning zeal in using up left-overs, and almost sighed. No doubt Teresa Moore and the lecturer were both right. It was all in the buying. And her patient industry in the kitchen had probably been undone and set at naught by the trickery of grocer or butcher. She had been paying the old price for bacon and ham. She had been paying the price of Long Island potatoes for the Maine brand. She—
Goodness gracious! Larry had gone to South Bethlehem to find a better market—and she had only to turn the corner.
Again she glanced round the table, her eye resting now on Teresa Moore's new bonbon dish, which she had bought at a mid-summer sale, and at Mrs. Gregory's fresh, straight-from-the-shop black chiffon. Of course they could have new things. They had found the right market, through organization and education. She wanted to laugh aloud, did Mrs. Larry. She wanted to go right out and send a telegram about that new envelope marked—no, not "Larry," but "A little pleasure as we go along."
However, as the conversation had drifted from food values to a new play, she pulled herself together and chatted with the rest. But as she parted with her hostess a few hours later, she said:
"Teresa, give me the address of the Housewives' League."
"Going to join, honey?" asked Mrs. Moore.
"Yes,—I'm starting on an adventure—in thrift."
"I'll go with you," laughed Teresa. "Meet me at the headquarters of the Housewives' League, 25 West Forty-fifth Street, Monday morning. We're having a demonstration of meat cuts—by a butcher."
"I'll be there," replied Mrs. Larry promptly.
She did not go alone. Claire had insisted on accompanying her.
"So long as Teresa doesn't know about—about—Jimmy's going away as he did, we won't have to tell her. And—and—even if I never did marry and, of course, I wouldn't marry any one but Jimmy—I might want to do work among the poor and this would help me."
Mrs. Larry nodded her head. She was wise enough not to insinuate that welfare work would never supplant love for Jimmy in Claire's heart. The all-important thing just now was to act as if nothing had happened between the two young people.
"I love to have you with me, Claire. Perhaps I'm a little stale in the domestic light. Your fresh view-point will help me amazingly."
Stepping from the elevator they found themselves in a huge undecorated auditorium covering an entire floor of a great office building. Just ahead was a desk, where they registered in the National League, paying ten cents each and receiving in return a small button, with a navy blue rim and lettering on a white ground, "Housewives' League."
"Wear this whenever you market," said the secretary. "It commands respect."
Beyond the desk was a space given over to desks, tables and bookcases filled with free bulletins and literature on food values and food preparations, easy chairs and settees.
Teresa Moore came bustling forward to greet them.
"This," she explained, "is the first club-room ever opened exclusively for housekeepers. Here may come any housekeeper, member of the League or not, New Yorker or suburbanite, to read our bulletins and magazines, to rest, to write notes on League stationery, to meet friends. We want to educate home-makers to the club idea, to put housekeeping on a club basis.
"Way over there in the corner is the desk of our national president, Mrs. Julian Heath. Across the room is the gas demonstration, cooking, ironing, etc. And now we must hurry if we are to see the meat demonstration."
One side of the great auditorium was filled with camp chairs and groups of interested eager women. On a platform, a force of butchers and helpers were hanging up a great side of fresh beef. Near the platform were two blocks on which the meat could be cut into pieces.
"Now, ladies, this is the fore-quarter—"
A great hustling for seats and advantageous
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positions, whipping out of note-books and pencils, then respectful silence.
Deftly one helper cut and sawed while the butcher held up cut after cut and explained their food values and their prices. Invariably he said: "The price for this cut to-day is—" showing the variability of the market.
Mrs. Larry listened almost breathlessly, glancing now and then at the oblong diagram of a side of beef furnished by Mr. Richard Webber, the dealer who had arranged the demonstration. The different sections of the beef were colored like states on a map.
"This, ladies, is the chuck steak at sixteen cents a pound."
Mrs. Larry looked at it with disapproving eyes. That would not do for Larry. He must have the best and most nutritious beef.
"Just as tender if properly cooked and just as nourishing as sirloin," announced the butcher. "But it lacks a certain flavor which both sirloin and porterhouse have."
He was handling more familiar cuts now.
"First and second ribs, twenty-four cents a pound because they are most in demand. But I consider the second cut, third, fourth and fifth ribs just as good at twenty-two cents a pound. The seventh and eighth ribs, known as the blade, have a fine flavor and are more economical at eighteen cents. Use the bones and blade for soup—and have the rest rolled and skewered."
Mrs. Larry nibbled her pencil and frowned. A difference of six cents a pound between the first cut and the last—and she had never asked her butcher which rib it was. Last Sunday's roast had cost twenty-six cents a pound, and she had not known whether that was the right price on beef or not.
"Here is what I call one of the most economical cuts—if you can get your butcher to make it for you. Some do not handle it. It's the ninth and tenth ribs, boned, known as the inside and outside roll roast, tender as porterhouse steak, solid meat, no waste, at twenty-five cents a pound. Five pounds of this are equal in nutritive and cash value to eight pounds of the usual rib roast."
Mrs. Larry's pencil fairly flew.
"Here is the most economical cut for a large family. The cross rib at twenty-one cents a pound. Average weight fourteen pounds. But be sure you get the best grade of beef if you try this cut. If it weighs less than fourteen pounds, you are getting poor quality of beef. Note the fat, creamy yellow, not a bit of dead white.
"Now, have your butcher cut off two steaks first—Saturday night's dinner! The next piece makes a fine pot roast for Sunday and Monday, and the balance a big pot of soup stock. From the pot roast you will have some cold meat for hash."
"Suppose you want just those two juicy steaks," suggested a well-dressed woman near the platform.
"Well, see that the butcher cuts them off the right end," readily replied the butcher.
"But," exclaimed Claire, as the result of watching her mother's household management, "suppose you order by telephone—"
The butcher and his helper looked at each other and grinned. As one voice, the other women cried, "Oh, don't do it!"
"Never buy meat by telephone," emphasized Mrs. Heath, the national president, "go to market—it pays."
Claire was blushing furiously. Of course, everybody would guess that she was unmarried and inexperienced. In reality, her question was already forgotten. The audience was absorbed in watching the butcher carving the hind quarter of the beef.
"You ladies scorn the flank," he explained, as he held up a long thin cut of beef, "but the inside cut, with a pocket to be filled with poultry dressing, makes a fine pot roast. And now for the steaks,—"
Delmonico, porterhouse, sirloin and round—he explained their points clearly, and then a young bride brought up the question:
"What is minute steak?"
"You'll have to ask the chef," replied the butcher, nodding to a stout mustached man on the edge of the crowd. "We thought you might ask questions like this, so we brought him along."
"Minute steak," explained the chef, "is any good cut, without bone, sliced very thin. It gets its name from the short time required to cook it."
Zip, the saw, knives and hatchet gleamed in and out of the red flesh, and the pages of Mrs. Larry's note-book bristled with facts and figures. When the demonstration was over, she snapped a rubber band around the little book, thrust it into her bag and walked thoughtfully to the elevator.
"Did you enjoy it, honey?" Teresa Moore linked arms with Mrs. Larry and rang for the elevator.
"Well, if there's any enjoyment in learning how little you know, I must have had a perfectly splendid time!" replied Mrs. Larry, not without slight sarcasm.
"Fine! I felt the same way—once. Now go a-marketing while it is all fresh in your mind. Put the fear of God in the heart of your butcher. You won't have to do it but once, I venture to assure you."
"I will," said Mrs. Larry firmly, as they parted at the corner. Then suddenly she stopped and stared in dismay at an unoffending, overtrimmed pincushion in a shop window. Memory turned a blur of red beef, white bone and creamy yellow fat.
"I don't believe I'll ever recognize those different cuts when I see them."
"I will," said Claire Pierce firmly. "I mean to have a talk with our butcher, too. No doubt father has paid him thousands of dollars, and now he can pay back some of the overcharge by teaching me how to buy meat properly. Let's go into that shop; I want to buy a note-book like yours."
"Well," said Mrs. Larry thoughtfully, as they waited for Claire's parcel and change, "they do say that meat is cheaper in Kansas City than in New York."