That the diet of the poorer London children is insufficient, unscientific, and utterly unsatisfactory is horribly true. But that the real cause of this state of things is the ignorance and indifference of their mothers is untrue. What person or body of people, however educated and expert, could maintain a working man in physical efficiency and rear healthy children on the amount of money which is all these same mothers have to deal with? It would be an impossible problem if set to trained and expert people. How much more an impossible problem when set to the saddened, weakened, overburdened wives of London labourers?
CHAPTER XI
THE POOR AND MARRIAGE
So many strictures are made on the improvident marriages of the poor that it is necessary to look at the matter from the point of view of the poor themselves.
If the poor were not improvident, they would hardly dare to live their lives at all. There is no security for them. Any work which they do may stop at a week’s notice. Much work may be, and is, stopped with no notice of any kind. The man is paid daily, and one evening he is paid as usual, but told that he will not be needed again. Such a system breeds improvidence; and if casual labour and daily paid labour are necessary to society, then society must excuse the faults which are the obvious outcome of such a system.
In the case of marriage, as things now are, the moment a man’s money approaches a figure which seems to him a possible one he marries. For the first year or even two years he may have less ready money but more comfort. The wife keeps their one room clean and pleasant, and cooks, none too well perhaps, but possibly with more attention to his special needs than his former landlady did, or than his mother did, who had her own husband as well as her other children to cater for. The wage may be £1 a week. He gives the wife 18s. and retains 2s. for himself. The result of her management may closely approach the following budget of two actual young people who came within the investigation.
Mr. W., aged twenty, a toy-packer in City warehouse—wages 20s.; allows 18s. He has been married eighteen months, and when this budget was drawn up a baby was expected any day. His wages were raised from 18s. a year ago. His wife before marriage was a machinist on piece-work, and could earn 10s. a week. She worked for six months after marriage, and paid for most of the furniture in their one room; also she provided the coming baby’s clothes. She is clean and thrifty, writes a good hand, and keeps excellent accounts. She is nineteen.
Out of the 2s. retained by the husband, he pays 6d. a week into a clothing club, and of course his 4d. is deducted for State Insurance. With the rest “he does what he likes.” Sometimes he likes to give the wife an extra penny for her housekeeping. The menu, from the list of food purchases given on next page, appears to consist of a sufficiency of bread, of meat, of potatoes, and perhaps of greens, as the husband’s dinners eaten away from home probably include greens for him. Some cold meat, with bread and butter and tea, would be provided for the evening meal; bread, butter, and tea would be the invariable breakfast.
Date of budget, January 16, 1913: