THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO THE PRODUCTION AND 
CONSUMPTION OF FOOD. 
A.NT 
ADDEESS 
BY 
EDWARD ATItINSON. 
VICE-PRESIDENT, 
CHAIRMAN, SECTION I, 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS, 
OF THE 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 
AT THB 
ANN ARBOR MEETING, 
AUGUST, 1885. 
From Vol. XXXIV, Proceedings of the Association. 
PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. 
SALEM, MASS. 
1885. THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO THE PRODUCTION AND 
CONSUMPTION OF FOOD. 
AN 
ADDRESS 
BY 
EDWARD ATKINSON. 
VICE-PRESIDENT, 
CHAIRMAN, SECTION I, 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS, 
OF THE 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOE THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 
AT THE 
ANN AEBOR MEETING, 
AUGUST, 1885. 
From Yol. XXXIV, Proceedings of the Association. 
FEINTED AT THE SALEM PKESS. 
SALEM, MASS. 
1885. ADDRESS 
BT 
EDWARD ATKINSON. 
VICE PRESIDENT, SECTION I. 
THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO THE PRODUCTION AND 
CONSUMPTION OF FOOD. 
Ladies and Gentlemen :—I have been called to preside over 
your Section at the present meeting without having had any previ- 
ous experience in the conduct of the work; I have, therefore, been 
somewhat at a loss as to what might be m3’ duties or my privi- 
leges ; but as soon as I began to consider the object of the Asso- 
ciation the way became very plain. 
If I rightly comprehend this purpose it is not to popularize 
science b}7 lowering its standard, but it is to bring the progress 
of science and art in their application to human welfare, promi- 
nently before the public and to bring together all who have even 
a moderate knowledge of the sciences; while at the same time 
rendering it easier for all who are engaged in the higher branches 
of scientific research to cooperate together,— to confer with each 
other,— and to aid each other in those preliminary investigations 
which must often take many, many 37ears before their results can 
be applied to the material welfare of humanity. 
Give all the credit that we may or which is due to those who 
engage in the pursuit of knowledge or in the evolution of sci- 
ence for its own sake ; yet, in one way or another, their work may 
finally rest, for its justification, upon its influence on the material 
welfare of the race. We are all members one of another, and the 
word which the Philistine may whisper to the Children of Light 
might be something like this: “Our Section I may be only the 
bread and butter section ; we may deal only with the prosaic sub- 
ject of providing food, shelter and clothing ; we may be only trying 
to find out how to save a few dollars’ worth more or less to the 4 
SECTION I. 
community, but what would become of all the rest of you without 
us?” Like other men, our scientific brethren must be provided 
for and sustained. Would that they were more fully sustained, and 
that their modicum of food, fuel, shelter and clothing could be 
supplied to them in greater measure and on less arduous and pe- 
nurious conditions than those under which they are sometimes 
forced to work. 
Perhaps we may open the way for more adequate provision for 
the higher branches of scientific research, if we connect it directly 
with the subjects which belong especially to our own section. 
Can we not prove, so that he who runs may read, that the only 
safety is in science and that the so-called “ practical man” who 
distrusts its teachings is the most unpractical of mere theorists? 
Is he not often the man who thinks he knows everything from his 
own insufficient observations and yet is utterly ignorant even of 
the simplest principles of his own art? 
To this end the direction of this address will be devoted mainly 
to opening the subject of the future applications of science to the 
production and use of food. 
What is the present daily ration of the working men and wo- 
men who constitute the vast majority of the people of this and 
other lands? 
What does it cost them in money or in labor? 
What might be the daily ration if the science of nutrition could 
be made a part of the common knowledge ? 
How much could its cost be reduced, and its nutritious prop- 
erties increased? 
In preparation for this meeting I have endeavored to bring into 
clear view the vast changes, both social and scientific, which have 
rendered the production and distribution of all commodities, and 
especially of food, so much easier and more equitable during the 
present generation than ever before. I have also endeavored to 
forecast, as far as we may, that further progress which may be 
immediately before us, perhaps to be completed before the end of 
the present century in some special directions, such as in the di- 
vision of the electric current, or in securing a supply of nitrogen 
at low cost in agriculture. 
I shall endeavor to demonstrate to you that in the generation 
which will have passed between the end of our civil war and the 
beginning of the next century, greater progress will have been ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
5 
made in the way of material welfare, that is to say, in the produc- 
tion and more equal distribution of wealth, than in any preceding 
period of the same tei’m, and perhaps more than in any preceding 
century since history began to be written. 
The true beginning of the economic history of this country may 
hereafter be dated from the year 1865 ; that is to say, from the 
end of the active war in which the passive war of slavery culmi- 
nated and by which it destroyed itself. 
I present this great social change as of the first importance, in 
its influence upon the economic history, not only of this country, 
but of the world. To the English-speaking people seems to have 
been given the power of extending their influence and their insti- 
tutions over every part of the globe. It has been clearly pointed 
out by Prof. Seeley, that while greater Germany, greater Portugal, 
greater France and greater Spain have almost ceased to exist, 
greater England continues to expand. Already the English 
speaking people of the United States outnumber those of Great 
Britain and all her colonies. What is the force which enables the 
English State to exist, to expand and to dominate all others? 
What is the essence of the common law of England? Is it not 
the spirit of individual liberty? When slavery attempted to dom- 
inate, it destroyed itself in conflict with the very principle of 
liberty on which this nation was founded by Washington, Jefferson, 
Laurens and Patrick Heniy of the south as truly as by Hancock, 
Adams, Hamilton and Franklin of the north. 
Only within the last twenty years has it been possible for any one 
of us to speak of our country as a land of liberty without a blush 
of shame. Yet so completely has this change been effected as to 
have enabled me to say to our southern brethren, with their hearty 
approval, that so absolute has been the revolution not only in their 
institutions but in their ideas, that it would take a greater war to 
reimpose the burden of slavery upon them than it did to destroy 
it; and I added that the time may not be far distant when the 
descendants of confederate soldiers will erect a monument to John 
Brown upon the heights of Harper’s Ferry, in commemoration of 
the liberty which he gave to the whites of the south when he fired 
the first shot for the freedom of the blacks. 
Coupled with this great social change have come such material 
changes that I think it is perfectly safe to say that “ Unde Sam,” 
considered as a concrete individual can do at least a third more 6 
SECTION I. 
work in the same number of hours and can produce a third more 
product measured by quantity in ratio to a given amount of labor 
than was possible for him to produce and distribute twenty or 
twenty-five years ago. 
My chief purpose in this address is, first, to pass in review 
these other changes, aside from the destruction of slavery, which 
have been brought about by the advancement of science, by 
means of which the necessary struggle for life has been so greatly 
lessened and the abundance, especially of food, has been so vastly 
increased. I shall then endeavor to forecast the future in such a 
way as will at least give a dim perception of what the next cen- 
tury may have’ in store for our children, if the inventions or dis- 
coveries, which now seem to be on the very edge of being per- 
fected, shall be presently completed. 
In the course of less than this single generation which will 
have passed between the date when peace had become established 
and the unity of this nation had been assured by the removal of the 
only cause of disruption, mankind, as a whole, will also have gained 
greater power over the forces of nature and will have reduced the 
effort necessary to secure a comfortable subsistence in greater 
measure than in any other similar period in the recorded history 
of the world : not even excepting the generation in which the 
smelting of iron with mineral coal was first discovered, in which 
period the steam engine was also invented ; or that in which the 
modern textile factory, the railway and the locomotive engine were 
first put to use ; or that in which the steamship and the telegraph 
wire first crossed the ocean. 
Perhaps the only period which can be compared with the present 
in the importance of the new forces placed at the use of man, 
would be that in which gunpowder was invented. This invention 
was of supreme importance in economic history. It finally com- 
pleted the change in the method of the distribution of wealth 
from status to contract. It affected society more profoundly than 
any other invention ever made, because it rendered the weak man 
equal to the strong man. It destroyed the power of the man clad 
in armor to secure wealth without work. It made modern mining 
possible, rendering metals abundant. It equalized the conditions 
of men without regard to superior strength. It substituted brain 
for muscle ; and it finally turned the scale between despotism and 
freedom, by rendering individual liberty possible. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
7 
It is I think commonly assumed that the invention of the steam 
engine, the spinning frame and the power loom, which came nearly 
together, made greater changes in the production and distribution 
of wealth, perhaps in a single half-century, than ever occurred be- 
fore or since ; but you will observe that the force of steam was sub- 
stantially limited during the first half-century of its application, to 
reducing the cost of labor in making textile fabrics for clothing and 
in working metals, but that it has only been in recent years that it 
has exerted any great influence in respect to the production or 
distribution of food. 
Now, important as clothing may be, it is relatively unimportant 
as compared to food in the proportion of labor required for its 
production. 
Even at the present time, all the available statistics prove that, 
measured in terms of money, the cost of food (including drink as 
one element, for whatever it is worth), is not less than three times 
the cost of clothing to the working people of this country and it 
bears even a greater proportion to the whole cost of living of the 
working people of Europe, probably four or five to one. 
If this be so now, how much greater this disparity must have 
been twenty-five years since when the value of grain was exhausted 
by transportation over an area of one hundred and fifty miles on 
common highways, and when, our railway service consisted only 
of a few disconnected lines inefficiently operated for a very limited 
service over a small area. 
If, then, one-half the struggle for life measured in money, and 
more than one-half when measured b}r the work of the household 
of the prosperous mechanic, artisan, or operative ; yet more than 
one-half, even in money, in respect to the common laborer, is the 
price paid for food, I think you will agree with me that the inven- 
tions and improvements of the last twenty years which have been, 
you will observe, mainly directed to the increased production and 
cheap distribution of grain and meat, ha,ve affected human welfare 
in even greater measure than those which ensued immediately after 
the invention of the steam-engine and the spinning-frame and more 
than any other inventions which have come into use in single 
generation, or perhaps in any single century. 
Limiting our present treatment to our own country, let it be 
observed that the one provision of our constitution which binds 8 
SECTION I.' 
these states most firmly into one nation is that which forbids any 
interference with free commerce among the states. 
Under this provision, competition is now absolutely free over a 
larger area and among a greater number of people than are per- 
mitted this privilege in any other part of the world. 
Suppose this provision of the constitution had not existed and 
that the people of the state of New York had endeavored to ob- 
struct the purchase and use of the wheat of the far west, who would 
have suffered? 
But although exposed to this free competition, the wheat pro 
duction of New York is now almost as large as when Genesee 
county was the centre of the wheat production of the country, and 
to it has been added the great variety of profitable crops which 
make wheat but an insignificant factor in the whole agricultural 
product of the state of New York. 
In making this statement, that competition is free over a larger 
area and among a greater number of people than anywhere else, I 
do not forget the existence of prohibitory liquor laws, or of laws 
in some of the states which restrict the liberty of adults in making- 
contracts for the hours of their labor. The effect of such laws con- 
stitutes so slight an exception to the competition which is other- 
wise free, that they may be entirely ignored ; neither would it be 
worth while to complicate the subject now under consideration by 
a discussion of the tariff question. It may be admitted that free 
competition has not existed between this and other countries, but 
this fact may be treated as an incident rather than as a prime fac- 
tor in our progress: for the reason that owing to our great diver- 
sity of soil, climate and other conditions, substantially every branch 
of mechanical and manufacturing industry either had been estab- 
lished or would have been so, sooner or later, whatever our fiscal 
policy might have been. It is seldom observed that there are a 
natural diversity and balance of occupations in every civilized 
country, and the effect of tariff is rather to change the direction of 
a small part of the work done, than to alter materially the relative 
proportions. This has been especially true in this country where 
even the productions of iron and steel and the manufacture of 
woollen and flax antedated the birth of the nation itself and could 
not be suppressed even by all the power which the mother country 
exerted over the colonies. 9 
In this area and among the people of this country, may be found 
as great diversities of climate, soil, condition, method of taxation 
(and even in systems of law, bearing Louisiana in mind) as are 
to be found existing between the people of different states or na- 
tions, hence a necessary diversity of occupations. 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
If we may judge institutions and customs by their fruits, this 
dominating spirit of liberty, of individualism and of free competi- 
tion, lias been most fully justified in its results. I may here re- 
fer to a subject which I have elsewhere treated at some length, to 
wit: that in this principle of competition we have the most effec- 
tive mode of cooperation among men, and that its ultimate be- 
neficent result will be to remove all poverty which is not due to 
mental or physical incapacity. Time does not suffice to develop 
this branch of the subject in this address. 
Imperfect, inadequate and insufficient as our system of common 
education may be, and subject as we have been to the incoming in 
enormous numbers of the illiterate or uninstructed of other lands, 
yet the people of these states possess on the whole that kind of 
education in greatest measure, whether attained in the schools or 
outside of them, which enables them to grasp the opportunities 
placed at their disposal by the advancement of science and by the 
progress of invention, and to apply them in the most productive 
way. 
We may be very much dissatisfied with existing conditions. 
Life is altogether too narrow to the great mass of our people. 
Discontent, as well as necessity, is the mother of invention and the 
incentive to progress, but we may yet claim that nowhere else can 
such conditions of material prosperity be found as are even now 
to be found in this country, however dissatisfied and wholesomely 
discontented we may be. 
Nowhere else are the products of labor and of capital so ade- 
quate and so ample. 
Nowhere else are wages and profits so high. 
Nowhere else is the cost of all production when measured in 
terms of labor so low. 
Nowhere else are high wages, either in money or what money 
will buy, so sure to be the consequent result and reward of a low 
cost of labor. 
Nowhere else, high as our taxes are, is so much general benefit 
gained from the expenditure of the taxes. 10 
SECTION I. 
Nowhere else is so small a proportion of the public income 
wasted for destructive purposes, in the support of standing armies 
and navies, and in the passive war which is now reducing Europe 
to pauperism in almost every part of that continent. 
As I have said, even our civil war itself, and the heavy taxes 
which have been imposed since it ended, have but little retarded 
our material progress. 
There was not a single year during the war itself, in which the 
production of the northern states did not increase in quantity and 
in value, in a measure greater than the expenditure for the war in 
that year, and could any equitable system of taxation have been 
invented and applied quickly enough, the whole cost of the war 
might have been defrayed during its very progress ; and yet the 
free states and territories would have come out with a larger cap- 
ital, and a greater power and measure of production at the end 
than at the beginning, while the south would have been redeemed 
from poverty by the destruction of its fictitious wealth. 
Not only ma}" these propositions be maintained but it has lately 
fallen to me to prove (see Distribution of Products, G. P. Put- 
nam & Sons) what Mr. Robert Giffin has also lately proved to 
have been the course of events in Europe : namely, that during 
the last fifty years, in the latter part of which the greatest relative 
progress has been made in the application of science to the useful 
arts, those whom we miscall the poor because they may as yet have 
accumulated no substantial amount of property, have yet annually 
obtained an increasing share of an increasing product, while the 
proportion of the annual product secured by the rich as a separate 
class, has steadily become a decreasing proportion. Yet such has 
been the rapid increase of product year by year that while the poor 
have thus become more prosperous the rich have become no poorer 
and are more numerous. There have been temporary fluctuations 
but in each decade such has been the conclusion ; even the present 
period of alleged depression is one in which the greatest relative 
progress is being made and when the adjustment is completed to 
the new conditions arising from the more recent applications of 
science which I shall presently consider, I venture to predict that 
it will become evident to the most superficial observer that such is 
the fact. 
These are perhaps startling propositions and the}" may be ques- 
tioned. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
11 
Let us glance at the list of almost new forces which were per- 
fected, extended or applied during the war, or which have been 
put to use since the war ended, both in this country and else- 
where. 
Afterward we will consider the newly available areas of pro- 
ductive land which have been put to use in this and other coun- 
tries during the same period, from which we now derive a part of 
our own abundance in exchange for the excess of our domestic 
products. 
But before we consider these new forces, a few words need to 
be given to certain changes which occurred in the decade imme- 
diately preceding the war. 
In ten years prior to 1860-61 California and Australia had sud- 
denly rendered up their great stores of the precious metals, as if 
in anticipation of the needs of the great commerce which other 
discoveries and new inventions were so soon to bring into ex- 
istence. 
It is often, but I think mistakenly, supposed that there is a pro- 
ductive force or influence in gold and silver themselves, and that 
a great addition to the money metals of the world constitutes a 
great addition to the productive powers of the world. I question 
this view ; these metals are but instruments of distribution. 
Had not the vast additions of the precious metals been accom- 
panied or immediately followed by the application of these other 
forces, which I shall presently name, and which made greater pro- 
duction and wider exchange of products possible, the only effect 
of the addition of such a vast fund to the money metal of the 
world would have been a great advance in the prices of commodi- 
ties ; and during such a period the rich would have become richer, 
while the poor would have become poorer; for the reason that any 
inflation of the currency, whether on a paper basis, or on a specie 
basis which is effected suddenly, raises prices much faster than 
wages follow. Witness the effect of the great mass of gold which 
was suddenly placed at the disposal of Germany by the payment 
of the French indemnity. It may be questioned whether the 
disasters which ensued from this sudden accretion of wealth in 
Germany were not greater than the burden imposed upon France. 
It precipitated the one country into disastrous speculation, while 
the other went quietly to work to replace the devastation of war. 
It is only the stimulus that rising prices have in making 12 
SECTION I. 
employment continuous, which renders them any benefit to those 
who work for wages. 
The exchange of this vast increase of our products, which im- 
mediately followed the addition of our stock of money metal after 
1850-60, might have been hampered and crippled for want of in- 
struments of exchange, except for the discovery of gold ; but to 
impute abundance of other products to this discovery, as a cause 
of the increase, might be like imputing the abundance of petro- 
leum with which the world is now lighted, to the scarcity of 
whales. Many other analogies could be found. 
In connection with the production of the precious metals the 
wonderful inventions in hydraulic mining may be named, which 
belong to the period now under consideration, in the application 
of which it has become profitable to wash a ton of gravel for ten 
cents’ worth of gold. 
Prior to 1865 the railway mileage of this country was less than 
34,000, consisting in great measure of detached lines, many of 
them serving for merely local purposes. Even the consolidation 
of a through line from New York to Chicago did not take place 
until 1869. Now our railway mileage is over one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand miles, consolidated in great systems and 
worked with an efficiency and economy unknown in any other coun- 
try. One-half of the traffic over these railways consists of food 
for man or beast. The grain crop of 1865 measured 1,12 7,499,187 
bushels; of 1884, 2,981,920,332. That of 1885 will probably 
exceed 3,000,000,000, over 50 bushels per capita. 
What would have become of this food had it been raised while 
the limit of transportation by wagon was limited within an area 
of one hundred and fifty miles? Would it not have rotted upon 
the field had it been produced? 
It was the Bessemer method of making steel which rendered 
this transportation of food possible over the longest distance at 
the lowest cost. 
The man who now gives up one holiday in each year, and de- 
votes it to earning wages, removes the obstruction of a thousand 
miles of distance in obtaining his year’s supply of food. One 
holiday in the year devoted to work puts the mechanic of Massa- 
chusetts next door to the prairie of the west. 
New inventions in the manufacture of steel even now in pro- 
gress of application in this and other countries, may, presently, 13 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
do away with the necessity of moving the ores of iron over long 
distances by rendering the presence of what have been impuri- 
ties in the ore of little consequence ; thereby bringing into imme- 
diate use vast deposits of iron ore in the very heart of our own 
country which have until now been of little use and almost of no 
value. And when we adopt these processes we may then convert 
iron ore into food for man and beast, as they now do in Germany, 
where the waste of the “ basic” process of making steel is now 
treated for the recovery of phosphate of lime which is left in the 
slag, to be converted into a fertilizer. 
Is it not a startling thought that modern science has converted 
iron stone into food? 
In the period under consideration the screw propeller has fi- 
nally displaced the paddle-wheel in all ocean traffic. At the same 
time the compound steam engine has been perfected ; the end of 
both being that the fuel required has been vastly reduced, and 
where it required over 200 tons per day of coal to cross 
the Atlantic twenty years since, a much more capacious steamer 
is now driven across by the use of 35 tons. But this statement 
is far from showing the full change; the important matter is the 
ratio of the fuel to the weight moved ; every pound of coal now 
carries thirty-two times as much cargo across the Atlantic as could 
be carried thereby in the earlier days of ocean navigation. The 
steamer “Persia,” in 1850, consumed 14,500 lbs, of coal to each ton 
of cargo, while even the racer “Arizona,” in 1882, consumed only 
450 lbs. per ton of cargo. In the freight steamers, assuming pa- 
per to have the same calorific value as coal, the combustion of an 
ordinary letter, such as is carried Ity mail for a two-cent stamp, 
would move a ton of cargo and its share of the vessel two miles. 
A lump of coal which can be mailed anywhere in the Postal 
Union for one cent would do the same work. Thus has room been 
made for cargoes of provisions or other merchandise, now car- 
ried at low cost more than half way round the world, to feed and 
clothe the people of the most distant lands. 
The Suez Canal has restored commerce to its old lines, but by 
more speedy and cheaper methods. The general adoption of the 
telegraph renders distribution quick and equal, and these two forces 
have done away with the necessity of accumulating and storing 
great stocks of merchandise at heavy cost and in other ways have 
vastly reduced the cost of distribution. 14 
Agricultural machinery has been perfected in this same period 
to the end that the equivalent of one man’s labor for one year, in 
the direction of this machinery, is wheat enough to give a thou- 
sand people all the bread they customarily use during the same 
twelve months, while corresponding inventions, too numerous even 
to mention separately, have reduced the labor cost of producing 
corn, oats, and of making hay in almost equal measure. One 
man’s work for one day will pay for moving a year’s supply of 
grain and meat a thousand miles and one man’s work for one year 
on the far away plains of Dakota will yield wheat for a thousand 
people for the same time. 
SECTION I. 
Not only have our own prairies and those of Canada been 
brought to the use of man by these inventions and the ap- 
plication of these new forces, but the vast plains of Australia, 
New Zealand and the middle sections of South America, upon 
the Paraguay and Parana rivers, now send their grain or their dry 
or frozen meat to the hungry men of Europe, and yield up the 
abundance of their wool to all who are wise enough not to ob- 
struct its use. Except for the railway and steamship their pro- 
ducts would have been almost without value. 
Within this period the whole process of canning meat, fish, 
fruit and vegetables has been developed, the refrigerator car and 
steamship compartment have been constructed, cold storage 
houses and ripening houses have been invented :—in the latter the 
banana, one of the cheapest and most abundant of the tropical 
products, which was first introduced into the temperate zone as a 
luxury, may be ripened in such abundance and at so low a cost 
that it may yet become an important article of food, being very 
rich in nitrogen. 
The oil wells of this country and Russia have given light to 
those who could never before extend their day’s work beyond what 
the sunshine permitted. The invention of the pipe lines for dis- 
tribution has enabled that product to be distributed. In this 
connection may be mentioned the extraction of colors ; or, as my 
friend Dr. T. Sterry Hunt stated it, when I asked him to add to 
my list any other suggestion of important inventions, “the creation 
of new coloring materials from hydro-carbons, chiefly from the 
refuse of coal distillation, which have already made a revolution 
in dyeing and printing. Yet more important, perhaps, as sugges- 
tive of what may follow, we may name the artificial production of ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
15 
alizarine (the red of madder) and of indigo both of which sub- 
stances are now manufactured on a large scale, while the madder 
culture has been almost abandoned on account of the greater cheap- 
ness and the advantage in the use of the artificial substitute. This 
abandonment of madder culture is not a loss, but a gain : because it 
frees large areas of land in some parts of Europe which are needed 
for the cultivation of grain.” 
Not least among the advantages which have ensued from the 
distillation of petroleum, has been the substitution of the lubri- 
cants made therefrom in place of animal or vegetable oils ; the 
latter, being subject to rapid oxidation commonly called sponta- 
neous combustion, were constant sources of danger in the factories 
where they were once used, while the mineral lubricants now in 
use, are absolutely free from this danger. 
When we bear in mind this fact, that important products like 
indigo and alizarine have been derived from these mineral sources, 
is it visionary to suggest that a time may come when the hydro- 
carbons may be converted into the carbo-hydrates of which we hear 
so much in the chemistry of food? After we have converted 
iron-stone into food byway of the laboratory of the soil, and since 
we have generated colors and perfumes from coal tar, may we 
ever expect to convert the hydro-carbon of petroleum into the car- 
bo-hydrate of the physiologist in the laboratory of the chemist ? 
Another revolution has occurred in the production of soda by the 
ammonia process, replacing the old method and dispensing with 
the use of sulphur. We all know that the march of civilization 
may be measured by the demand for soda ash and other alkalies. 
In connection with this may be named the processes by which 
all the volatile products of the coke ovens are now saved, and a 
vast product of oils and of ammonia is thus obtained. 
In medicine the artificial product of the alkaloids such as mor- 
phine and quinine may be mentioned as among the possibilities of 
the near future. To these may be added the great discoveries 
which have been made during the last few years in the use of an- 
tiseptics, especially in connection with the preservation of fruits, 
wine, beer, etc. 
Electricity has been put under control as yet mainly for light, 
but who can tell how soon the electric current will be divided or 
when this old but ever new force may be placed in every house- 16 
SECTION I. 
hold, to be applied even more readily than the force generated by 
the combustion of coal. 
Among the lesser of the new mechanical forces which have been 
applied during this period, we may name the substitution of the 
roller for the mill-stone in the preparation of flour, while the 
wheat elevator for the storage of grains has been perfected. 
The driven well, which may hereafter make many a desert blos- 
som like the rose. 
The application of the diamond drill, worked by steam or com- 
pressed air to the boring of these wells, and also to mining. 
The use of nitro-glycerine, or other high explosives in mining. 
The application of steam or hydraulic power to the derrick or 
the crane for handling heavy weights, and for loading and unload- 
ing vessels. 
The introduction of the elevator, lift or vertical railway into 
hotels, office buildings and warehouses, whereby the aggregate rent 
of land has been reduced, although the special rent of particular 
places may have been increased. 
Not least among the developments of this period has been the 
great perfection to which machine tools have been brought, ac- 
companied or rendered possible by the adoption of standard 
measures and gauges, to the end that the interchangeable system 
has been applied to almost every kind of mechanism from the 
locomotive engine and the sewing machine to the finest watch. 
The sewing machine has become the common implement of the 
housewife, the seamstress, the shoemaker and the sailmaker. 
A woman may pass through the office of a Lynn boot and shoe 
factory to inspect the work who, being measured as she passes the 
office, will find a pair of boots perfectly fitted to her foot, finished 
and ready for her use as she goes out, after having looked over the 
five floors of the factory. The boots will have passed from machine 
to machine much faster than she can comprehend the process of 
the work even in the most superficial way. 
Every one of you will add something to this list, each impor- 
tant in its place. And to these absolutely new applications of sci- 
ence may be added improvements in the construction of old ma- 
chines previously invented, especially in the textile arts, by means 
of which the product has been increased and the requisite number 
of laborers has been reduced in greater measure than in any pre- ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
17 
vions period since the substitution of automatic machinery for the 
spinning wheel and the hand loom. 
In the cutting and preparation of timber and its conversion 
into boards, I have been told that a few simple inventions have 
rendered the work of one man as effective as that of sixteen men 
twenty years ago. A little stream of cold water distributed from 
the hollow axle of the circular saw, to keep the saw cool, has ren- 
dered it possible to substitute six foot circular saws and a steam 
feed for four foot saws or less, fed slowly b}' hand. The planing 
machine invented a little earlier has come into practical use to- 
gether with innumerable other inventions in wood working. 
The application of iron and steel to purposes of construction 
has made vast progress, of which the elevated railway in New 
York is a conspicuous example. The common use of structural 
steel may also be named and the development of the cantilever 
principle in bridge construction. 
But iron is less useful, less safe and more costly than timber 
and brick, even at the present prices, for the construction of mills, 
works and warehouses ; and in these branches of construction very 
great progress has been made in the combination of brick and 
timber. By the adoption of suitable methods the modern Amer- 
ican factory has become one of the safest fire risks in the world, 
costing less for its insurance than the so-called fire-proof factory 
of Great Britain. 
This safety from loss by fire has been accomplished, in part, 
by what is known as the open timber construction, free from cel- 
lular or concealed spaces, the timber being in some dangerous 
places protected by plastering laid on wire lathing ; and in part 
by the adoption of the system of automatic sprinkling, whereby 
the fire lets on its own water, puts itself out and tells where it is 
at the same moment. 
Another great step in the progress of the art of building facto- 
ries and works consists in reducing the number of stories as nearly 
to one as circumstances will permit. The use of a three-inch solid 
deck made of timber, for a roof, making the one-stoiy factory cool 
in summer, warm in winter, while such a one-story factory may be 
better lighted and ventilated, and is more suitable for general use 
than any other form. 
In this connection reference may be made to some of the pos- 
sibilities of the future. 18 
The adoption of steam power and the use of coal gas for light- 
ing have rendered a great concentration of the manufacturing and 
mechanical arts an absolute necessity ; this concentration of the 
work in closely built towns and cities has of necessity been fol- 
lowed by a concentration of population under adverse conditions, 
both with respect to health, economy of rent and other matters. 
SECTION I. 
Whenever the electric current can be divided economically, so 
that a measured amount of power or light may be sent over wires 
in different directions from the same source, water power may be 
utilized where dams can be built with the greatest economy, but 
which are now useless for want of proper space for the construc- 
tion of factories near them. 
Large steam engines working at 1 lbs. of coal per horse 
power per hour, or less, may be substituted for small steam engines 
requiring from four to eight lbs. Gas for heating purposes may 
soon be as widely distributed as it now is for illuminating. 
Under such conditions, power and light being furnished in the 
same manner, the directions for the work given by the telephone 
from the city office, factories which now occupy dangerous and un- 
suitable positions in the fourth, fifth and sixth stories of our city 
warehouses, may be scattered over a wide area in the suburbs of 
the same cities, in well ventilated and cheaply constructed one 
and two story factories, surrounded by dwelling places, each with 
its small plot of land, where the working people can live under 
vastly better conditions than they can now live in the narrow courts 
and streets of the cities. 
Less conspicuous but even more important than almost any dis- 
covery or invention yet named in their ultimate effect upon our 
food supply may be recited the opening of the Stassfurt potash 
mines in Germany, and the discovery and working of the phos- 
phate beds of the United States and quite recently those of Can- 
ada. 
In the latter, deposits, which are 80 per cent phosphate of lime, 
have been found in almost inexhaustible quantity, and under such 
conditions that they will be very cheaply furnished to all our west- 
ern and northern states and territories. 
Mention may also be made of the mines of very pure salt on the 
Canada side of Lake Superior which may presently yield, if they 
do not already, the necessary supply of salt most suitable for the 
preservation of meat; these mines are also close to the prairies of 19 
the West and subject to our use whenever we are wise enough to 
remove the obstructions which now render the import of salt more 
costty than it need to be. 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
These discoveries were prophetic. Who knows yet what may 
come from the alkali plains of the far west or from the volcanic 
region which lies between Oregon and California? None can 
doubt that there are mines yet to be opened in that section more 
precious than those of silver or gold, of which one example may 
be mentioned, consisting of vast deposits of sulphate of alumina 
latety discovered. 
I may venture to add, among the most important applications 
of science to agriculture, the re-discovery of the system of pre- 
serving green crops in pits known as “ ensilage.” 
There remains but one great discovery to be made to round out 
and complete this list which I have presented to you, and to per- 
fect the series of the present generation. 
Whoever can attract the nitrogen of the atmosphere, and combine 
it with the potash of and the phosphates of South Car- 
olina or Canada, will add the last element necessary to secure 
permanent abundance in agriculture at the least cost. 
It is possible, I will even say probable, that the solution of this 
question may lie in the one plant, as I will presently attempt to 
show you, which might well be adopted on the coat of arms of 
this country, namely, Indian corn. Perhaps this symbol may be 
justified in the peaceful war which we have just waged with our 
foreign enemies. 
Who were our enemies when we were engaged in a contest for 
liberty? Were they not the privileged classes of Europe, whose 
main-stay has been the rent of the land possessed, but not worked 
by themselves ? 
We have attacked them with ship-loads of grain and meat. We 
have sustained the operatives of England who sacrificed even their 
daily bread in our cause, while we have rendered the collection of 
rent from land devoted to grain hereafter almost impossible in 
Great Britain, except it be earned by the owner himself who may 
put capital, brains and personal industry to the use of his own 
land. 
Said I not rightly that greater progress has been made in the 
period which has elapsed since the beginning, or even since the 
end of our civil war, in the advancement of science and its appli- 20 
SECTION I. 
cation to human welfare, than in any other previous generation in 
the history of the world ? 
Time will not suffice for me to more than refer to the substan- 
tial foundation and extension of technical education in the same 
period both in this and other countries ; to the beginning of scien- 
tific methods of manual instruction ; to the great development of 
statistical science ; and to many other intellectual factors which 
have also marked the era of which we are treating. 
But there is a reverse to this pleasant picture, and much more 
remains to be accomplished. 
Vast progress has been made in individual wealth and in com- 
mon welfare. The time necessary to be devoted to the struggle 
for life has been reduced ; leisure has been earned and earned in 
such a way that it has not become license, but will become the op- 
portunity for that moral and intellectual progress which must 
always be founded on material progress if they are to become 
general. 
Great as our progress has been and huge as our abundance now 
appears to be, yet we cannot too often recall the fact that the aver- 
age product to each person in this most prosperous country, 
measured in money at the point of final distribution for final 
consumption, does not exceed fifty to fifty-five cents worth per 
capita, and our whole accumulated wealth, aside from land, does 
not exceed two or at the utmost three years’ production. 
Let us not boast too much nor think that we can remit our 
work in the least degree, when we remember that after we have 
set aside only so much as is required to maintain or increase our 
capital, so that it shall bear a due proportion to its necessary use, 
and after we have provided for the support of the government by 
taxation, each average person must find shelter and be supplied 
with food and clothing, out of what forty to forty-five cents per 
day will buy, because such is the measure in money of all that is 
produced and we cannot have more than all there is. I have 
treated this matter at length in another place, but I ask you to 
recall this when you are considering the daily rations which are 
served at a cost, varying from fifteen to thirty cents per person 
and the table of economic rations which accompany this address. 
When our resources are thus reduced to 40 or 45 cents per day, 
you are somewhat startled, but each person who is engaged in 
gainful occupation in this country sustains two others: at 40 ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
21 
cents a day the expenditure of three persons comes to $438.00 
per year; at 45 cents to $492.75, which are not so startling fig- 
ures, when compared to what we know to be the average earnings 
of working people. 
What can be done for those whose income is less than forty 
cents a day for themselves and their children and who must spend 
more than one-half for food ? They are counted by millions even 
in our fair land. 
Whenever any great invention or discovery displaces common 
laborers whose education or development has never been of such 
a kind as to fit them for any other work than that to which they 
have been accustomed, they suffer for the time. 
What can we do to aid those who have been almost crushed in 
the onward march of industry ? When partly automatic machinery 
is substituted for manual labor in any given art, although the man}’’ 
consumers gain a greater supply at less cost and a few trained 
workmen obtain higher wrages in guiding the machinery while doing 
the work at less cost than before ; yet, those whose only occupation 
had been in this handicraft may lose even the pittance which they 
had gained before and they are apt to be the persons least capable 
of adjusting themselves to new conditions. Witness the suffering 
of the hand loom-weavers of England when the power loom was 
first used. Bad as their condition had been it became for a time 
yet more wretched. 
It is manifestly impossible to make any special provision in ad- 
vance to meet the adverse contingencies of new invention. 
The only adequate remedy for the hardships which must ensue, 
when those who have been engaged in the common kinds of handi- 
craft have even that resource taken from them, is to develop the 
general system of education in such a way that there shall be the 
least possible number of children brought up under conditions 
which would limit them to a single art, and that a very low 
grade of hand work. 
The disadvantage which ensues from the very great subdivision 
of labor which Jias been introduced with modern scientific inven- 
tions, is, that in the conduct of this work versatility or “gumption ” 
as it is commonly called, is not developed such as was the very 
marked characteristic of the Yankee of former times. 
The country boy, who attended the common school three or six 
months in the year, and during the rest of the time was of neces- 22 
sity a “Jack-at-all-trades,” was thereby enabled to become master 
of any trade to which he might afterward choose to devote his 
time. Such is not the case in the present day. 
SECTION I. 
A good beginning has, however, been made in the attention now 
given to manual instruction as well as mental, but the benefit of 
what we are now doing in this direction will only be realized in 
the future. Our problem is with the present. 
Witness how suddenly changes may come which involve great 
hardships to those least capable of meeting them. 
In the census of 1880, the fact was disclosed that out of every 
thousand persons who were occupied in all kinds of gainful occu- 
pation, mental, mechanical and manual, three hundred and twelve 
could only answer the enumerator’s question with the reply that 
they were common laborers. Among these common laborers there 
were over eighteen hundred and fifty thousand, or more than ten 
per cent of all who were occupied in all the arts of life, who were 
engaged in common labor other than that upon farms. Where 
were the}' ? 
They had doubtless increased in number between 1880 and 1882 
by immigration in very considerable measure and in 1882 com- 
mon laborers numbered at least two millions ; in that year not less 
than six hundred and fifty thousand persons, of whom at least six 
hundred thousand were common laborers, were engaged in the 
single work of constructing new lines of railwa}7 within the limits 
of the United States. This railway fever culminated in 1882 with 
the construction of lines numbering over 11,500 miles. In 1884 
the construction was less than 4,000 miles. 
Between these two dates more than four hundred thousand com- 
mon laborers, or more than twenty per cent of the whole number of 
common laborers who were not occupied upon farms, were dis- 
charged and were compelled to find other work or to be idle 
Where could they go ? For what other work were they fitted ? 
A part of the more intelligent and thrifty doubtless took up land 
upon the lines of the railway where they had been employed, but 
the greater part drifted back to the cities, where they gave the ap- 
pearance of being much more numerous than they really were, be- 
cause they were concentrated in particular places. 
When this work ceased, the demand for iron also fell off' a million 
tons, and consequently all iron works were affected, then the roll- 
ing mills. Then the demand which had existed for the supply of ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
23 
the idle common laborers, of the idle iron workers, and of me- 
chanics who had been engaged in this art of constructing new 
railroads, in part ceased, and the goods and wares which they had 
consumed began to accumulate ; presently the effect of this was 
felt throughout the whole body politic. 
One of the penalties which we pay for the complexity of the work 
of modern art and manufacture, is, that when the most insignifi- 
cant gear is thrown out of place, the whole machine is crippled. 
We are all interdependent and the calamity which falls on those 
who are apparently the least important classes in society has an 
adverse effect upon the progress of the whole, like that which a 
slight injury to the foot, or a pebble in the shoe of a strong man, 
may have on his power of locomotion. 
As I have said, the true remedy can only consist in the develop- 
ment of versatility, of manual dexterity, and of capacity on the 
part of the poorest child in the community, to take advantage of 
the many opportunities which may be found waiting at all times 
for those who are capable of grasping them. We may, however, 
alleviate the present difficulty in some measure, by reducing the 
necessary cost of subsistence. Before we enter upon this part of 
my subject, permit me to observe that in this address, I have kept 
the fact in view that the political economist may only treat the 
physical sciences in their direct connection with material progress. 
In the list of the scientific inventions and applications which I 
have presented to you, I have made no reference to abstract science 
or to the higher branches of research. 
May I venture to give a summary of the conclusions which we 
may draw from the facts which I have presented so far as this 
country is concerned. 
With respect to the primary processes of production, the appli- 
cations of science, crude as they yet are in respect to agriculture, 
have assured an excessive abundance in ratio to any possible in- 
crease of population during this present century. There is enough 
for all and to spare. 
With respect to the primary processes of distribution by land 
and by water, the cost has been reduced to such a point that there 
is little margin left to work upon for further saving. 
In the conversion of crude materials into finished forms ready 
for consumption the field for invention and improvements is still 
a broad one. 24 
SECTION I. 
In wholesale traffic,'there is no longer any great margin to be 
saved and even in the retail distribution of staple articles the 
smallest profits suffice. 
In the distribution of perishable commodities, there is an enor- 
mous waste, and in the science of consumption almost no progress 
has been made. It is only within a very recent period that even 
the statistics have been gathered, while I believe the beginning of 
a true study of the chemistry of food and a true science of nutri- 
tion may be dated within the period under consideration. 
I have presented to you the two aspects of the question : on 
the one side, the prophecy of the future, replete with the comfort 
of an assured abundance ; while the statistics of the past prove 
conclusively that those who perform the arduous work of creating 
this abundance are steadily but surely securing to themselves an 
increasing share of the increasing product, and this product will 
yet continue to increase as capital and labor are combined in more 
harmonious relations. 
On the other side, the data have been given which show within 
what narrow limits the great masses of this most prosperous people 
must now exist; even though they secure to themselves for their 
own consumption more than ninety per cent of all that is annually 
produced. 
The danger of our time is the constant resort to legislative rem- 
edies for evils which can only be removed by the development of 
the individual. 
I have brought this great problem of subsistence to the unit of 
the individual, because we can comprehend it better when it is 
stated in terms of what 40 or 50 cents per day will buy for each 
person. 
We can, perhaps, comprehend how hopeless the problem of 
ameliorating the condition of life would be, were it not for the ad- 
vancement of science, when the fact is stated that in order to give 
each person of our present population five cents’ worth more per 
day, we must produce and distribute one thousand million dollars’ 
worth more than our present annual product. We may confirm 
this impression both of the minimum and maximum elements of 
the problem by the consideration that if we reduce our present 
population of over 57,000,000 to the equivalent of 50,000,000 
adults, by counting two children under ten as one adult, and then 
assign to each of the 50,000,000, one egg every two days at the 25 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
price of one cent each, then the annual value of the product of 
hen’s eggs would be equal to the annual product of gold and silver 
of all our mines. 
In the presence of the facts which I have submitted to you, may 
we not also find evidence that the hypothetical deductions of the 
English political economists, who narrowed the field which Adam 
Smith had opened but had not exhausted, must give place to more 
humane inductions based upon solid historical and statistical 
foundations. 
Were there no promise of material welfare being attained upon 
this earth Ity any possible population which can find standing 
room upon it, all expectation of moral and spiritual progress, 
would of necessity be surrendered, and the only motto of the social 
scientist might well be, “ Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we 
die.” 
I fear that I have occupied too much time in this introductory 
review ; we will now take up the more practical part of our work. 
In the various tables which will accompany this address, and 
in the material which has been so kindly furnished me by Prof.W. O. 
Atwater of Middletown, Conn., it is made apparent that there is a 
wide choice in the ration of food necessary to sustain an adult man 
or woman in full vigor and health. 
Again recalling the fact that with respect to this lowest plane of 
common laborers, the mere price of food constitutes sixty per cent 
of the cost of living, even for those who are fully and continuously 
occupied, it will be very obvious that if we can show them how to 
maintain themselves in full vigor at a cost of. thirty or foidy per 
cent of their ordinary income, we shall have done good service. 
In Professor Atwater’s table representing the cost of protein, 
it appears that we if we buy protein in a sirloin of beef at twenty- 
five cents per pound we pay one dollar a pound for it; whereas if 
we seek for protein in oat meal or in corn meal, we pay twelve to 
fourteen cents per pound for it. 
It is also proved by these chemical investigations in respect to 
the elements of food, that the Scotch have by a process of natural 
selection, adopted in their oat meal that kind of food which gives 
them the right proportions of nutrient material at the very lowest 
cost. 
The people of New England have also come to a similar conclu- 
sion by a similar process: in their baked beans and pork, and in 26 
SECTION I. 
their fried fish-balls composed of dried cod-fish and potato, even 
in their brown bread, are also to be found substantially the right 
proportions of nutrient at a very low cost. To a Yankee it 
would not be a very great hardship under the pressure of 
adverse conditions, to be obliged to substitute baked beans, fish- 
balls and brown bread in a more considerable measure for roast beef, 
than they are accustomed to do when in a condition of pros- 
perity. 
The weekly ration of the southern negro, which he chooses in 
preference to any other, to wit: a peck of meal and three and 
one-half pounds of bacon, is also one which contains the elements 
of vital force at an exceedingly low cost. There are probably no 
working people in the world so cheaply subsisted as the southern 
negroes, if consideration be given to the force contained in the 
food. The rice of the east may cost less in money, but it is defic- 
ient in some of the nutrients which are necessary to full vigor. 
There are, therefore, many ways in which temporary poverty 
can be alleviated, but it is not altogether desirable either to advise 
or to attempt to promote such changes in the diet as might, under 
the pressure of necessity, make a considerable saving. 
The people of this country can afford a more abundant diet 
than that enjoyed by any other country, and they will continue to 
enjoy it because even periods of adversit}7 affect a relatively small 
number of persons however unintelligent they may be. 
The same conditions affect this question as that of taxation. 
I suppose no economist of repute has failed to reach the conclu- 
sion, that a system of direct taxation will lead to the greatest 
economy in the public expenditure ; or that when the taxes are 
collected indirectly in such a way as not to come to the immediate 
knowledge of the consumers who pay them, twenty-five per cent 
at least will be wasted ; and yet I am of opinion that the people 
of this country would prefer to pay about twenty-five per cent in 
excess of the absolute need rather than to have a direct tax im- 
posed upon them. 
And so I think that the great majority will prefer to continue 
their present practice in respect to the use of food as long as it is 
a somewhat difficult matter to learn how to combine true econ- 
omy with a generous diet. 
Our main attention may, therefore, be given to cheapening the 
cost of meat, rather than reducing the consumption thereof, and 27 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
with a few pages upon this subject of a rather visionary sort, I shall 
close this address. 
Having presented the importance of animal products in their 
relation to the daily rations of the people; having also presented 
data giving proof that a part of the ration of animal products 
might well be spared if it continues to be as costly as it now is, 
the next question which arises is : May not the cost of animal 
products be greatly reduced by the adoption of more scientific 
methods of production? Upon this subject I may present to you 
certain hypotheses in which, I think I may be sustained by Pro- 
fessor Atwater. 
Let me begin by reminding you that iron ore is now being con- 
verted in part into animal food in Germany, and that we may 
perhaps look mainly to our mines and to our atmosphere for our 
vegetable and animal food rather than to any other source, if other 
sources fail. We may treat the soil as a laboratory when the soil 
itself fails or begins to fail as a mine. We may restore it with 
mineral elements from mines in which they are found in a concen- 
trated form. 
We have throughout the eastern and most densely populated 
section of the United States a vast area of land which is not now 
considered worth cultivation. Much of it has once been cultivat- 
ed and has sustained an intelligent people, but when the possi- 
bility occurred for obtaining Indian corn from far distant points, 
the cultivation of much of this land ceased, because it was not 
needed for market gardens, and it did not appear to be well 
adapted to pasturage. 
In the section of Massachusetts where I pass my summers, old 
fields are being covered with scrub oak, and old dwelling places 
are falling into decay, where by means of intelligent cultivation 
sixty bushels of shelled corn to the acre can be made, and it is 
only a question of cost whether or not such a crop shall be 
made. This cost again depends upon the price at which the land 
can be fertilized. 
Now the chemists assure me that this soil contains iron, 
magnesia and chlorine in ample measure ; that it can be furnished 
with potash at a very low cost from many sources, especially from 
the inexhaustible mines in Stassfurt, Germany; that it can be fur. 
nished with tiie phosphate of lime at very low cost from the phos- 28 
SECTION I. 
phate deposits of South Carolina and of Ottawa, to which latter 
source reference has already been made. Along the whole New 
England coast are also scattered the fertilizer works which draw 
their supplies mainly from the sea. 
But it has been assumed that unless some kind of a fertilizer 
could be added to these substances containing nitrogen in large 
quantities, the effort to raise corn upon this land would fail; yet 
now comes Professor Atwater who tells us that so far as his 
experiments and his cooperative work yet prove anything, it may 
be proved that the Indian corn plant is analogous to clover, to 
the southern cow-pea and to a few other plants, in being capable 
of deriving its nitrogen, somehow or other, from the nitrogen of 
the atmosphere or from some natural source, and that it needs 
no expensive nitrogenous fertilizer to be applied to the soil, pro- 
vided the other elements already named are there. But while the 
corn has done so well with the phosphates and potash salts, it has 
given still larger and more satisfactory results where these and 
farm manures were used together. In the plan herein proposed, 
stable manure would be furnished in great abundance. Professor 
Atwater’s statement is as follows : 
“ The important fact is, that the corn plant has in these trials 
shown itself capable of bringing fair yields with small amounts of 
the less costly mineral fertilizers, even in the worn-out soils of the 
eastern states. With this help it has gathered its nitrogen from 
natural sources, and holds it readily to be fed out on the farm 
and returned in the form of manure for other crops. In other 
words, the experiments, thus far, imply that the corn has, some 
how or other, the power to gather a great deal of nitrogen from 
the soil or air, or both ; that in this respect it comes nearer to the 
legumes than the cereals ; that, in short, corn may be classed with 
the ‘renovating’ crops. If this is really so, and this can be settled 
only by continued experimenting, then our great cereal, instead of 
being simply a consumer of the fertility of our soils, may be used 
as an agent for their restoration.” 
If this is so, it is difficult to conceive of the importance of these 
facts. 
As I have before said, life is but a conversion of forces, and this 
proposition may be sustained with regard to animal life, as well as 
with regard to human life. 29 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
How, then, shall we convert the forces of our mines and of the 
soil and air into animal food for the use of man, by working over 
this deserted soil of Massachusetts into a beef factory ? 
The way is very plain and simple—if. (I call you to witness that 
I italicize the?/.) Witness Farrish Furman of Georgia, after carefully 
studying the chemical elements of the cotton plant, invented a 
fertilizer, at very low cost, by which he brought waste and deserted 
cotton land, from \of a bale to 2£ bales to the acre. In so doing 
he made use of the Stassfurt potash and the phosphate rocks of 
South Carolina. By way of his laboratory, consisting of wasted 
soil which had long since ceased to be a mine yielding cotton, he 
converted the two minerals named into cotton seed. We may buy 
the meal of this cotton seed, bring it to Massachusetts, there feed 
it and thus convert the same minerals into fertilizing elements, in 
the soil laboratory of Bristol or Plymouth counties. 
Here we have not only the phosphate and the potash, but also a 
food for beasts very rich in protein, yielding the most valuable 
manure by the use of which we may enable our laboratory to 
grow Indian corn at the rate of 20 to 25 and some claim even 30 
tons of forage to the acre. 
Suppose we put this forage into pits and feed it at the rate of 
two steers to an acre, adding each year the ration of cotton seed 
meal to the sixty pounds of ensilage daily required by a steer. We 
may also soon find some other very nitrogenous plant capable of 
being grown in the north, which like the southern “cow-pea” will 
produce a very heavy crop of forage on very poor soil. Cow-pea 
vines, being mixed with Indian corn in ensilage pits, appear to 
yield the necessary proportion of protein, so that, in North Caro- 
lina, working mules are now sustained upon this mixed ration of 
pitted fodder in as good condition as when previously fed on 
northern hay. 
I am assured that if we slaughter the steer, removing all the 
salable products, the hide, the meat, the bone and the hoof, we 
should yet remove less phosphate of lime and less potash than we 
had fed through the steer to the soil. Our Indian corn might some- 
how have entrapped the nitrogen of the atmosphere, and with the 
fertilizing elements of the cotton seed, would again have enriched 
the soil; our soil laboratory would thus grow more productive every 
year in ratio to the number of animals which we fed upon it, per- 
What may be the result of our conversion ? 30 
SECTION I. 
haps until we fed possibly three steers to an acre. This has never 
been done within my knowledge, but I do not believe it is beyond 
the power of science to make such a crop upon a fair acre of land 
in a good season, as to yield sufficient forage to carry three steers 
to an acre if not for a full year, then for at least eight months in 
a year, and during the remainder of a year they could as well as 
not be turned out to the wild land in the neighborhood for pas- 
turage. There is room enough in New England on land now 
going to waste to raise all the beef we can eat, and more, if such 
methods are feasible. 
Without giving any especial attention to the matter I have my- 
self been keeping two cows on the crop of a single acre for nearly 
a year, year by year since 1880, but I am rather ashamed tjo say 
that I cannot give the measure of meal or middlings. I have only 
proved to my own satisfaction that it is easily possible to raise 
as much corn fodder on an acre as two cows require for one year. 
What would be the cost of beef in money? Would it not be 
the price of the cotton seed meal and the price of the labor? to 
which may be added, if any one chooses, a slight additional sum 
for the interest on very low priced land. Ido not put interest on 
the capital invested into the cost of the product, because that is 
what the capitalist would work for ; that would be his profit. 
Again, if deserted land can be used in this way in the eastern 
part of the country, what would be the method of use? 
I have referred to the land as a laboratory and to the estab- 
lishment as a beef factory, and I did this with a purpose. 
A small area of land can be kept under the intelligent super- 
vision of one man (either the owner or his superintendent who 
ma}r himself do no part of the actual work) ; then the land 
worked as a laboratory would be like the factory in its adminis- 
tration. 
Furthermore, every part of the planting, cultivating, harvesting 
and feeding can be done by the piece, paid for by the measure, 
and supervised with as much accuracy as the working of the cot- 
ton factory can be supervised by an agent. 
The subdivision of labor can be made in the same way ; each 
workman in the beef factory, having his work assigned to him by 
measure, can be paid by the piece or job, precisely as the work 
of the cotton factory is subdivided. The end of such a method 
is the largest product at the least cost. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
31 
If tlie hypothesis, which is not yet absolutely proven, but in 
favor of which the array of facts is so strong as to leave Professor 
Atwater in but little doubt about it, be hereafter sustained that 
Indian corn has the power of gathering its nitrogen from natural 
sources, then it may be safelj* affirmed that a three-year old steer 
can be produced upon the waste land of New England at this 
time at less cost than the same steer can be produced from Texas 
by way of the western plains to the Brighton abattoir on the basis 
of the present charge for Texas cattle on their native plains. 
Here, then, we may be able to reduce the cost of meat if the 
alternative of using less meat is not acceptable. 
But, even if this solution may not prove to be the true and final 
one, may we not expect to displace the semi-barbarous or wild sys- 
tem of raising steers on our far distant plains—moving them in 
cruel cattle cars at heavy cost and thus providing meat which is 
very liable to be unwholesome—by substituting methods more 
consistent with science? When we can do so we may be able to 
advise our young men in New England to stay east rather than to 
go ivest, and thus maintain a better and safer balance in our pop- 
ulation, of which in Massachusetts more than one-fourth part is 
now foreign born. 
If these points are well taken ; if it is possible to treat the soil 
as a laboratory without very much regard to its original properties, 
or, at least, without so much regard to the original properties as 
is commonly given, a great change must be made in the postulates 
of economic science. 
When the intensive system of farming is adopted, tending to a 
greater concentration of the population engaged in agriculture, 
which change may be accompanied, as I have endeavored to show, 
by a wider diffusion of the population now too much concentrated 
in cities, the whole balance of the population will be changed ; both 
the agricultural and the manufacturing population will be brought 
nearer together, and all will be brought under vastly better condi- 
tions of society than either class can now enjoy. Furthermore, 
several of the a priori concepts of the English economists must 
yield. 
The law of diminishing returns from land can neither be sus- 
tained historically, theoretically nor practically. 
The so-called law of population, that population tends to in- 
crease faster than the means of subsistence, has no foundation 32 
historically, practically nor theoretically if the propositions which 
are presented in this address have any validity. 
SECTION I. 
The Ricardian theory of rent will have no basis whatever. 
What may be the future of humanity under these conditions no 
man can tell. 
What may be the influence of this country upon the rest of the 
world no man can foresee. 
In order that }rou may, in some very dim manner, foreshadow this 
influence, I beg to submit to you a few statements in figures and 
in black lines which I have made use of in another publication. 
I present to you lines indicating the total area of the United 
States accompanied by others which show the little fraction of our 
soil, which has yet been devoted to the production of grain and 
cotton. Even this little fraction is double what would be re- 
quired under an intelligent and intensive system of agriculture. 
To these lines, showing what has been done, I have added other 
lines, showing what may be done in the production of wool, of 
meat and of dairy products, and these again are measured upon 
an assigned product to each acre of only one-half that which has 
been actually accomplished in certain places. 
In this table, I have dealt in a rough and ready way, with the 
acres now occupied or which might serve for all our great crops. 
The area of the United States, omitting Alaska, is a trifle less 
than 3,000,000 square miles. 
In a broad and general way we may assume that one-half this 
area is good arable land, one quarter good pasture land, and one 
quarter forest, mountain, and mining territory. 
8,000,000 square miles. 
Graphically shown by the four lines, 
Mountain and Timber. 
1-4. 
TOTAL AREA. 
Grazing. 
1-4. 
Arable. 
1-2. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
33 
INDIAN CORN FIELD. 
112,500 square miles. 
At 25 bushels to an ac/e this area produces 1,800,000,000 bushels. This 
corn is largely converted into pork at the rate of 5 lbs. of corn to one 
pound of pork. Assuming one thousand million bushels thus converted, 
and the rest used for human or cattle food, the product of pork would be 
equal to 18,500,000 casks or its equivalent in bacon; which would give 
nearly one cask of pork of 300 lbs. to each head of a group of three per- 
sons per year, or 100 lbs. per capita. 
WHEAT FIELD. 
60,000 square miles. 
At 13 bushels per acre this little area yields a little over 500,000,000 
bushels. Setting aside an ample portion for seed this quantity would give 
over 80,000,000 persons one barrel of flour per year. 
COTTON FIELD. 
20,000 square miles. 
At the wretched average of only half a bale to an acre this little patch 
yields 6,400,000 bales in a year. 
What the actual area of sheep pasturage is no man can tell, 
because the area of land absolutely free to glaziers and ranchers 
is so large that no question of area has arisen until within a very 
short time; but the end of this wasteful and archaic method can 
be foreseen. When the cur-dog shall have been muzzled, or when 
dogs shall have been declared ferce natures, it will be easily possi- 
ble to sustain four sheep to an acre over wide areas of unoccupied 
land in the east and south as well as in the far west; this would 
require a sheepfold of 
WOOL. 
40,000 sq.miles, 
sustaining 102,400,000 sheep, which at only 4 lbs. each would yield as 
much wool as we now consume of all kinds, both domestic and foreign. 
DAIRY FARMS AND HEN YARDS. 
In 1880 the number of milch cows was estimated at 12,500,000, 
and the product of eggs was computed at 500,000,000 dozen, val- 34 
SECTION I. 
ued at $80,000,000. Over how wide a range of pasturage the 
milch cow ranged it is impossible to say, but almost within the 
period which has elapsed since 1880 it has been proved entirely 
possible to feed two cows one year on the corn-stalks saved in pits 
which can be raised on one acre of fairly good land, if to this green 
fodder be added a ration of meal made from the cotton seed which 
was almost all wasted until a very recent time, and is yet saved in 
only a very small proportion. But in order to be safe we may 
reverse this ratio, and assigning only one cow to two acres we may 
greatly increase our present ration of milk, butter and cheese, 
with the hens’ eggs thrown in. 
A Dairy Farm and Hen Yard 
of 60,000 square miles, 
at 1 cow to 2 acres, will sustain 19,200,000 cows. I have myself no diffi- 
culty in keeping two cows one year on the forage of one acre with a mod- 
erate feed of meal, or wheat middlings added. 
BEEF. 
The relative importance of meat in the subsistence of our people 
has been shown. A large portion of our beef is now produced by 
almost serai-barbarous methods on the far-distant plains; but as 
population increases this rude way must give place to more civil- 
ized and humane modes, and our beef must be produced near its 
place of consumption. Provision has been made for the cornfield, 
and if pitted forage is as fully justified on a broad scale as it has 
been in the successful experiments of many able men who have 
applied brains and capital to the use of land, it would be necessary 
to assign only a small area to beef. 
60,000 square miles, 
at 500 lbs. of meat to an acre, would yield nearly one pound of beef per 
day to our present population (reckoning two children as one adult). 
If these propositions can be sustained, it follows that our present 
crops of corn, wheat and cotton, and a very much increased prod- 
uct of the dairy and poultry-yard, as well as of meat and wool, 
can be raised on 
352,500 square miles, 
or upon twelve per cent of the total area ; and even this assign- 35 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
merit of land is nearly double what might be required if the inten- 
sive system of farming were adopted by men of sufficient intelligence 
and capital to conduct all part* of the work in a reasonably good 
way. 
It is held that in the face of this demonstration the charge that 
poverty is now to be attributed to monopoly of land in this coun- 
try is utterly disproved, and that the explanation of extreme pov- 
erty must be sought in other directions. It is painfully apparent 
that extreme poverty is to be found chiefly among those who are 
foreign born, but there is as much free land open to them as there 
is to the native born, —enough and to spare for both. 
If these propositions can be sustained, it may therefore happen 
that when the population of the United States of 1880 shall have 
doubled,— perhaps in the first decade of the next century,— an 
area of land no larger than that which is assigned in these graph- 
ical lines will be required to sustain the people of that day ; it 
may happen that the hundred million people then existing upon 
our national domain will require a very much less area of soil 
to sustain them than is now devoted to the subsistence of the 
present population. 
Venture then to imagine one hundred million English-speaking 
people living in comfort and welfare upon our national domain, 
even then making use for the necessary purposes of subsistence, 
of only one acre in eight or ten of our whole area; free from 
national debt, paying their national taxes under a well devised 
and intelligent system, meeting their competitors in the com- 
merce of the world with vast quantities of every kind of produce, 
and of manufactured articles which will have been produced by 
the application of the best machinery to the greatest natural re- 
sources to be found in any similar area of the earth’s surface. 
The working people who will then, as they do now, constitute 
more than ninety in every hundred of the population, gaining a 
constantly increasing share of an increasing product with less 
effort or labor in each decade, as the decades pass. 
Can the standing armies of Europe be sustained when the full 
economic effect and the moral influence of this nation is thus ex- 
erted ? 
The material subjects which we treat are but one phase of that 
life of which the moral and the spiritual are also integral parts,— 
each resting upon the other, each more or less dependent upon 
the other. 36 
lEven among the figures and the dry statements of facts with 
which we are called upon to deal in Section I, may we not there- 
fore find something to arouse the imagination and much to stim- 
ulate the higher life which is the end of all our work ? 
SECTION I. 
Of a truth the swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and the 
spears into pruning hooks. 
In our far southern land, upon the heights around Chattanooga, 
were many ramparts within and before which thousands rendered 
up their lives in order that liberty might be established over all 
our domain. 
Even from death unto life sprang forth the new industry of the 
new south ; those very ramparts are now the walls of the reservoirs 
which supply the free men of that city with living water. 
So may it be in all lands when men learn to serve each other in 
beneficent commerce and when all the nations of the earth shall 
have become interdependent. 
If the basis of the consumption of adult factory operatives, 
composing a large proportion of females and the lesser proportion 
of men customarily occupied in or about a cotton factory in the 
eastern or middle states combined, be adopted as a fair standard 
for the average per capita consumption of the country, the con- 
sumption statement of the present population of 57,000,000 as 
the equivalent of 50,000,000 adults by computing two children 
under ten as one adult, would be as follows ; the data being com- 
piled from a sufficient number of records between 1880 and 1884, 
to be reasonably accurate ; since the computation prices have fallen 
considerably. The proportion of tea, coffee and sugar is probably 
somewhat above the average consumption, women apparently con- 
suming a larger proportion than men. 
STATISTICAL TABLES. 
CENTS 
CONSUMPTION OF THE 
U. S. ON THIS BASIS. 
Meat, poultry and fish, 
per day J to 1 lb. 9.70 $1,765,000,000 
Milk I pint, butter 1£ to 
oz., cheese, a scrap, 5.00 912,500,000 
Eggs 1 every two days 
at 12 cents per doz., .50 91,250,000 
15.20 J2,768,750,000 37 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Amount brought forward 15.20 2,768,750,000 
Cereals, 2.50 456,000,000 
Vegetables, 1.98 360,500,000 
Sugar or syrup, 1.94 353,000,000 
Tea or coffee, 1.20 185,000,000 
Fruit, green or dry, .62 113,000,000 
Salt, spice, ice, etc. .49 89,000,000 
Total per day, 23.93 per year, $4,325,250,000 
CENTS 
CONSUMPTION OF THE 
U. S. ON THIS BASIS. 
The estimates of the cost of drink range from a mimimum which 
has been established by Mr. David A. Wells after careful research 
of $474,823,000, to various sums reaching very extravagant fig- 
ures. It may be fairly computed that the total price of food to 
consumers is over $5,000,000,000 ; the price of clothing, carpets 
and other textile fabrics which are directly used by men and women 
may be fairly computed at $1,500,000,000. 
Dietary No. 2. 
Fourteen adult men and women in Massachusetts, nine men en- 
gaged in mechanical work, three women in mill work, two in the 
care of the house, for six months in 1885. (Mostly Irish.) 
CENTS 
Meat per day, 9.52 
Milk, butter and cheese, 6.50 
Eggs, 1.40 
Total animal food, 17.42 
Cereals, 4.07 
Sugar and syrup, 1.90 
Vegetables, 1.32 
Fruit, green and dry, 1.17 
Tea and coffee, .70 
Sundries, 2.14 
Total cents per day, 28.73 
Dietary No. 3. 
A French Canadian family of ten persons, four adults, six chil- 
dren, two to eighteen years computed at 4| adults. Total 8| 
adults. Massachusetts six months in 1885. 38 
SECTION I. 
CENTS 
Meat and fish per day, 5.02 
Milk, butter and cheese, 4.63 
Eggs, .96 
Total animal food, 10.61 
Cereals, 3.00 
Vegetables, 2.82 
Sugar and syrup, 1.87 
Fruit, green and dry, 1.05 
Tea and coffee, .63 
Sundries, 1.81 
Total cents per day, 21.79 
Dietary No. 4. 
A well-to-do American family, father and two sons, mechanics, 
three adults, five children, two under ten years old. Massachu- 
setts, six months in 1885. 
Meat and fish per day, 9.70 
Milk, butter and cheese, 6.73 
Eggs, 1.43 
Total animal food, 17.86 
Cereals, 3.83 
Vegetables, 3.21 
Fruit, 3.28 
Sugar and syrup, 1.88 
Tea and coffee, 1.25 
Sundries, 2.53 
Total cents per day, 33.90 
Dietary No. 5. 
I am indebted to Mr. J. S. Lord, Chief of the Bureau of Sta- 
tistics of Illinois, for the most comprehensive statement of the 
cost of the food of a large number of persons, which I have 
ever seen, except in the data of armies. 
It was prepared by Dr. Fred. H. Wines, Secretary of the Board 
of Public Charities of 111., from the accounts of the Public In- 
sane Asylums, Institutions for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb and 39 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Feebleminded and of the State Reform School. This report 
covers the cost per day of sustaining these institutions for ten 
years, lacking two months, from Dec. 1, 1874, to Sept. 30, 1884. 
The average number of persons fed was 3,293 : inmates 2,779, 
officers and employes 514. The total number of days’ board was 
11,828,685: inmates 9,981,483, officers and employes 1,847,202. 
No account has been kept and no estimate has been officially 
made of the garden stuff raised on the farms connected with 
these institutions, nor of milk, nor of pigs and poultry raised and 
eaten. The statistics cover only the food purchased. The dietary 
is as follows: 
CENTS 
Meat, fish, butter, lard and eggs, per day, 6.69 
Cereals, 2.34 
Vegetables, .53 
Sugar and syrup, 1.22 
Tea and coffee, .62 
Sundries, 2.09 
Total cents per day, 13.49 
All purchased at wholesale prices. Dr. Wines estimates the 
consumption of milk at one-tenth of a gallon per day which at 20 
cents a gallon would add two cents per day. He also computes 
the value of the farm products raised on the farms connected with 
the institutions at two cents per day each person, which being 
added to the money paid for provisions would bring the actual 
ration to about 17 cents per day per person, which is somewhat 
above the cost of food provided for the prisoners in Massachusetts 
jails ; but due regard being given to the members of skilled officials 
and employes, to the greater variety of food and to the abun- 
dance of vegetables raised, the ration may be considered one of a 
higher grade. 
The inmates of these institutions are all adults or boys except 
in one case, the Home for Soldiers’ Orphans: in the Reform 
School the ages are fourteen to seventeen. 
The quantities of food per capita were as follows, per annum : 
Breadstuff's (all sorts), 281.38 pounds. 
Meats and fish, 226.12 “ 
Butter, 28.99 “ 
Cheese, 3.26 “ 40 
SECTION I. 
Tea, 2.40 pounds. 
Coffee, 7.60 “ 
Sugar, 36.78 “ 
Hice and hominy, 5.23 “ 
Fruit bought by the pound, 10.64 “ 
Total, 602.40 “ 
Fruit bought by the quart, 27 quarts. 
Vegetables reduced to quarts, 71 “ 
98 
Oranges and lemons, number, 4 
Eggs, number, 91 
Molasses, vinegar and cider, 1.22 gallons. 
Average prices paid : 
Flour (wheat) per barrel, $6.03 
Fresh meat per 100 lbs., 7.33 
Salt meat per 100 lbs., 5.66 
Potatoes per bushel, .64 
Butter per pound, a fraction less than .22 
Tea per pound, .41 
Coffee per pound, .17 
Sugar per pound, .09 
Molasses per gallon, .49 
Eggs per dozen, > .13 
The expenses of these institutions during this period were 
$5,869,189.30, of which salaries constituted $2,094,896.86. 
The average charge per inmate has been as high as cents 
per day and is now 55 cents ; but, including officials and emplo}’es, 
the cost per head, no rent being charged, is 46 cents per day per 
capita. 
If we deduct 25 per cent, as the savings of officials and em- 
ployes, the remainder, $5,345,515 gives an average cost of about 
45 cents per day, expended in food, fuel, clothing, repairs, and gen- 
eral expenses, without rent; or if we reduce the salaries of offi- 
cials and employes by one-half, we still have an average cost of 
41 to 42 cents, or at the present time of cents per head. 
This is surprisingly low, and it proves the economjr and effi- ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
41 
ciency of the management of these institutions ; hut it brings out in 
a most conspicuous way the close conditions of existence when 
we compare these figures with the average expenditure per 
capita in the families of working people and when we recall the 
fact that a very large proportion must pay rent as well as provide 
food, fuel and clothing out of what 40 to 45 cents a day will buy. 
Dietary No. 6. 
Fifty-six adult females, factory operatives and the employes in 
charge of the boarding-house, for six months in 1885, in Mary- 
land. 
Food bought by the factory owners at wholesale prices. 
CENTS 
Meat and fish, 6.51 
Milk, butter and cheese, 2.86 
Eggs, .65 
Total animal food, 10.02 
Vegetables, 1.46 
Cereals, 1.73 
Sugar and sj’rup, 1.30 
Tea and coffee, .90 
Fruit, .35 
Salt, spice, etc., .40 
Total cents per day, 16.16 
Dietary No. 7. 
By the kindness of Mr. L. McHugh, Chief of the Bureau of La- 
bor Statistics of Ohio, I have been furnished with the division of 
the expenses of twenty-seven mechanics’ and miners’ families in 
Ohio whose average expenditures ranged for one year from $3OO 
for 2 persons to $1,194 for 6 persons. 
Average persons per family 4T70°O-. 
Average expenditure per year 1557.14 
Average per person per day .32x4Ds(j 
Subdivision. 
Rent 76.52 
Food and light 261.04 42 
SECTION I. 
Clothing including boots and shoes 
and miscellaneous dry goods 115.42 
Fuel 32.00 
Sickness 20.74 
Sundries 50.42 
■ $557.14 
Food in this statement costs a little less than 50 per cent of the 
expenditure at an average of ISy cents per person per day. At 
a fair computation this would be at the rate of 1 7t3q50- cents per 
day per adult. 
Dietary No. 8. 
A carder in a woollen mill in Rhenish Prussia, supporting his 
wife and two children of 6 and 8 years, equal to three adults. 
(From Consul J. S. Potter’s report.) 
PER WEEK. 
Breakfast: coffee, bread and butter, .47£ cts. 
Lunch : bread and butter, sometimes a 
little meat, .47* 
Dinner: soup, potatoes or other vege- 
tables, occasionally a little meat, 1.66 
Lunch at 4 p. m. : coffee, bread and butter, ,47£ 
Slipper, Bp. m.; milk, soup and bread, .47^- 
Personal luxuries including beer, .26 
Total per week, $3.82 
Per day for the equivalent of 3 adults .5455 
Per day for each adult cents. 
Dietary No. 9. 
Condition of a representative workman in a German shoe fac- 
tory as given in the report of Consul J. S. Potter. 
“I am 38 years old and have a wife and three children the old- 
est 13 and the youngest 6 years of age. I am shoe-dresser in a 
factory and I am paid 77 cents per day for 12 hours work. 
For breakfast we have coffee, bread and butter and some meat 
for myself. 
For dinner : soup with some vegetables and pork. 43 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
At 4 o’clock: coffee, bread and sometimes butter. 
At 8 o’clock supper: salad, potatoes and bacon sauce and some 
meat. 
My wife earns 94 cents a week and I work extra hours. With 
our united earnings I can support my family very well and save 
for the ‘sparcasse’ from §lO to §l2 a year. 
My regular yearly wages now amount to §241X3^V 
I pay for rent per year, 32.13 
Clothing for self, wife and children, 41.65 
For food and fuel, 44 cents per day, 160.27 
Government tax, .72 
Beer and tobacco, 6.56 
§241.33 
My savings are from extra work. When sick we are furnished 
with medicine and medical attendance, free of cost, the expense 
for which is paid from a contribution by my employer and a work- 
man’s union in the factory. 
At the present time (1885) business is very lively and wages 
are high.” 
The italics are my own. It will be observed that the cost of 
food and fuel is 66| per cent of the expenditure, and if the family 
is computed at 3£ adults, the cost of food and fuel is 1 2t507<t cts. 
per day. 
These two reports give some indications of the comparative con- 
ditions of workmen in Germany and in the United States. The 
money available for food is less in Germany, both in amount and 
in purchasing power. 
Under recent instructions from the Secretary of State, consuls 
will hereafter report on a uniform plan as to the daily rations of 
European workmen, giving quantity, price and amount, in a form 
corresponding to the statements given in this address on the 
rations in this country. 
It needs no argument to prove that the great advantage of this 
country over all others lies in the huge abundance of the most nu- 
tritious food, and since the cost of labor in any given product may 
be measured by the effectiveness of the labor, rather than by a 
mere comparison of the rate of wages in money, it becomes impor- 
tant to know the price of food in countries which may compete 
with us, or which we may be called upon to supply in part. 44 
SECTION I. 
1. What is the quantity of work performed for a given sum of 
money ? 
The problem maj7 be given in these terms : 
2. How much of such given sum of money can be devoted to 
the purchase of food ? 
3. How much force or energy does such a supply of food rep- 
resent ? 
The underfed cannot compete with the well nourished. 
So far as the food problem yet affects this country, the only ser- 
vice which science can render is to show what choice should be 
made as to the kind of food to be purchased, and how it should be 
prepared. 
In Germany, and in many other European states, it has be- 
come necessary to teach the people how to get the utmost out of 
an insufficient supply. For this reason, a great deal of scientific 
work has been done in Germany, in a direction upon which we 
have only begun, and the dietary which has been prepared by Dr. 
Meinert may possess great interest in comparison with both the 
practice of this country, and the theory which is presented in the 
table of standard rations given herewith. 
The main point of interest, is the very limited variety of food, 
and the somewhat meagre,even if theoretically sufficient, diet which 
can be had in Germany at a cost of 18| cents per day. 
For the preparation of translation of the German dietary as well 
as for all the other tables hereto appended, I am indebted to Prof. 
Wm. O. Atwater of Middletown, Conn. 
I entered upon this statistical inquiry without any full compre- 
hension of the vast importance of the subject. Many of the prop- 
ositions, which have been generally accepted by economists, such 
as the law of population propounded by Malthus, the theory of 
rent of Ricardo, and the so-called law of diminishing returns from 
land, have never seemed to me to have any true foundation, either 
in reason or in history, and it was mainly for the purpose of es- 
tablishing a statistical refutation of these hypotheses that I began 
to consider the food question. 
Upon examining such books as were within my reach, I found 
the statistics of rations almost wholly wanting, except the data 
taken from charitable institutions. On consulting the physiolo- 
gists and biologists, I found that the cooperation of the statisti- ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
45 
dan was urgently needed by them in the solution of the food 
problem as it is presented to them. 
After consulting with Col. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Na- 
tional Bureau of the Statistics of Labor, and presenting the sub- 
ject for the consideration of the Chiefs of the Labor Bureau of 
the several states, the following blank was prepared. 
THE DAILY RATION OF FOOD OF WORKING PEOPLE IN THE 
DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF THE COUNTRY. 
1. Of what does this ration now consist and what does it cost? 
Cents. 
A. Meat and Fish. Quantity, price, cost, 
B. Milk. “ “ “ 
Butter. “ “ 
Cheese. “ “ “ 
Eggs, 
Total Animal Food. 
O. Bread: Wheat, Quantity, price, cost, 
Corn or Rye. “ “ “ 
D. Vegetables. “ “ “ 
E. Sugar. “ “ “ 
Molasses or Syrup. *• “ “ 
p. Tea. •• “ “ 
Coffee. “ “ “ 
Q-. Fruit, green, “ “ “ 
dry. “ “ 
H. Salt, Spice, Ice. i 
Pickles and Sundries. > “ “ “ 
Totals. 
2. What proportion does the average cost of food bear to the 
total cost of living? 
As I have before stated, a similar inquiry is now being made by 
the Consular Bureau, and it is possible that before the report of 
this meeting is finally published, the data included will constitute 
something more than a beginning of the science of the consumption 
of food. 
I trust that you will be so impressed with the importance of 
this subject, that you will excuse me for the weary length of this 
address. 46 
SECTION I. 
I am requested by Prof. Atwater before presenting even a di- 
gest of the material which he has placed in my hands subject to 
my use, to state, that his numerous engagements since I made the 
request for this treatise have prevented his doing anything more 
than to dictate a partial answer to my questions, and there has 
been no time to consider the form or to revise the substance of 
what he has given me. It is of the utmost value, and I trust that 
it will all appear, perhaps in connection with his address lately 
made to the Chiefs of the Bureaus of Labor Statistics of the 
United States. 
The following pages contain only a portion of the extremely 
valuable information supplied by Prof. W. O. Atwater upon the 
subject of A Standard Ration. 
DATA PREPARED BY PROF. W. O. ATWATER. 
In answer to the question “What should be the standard or daily 
ration?” it may be said that the ordinarily accepted standards are 
estimated in terms of the three most important classes of the nu- 
tritive ingredients, or nutrients of food : (1) protein, or albumin- 
oids ; (2) fats ; (3) carbo-hydrates. 
Our best information upon this subject comes from Germany, 
accurate experiments having been made by Liebig, Moleschott, 
Pettenkofer, Yoit and others. Payenin France ; Frankland, Play- 
fair, Lavves and Gilbert, in England, have also made most valuable 
contributions to the knowledge upon this subject. 
I cannot forbear noting the fact, however, that very little atten- 
tion appears to have been paid to the results of these experiments 
on this side of the Atlantic, or, for that matter, in England : even 
in some of the best text-books in chemistry and physiology, those 
which are looked upon as most authoritative are too apt to pass 
the subject over most superficially, or almost to ignore it. 
The standard rations assumed by Prof. Voit of Munich are more 
commonly accepted than any others, and are most frequently 
quoted and followed in estimating dietaries. 
The following are standards adopted by the Munich school of 
physiological chemists who follow Yoit. 47 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
PROTEIN. 
FATS. 
CARBOHYDRATES. 
grammes 
grammes 
grammes 
Children to years. 
20-36 
30-45 
60-90 
“ from 6 to 15 years. 
70-80 
37-50 
250-400 
Laboring man at moderate work. 
118 
56 
500 
“ “ “ severe “ 
145 
100 
450 
Laboring woman. 
92 
44 
400 
Aged man. 
100 
68 
350 
Aged woman. 
80 
50 
260 
STANDARD RATIONS. 
We are of coarse to understand that these figures represent only 
general averages. It is assumed that for an ordinary laboring 
man doing an ordinary amount of work, the amounts of nutrients 
above given will suffice, and that with them he will hold his own 
that with much less he will lose flesh and fat, and grow weak ; and 
that any considerable excess above these quantities will be super- 
fluous. But of course no one expects any given man to adjust his 
diet exactly to this standard ; he may need more, and may per- 
haps get on with less. He may eat more fats and less carbohy- 
drates, and more protein, if he is willing to pay for it. If, however, 
he eats much less protein, and keeps up his muscular exertion, 
he will, in Prof. Voit’s opinion, be apt, sooner or later, to suffer. 
Protein is the costliest of the food ingredients, and hence the 
one which, from the pecuniary standpoint most needs to be econ- 
omized ; and since, furthermore, its work of building up muscles, 
tendons and the like, cannot be done by either of the other classes 
of nutrients, since, in other words, it is very expensive,—one of 
the first questions in constructing an economical ration is, “What 
is the least amount of protein that will suffice.” This question 
cannot be answered exactly until we know more than we now do 
about the demands of different organisms under different condi- 
tions. The subject needs more thorough and experimental study. 
To resume briefly. In computing standard rations to supply 
sufficient food at the minimum cost, we have to learn. 
Ist.—What is the minimum quantity of the most costly ingre- 
dient, viz., protein? 
2d.—What proportion of nutrients are contained in the food 
materials we are to use? 48 
SECTION I. 
The flavor of the food and the special fitness of the different 
kinds must of course be considered. We are as yet only on the 
threshold of our knowledge of these matters. I ought not to dis- 
miss this subject without adding a word upon the digestibility of 
foods, and the quantities needed. Many experiments have been 
made to determine the proportions of the different nutrients that 
are actually digested by a healthy man. Meats and fish are more 
completely digested than vegetable foods. 99 per cent has been 
found to be digested by a healthy man, only one or two per cent 
being wasted, while, of course, of bread one-fourth or one-third 
might pass through the alimentaiy canal undigested. 
But lack of complete data as well as of time for discussion pre- 
cludes further reference to the matter. 
EXAMPLES OF GERMAN RATIONS, CORRESPONDING TO 
THIS STANDARD, AND THEIR PRICE. 
Of late a great deal of attention has been paid, in Germany, to 
this particular subject of the food of the people, and the best 
ways to economize it. I noticed a statement in a scientific jour- 
nal, a few days ago, that Bismark had engaged Professor Konig 
to prepare a series of schedules of'rations for ordinary German 
laboring people, which, I suppose, actually means that one of the 
departments of the Prussian governmant has engaged Professor 
Konig, who is one of the principal authorities in this line, to 
carry out this enterprise. Numerous attempts have already been 
made in this same direction. I have before me, for instance, a 
little brochure, of about one hundred pages by Dr. Meinert, en- 
titled “ Wie ndhrt man sick gut und billig?” “How can one feed 
himself well and economically.” That this is regarded as trust- 
worthy is evinced by the fact that it was honored with a prize, of- 
fered by an association and awarded by a committee consisting of 
Professors Yoit, Foster, and Beneke, three of the best known 
German authorities in this specialty. It tells in plain language 
about foods, their constituents, the proportions of the several nu- 
trients in various foods, the relative cheapness and dearness of 
different food materials as shown by the comparison of their com- 
position with their price, and with the rest gives schedules of daily 
rations for families. There are three of these schedules, the first 
intended for a family with an annual income of 800 marks, 
$200.00, of which it is assumed that 60 per cent will be expended 49 
for food. The second is for a family with an income of 1100 marks, 
or $275.00, and ihe third for one of 1500 marks, or $375.00 per 
annum. The outlay for the food of each of the two last is to be 
about 53 percent of the income. As the largest of the three in- 
comes would be counted very small with us, I have selected the 
schedule corresponding to it rather than either of the others, for 
the translation which I have caused to be made and included here- 
with. 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Dietary for a family for two weeks. 
The following dietary is calculated for a family consisting of 
father, mother and two children of ten and twelve years of age. 
The annual income for the support of the family is taken at 1500 
marks or $375, of which 53 per cent, 800 marks, per year, or $2OO 
which would allow 220 pfennigs or fifty-five cents per day, is to be 
spent for food. It is assumed that the mother and two children 
will require as much nutritive material in their food as two labor- 
ing men, so that the family of four persons will be equal in their 
demand to three laboring men. Dr. Meinert further assumes that 
to earn so large a sum as 1500 marks per year, more than ordinarily 
hard work will be required ; and hence, following Professor Voit’s 
figures for rations, he provided for a ration with nutrients a little 
in excess of the standard for a laboring man at moderate work. 
Professor Voit’s standards for an ordinary laboring man doing 
moderately hard work, and for the same man at severe work, are 
stated below and with them Dr. Meinert’s standard for the family 
in question. 
Nutrients. 
PROP. 
VOIT’S STANDARDS. 
Dr. Meinert’s 
standard for family 
with 1500 marks 
per year. 
For laboring man at 
moderate work. 
For laboring 
man at severe 
work. 
Protein. 
118 grams 
(0.26 lb.) 
145 grams. 
120 grams. 
Fats. 
56 “ 
(0.12 lb.) 
100 “ 
70 “ 
Carbohy- 
drates. 
500 “ 
(1.10 lbs.) 
450 “ 
500 “ 
NUTRIENTS IN DAILY RATION. 
As the family are accounted equivalent to three “laboring men” 
the 220 pfennigs allowed for food per day must pay for three ra- 
tions which gives 73.3 pfennigs per ration. The problem then is 50 
SECTION I. 
to draw up a bill of fare for each day, which shall furnish a min- 
imum of 120 grams or 0.27 lbs. of protein, 70 grams or 0.15 lbs. 
of fats, and 500 grams or 1.10 lbs. of carbohydrates for 73.3 
pfennigs or 18| cents per day, in food materials such as a German 
laborer may properly use and at such prices as he must pay for 
■ them. 
In accordance with German usage provision is to be made for 
breakfast, dinner at midday, lunch (Yesperbrot) in the afternoon 
and supper (AJbendessen). The following is Dr. Meinert’s out- 
line of the bill of fare for two weeks. 
BILL OF FARE FOR FOURTEEN DAYS, 
i DAT. 
BREAKFAST. 
DINNER. 
LUNCH. 
SUPPER. 
1st 
Coffee, milk, 
rolls, black 
bread, butter. 
Fresh haddock with 
mustard sauce and 
potatoes. 
Coffee and milk. 
Bread and but- 
ter. 
Meat and vege- 
table soup. 
2d 
66 
Beef stew with Kohl- 
rabi and potatoes. 
66 
Cheese and beer. 
3d 
(< 
Sausage with 
and beer. 
“ 
Onion soup. 
4th 
(1 
Mutton and beans. 
« 
Potato soup. 
6th 
(4 
with bacon and 
beer. 
(( 
Pea soup. 
6th 
<< 
(( 
Herring and 
beer. 
7th 
Dried codfish with 
sauerkraut, peas and 
beer. 
66 
Buttermilk soup. 
8th 
Hashed meats with po- 
tato soup. 
66 
Meat and vege- 
table soup. 
9th 
u 
Sausage (Bludwurst) 
with lentils 
and beer. 
66 
Potatoes and 
10th 
“ 
Liver with potato 
salad. 
66 
Cheese and beer. 
11th 
Beefsteak with cab- 
bage and potatoes. 
66 
Bread and milk 
soup. 
12th 
66 
Herring, potatoes and 
beer. 
66 
Meat and vege- 
table soup. 
13th 
66 
Pork with cabbage and 
potatoes. 
66 
Cheese and beer. 
14th 
n 
Liver with spinach, po- 
tatoes and beer. 
66 
Oatmeal in but- 
termilk. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
51 
The details of the daily bills of fare are given by Dr. Meinert 
in the forms translated beyond. The quantities are given in the 
metric weights and measures current in Germany. It will be 
remembered that the kilogram consists of 1,000 grams and equals 
about 2.2 lbs. ; that the gram is nearly 15.5 grains, and roughly 
speaking, 450 grams make a pound and 28 grams an ounce. The 
liter is 1,000 cubic centimeters, a little over a quart; a liter of 
water weighs 1 kilogram. The mark consists of 100 pfennigs 
and is worth about twenty-five cents, so that the pfennig is one- 
quarter of a cent. Translating these into our own weights and 
measures would, I think, rather detract from than add to their 
clearness and value. In their present form they are simple, but 
would by recalculation become more complex. In the summary 
at the end the quantities and prices are given in American 
weights and money. 
In translating I will for convenience speak of the first and sec- 
ond breakfast together as breakfast. The midday and evening 
meals we will call dinner and supper and will follow Dr. Meinert’s 
example in including the afternoon lunch with breakfast. 
In this dietary Dr. Meinert gives flrstr a general schedule for 
breakfast and lunch, which (or its equivalent) is to serve for each 
of the fourteen days. The schedule for dinner and supper for 
each several day is given by itself. It is assumed that the mate- 
rial left over at one time will serve for another, and that thus the 
evening meals may be filled out from what is left at breakfast or 
dinner. 52 
SECTION I. 
BREAKFAST AND BUNCH. 
AMOUNT OU FOOD 
AND PRICE. 
AMOUNT 
IN 
GRAMS. 
Price 
Price of 
AMOUNT OP 
per 
kilo or 
liter in 
px'ennigs. 
amount 
indicated 
in 
pfennigs. 
Protein. 
grams. 
Fats 
grams. 
Carbo-hy- 
drates. 
grams. 
4 Wheat rolls. 
290 
12 
15 
2 
148 
Eye bread. 
1500 
24 
36 
90 
9 
750 
Coffee anditrimmings. 
60 
9 
5 
1 
28 
liters skimmed milk. 
1250 
8 
10 
38 
6 
50 
Butter. 
100 
240 
24 
98 
Salt. 
75 
20 
1.5 
2 liters beer. 
2000 
12 
24 
10 
160 
116.5 
158 
116 
1136 
Per head and day. 
38.8 
■ 53 
39 
379 
There remains for din- 
ner and supper. 
34.5 
67 
31 
121 
Total per head per day 
• 73.3 
120 
70 
500 
It will be observed that the cost of each material is stated, with 
the amounts of nutrients it contains. By “per head” is under- 
stood for one laboring man. It will be remembered that the 
mother and two children were assumed to require as much as two 
laboring men. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
53 
Here follow details of dinner and supper, and summary for each 
of the 14 da}rs. 
BILE OF FARE FOR DINNER AND SUPPER FOR FOURTEEN DAYS 
Amount 
Price 
per 
Price 
of the 
AMOUNT OF 
AMOUNTOPFOOD 
in grams. 
kilo or 
liter in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
indi- 
cated in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
Protein 
grams. 
Fats 
grams. 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates 
grams. 
Fresh haddock. 
Mustard. 
Flour 
Fat (lard, butter) 
Potatoes 
“Fleischgemlise”1 
500 
125 
50 
60 
2500 
125 
80 
80 
40 
130 
7 
200 
40 
10 
2 
8 
17.5 
25 
60 
33 
6 
50 
40 
5 
42 
57 
3 
22 
8 
31 
35 
500 
44 
FIRST DAY. 
Dinner.—Cod- 
fish with mus- 
tard sauce and 
potatoes. 
Supper.— Meat 
and vegetable 
soup. 
102.5 
189 
129 
618 
Per head. 
34.2 
63 
43 
206 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
73.0 
116 
82 
585 
Beef 
Fat (lard, butter, 
etc.) 
500 
100 
120 
130 
60 
13 
80 
40 
95 
— 
SECOND DAY. 
Dinner.— 
Kohlrabi 
1000 
15 
15 
27 
2. 
86 
Potatoes 
Skim-milk cheese 
1500 
300 
7 
50 
10.5 
15 
30 
120 
3 
21 
300 
Supper.— 
Cheese and 
beer. 
113.5 
257 
161 
386 
Per head. 
37.8 
86 
54 
129 
For breakfast 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
76.6 
139 
93 
508 
1 “Fleischgemiise,” soup made from a mixture of preserved South American meat 
and vegetables especially recommended by Dr, Meinert. SECTION I. 
Amount 
Price 
per 
kilo or 
liter in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
Price 
of the 
Amount of 
Amount of food. 
in grams. 
indi- 
cated in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
Proteii 
grams 
Fats. 
grams 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates. 
grams. 
Millet. 
Skimmed milk. 
500 
1500 
40 
8 
20 
12 
56 
45 
17 
7 
290 
60 
THIRD DAT. 
Dinner.— 
Sausage. 
300 
180 
54 
69 
33 
21 
Onions. 
150 
10 
1.5 
4 
— 
12 
Fat. 
Flour. 
50 
150 
130 
40 
6.5 
6.0 
17 
47 
2 
105 
Supper.— 
Onion soup. 
100.0 
191 
106 
488 
Per head. 
33.3 
64 
35 
163 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
72.1 
117 
74 
542 
Mutton. 
Beans. 
500 
500 
120 
40 
60 
20 
75 
130 
50 
10 
250 
FOURTH DAT. 
Dinner.— 
Mutton and 
beaus. 
Fat. 
100 
130 
13 
- 
95 
- 
Potatoes. 
2000 
7 
14 
40 
2 
400 
Supper.— 
Potato soup. 
107 
245 
157 
650 
Per head. 
35.6 
82 
52 
216 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
74.4 
135 
91 
595 
‘■Fleischgraupen” 
450 
150 
68 
100 
10 
300 
FIFTH DAT. 
Dinner.— 
Bacon. 
125 
160 
20 
3 
98 
- 
Pease. 
300 
60 
15 
67 
6 
150 
Lard. 
Spices. 
40 
170 
7 
2 
: 
37 
— 
Supper.— 
Pea soup. 
112 
170 
151 
450 
Per head. 
37.3 
57 
50 
150 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
76.1 
110 
89 
529 55 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON, 
Price 
Price 
AMOUNT OF 
• 
per 
kilo or 
of the 
amount 
indi- 
AMOUNT OF FOOD. 
Amount 
Protein 
Fats. 
Car 
bo- 
hy- 
drates. 
in grams. 
in 
rated in 
pfen- 
plen- 
grams. 
grams. 
nigs. 
nigs. 
grams. 
Wheat flour, 
600 
45 
27 
66 
6 
438 
SIXTH DAT. 
Dinner.— 
Potatoes, 
1500 
7 
10.5 
30 
1.5 
300 
Dumplings 
with fruit. 
Wheat rolls, 
72 
— 
3 
4 
— 
35 
Fat 
100 
130 
13 
- 
95 
- 
Fruit, 
250 
80 
20 
8 
2.5 
113 
Sugar, 
30 
100 
3 
— 
— 
27 
Supper. — Her- 
ring and 
beer. 
Herrings, 
260 
7 
21 
52 
32 
5 
97.5 
160 
137.0 
918 
Per head. 
32.5 
53 
46 
306 
For break fast, 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
lunch, etc. 
Total per head and 
day. 
71.3 
106 
85 
685 
Dried codfish, 
250 
140 
35 
198 
3 
- 
SEVENTH DAY. 
Sauerkraut, 
1000 
18 
18 
10 
2 
46 
Dinner.—Dried 
codfish, with 
Pease, 
300 
50 
15 
67 
3 
150 
s a u erkraut, 
pease and 
Fat, 
100 
130 
13 
— 
95 
— 
beer. 
Buttermilk, 2 li- 
2000 
6 
12 
51 
15 
15 
Supper. — But- 
ters. 
ter milk soup. 
93 
326 
118 
211 
Per head. 
31 
109 
39 
70 
For breakfast, 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
lunch, etc. 
Total per head and 
day. 
69.8 
162 
78 
449 56 
SECTION I. 
Price 
Price 
of tlie 
AMOUNT OF 
AMOUNT OF FOOD. 
in grams. 
kilo 01- 
liter in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
indica- 
ted in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
Protein 
grams. 
Fats 
grams. 
Car bo 
hy- 
drates, 
grams. 
Beef, 
200 
120 
24 
32 
16 
_ 
EIGHTH DAY. 
Pork, 
100 
130 
13 
14 
10 
— 
D i n n e r.— 
Hashed meats 
Mutton, 
125 
120 
15 
20 
8 
— 
with potato 
soup. 
Pat, 
60 
130 
8 
— 
56 
Spices and vegeta- 
bles, 
40 
3 
- 
- 
- 
- 
Potatoes, 
3000 
7 
21 
60 
3 
600 
Supper.— Meat 
and vegeta- 
“ Pleischgemiise,” 
125 
200 
25 
40 
22 
46 
bie soup. 
106 
166 
115 
646 
Per head. 
35.3 
55 
38 
215 
For breakfast, 
38.5 
53 
39 
379 
lunch, etc. 
Total per head and 
day. 
74.1 
108 
77 
594 
Sausage. 
300 
160 
48 
35 
34 
78 
NINTH DAY. 
Lentils. 
500 
50 
25 
125 
10 
250 
Dinner.— 
Sausage and 
Vinegar. 
— 
— 
3 
— 
— 
— 
lentils. 
Curd. 
250 
40 
10 
43 
8 
7 
Supper.—Pota- 
toes and curd. 
Potatoes, 
2500 
7 
17.5 
50 
3 
500 
103.5 
253 
55 
835 
Per head. 
34.5 
84 
18 
278 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
73.3 
137 
57 
657 57 
ADDRESS BY EDWABD ATKINSON. 
Price 
Price 
AMOUNT OF 
AMOUNT OF FOOD 
Amount 
per 
kilo or 
amount 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates 
grams. 
in grams. 
liter in 
cated in 
Protein 
Fats. 
pfen- 
nigs. 
pfen 
nigs. 
grams. 
grams. 
Liver and lungs. 
500 
80 
40 
97 
27 
10 
TENTH DAY. 
Lard. 
40 
1.70 
6.8 
— 
36 
— 
Dinner.—Liver 
with potato 
Wheat rolls. 
156 
— 
6 
6 
1.5 
78 
salad. 
Flour. 
40 
40 
1.6 
4 
0.5 
28 
Onions. 
50 
10 
.5 
1 
- 
4 
Pepper and vegeta- 
hies. 
60 
— 
1.6 
— 
— 
— 
Potatoes. 
2500 
7 
17.5 
50 
2.5 
500 
Vinegar and oil. 
— 
— 
5 
— 
— 
— 
Supper.— 
Cheese. 
300 
50 
15 
120 
21 
— 
Cheese and 
beer. 
94.0 
278 
88.5 
620 
Per head. 
31.3 
93 
29 
207 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
70.1 
146 
68 
586 
ELEVENTH 
Beefstake. 
400 
160 
64 
88 
20 
DAY. 
Dinner.—Beef- 
Lard. 
60 
170 
10 
57 
steak with cab- 
bage and pota- 
Bed cabbage. 
1000 
15 
15 
18 
2 
70 
toes. 
Potaotes. 
1500 
7 
10.5 
30 
1 * 
300 
Bread. 
300 
24 
7 
18 
3 
150 
Supper.— 
Bread and milk 
Skimmed milk. 
1500 
8 
12 
45 
7 
60 
soup. 
118.5 
199 
90 
580 
Per head. 
39.5 
63 
30 
193 
For breakfast, 
lu nch etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day 
78.3 
116 
69 
572 SECTION I. 
AMOUNT OF FOOD. 
Amount 
in grams. 
Price 
per 
kilo oi- 
liter in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
Price 
of the 
amount 
indi- 
cated in 
pfen- 
nigs. 
AMOUNT OB’ 
Protein 
grams. 
Fats. 
grams. 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates. 
grams. 
TWELFTH 
Three herrings. 
260 
73 
21 
52 
32 
5 
DAY. 
Dinner. — Her- 
Potatoes. 
3000 
7 
21 
60 
3 
600 
ring and no- 
tatoes, beer. 
Shimmed milk. 
1000 
8 
8 
30 
4 
40 
Flour. 
£0 
40 
2 
5 
0.5 
35 
Onions. 
50 
10 
0.5 
1 
0.5 
3 
Lard. 
50 
170 
8.5 
- 
47 
- 
Spices. 
. 
__ 
1.5 
Supper.— Meat 
and vegetable 
“Fleischgemiise.” 
125 
200 
25 
40 
22 
46 
soup. 
87.5 
188 
109.0 
729 
Per head. 
29.2 
63 
36 
243 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
68.0 
116 
75 
622 
THIRTEENTH 
Pork. 
500 
130 
65 
67 
60 
— 
DAY. 
Dinner.— Pork 
Cabbage. 
1000 
10 
10 
20 
1 
66 
with white 
cabbage and 
Potatoes. 
2000 
7 
14 
40 
2 
400 
potatoes. 
Lard. 
50 
170 
8.5 
47 
Supper.— 
Cheese and 
Cheese. 
300 
50 
15 
120 
21 
— 
beer. 
112.5 
247 
131 
466 
Per head. 
37.5 
82 
44 
155 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
76.3 
135 
83 
534 
s At 7 pfennigs each. 59 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Price 
Price 
AMOUNT OF 
AMOUNT OF FOOD 
Amount 
per 
kilo or 
amount 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates. 
grams. 
in grams. 
liter in 
cated in 
Protein 
Fats. 
pfen- 
nigs. 
pfen- 
nigs. 
grams. 
grams. 
FOURTEENTH 
Liver. 
500 
100 
50 
175 
15 
— 
DAY. 
Dinner.—Liver 
Spinach. 
1000 
15 
15 
20 
2 
60 
with vegetables 
2000 
and potatoes, 
Potatoes. 
7 
14 
40 
2 
400 
beer. 
Fat. 
SO 
130 
10 
- 
75 
- 
Oatmeal. 
150 
60 
9 
23 
9 
96 
1000 
Supper.— Oat- 
Buttermilk. 
6 
6 
34 
10 
10 
meal in butter 
milk. 
104 
292 
113 
566 
Per head. 
35 
97 
38 
189 
For breakfast, 
lunch, etc. 
38.8 
53 
39 
379 
Total per head 
and day. 
73.8 
150 
77 
568 
Rations of common food materials estimated to contain the 
AMOUNTS OF NUTRITIVE INGREDIENTS IN THE 
STANDARD RATION, WITH COST OF EACH. 
The following rations have been calculated by my assistant, Mr. 
Rockwood, mostly from results of analysis made in our labor- 
atory in behalf of the Smithsonian Institution (U. S. National Mu- 
seum) as a basis for its explanation of its food collection. No 
other considerable series of analysis of American food materials 
has, so far as I am aware, been executed, hence, though the data 
are meagre they are the best available ; they are probably not far 
out of the way. Mr Rockwood has endeavored to construct one 
series of rations at a very low cost, eleven or twelve cents a day 
or thereabouts, and another series at higher rates, up to forty-five 
cents a day. Of course it is not proposed that any person or fam- 
ily should attempt to follow these exactly. For that matter the 
chemist will evidently have to consult the cook if he proposes to 
construct rations to accord with ordinary tastes. The rations 
will, nevertheless, help to show how foods may be economized, 
and what proportions would suffice for the nourishment of ordi- 60 
SECTION I. 
nary people, and what are the constituents and costs of the differ- 
ent materials. 
DAILY RATIONS COMPUTED TO FURNISH NUTRIENTS EQUIVALENT TO THOSE OF 
STANDARD FOR LABORING MAN AT MODERATE WORK. 
Standard Ration:—Protein (118 grams) 0.26 lb.; fats (56 grams) 0.12 lbs,; carbohydrates 
(500 grams) 1.10 lbs. 
A. Daily Rations costing 12 cents or less. 
Food materials. 
Food materials. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
No. 1. 
No. 6. 
Beef, neck, 
i lb. 
4 cts. 
Smoked herring, 
i lb. 
3 cts. 
Beans, 
4 “ 
3 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 “ 
1 “ 
Potatoes, 
2 “ 
2 “ 
Bean s, 
h “ 
li “ 
Oatmeal, 
1 u 
n “ 
Wheat flour, 
i “ 
4 “ 
Butter, 
| oz. 
ii “ 
Butter, 
1-16 “ 
2 “ 
Eye flour, 
i lb. 
14 “ 
Total, 
— 
Hi « 
Total, 
10| 
No. 7. 
No. 2. 
Beef, neck, 
i lb. 
4 cts. 
Beef, shin, 
i lb. 
3 cts. 
Beef, shin, 
ts a 
3 “ 
Oatmeal, 
li H 
2i “ 
Alewives, 
i “ 
3 “ 
Corn meal, 
« a 
1 “ 
Beans, 
1 u 
4 “ 
Milk, i pt., 
u *. 
2 “ 
Milk, i pt., 
1 u 
2 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 lb. 
1 “ 
Rye flour, 
u u 
Butter, 
1 oz. 
2 “ 
VVheat flour, 
t( u 
2 “ 
Oatmeal, 
5 “ 
34 “ 
Total, 
Hi “ 
Corn meal, 
1 “ 
3 “ 
Potatoes, 
5 “ 
5 “ 
Butter, 
2| oz. 
5i « 
No. 3. 
Total, for 3 men, 
334 “ 
Herring, 
i lb. 
3 cts. 
“ “ 1 man, 
11 
Oatmeal, 
4 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 “ 
1 “ 
Wheat flour. 
1 “ 
4 “ 
00 
d 
Butter, 
1-16“ 
2 “ 
Beef, neck, 
h lb. 
4 cts. 
Total, 
114 “ 
Beef, shin. 
(( “ 
3 “ 
Rye flour, 
Sugar, 
li oz. 
1 “ 
No. 4. 
Oatmeal, 
5 lb. 
2i “ 
Herring, 
i “ 
6 “ 
Beef, shin, 
| lb. 
3 cts. 
Beans, 
10 oz. 
2| “ 
Potatoes, 
3 “ 
Wheat flour, 
2i lb. 
10 “ 
Wheat flour, 
h “ 
2 “ 
Potatoes, 
7 
7 “ 
Beaus, 
4 “ 
4 ‘ 
Butter, 
3J oz. 
74 “ 
Butter, 
1-16“ 
2 “ 
Sugar, 
1 i oz. 
1 “ 
Total, for 4 men, 
44 i “ 
“ “ 1 man, 
1H “ 
Total, 
— 
11J “ 
No. 5. 
Alewives 
1 lb. 
3 cts. 
Potatoes, 
2 
2 “ 
Corn meal, 
i tl 
1 1 “ 
Wheat flour, 
h ** 
2 “ 
Butter, 
1-16 “ 
2 “ 
Total, 
10* “ ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON, 
61 
Food-materials. 
Food-materials. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. | 
1 
Costs. 
No. 9. 
No. 14. 
Liver, 
4 lb. 
5 cts. 
Fresh mackerel, 
3 lb. 
4| ets. 
Potatoes. 
1 “ 
1 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 
1 “ 
Butter, 
1-16“ 
2 “ 
Cracked wheat, 
1 ii 
3 “ 
Corn meal, 
1 “ 
3 “ 
Cornmeal, 
U “ 
Bread, 
3 “ 
Beans, 
3 “ 
Butter, 
1 oz. 
2 “ 
Total, 
14 “ 
Total, 
123 “ 
No. 10. 
No. 15. 
Beef, shin, 
\ lb. 
3 “ 
Bread, 
2 4 “ 
Beef, neck, 
1 it 
4 cts. 
Potatoes, 
1 “ 
1 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 “ 
1 “ 
Oatmeal, 
1 it 
14 “ 
Cornmeal, 
U “ 
Cornmeal, 
14 “ 
Bye bread, 
1 “ 
4 “ 
Butter, 
1-16“ 
l “ 
Butter, 
1 oz. 
2 “ 
Sugar, 
1-32“ 
Milk, 
1 ii 
4 
2 “ 
Total, 
184 “ 
Total, 
‘ ‘ 
No. 16, for 3 men. 
No. 11. 
Liver, 
5 “ 
Beef, shin (soup), 
4. ii 
3 “ 
Salt cod, 
4 lb. 
8J “ 
Salt codfish, 
ii ii 
31 “ 
Oatmeal, 
*• ii 
24 “ 
Salt pork, 
2 oz. 
2 “ 
Cornmeal, 
it it 
1 “ 
Crackers (pilot), 
1 lb. 
5 4 “ 
Milk, 
u it 
2 “ 
Pease, 
3 “ 
Butter, 
1 oz. 
2 “ 
Sugar, 
h oz. 
Potatoes, 
2 lbs. 
2 “ 
Milk, 
4 lb. 
2 “ 
Oatmeal, 
“ “ 
U “ 
Total, 
13 “ 
Potatoes, 
2 lbs. 
2 “ 
Bread, 
1 
6 “ 
Butter, 
2 oz. 
4 “ 
No. 12. 
Cornmeal, 
1 h lb. 
44 “ 
Pork, 
i lb. 
2 “ 
Total, for 3 men, 
42 “ 
Beans, 
4 “ 
“ “ 1 man, 
14 “ 
Salt cod, 
2 “ 
Potatoes, 
1| lbs. 
1| “ 
Bread, 
6 “ 
No. 17, for 4 men. 
- 
Total, 
123 “ 
Beef, shin, 
i lb. 
3 “ 
Fresh mackerel, 
4| “ 
Salt cod, 
54 “ 
No. 13. 
Pork, 
2 oz. 
2 “ 
Beans, 
5 lb. 
Salt codfish, 
4 lb. 
3 h “ 
Wheat bread, 
13 “ 
84 “ 
Salt pork, 
2 “ 
Cracked wheat, 
3 “ 
Crackers (pilot), 
1 “ 
Cornmeal, 
14 “ 
44 “ 
Pease, 
3 “ 
Oatmeal, 
4 “ 
Butter, 
3 oz. 
6 “ 
Total, 
14 “ 
Milk, 
3 lb. 
4 “ 
Potatoes, 
5s “ 
54 “ 
Sugar, 
5 oz. 
4 61 
Total, for 4 men. 
523 “ 
“ “ 1 man, 
13 “ 
B. Daily rations costing from 13 to 15 cents. 62 
C. Daily rations costing from 15 to 20 cents. 
SECTION I. 
Food-materials. 
Food-materials. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
No. 18. 
No. 22. 
Beef, neck, 
1 
lb. 
2 cts. 
Pork, 
1 
OZ. 
1 
(( 
Salt cod, 
44 
14 “ 
Beans, 
3 
21 
u 
Potatoes, 
1 
(I 
1 “ 
Fresh cod, 
4 
lb. 
34 
<« 
Bread, 
1 
66 
3 “ 
Potatoes, 
14 
lbs. 
14 
Cabbage, 
2 
oz. 
1 <( 
Bye bread, 
l 
44 
4 
(C 
Turnips, 
«( 
44 
Butter, 
l 
OZ. 
2 
u 
Carrots, 
66 
44 
Sugar, 
2 
44 
14 
(( 
Oatmeal, 
44 
44 
Milk, 
1 
lb. 
34 
Milk, 1 pt., 
1 
lb. 
34 “ 
Rice, 
2 
OZ. 
14 “ 
Total, 
184 
n 
Sugar, 
44 
n •• 
Corn meal, 
1 
lb. 
Soda crackers, 
1 
OZ. 
No. 23, for 3 men. 
Butter, 
u 
44 
2 “ 
Round steak, 
1 
lb. 
9 
cts. 
Total, 
18 “ 
Beef, neck. 
2 
Fresh haddock, 
66 
34 
Salt cod, 
44 
14 
ti 
No. 19. 
Fat pork, 
OZ. 
u 
Beans, 
3 
44 
2 
K 
Round steak, 
1 
lb. 
8 “ 
Milk, 
24 
lbs. 
9 
a 
Milk, 
44 
2 “ 
Cheese, 
1 
OZ. 
1 
Butter, 
1 
OZ. 
44 44 
Butter, 
3 
44 
6 
Cheese, 
“ 
44 
1 “ 
Wheat bread, 
1 
lb. 
5 
a 
Bread, 
lb. 
24 “ 
Rye bread, 
44 
4 
a 
Potatoes, 
lbs. 
n “ 
Soda crackers,] 
66 
OZ. 
| 
u 
Sugar, 
OZ. 
i “ 
Oatmeal, 
2 
a 
Turnips, 
lb. 
h “ 
Cornmeal, 
7-12 lb. 
if 
Cornmeal, 
1 
44 
i “ 
Rice, 
2 
OZ. 
Is 
u 
Carrots, 
4 
Total, 
194 “ 
Turnips, 
10 
66 
5 
a 
Potatoes, 
4 
lbs. 
4 
tt 
Cabbage, 
2 
oz. 
t( 
No. 20. 
Sugar, 
54 
44 
34 
u 
Beef, shin. 
1 
lb. 
14 “ 
Total, for 3 men, 
46J 
Fresh cod, 
4 
44 
4 “ 
Oatmeal, 
1 
66 
“ “ 1 man, 
15 
a 
Bread, 
1 
44 
3 “ 
Butter, 
1 
OZ. 
2 “ 
Potatoes, 
1 
lb. 
1 “ 
No. 24, for 3 men. 
Boston crackers, 
2 
OZ. 
14 “ 
Milk, 1-2 pint, 
1 
lb. 
11 41 
Round steak, 
4 
lb. 
9 
a 
Cornmeal, 
44 
u u 
Beef, shin (soup), 
44 
Fat pork, 
l 
oz. 
1 
u 
Total, 
104 “ 
Fresh cod, 
lb. 
4 
16 
Cheese, 
i 
oz. 
1 
66 
Milk, 
i 
lb. 
34 
44 
Beans, 
44 
5 
66 
Peas, 
u 
24 
66 
No. 21. 
Wheat bread, 
14 
66 
66 
Rye bread, 
u 
2 
66 
Beef, neck, 
lb. 
44 “ 
Boston crackers, 
2 
oz. 
14 
6« 
Milk, 
44 
2 “ 
Oatmeal, 
u 
66 
Cheese, 
1 
OZ. 
1 “ 
Cornmeal, 
5-G 
lbs. 
24 
66 
Bread, 
1 
lb. 
5 “ 
Potatoes, 
24 
24 
66 
Potatoes, 
2 
44 
2 “ 
Turnips, 
« 
u 
Sugar, 
14 
oz. 
1 “ 
Butter, 
32 
oz. 
G1 
66 
Sugar, 
34 
24 
66 
Total, 
154 “ 
Total, for 3 men, 
534 
(« 
. 
“ “1 man, 
18 
66 63 
D. Daily rations costing from 20 to 45 cents. 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Food 
Materials. 
Food 
Materials. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
Kinds. 
Amounts. 
Costs. 
No. 25, for i men. 
Potatoes, 
Cauliflower, 
1 
2 
lb. 
2 
6 
cts. 
Round steak, 
h 
lb. 
9 
cts. 
Rice, 
44 
3 
<4 
Beef, shin (soup), 
44 
H 
ii 
Oyster crackers, 
44 
5 
44 
Beef, neck, 
“ 
2 
6i 
Sugar, 
2 4 
44 
Fresh cod, 
1 
8 
6 * 
Butter, 
i 
OZ. 
2 
44 
Salt cod, 
Pork, 
1 
n 
44 
f 
66 
Total 
Beans, 
lb. 
5 
16 
Wheat bread, 
n 
44 
8 
<( 
Rye bread, 
i 
44 
4 
it 
No. 29. 
Boston crackers, 
2 
oz. 
U 
66 
Soda crackers, 
1 
44 
1 
6 ( 
Mutton, leg, 
lb. 
4 
cts. 
Oatmeal, 
1 
lb. 
5 
t( 
Oysters, 
44 
10 
44 
Corn meal, 
1 
44 
2? 
44 
Pease, 
h 
44 
44 
Rice, 
2 
OZ. 
1* 
l( 
Potatoes, 
i 
44 
1 
44 
Potatoes, 
5j 
lbs. 
5? 
(4 
Oatmeal, 
i 
44 
1 
44 
Cabbage, 
2 
OZ. 
(4 
Rice, 
44 
n 
44 
Turnips, 
“ 
44 
44 
Bread, 
44 
3 
44 
Carrots, 
44 
44 
44 
Oyster crackers, 
3 
44 
Butter, 
3 
66 
6 
44 
Butter, 
H 
OZ. 
3 
44 
Milk, 
lbs. 
44 
Sugar, 
OZ. 
44 
Total 
28J 
44 
Total for 4 men, 
“ “ 1 man, 
7ii 
18 
44 
44 
No. 30. 
Turkey, 
Fresh pork, 
2 
2 
lb. 
OZ. 
18 
15 
cts. 
No. 26, 
Hominy, 
1 
2 
lb. 
2 
44 
Potatoes, 
i 
44 
1 
44 
Beef (soup), 
I 
lb. 
6 
cts. 
Beans, 
i 
44 
ih 
44 
Potatoes, 
i 
• 4 
1 
(4 
Rye bread, 
h. 
** 
3 
K 
Bread, 
Cabbage, 
Turnips, 
h 
66 
3 
44 
Milk, 
i 
2 
OZ. 
k 
Total 
30i 
44 
Carrots, 
2 
44 
$ 
44 
Oatmeal, 
2 
u 
lb. 
1 
44 
No. 31. 
Milk. 
1 
34 
44 
Rice, 
Sugar, 
Corn meal, 
2 
2 
i 
OZ. 
lb. 
U 
n 
44 
44 
44 
Beef, sirloin, 
Potatoes, 
1 
4 
2 
lb. 
5 
3 
cts. 
44 
Soda'crackers, 
Butter, 
* 
1 
oz. 
i 
2 
44 
44 
Butter, 
Sugar, 
1 
i 
4 
OZ. 
lb. 
2 
2£ 
Total 
20£ 
Beans, 
4 
4* 
2i 
44 
Skimmed milk, 
i 
44 
2 
4« 
No. 27. 
Oysters 
4 
20 
44 
Total 
43 
u 
Shad, 
lb. 
4 
cts. 
Eggs, 
k 
44 
4 
44 
No. 32. 
Oatmeal, 
2 
oz. 
I 
44 
Rice, 
2 
66 
ll 
44 
Salmon, 
lb. 
10 
cts. 
44 
Beans, 
i lb. 
44 
Beef, sirloin, 
I 
5 
Bread, 
h 
lb. 
3 
<4 
Oysters, 
10 
44 
Potatoes, 
1 
1 
Dried beef, 
i 
OZ. 
1 
44 
Soda crackers, 
I 
4 
66 
2* 
44 
Wheat bread, 
h 
lb. 
3 
44 
Sugar, 
2 
OZ. 
n 
44 
Oatmeal, 
2 
OZ. 
5 
44 
Butter, 
1 
44 
2 
44 
Rice, 
2 
44 
Potatoes, 
Total 
21g 
Sweet potatoes, 
Cabbage, 
1 
2 
oz. 
6 
i 
44 
No. 28. 
Turnips, 
Butter, 
2 
2 
U 
g 
2 
tl 
44 
Beef, round, 
lb. 
Milk, 
1 
lb. 
34 
44 
h 
il 
cts. 
Sugar, 
2 
oz. 
li 
44 
Shad, 
i 
<$ 
4 
Pease, 
u 
2i 
44 
Total 
45 “ 64 
SECTION I. 
I have been permitted by Professor Atwater to incorporate the 
following statements and tables, which have been long in prepara- 
tion by him, with my address. I do so with the more satisfaction 
since he has assured me that the time has come when the services 
of the economist and the statistician are much needed to sustain 
the work of the chemist and the physiologist. 
PECUNIARY ECONOMY OF FOODS. 
E. A. 
A. COST OF PROTEIN. 
A subject that has received but little attention in this country, 
though it has become a vital one in Europe, and is becoming so 
with us, is the cost of the nutritive material of our foods. The 
relative cheapness or dearness of different foods must be judged 
by comparing, not the prices per pound, but the costs of the actual 
nutrients. In making such comparisons, the cost may be assumed 
to fall, not upon the inedible portions and the water, but solely 
upon the three classes of nutrients, the protein, fats, and carbo- 
hydrates. 
The relative physiological values of the nutrients in different 
foods depend upon (1) their digestibility and (2) their func- 
tions and the proportions in which they can replace each other 
in nutrition. An accurate physiological valuation is, in the pres- 
ent state of our knowledge, at least, impracticable. The pecun- 
iary costs of the nutrients are, however, more nearly capable of 
approximation. 
Various methods have been proposed for computing the relative 
pecuniary costs of the nutrients of foods, none of which, however, 
are entirely beyond criticism. The following, based upon German 
estimates of the relative costs of protein fats and carbohydrates, 
is perhaps as satisfactory as any. They are those of Prof. Kdnig. 
From extended comparisons of the composition and market 
prices of the more important animal and vegetable food materials, 
such as meats, fish, flour, etc., those which serve for nourishment 
and not as luxuries and form the bulk of the food of the people, 
it has been estimated that a pound of protein costs, on the average, 
five times as much, and a pound of fats three times as much, as a 
pound of carbohydrates; that, in other words, these three classes ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
65 
of nutrients stand related to each other, in respect to cost, in the 
following proportions : 
Assumed ratios of costs in staple foods 
Protein, . . 5 
Fats, . . 3 
Carbohydrates,. 1 
Perhaps a study of foods and prices in our markets might lead 
to a different scale of valuations, but this will serve our present 
purpose. 
Suppose a pound of beef bo cost 25 cents, and to contain 25 per 
cent of inedible matters, bone, etc., 45 per cent of water, and 30 
per cent of nutritive substance, upon which latter—the bone and 
water being assumed to be without nutritive value the whole 
cost comes. The 30 per cent or T3o°ff pounds of nutritive substance 
thus costs 25 cents, or at the rate of 83£ cents per pound. If now 
we leave out of account the minute quantities of carbohydrates 
and the mineral matters, the whole eost will fall upon the protein 
and fats. Assuming these to cost in the ratio of 5: 3 and the 
amounts in the meat to be : protein 15 per cent, and fats 14£ per 
cent, an easy computation will show the protein to cost 106 cents 
and a pound of fats 64 cents. 
Of the different nutrients, protein is physiologically the most 
important as it is pecuniarily the most expensive. For these 
reasons the cost of protein in different food materials may be used 
as a means of comparing their relative cheapness or dearness, as 
is done in the following table. The figures represent the ordinary 
prices per pound and the corresponding costs of protein, in speci- 
mens of food materials obtained in New York and Middletown, 
Conn., markets. Though the number of specimens is too small 
for reliable averages, the figures, taken together, doubtless give a 
tolerably fair idea of the relative costliness of the nutrients in the 
different classes of foods. It will of course be understood that 
the computations make allowance for the costs of the other nutri- 
ents, the fats and the carbohydrates, though for the sake of brevity 
the latter are omitted from the table. 66 
SECTION I. 
FOOD MATERIALS. 
; At prices per 
IDOund. 
i Cost of protein 
| per pound. 
FOOD MATERIALS. 
[ At prices per 
pound. 
jCost of protein I 
| per pound. | 
cts. 
cts. 
cts. 
cts. 
Salmon. 
100 
511 
Salt mackerel. 
12.5 
53 
Oysters, 50 cts. per quart. 
25 
336 
Smoked ham. 
18 
51 
Oysters,%0 “ “ “ 
20 
269 
Oysters, 30 “ “ “ 
15 
202 
Smoked ham. 
15 
43 
Lobsters. 
12 
202 
Salt cod. 
7 
43 
Eggs,'40 cts. per doz. 
28 
157 
Mackerel. 
5 
40 
Salmon. 
30 
153 
Wheat bread. 
8 
38 
Flounder. 
8 
149 
Rice. 
9 
38 
Beef, sirloin. 
25 
06 
Cheese, whole milk. 
18 
37 
Eggs, 25 cts. per doz. 
IS 
101 
Salt cod. 
6 
37 
Shad. 
12 
99 
Corned beef, lean. 
10 
36 
Blueflsh, 
10 
98 
Beef, flank.3 
15 
36 
Lake trout. 
15 
92 
Beef, neck. 
8 
33 
Mutton, leg. 
22 
91 
Pork very fat,3 salted. 
16 
33 
Beef, sirloin. 
20 
86 
Salt cod. 
5 
31 
Halibut. 
15 
85 
Potatoes,3 $1.00 per bn. 
1.7 
30 
Haddock. 
7 
84 
Wheat bread. 
6 
29 
Mutton, leg. 
20 
82 
Cheese, whole milk. 
13 
27 
Mackerel. 
10 
79 
Alewives, 
3 
27 
Cod. 
8 
75 
Pork, very fat,3 salted. 
12 
25 
Mutton, side. 
20 
73 
Smoked herring. 
6 
24 
Beef, round. 
18 
70 
Potatoes,3 75 cts. per bu. 
1.38 
22 
Canned salmon. 
20 
70 
Wheat bread. 
4 
19 
Mutton, leg. 
16 
66 
Beans, 13 cts. per quart. 
6.5 
18 
Shad. 
8 
66 
Cheese, skimmed milk. 
8 
18 
Cornedjbeef, lean. 
18 
66 
Wheat flour. 
4.5 
17 
Eggs, 15 cts. per doz. 
11 
62 
Wheat flour. 
4 
15 
Milk, 8 cts. per quart. 
4 
61 
Oatmeal. 
5 
15 
Beef, round. 
15 
59 
Beans, 10 cts. per quart. 
5 
14 
Cod. 
6 
56 
Potatoes,3 50 cts. per bu. 
0.85 
14 
Corned beef, lean. 
15 
55 
Wheat flour. 
3.5 
13 
Milk, 7 cts. per quart. 
3.5 
53 
Corn meal. 
3 
12 
COMPARATIVE COST OF PROTEIN IN FOOD MATERIALS. 
Containing very little protein, the chief value being in the other ingredients. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
67 
Thus the nutrients of vegetable foods are, in general, much less 
costly than in animal foods. The animal foods have, however, 
the advantage of containing a larger proportion of protein and 
fats, and the protein, at least, in more digestible forms. 
Among the animal foods, those which rank as delicacies are the 
costliest. By the above calculations, the protein in the oysters 
costs from two to three dollars, and, in salmon, rises to over five 
dollars per pound. In beef, mutton, and ham, it varies from 106 
to 43 cents ; in shad, blue-fish, haddock and halibut, the range is 
about the same ; while in cod and mackerel, fresh and salted, 
it varies from 75 to as low as 31 cents per pound. Salt cod and 
salt mackerel are nearly always, fresh cod and mackerel often, and 
even the choicer fish, as blue-fish and shad, when abundant, 
cheaper sources of protein than any but the inferior kinds of 
meat. Among meats, pork is the cheapest; but sslt pork or 
bacon has the disadvantage of containing very little protein. 
It is well worth the noting that oat meal is one of the cheapest 
foods that we have ; that is, it furnishes more nutritive material, in 
proportion to the cost, than almost any other. Corn meal is 
indeed cheaper, but the oat meal has this great advantage over 
corn meal and wheat flour, that it has more protein. Of course, 
if we are to eat large quantities of lean meat—and most of us, I 
think, eat more than is best for our health, saying nothing of our 
purses, the extra protein in the oat meal is of little consequence to 
us. But if one wishes to economize in his food, oat meal—rightly 
cooked—affords an excellent material therefor. 
One of the most interesting things brought out in the table is 
cheapness of the staple vegetable food materials, such as potatoes, 
wheat flour, corn meal, oat-meal and beans. 
B. AMOUNTS OF NUTRIENTS OBTAINED FOR TWENTY-FIVE CENTS 
IN DIFFERENT FOOD MATERIALS. 
The above method of computing the relative expensiveness of 
different kinds of food materials is, as I have said, open to the 
objection that it is based upon a certain assumed ratio of relative 
costs of protein, fats, and carbohydrates, which may or may not 
be right in any given case. A method free from these objections 
consists in computing how much of the several nutrients may be 
obtained for a given sum, for instance, twenty-five cents, in differ- 
ent food materials. This is done in the following table. SECTION I. 
AMOUNTS OF NUTRIENTS FURNISHED FOR TWENTY-FIVE CENTS IN FOOD 
MATERIALS AT ORDINARY PRICES. 
Q 
25 CENTS WILL PAY FOR:- 
MATERIALS. 
)vices 
pound 
13 • 
£.5 
NUTRIENTS, POUNDS. 
s 2 
O 2 
EH = 
Totals. 
Protein 
Fats. 
Carbo- 
hy- 
drates. 
Salmon. 
cts. 
100 
lbs. 
.25 
.06 
.04 
.02 
Oysters, 50 cts. per quart. 
25 
1.00 
.12 
.06 
.02 
.04 
Oysters, 35 cts. per quart. 
17.5 
1.42 
.17 
.09 
.02 
.06 
Salmon. 
30 
.83 
19 
.12 
.07 
— 
Bluefish. 
10 
2.50 
.27 
.25 
.02 
— 
Beef, sirloin. 
25 
1.00 
.29 
.15 
.14 
— 
Shad. 
12 
2.08 
.29 
.19 
.10 
— 
Cod. 
08 
3.13 
.34 
.33 
.01 
— 
Mutton, leg. 
22 
1.14 
.34 
.17 
.17 
— 
Mackerel. 
10 
2.50 
.35 
.25 
.10 
— 
Beef, sirloin. 
20 
1.25 
.37 
.19 
.18 
— 
Mutton, leg. 
20 
1.25 
.38 
.19 
.19 
— 
Beef, round. 
18 
1.39 
.40 
.29 
.11 
— 
Canned salmon. 
20 
1.25 
.44 
.25 
.19 
— 
Shad. 
08 
3.13 
.44 
.29 
.15 
— 
Cod. 
06 
4.17 
.45 
.44 
.01 
— 
Mutton, side. 
20 
1.25 
.46 
.17 
.29 
— 
Beef, round. 
15 
1.67 
.49 
.85 
.14 
— 
Salt cod. 
07 
3.57 
.58 
.57 
.01 
— 
Salt mackerel. 
12.5 
2.00 
.60 
.30 
.30 
— 
Mackerel. 
05 
5.00 
.71 
.51 
.20 
— 
Butter. 
30 
.83 
.73 
— 
.73 
— 
Milk, Sets, per quart. 
04 
6.25 
.74 
.21 
.23 
.30 
Salt cod. 
05 
5.00 
.82 
.80 
.02 
— 
Milk, 7cts. per quart. 
03.5 
7.14 
.84 
.24 
.26 
.34 
Cheese, whole milk. 
18 
1.39 
.90 
.38 
.49 
.03 
Beef, neck, whole. 
08 
3.13 
.92 
.48 
.44 
— 
Cheese, whole milk. 
15 
1.67 
1.08 
.45 
.59 
.04 
Smoked herring. 
PorK, salted, fat. 
Pork, salted, fat. 
06 
4.17 
1.21 
.84 
.37 
— 
.16 
1.56 
1.23 
.04 
1.19 
— 
12 
2.08 
1.65 
.06 
1.59 
— 
Cheese, skim milk. 
.08 
3.13 
1.69 
1.20 
.21 
.28 
Wheat bread. 
.08 
3.13 
2.08 
.28 
.06 
1.74 
Wheat bread. 
06 
4.17 
2.75 
.37 
.07 
2.31 
Potatoes, $1.00 per. bushel. 
01.7 
3.24 • 
3.04 
.27 
.03 
2.74 
Beans, 10 cts. per. quart. 
05 
5.00 
3.96 
1.16 
.11 
2.69 
Potatoes, 75 cts. per bushel. 
01.25 
18.00 
4.13 
.36 
.04 
3.73 
Wheat bread. 
04 
6.25 
4.15 
.56 
.12 
3.47 
Oatmeal. 
05 
5.00 
4.48 
.76 
.36 
3.36 
Wheat flour. 
04.5 
5.55 
4.83 
.62 
.06 
4.15 
Wheat flour. 
04 
6.25 
5.44 
.69 
.04 
4.71 
Potatoes, oOcts. per bushel. 
00.85 
26.47 
6.06 
.53 
.05 
5.48 
Indian meal. 
03 
8.33 
6.90 
.70 
.29 
5.91 
The methods of computing the cost of protein and the amounts 
obtained for twenty-five cents in different foods are as follows. 
1. Cost of protein.—Suppose we wish to learn the costs of the 
nutrients in wheat flour, containing 11.1 per cent of protein, 1.1 per 
cent of fat, and 75.4 per cent of carbohydrates, and costing four 
cents a pound. 69 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
Let x represent the cost of a pound of carbohydrates in cents. 
Then, by the ratio of costs assumed above, a pound of fats would 
cost 3a cents and a pound of protein 5x cents. 100 pounds of the 
flour will cost 400 cents and will contain 11.1 pounds of protein, 
1.1 pounds of fats, and 75.4 pounds of carbohydrates. We shall 
have 
75.4 a; cts, cost of 75.4 pounds of carbohydrates. 
3.3 a; “ = “ “ 1.1 “ “ fats. 
55.5 a; “ = “ “ 11.1 “ “ protein. 
Total 134.2 a; “ = “ “ 100 “ “ flour = 400 cents. 
Whence x = 3 cts. cost of carbohydrates per lb. 
3a; = 9 “ “ “ fats per lb. 
5x =l5 “ “ “ protein per lb. 
2. Amounts of nutrients obtained for 25 cents.— At 4 cents 
per pound for the flour, 25 cents will pay for 6.25 pounds. By the 
percentage composition above given 6.25 pounds of flour will con- 
tain .69 pound of protein, .07 pound of fats and 4.71 pounds of 
carbohydrates which are the amounts of nutrients obtained for 25 
cents. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
The facts to which I have referred and others, which this is not 
the place to dwell upon in detail, seem to me to warrant the follow- 
ing statements. 
1, The subject is one of the utmost importance. If, as you 
say, for the large majority of people, “half the struggle of life is 
a struggle for food,”— and I believe that yotir own statistics as 
well as those of Colonel Wright for this country, and those of Dr. 
Engel for Germany show that the statement is none too strong,— 
it is certainly worth while that people should know of what their 
food consists and how to economize it. 
2, In order that ordinary people may know these things, it is 
necessary first of all that the facts should be found out. Here, 
as in many other arts and economies of life, the practical details 
which are at once most important and seemingly the most simple, 
rest upon data so extended and laws so abstruse as to be found 
out only by the longest inquiry and most profound research. It 
is only lately that science has begun to bring the most useful re- 
sults, and hence we are just at the beginning of our knowledge of 70 
SECTION I. 
these matters, yet enough has been done to give us a great deal of 
extremely useful information, and to show us where and how we 
must search for more. 
3. Economy of food must be regarded from two standpoints : 
(1) physiological and (2) pecuniary. 
Viewed from the physiological standpoint, the facts at hand make 
it reasonably certain that many people in our country, including 
not simply the wealthy but those in what we call moderate circum- 
stances as wefl, consume much more food than their bodies demand, 
and that the excess is detrimental, not only to their purses but, 
what is worse, to their health. The chief error seems to be in the 
excessive use of meat and other animal foods, though I am in- 
clined to think that sweetmeats are also consumed to a very detri- 
mental excess. The poor, too, whom poverty debars from over- 
eating suffer, not only because of insufficient food, but because 
the food they do have is not that which is best adapted to their 
wants. 
Viewed from the pecuniary standpoint, the data at hand indi- 
cate a great deal of bad economy, in the purchase of excess of 
food. This manifests itself in two ways: one is consumption of 
unnecessarily large quantities of food to which I have just referred. 
Of the many ways in which American wastefulness manifests 
itself, one of the chief, I believe, is in the waste of food. It is 
indeed better that part of the excess we purchase should be 
thrown away, than that it should all be employed in overloading 
our stomachs, but it would be better to purchase only so much as 
we need and use that rightly. And it is not the well-to-do onty, 
but people in moderate circumstances, mechanics, farmers, trades- 
men, professional men with limited incomes, among whom this 
wastefulness is very common. 
The other kind of bad economy is in the use of needlessly ex- 
pensive foods. Among that large class of people whose incomes 
are moderate, and intelligence and desire to economize consider- 
able, a great deal is lost in the purchase of materials which sup- 
ply the needed nutritious materials at high cost instead of those 
which would furnish them in equally wholesome and nutritious 
forms for less. Many a thrifty house pays from half a dollar to 
a dollar and a half a pound for the protein of the food on her table 
when she might obtain it in equally nutritious and wholesome forms 
for from twelve to forty cents. ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
71 
But what seems to me the most pathetic part of the whole 
problem is, that it is the needy wh© know least how to make good 
use of what they have. It is too often the poor man’s money that 
is wasted in the market and it is the food of the destitute that 
loses most from improper preparation. Here it is especially true 
that “ to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not 
shall be taken even that which he hath.” 
4, It is as important that the information should be spread as 
that it should be gained. There is a great dearth of reliable lit- 
erature on this subject. This is due mainly to its newness. It is 
only within a few years that the data have accumulated of such 
amount and reliability that the authors of standard works have 
felt like incorporating them in their treatises. The army of ordi- 
dinary writers, therefore, have never had the facts before them. 
The text books have had but little to say upon the subject, while 
the magazines and newspapers have contained a great deal that 
might better have been left unwritten. But treatises are already 
appearing in foreign languages, and must soon be written in Eng- 
lish. 
I think that the literature of the subject needs three things. 
First: standard treatises giving the results of investigations to 
date. 
Second : smaller works with the main results epitomized in 
form convenient for those especially interested in the matter to 
read. 
Third : tracts for the people in which the most useful practical 
facts shall be set forth in plain and simple language illustrated by 
diagrams and enforced by practical applications which ordinary 
people may comprehend and use. 
And finally, let me repeat, for this, I believe, is the most impor- 
tant thing of all for us to consider now,—we need more research. 
Almost nothing has been done on this side of the Atlantic, Nearly 
all the analyses we have of American food-materials except cereal 
grains and milk have been made within a short time in a single 
chemical laboratory. The most valuable part of our information 
comes from Germany. But, although the laws of nutrition are the 
same there as here, they are at best but imperfectly investigated. 
The pressing need is for more knowledge. The most successful 
research, that of the highest type, must be carried on here, as 
in Europe, in connection with the higher educational institutions. 72 
SECTION 1. 
But such research is costly and our universities and colleges have 
not the means for prosecuting it. Science in this country depends 
mainly upon private munificence for its advancement. The cost 
of a single pleasure yacht, if devoted to research in this direction, 
would not only.give the donor fame, hut would bring tenfold re- 
turn in the benefits it would confer. 
W. 0. A. 
APPENDIX. 
The following data will in some measure justify the statements 
which I have given in my address, both in regard to the gain of 
the people of the United States in realized wealth, but also in re- 
spect to the increase of products which make for the common wel- 
fare. 
Statistics of realized wealth, when given in terms of monejr, 
are delusive and uncertain, and such aggregates are of little 
value ; but there are certain standards which may be taken as in- 
dications of the progress of accumulation or of the increased quan- 
tities of merchandise on the way from producer to consumer. 
The data of insurance against loss by fire are capable of very 
accurate compilation from the official statements which are re- 
quired by law. 
One of the most valuable compilations of this sort appeared in 
the Insurance Monitor of New York, for September 1884, made 
by the editor C. C. Mine, Esq. 
The progressive increase in the amount of insurance against 
loss by fire since 1865—the figures indicating millions of dollars 
—is as follows : 
1865 $ 2564 1875 $ 6039 
1866 2945 1876 5914 
1867 3165 1877 6008 
1868 3420 1878 6229 
1869 3778 1879 6673 
1870 4035 1880 7184 
1871 3987 1881 7949 
1872 4529 1882 8534 
1873 5783 1883 9359 
1874 5889 73 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD ATKINSON. 
The grain crop of 1865, including maize, wheat, oats, rye, bar- 
ley and buckwheat amounted to 1,127,499,187 bushels ; the crop 
of 1884 numbered 2,981,920, 332 bushels; the crop of 1885, in 
which the excess of corn will make up for the deficiency of wheat, 
will probably exceed 3,000,000,000 bushels. Except for the con- 
solidation and extension of the railway service, and the very great 
reduction in the freight charge, these crops could not have been 
moved. 
The number of miles of railroad Jan. 1, 1865, was 33,908 ; Jan. 
1, 1885, it was 125,379. One-half the tonnage carried by these 
railways consists of food for man or beast. 
If we compare the average charge per ton, per mile, as it was 
in 1865-1869, inclusive, with the average charge of each subse- 
quent year, the difference on the traffic of each subsequent year 
assessed on the tonnage of that year amounts to a sum more than 
equal to the money expended on all the new railroads of that 
year. 
The average product of pig iron for 1865-66-67 was 1,247,850 
net tons ; for a fraction, only, under 5,000,000 net 
tons each year. 
The cotton crop of 1865-66, 1866-67, 1867-68 averaged 2,600,- 
000 bales each year. The crops of 1882-83, 1883-84, 1884-85 
averaged 6,122,000 bales each year. The present crop may ex- 
ceed 7,000,000 bales. 
The last 20 crops of slave-grown cotton numbered 56,757,906 
bales. The Last 20 crops of free-grown cotton numbered 86,829,- 
795 bales; a gain of 30,031,889 bales, or 1,500,000 bales per 
year, besides an increase in the average weight per bale of about 
ten per cent; 400 lbs. in 1841, 485 lbs. in 1885. This difference* 
with the value of the seed now saved, but formerly wasted, may 
be computed at a value of about $1,800,000,000. 
The debt of the United States at its maximum in 1865 amounted 
to $2,997,386,203, according to the estimate of Sec’y McCulloch, 
who added to the recorded debt, the sum due and in arrears for the 
pay of the army and on war contracts. On the Ist of August, 
1885 the net debt amounted to $1,386,555,527. 
Our population in 1865 was about 35,000,000; it is now over 
57,000,000. The debt per capita in 1865 was over $B4. It is now 
less than $24. 
The debt of all Europe in 1884 as reported by M. G. Mulhall at 74 
SECTION I. 
the meeting of the British Association in Montreal was $21,319,- 
620,000. Omitting Russia, Turkey, Senna and the bankrupt 
states of Spain and Portugal, there remains over $15,000,000,000 
of debt due by England, Germany, France and other states which 
are assumed to be solvent. The population of these latter states 
is now about 200,000,000 and the proportion of their steadily 
increasing debt is $75 per head. These states have one mile of 
railroad to each 2420 persons. In the United States there is one 
mile to each 450 persons. 
The number of men in actual service in the standing armies of 
Europe, omitting Russia and Turkey, as listed in Martins’ Year 
Book for 1884 was 2,675,386 or one in every twenty-one and a half 
of the adult men, assuming one in four of the population as such. 
The number in the army and navy of the United States is 36,871 
or one in three hundred and eighty-five. 
The number of men in the reserves in Europe, who are enrolled 
and subject to active service at a moment’s notice, is far greater 
than the number actually under arms. If to the waste of time of 
those who are under arms be added the cost of their support, at 
least ten per cent of the productive power of Europe is spent in 
passive war even in periods of so-called peace while a large part 
of the remaining product is distributed according to privilege 
rather than according to service. These conditions are as impos- 
sible of continuance as they are dangerous in their existence. 
I may safely leave you to make the application of these facts to 
the relative conditions of this country and of Europe—in sadness 
rather than in exultation. 
At the beginning of the next century this country will be free 
from debt—our army will have become a mere national police— 
the progress of invention will have rendered navies powerless 
cither for offence or defence. 
We are to be tried by the fire of prosperity and tested by the 
dangers of luxury. The burning question now is, Are we capable 
of maintaining a just government in its integrity? 
“Of what avail, the plough or sail, 
Or land, or life, if freedom fail!” 
E. A.