TRIFLES THAT COST MILLIONS.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15752, 20 November 1916, Page 9

TRIFLES THAT COST MILLIONS.

SOME POSSIBLE ECONOMIES. A very economical contributor to a London paper writes:— "Walking down Fleet street, I found that of every hundred of my steps seven were taken to get out of the way of people walking on the wrong side = —they kept tp the rigiit instead of tho left—-and one was taken to pass round groups standing in obstructive positions. In Ivingswav's wid'o footpaths tho divergences from my straight course wcro fewer, in the Strand they were more numerous: in streets frequented bv strolling women, such as liegent and Oxford streets, much more numerous.

Striking an average, pe r cent, of my steps were wasted in this way, consequently 5 per cent, of nW time spent in walking was also wanted, and 5 per cent, of my boot leather was worn ous unnecessarily. Thus, as I take 120 steps to the minute and walk for al>out three hours per day, I take 330.000 unnecessary steps in a year, and waste 45 hours of time. Assuming that only one million people are incommoded in the same way, the waste amounts to 45,000,000 hours per annum, which at ninepence an hour equals £562,500 in value. GRAVEL PATHS AND BOOT WEAR. But as time is an intangible thing I confine my calculation to loss by unnecessary wear of leather, a very "precious article just now. Boots, with repairs, cost Jno about £2 10s ji year. My, loss in leather by having to get out of" the way of people walking 011 the wrong side is therefore 2s 6d. Say that for the million poople in London it averages only two shillings, and we get a total lossof £100,000. This is worth saving, and it could be saved if the Chief Commissioner would cnforce the rule of the road for pedestrians instead •oF leaving it to individual discretion.

But there is moro waste of leather that could bo prosent-cd. A bootmaker of experience agrees with my computation that from 7 to 10 per cent, of wear of boot leather throughout the country is due to the cutting effect of gravel on the footpaths. IThje amounts to something between £2,000,000 and £4,000,000 for about forty million people. Now gravel is mot necessary on most of the footpaths, and. would not be required at all if they were as compactly constructed as the roadways. It is most unnecessary just at that timo when it is put on or raked up, namely, tho dry spring and summer months. If the gravel were removed from the country footpaths, and. also from the walks in public parks, and if these were constructed as solidly as the car-riage-ways, we shonld save at least £2,000,000 per annum in boot leather and greatly reduce the number of running down accidents, many of which are caused by the fact that in suburbs and tho country, people walk on the roadway for greater comfort.

OULT OF THE BRIGHT BUTTON. To jump to a matter of » very different nature, how much time do our five million soldiers spend in polishing their brass buttons? One of them tells me it takes at least ten minutes per day. For five million men this means over 830,000 hours, or more than 100,000 working days. Multiply that by 365 working days, and you get an expenditure of 36.500,000 working days per annum in polishing brass buttons! A soldiers' time must be worth at least five shillings a day, and thus the cost of polishing buttons is more than £9,000,000 a year in time, to say nothing of cost of material.

What the cost of the buttons is I do not know, but a tailor tells mo that a saving per man of 2s a year could be effected by substituting cheaper buttons; an aggregate saving on five million men of £500,000. This money could be better expended in supplying artificial limbs, to wounded soldiers, or in starting disabled men in moneyearning occupations.

Civilian waste on buttons is even of larger amount. ' To be strictly fashionable a man's coat must have two or buttons on each sleeve, with but-ton-holes, real o«- sham. These are an interesting survival of remote times when coat-sleeves were worn so tight that buttoning and unbuttoning was necessary. They have been useless for perhaps more than a hundred sears, but because ancient tailors sewed" them on for a purpose modern tailors continue the practice, now purposeless.

If about 32,000,000 men's coats are mads annually, the number of useless buttons attached is over 48,000.000, which, at fourpence a dozen, constitute | a wasto of £66,600. raised to at least I £150,000 by the addition of the cost of j labour in sewing on and making the I buttonholes. | WASTE IX DRESS MATERIAL. | "Women wear far more useless but- | tons than men on dresses, coats, gloves, I etc., and by reasonable economy they conf'l reduco the expenditure by £500,000. Our waste in dress material is enormous. Sometimes fashion orders that coats, trousers, skirts, blouses. I etc., shall be worn extremely tight: at other times most unnecessarily loose. Tightness or looseness is therefore a ! question not of comfort, but of tem- j porary custom. The comfortable j medium would be tho sensible plan to adopt, and it would save enormous i sums of money. j For example, suppose that one yard of material could be saved in the whole of a man's clothes each year, and three ; yards in a woman's outer dress, then j the aggregate for the whole population would not be less than 18.000,000 yards , for men and 54.000.ci00 yards for women. Pricing this material at an ■ average of five shillings a yard for men : and one shilling for women, the saving i would amount of £7,200,000. j In the amount of material used for ' collars, ties, shirts, gloves, and all other miscellaneous wear a saving could be effected which we may estimate at 5s per head for forty million people, i giving a total of £10,000,000. WROXGL Y-SHAPED BOTTLES. Thero are hundreds of other articles' where economy of material could be effected without any loss of usefulness, but I have spaco to refer to only ono more —naipteJy,, bottles. At present.wo

have a great scarcity of glass, and vet bottles are shaped in the least economical manner. The taller a bottle is in proportion to its girth, the greater quantity of glass does it require tA hold a given* amount of liquid. For example, a flat-sided tall bottle measuring 1-i inches high with sidc,s 3 inches wide would contain 126 cubic inches of liquid, a short, broad bottle measuring o inches high, with sides ."> inches wide, would hold just about the sams amount—l2o cubic inches. But the glass required fop the former would amount to IS6 square inches, while that for the latter would be only 100 square inches. By making bottles of a shape to hold the largest quantity for a given amount of material we could save a very large sum now wanted in glass. The saitie applies, of course, to iron, tin, and wood receptacles. These few examples show what an immense economy jcould be cfTccte<l in scores of ways if 'we would apply our reason and intelligence to the question. insroad of allowing ourselves to be dominated by the lesser intelligence of former generations, and continuing to do as they did. —M.