The immigrant housewife is restricted by her ignorance of places and
methods of marketing, and so feels the necessity of buying in the
immigrant neighborhood. Among the 90 Chicago families from whom
schedules were obtained, representing Bohemian, Croatian, Italian,
Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian groups, 72
purchased all their food in the neighborhood stores, 2 kept their own
stores, and only 16 were seeking bargains in other localities. Among
these 16, 5 were going to larger business centers near their
neighborhood, 4 bought in downtown department stores, 1 used a
mail-order house, 1 went to a well-established "cash and carry" store,
2 bought in the wholesale markets, and only 2 took advantage of the
co-operative association of their own group.
The 72 families who were marketing exclusively in their own
neighborhoods were patronizing for the most part stores owned by
foreign-speaking people or those employing foreign-born salesmen to
attract the housewives of particular groups. A Croatian woman says
that when she tries to do her marketing downtown she sees many new
things and would like to ask what they are used for, but she does not
know how to ask. In her neighborhood store the grocer can easily
explain to her. One Polish woman reads the advertisements in the
papers and buys where there is a sale. She thinks that an alleged
Polish co-operative is expensive and prefers the large department
stores, but for the first few years she bought everything in her
neighborhood where the clerks speak Polish.
The prevalence of the immigrant store may be illustrated by a detailed
study that was made of the Sixteenth Ward in Chicago. The population
of the ward is predominantly Polish, with an intermingling of Jewish,
German, and Slovak in the southern portion. In the twenty-five blocks
there are 113 retail stores, 44 of which are grocery and delicatessen
stores, meat markets, and bakeries. In one block there are 5 grocery
and delicatessen stores, and at least 1 in every block which has any
stores. Most of these shops are small and crowded, with family living
rooms in the rear. For the most part, the nationality of the
proprietor is that of the majority in the block, and there are only 14
proprietors of all the 113 stores who are not Polish.
The difficulty with the language, however, extends beyond merely
talking in the store. A Ukrainian mother, who admits being afraid to
go beyond her own neighborhood, is perhaps typical of many
foreign-born mothers to whom a trip to the central shopping district
is a strange and terrifying adventure.
There is also the question of the means with which to buy. An Italian
mother says that she buys at the chain store when she has the cash,
and at other times in the Italian stores where, although the prices
are higher, she can run a charge account. The system of buying on
credit at the local store is spoken of as practically universal in all
the foreign-born groups. The purchaser carries a small blank book, in
which the merchant enters in large figures merely the sum charged,
with no indication of what was bought or the amount. The account is
settled on pay day by the man of the family. There is, of course,
every chance for inaccurate entry. It is not surprising, then, that
one hears from many sources that buying food is generally extravagant.
Women often do the buying. Whether or not it is the more common among
foreign-born families than among native born for the children to be
sent to the store, we cannot say. Since the marketing is done so
largely in immigrant stores, there is perhaps not the need for an
English-speaking member of the family to do the purchasing. We find
among 89, 43 mothers who still do all their own buying, 32 who allow
the children to do part, 4 who share the task with the father, and
only 10 who never do any of the buying. In this last group of 10
families there are 7 in which the children do all the marketing and 3
in which it is done by the father.
Even the skilled housekeepers have little experience in buying. At
home they were used to storing vegetables in quantities; potatoes in
caves, beets and cabbage by a process of fermentation, other
vegetables and fruits by drying. In the United States this sort of
thing is not done. There is, in the first place, no place for storage,
and the initial cost of vegetables is high and quality poor, and the
women know nothing of modern processes of canning.
It is difficult to discover the general practice with regard to the
quantity of food bought at one time, since it must necessarily vary
considerably. Meat, milk, bread, perishable fruits and vegetables must
usually be purchased daily. As for staple food, the thrifty housewife
will buy in as large quantities as she can afford in order to save
both money and time.
Reference has been made, however, to the lack of storage space and the
consequent necessity of buying very little at one time. Thirty-three,
or two fifths, of the 81 foreign housewives who were interviewed on
this subject report that they buy food in daily supplies; 1 buys twice
a day and 1 for each meal. Forty, however, buy in larger quantities.
Twenty-nine for the week and 11 for a month at a time. Six say that
they buy whenever they have the money. It must never be forgotten that
among the lower-income groups, to have more in the house is to have
more eaten, and that cannot be afforded.
Besides the high prices, one of the other limitations of the
foreign-born neighborhood store is the low quality of the food. This
may be illustrated by a description of the markets in one Lithuanian
neighborhood back of the stockyards, where men are working at
low-grade labor in the yards, and the women are keeping lodgers, where
few speak English and not many ever go more than a few blocks from
home. The typical market in this neighborhood--and there are sometimes
as many as ten in a block--is a combined meat market and grocery
store. Such stores are found in the poorer neighborhoods of every
settlement.
Stock in all these stores is the same; there is a great deal of fresh
meat, apparently the poorer cuts, scraps, etc.; shelves are filled
with canned fruits, canned vegetables, canned soups, and condensed
milk; there is much of the bakers' "Lithuanian rye bread," and
quantities of such cakes as are sold by the National Biscuit Company.
No fresh vegetables are to be seen in any of these stores. The reason
given by shopkeepers is that they are little used in the neighborhood
and that the truck wagons supply the demand.
Women who actually depend upon these stores and the truck wagons for
all their supplies find them very unsatisfactory. No really fresh
vegetables are to be found in either stores or wagons, they say. In
commenting upon this situation, several persons have expressed a
belief that the restriction of diet among Lithuanian immigrants was
largely due to the fact that the markets afford so little variety, and
that an effort to extend the stock in the stores would find a response
in the community.
These stores, however, are widely different from those found in
Italian neighborhoods. Practically all the food used by the Italian
families of one such neighborhood is bought in these stores. In this
district the population is as dense as back of the stockyards, and the
families have comparable incomes, the men being engaged in unskilled
occupations and their earnings being supplemented by the earnings of
women and children. The number of food stores in a block is about the
same as in the other district, but the stock carried differs greatly.
Here, in place of shops that carry only meat, canned goods, and
potatoes, cabbages, and beets, the greengrocery stores largely
predominate.
There are four or five greengrocery shops to one meat market, and
these stores have a surprising variety of fresh vegetables and fruits
all the year. The variety of salad greens is remarkable. More Swiss
chard, mustard, dandelion leaves, endive, squash blossoms and leaves,
escarole, are to be seen in one little Italian store than in a half
dozen American markets. Legumes are in stock in great quantity and
variety--there are some little stores that do not handle
greengroceries, but carry large stocks of legumes. Every store has a
large case of different varieties of Italian cheese, and the variety
of macaroni, spaghetti, and noodles is amazing to an American. Fish is
frequently sold from stalls along the street, and on Friday fish
wagons go about through the district. Sometimes meat is sold from
wagons, but less to Italians than to other nationalities living in the
neighborhood.
Certainly one effect of the organization of these shops on the basis
of nationality is to prevent the members of one group from gaining the
advantage of dietetically better practices followed in other groups.
The Lithuanian and Italian neighborhoods described happened to be in
widely separated districts of the city, but often similar differences
may be observed between two shops within the same block that serve
different national groups.
It is clear that the retail trade, being unstandardized, gives no help
to the immigrant woman in the matter of efficient buying. There is as
yet no fine art of service in this field based on careful accounting
of cost and service. Obviously there is great waste in the number of
stores, in the number of persons engaged in conducting them, in the
needless duplication of even such meager equipment as is found in
them. This waste will reflect itself in needlessly high prices which,
while they mulct the buyer, bring the seller little gain.
Evidently, then, little or no help is given through the system of
retail trading to the foreign-born housewife in the matter of adapting
the diet of her family to American or dietetic requirements. Yet food
demands a large share of the income. In the latest report on the cost
of living in the United States, in only 8 out of 45 cities were the
food demands met by less than 40 per cent of the entire expenditure in
the group whose incomes were between $900 and $1,200.[36] Those cities
were:
Pana, Illinois 39.4
Buffalo, New York 38.9
Wilmington, Delaware 38.9
Dover, New Jersey 38.8
Indianapolis, Indiana 37.6
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota 37.6
Steubenville, Ohio 37.3
Fort Wayne, Indiana 35.6
The lowest proportion was in Fort Wayne, where over a third of the
income was required for feeding the families in this income group.