"FEEDING-THE-FAMILY" CLUB
Women are waking up to the fact that upon their shoulders rests the responsibility of having a healthier nation. Too many people are dying of avoidable diseases. Rich foods have taken more toll of life than war and pestilence, dietitions tell us. More and more stress is being placed upon diet—not for the sick only, but for those in good health, that they may preserve it. By diet we mean the proper combinations of foods and the scientific uses of vitamines, starches, proteins and acids. What we need is more than a reading acquaintance with those subjects.
A certain group of women in Long Beach, Calif., have decided that the acquisition of knowledge concerning food properties is the only way to better living for their families. They have grouped together under the name of the "Feeding-the-Family" Club, and, under the leadership of the head of the department of domestic science of the public schools, they meet on Wednesday evening each week for two hours to learn how to prepare healthful, nourishing meals for the average family. There are sixteen women in the group, representing fifty-six persons, most of whom are children in school. Think what it means to those children to have mothers who are vitally interested in seeing them grow up to be strong, virile men and women. "Knowledge makes Power," aye, the knowledge of the mothers of today makes for the powerful citizens of tomorrow.
R. C. C.
DO YOUR OWN WORK AND SAVE
MONEY
If you are one of the people who are "sick unto death" of these thrift articles and are utterly weary of reading how to clean your porcelain gas-stove and keep your electric washer in repair.
The magazines are so full of helpful hints to the $5,000 and upwards class, that it seems as though a mere person like myself might inquire, "How about poor us? Won't somebody write something for us? How can we, who make up most of the world, live within our incomes?"
As nobody has responded as yet, I am going to tell how we manage and, possibly, some one else may be helped thereby.
Six years ago, when my husband and I awoke from our honeymoon trance, we found ourselves in California, strangers in a lone land, penniless and jobless. My husband was blessed with neither college education nor profession, but we were both young and undaunted—therefore we pulled through. We rented an apartment, furnished, at $15 per month and buckled in. I might say that the rent didn't have to be paid in advance or we wouldn't have moved in. My soul mate—otherwise husband—worked as a truckman, a taxi driver, a cement lamp-post worker, a chauffeur, a night watchman, a salesman, a cook and a dish-washer. In five years we moved twenty different times, an average of once every three months (not because we wished to skip our rent, but because my husband found jobs in so many different parts of the city).
The end of the sixth year has found us located, at last. We get $150 per month and live on that alone. We are buying our own home, a flivver stands in the garage, our house is nicely furnished (a good deal of the furniture we have made ourselves) and we dress and live respectably. I do all my own cooking, washing, ironing, sewing, cleaning, baking and gardening, with a little writing thrown in as a spare-time occupation. No electric machine, $300 gas stove, $700 bedroom set, nor blue-goose stenciled kitchen yet graces our home. No little tea-wagon runs our food to the table. We don't lay by 35 cents in one envelope, $1.25 for electricity in another, nor 63 cents per week for meat in another. We merely save a small portion each month. First, toward our home and the rest we spend or save as we see fit. Our twenty chickens help out a little in meat and eggs, but one whole year passed by before we bought linoleum for kitchen or bath-room. At present we are working on a $7 second-hand writing desk with varnish remover and putty knife and in the end we shall have a very modern, pretty, little, fumed-oak desk for one-seventh the cost of a new one.
So, Ladies, get in and do your own work. Forget the servant problem and the money question. Make things yourselves and see how much fun there is in Life. Don't be afraid to soil your hands—cold cream will fix them. Get as much fun out of each day as possible.
H. W. P.
SOME HOMELY THANKSGIVING VEGETABLES