“Oh, it’s done by the Kimbells. My husband says it’s a very clever way to bring women into the store. And you just want to buy everything the doctors and the lecturers tell you about.”
The brisk-looking leader had mounted the platform. An expectant hush fell upon the audience.
“Yesterday afternoon, when I announced the subject of to-day’s lecture, ‘What Do You Do With Father’s Money?’ a good many of you laughed. Some of you shook your heads, because you know how hard it is to make father’s money go around. And one reason why it is so hard to stretch the family income is this: You don’t know what you are getting for the money you spend,—how much nourishment it contains, if it is for food; how long it will wear, if it is clothing. You take a chance. You guess. But you don’t know. And because you don’t know, quite a little of father’s money goes to waste.
“Now, this isn’t your fault. It is because economic and domestic conditions have changed or progressed, but the training of women has not changed nor progressed in the same way. We are still trying to economize by concocting dishes out of left-overs in the refrigerator, and turning and dyeing clothes, when it is far more important that we should know the true value of food and fabrics when we buy them.
“A few generations back, your ancestors and mine, both husbands and wives, raised together in the field, the pasture and the garden, most of the foodstuffs required for the family. And in the great kitchen were woven most of the fabrics required for clothing the family. What could not be raised on the land or made in the home was traded for at the country store. Quite generally, these negotiations were conducted by the men of the family. The women knew how much sugar would be brought home for each dozen of eggs, how many pounds of butter they must send to the store for a pair of shoes.
“Then farms were cut up into towns, towns were swallowed by cities and the family loom disappeared before the advancing factory. The daughter of the woman who had dried apples, cherries and corn on the tin roof of her lean-to kitchen served at her table the product of canneries. And everybody whose ancestors had traded butter and eggs and cheese and smoke-house ham for drygoods had money to spend instead. Some of them had a great deal of money—more than was good for them. The country passed through a period of prosperity and suddenly acquired wealth, but nobody thought to teach this new generation of women the value of money or how to spend it to best advantage. No one even realized that while extravagant habits were gripping American women, nobody warned them concerning the lean days that would come with financial panic, and nobody observed the quiet but steady increase in the cost of living.
“Then the deluge! Greedy corporations cornered food supplies. The high cost of living became a bitter reality. And behold, press and public bewailing the extravagance of the American woman and comparing her unfavorably with her housewifely sisters across the sea!
“This is unjust. Give the American woman lessons in thrift along the modern lines of income and expenditure, and she will work out her splendid salvation. Throw light on food values, on fabrics and their adulteration. Teach the woman how to buy as well as how to utilize what she buys, and she will be able to solve, in her own way, the much discussed problem of the high cost of living. She will know what to do with father’s money.
“It is not possible in one short afternoon to discuss food values and modern methods of marketing, but when you have heard what these ladies and gentlemen have to say,” indicating the buyers in charge of their respective exhibits, “you will realize what you can save by knowing more about what you buy. I take pleasure in introducing Mr. Jones, the linen buyer.”
Mr. Jones, an elderly man, took his place beside a table piled high with towels, table and bed linen.