“Not so much as you probably imagine,” said Ed. “A robust man requires about a pound and a half of meat and a pound and a half of bread per day. Vegetables are simply substitutes for bread and cost about the same. Eggs, milk, etc., take the place of meat and cost less. So by reckoning on three pounds of food a day, half meat and half bread, or their equivalents, we find that a strong, healthy, hard-working man can be fed at a cost of about fifteen cents a day. The coarser and more nutritious parts of beef and mutton and good sound pork can be bought at retail at an average of eight cents a pound--often much less. The man’s meat, therefore, will cost him twelve cents a day or less. Good flour can be had at about two cents a pound. The man’s bread will, therefore, cost him about three cents a day, making the total cost of his food about fifteen cents a day, or less than fifty-five dollars a year.” “But it costs something to cook it,” said Phil. “Yes, but not much. I have calculated only the actual cost of the raw materials, but my figures are too high rather than too low, for corned beef and chuck steaks are often sold at retail as low as three or four cents a pound, and neck pieces, heads, hearts, livers, and kidneys even lower, while I have allowed eight cents a pound as an average price for all the meat that the man eats. Now, allowing for the cost of cooking and for unavoidable waste, I reckon that a strong, healthy American citizen can feed himself abundantly on less than seventy-five dollars a year.” “But what if he can’t get the seventy-five dollars?” asked Will. “In this country any man in tolerable health can get it easily. There is no excuse in this country for what somebody calls ‘the poverty that suffers,’ at any rate among people who have health. Why, one hundred dollars a year is a good deal less than thirty cents a day, and anybody can earn that.” “What does cause ‘the poverty that suffers,’ then?” asked Will. “Drink, mainly,” broke in Phil. “By the way,” said Irv, looking up from some figures he had been making, “does it occur to you that our corn crop alone, even if we produced nothing else in the world, would furnish food enough for all the people in this country?” “No; how do you figure it, Irv?” asked Will. “Why, Ed says the corn crop amounts to 2,000,000,000 bushels. There are 56 pounds in a bushel, or 112,000,000,000 pounds in the crop. That would give every man, woman, and child in our 70,000,000 population 1600 pounds of corn per year, or pretty nearly four and a half pounds apiece each day in the year, while Ed says no man needs more than three pounds of food per day. So the corn crop, whether eaten as bread or partly in the shape of meat, furnishes a great deal more food than the American people can possibly eat. No wonder we ship such vast quantities of foodstuffs abroad!” “That’s encouraging,” said Phil; “but it’s bedtime. Hie ye to your bunks! Whose watch is it?” And so the scuttle chatter ended.