MONEY SQUANDERED IN SUBTLE FOODS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13847, 28 August 1919, Page 2

MONEY SQUANDERED IN SUBTLE FOODS.

(\\y Edgar Wallace.) flue agricultural district is vcry like another, but the farm workers of the midlands are reputedly more ■ thriftv than their fellows in the south. , With what horror and indignation ! must these simple sons of the soil be I regarding the woeful extravagance of the towns '. Cut off from the tempt a- i tion of spending by the .very isolation | of their lives and their remoteness - from the lure of plate-glass windows, one expects to find substantial evi- ] deuce of prosperity. There is evi- , denee of prosperity, but it is not sub- ] stnntial. Tlie ftirm laborer has been ( earning big mouey. J "He gets from £.2 to £.2 -Is a j week," said a Northamptonshire far- | •:ner. "Ho lives in a cottage, the rent j of which seldom exceeds 7s Gd. lie t raises his own vegetables, and the bacon shortage never wories him, be- ' cause he breeds his own pigs. Butthe £2 -Is does'not represent his income. Throughout the war his wife has been earning money, and if lie has two or three children under military age they have been bringing in from £1 to 30s each every week."

So that, in every way the position of the farm laborer has been better than "that of the townsman. His wife has not had to stand in a queue even for her meat, which has been delivered by carts from ihe nearest, town. Though she has given up the habit, of making bread herself, and has been buying her loaves, they also have come by cart and been delivered at her door, even in the days of bread shortage.

I went into one or two cottages, but thev were not the cottages of.oklon times. One of litem had a -hind and the most of .them had gramophones. The wife sincl the family were sprucely dressed (T noticed that- one" of the children had natent leather !shoes), and at a cottage that I visited later in the day'l found the head of, the family sitting- outside the door practising on a brand new guitar.

"The agricultural.laborer's extravagance has run in the lines of music and food." said a schoolmaster, who is a student of local sociological conditions.

• ''lf you inquire throughout the country vou will discover that there has been a perfect orgy, of feeding amon»- the beef-fed. people in England. I have seen a farm laborer's wife who had everything that would satisfy you or me—from chickens to asparagus—on her own holding* spend 30s on a Saturday night- in tinned food. One of the big stores in this neighborhood sold twelve glass, pots of prawns in aspic on one Saturday night. Anything fantastic or expensive will attract the woman buyer. Women with asparagus in theiV own garden buy tinried asparagus by the hunderd.weight. You can say that two-thirds of the extravagance in country districts is in fanev tinned foods."

A few inquiries substantiated the truth of this extraordinary state of affairs, and I have also had an opportunity of consulting a big. west of England farmer, who says that exactly the same sort of thino- is going on throughout Somerset and Devon. "Tinned lobster, tinned salmon, tinned tongue /especially tinned tongueV fill the shelves of the. country stores and find a ready sale," he said. ; "If you could stop the carts that are going, out of the market towns on Saturday afternoon on their way back to the various villages you would discover that tinned stuff forms the bulk of the provisions that- are being carried: back.

. "It is; also true that gramophones and gramophone records are finding their way into the cottages, and I

know for a fact: that.then I laborer who. like us farmers I !.!•>• money out of the win I saved a cent. A laborer! 'made over £SOO with the I familv in additional wu.uie past three years, and I offi bit of land at a price' .n thought he would jump. "lie told me (bat he wns ! to have a good 'time til'tei I and tkat he could nol iiffi ' land because of the liish j would have to pay for hb I it !"