actual experience that one can live in
the best of health on food costing as low as ten cents a day, exclusive
of the labor of preparing, cooking and serving. Mrs. Richards, in her
"Cost of Food," says that this is possible anywhere in America within
fifty miles of a railroad. The only real objection to living on this
minimum expense is the lack of variety. The following is a brief list of
foods in ascending order of cost per 100 calories of food value, the
cheapest being at the beginning and the dearest at the end: glucose,
corn-meal, wheat-flour, oatmeal, cane-sugar, salt pork, rice, wheat
bread, oleomargarine, beans, peas, potatoes, butter, milk, cheese,
beef-stew, ham, mutton-chops, beef, eggs, and oysters. If the foods in
this list be looked up in the table given in the SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES for
their protein, fat, and carbohydrate contents, it will be seen that a
well-balanced ration is possible without the use of expensive foods. In
fact, among the cheap foods are some consisting mostly of protein, some
consisting mostly of fat, and some consisting mostly of carbohydrate.
For instance, cheap sources of protein are skim milk, beans, cheese, and
peanuts. Cheap sources of fat are oleomargarine and cottonseed-oil.
Cheap sources of carbohydrate, i.e., starch and sugar, are bread,
bananas, potatoes, glucose, and even ordinary sugar. If a diet, selected
for cheapness, is not at first well balanced, a judicious admixture of
one or more of the foods just mentioned, will restore equilibrium. A
cheap bulky food is cabbage.

[Sidenote: Repaid Cost]

Most of the rules of hygiene cost nothing to observe. But even when
hygiene is costly at first, the cost is usually repaid in the end many
times over. To ventilate a house in winter always costs a certain
additional expenditure for coal, but it is better to pay the coal bill
than the doctor's bills. To sleep out-of-doors costs some extra
blankets, bedding, clothing, and roll curtains, but these not only save
the cost of heating an indoor sleeping-room, but save also the cost of
ill-health. There is no better economy than to keep one's working-power.
To lose it means to lose its earnings and to have, in addition, the
heavy expenses of medical attendance, medicines, and nursing, and often
to lose life itself with its potential earnings of every sort. In short,
an unhygienic life, for the sake of economy, is "penny-wise and
pound-foolish."

[Sidenote: "I Have No Time"]

Many busy