without planning ahead and keeping accounts.  Saving in this way is largely a matter of habit; but it is astonishing how many fail to form the habit.  Court records show that out of every 100 men who die, 82 leave no income-producing estates, or that about 85 per cent who reach the age of 65 are dependent upon relatives or upon the community.  “Out of every 100 widows, only 18 are left in comfortable circumstances, while 47 are obliged to go to work and 35 are left in absolute want.” [Footnote:  S.W.  Strauss, “The Greater Thrift,” National Education Association proceedings, 1916, p. 278.]

AMERICAN EXTRAVAGANCE

Wise buying means saving money; and so does the wise use of what we buy.  It is said that an American ship can be distinguished from the ships of other nations in harbor by the flocks of gulls that hover around to feast on the food thrown overboard.  Whether this is true or not, Americans have a reputation for wastefulness.  It has been called our chief national sin.  It is said that a family in France can live in comfort on what an American family in the same circumstances ordinarily throws away.  An average load of garbage in New York City has been shown to contain fifty dollars’ worth of good food materials.

WHAT SMALL SAVINGS WILL DO

Investigations by the Food Administration showed that there is enough glycerine in a ton of garbage to make explosives for 14 shells, enough fat and acid to make 75 bars of soap, and enough fertilizer to grow 8 bushels of wheat.  It is said that 24 cities wasted enough garbage to make 4 million pounds of nitroglycerine, 40 million cakes of soap, and fertilizer for 3 million bushels of wheat.  On the other hand, 300 cities produced 52 million pounds of pork by feeding their garbage to hogs.

The Department of Agriculture has shown that the waste of a half-cup of milk daily by each of the 20 million families in the United States would equal in a year the total production of 400 thousand cows; that one ounce of meat or fat saved daily would in a year mean 875 thousand steers, or a million hogs; and that if 81 percent of the whole wheat were used in bread instead of 75 percent, the saving in a year would feed 12 million people.  During the war our government organized a campaign for the salvage of “junk,” and the total amount collected had a value of 1 1/2 billion dollars.  The school children of Des Moines, Iowa, are reported to have gathered and sold two thousand dollars’ worth of waste paper in one week, and those of many other communities obtained similar results.

VALUE OF BY-PRODUCTS