“That’s so,” said Irv, this time sitting bolt upright. “I’ve heard that the big farmers all over the West keep tab on the price of meat and corn. If meat is high and corn low, they bring up all their hogs from the woods, fatten them on the corn and sell them. But if meat is low or corn high, they sell the corn.”
“And they know to the nicest fraction of a pound,” added Ed, “how much corn it takes to make a given amount of pork.”
“Well, even if we didn’t sell any corn at all to other nations,” said Phil, “I should think our crop would help them. We eat a great deal of it, and if we hadn’t it, we’d eat just so much wheat instead, and so we should have just that much less wheat to sell to them.”
“Exactly,” said Ed. “Every thing that feeds a man in any country leaves precisely that much more to feed other men with in other countries.”
“And what a lot it does take to feed a man!” exclaimed Will.
“Not so much as you probably imagine,” said Ed. “A robust man requires about a pound and a half of meat and a pound and a half of bread per day. Vegetables are simply substitutes for bread and cost about the same. Eggs, milk, etc., take the place of meat and cost less. So by reckoning on three pounds of food a day, half meat and half bread, or their equivalents, we find that a strong, healthy, hard-working man can be fed at a cost of about fifteen cents a day. The coarser and more nutritious parts of beef and mutton and good sound pork can be bought at retail at an average of eight cents a pound—often much less. The man’s meat, therefore, will cost him twelve cents a day or less. Good flour can be had at about two cents a pound. The man’s bread will, therefore, cost him about three cents a day, making the total cost of his food about fifteen cents a day, or less than fifty-five dollars a year.”
“But it costs something to cook it,” said Phil.
“Yes, but not much. I have calculated only the actual cost of the raw materials, but my figures are too high rather than too low, for corned beef and chuck steaks are often sold at retail as low as three or four cents a pound, and neck pieces, heads, hearts, livers, and kidneys even lower, while I have allowed eight cents a pound as an average price for all the meat that the man eats. Now, allowing for the cost of cooking and for unavoidable waste, I reckon that a strong, healthy American citizen can feed himself abundantly on less than seventy-five dollars a year.”
“But what if he can’t get the seventy-five dollars?” asked Will.
“In this country any man in tolerable health can get it easily. There is no excuse in this country for what somebody calls ‘the poverty that suffers,’ at any rate among people who have health. Why, one hundred dollars a year is a good deal less than thirty cents a day, and anybody can earn that.”