If, instead of these few isolated instances of the cost of living, clothes, and entertainment, a systematically compiled list could be furnished tabulating some hundreds of cases, it would give a much more complete idea of the habits and customs of this stratum of society. And it would show that the cases here quoted are fair examples of average normal expenditure.
In both the extremes of excess, at the top and at the bottom, there are hopeless tragedies.
(a) Mrs. L., a married daughter of the deceased, said the old couple occupied a back room for which they paid 1s. 6d. a week.
The Coroner. Have the old people enough to live on?
Witness. Father could not work, and mother sold matches and laces to keep things going as best she could, but, of course, she could not earn more than about 3s. a week.
The Coroner. Then she cannot have had enough to eat, as after paying rent this old couple have only had 1s. 6d. a week to live on, a most awful thing to contemplate.
Witness. No, I don’t think she did have enough to eat, and she had been very bad in health also. Poor old mother used to work very hard for years at the wash-tub, but her strength failed her at the last; but she battled on to keep dad.
The Medical Officer said death was primarily due to pneumonia and pleurisy.
The Coroner. Is it a case of want?
Witness. Yes.
The Coroner. Can I class it in my report as a death from starvation?
Witness. Yes.
The Coroner. It is a pitiful story and one that is getting all too frequent.
The jury returned a verdict of “Death from starvation.”
(b) xxx,000 a year and money accumulating. At first the enjoyment of the pleasures which money can give. The money continued to accumulate. Dawning realisation that it did not mean happiness, that it did not mean even health, and that affection and gratitude cannot be bought. The money still accumulating. All wants, rational and irrational, satisfied: the starting of peculiar fads, capricious gifts, fantastic charities. The money still accumulating. Ennui, disillusionment, gradual exhaustion and depression. Recourse had to some novel form of excitement; refuge taken in stimulants. The money still accumulating, but slowly choking. Despair, complete demoralisation, and at last welcome death. The money still accumulating, to drag down some heir and claim another victim.
Let us see how the two sorts of crowds have impressed two writers.
“What struck every observant delegate was the utter blankness of the faces that looked up at us from the pavement or down on us from the windows, with scarcely enough capacity for human interest to wonder who we were and what we wanted. Never a sign of humour. Stooped shoulders, hollow chests, ash-coloured faces, lightless eyes, and, ghastliest of all, mouths with bloodless gums and only here and there a useful tooth. Literally hundreds of women between seventeen and seventy crowded close to our motor-cars that day, and the marks were on them all.”[30]
And:
“Yours is the three hundredth carriage in this row that blocks the road for half a mile. In the two hundred and ninety-nine that came before the four hundred that come after you are sitting, too, with your face before you unseeing eyes. Resented while you gathered being; brought into the world with the most distinguished skill; remembered by your mother when the whim came to her; taught to believe that life consists in caring for your clean, well-nourished body and your manner that nothing usual can disturb; taught to regard Society as the little ring of men and women that you see, and to feel your business is to know the next thing that you want and get it given you; you have never had a chance. Sitting there in your seven hundred carriages you are blind—in heart and soul and voice and walk—the blindest creatures in the world ... and you are charming to us who, like your footman, cannot see the label ‘Blind.’ The cut of your gown is perfect, the dressing of your hair the latest, the trimming of your hat later still; your tricks of speech the very thing; you droop your eyelids to the life, you have not too much powder; it is a lesson in grace to see you hold your parasol. The doll of Nature! So since you were born; so until you die!”[31]
If the suggested volume, The Life and Leisure of some People, or Riches: a Study of Town Life is ever written, any comment on the carefully tabulated investigations would be quite unnecessary. As in the case of the books on Poverty, the bare statement of facts is eloquent enough by itself.
Mr. Rowntree concludes his book with this pregnant phrase: