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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1348, 16 January 1915, Page 4

Having just landed an up-to-date supply of catering utensils from England, Mr M. Perreau is now in a position to specialise in catering, which will be undertaken in any part of the district.* Maudie pouted much at Bertie, To his great surprise ; P’raps she’d heard of him and Gertie

Swapping gladsome eyes; But the thing that did upset her, Made her glum and dour; Was that Bert had dared forget her, Woods’ Great Peppermint Cure. 4

“I reckon it costs me quite id per pound for booking and delivering meat,” stated a wellestablished city butcher. Marketing and shipping are two different things. Marketing means a tour round the shops with capacious baskets buying food supplies, sometimes for the week. It is not generally done in Wellington, where meat and bread and milk and vegetables and fruit are brought to the door. Marketing and early closing do not concur, for marketing on Saturday nights r -va. a sort of excursion, with uuccbers closing at seven this cannot be done. Marketing during xbe week is not so convenient nor so entertaining.

Shopping generally means a tour of the city drapery establishments, at least a study of their spacious windows, with a visit to the gas office, or the electric light office, by way of a variant. And shopping can be done in the afternoon, between lunch time and bed time, and, besides, the collapsible pram is an important factor, relieving many a poor child-harassed mother from her four-walled home, enabling her to get out into the air, even if it be the air of shops and of the streets of shops. Food might be cheaper—bread, meat, vegetables, and groceries—if bought for cash over the counter; but the tendency for house to house delivery and booking is a growing rather than a diminishing one. It has to be paid for, four bakers’ carts delivering, each one loaf to four different houses in one street, may be, and is economic waste, but the consumer has to pay for it. The going up process is not yet finished. Whether it will go on until the war is over no one knows with certainty. There are some other rises pending. Tea has gone up, or where not gone up the quality is perhaps lower at a given price. It may be advanced on brands which have not yet changed in quality or price. Tea is much dearer to day the world over than in June last. Biscuits of the kind most used, soda, water and wine biscuits, are likely to go up yl d per pound. Unfortunately, it is not the luxuries that have risen since June, for pudding fruits, canned trails, wines and spirits, chocolates and confectionery, hams, and sauces are where they were. Jams may be advanced, but soap and candles are unchanged. So far as clothing goes, an advance in the retail prices of all imported goods is to be expected, especially as vast quantities of German hosiery and similar goods do not now come to this market, and British manufacturers are not up to the moment entirely prepared to take up where the Germans left off.

Altogether the careful housewife has a rather difficult time before her as chancellor of the exchequer of the home. If economy cannot be effected in the table it must obviously be exercised in some other directions if she is to avoid domestic insolvency,—Post.