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Land reformers, socialists, co-operators, democrats would, in their turn, each provide an answer to our question; but, if examined, the root of each would be the same—in one word, it is Poverty, and this means scarcity of food.

Let us now go into the kitchen and try and provide, with such knowledge as dietetic science has given us, for a healthily hungry family of eight children and father and mother. We must calculate that the man requires 20oz. of solid food per day, i.e. 16oz. of carbonaceous or strength-giving food and 4oz. of nitrogenous or flesh-forming food. (The army regulations allow 25oz. a day, and our soldiers are recently declared on high authority to be underfed.) The woman should eat 12oz. of carbonaceous and 3oz. of nitrogenous food; though if she is doing much rough, hard work, such as all the cooking, cleaning, washing of a family of eight children necessitate, she would probably need another ounce per day of the flesh-repairing foods. For the children, whose ages may vary from four to thirteen, it would be as well to estimate that they would each require 8oz. of carbonaceous and 2oz. of nitrogenous food per day: in all, 92 of carbonaceous and 23oz. of nitrogenous foods per day.[2]