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374 An American Dilemma
TABLE 4
Average Value (in Cents) per Meal per Food-Expenditure-Unit* in
Small and Large Normal Nonrelief Families, by Race
Southern Farm Areas Southern Villages
Negro White
Owners Owners
Tenants and White and Other Negro White
Family Type Croppers Croppers ’Tenants Families Families
Small families 8.6 10.8 12.6 9-7 14.1
Large families 4.9 6.8 8.8 3.8 8.0
Sources: U.S. D^artment of Agriculture, Bureau of Home Economics, Consumer Purchases Study, Farm
Series, Family Food Consumption and Dietary Levels, Five Regions, Miscellaneous Publication No. 405 (1941),
pp. 176-178, and Urban and Village Series, Family Food Consumption and Dietary Levels, Five Regions,
Miscellaneous Publication No. 452 (1941), p. 96.
• Persons 20 years or older are counted as i.o food-expenditure-unit; persons 13 to 19 years as i.i food-
expenditure-unit; persons 6 to 12 years as 0.9 unit, and children under 6 years as 0.6 unit.
^ Small families are those consisting of husband and wife without children. Concerning large families,
see Table 3, footnote (a).
This is particularly true in the case of Negroes, since they usually have no
room whatever in their family budget for the increased needs brought
about by a large number of children. Large Negro families in Southern
villages expended less than 4 cents per meal per ^^average-adult.” This was
not even half of what corresponding white families expended, and it was
about 60 per cent less than the figure for Negro two-person families. The
plight of the large Negro families is only too evident.
In the economic groups most typical for Southern Negroes,^* the majority
of the families had diets which failed by far to meet modern "optimal”
requirements regarding content of proteins, minerals and vitamins.^^ Half
the Negroes studied in farm areas and villages, having a food expenditure
of $0.69—$1.37 per week per "average-adult,” even failed to get the energy
value standard of 3,000 calories a day, and between one-fourth and one-
fifth of them got less than 2,400 calories—this in spite of the fact that
Negroes are concentrated in heavy work for which the requirements are
often much higher than is the usual standard. Conditions were decidedly
better when food expenditures were from $1.38 to $2.07 per unit per week,
but even in this group there were a large number of Negro and white
families who failed to get real "health diets.”
On the lower levels—^that is, in income groups and food-expenditure
groups most typical for the Negro population—the majority of the families
had diets which failed to meet certain even more restricted requirements
and which, for this reason, were characterized as "poor” by the Bureau of
Home Economics (Table 5).®®
It seems, therefore, that we are entitled to draw this rather general but,
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