  Perhaps it will be as well here to reiterate the statement that these chapters are descriptive of the lives and conditions of families where the wage of the father is continuous, where he is a sober, steady man in full work, earning from 18s. to 30s. a week, and allowing a regular definite sum to his wife for all expenses other than his own clothes, fares, and pocket-money. Experience shows how fatally easy it is for people to label all poverty as the result of drink, extravagance, or laziness. It is done every day in the year by writers and speakers and preachers, as well as by hundreds of well-meaning folk with uneasy consciences. They see, or more often hear of, people whose economy is different from their own. Without trying to find out whether their own ideas of economy are practicable for the people in question, they dismiss their poverty as “the result of extravagance” or drink. Then they turn away with relief at the easy explanation. Or they see or hear of something which It is now possible to begin calculations as to the expenditure of families of various sizes on a given wage or household allowance. For a family with six children the rent is likely to be 8s., 8s. 6d., or even 9s., for three or four rooms. A woman The budget may begin thus:
The other regular items in such a woman’s budget, apart from food, would be heating and lighting, comprising coal, wood, matches, gas or oil, and candles. The irregular items include doctor’s visits to a sick child, which may cost 6d. a visit, or 1s. a visit, including medicine, and renewals which may be provided for by “crockery club, 4d.,” or Coal is another necessary for which the poor pay a larger price than the well-to-do. The Lambeth woman is compelled to buy her coal by the hundredweight for two reasons, the chief of which is that she is never in possession of a sum of ready money sufficient to buy it by the ton or by the half-ton. A few women, in their passion for regular weekly payments, make an arrangement with the coalman to leave 1 cwt. of coal every week throughout the year, for which they pay a settled price. In the summer the coal, if they are lucky enough to have room to keep it, accumulates. One such woman came through the coal strike without paying anything extra. She used only ½ cwt. a week from the coalman, and depended for the rest upon her store. But not all have the power to do this, because they have nowhere to keep their coal but a box on the landing or a cupboard beside the fireplace. They therefore pay in an ordinary winter 1s. 6d. a cwt., except for any specially cold spell, when they may pay 1s. 7d. or 1s. 8d. for a short time; and in the summer they probably pay 8d. or 8½d. for ½ cwt. a week. In districts of London where the inhabitants are rich enough to buy coal by the ton, the same quality as is used in Lambeth can be bought in an ordinary winter—even now, when the price is higher than it used to be—for 22s. 6d. a ton, with occasional short rises to Wood may cost 2d. a week, or in very parsimonious hands 1d. is made to do. Gas, by the penny-in-the-slot system, is used rather more for cooking than lighting. The expense in such a family as that under consideration would be about 1s. The budget now may run:
The whole amount of the household allowance was supposed to be 22s. The amount left for food therefore would be 8s. 7d. in a week when no irregular and therefore extra expense, such as a doctor’s visit or a new teapot, is incurred. This reasoned calculation of expenses other than food has been built up from the actual personal knowledge of the visitors in the investigation—from the study of rent-books and of insurance-books, from the sellers of coal, from the amount taken by the gasman from the meter, from the amount paid in clothing clubs and boot clubs, down to the price of soap and soda and wood at the local shop. It does not depend upon the budget or bona fides of any one woman. It is therefore given in order to show how closely it bears out budget after budget of woman after woman now to be given. Mr. P., printer’s labourer. Average wage 24s. Allows 20s. to 22s. Six children. November 23, 1910, allowed 20s.
Left for food 7s. 0½d. November 30, allowed 20s.
Left for food 7s. 3d. December 7, allowed 20s.
Left for food 5s. 9d. A note in margin of this budget explains that no meat was bought that week owing to a present of a pair of rabbits. Meat generally cost 2s. 6d. The next week Mr. P. was ill and earned only 19s. He allowed 18s. 1d.
Left for food 7s. 7d. This family spent extraordinarily little upon coal, and less than the usual amount on gas. Their great extravagance was in burial insurance. The extra penny on each child was not to bring a larger payment at death, but to provide a small sum at the age of fourteen with which to start the child in life. A regular provision of 6d. for other clothing than boots was made when the household allowance rose to 21s. 9d. on January 6, 1911. Mr. B., printer’s warehouseman, jobbing hand. Average wage 23s. Allows 20s. Four children. August 18, 1910, allowed 20s.
Left for food 8s. 8d. August 25, work slack, allowed 18s.
Left for food 7s. 8d. September 1, allowed 20s.
Left for food 8s. 3d. September 8, allowed 20s.
Left for food 7s. 4½d. This family make no regular provision for clothing of any kind. Overtime work solves the problem partly, and throughout the year the budgets show scattered items of clothing. Mr. K., labourer. Wage 24s. Allows 22s. 6d. Six children. March 23, 1911, allowed 22s. 6d.
Left for food 9s. 9½d. March 30, allowed 22s. 6d.
Left for food 9s. 8d. April 6, allowed 21s.
Left for food 8s. 11d. No gas was laid on in the house. The item for coal, therefore, is moderate, as most women pay 1s. 6d. for 1 cwt. of coal a week in cold weather, besides paying 10d. or 1s. for gas. Boots are paid for when required. A note against the budget for April 13 says: “Sole old pram for 3s. it was to litle. Bourt boots for Siddy for 2s. 11½d. Made a apeny.” Mr. L., builder’s handyman. Wage 23s. Allows 19s. to 20s. Six children alive. July 10, 1912, allowed 19s. 6d.
Left for food 10s. 1½d. July 17, allowed 19s. 6d.
Left for food 10s. 3½d. July 24, allowed 19s.
Left for food 9s. 9½d. This family squeezes six children into two rooms, thereby saving from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a week, and makes no regular provision for clothing. Mr. S., scene-shifter. Wage 24s. Allows 22s. Six children alive. October 12, 1911, allowed 22s.
Left for food 10s. October 19, allowed 22s.
Left for food 10s. 0½d. October 26, allowed 22s.
Left for food 9s. 4d. In this family there is no regular provision for clothes, which are paid for as they must be bought. No extra money is at any time of the year forthcoming. Mr. S. clothes himself, but extracts from his wife his newspaper as well as his fares. The latter are usually paid by the men. The mother is an excellent needlewoman, and makes nearly all the children’s clothes. She is also a wonderful manager, and her two rooms are as clean as a new pin. This had not prevented her from losing five children when these particular budgets were taken. She soon after lost a sixth. The rent is far too low for healthy rooms. Though she pays for the same number of rooms as Mrs. L., she pays 1s. 6d. less a week for them, and they are wretchedly inferior. Her burial insurance is All the women, with the exception of Mrs. K., are notable managers, and all but Mrs. K. and Mrs. P. are extremely tidy and clean. Mrs. K., who has five sons and a daughter, is more happy-go-lucky than the others, as, fortunately for her, her husband “can’t abide ter see the ’ouse bein’ cleaned,” and when it is clean “likes to mess it all up agen.” Mrs. K. doesn’t go in for worryin’ the boys, either. Her eldest child is Louie, the only girl, who is thirteen, and rather good at school, but doesn’t do much to help at home, as Mrs. K. likes to see her happy. With all her casual ways, Mrs. K. has a delicate mind, and flushes deeply if the visitor alludes to anything which shocks her. Louie’s bed is shared by only one small brother; Louie’s clothes are tidy, though Mr. and Mrs. K. seem to sleep among a herd of boys, and Mrs. K.’s skirt looks as though rats had been at it, and her blouse is never where it should be at the waist. Mrs. P. is under thirty, and, when she has time to look it, rather pretty. Her eldest child is only ten. The tightest economy reigns in that little house, partly because Mr. P. is a careful man and very delicate, and partly because Mrs. P. Mrs. B. is a manager who could be roused at any moment in the night and inform the inquirer exactly what money she had in her purse, and how many teaspoonfuls of tea were left, before she properly opened her eyes. She likes to spend exactly the same sum on exactly the same article, and the same amount of it, every week. Her menus are deplorably monotonous—never a flight Mrs. L. is older and larger and more gaunt—a very silent woman. Mr. L. talks immensely, and takes liberties with her which she does not seem to notice. She is gentle and always tidy, always clean, and very depressed in manner. When her baby nearly died with double pneumonia, she sat up night after night, nursed him and did all the work of the house by day, but all she ever said on the subject was, “I’d not like ter lose ’im now.” She looked more gaunt as the days went on, but everything was done as usual. When the baby Mrs. S. could tell you a little about Mr. S. if you pressed her. He was a “good ’usbin’,” but not desirable on Saturday nights. She was a worn, thin woman with a dull, slow face, but an extraordinary knack of keeping things clean and getting things cheap. All her bread was fetched by her eldest boy of thirteen from the back door of a big restaurant once a week. It lived in a large bag hung on a nail behind the door, and got very stale towards the end of the week; but it was good bread. She could get about 100 broken rolls for 1s. 9d. When she lost her children she cried a very little, but went about much as usual, saying, if spoken to on the subject, “I done all I could.’ E ’ad everythink done fer ’im,” which was perfectly true as far as she was concerned, and in so far as her means went. She loved her family in a patient, suffering, loyal sort of way which cannot have been very exhilarating for them. All of these women, with, perhaps, the exception of Mrs. K., seemed to have lost any spark of humour or desire for different surroundings. The same surroundings with a little more money, a little more security, and a little less to do, was about the best their imaginations could grasp. The children of these five families were, on the whole, well brought up as regards manners and cleanliness and behaviour. All of them were kindly and patiently treated by their mothers. Mrs. P., who was only twenty-eight, was a little plaintive with her brood of six. Mrs. K., as has been explained, was unruffled and placid. The Note.—In dissecting budgets in this and following chapters the writer has not reckoned in the extra nourishment which was provided for mother and child. It is obvious that general calculations based upon such temporary and unusual assistance would be misleading with regard to the whole class of low-paid labour. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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