Chapter 2

Waste of Food in American Households.--The direct waste of food occurs in two ways, in eating more than is needed and in throwing away valuable material in the form of kitchen and table refuse. That which is thrown away does no harm to health, and in so far as part of it may be fed to animals or otherwise utilized, it is not an absolute loss. That which we consume in excess of our need of nourishment is worse than wasted, because of the injury it does to health. A few instances taken from the investigations mentioned above will help to illustrate the waste of food.

One of the dietaries examined by the Massachusetts Labor Bureau was that of a machinist in Boston, who earned $3.25 per day. In food purchased the dietary furnished 182 grammes of protein and 5,640 calories of energy per man per day, at a cost of 47 cents. One-half the meats, fish, lard, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, and molasses would have been represented by 57 grammes of protein, 1,650 calories, and 19 cents. If these had been subtracted, the record would have stood at 125 grammes, 3,990 calories, and 28 cents. This family might have dispensed with one-half of all their meats, fish, eggs, dairy products, and sugar, saved 40 per cent. of the whole cost of their food, and still have had all the protein and much more energy than is called for by a standard which is supposed to be decidedly liberal.

In the instance just cited no attempt was made to learn how much of the food purchased was actually consumed and how much was rejected. In some of the dietaries published by the Massachusetts bureau such estimates were made. That of a students' club in a New England college will serve as an example.

The young men of the club, some 25 in number, were mostly from the Northern and Eastern States, and coming from the class of families whose sons go to college, it seems fair to assume that their habits of eating formed at home would not differ materially from those of the more intelligent classes of people in that part of the country. While the diet of the club was substantial and wholesome, it was plain, as was, indeed, necessary, because several of the members were dependent upon their own exertions and the majority had rather limited means. Though fond of athletic sports they could hardly be credited with as much muscular exercise as the average "laboring man at moderate work." The matron, a very intelligent, capable New England woman, had been selected because of her especial fitness for the care of such an establishment. The steward who purchased the food was a member of the club, and had been chosen as a man of business capacity. He thought that very little of the food was left unconsumed. "All of the meat and other available food that was not actually served to the men at the table," said he, "was carefully saved and made over into croquettes. Men who work their way through college cannot afford to throw away their food." But actual examination showed the waste to be considerable. The estimates of the quantities of nutrients were based upon the quantities of food materials for a term of three months and upon the table and kitchen refuse for a week. The results were as follows: In food purchased, protein, 161 grammes; energy, 5,345 calories. In waste, protein, 23 grammes; energy, 520 calories. In food consumed, protein, 138 grammes; energy, 4,825 calories. One-eighth of the protein and one-tenth of the energy were simply thrown away.

During the succeeding term a second examination of the dietary of the same club was made. Another steward was then in charge. He had learned of the excessive amounts of food in the former dietary, and planned to reduce the quantities. This was done largely by diminishing the meats. He stated that he did not apprise the club of the change, and that it was not noticed. As he put it, "The boys had all they wanted, and were just as well pleased as if they had more." Estimates as before but with more care in determining the waste, showed in food purchased, protein, 115 grammes; energy, 3,875 calories. In waste, protein, 11 grammes; energy, 460 calories. In food consumed, protein, 104 grammes; energy, 3,415 calories. One-tenth of the nutritive material of the food this time was thrown away. The young men were amply nourished with three-fifths of the nutrients they had purchased in the previous term.

How much food is required on the average by men whose labor is mainly intellectual is a question to which physiology has not yet given a definite answer, but it is safe to say that the general teaching of the specialists who have given the most attention to the subject would call for little more than the 104 grammes of protein and very much less than the 3,400 calories of energy in the food estimated to be actually consumed by these young men when the second examination was made. They could have dispensed with half of all the meats, fish, oysters, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, and sugar purchased for the first dietary and still have had more nutritive material than they consumed in the second. Not only was one-tenth or more of the nutrients thrown away in each of the two cases, but what makes the case still worse pecuniarily, the rejected material was very largely from the animal foods in which it is the most expensive.

The estimates of the quantities of food in the two dietaries just quoted were made from tradesmen's bills and the composition was calculated from analyses of similar materials rather than of those actually used. The figures are therefore less reliable than if the foods and wastes had been actually weighed and analyzed. In some dietaries lately examined in Middletown, Conn., all the food has been carefully weighed and portions have been analyzed, and the same has been done with the table and kitchen refuse. The results, therefore, show exactly how much was purchased, consumed and thrown away. One dietary so investigated was that of a boarding house. The boarders were largely mechanics of superior intelligence and skill, and earning good wages; the mistress was counted an excellent housekeeper and the boarding house a very good one. About one-ninth of the total nutritive ingredients of the food was left in the kitchen and table refuse. The actual waste was worse than this proportion would imply, because it consisted mostly of the protein and fats, which are more costly than the carbohydrates. The waste contained nearly one-fifth of the total protein and fat, and only one-twentieth of the total carbohydrates of the food. Or to put it in another way, the food purchased contained about 23 per cent. more protein, 24 per cent. more fats, and 6 per cent. more carbohydrates than were eaten. And worst of all for the pecuniary economy, or lack of economy, the wasted protein and fats were mostly from the meats which supply them in the costliest form.

In another dietary, that of a carpenter's family, also in Middletown Conn., 7.6 per cent. of the total food purchased was left in the kitchen and table wastes. The total waste was somewhat worse than this proportion would imply, because it consisted mostly of the protein and fats, which are more costly than the carbohydrates. The waste contained about one-tenth of the total protein and fat and only one-twenty-fifth of the total carbohydrates of the food. At the rate in which the nutrients were actually eaten in this dietary, the protein and fats in the waste would have each supplied one man for a week and the carbohydrates for three days.

These cases are probably exceptional; at least it is to be hoped that they are. Among eight dietaries lately studied in Middletown those above named showed the largest proportion of material thrown away. In the rest it was much less. In two cases there was almost none. It is worth noting, however, that the people in these two had the largest incomes of all. In other words the best-to-do families were the least wasteful.

This form of bad economy is not confined to the kitchen, but begins in the market.... The common saying that "the average American family wastes as much food as a French family would live upon" is a great exaggeration, but the statistics cited show that there is a great deal of truth in it. Even in some of the most economical families the amount of food wasted, if it could be collected for a month or a year, would prove to be very large, and in many cases the amounts would be little less than enormous.--W.O. Atwater, Charities Review.

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THE COLORS NAMED IN LITERATURE.

Mr. Havelock Ellis has made (Contemporary Review, May) an interesting study of the color terms used by imaginative writers, which is a real contribution to scientific æsthetics. The fact that the Greeks did not name green and blue does not, of course, indicate (as Mr. Gladstone and others have alleged) that they could not see the more refrangible rays of the spectrum, but it does show a lack of interest in these colors. Mr. Ellis' statistics are given in the annexed table, the number of times each of the colors is used by the author in selected passages being reduced to percentages.

+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+ |White.|Yellow.|Red.|Green.|Blue.|Black.| PREDOMINANT | ------------------+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+ Mountain of Chant | 28 | 13 | 3 | ... | 19 | 37 |Black, white. | Wooing of Emer | 34 | 3 | 48 | ... | ... | 14 |Red, white. | Volsunga Saga | 14 | ... | 71 | ... | 14 | ... |Red. | Isaiah, Job, | | | | | | | | Song of Songs | 18 | 4 | 29 | 33 | ... | 15 |Green, red. | Homer | 21 | 21 | 7 | 2 | ... | 49 |Black, white-yellow.| Catullus | 40 | 21 | 17 | 9 | 4 | 8 |White, yellow. | Chaucer | 34 | 10 | 28 | 14 | 1 | 13 |White, red. | Marlowe | 19 | 21 | 19 | 6 | 6 | 28 |Black, yellow. | Shakespeare | 22 | 17 | 30 | 7 | 4 | 20 |Red, white. | Thomson | 9 | ... | 18 | 27 | 9 | 36 |Black, green. | Blake | 17 | 17 | 13 | 16 | 7 | 29 |Black, white-yellow.| Coleridge | 21 | 7 | 17 | 25 | 14 | 16 |Green, white. | Shelley | 17 | 19 | 11 | 21 | 21 | 11 |Green-blue. | Keats | 14 | 23 | 24 | 29 | 8 | 1 |Green, red. | Wordsworth | 14 | 18 | 10 | 35 | 11 | 12 |Green, yellow. | Poe | 8 | 32 | 20 | 12 | 4 | 24 |Yellow, black. | Baudelaire | 11 | 9 | 19 | 10 | 16 | 34 |Black, red. | Tennyson | 22 | 15 | 27 | 15 | 10 | 11 |Red, white. | Rossetti | 30 | 22 | 22 | 9 | 7 | 10 |White, yellow. | Swinburne | 28 | 18 | 28 | 16 | 6 | 4 |Red, white. | Whitman | 25 | 10 | 26 | 14 | 8 | 16 |Red, white. | Pater | 43 | 19 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 7 |White, yellow. | Verlaine | 20 | 15 | 24 | 9 | 14 | 18 |Red, white. | Olive Schreiner | 38 | 12 | 25 | 3 | 19 | 2 |White, red. | D'Annunzio | 15 | 11 | 46 | 7 | 14 | 6 |Red, white. | ------------------+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+

Mr. Ellis makes a number of acute psychological and literary suggestions and concludes that a numerical study of color vision "possesses at least two uses in the precise study of literature. It is, first, an instrument for investigating a writer's personal psychology, by defining the nature of his æsthetic color vision. When we have ascertained a writer's color formula and his colors of prediction we can tell at a glance, simply and reliably, something about his view of the world which pages of description could only tell us with uncertainty. In the second place, it enables us to take a definite step in the attainment of a scientific æsthetic, by furnishing a means of comparative study. By its help we can trace the colors of the world as mirrored in literature from age to age, from country to country, and in finer shades among the writers of a single group. At least one broad and unexpected conclusion may be gathered from the tables here presented. Many foolish things have been written about the 'degeneration' of latter-day art. It is easier to dogmatize when you think that you are safe from the evidence of precise tests. But here is a reasonably precise test. And the evidence of this test, at all events, by no means furnishes support for the theory of decadence. On the contrary, it shows that the decadence, if anywhere, was at the end of the last century, and that our own vision of the world is fairly one with that of classic times, with Chaucer's and with Shakespeare's. At the end of the nineteenth century we can say this for the first time since Shakespeare died."--Science.

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WHAT THE SEA HAS TAKEN.

It was recently announced that the committee sitting under the presidency of Minister Lely, at the Hague, had determined to reclaim the Zuider Sea, and that for this purpose a dam is to be constructed from the peninsula of North Holland to the opposite coast of Friesland.

This announcement brings back to recollection the proud old Dutch proverb: "God created the sea, the Hollander the coast."

The proposal is to construct a dam from Ewyk, on the northeastern point of North Holland, to the island of Wieringen, and then from the eastern point of this island another dam, 18½ miles long, to the coast of Friesland, by the shortest route.

The Hollanders, in their great reclamation works, the Sea of Harlem, for instance, prepare the entire foundation first and then gradually raise the dam on it. The watercourse is not narrowed during the progress of the work, as the dam is raised uniformly throughout the whole length; the current therefore passes slowly over it, and the dam is not subject to damage from flood waters. These deposit enormous quantities of sand and mud within the intercepted area, and after a few years the land shows above the surface of the water; the land while still in course of formation is locally known as "Heller," and the reclaimed land as "Polder."

As soon as the land has attained the required height, the dam is built sufficiently high, and also strong enough, to answer the purposes of a dike and to withstand the force of the largest tidal waves.

In constructing these dams, enormous rafts are made on the shore and then floated to the works, where they are weighted by stones and sunk in the required position. Within a few weeks large quantities of silt and mud accumulate, and the whole forms an exceedingly tough and strong elevation under the water; the currents grow weaker, and deposits are lodged also outside the dam, the base of which is of course of great width.

The Zuider Sea is one of the strongest evidences we have of the power of the sea over the land. Its formation commenced as far back as the twelfth century, prior to which it was only an inland lake. On December 14, 1287, during a terrific storm, the sea broke through the dividing shore line and widened the lake into a wide bay (Southern Sea, Dutch, Zuider Sea) of the North Sea; 80,000 persons lost their lives on that occasion. The same storm also did enormous damages in other localities.

This was, however, not the first occasion on which the sea had made inroads into the coast lands. Before the works of destruction commenced a narrow isthmus connected Great Britain with the Continent. The North Sea was then--comparatively speaking--calm; vast chains of sandy downs ran parallel to the coast, and stretched from this isthmus to the coast of Jutland; they were of considerable height, those on the west coast of Schleswig attaining an altitude of 200 feet. Behind these downs enormous swamps are formed, in which the rivers, with few exceptions, disappeared; but the deposits they brought down formed those rich agricultural lands now known locally as "Marschland."

The destruction of the shores commenced from the date that the narrow isthmus above referred to was carried away by the tidal waves which broke the English Channel during westerly gales. Traces, found far inland, show that this catastrophe occurred when the locality was inhabited, in fact a legend, in circulation to this day, relates that an English queen, to revenge herself on a Danish king, had the dam which connected England with France pierced, and so destroyed Denmark. When the Romans appeared on the scene the work of destruction was in progress, the chain of downs had been broken, and its place taken by many islands, far larger and more numerous than at present.

The first historical accounts of the storm tidal waves is referred to by Strabo as having occurred in 113 B.C., this, he relates, drove the Cimbers and Teutons from their homes and was the cause of their threatening Rome. Many other floods occurred which are known as "Manntranke" (man drowning). In the flood of 1216, for instance, 10,000 persons lost their lives, and three years later the "Marcellus" flood caused similar destruction. In 1300 the second "Marcellus" flood broke 12 feet over the highest dikes and Schleswig alone lost 7,600 persons in the waves.

Heligoland was at that time a large island, 46 miles long and 24 miles wide, it contained a monastery, many churches, large villages, extensive cultivations and forests; the island was all but destroyed by this inundation. Before that disastrous occurrence the island could be seen from the shores of Friesland, which in the days of Charles the Great was twice as large as now. The Friesland of to-day is only the southern and poorest remnant of the magnificent lands which were completely destroyed on October 11, 1684; 20 parishes and 150,000 persons disappeared beneath the waves, which broke through the dikes simultaneously in twenty-four places.

To relate all inundations would lead too far, but the most serious may be mentioned as showing the struggles in which the inhabitants of the North Sea coast are engaged. That of 1421, which swallowed 21 parishes and 100,000 persons; then the most terrible of which there is any record, and which is known as the "All Saints' Day" flood of 1570; the sea raged along the whole of the coast from Holland to Jutland for forty-eight hours, carried away all the dikes and caused the loss of 400,000 lives; the whole country lay waste for years, for the want of population to rebuild the dikes.

The Christmas flood of 1717 also visited the whole coast and 15,000 lives were lost.

During the present century the destruction by the sea has been minimized, as the dikes are now built strong and high enough to withstand the heaviest seas. The various islands along the coast act as breakwaters and protect, to a great extent, the coast line; the various governments are endeavoring to strengthen the islands by vegetation, but it appears to be only a question of time when they will disappear altogether.

Although the sea has, during the past 1,000 years, robbed the Dutch of great tracts of land, yet they have, by enduring perseverance, recovered a great deal, and there appears no doubt that they will succeed to form the Zuider Sea into rich agricultural lands, just as they have already dried up the Harlem Sea and converted it into waving cornfields.

Ground is also gained yearly in other directions, by continually extending the dikes; the richest lands on the coasts of Holland and Germany have thus been reclaimed from the ocean, and they are protected by means which secure the coasts against future encroachment.

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[Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No. 1080, page 17263.]

THE DE DION AND BOUTON ROAD MOTOR.

It was with a vehicle of the kind described in our last article that Messrs. De Dion and Bouton obtained a conspicuous success in 1894. In this competition they were the first to arrive at Mantes, doing the 36 miles in 3 hours, so that they made an average of 12 miles an hour; they were followed very closely by the Peugeot and Panhard-Levassor carriages. In spite of a series of difficult hills and bad roads, and an unintentional detour, they traversed the 48 miles between Mantes and Rouen in 4 hours 10 minutes. They recorded a speed of 15 miles an hour on some of the level roads, and on several occasions touched a maximum of 19 miles. The fact that they were able to ascend gradients of 1 in 10 at a speed of from 6 to 12 miles an hour sufficiently proved the efficiency of the machine.

The same constructors ran another vehicle in this competition of a somewhat similar design, but not adapted for a traction engine; this carried six passengers, and weighed about 3,000 lb. in working order. It was mounted on a rectangular and strongly braced frame, and was furnished with a boiler similar to that already described, but having only some 14 square feet of heating surface, a capacity of about 6 gallons of water, and 18 rows of tubes. The ratio of gearing was 4.06; the small cylinder was 3.54 in. in diameter and the low pressure cylinder 5.51 in., the stroke being 3.94 in. About the same time Messrs. De Dion and Bouton built for one of their clients a carriage in which the driving wheels were entirely independent, each of them being driven direct by a separate steam engine without any intermediate gear.

The Count de Dion was one of the most enthusiastic organizers of the Paris to Bordeaux competition in 1895, and naturally his firm took part in the trials. They entered three vehicles for competition; one of these, called No. 1, was the traction engine which had taken part in the 1894 trials, and which we have already described. For the second time this machine gave very excellent results, as it made the distance from Paris to Angoulème (280 miles) in 30 hours, but on account of various mishaps it had to run very slowly from Angoulème to Bordeaux (84 miles), taking, in fact, 31 hours for this part of the journey, and not arriving until long after it had been ruled out of the competition.

Their second vehicle, No. 2, was a four seated brake which was, in fact, a modified traction engine. The boiler, which was of the De Dion and Bouton type, had a heating surface of 36 square feet, and was registered at 200 lb. per square inch; it weighed 550 lb. As to the motor, it was a Woolfe engine, the moving parts of which were carefully counterbalanced. The cranks were set at an angle of 180°; the diameter of the high pressure cylinder was 2.95 in., and that of the low pressure 5.90 in.; the low pressure cylinder was steam jacketed. This motor, which weighed 330 lb., developed 11 horse power at a speed of 800 revolutions. The engine was coupled direct to the shaft of the differential motion, on which were mounted two pinions for changing the speed, and which could be moved to and fro on the shaft; the movement of the differential gear was transmitted to the wheels by articulated shafts, such as those we have already referred to in describing the traction engine; sufficient water and coke could be carried for a run of 45 miles, and on a good road a speed of more than 25 miles an hour was obtained.