Mr. Edward Atkinson gave a most interesting talk on consumption before the Finance Club yesterday evening. Mr. Cole introduced Mr. Atkinson to the club as an economist against whom the popular cry that a political economist is a theorist could never be raised and this description was fully justified by the talk which followed, which was nothing if not practical.

Political economy, said Mr. Atkinson, has dealt most carefully and scientifically with production, but there it has stopped. It has examined minutely the science of raising food and getting it to the retail dealer as cheaply as possible, but it has not yet gone on to teach the consumer his part of the work, to tell him how to dispose of his share of the food without waste.

The average product of the United States amounts to $200 a year to each mum, so that nine-tenths of the community must live, on the average, on less than that amount. Statistics show that the average man spends one-half of his income for food. Now if each man wastes five cents a day by bad methods of cooking, etc., the total waste for the United States in one year would amount to twelve million dollars, and the saving of this waste would mean the solving of the whole problem of shelter for the masses.

Mr. Atkinson has been experimenting for some years, and he has now invented a cooking pail which he believes will save the waste. The apparatus consists of a tin-lined paper pail, surrounding a tin-lined paper pail, surrounding a tin pale of three compartments, heated by a common lamp. The heat in this pail cannot go above 320 degrees, which is the proper temperature at which to cook food, and by its use a man can get good food, properly cooked for a dollar a week, and the best of food for two dollars a week.

Mr. Atkinson had a pail at work during the lecture, and the club tasted the food after the lecture and pronounced it delicious.