The same dinners are furnished to the public to be eaten at their homes for nine and seven cents respectively, and usually contain enough food for two or three women, although Norwegians have stalwart appetites. The outdoor service is conducted in another part of the building, upon another street. The patrons procure tickets at an office and then form in line—men, women and children, each with a bucket or a basket, or both, in hand. Many tickets are given gratuitously, but it is impossible to distinguish the paying from the charity customers. Benevolent people throughout the city purchase bunches of tickets, which they give to the poor, and sometimes in lieu of wages. If you hire a man to clean up the yard, you can give him so much cash and so many meal tickets, or if a person appeals to you for relief, it is always better to give a ticket to the "Steam Kitchen" rather than money. Many customers buy two portions which they take home and warm up at meal time for the whole family.
In the center of a large room are rows of immense caldrons with coils of steam pipe embracing them. The air is filled with pungent odors from the bubbling soup, and clouds of steam rise from the other cook-pots. On a long table are pyramids of bread, cut into cubes three or four inches square, usually rye or black bread, such as the natives of Norway prefer. Along the walls are deep cupboards containing the linens, the culinary supplies and utensils. In an adjoining but detached building is a furnace and boiler-room which furnishes the steam, and beside it a laundry and dish-washing establishment. It requires a good many dishes to serve three thousand people even in a simple way. In an annex the finer qualities of beef, mutton, and other meats are cut off and sold to the public, thus utilizing all the supplies which are bought in large quantities, the beef by the carcass and the vegetables by the carload. The sausage of the "Steam Kitchen" is said to be the best to be found in Christiania. All kinds of prepared meats are also sold in this annex butcher shop. During the fruit season the company runs a canning department upstairs, preserving all kinds of fruits, jellies, pickles, and that sort of thing. At the baking department bread is sold to the general public at wholesale or retail, and small retail establishments are supplied with all kinds of groceries as well as meats and other edibles. Thus the restaurant is only part of this large business from which the company derives its profits. There is naturally a good deal of jealousy among the competing small dealers against the "Steam Kitchen," but it serves a benevolent purpose, and there is no disposition among its customers to question its business methods or reduce its profits. It has succeeded in abolishing the cheap restaurants such as are found in all large cities, at which wretched food, generally the scrapings from high-class hotels and eating-houses, is worked over and sold to the poor.
It is an interesting sight, this bucket brigade, that stands in line and passes slowly by the serving windows, which are attended by half a dozen brawny Norwegian women with bare arms and broad, good-natured-looking faces. They wear neat white aprons and caps, and handle the food with a dexterity that shows long experience. They seem to know most of the customers and carry on a familiar conversation with them while falling their orders. When a bucket and a ticket passes up, blue for a nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke or a few pleasant words.
Many of the customers are well dressed, according to the Norway standard, but no people in the world seem to care so little for their personal appearance, except on Sundays, when you can scarcely recognize men and women you have been familiar with during the week. On the day I ate at the restaurant, my cicerone pointed out at the dining table two professors of the University faculty, a lawyer in good standing, a photographer, and a sub-editor of one of the daily papers, who were his personal acquaintances. The remainder of the customers appeared to be professional men, clerks, bookkeepers, and a good many laborers, many of them coming for their dinner without having removed the traces of toil from their faces and hands. At one of the tables was a group of students inclined to be boisterous and evidently enjoying themselves. The "Steam Kitchen" is the favorite eating-place for the undergraduates, from four to five hundred being served every day.
Such an institution as the "Steam Kitchen" is especially suitable to a Norwegian city, where a portion of the population work for very small wages, the average income of the wage-earner being less than $100 a year—so small that, measured by the American standard, it would seem a difficult problem to find food, clothing, and shelter for a family.
Few Norwegians suffer from poverty or privation, even through the cold and gloomy winters that are eight months long. Our own people might die, or at least suffer seriously under the same circumstances, but the Norwegians are a hardy race. They have inherited the power of endurance and the ability to survive hunger and thirst and discomforts better than most races.
There are comparatively few poor in Sweden, probably fewer than in any other European country except Norway and Switzerland, because of the low cost of living, the sparse population, and the ability of all men and women to find work if they are willing to earn their own subsistence. Able-bodied paupers are compelled to work upon poor farms, but the aged, decrepit and invalids who are dependent upon public charity are kindly taken care of by what is called outdoor and indoor relief. In the cities are asylums and almshouses similar to those in the United States, but in the parishes, as a rule, the care of the poor is assigned to individual farmers and others who are willing to take care of them under contract, subject to the supervision of a board of guardians, of which the pastor is the chairman and the elders of the church are members. This has long been a practice in Sweden, but is not universal.
There are at present 5,277 relief establishments of all kinds in the kingdom, and the total contributions for the benefit of the poor amount to $3,000,000 annually, or on an average of 58 cents per capita of the entire population, an average of 44 cents in the country and $1.18 in the cities. This includes all poorhouses, asylums, hospitals, and other institutions for adults and children who can not take care of themselves.
A large part of the relief work in the cities is looked after by the Salvation Army under contract with the municipal authorities, but there are many institutions, hospitals, asylums, homes for the friendless and aged and for orphan children, supported by private charity. The free hospital for children in Stockholm is famous as one of the best equipped and managed institutions in the world.
The private charities in Stockholm are united for cooperation in an organization similar to those found in American cities, and all charitable institutions are subject to government supervision.[l]