For the five persons, ten dollars a week for raw-food
materials and five for its preparation is the lowest limit likely to be
cheerfully submitted to.
Rent, heat, light, etc..................... $400
Food....................................... 800
Clothing hardly less than.................. 400
Children's education, even with free
schools, and their illnesses will use up. 100
Car-fares, church, etc..................... 100
Wages and sundries......................... 200
------
Total..................................... $2000
In the bank nothing.
But what shelter can this refined, intelligent family find to-day for
$400? Certainly nothing with modern conveniences. The lack of these is
_made up by women's work_--hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the
servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more families do not go into
the country to live. The work required in an old house to bring living up
to modern standards is too appalling to be undertaken lightly.
In England the Sunlight Park and other plans, in America the Dayton and
Cincinnati schemes, are samples of what is being done for the $500 to $800
family, but where are the examples (outside the Morris houses) for the
salaried class for whom we are pleading? The great army of would-be
home-makers are forced into a nomadic life by the exigencies resulting
from the great combines--a shifting of offices, a closing of factories, a
breaking up of hundreds of homes.
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