THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP
LETTERS, COMMENTS AND CONFESSIONS FROM READERS OF THE MAGAZINE
THE RISE IN THE COST OF LIVING
(This letter is from a woman who is connected with a prominent college in the middle west)
WE are a college community. The population of our town numbers about five thousand, which is swelled during the school year by some seventeen hundred students. There is little business done here except that which sup- plies the needs of the residents. Hence, no one grows rich. Neither do rich people come here to livCi although occasionally some one whose worldly possessions are estimated in six figures drops down among us for a year or two.
Accordinglyi there is much more uni- formity here in the matter of incomes than in most towns of the same size. The col- lege professors have for the last twenty years had a salary of $1600 a year, which after ten years' service is increased to $1800.[1] Probably there are few business men whose incomes are much larger; therefore, in material ways the college people seem as prosperous as any portion of the community.
Salaries and the Price of Food
But a curious problem in economics is presenting itself among us during the last few years. The income of a large number of families whose heads are members of the college faculty is, as I have already stated, the same that it has been for about twenty years. The cost of living, however, has ad- vanced greatly of late years, while at the same time the standard of living has be- come more expensive than formerly. Within the last ten years, for example, rents have advanced considerably, although the increase is not so noticeable as in some other items of family expenses. Hard coal which used to seem high enough at $5 or $5.25 a ton now ranges from $6 to $7 a ton. Soft coal and wood have followed it in its upward flight. Such staples of family con- sumption as meat, milk, butter, eggs, fruits and vegetables have all taken on prices which make one sigh for the old day of cheap and lavish living. No more shall we have recipes for cake demanding one hundred and eight eggs as in the days of our grandmothers. We have fallen upon a time when the economical housewife is forced even in midsummer to consider whether two eggs and a little cornstarch will not make as good a custard as four eggs.
It is hard alike on your pocket-book and your feelings to have your roasts and por- terhouse steaks cost a fourth more than they did five years ago, and to pay in the height of the strawbeny season fourteen or fifteen cents a quart, where you used to pay from eight to ten. Still worse is it, when you have been accustomed in the fall of the year to store a goodly supply of apples in your cellar, at a price of from twenty-five to fifty cents a bushel, to have that old reliable fruit suddenly emulate the orange in price, as it has for the last three years, and be re- duced to buying it by the half peck or even by the dozen. You fed as if an old friend had deserted you. The worst shock to one's feelings, however, is the conduct of that festive bird, the turkey, which has leaped from fourteen or fifteen cents a pound to twenty-two cents during the last two sea- sons. To have the turkey take on airs and attempt to class itself with terrapin as out of the reach of ordinary mortals is a blow aimed directly at the happiness of humanity. The same ambition to rise is showing 554
- ↑ The salary is now $1800 a year, which after 10 years' service is increased to $3000.
