The Business of Being a Housewife A Manual to Promote Household Efficiency and Economy

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underlined text is surrounded by ~tildes~ and italic text is surrounded
by _underscores_. Some tables were split to make them thinner, some were
unable to be split.]


The Business of Being a Housewife

    _2nd Edition_

    [Illustration]

    A manual to promote
    Household Efficiency
    and Economy

    by Mrs. Jean Prescott Adams
    Director of the Department of Food Economics

    ARMOUR AND COMPANY
    CHICAGO

    Copyright, 1921, Armour and Company

As meat is one of the most important items of American diet, its price
is a matter of moment to every housewife. Comparisons between the cost
of live animals and the price per pound of meat sometimes lead to the
conclusion that the existing margin is too wide and that possibly the
profits of the middleman are too large.

After fair analysis, the housewife realizes that a live animal is not
all meat and, furthermore, that the meat carcass is not all steaks and
rib roasts. A comparison, therefore, between the live cost of meat
animals per pound and the cost per pound of a tenderloin is misleading,
if it results in any conclusions relative to margins.

Then we must reckon with the wide difference in grades of meat. We
cannot correctly estimate the cost of a steak cut from a prime beef by
that of a steak from a grass-fed cow. There are several grades of meat,
depending upon the nature and feeding, each wholesome and nutritious,
but some demanding more special cooking than others.

About fifty-five per cent of a steer is meat; the remainder includes
the hide and various other by-products, which, except the hide, are
not worth in their primary state anywhere near as much per pound as
they cost alive. The fifty-five per cent of the animal which is meat
must, therefore, carry the greater portion of the original cost. That
is why a steer carcass might be sold by the packer for twenty cents
a pound and still fail to pay a profit, even though the live animal
cost the packer only twelve cents a pound. The casual observer, noting
a difference of eight cents a pound between the live animal and the
carcass, might say a sixty-six per cent increase in price is unduly
large; but a little deeper study develops that the return from the
carcass in this instance would fail to equal the amount paid for the
live steer.

When a retailer buys a carcass, he purchases neck meat as well as
loins; chucks as well as rounds. Portions of the carcass have to be
sold at or sometimes less than he paid per pound for the carcass.
The choice cuts necessarily have to make up for the losses on the
less desirable portions. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that the
retailer should charge fifty or sixty cents a pound for choice steaks
and fifteen cents a pound for boiling beef out of a carcass which he
bought at the rate of twenty cents a pound.

Only the aggregate price which the retailer gets for all parts and
portions of the carcass will show his margin over the initial cost.
It is wholly improper, therefore, to compare sixty-cent steaks with
twelve-cent cattle with a view to determining profit.

The same thing is true of hogs and of sheep. A hog is not all meat, nor
is the meat all ham. A sheep is not all carcass and only a small part
of the carcass cuts up into chops. One must know the aggregate return
and something about the costs of doing business before a justifiable
conclusion as to price margins can be determined.




THE BUSINESS OF BEING A HOUSEWIFE

THE home managers have in their hands the most important business
of the nation. American women realize that to their duties as home
makers, mothers, and guiding influences, is added an important economic
responsibility. The manner in which the purchasing power of twenty
million home managers is used has an inestimable effect upon the
production, collection, and distribution of all products in the market.

This second edition of “The Business of Being a Housewife” is
respectfully dedicated to the thousands of wise home managers who are
determined to understand more fully their relation to the producers
of the country and to the great industries, such as that of Armour
and Company, who have made possible the providing of perfect food in
perfect condition at any distance from the farm.


ECONOMIC CHANGES

A study of the national and world situation on food production shows
that old-time low food prices may never return. Formerly much of the
food was raised by numerous individual families on Government land
at nominal cost; today practically all food is raised on expensive
land—the plains have been turned into villages and farms by the
increasing population. Many men and expensive machinery and equipment
are needed to produce our present high standard products.

It became economically unsound for so great a percentage of food
producers to spend their time in producing meats and staples, only part
of which could be consumed by themselves and their near neighbors,
the rest going to waste.