In the first place, her income is in an unfamiliar form. There is
first the fact that the money units are strange to her. A woman who
recently came over, being called on to make an unexpected payment,
handed her purse to a fellow traveler, asking that the required amount
be taken out. In the second place, for many there is the difficulty
growing out of the exclusive dependence upon money payments, when
before there were both money and the products of the land.
The fact should always be kept in mind that, to the extent to which
the foreign born are from rural districts, they have the difficulty
experienced by all who are forced to adjust themselves to an economy
built on money, as distinguished from an economy built on kind. In the
country where things are grown, there is little opportunity for
acquiring a sense of money values.
It is then peculiarly difficult to value in terms of the new measure
those articles with which one has been especially familiar under the
old economy. For example, when vegetables and fruits have been enjoyed
without estimating their value, it is difficult to judge their value
in money. While meat was before thought out of reach, it may be
purchased at exorbitant rates under the new circumstances, because one
has no idea of how much it should cost. Evidence as to this kind of
difficulty is found among all groups. It takes the form, sometimes, of
apparent parsimony, sometimes of reckless and wasteful buying.
The Lithuanians seem, for example, to experience difficulties of this
kind everywhere. The small farmer in Lithuania was accustomed to an
irregular cash income at harvest time. Sometimes it carried over from
one year to another, while young stock was growing. He had little need
of money except for extraordinary expenses, such as those for farm
machinery, or building. The local store, which was usually
co-operative, carried only such imported articles as salt, sugar,
spices, tea, and coffee. All other foods were produced at home or
secured through neighborly exchange. All the clothing for the family
was of home manufacture, even to the cloth. If a boy were sent to
school in the nearest large town, his board was paid with poultry and
dairy products.
The tenant laborer had house rent free, a garden, a cow, a few pigs,
and all the poultry he cared to raise, in addition to the yearly wage
of from 125 to 150 rubles a year.
Other farm laborers had board and clothing in addition to their wage
of 25 rubles a year. Women received 3 rubles a year for farm labor,
in addition to board and all ordinary clothing. The food provided by
the farmers was coarse and monotonous, but it was plentiful and
nourishing. Laborers were housed in two-room log or board houses, with
thatched roofs; farm workers without families slept in the farmer's
granaries and ate at a common table.
To the inexperienced peasant the daily wage of $1.50 and $2 in the
United States seemed ample, but it was not long after the family
arrived before it was found inadequate. The situation becomes still
more confusing if employment is seasonal and irregular. In Lithuania,
contracts were made by the year and unemployment was unknown. Through
apprehension they begin to adopt a low standard of living in order to
economize, a practice now common in many Lithuanian communities in
this country. They have never paid rent in their native country, so
one of their first instincts is to economize at that point in the new
country by taking lodgers.
Among other national groups there are evidences of the same
difficulties. Bohemian women, it is said, buy recklessly at first,
spending money for jewelry and all sorts of things they see for sale
in the neighborhood stores. Ukrainian women control the expenditure of
the family income here, but in the village life in Galicia they never
had much money to spend; the table was supplied from the farm,
clothing was of home manufacture, furniture was seldom bought. They
are, therefore, when they first come, little fitted by previous
experience for wise expenditure of the family income.