FOOTNOTES:
Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” edited by J. S. Nicholson, pp. 135 and 280. It is of course true that Adam Smith meant by this merely what is in a way true, that domestic servants earn no profit for their employers. He does not deny (p. 136) that their labour “has a certain value.” But, like all the economists who followed him, he is content to dismiss domestic workers with this cursory treatment and to identify labourers with the workers hired for profit-making purposes.
See “Principles of Economics” (4th ed.), pp. 192, 772.
Marshall, “Principles” (4th ed.), p. 764: “The working classes had then no other beds than loose straw, reeking with vermin and resting on damp floors.”
Thorold Rogers is a partial exception.
e.g. Rowntree, “Poverty: a Study of Town Life;” portions of Booth’s “Life and Labour of the People;” reports to the Board of Trade on the cost of living.
Webb, S. and B., “Industrial Democracy” (cheap edition), p. 674.
Marshall, “Principles of Economics,” vol. i. p. 159.
There is an assumption here which needs perhaps some discussion, i.e. that expenditure or consumption of goods can be most conveniently studied on the basis of family life. This is obviously the case with house-room, food, fuel, cleanliness, &c., less so with regard to clothes or recreation; it was truer of the past than of the present, and is truer of the poor than of the rich. In some classes, e.g. the professional class, where marriage is commonly delayed and a considerable period may intervene between the end of education and the establishment of a fresh household, it may be necessary to supplement the study of family expenditure by a consideration of the standard of living of unmarried men and women. Attempts, too, must be made to deal with the various forms of institutional life, varying from prisons and workhouses on the one hand to expensive boarding-schools and hotels on the other. But when all these necessary deductions have been made, it remains true that in order to study expenditure we must in the great majority of cases take the family as our basis of investigation. Consumption is organised on a family basis.
See Marshall, “Principles,” book ii. chap. ii.
Ashley, “Economic History,” vol. i. part ii. p. 262.
The economic historian must always be prepared to acquiesce in a certain vagueness in the matter of dates. He is not dealing with definite events, such as battles and the enactment of special laws, but rather with social tendencies, each constituted by a large number of small events; such as, for instance, the replacement of hand labour by machinery, the appearance of limited liability companies in the place of the single employer, or the determination of middle-class girls to earn their own living instead of remaining dependent on father or brothers. Tendencies such as these appear at different times in different industries and in different parts of the country, and only a misleading precision can be gained by any mention of definite dates.
Summarised from Seebohm, “Village Community,” pp. 156-157.
Gasquet, “English Monastic Life,” p. 197.
“Economic History,” vol. i.
Surtees Society, Boldon Book, p. 28.
“English Monastic Life,” p. 198.
The English were famed in the Middle Ages for their preference for good bread. They would eat no bread
“That beans in come,
But of cocket[30] or clerematyn[30] or else of clean wheat.”
—Piers Plowman, A. vii. 292.
Better kinds of bread, but not the best (wastel).
Walter of Henley, p. 29.
Apparently, it is only within the last hundred years that the cow has ceased to be a normal possession of the agricultural labourer. See Slater, “English Peasantry and Common Fields,” pp. 122-128.
Eddy, “English House,” p. 133.
England at that time possessed her own vineyards, e.g. near Gloucester, and produced white wine.
Rules of S. Robert as given in “Walter of Henley,” p. 145.
Broth in which the meat had been boiled.
Pepper.
Stiff.
“Meals and Manners of the Olden Time,” p. 164.
Kind of sauce.
Pork, eggs, cloves, currants, dates, sugar boiled in a bladder, cut into strips and served with hot rich sauce.
A soteltie was an elaborate confection of pastry painted or adorned with paper to represent a saint or a figure of spring, summer, &c.
Spiced wine.
Panter and pantry, from pain.
Butler = bottler.
Rules of S. Robert in “Walter of Henley,” pp. 138-140, passim.
Webb, “Essay on Gloucester Abbey,” p. 13.
“Meals and Manners,” p. 74.
Libes Niges Domus, p. 65.
Gasquet, “English Monastic Life,” p. 211.
The maintenance of a large retinue was one of the easiest ways available for indicating the possession of surplus wealth. This fact, coupled with the almost absurd over-elaboration of the details of serving, incline me to believe that in the mediæval castle servants were numerous and not overworked.
Riley, “Memorials of London,” p. 48.
Riley, “Memorials of London,” p. 199. There is, unfortunately, no indication of the social standing of this felon, Hugh le Bevere by name. The list of clothes suggests that he was fairly well-to-do, in which case his equipment of cooking and table utensils is certainly meagre. It is curious that pottery is not mentioned; it can hardly be urged that although in use it was too unimportant for a place in the inventory, since room is found for one small canvas bag, value 1d.
Hence the name convertible husbandry.
This is, of course, a very summary statement of changes which it took centuries to bring about. On the one hand, money economy existed in the mediæval town; on the other, subsistence farming continued in England to some extent until within a hundred years ago. Yet it is roughly true that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries production for the market and not for use markedly and suddenly increased.
By an Act of 1589, it was ordained that four acres of land should be attached to every cottage. Cf. Hasbach. “English Agricultural Labourer,” p. 40.
See Cunningham, “English Industry and Commerce,” vol. ii. p. 40 (4th ed.).
Poultry.
“Description of England,” p. 238 ff.
Op. cit., vol. i. p. 150.
Pickled pork.
This class is never described by him.
See Cunningham, ii. p. 78, “Issue of Patents for making Soap and Vinegar.”
e.g. Slater, “English Peasantry and the Enclosure of the Common Fields.” Hasbach, “History of the English Agricultural Labourer.” Toynbee, “The Industrial Revolution.” Hobson, “Evolution of Capitalism.”
[Near Halifax]. “After we had mounted the third hill, we found the country one continuous village ... hardly a House standing out of speaking distance from another, and as the day wore on we could see at every House a tenter, and on almost every tenter a Piece of Cloth, Kersey or Shalloon, which are the three articles of this country’s labour.... Then as every clothier must necessarily keep one horse at least to fetch home his wool and his provisions from the market, to carry his yarn to the spinners, his Manufacture to the fulling mill, and when finished to the market to be sold and the like; so every one generally keeps a cow or two for his Family.... Nor is the industry of the people wanting.... Though we met few People without Doors, yet within we saw the Houses full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat, some at the loom, others dressing the cloths, the women and children carding or spinning. All employed from the youngest to the oldest. Scarce a thing above four years old, but its hands were sufficient for its own support.” Defoe, “Tour through Great Britain” (1769), vol. iii. p. 146.
“The increase of urban areas can be gathered from the Census Reports. In 1851 ... the population of such areas amounted approximately to 9,000,000, or 50 per cent. of the total population of England and Wales; by 1881 the population of urban sanitary areas, as defined by the Public Health Acts, 1872 and 1875, was 17,600,000, or 68 per cent. of the aggregate population; by 1901 ... the population of boroughs and urban districts amounted to 25,000,000, or 77 per cent. of the aggregate population.”—Blue Book on Public Health and Social Conditions, p. 6 [Cd. 4671 of 1909].
It should be noted, too, that the advantages of the large-scale method of production are greatly diminished by the dangers of adulteration. Cf. p. 177.
In the absence of an efficient system of police, it probably was not safe for women to walk or travel alone. In the security provided for us by paved and lighted streets, guarded by trained constables, and in the complete safety of modern methods of travelling, some of us are apt now to forget these elementary considerations, once of supreme importance.
For the whole subject, see Hutchins and Harrison, “History of Factory Legislation.”
In “Educated Working Women,” by Clara E. Collet, 1902. Miss Collet says: “Were statistics available it might perhaps be shown that the unmarried women are to a large extent the daughters of clerks and professional men.... Emigration is probably more frequent in the salaried class; and where the sons are obliged to emigrate, it frequently happens that the daughters have to work for their living. In this class I believe the inequality of the sexes is greatest and the chances of marriage least” (pp. 37-38).
P. 171.
I cannot refrain at this point from inserting the following quotations from “Shirley” (chapter xxii.). Charlotte Brontë’s genius illumined the situation of many girls even in her time, and of a larger number since. Caroline is speaking. “Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world; the demand disturbs the happy and rich; it disturbs parents. Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood. The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions ... their sisters have no earthly employment but household work and sewing.... Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied.”
I am not suggesting here that the pioneers of women’s higher education were wrong in the attitude they adopted. To win for women intellectual freedom was the most important duty for them, and that could only be achieved by women submitting to the same intellectual tests as men. But the problems which call for solution by their successors of a later generation have assumed a new form.
See Raymond Unwin, “Housing and Town-Planning.”
In June 1908, the value of the property of the various tenants’ companies was only a little short of a quarter of a million pounds, and their operations have since then been extended in various directions.
For comparison:—
| Occupation. | Number of Persons Employed. |
| Agriculture | 1,197,922 |
| Textile fabrics | 1,155,397 |
| Professional occupations | 606,260 |
Owing to a change in the system of enumeration which alters the basis of comparison, the year 1891 cannot be used in our calculations.
The competent single-handed maid is meant here, not the little “slavey” who assists her mistress in the rougher part only of the work.
A further inquiry is needed into this matter. I am not at all clear whether servants are derived from the class of the fairly prosperous artisan or from the unskilled labouring class.
“There are unfortunately no reliable statistics as to the average wages earned by women workers, but, speaking from a large experience, I estimate that the average wage of the manual woman worker, taking into account slackness, sickness, &c., is certainly not more than 7s. 6d. all the year round.”—“Trade Unions,” by Mary Macarthur, in “Women in Industry from Seven Points of View,” p. 66.
Stephen Reynolds in “A Poor Man’s House” paints this situation with great psychological insight.
Compare Salmon, “Domestic Service,” pp. 145-6.
Compare “Englishwomen’s Year-book for 1910,” p. 69.
e.g. Rowntree, “Poverty: a Study of Town Life”; Liverpool Economic and Statistical Society, “How the Casual Labourer Lives”; “Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh” (published by Otto Schulze & Co., now out of print); Recent Blue-books on the Cost of Living, &c.
Rowntree, “Poverty: a Study of Town Life,” pp. 117, 298 ff., as to inadequacy of diet of labourer, pp. 235 and 303. Mr. Rowntree’s conclusions have been impugned by several critics, and it may be that his dietary standard is too high. But even if it turns out that only a quarter and not a third of the population are in receipt of incomes insufficient for the expenditure necessary to secure bodily efficiency, the fact is serious enough.
Calculated by Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell to amount to 6s. 10d. per family of the working-class population. “Temperance Problem and Social Reform” (7th ed.), p. 20.
“Principles” (4th ed.), p. 194.
A special charge was made for guests in this household, and the amount received was deducted from the weekly food bill.
“The Camel and the Needle’s Eye.”
“The Camel and the Needle’s Eye,” p. 153.
SOME RELATIONS OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO FAMILY LIFE AND INDIVIDUAL EFFICIENCY
By ALICE RAVENHILL
Among the many notable characteristics by which the last half century has been distinguished, there are two which bid fair permanently to colour its records and materially to influence the future of our country. I refer in the first place to the scientific study of man, his nature, his needs, and his potentialities; and in the second to the growing appreciation of the fact that the centre of ethical gravity must be shifted from absorption in the sole concerns of self to an intelligent interest in the affairs of others—that is to say, that selfishness must yield to well organised and discriminating social service.