Читать книгу Practicable Socialism. Essays on Social Reform онлайн

5 страница из 22

ssss1To those who have had experience of children’s appetites it may seem as if their daily food had been under-estimated. A growing lad of eleven or twelve will often eat more than his mother, but the eight children, being of various ages, will probably eat together about this quantity, and it is better, perhaps, to under- than over-state their requirements.

For the breakfast of the family we will provide oatmeal porridge with a pennyworth of treacle and another pennyworth of tinned milk. For dinner they can have Irish stew, with 1¼lb. of meat among the ten, a pennyworth of rice, and an addition of twopennyworth of bread to obtain the necessary quantity of strength-giving nutriment. For tea we can manage coffee and bread, but with no butter and not even sugar for the children; and yet, simple fare as this is, it will have cost 2s.5d. to feed the whole family and to obtain for them a sufficient quantity of strength-giving food, and even at this expenditure they have not been able to get that amount of nitrogenous food which is necessary for the maintenance of robust health.