"We don't want it ... otherwise, ... but India ... possibly Australia." He waves his hands.
You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of the great everyday distances between your countryfolk and his. You think of a French novel that has amused you lately, because the parents of the heroine objected to her marriage with the hero on grounds you were quite incapable of understanding. The young man's work was in Cochin-China, and the young lady's father and mother did not wish her to go so far. Never in your life have you heard anyone raise such a trivial difficulty. You live in a dull sober street mostly inhabited by dull sober people, but there is not one house in it that is not linked by interest or affection, often doubly linked, with some uttermost end of the earth. You can hardly find an English family that has not one member or more in far countries, and so the common talk of English people in all classes travels the width of the world in the wake of those dear to them. But in 1900 only 22,309 Germans out of a population of 60,400,000 emigrated from Germany, and these, says Mr. Eltzbacher, whose figures I am quoting, were more than counterbalanced by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an Englishman that he may better his fortunes in another part of the world, or if he is an official that he will apply for a post in Asia or Africa. He wants to stay near the Rhine or the Spree where he was born, and to bring up his children there; and with the help of the State and his wife he contrives to do this on an extraordinary small income. The State, as we have seen, almost takes his children off his hands from the time they are six years old. It brings them up for nothing, or next to nothing; in cases of need it partially feeds and clothes them, it even washes them. Some English humorist has said that a German need only give himself the trouble to be born; his government does the rest. But first his mother and then his wife do a good deal. They are like the woman in Proverbs who worked willingly with her hands, rose while it was night, saw well to the ways of her household, and ate not the bread of idleness.
I have before me the household accounts of several German families living on what we should call small incomes; and they show more exactly than any vague praise can do the prodigies of thrift accomplished by people obliged to economise, and at the same time to present a respectable appearance. The first one is the budget of a small official living with a wife and two children in a little town where a flat on the fourth or fifth floor can be had at a low rent:—
| £ s. d. | |
| Rent | 20 0 0 |
| Fuel | 3 10 0 |
| Light | 1 10 0 |
| Clothes for the man | 3 0 0 |
| Clothes for the wife | 2 0 0 |
| Clothes for the children | 1 0 0 |
| Boots for the man | 1 0 0 |
| Boots for the wife and children | 1 5 0 |
| Repairs to boots | 0 17 6 |
| Washing and house repairs | 3 0 0 |
| Doctor | 2 0 0 |
| Newspaper | 0 12 0 |
| Charwoman | 3 0 0 |
| Taxes | 2 10 0 |
| Postage | 1 4 0 |
| Insurances | 2 10 0 |
| Amusements | 3 0 0 |
| Housekeeping | 45 0 0 |
| Sundries | 3 1 0 |
| £100 0 0 |
The fuel allowed in this budget consists of 30 cwt. of Steinkohlen at 1 mark 15 pf. the cwt., 30 cwt. of Braunkohlen at 70 pf. the cwt., and 4 cwt. of kindling at 1 mark 10 pf. the cwt. This quantity, 3 tons without the kindling, would have to be used most sparingly to last through a long rigorous German winter, as well as for cooking and washing in summer. The amount set apart for lights allows for one lamp in the living room and two small ones in the passage and kitchen. The man may have a new suit every year, one year in winter and the next year in summer, and his suit may cost £2, 10s. His great-coat also is to cost £2, 10s., but he can't have a new suit the year he buys one, and it should last him at least four years. The ten shillings left is for all his other clothes except boots, and presumably for all his personal expenses, including tobacco, so he had better not spend it all at once. His wife performs greater miracles still, for she has to buy a winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for her £2. These are not fancy figures. The miracle is performed by tens of thousands of German women every year. They buy a few yards of cheap stuff and get in a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen about making things for themselves. Your English maid-servant will buy a blouse length at a sale for a few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a month of Sundays. Your German she-official will have a blouse made for her, and it will probably be hideous; but she will wear it so carefully that it lasts her two years. Under-raiment she will never want to buy, as she will have brought a life-long supply to her home at marriage. You easily figure the children who are dressed on twenty marks a year, the girl in a shoddy tartan made in a fashion of fifty years ago with the "waist" hooked behind, and the boy in some snuff-coloured mixture floridly braided. But the interesting revelation of this small official budget is in its carefully planned fare made out for a fortnight in summer and a fortnight in winter. In winter the Hausfrau may spend about 17s. a week on her food and in summer 19s. That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the month, and for small expenses, such as soda, matches, blacking, and condiments. Breakfast may cost sixpence a day, and for this there is to be ¾ litre of milk, 4 small white rolls, ½ lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of butter, 1 oz. of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German families of this class would not use sugar, and would eat their bread without butter. On Sunday they have a goose for dinner, and pay 4s. 6d. for it, and though 4s. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it seems an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover that they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not only has the Hausfrau brought home this costly bird, but she has laid in a whole pound of lard to roast with it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a vegetable. Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and for supper there is bread and milk for the children, and bread, butter, cheese, and beer for the parents. On Monday they have a rest from goose, and dine on gehacktes Schweinefleisch. German butchers sell raw minced meat very cheaply, and the Hausfrau would probably get as much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday they get back to the goose, and have a hash of the wings, neck, and liver with potatoes. For supper, rice cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use cinnamon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to think it improves everything, and they eat quantities of milky rice strewn with it. On Wednesday my family has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of goose, rice, and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is sausage, bread, and beer. By the way, this official is not really representative, for he spends nothing on tobacco, and only a penny every other day on beer. He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife gives him cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and shin of beef on Friday, and on Saturday lentil soup with sausages, an excellent dish when properly cooked for those who want solid nourishing food. On the following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and potato dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German mixture if the dumplings are as light as they should be. The husband has them warmed up for supper next day. One day he has bacon and vegetables for dinner, and another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at every midday meal throughout the fortnight he has carefully planned food on which his wife spends considerable time and trouble. He never comes home from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone and watery potatoes set before him. In summer the bill of fare provides soups made with wine, milk, or cider; sometimes there are curds for supper, and if they have a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it. But a chicken only costs this Hausfrau 1 mark 20 pf., so it must have been a small one. I have often bought pigeons for 25 pf. apiece in Germany, and stuffed in the Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs they are good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful in many parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We have Heine's word for it that the plums grown by the wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for most of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe; how he had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy and reflection, and how when he was face to face with the great man all he found to say was a word in praise of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the fruit-growing districts most of the roads are set with an avenue of fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys of Germany, and so plentiful is fruit in its season, that no one seems to steal from them. I have talked with elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3 pounds of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, when they were boys. But those days are over. The small sweet-water grapes from the vineyards of South Germany are to be had for the asking where they are grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and the little golden plums called Mirabellen that are dried in quantities and make the best winter compote there is. When I see English grocers' shops loaded up with dried American apples and apricots that are not worth eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always wonder why we do not import Mirabellen instead.
Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about 1 mark 10 pf. each last year, small tongues were 1 mark 10 pf. Morscheln, a poor kind of fungus much used in Germany, were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were 1 mark 50 pf., and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the same price. Butter and milk are usually about the same price as with us, but eggs are cheaper. You get twenty for a mark still in spring, and I remember making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A rye loaf weighing 4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white rolls cost 3 pf. each. In Berlin last year vegetables were nearly as dear as in London, but in many parts of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one housewife who fed her family largely on vegetables, and would not spend more than 10 pf. a day on them, but she lived in a small country town where green stuff was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than here, for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten in such quantities that even an asparagus lover gets tired of it. Meat has risen terribly in price of late years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef for 1 mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton for 90 pf. to 1 mark, and veal for 1 mark, but all these prices are higher at a butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a pound there.
The budget of a family living on £250 a year does not call for so much comment as the smaller one, because £250 is a fairly comfortable income in Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must have risen in his profession before he gets it; but the following estimate is made out for a business man who does not get a house free or any other aid from outside:—
| £ s. d. | |
| Rent | 50 0 0 |
| Fuel | 7 10 0 |
| Light | 5 0 0 |
| Clothes—husband | 6 0 0 |
| Clothes—wife | 4 0 0 |
| Clothes—children | 2 10 0 |
| Shoes | 4 0 0 |
| School fees | 5 0 0 |
| Washing | 5 0 0 |
| Repairs to linen | 2 10 0 |
| Doctor and dentist | 5 0 0 |
| Newspapers and magazines | 2 0 0 |
| Servant's wages | 9 0 0 |
| Servant's insurance and Christmas present | 2 0 0 |
| Taxes | 6 0 0 |
| Postage | 1 10 0 |
| Insurances | 5 0 0 |
| Housekeeping | 90 0 0 |
| Amusements and travelling | 25 0 0 |
| Christmas and presents | 10 0 0 |
| Sundries | 3 0 0 |
| £250 0 0 |