“I still keep to about £12 a year for my dress, and I think there are many teachers, if not most, who spend about that amount. Miss B——, who was for some years head mistress at C——, tells me that she never spent more than £12 a year while there, and she visited a good deal and certainly always looked very nice. Miss D——, head mistress at E——, tells me that before she came here she spent £10 a year for about ten years while teaching in London. As to being well dressed, that is always comparative. I have my clothes made at very good shops, not the most fashionable, and always of the best materials, as I think it is most economical in the end; but I spend very little on trimmings, and nothing on fripperies, such as beads and feathers. I generally have two new dresses a year. I make my own blouses because the ready-made ones are too cheap and poor. If I had time, I think I should enjoy making other things, but I have too much to do. I generally do my own mending, but sometimes lately I have had a woman in to do it. Children certainly prefer a well-dressed teacher; I do not think my dress is either so dowdy or so shabby as to displease their taste; to look fresh and clean is my aim for school clothes, and plainly made things seem to me most suitable for our work. As to evening dress, I generally have one dress that will do for a concert, and I very seldom go to any other evening entertainment. I think it distinctly an advantage to a teacher to have as many quiet evenings at home as possible, and I find so many occasions present themselves of attending meetings and lectures that if I were to go into society as well, I should have very little time to give to study and the quiet rest which is so refreshing after the day’s work.”
The details of No. 4’s expenditure are given later on.
No. 3 and No. 4 were both considerably older than No. 1 and No. 2, and had both learnt that the one absolutely necessary indulgence for a high school mistress is a good holiday in new scenes. No. 4 says in a note that the cost of her holidays during this year were lower than usual, as she did not go abroad. No. 2 strikes the usual note of warning on this point:—
“I spent very little in my holidays; for my father was much averse to his only daughter spending any of her free time away from home; but you will also notice that there is a distinctly large proportion of my salary unappropriated or reserved, and a certain proportion of this ought to have been spent in holidays. I enjoy excellent health usually, and my nerves seem the only vulnerable point, but after teaching more than three years at W——, a term in X—— brought me to the brink of a regular nervous breakdown: this I imagine might have been avoided if I had really had a good holiday every year.”
The moral of this to young teachers would seem to be: Do not try to save out of £100 a year at the expense of your health. Better keep fresh and strong without saving and rise to £120 as quickly as possible, than break down and exhaust your savings in a long illness which may reduce your salary to £90.
The conditions and cost of living of women clerks vary in many and important respects from those of women teachers. Their work is less exhausting on the whole and less trying to the nerves. But, on the other hand, their holidays are generally very short; except for a few brief months in the year, they must work while it is day, and seek for their amusements when the night comes; they are doing sedentary work in office hours, and yet only by a strong determination can they find any recreation except in the further sedentary occupations of reading and sewing, or in poisonous lecture halls, concert rooms, or theatres. They cannot easily do their shopping, and have no opportunity of wearing out their shabby dresses in private; they must feed themselves unwholesomely at tea-rooms, or extravagantly and monotonously at restaurants. Above all, whereas teaching may be regarded as a life work well worth the doing for its own sake, clerical work can hardly be soul-satisfying to any intelligent human being. It is not living, but merely a means of living.
Dress is necessarily much more expensive in the case of the clerk than in the case of the high school mistress. Circumstances and temperament work together in producing this result. Were it possible—as I hope it may be—to secure accounts of clerks and typists living at home and working for about £40 to £60 a year, it would, I believe, frequently be found that their expenditure on this item was double that of the high school mistress earning £130 a year. On the other hand, the high school teacher knows that she must preserve physical health, and that she cannot afford to economise in food. The clerk too often lives on tea and roll until the evening, and for want of physical exercise, has little appetite even then.
The clerk’s budget (No. 5) that I present here gives a year’s expenditure of an income of £227. It has to be noted that, apart from the food and rent, most of the items were largely supplemented in kind. The expenditure does not at all represent the standard of living in things not strictly necessaries. The sum put down for holiday expenditure includes the expense of five days’ holiday only, the remainder being for railway fares, no other expense whatever being incurred during the remainder of the holidays.
Table III.
Accounts of Expenditure of a Clerk (No. 5) renting Unfurnished Lodgings.