THE BRITISH WORKMAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 26 August 1907, Page 4

THE BRITISH WORKMAN.

''All over the British Isles the people live ou better and more abundant food than formerly,"writes the former editor of the New Zealand Times in that paper. "Compared with the state of things that X remember, the living might be calied luxuriant. Dropping in, haphazard, to a workman's home at dinner time, you wiil find the family partaking of a meal of three courses, equal to that of the average colonial worker. The 'halesome pnrritch' is no longer 'chief of Scotia's food.' You wili lind instead bacon and egg for breakfast, meat for dinner, with perhaps bananas for dessert. At the time of my arrival, English and Scottish people were eating early potatoes from the Canary Islands, which arrive a month or more before those from France of Jersey. More from habit than necessity, I fancy, the people here are very economical in their use of butter. In private homes they spread it very sparingly; in restaurants they give you a little dab of it, and are careful to charge you for it. A Glasgow merchant told me that this habit Is largely responsible for the practice of blending butter. The people like a butter that is 'sprcadable,' and if New Zealand butter were supplied by them In its pure state to the consumer, it would be voted wasteful, because its stiffness would preventits being spread thinly. In the large cities, you see displays of fruit that would put any colonial fruitdealer to the blush of shame. Ilirmingham, in particular, has excellent shops, with all kinds of Home and exotic fruits displayed to advantage. The meat shop* in all the cities and towns I visited are numerous siul well kept, find cvi- I dence of the large extent to which the J consumption of flesh food has grown." I