The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical ProblemsFetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
General
The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems
Fetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
Economics
2. _The physical efficiency of the worker is conditioned on wise
consumption._ Chemists and physiologists are telling now in accurate
terms how the nutritive values of foods differ. Food values are not
measured by the pleasure afforded the palate. The wide variety and
greater choice now possible, even to the modest purse, make the chance
of error much greater than in simpler conditions. This subject, already
touched upon in the sections on the efficiency of labor, deserves
further notice. From youth to age, the foolish choice of goods yields
its harvest of ultimate misery. When babies are fed on crackers dipped
in coffee, or, as among the Italian immigrants, on stale bread dipped in
sour wine, there is a poor foundation laid for a vigorous manhood. Rich
and poor cook too much for taste and too little for nutrition or
digestion. Much cooking is still done in ways fit only for our
grandfathers who had cast-iron stomachs and worked in the open air.
Culinary methods have not been adapted as yet to a sedentary life.
[Sidenote: Of drinks]
Drinking tempts some men not only by taste, but by the appeal to
sociability; to other coarser natures the joys of Bacchus offer the one
hope of exhilaration. The pleasure from alcoholic liquor may at the
moment outweigh the cost in money, but a diseased appetite forbids any
reckoning of the vast psychic cost that follows. The coin paid for the
drink is the beginning of the expense; misery, disgrace, degeneracy, and
bestialty too often are the unreckoned items.
[Sidenote: Of clothing]
Clothing is primarily for ornament, secondly for physical comfort. That
was the historical order, and it is the logical order in most minds
to-day. How badly the two needs are harmonized! No wonder that the
savage suffers in adopting civilized dress. Travelers describe the
African potentate, attired in a high hat and a bracelet, striving to
outshine his rival resplendent in full-dress coat and a palm-leaf fan.
Civilization is making headway there; but the student of primitive
peoples finds one of the important causes of their decay to be their bad
judgment in adopting civilized dress, unsuited to their customs and
climate. A mistake is made likewise by workers in physical tasks in
imitating the dress of the wealthy and professional classes. The dress
of the higher classes often is chosen because of its unsuitableness for
an active worker. It serves thus to mark its wearer as one engaged in
delicate tasks or as a person of leisure. Possibly, therefore, because
of their strong social ambitions, the manual workers in America more
than elsewhere adopt a costume that is not sensible or sanitary.
[Sidenote: Reactions of enjoyment upon the intelligence]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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