The day book. [volume], January 16, 1912, Image 13

About The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
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BILL WATTS HIS COST OF LIVING
How He Managed to Make Both Ends Meet and Overlap a
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Middleman and Buy Supplies at Cost.
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Editor's Note This is the
first of a series of articles on
the great co-operative move
ment in England. Tomor
row's article will tell about
how the movement began
more than half a century ago
in Lancashire.
By Harry G. Farmer.
London, Jan. 16. William
jWatts, respectable workingman,
has the co-operative habit. He
has had it some years. More than
two million and a half people in
Great Britain have the same hab
it. It s a srood habit to sret.
Watts or "Bill," as he pre
fers to be called by his intimates
earns a guinea a week, or, in
'American money, $5.03. "And a
good wage, too," says Bill. Bill
has a wife and four children, and,
before he got the habit, he and
. Mrs. Watts, in suite of the "eood
wage," were set the impossible
problem of getting five by adding
two and two.
Bill's big expense was rent
six shillings a week for four
rooms j he had 15 shilling left
wKen the rent was paid. London
is a big, spraddling town, and Bill
had to take a train to his work.
Then there were clothes to buy,
and food and coal. Bill had two
extravagances:' he allowed him-
jgself daily two glasses of "four-
M&i
ale" at a penny a glass and an
ounce of shag, which meant an
other penny. '
There was a sameness about
the Watt's bill-of-fare from day
to da,y before Bill got the habit.
Breakfast bacon once a week,
with tea. Other mornings bread
smeared with bacon t dripping,
with tea. Other meals: Bread and
cheese, a bit of fish now and then
and once in a blue moon a joint
bought cheap at one minute to
midnight of a Saturday night at a
"Dutch auction."
Not far from the Watt's hum
ble home, in another street, a
very tony street filled with big
sandstone houses set in big orn
ate gardens, lives Algernon Cecil
Montgomery Smudge, Esquire,
commission merchant. Mr.
Smudge is a large, fat person
who affects large, shiny auto
mobiles and large, black cigars.
He is a useless person in a busy
world, but he makes money out
of it.
Mr. Smudge deals in things to
eat. That is, he passes on from
the producer to the retailer the
articles of diet which are destined
for the tables of such folks as the
Wattses, and takes as payment
for the trifling transaction a bit
more than his legitimate com
mission. Milk is 10 cents a quart in Lon-
Uli