Household Administration, Its Place in the Higher Education of Women

by Unknown

So, then, a scientific study of the economics of the household would fall into two divisions—(1) an endeavour to describe the industrial development of each country as it affects family life, house-room, food, and clothes; and (2) a descriptive account of the domestic circumstances and the expenditure[20] of each class of the community at the present time. Under each of these headings 134 special sections should treat domestic service, the work of woman beyond the household, and the organisation of household work as compared with different branches of industry and administration. Finally, a supplementary section should set forth the practical applications of the conclusions arrived at, and should endeavour to help the housewife or, it may be, the superintendent of an industrial school, college, or boarding house in the administration of the income at her disposal.

But much more careful investigation into the question of how incomes actually are spent is essential before we can deal satisfactorily with the even more difficult problem of how they ought to be spent. And there is, too, another factor which must be taken into consideration. Economists in defining wealth commonly admit nowadays that it includes collective and immaterial well-being of various kinds.[21] But having made this admission, they straightway put it aside and proceed to discuss wealth as though it consisted exclusively of material exchangeable commodities. Yet clearly the real income of a family is increased if the children have easy access to good free schools or to ample open spaces. It will not be possible to estimate precisely the money value of opportunities of this description. But we should at least notice their presence or absence for each class and for each stage of national development. It is clear that in the present paper no attempt can be made 135 to deal with the problems of the economics of expenditure or of the household save in the merest outline, and therefore the following pages are to be taken simply as a sketch to be filled in by more extensive and more throughgoing investigation later on.

II. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE POSITION OF THE HOUSEHOLD IN ENGLAND

English industrial history has been divided into three main epochs with intervening periods of transition. These are (1) the mediæval period, (2) the period extending from Elizabeth’s reign to the reign of George III., and (3) the modern period.

In the first, the typical economic institutions are the manor and the gild; in the second, domestic manufacture and convertible husbandry are predominant; and in the third the factory system and capitalist farming take their places.[22] Trade, too, undergoes a similar evolution. In the first period it is intermunicipal rather than international. In the second period, within each nation trade is free and unfettered, and a considerable amount of territorial division of labour and regional specialisation results. But external trade is regulated by governments on the principles of the mercantile system. In the third period, with the increase and improvement of the means 136 of communication, international trade becomes more and more important, markets are immensely widened, and the economic organisation of society reaches the complexity possessed by it to-day, which reacts in many half comprehended ways on the household and on family life.

The main characteristics of these divisions of English industrial history are, on the whole, clear and well-marked. But the transition periods are more difficult to describe. It has often been pointed out that the two industrial revolutions, as they have been named by some writers, bear a certain resemblance to each other. Both involve a reorganisation of industry which results in increased productivity on the one hand, but in the demoralisation of certain classes of the workers on the other hand. Both therefore require a revision of the system of providing for the destitute. Both, too, produce the most far-reaching effects on home-life and the economy of the household, and influence profoundly the position of women. Both, too, are alike in that it is not easy to fix dates to the periods within which the revolution in industry takes place.[23] But roughly 137 we may regard the late fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth as a time of stress and strain, due to the appearance of new methods both in agriculture and in industry, especially in the wool trade; and in the same way the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth was a period of sudden and violent economic transition. In both cases alike the changes in agriculture preceded somewhat the changes in industry, and the revolution made itself felt in different ways and at different times in the various districts of the country. There are still backward areas in the south of England and in the west of Scotland where life has been very little affected, notwithstanding trains and steam-engines, by the alterations in industry which have produced the roaring mills and clattering shipyards of Lancashire and the Clyde.

The task before us, then, is to sketch as clearly as possible from the scanty material available the main features of domestic life at each one of these epochs, and to show how the changes in industry reflected themselves in the life of the household.

(a) The Household in the Mediæval Period

(1) The Serf—his Position and Domestic Arrangements

In the mediæval period, outside the small and scattered towns, the prevailing form of economic organisation was the manor. We have to imagine 138 the surface of England dotted over with stretches of cultivated land, with areas of waste, moorland or woodland intervening. Each stretch of arable land was cultivated more or less in common by groups of serfs, who lived generally in one long village street, with the church and the lord’s hall near at hand. Usually, in addition to the arable land worked on the complicated “three-field” system soon to be described, there were also hay-meadows down by the river, sometimes permanent pasture held in common, while the waste was available for extra pasturage, and for cutting turf and wood for fuel. Each serf possessed, besides, a small croft attached to his house, and sometimes an orchard and rude garden. The arable land was divided into three large fields, not shut in as are our fields by hedges, but lying open. Each field, again, was partitioned into numbers of strips more or less regular in shape, and each serf possessed a certain number of these, not, however, all lying together, but intermixed “mingle-mangle” with the holdings of his neighbours. He was not allowed to cultivate these, or indeed any of the land save his own tiny croft, as he pleased, but was compelled to follow the traditional method of farming according to the customs of his manor. Usually the rotation was wheat or rye in the first year, oats or barley in the second year, fallow in the third year, while the other two fields followed the same course a year and two years later; so that in each year one field was fallow, one grew wheat or rye, and the other oats or barley. The 139 animals belonging to the serfs and their lord were pastured on the arable fields when the crops were taken off, and on the fallow field. The lord of the manor also possessed strips in the common fields, and was regarded as the owner of the common and waste, subject to the pasturage and fuel rights of the tenants. He did not receive rent quite as we understand it, but each serf owed him dues calculated in labour, in kind, and occasionally in money.