The foreign born are faced with a particularly difficult problem. They often come from places where dress served to show where one came from, and who one was. In the United States, dress serves to conceal one's origin and relationships, and there results an almost inexorable dilemma. Follow the Old-World practice, and show who you are and where you come from, and the result is that you remain alien and different and that your children will not stay with you "outside the gates." Or follow the fashion and be like others, and the meager income is dissipated before your eyes, with meager results. The Croatians have emphasized the waste of American dress and the immodest styles often worn, while the Italians have chiefly dwelt upon the friction between parents and children. In some neighborhoods Jewish agents go about offering clothing on the installment plan at prices much higher than those charged even in inefficient neighborhood shops. Shoes are particularly a source of difficulty, both those for the younger children and those for the older boy or girl who goes to work. In some neighborhoods where the older women go barefooted and are thought to do so because they wish to cling to their Old-World customs, they are simply saving, so that the children may wear "American shoes." Certainly the foreign-born woman who undertakes to manage her family's affairs in an American community is confronted by no easy task. The question arises as to what might be done to render that task less difficult. The dull of sight cannot lead the blind at a very swift pace. But certain steps might be taken to simplify the problems for all consumers, including the foreign born. In fact, whatever renders the system of retail dealing less chaotic and less wasteful will benefit all. The establishment of markets for foodstuffs at appropriate places where grower and consumer can meet, and certain costs of double cartage can be eliminated, is, for example, a recognized item in reform of the present food traffic. TRAINING NEEDED The importance of the spending function of the housewife must be brought home more clearly to great numbers of women. Too few native-born housewives realize that they have any problem to work out, or that there may be an "art of spending." None of the ninety foreign-born women interviewed had received any instruction in buying except advice from friends or from their own children. What little instruction they had received had been concerned only with cooking. Not one of these women recognized any difficulty in buying except the difficulty of speaking the language well enough to ask for things or to understand how much they cost, or of getting the wherewithal to pay.