Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/469

 THE SALOON IN CHIC A GO 455

poorly cooked and hunger but half satisfied, these men are in poor condition to resist the tempting offer the saloon holds out to them, both in the food well cooked and often served in dishes daintily garnished with lettuce and parsley, and in the beer, which, for the time, satisfies their hunger. That this is not a mere super- stition Professor Atwater's recent experiments have clearly demonstrated. Splendid, but comparatively small in extent, are the efforts on the part of the settlements to teach the mothers and girls how properly to prepare the food, how to prepare the most nourishing meals at the smallest expense. In the saloon or in the cheap restaurants the 30,000 of the floating population get their meals. But nowhere in the city, aside from the saloons, can one fully satisfy his hunger for 5 cents. I found four 5- cent restaurants ; in one the dinner offered was unfit for even a dog the meat, bruised beef from a meat market (the owner excused it by saying it was cheaper), was unhealthful. The place in which it was served was too indescribably dirty for mortal man to endure. The others were cleaner, but bare and unattractive. Even there the lunch did not compare favorably with the free lunch of the saloon. The air of poverty about these places is intolerable. The 10-cent restaurants are also scarce and furnish lunches about equal to those which can be found in the saloon with a glass of beer. Although they are better than the ordinary saloon, there are more saloons in the city offering this class of meal for 5 cents, and having far greater attractions, than there are 10-cent restaurants. The ig-cent restaurants are more common, and vary but little from the ro-cent ones. Such are the restaurants supplying food to the laboring people.

The middle classes, the clerks and office-men, can find better

accommodations. The restaurants, of which there are

nine, are the most attractive and best-patronized of any of this class. The service is good, the food is of the best. Here a lunch would cost from 25 to 35 cents. They feed 2,500 daily on an average. One of them averages 5,000 daily. And yet the thrifty, economical young clerk, unless he has strong temper- ance principles, will find that his money will go farther in one of the first-class saloons. On Madison street, a business street