HOW TO MAKE ENDS MEET

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3161, 13 August 1917, Page 3

HOW TO MAKE ENDS MEET

THE WOMAN'S PROBLEM. Tho big problem with which the woman of Australia to-day is confronted, and with which eflio must straggle until long after the cessation of tho war, is tho adjustment of hor income to the increasing domands made upon it by tho high price placed upon every article in uaily household consumption (states a writor in tho Sydney 'telegraph"). Even now these prices havo soared to an alarming hoiglit, and tho woman who a littlo ■time ago cotiJd manage to make ends meot .with, a certain amount of comfort, is finding the task a difficult one without leaving here and there a few very bare patches. And prices will continue to soar. Labour, which is scarce enough now, will becomo scarcer as more men leave by tie transports and women become absorbed in industrial occupations; importation will be.less certain; taxes will become more and more burdensome, and altogether tho snug little income which made fife agreeably smooth will be quite inadequate to cover the needs of its recipients. This is the problem winch every woman must solve individually, and whoso only solution is efficiency and economy— learning the real meaning of thrift, and stretching it to its farthest limits. Tho time for wasteful housekeeping is past — and how wasteful the Australian housekeeper has been she will only realise when she looks back and compares her pre-war housekeeping methods with those which she will be forced to use as wartime and post-war i,ee»ssvty. She must learn to do more with what she has, and to do with much less than she has been used to; to run her household on business, lines; to watch for leakages, and see that s'ho gets the best results from her outlay of money. This does not mean that she should deprive her family'of necessary nourishment, but that she must study food values more thoroughly, and see how much that is nourishing and wholesome she can get for the smallest amount of money; the best substitutes for the foods to which she has been used and which have become prohibitive, so that under the new economic. regime hor household health will be kept at par. . Last year the waste of food in America was computed at a value of 700,000,000 dollars, and tho United States Department of Agriculture is now making an attempt to mobilise American women in a fight against waste of food. C4erMany, to a very large extent, owes her survival to tho willingness and ability of her people to cut out waste of food, and to make every ounce count. French and English women are considering the food and clothes problem as a very serious question, and are "making over," and themselves and their children wearing their frocks whilo mending and renovation can make them hold together. What they "want" is no longer a consideration; only what they "need," and what can be made to do.

It would he interesting and no doubt illuminative to learn what the food wastage in Australia has been. So lar, the Australian woman has not come to grips with necessity. She has begun to feel its effects in a vague bind of way, but the actual stress of it lias_ not yet been severely felt. But it is time now that she woke up and set_ herself to straightening out tho rapidly growing problem. It will be a good experience for her, this national necessity for thrift and economy, and will doubtless supply to the Australian character just that leaven of .proportion and balance of which it stands <o badly in need. TTj> to now we have been an irresponsible people. taking the good things life offered without question and as our right; but this war has brought home many lessons to us, not the least valuable of whicn will ho tho real place real thrift and economy should hold in a country's conduct.