HOUSEKEEPING ON NOTHING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18888, 14 October 1929, Page 12

HOUSEKEEPING ON NOTHING.

A WOMAN’S PLIGHT IN RUSSIA. The woman took a huge bathing sheet from a drawer and spread it on her lap. “This,” she said reflectively, “means two sacks of potatoes, a pound or two of salt and a nice pat of butter. Well, that ought to last me at least three weeks.”

I stared at her, hardly knowing what she meant. A bathing-sheet turned into an equivalent of potatoes, butter and salt—was the woman mad ? No, merely an “unemployed” in a dole-less, bank-less country like Russia. She was bringing all her housewife’s faculties to cope with the difficult problem of how to keep house on nothing. Not exactly on nothing, though, for she had that bathing-sheet and a few other things apparently, but it was all a game of hazards. She might sell the sheet, and again she might not. Markets might ’'e opened or closed. Potatoes might rise in price, and so on. This example is typical of conditions in Russia. If you work, you get a little paper money and, perhaps, some sadly restricted rations which help to keep body and soul together. If you are a woman over, fifty, you are forbidden to work, and you receive no rations whatsoever. ' If you are quite alone, it is entirely “up to you” to on as best you can. My old friend was one of these. Her banking resources consisted of the sheet, a silk dress or two, a tiny sable “choker” and five silver spoons. Beyond tflese she had nothing. She had great hopes of her choker. “It ought to keep me through a whole winter," she confided. “They say sables have gone up, and mine is a particularly good fur.” When I went to see her again, the bathing sheet was gone and she was over her potatoes. As luck would have it, she still possessed a little •oven and she was thus able to bake her precious “spuds”. Her daily menu was as follows: Two x>otatoes for break-

fast, five large ones for dinner, and three for supper. Butter was kept for Sunday use only. When I her what she was going to do when there were no more things to barter, she just shrugged her thin shoulders. “The future is not ours; why worry?” Thousands of women lead a similar life to-day; some have fatherless children, who. doubtless, make them the more valorous in keeping “the little ones” from hunger. And they are mere weak women! INGEBORG STROM, i