The low food standards of English workers in 1750 is recorded in the preface to Mrs. Glasse's cookbook where, for the first time, she points to the great gulf between the diets of the classes and tells of difficulties she encountered in an "attempt to instruct the lower sort": For example, when I bid them lard a fowl, if I should bid them lard with large lardoons they would not know what I meant; but when I say they must lard with little pieces of Bacon, they know what I mean. In spite of this, during the craft period "the labourers dyet" is recorded as " Milk, butter and cheese .... and a pot of good Beer quickens his spirits." On the other hand, a survey of today's work- er's diet in the New York "Times says he can't afford to buy milk, **WE DINE FOR THE POOR*' 215 but subsists on pork and cereals, while nothing is said about the bad beer, now made with rice to give it a cheap kick, for which he pays a dime a glass. This looks like Liberty League propaganda, but it serves.to remind us of Hoover's failure to provide "two chick- ens in every pot," a failure everlastingly recorded in the name "Hoover hog" for the armadillo on which depression residents in Mexican-border Hoovervilles sub-subsist. It is true also that the majority of dispossessed farmers, especially in the South, don't even get the pork, but exist on unappetizing cornmeal mush which they call **hushpuppy" because it attempts to still the inward cries of hunger. And Erskine Caldwell has shown us whole populations of 100% Americans who are down to a diet of grubs and clay. Likewise the grasshopper ravages have driven Western farmers to eating that pest which has left them nothing else to feed on, even as Chinese coolies were driven to making sweet- meats of roast locust thousands of years ago. And while baked grasshoppers are a genuine addition to our national menu, the same as cooked crows in the corn belt, the obvious objection to both is that there's nothing else to vary the monotony of the diet. It smacks of the enlisted Navy man's bean song, with the melancholy refrain, "All American mothers, I want to say to you, Monday b-e-a-n-s, Tuesday s-o-o-u-p, Wednesday b-e-a-n-s — all American mothers, I want to say to you!" For it doesn't matter how great a delicacy any food is, too much of it is plenty — as is eloquently proved by early laws which for- bade voracious Southern planters feeding their slaves terrapin more than twice a week and likewise shad and shad roe, both of which are expensive delicacies today but used to be so common they were shoveled out as the cheapest food, costing the owner nothing be- yond the labor of bringing them in by the ton. But now that the organization of labor is helping the toiler enjoy more of the fruits of his own production, there's no fear of his ever again slipping back to abjectly taking a repulsive diet lying down. "COOKERY FOR THE POOR" Passing from Shakespearean times to our revolutionary war period, let us observe the illuminating "General Remarks and 21 6 MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK Hints" in A New System of Domestic Cookery, formed upon princi- ples of economy; and adapted to the use of private families through- out the United States^ published in i8cx) and signed significantly "By a Lady."

AI-modernized reading of the original text

The low food standards of English workers in 1750 is recorded in the preface to Mrs. Glasse's cookbook where, for the first time, she points to the great gulf between the diets of the classes and tells of difficulties she encountered in an "attempt to instruct the lower sort": For example, when I bid them lard a fowl, if I should bid them lard with large lardoons they would not know what I meant; but when I say they must lard with little pieces of Bacon, they know what I mean. In spite of this, during the craft period "the labourers dyet" is recorded as " Milk, butter and cheese .... and a pot of good Beer quickens his spirits." On the other hand, a survey of today's worker's diet in the New York "Times says he can't afford to buy milk, "COOKERY FOR THE POOR" 215 but subsists on pork and cereals, while nothing is said about the bad beer, now made with rice to give it a cheap kick, for which he pays a dime a glass. This looks like Liberty League propaganda, but it serves to remind us of Hoover's failure to provide "two chickens in every pot," a failure everlastingly recorded in the name "Hoover hog" for the armadillo on which depression residents in Mexican-border Hoovervilles sub-subsist. It is true also that the majority of dispossessed farmers, especially in the South, don't even get the pork, but exist on unappetizing cornmeal mush which they call "hushpuppy" because it attempts to still the inward cries of hunger. And Erskine Caldwell has shown us whole populations of 100% Americans who are down to a diet of grubs and clay. Likewise the grasshopper ravages have driven Western farmers to eating that pest which has left them nothing else to feed on, even as Chinese coolies were driven to making sweetmeats of roast locust thousands of years ago. And while baked grasshoppers are a genuine addition to our national menu, the same as cooked crows in the corn belt, the obvious objection to both is that there's nothing else to vary the monotony of the diet. It smacks of the enlisted Navy man's bean song, with the melancholy refrain, "All American mothers, I want to say to you, Monday b-e-a-n-s, Tuesday s-o-o-u-p, Wednesday b-e-a-n-s — all American mothers, I want to say to you!" For it doesn't matter how great a delicacy any food is, too much of it is plenty — as is eloquently proved by early laws which forbade voracious Southern planters feeding their slaves terrapin more than twice a week and likewise shad and shad roe, both of which are expensive delicacies today but used to be so common they were shoveled out as the cheapest food, costing the owner nothing beyond the labor of bringing them in by the ton. But now that the organization of labor is helping the toiler enjoy more of the fruits of his own production, there's no fear of his ever again slipping back to abjectly taking a repulsive diet lying down. "COOKERY FOR THE POOR" Passing from Shakespearean times to our revolutionary war period, let us observe the illuminating "General Remarks and Hints" in A New System of Domestic Cookery, formed upon principles of economy; and adapted to the use of private families throughout the United States, published in 1800 and signed significantly "By a Lady."

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