The Immigration Commission published a table[33] of the expenditures at such stores, the amounts deducted from the wages, and the proportion of earnings left to be collected at the end of the month, illustrating the confusing effect of these practices on the housewife whose income should be a settled and regular amount. While some of the Croatians and Magyars spent hardly a fourth or a third of their earnings at the company store, others in the same national groups collected on pay day less than a fifth or even less than a tenth of their earnings. From this balance must come the payments for rent, medical service, entertainment, school, for all things other than food, clothes, and furniture. It may be that in some cases the employee is able to secure at the company store as good articles as he can obtain elsewhere and for the same prices, but this is by no means common. In West Virginia it was found necessary to enact legislation forbidding a company which ran a store to charge its own employees higher prices than the employees of other companies were charged.[34] The Immigration Commission found not only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high, but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost impossible to adjust income and needs. It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of balancing what one gives with what one gets.[35] A similar objection may be raised to payment of wages by check. In the old days, before the world went dry, one service the saloon was frequently called on to render was that of cashing checks. Either payment in "lawful money" or an opportunity to exchange at once for lawful money is the only method of paying wages that gives the housewife her full opportunity. SHOPPING HABITS The immigrant housewife is restricted by her ignorance of places and methods of marketing, and so feels the necessity of buying in the immigrant neighborhood. Among the 90 Chicago families from whom schedules were obtained, representing Bohemian, Croatian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian groups, 72 purchased all their food in the neighborhood stores, 2 kept their own stores, and only 16 were seeking bargains in other localities. Among these 16, 5 were going to larger business centers near their neighborhood, 4 bought in downtown department stores, 1 used a mail-order house, 1 went to a well-established "cash and carry" store, 2 bought in the wholesale markets, and only 2 took advantage of the co-operative association of their own group.