HUMOURS OF WAR SAVING.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 209, 15 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

HUMOURS OF WAR SAVING.

ECONOMY GONE MAD. Every body knows the type of perAJn who might be heard to say, in far-off days before economy became the fashion—"l gave the porter 3d. I didn't want to seem mean. ! To be mean (without seeming mean would have been ah right, but "seeming mean" in the eyes of the porter and any other witnesses was worth paying 3d to avoid. Tins is a very common type indeed. C:rcumstansec, however, alter types. If you were to overhear the self-same individual to-day under similar conditibns, this would be more like the apology for the occasion, uttered with a purr of self-approval—"! didn't give the porter a tip. I didn't like to seem extravagant." Now the desire to seem economical is an evidence to a certain extent of the force of publ ; c opinion. No one can deny that it is well that the tendency should be in this direction, and that' the very large section in every class of society that wishes to stand well with its fellows should be actuated to economy by a wholesome dread of "seeming extravagant." Unfortunately, not all "seeming economy" is real' economy, and a good many attempts to make a great show of niggardliness have led to a topsy-turvy state ot "economy gone mad." EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. A very .wealthy merchant, the Mayor of a certain Midland town, was so taken up with the subject of thrift and economy that he gave a lecture to encourage others to follow his example. Example is so much better than precept. Everybody imagined h j :« Worship lived in the lap of luxury; now the truth was revealed ; instead of having two eggs to his breakfast, he now had only one. \ clear saving to the nation of 365 fresh eggs —new-laid eggs —in the year. This was a noble cVcample; it was easy to calculate the saving that would lie effected if every two-egg breakfaster were tj put himself on a one-egg ration. But an ungrateful person pointed out that the merchant jn question was a dealer in provisions on a large scale, and imported annually some millions of cases of eggs—not new laid eggs or fresh, bn, out-and-out shop eggs. And when these eggs, imported at peril of their lives by British seamen, came to make their final appearance upon the British breakfast table, two in ten upon being opened too rashly by the intending broakfaster contained so potent a surprise as to put him off his breakfast altogether. Economy again, in a. way, after all. The breakfast that merchant's 6hop-eggs saved to the public dwarfed the effect of his personal sacrfice. Walking to save a penny car fare is another laudable form of economy. It is economy gone mad, liowevef, to do this on an ordinarily muddy day in i new pa ; r of twenty-live shilling mauvesuede walking shoes. All the same, it seems economical, and if one is tired of the hue and shape of a pair of shoes it provides as good an excuse as most people need to put them out of commission and replace them with a new pair.

SAVING ON PETS. A thrift lecturer made such an im pression on an old lady with a large entourage of domestic pets that she deeded to make away with the lot. There wer many tears shed, but the food of the nation must be conserved. Bones must be made into soup; dog biscuits, she knew, were the staple, diet of the British sold ; er. She bought a chloroform-box; she learned how to use it; she put to painless slumber one by one her big dogs, and her little dogs. her cat, her kitten, her parrot, her canary, the tortoise but of the greenhousox.and an unseasonable fly or two, everything about the place that had a mouth. The footman enlisted (before slid had exhausted the four-footed memljers of the establishment. Perhaps he expected : "Jump in, Thomas, good man!" to come next. Anyhow, she used as much chloroform as would have been very welcome rel : ef to about fifty operation cases in base hospitals, and, after all, the came to rind was wagging Irs tail and drinking beef-tea hour after! The paper economist is quite another type. She—it is usually a she —goes in for using the backs of old envelopes tor her correspondence instead of new note, paper. When you have paid twopence a time or two for the rece : pt of such a miscellaneous budget as she accumulates you begin to think the economy is too much on one side. But the funny thing about this enthusiast is that the whole letter is a superfluity; from beginning to end of ite crabbed and confused pages there is not an essential statement to be found. The Whole thing would be as well left unwritten. Another crazy form of postal economy is to .write all over and across a postcard, even overflow : ng across the address in a desperate attempt to confine the outpourings of a sou! in the limits of a halfpenny stamp.

"NO FIRES." Zeal for fuel economy probably accounts for a good many of the season' fatal illnesses. So easy to decree : " To-morrow shall bo the last day for a fire." Easier than to provide a seasonable sunshiny morning to hail the firel.ess breakfast room. The busy housewife, bustling about her affairs, standing over her hot stove, cooking and superintending, feels herself in a tolerably warm state. Poor hubby, -with half an hour for breakfast and a peep at the paper befojne leaving tor th-i office, starts the day chilled to the bone. He sits in a draught in llie tram, sneezes by noon, is coughing and thoroughly miserable by the time ho gets back to the prematurely tireless home. Ho doesn't like to mention the obvious causa of his indisposition; it never occurs to the economist, who is so happv counting up what she saved from the coal h : !l. She will never remember, h.e sure, to deduct the doctor'si bill, and the extra nourishment, and the expense of the bedroom tire wh.en the patient finishes up with pneumonia.

ECONOMISE ON EDUCATION. The no-morc-culture maniac is another economist gone mad. H : s cry, and practice, is "No more letters:" Kducation is to cease, or be remodelled on industrial school lines. Everything heautful shall be banished. Fict:oi drives him mad. Authors and poet-, artists, actors, belong to the great unnecessary class; down with them! Let us have no rami! books, not even Bibles. To buy books is wicked; to buy magazines is wasteful; to read is idle; to-) much education has been the ruin o* tho generation. He expounds these views to his bookseller, who listens with depressed attention; he repeats it at his club, his vary expensive club, where lie dines sumptuously. **e is pleaded wtn himself; his line of argument is sonicthing quite original; it doesn't interfere with any of his own pet extrava-

gances. The funny tiling about them all is that none of the economists do denounce the'r own business. It is th.» grocer at the comer with is down on members' salaries; and the titled Indv with three motors and a French maid ;vho denounces as an extravagance the v.li-te pinafore of the working man * vli'l.l. Tho motorist Is down on racing.

golf incenses fhe chess player; the hunt'ng woman thinks dances at this time are perfectly dbonrnal^e; ttliu " fluffy" woman wonders how they can bear to use horses for pleasure when they are so costly to keep. Everybody has some special economy to urge upon everybody else; and yet, jn the midsl o'f it all, very little practical economy comes to pass.