History Female Narrator- Food in War Time
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
There is no doubt that under the conditions existing before the war, the american people lived in a higher degree of comfort than that enjoyed in europe. Hard times in America have always been better times than the best times in europe. As a student in Munich in 1890, I remember paying $3 a month for my room, five cents daily for my breakfast consisting of coffee and a roll without butter and 35 cents for a four course dinner at a fashionable restaurant. This does not sound extravagant, but it represents luxury when compared with the diet of the poorest italian peasants of southern Italy. Two italian scientists describe how this class of people live mainly on cornmeal, olive oil and green stuffs and have done so for generations. There is no milk, cheese or eggs in their dietary meat, in the form of fat pork is taken three or four times a year, cornmeal is taken as polenta or is mixed with beans and oil or is made into corn bread, cabbage or the leaves of beats Are boiled in water and then eaten with oil flavored with garlic or Spanish Pepper. One of the families investigated consisted of eight individuals, of whom two were Children. The annual income was 424 francs, or $84 Of this three cents per day per adult was spent for food, and the remaining 3/5 of ascent was spent for other purposes. Little wonder that such people have migrated to America, but it may strike some as astonishing that erased. So nourished should have become the manpower in the construction of our railways are subs and our great buildings.