The True Cost of a Working Family's Survival

You hear a whole lot of bosh about the workingman being responsible for his own poverty 'because he blows his money for booze.' Out of a dark recess in a distorted brain an Eastern student of economics evolves the theory that American housewives are responsible for the high cost of living. Isn't it funny that none of these wiseacres ever thought that perhaps the workingmen needed more wages? There are thousands of families who never know what it means to have luxuries. Among the letters received by Mayor Pratt on the cost of living is one from a woman whose husband works in the city for $2.75 a day. He worked 260 days last year, receiving $715. They pay $10 a month on a house, $34 monthly for groceries, $18 for water, $50 for fuel, and $26 for carfare. Aside from that, they spent $21 on doctor bills and $30 on home improvements. With eight in the family—five children and an aged mother—they are left with almost nothing to clothe the children or provide medical care for their daughter's eye-strain and dental needs. She asks if the chamber of commerce or city council would consider themselves well-off if their best suit of clothes was a pair of overalls.