Page:Adventures in Thrift (1916).djvu/28

 cherries and corn on the tin roof of her lean-to kitchen served at her table the product of canneries. And everybody whose ancestors had traded butter and eggs and cheese and smoke-house ham for drygoods had money to spend instead. Some of them had a great deal of money—more than was good for them. The country passed through a period of prosperity and suddenly acquired wealth, but nobody thought to teach this new generation of women the value of money or how to spend it to best advantage. No one even realized that while extravagant habits were gripping American women, nobody warned them concerning the lean days that would come with financial panic, and nobody observed the quiet but steady increase in the cost of living.

"Then the deluge! Greedy corporations cornered food supplies. The high cost of living became a bitter reality. And behold, press and public bewailing the extravagance of the American woman and comparing her unfavorably with her housewifely sisters across the sea!

"This is unjust. Give the American woman lessons in thrift along the modern lines of in-