Adventures in Thrift/Chapter 3
MR. LARRY, settling his stalwart shoulders into his overcoat, stopped and looked down with a smile at the pink-tipped finger peeping through the buttonhole in his left-hand lapel. He had come to recognize certain wifely signs. Mrs. Larry's finger attached to this particular buttonhole indicated that Mrs. Larry's gray matter was twisting itself into an interrogation point.
"Well?" he prompted.
"Um-m!" she murmured; then, with sudden accession of courage: "Larry, when you went to South Bethlehem looking for a new foundry to buy castings, what did the old man say?"
"The old man?" echoed Mr. Larry.
"Yes, the man where you had been buying them before. Didn't he want you to keep right on buying from him? Didn't he say anything?"
"Did he? Why, as soon as he heard we were dickering with new people, he had half a dozen of his best men camping on our trail, cutting prices. That's the game—play one concern against the other."
"Thank you, dear," murmured Mrs. Larry, with a far-away look in her eye.
Mr. Larry caught the pink-tipped finger as it slipped from the mooring in his buttonhole.
"What's up, sweetheart? Been hearing a lecture on 'Every Wife Her Husband's Partner'? Going into business?"
"That's just it, Larry, I am your partner, and I ought to make a business of it."
Mr. Larry drew her close, looking a trifle anxious.
"I don't want you any different. I love you just as you are."
"Yes, but you might love me better"
"I couldn't."
"Yes, you could—if I were a better manager. Larry, we eat too much. I mean, I don't market efficiently."
Her husband groaned.
"I don't want an efficient wife, the kind that counts her steps and moves, and has charts and signs hanging all over the house."
"I'm not going to do any of those things; but I do want to buy for our home as closely as you buy for your firm. I'm afraid that Mr. Dahlgren, my butcher, is overcharging me. I've bought meat there, and vegetables and fruit ever since we moved into this apartment; we've paid him hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and—well, I think I ought to talk to him."
Mr. Larry kissed the pink finger-tip, and several more, before he answered.
"Before you make any statements about his overcharging, you must know the prices elsewhere."
"Oh, I do," and she held up a sheet of paper covered with figures, some newspaper clippings and a Housewives' Marketing Guide of the current week. "I got these at the Housewives' League meeting."
The clock in the living-room struck the half hour and Mr. Larry reached for his hat.
"That's right—you hand it to the old boy, straight—and tell me about it to-night."
When the door had closed on Mr. Larry, his wife tripped to the telephone and called up Claire.
"I'm going to have it out with my butcher," she announced very firmly. "If you've remembered anything that I've forgotten, now's your chance to help me."
"I'll be over in half an hour," answered Claire briskly. "Mother wants me to answer some invitations for her, and then I'll be free for the morning. It's dear of you to take me on your adventures. By-by."
Mrs. Larry stood looking at the now silent telephone. Certainly Claire was taking the thing splendidly. If only Jimmy knew what was going on! Yes, decidedly, Jimmy ought to know. Having settled this matter to her satisfaction, Mrs. Larry proceeded to act with characteristic promptness. She took her pen in hand—
"Dear Jimmy:
"Clearing out a drawer this morning, I came upon the program of the Monday Night Dance. Didn't we have a wonderful time? If you are as good a lawyer as you are a dancer, you'll be famous before long.
"So sorry you did not have dinner with us before you left. You must never treat us that way again.
"Can't write any more, because I am going over to my butcher's to take my second lesson in reducing the high cost of living. Claire is going with me. Of course, she'll write and tell you all about our adventures in thrift. I suppose we'll have some wild experiences. But when you really, truly love a man, you don't mind what you go through for him. Not even if this means stalking that ogre, 'High Prices,' to its darkest lair."
She sealed and stamped the envelope with an affectionate little pat.
"It's just as well not to take any chances on some catty Kansas City girl discovering that Jimmy's heart has had a wound that she might heal. I've heard a lot of strange things about the way a man's heart acts on the rebound."
Nevertheless, she was very careful not to allow Claire to see the address on the letter, which she mailed in the first box they passed.
When Mrs. Larry, armed with market quotations, entered the Dahlgren market, with its glittering marble slabs, its white-coated cutters, and its generally up-to-the-minute air, she felt a sudden sinking in the region of her heart. "Jud," the rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed cutter, who always took her order, came forward, book in hand.
"What is it this morning?"
"A roast of beef"
"Two ribs or three?" he suggested, already writing the order.
"I think I'd like to see it."
"Certainly. Bill, let me have that prime rib, rolled. No, the other cut."
A helper produced a roast, beautifully rolled, all crimson flesh, flecked with rich, creamy-white fat. Jud tossed it on the scales, and in a flash had it off again.
"Not quite eight pounds—two dollars and thirty-two cents. Can't be beat for slicing down cold. Anything else?" he added. "We have an unusually fine pair of sweetbreads to-day. Some chops for lunch?"
Mrs. Larry was doing mental arithmetic. Claire had been using her pencil. "Two-thirty-two— That's thirty cents a pound."
"What cut is that?" Mrs. Larry asked, with a fine assumption of firmness and indicating the rolled roast, which Jud had tossed into the basket, as if the sale were made.
"That?" echoed the wondering cutter. "That's a Delmonico roast—fancy."
"Haven't you—haven't you a third or fourth rib roast, something cheaper than this?"
"Well, of course, I can give you any cut you want," said the amazed attendant, accustomed to filling unqualified telephone orders. "But I'd advise you to take this—no waste."
Mrs. Larry looked up from her quotations.
"The second cut is only twenty-one cents a pound, to-day. I'll take that."
"Certainly," acquiesced Jud; "but you won't find much saving in that piece, what with bones and tailings." He had flung another roast, unrolled, on the scales. "Seven pounds—one dollar and sixty cents. Mebbe you'd rather have three ribs than two?"
Again Claire's pencil moved to the rhythm of figures.
"If it's twenty-one cents a pound, it ought to be only one dollar and forty-seven cents."
"This cut is twenty-three cents a pound."
"But the market quotations say twenty-one cents," murmured Mrs. Larry.
Jud's good-humored face clouded. Here was an experience practically unheard of in the Dahlgren market, and plainly beyond his jurisdiction.
"I guess you'd better talk to the boss."
Mr. Dahlgren stepped forward solicitously.
"Nothing wrong, I hope?"
Mrs. Larry felt her color rising. The few women in the market, like herself, were well-groomed, well-tailored. They turned and stared at her and Claire. Price-haggling in a shop of this class suddenly seemed cheap and common. And yet she was determined to put into practise the lessons in meat buying she had learned at the Monday morning meeting of the Housewives' League.
"I don't quite understand why this cut, the third and fourth ribs, is twenty-three cents a pound when the Housewives' League price says twenty-one cents," she explained, proffering Mr. Dahlgren the printed sheet.
The butcher's shrewd experienced glance swept the line of quotations.
"Ah—hem—yes, I see. U'm—Quite so. Twenty-one cents to twenty-three. That's right. Twenty-three cents—and that's what we're charging you."
"But," murmured Mrs. Larry, trying to look severe, "why do you charge me the top price instead of the bottom one? I am a regular customer. I pay my bill weekly, which is as good as cash, my husband says." Being launched, she felt quite courageous. Surely this was the way Larry would talk to competing firms!
"I have been marketing here for three years and have paid you hundreds of dollars."
"I appreciate all that," said Mr. Dahlgren good-naturedly, "and I want to hold your trade; but we do not carry the twenty-one-cent grade. See?"
Decidedly Mrs. Larry did not "see," and her puzzled face betrayed the fact.
"The difference between twenty-three cents and twenty-one cents does not represent the whim of the butcher, Mrs. Hall, but the grade of the beef sold, and I might say, also the expenses of store management—what your husband would call overhead expenses. This particular roast, cut from the Argentine beef mentioned in your Marketing Guide, could be sold by some butchers at twenty-one cents a pound, because the Argentine beef wholesales at ten to ten and a half a pound. But I handle only fancy, native, stall-fed beef, which wholesales from fourteen and a half to fifteen and a half cents per pound. Our prices here are regulated by what I pay, which is always top notch for selected meats, and by the expense of running the shop. Cleanliness, modern equipment, highly paid clerks, good telephone and delivery service all come high. Then, of course, in a shop like this heavy accounts are carried"
"Oh—then I pay not only for the meat I buy, but must make up your losses from charge customers who do not pay. I really gain nothing by paying my bill weekly."
A great light illuminated Mrs. Larry's marketing vision. Mr. Dahlgren looked uncomfortable.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mrs. Hall; but the sort of custom I have, what we call A-1 charge trade, demands the best"
"It can," asserted Mrs. Larry significantly, "if it does not pay."
"I can't offer you seconds in meat, poultry or vegetables. Now, take this lettuce"
He picked out a head of choice lettuce and pulled the leaves apart.
"See? Not a withered leaf, not a single leaf you could not serve on your table. Fifteen cents. Well, you can go to the dago stand round the corner and buy lettuce for eight or ten cents. My lettuce you have charged and delivered in clean baskets, by clean, respectful delivery boys, and you'll have enough for two salads. The Italian sells you lettuce that is withered on the outside from long standing in his hot cellar, or small heads from which all the outside leaves are stripped. You pay cash, the lettuce is dusty, it is delivered by a dirty little ragamuffin who ought to be in school, and you get one salad as against two from the head bought here.
"Same way with those meat quotations. I went down to hear that lecture. I sort of felt some of my customers would be there. The man who gave what you called your meat demonstration is one of the biggest dealers in this city. He wholesales as well as retails. He does not carry a single retail charge account. He would not give credit to a woman who had traded with him ten years. Every sale is a cash transaction—no waiting, no chance of loss. Of course, he can undersell a man like me. I don't pretend to compete with him. You can go to his market—across town—or you can order by telephone or postal card, and he will give you good meat, not fancy grades like I carry for my exclusive trade, but good meat, and you will save money. His rent is less than mine and he pays smaller wages. I am not knocking his meat; but I will say that if you take his roast at twenty-one cents a pound and mine at twenty-three cents a pound, and treat them exactly the same way, you'll be able to tell the difference. It's in the flavor and the tenderness and the juiciness, and of the twenty-one-cent roast Mr. Hall will probably say: 'Roast a little dry and flat to-night, isn't it?'"
"Then this Marketing Guide is really no guide at all?" sighed Mrs. Larry, suddenly recalling that she had meant to clean the baby's white coat this morning, and here she was spending precious minutes unlearning what she thought she had learned so well.
"Oh, yes, it is—if you know how to use it. Take this one item alone. 'The market is flooded with Florida oranges and grapefruit.' That's your chance to lay in a supply of both fruits while the wholesale prices are down. 'Cranberry shipments are heavy and market glutted.' That's true, too. Cranberries have sold a few weeks back for twelve cents a quart. I am selling now for nine. It would pay you to make up some jelly and set it aside, or, if you have a cool place, you can keep the raw berries just as well as we can. Just now the manufacturers of bacon are cutting prices—they are overloaded. I can save you three cents a jar if you want to buy a quantity and stock up. Next week it may be back to the old price."
"And these prices change all the time, like this? Why haven't you told me such things before?"
"Well," said the butcher, trying hard not to smile, "you never asked me. You usually order by phone, and—"
"You can send me the roast—the second cut at twenty-three cents—five quarts of cranberries and a dozen jars of bacon," said Mrs. Larry out loud. Inwardly she calculated: "Fifteen cents saved on cranberries, thirty-six on bacon. Every penny cut off what it might have been, saves just a little bit more."
Safely back on the sunlit street, Mrs. Larry and Claire glanced at each other. The faces of both were a trifle flushed.
"I've had more agreeable experiences," commented Mrs. Larry, with a wry smile.
"I don't care what happens," said Claire, looking straight ahead, "I'm going to win out in this game. It means everything to me."
Whereat Mrs. Larry felt an inward glow. She hadn't made any mistake in writing to Jimmy Graves.
"If you feel that way about it, I'll telephone you my plans every day."
"Do," said Claire, as she hurried away.
Frequently, when Mrs. Larry discoursed on the happenings of the day to her husband, she felt that Mr. Larry was not so deeply interested in domestic problems as a carefully chosen father might be. But on the memorable evening after her discovery that the same cut of beef might sell for twenty-one or twenty-three cents a pound, and for a very sufficient and convincing reason Mr. Larry gave her remarks flattering attention.
After he had studied the Marketing Guide and gone over Mrs. Larry's figures, he drew her down into the great chair that had been built for two and which faced the sputtery gas log.
"Tell you, little woman, you are all right! I supposed it cost just so much to keep up our table, and there was no use fighting the high cost of living, but I believe you are on the right track. Finding the cause of high prices is the way to begin."
"And, Larry, one cause of our high prices is the neighborhood in which we live."
"Well, we're not going to move out of it. I won't raise my children in an undesirable neighborhood just to save two cents a pound on meat."
"I have an idea!" remarked Mrs. Larry, snuggling closer in the arm that seemed always waiting for her. "If the cheap markets can't come to our neighborhood because of the high rents, I'm going to them. All of them deliver. The man who talked to the League said so; I don't suppose the East Side butchers would come over here more than once a day."
"And his system of delivery at all hours is one of Mr. Dahlgren's heavy overhead expenses, remember."
"And you're not to complain, understand, if sometimes there is a shortage in tenderness or juiciness of roasts."
"I'll be the best little victim of your experiments in thrift that ever was," said Mr. Larry assuringly.
"Oh, Larry, that's the very idea! Every day will brings its adventure in thrift. I'll have my next trip in the morning."
"Why don't you start with the open market?" suggested Mr. Larry.
"I thought they were just for the poor."
"They are run by the city for the people—and we are the people, aren't we?"
"Well, not just people—when you have the darlingest and most understandingest of husbands—"
"And the most calculating and parsimonious of wives."
"Now you're making fun of me. But I'll try the city market to-morrow. There's one at the end of the Broadway car line."
"Yes; at the old Fort Lee Ferry. You ought to catch some New Jersey farmers there, with fresh butter and eggs."
At ten the next morning Mrs. Larry and Claire started for the people's market. This was Mrs. Larry's usual time for marketing.
At ten-thirty they sprang from the car, near the dull, redding-brown ferry house, and looked around for the market with the true country atmosphere. Near the recreation pier were scattered a few wagons that suggested the hucksters who sometimes dared to invade the sacred precincts of her exclusive neighborhood, with heaps of over-ripe pineapples and under-ripe apples. Here and there were push carts, such as Mrs. Larry had seen that day when she had "slummed" through the great East Side in search of a wedding gift in old Russian brass. A few rickety stands completed the background, and these were heaped with sad-looking poultry, tubs of butter, and crates of eggs, bearing striking black and white signs that announced big cuts in prices.
Hucksters, peddlers and sharp-featured tradesmen greeted them with strident price quotations. But Mrs. Larry's glance sought in vain for the kindly farmer and his wife, the sort she could suddenly recall as handing her bits of home-made cake, pot cheese or a tiny nosegay of garden flowers in the days when she had gone to early market with her grandmother in a quiet Pennsylvania city.
A neatly dressed man, with a semi-official air, who had evidently noticed their bewilderment, raised his hat and spoke courteously:
"Is there anything special you want?"
"No; nothing special—we thought we'd like to see one of the city markets."
"Well, you're a little late to see the market at its best. I'll explain, if you don't mind. I'm on Borough President Marks' committee and we are very anxious to interest New York housekeepers in these markets."
"But it's not clean," protested Mrs. Larry, driven to frankness by her disappointment.
"It's as clean as any open market can be kept. Everything is cleaned up and flushed every night, but you see people have been trading here since six-thirty this morning."
"As early as that?" exclaimed the astonished Claire.
"Yes, the farmers are early birds. They are the first to arrive and the first to leave. They sell out in no time. One man brought in two loads weighing about five tons each, solid produce, and his wagons were empty in two hours. Among other things he sold six hundred bunches of celery at ten per cent. less than you can buy it at your fancy grocery store. He sold small heads of cabbage for four cents, large for eight, solid as rock and fine for cold slaw. You may pay the same in your store, but the heads are soft and wasteful. His cooking apples brought ten cents for a two-quart basket that grocers sell at fifteen or twenty, according to the customer. We've got rid of eight hundred pounds of fresh fish, brought direct from Monmouth, New Jersey, by a real fisherman. On Friday we'll sell one thousand eight hundred pounds caught by the same man and his neighbors."
"Then these," murmured Mrs. Larry, indicating the straggling wagons and push carts, "are not farmers?"
"No; these are hucksters, mostly, or small dealers. You could buy for the same prices at your door or at their stands down-town. We group the farmers under signs: 'Farmers' Wagons,' and discourage hucksters who fix wagons to look like the real farm article.
"We have a representative of the Department of Weights and Measures to receive complaints, and to test weights and measures. This morning we ordered off a push cart man because his fruit and vegetables were not fresh. We are doing everything in our power to protect housewives and encourage them to patronize the open market, because that means more farmers will come here. And we are aiming to bring about direct connection between producer and consumer—farmer and housewife."
"But what of that wagon," inquired Claire, indicated a huge delivery wagon bearing the name of a prominent down-town department store, "does that firm sell fresh food?"
"No; staple groceries which they can buy in huge quantities, like five pounds of granulated sugar at twenty-three cents, when your grocer and mine are charging us at the rate of three and one-half pounds for eighteen cents. This firm delivers orders. The farmers, the hucksters and stand men can not. But we arrange for that by having a man who will deliver the ordinary market basket from any of our open markets at ten cents."
"Then the delivery is extra and cuts into the saving on prices?"
"Not enough to notice if you buy in good quantities. Now figure this up for yourself. What are you paying for potatoes?"
"Twenty-five cents a basket."
"How big a basket; how many pounds?"
Mrs. Larry stared.
"Pounds?—I never weighed them."
"But that's the only honest way to sell potatoes. Big potatoes leave huge air holes in the basket that weigh nothing. Well, here are seven pounds for ten cents. The same quantity by measure would cost you at least fifteen cents. This head of cabbage at six cents would cost ten in your store; six bunches of beets here for ten cents, two bunches in your store. Two quarts of onions five cents, ten in your store. Three fine rutabagas for eight cents; I paid eight cents for one like these down-town. You can afford ten cents for delivery on a list like that."
"I would save about thirty cents. Ten cents would go for delivery, ten for car fare—and my time—"
"Well, of course, you have not bought much, considering that you must have them delivered and you must pay car fare. Women like you from the distance must either buy in larger quantities or carry things home on the car."
"Carry them!" exclaimed Mrs. Larry.
"Yes; women come here with old suit-cases and bags. Women with babies bring the babies in the carriages and fill the front with vegetables, etc. Mothers of older children use the little express wagons. They don't spend ten cents for deliveries."
"Do—do many ladies come here?"
"Say, if you want to see ladies marketing, you go over to the market under Queensboro Bridge to-morrow morning—early."
Mrs. Larry laughed joyously over her recital that night.
"Evidently the early bird has come back into style," was her husband's comment. "Are you game for the early market?"
"Indeed I am," declared Mrs. Larry. "Just think! I didn't save a penny to-day—lost time and money—because I didn't know enough to dig out your old suit-case. Anyhow, I think it is cowardly to market with a bag or suit-case. My grandmother and aunts carried a market basket, and so shall I."
"Hurrah!" shouted Mr. Larry. "A fig for convention-bound neighbors. But do you own one?"
"I just do," responded Mrs. Larry proudly. "Aunt Myra sent it to me last fall, packed with pickles and jelly."
And the next morning, after wafting a kiss to the sleeping Mr. Larry and stealing a glimpse at the rosy-cheeked small Larrys, she drank a cup of hot coffee, munched a roll, and by eight o'clock was at the Queensboro Bridge market.
But she was not accompanied by Claire on this trip. The girl's enthusiasm was beautiful to see, but Mrs. Larry was a cautious person. She did not want to kill it by drawing on it at seven A. M. The family of Pierce were not early risers.
"Ah, this is something like," she sighed as she saw the groups of farm wagons from Long Island, with tanned lean men handling poultry, eggs and vegetables. She bought with enthusiasm fowl that she knew were fresh killed and picked, at the price often charged for cold storage poultry; vegetables that were firm and fresh; fruits at close to wholesale prices. The farmers and dealers helped her pack her basket compactly. All around her were comfortable-looking, well-dressed women. Beyond the line of wagons, push carts and stands was a second line of automobiles, many of whose owners were marketing at her elbow.
"It's the automobile folks that are saving money," said a farmer's helper, as he packed a crisp head of lettuce into the last corner of her basket. "You'd die to see how it riles their chauffeurs to have to come for the baskets."
The baskets, of course—and Mrs. Larry suddenly realized that her arm throbbed like the proverbial toothache. She had a full block to walk to the car, a transfer to make, and two blocks to walk at the other end of the line. The prospect was not cheering. She sought out the man who had contracted to deliver baskets at ten cents each.
"What time shall I get these goods?" she asked.
"Before nightfall," answered the man.
"But this chicken is for dinner," she said. "I must have it by two o'clock."
"Then you had better take it with you," said a by-stander, a competent-looking woman.
Mrs. Larry unpacked the basket, had the fowl, some sweet potatoes and celery done up in a big paper sack which she could carry, and turned the balance of her marketing over to the delivery men.
Why in the world hadn't she thought of this and let Claire bring them both over in the Pierce limousine? Well, she'd know better the next time. And she turned over the silver lining of this particular domestic cloud so quickly that the young bride, sitting opposite her on the cross-town car simply had to smile back. After which they fell into conversation.
"I've just about decided," the younger woman remarked, as she looked at Mrs. Larry's great bag of provisions, "that you've got to pay the high cost of living either in money or time or strength. I bought four dollars' worth of produce this morning for about two dollars and seventy-five cents. That is, I save about one dollar and twenty-five cents on what you'd pay to the grocer on your block, or your regular butcher. But it takes two hours of my time, and then we can't tell how long these city markets will last. If they are to be open in winter, the city will have to lay floors of concrete, my husband says, and provide better protection all round. That means the city will have to charge the dealers for rent, and then—up will go the prices. Seems like you have to pay somebody his price or give a lot of yourself in saving."
"It is discouraging," said Mrs. Larry. "The chief trouble I have is in taking care of goods in quantity after I buy them. You have no cellar or pantry in an apartment-house. There are closets and bins enough in my kitchen, but winter and summer it's too hot, vegetables and fruit spoil."
"And that eats up what you save going to market. Buying in small quantities comes high. Now if a lot of women could go together and buy and then divide up, they could save money."
"Oh, I've heard of that system. They're called 'Marketing Clubs,' I believe there's one in Brooklyn. Suppose we look into it," she added.
"I'll have my husband get the president's address. He knows some newspaper men and the club has been written up lots of times. Oh, yes, I remember the president's name is Mrs. Bangs."
So they exchanged cards, and, much to their amusement, discovered that they lived on the same block. The little bride's name was Mrs. Norton, and, as they parted at her door, she bound herself to join Mrs. Larry, Teresa Moore and Claire Pierce on their adventures in thrift.
"It's so much nicer to travel in pairs than in odd numbers," said Mrs. Larry.
"It's awfully good of you to let me come," answered Mrs. Norton. "None of my intimate friends are particularly interested in this sort of thing, but I've just got to be."
Mrs. Larry shifted the heavy parcel to the other arm.
"Every wife would be happier if she was interested. I'm beginning to think that she really can't be happy if she isn't—efficient, though my husband hates that word."
"So does mine," said Mrs. Norton, and having found that their husbands were of one mind, they decided that it was a real bond between them.