Part 1 — CHAPTER V (continued 2)

Baked beanshalf pint, 3¢

Two frankfurters, one potato and cup full of boiled cabbageall for 7¢

Rice pudding,3¢

Stewed peaches3¢

Coffee or cocoa with milkhalf pint, 3¢

"My mother wants three cents' worth of vegetable soup."

"And mine wants enough beef stew for three of us."

Two battered tin pails were handed up by small, grimy fingers. Two eager little faces were upturned toward the top of the bright green counter which loomed before them. Two pairs of roguish eyes smiled back at the woman who reached over the counter and took the pails.

"The beef stew will be twelve cents," she said. "It is four cents for each half pint, you know."

"I know," answered the youth. "My mother says when she has to buy the meat and all and cook it and put a quarter in the gas meter, it's cheaper to get it here. My father got his breakfast here, too, and it only cost him five cents."

"And was he pleased?" asked the woman, carefully lowering the filled pail to the outstretched little hand.

"You bet," chuckled the lad, as he turned and followed the little procession down the length of the room and out through the door on the opposite side.

The woman was Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The boy was the son of a 'longshoreman living on "Death Avenue," in close proximity to the newly established People's Kitchen, situated on the southeast corner of Tenth Avenue and West Twenty-seventh Street, New York.

So it is here at last—the much talked of, long hoped for, community kitchen.

Within three days after its doors had been opened to the public more than 1,100 persons had availed themselves of its benefits. Within three years, it is promised, the community kitchen will have become national in character. Its possibilities for development are limitless.

Way was blazed for the pioneer kitchen by Edward F. Brown, executive secretary of the New York school lunch committee.

The active power behind the cauldrons of soup, cabbage and frankfurters, beans and rice pudding is vested in Mrs. James A. Burden, jr., and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The evolution of the community kitchen is going to be of interest to every housewife and to every wage earner in all classes of society.

First of all, let it be distinctly understood that the kitchen as inaugurated is not a charity. It is social and philanthropic in character, and it will ultimately reduce the cost of living by almost 50 per cent. This much has been demonstrated already to the extent that the Tenth Avenue kitchen has not only paid expenses, but has so overrun its confines that plans are in preparation for the establishment of other and larger kitchens in rapid succession.

The object is to give to the purchaser the maximum quantity of highest grade food, properly cooked, at minimum cost. This cost includes rent, light, heat, power, interest on investment, depreciation, cost of food materials, labor and supervision. The principle is that of barter and sale on an equitable business basis.

The project as now formulated is to establish for immediate use a small group of public kitchens having one central depot. This depot will be in constant operation throughout the twenty-four hours. Here the food will be prepared and distributed to the smaller kitchens where, by means of steam tables, it can be kept hot and dispensed. The character of the food to be supplied each district will be chosen with regard to what the population is accustomed to, that which is simple and wholesome, which contains bulk, can be prepared at minimum cost, can be conveniently dispensed and easily carried away.

Opposite a large school building, in a small room that had been at one time a saloon, the kitchen of the century was fitted up and formally opened to the public.

Three long green tables with green painted benches beside them encircle the room on two sides. Their use was manifest the second day after the kitchen was opened.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, from various tenement homes near by, sturdy 'longshoremen and laborers might have been seen plodding silently from their respective homes, careful not to disturb their wives and families, and heading straight for the new kitchen on the corner. From trains running along "Death Avenue" came blackened trainmen after their night's work. They, too, stopped at the corner kitchen. By the time the attendant arrived to unlock the doors forty men were in line waiting for breakfast.

Ten minutes later the three tables were fully occupied.

"Bread, cereal and coffee for five cents!" exclaimed one of the men, pushing the empty tray from him, after draining the last drop of coffee in his mug. "This kitchen's all right."

Noon came. The children from the school building trooped in.

"My mamma works in a factory," said one. "I used to get some cakes at a bakery at noontime. Gee! There's raisins in this rice puddin', ain't there?" He carried the saucerful of pudding over to the table. "Only three cents," he whispered to the little girl beside him. "You better get some, too. That'll leave you two cents for a cup of cocoa."

"Ain't it a cinch!" exclaimed the little girl.

Behind the counter the women who had made these things possible smiled happily and dished out pudding, beans and soup with generous impartiality. The daughter of Mrs. Vanderbilt appeared.

"I'm hungry, mother," she cried. "I'll pay for my lunch."

"You'll have to serve yourself," was the rejoinder of the busy woman with the tin pail in her hand. "There's a tray at the end of the counter—but don't get in the way."

So rich and poor lunched together.

"Oh, but I'm tired!" exclaimed a woman, who, satchel in hand, entered, late in the afternoon, "It's hard to go home and cook after canvassing all day. Will you mind if I eat supper here?"

Then the women and children poured in with pails and dishes and pans.

"We're getting used to it now," said one. "It's just like a store, you know, and it saves us a lot of work—"

"And expense! My land!" cried another. "Why, my man has only been working half time, and the pennies count when you've got children to feed and clothe. When I go to work by the day it's little that's cooked at home. Now—" She presented a dish as the line moved along. "Beef stew for four," she ordered, "and coffee in this pitcher, here."

(2)

GATHERING IN THE RAW RECRUIT

BY KINGSLEY MOSES

Men Wanted for the United States Army

A tall, gaunt farmer boy with a very dirty face and huge gnarled hands stood open-mouthed before the brilliant poster displayed before the small-town recruiting office. In his rather dull mind he pictured himself as he would look, straight and dignified, in the khaki uniform, perhaps even with the three stripes of the sergeant on his arm.

"Fifteen dollars a month," he thought to himself, "and board and clothes and lodgings and doctor's bills. Why, that's more than I'm gettin' now on the farm! I'd see the world; I might even get to learn a regular trade." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I ain't gettin' nowhere now, that's sure," he concluded, and slowly climbed the stairs.

This boy had not come to his decision in a moment. His untrained but thoroughly honest mind worked slowly. He had been pondering the opportunities of army life for many weeks. The idea had come to him by chance, he thought.

Over a month ago he had been plowing the lower forty of Old Man Huggins's farm. The road to the mountains lay along one side of the field, and as the boy turned and started to plow his furrow toward the road he noticed that a motor cycle had stopped just beyond the fence. "Broke down," the boy commented to himself, as he saw the tan-clad rider dismounting. Over the mule's huge back he watched as he drew nearer. "Why, the rider was in uniform; he must be a soldier!"

Sure enough, when the fence was reached the boy saw that the stranger was dressed in the regulation khaki of Uncle Sam, with the U.S. in block letters at the vent of the collar and two stripes on the left sleeve.

"Broke down?" the boy queried, dropping his plow-handles.

The corporal grunted and continued to potter with the machine.

"You in the army?" the boy continued, leaning on the fence.

"You bet!" assented the soldier. Then, looking up and taking in the big, raw-boned physique of the youngster, "Ever think of joinin'?"

"Can't say's I did."

"Got any friends in the army?"

"Nope."

"Fine life." The motor cycle was attracting little of the recruiting officer's attention now, for he was a recruiting officer, and engaged in one of the most practical phases of his work.

"Them soldiers have a pretty easy life, don't they?" Evidently the boy was becoming interested.

The recruiting officer laid down his tools, pulled out a pipe, and sat down comfortably under a small sycamore tree at the roadside.

"Not so very easy," he replied, "but interesting and exciting." He paused for a minute to scrutinize the prospective recruit more closely. To his experienced eye the boy appeared desirable. Slouchy, dirty, and lazy-looking, perhaps; but there were nevertheless good muscles and a strong body under those ragged overalls. The corporal launched into his story.

For twenty minutes the boy listened open-mouthed to the stories of post life, where baseball, football, and boxing divided the time with drilling; of mess-halls where a fellow could eat all he wanted to, free; of good-fellowship and fraternal pride in the organization; of the pleasant evenings in the amusement rooms in quarters. And then of the life of the big world, of which the boy had only dreamed; of the Western plains, of Texas, the snowy ridges of the great Rockies, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the Philippines, Hawaii, the strange glamour of the tropics, the great wildernesses of the frozen North.

"It seems 'most like as I'd like to join," was the timid venture.

"What's your name?"

"Steve Bishop."

"All right, Steve, come in and see me the next time you're in town," said the corporal, rising. "We'll talk it over."

And, mounting his motor cycle, he was gone down the road in a whirl of red dust. Nor did the farmer boy think to wonder at the sudden recovery of the apparently stalled machine.

"Missionary work," explains the corporal. "We never beg 'em to join; but we do sort of give 'em the idea. Like joinin' the Masons, you know," he winked, giving me the grip.

So it happened that Steve Bishop mounted the stairs that day, resolved to join the army if they would take him.

In the small, bare, but immaculately clean room at the head of the stairs he found his friend the corporal banging away at a typewriter. "How are you, Steve? Glad to see you," was the welcome. "Sit down a minute, and we'll talk."

The soldier finished his page, lit his pipe again, and leisurely swung round in his chair.

"Think you'll like to soldier with us?" he said.

Unconsciously the boy appreciated the compliment; it was flattering to be considered on a basis of equality with this clean-cut, rugged man of the wide world.

"I reckon so," he replied, almost timidly.

"Well, how old are you, Steve?"

"Twenty-one." The corporal nodded approval. That was all right, then; no tedious formality of securing signed permission from parent or guardian was necessary.

Then began a string of personal questions as to previous employment, education, details of physical condition, moral record (for the army will have no ex-jailbirds), etc., and finally the question, "Why do you want to join?"

"They don't know why I ask that," says the corporal, "but I have a mighty good reason. From the way a boy answers I can decide which branch of the service he ought to be connected with. If he wants to be a soldier just for travel and adventure, I advise the infantry or the cavalry; but if he seriously wants to learn and study, I recommend him to the coast artillery or the engineers."

Then comes the physical examination, a vigorous but not exacting course of sprouts designed to find out if the applicant is capable of violent exertion and to discover any minor weaknesses; an examination of eyes, ears, teeth, and nose; and, finally, a cursory scrutiny for functional disorders.

"I'll take you, Steve," the corporal finally says. "In about a week we'll send you to the barracks."

"But what am I goin' to do till then? I ain't got a cent."

"Don't worry about that. You'll eat and sleep at Mrs. Barrows's,"—naming a good, clean boarding-house in the town, the owner of which has a yearly contract with the Government to take care of just such embryo recruits; "in the daytime you can hang around town, and the police won't bother you if you behave yourself. If they call you for loafin' tell them you're waitin' to get into the army."

In a week the district recruiting officer, a young lieutenant, drops in on his regular circuit. The men who have been accepted by the non-commissioned officer are put through their paces again, and so expert is the corporal in judging good material that none of Steve's group of eight are rejected.

"All right," says the corporal when the lieutenant has gone; "here's your tickets to the training station at Columbus, Ohio, and twenty-eight cents apiece for coffee on the way. In these boxes you'll find four big, healthy lunches for each one of you. That'll keep you until you get to Columbus."

One of the new recruits is given charge of the form ticket issued by the railway expressly for the Government; is told that when meal-time comes he can get off the train with the others and for fifty cents buy a big pail of hot coffee for the bunch at the station lunch-room. Then the corporal takes them all down to the train, tells them briefly but plainly what is expected in the way of conduct from a soldier, and winds up with the admonition: "And, boys, remember this first of all; the first duty of a soldier is this: do what you're told to do, do it without question, and do it quick. Good-bye."

In twenty-four hours Steve and his companions are at the training station, have taken the oath of allegiance, and are safely and well on their way to full membership in the family of Uncle Sam.