Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/287

 REVIEWS 273

But this is not all. Dr. Chapin has very clearly made the point that the standard of living is not shown so much in the amount of money expended for such staples as food, rent, and clothing, as in that spent for furniture, dues and contributions, recreation and amusement, education and reading, funeral expenses, cost of mov- ing, etc.

Mrs. Moore makes the same point. However, it is precisely these things that are most difficult to learn by any method, and which the author in several places says could not be successfully secured by a single-visit, schedule method (e. g., pp. 182, 198, 206, 210, 219, 222). On this difficult point the personal sustained method used by Mrs. Moore seems to promise better results. When one question was asked, whether families were sufficiently nourished or not, other difficulties were discovered. In addition to the lack of agreement among physiologists as to the amount of protein, fats, and carbo- hydrates needed by a man, or the proper balance of these constitu- tuents (pp. 320, 321), there is the grave difficulty of finding out what quantities of these classes of foods were consumed by the members of the families studied. There is one uncertainty as to what amount and balance should obtain, and another one as to what amount and balance did exist in the dietary of the families. The former question belongs to the physiologists, the latter to the student of the standard of living.

A moment's thought makes these uncertainties quite noticeable. The findings of Dr. Underbill were based on the quantities bought, not upon those consumed. The shrinkage in preparation, poor cooking, and service, the waste of the left-over — not to mention the digestibility and the absorbability — these should be taken into account.

The report does not make it clear how the quantities bought were determined, whether by multiplying the weight used in a day by three hundred and sixty-five (or that used in a week by fifty- two), or by dividing the amount spent in a g^ven year or week for a given article by the average price. It is of course well known that housewives usually buy so many cents' worth, rather than so many pounds, pecks, quarts, etc. Moreover, the quality of articles bought is nowhere adequately shown, nor is any account taken of variations of need, as in sickness and unemployment. Under these conditions it was impossible to decide with exactness whether the families were sufficiently nourished or not. The conclusions could