CHEAP LIVING.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13596, 16 May 1908, Page 3

CHEAP LIVING.

ONE SHILLING PER DAY.

AT AX AMERICAN UNIVERSITY.

The problem of living r.6*m> to have been solved by the Valparaiso University, a private* educational institution in Indiana. The University has a teaching staff of 162 prokfitsors and lecturers and 5000 students. Mr. Geo. Keennn, who gives an account of the Valparaiso system in McChtre's Magazine, claims that his little known establishment is able ta hoard and lodge its students in comfort for a shilling a day. It gives the student an abundant well-cooked and wellserved dinner for ten-cents, a breakfast for four cents, a supper for four cents, and a good bed in a single furnished room for five sents; the total cost is thus twenty-three cents, or rather lew than one shilling. Meals are served on a neat linen-covered, flower-decorated table, in. a warm well-ventilated hall, and the cost includes not only the cooking, lights fuel and service, but also laundry work, breakage, depreciation of plant, and interest on capital invested. A typical twopenny breakfast includes apples and eauce. baked potatoes, bread and two kinds of rolled «>ats. coffee, sugar, milk, and butterine. Everything is unlimited in quantity, and the menu is varied as much as possible from day to day and season to -eason. When eggs are cheap they are substituted for potatoes or rolled oats, and when strawberries-are in the market they take the place of apples. Xow and then ham and eggs are served, while Tolled oats and apples are omitted. Butterine is used instead of creamery butter at seasons of the year when the latter is very expensive. The University is able to charge low prices partly by good management and ]>artly by buying foodstuffs direct from the producers. It. knows what the demands will be for months ahead, and there is therefore a very small percentage of waste. It pays twopence a gallon for thirty thousand gallons of milk a year. Vegetables are grown largely in the University grounds, but quantities of fruit, fresh and preserved are bought. There are no middle-man's profits to be paid. Mr. Keenan quotes the average cast of feeding the prisoners in American gaols as eight pence per head per day. and. considering the abundance and variety of the fare provided, the Valparaiso management must be even more efficient and economical than is that of the prisoners.