FAMILY BUDGETS.
ASUB-COMMITTEE of the Economic Club has undertaken what eventually may prove a very valuable, and is already a very interesting, piece of statistical work. Its object is to "study family life in Great Britain through details of family expenditure," and as this end is being pursued under the direction of Mr. Charles Booth, there is the highest possible warrant for the thoroughness and judgment of its execution. Indeed, Mr. Booth's own hand is to be traced in many parts of the little volume which forms the first instalment of the Com- mittee's report. Up to the present time about thirty-eight budgets, drawn up in accordance with instructions, and a specimen budget circulated among the members of the Club, have been sent in, and twenty-eight of these have now been printed by the Club,—eight from London and the neighbourhood, nine from provincial towns, and eleven from the country. About half of the budgets are accom- panied by a descriptive monograph. Seven of these have been given in full, and it must be confessed that the narratives of the family histories are pleasanter read- ing than the tables. The importance of the latter lies in the future,—in the body of information that will, we may hope, be brought together on the whole subject of working-class expenditure. You cannot draw universal conclusions from the experience of twenty-eight families. But the experience of even one family, when it is given in sufficient detail, has a "warm human interest" belonging to it. If we do not get any data for legislation, we are at least made to enter into thoughts and feelings which without this help would be a sealed book to us. Some of the monographs are of a fair length. One in particular, the first in the series, goes very fully into particulars, and is remarkable for the frankness and cheerfulness with which the head of the family describes their mode of life. Certainly this cheerfulness is not the creation of circumstances. The man's employment is uncertain and irregular. He is a jobbing plumber, and during the four weeks to which the accounts relate his average weekly income amounted to us. 7d., and his average weekly expenditure to us. 6-11d. The wife is delicate, and the eldest of the three children is con- sumptive. They get very little help, and what they do get "does not always come at the best time," the reason being that the family "receives no visits and conceals its priva- tions." Their great misfortune occurred about seven years ago. The wife fell ill of bronchitis, and required more nourishing i;ood. Asthe man was out of work at the time, the only way to obtain this was to allow the rent to go unpaid. When the arrears came to us. 'their home (worth about £5 to them) was distrained upon and broken up. Since then they have not been able to get upon their legs again." They spend on an average 4s. in rent, 4s. 71d. in food, is. 3d. in fuel and light. The only entry for clothes is boots, for which le. 2d. is set down each week. Washing and education, with O. for drugs, make up the weekly outlay. Recreation ordinarily costs them nothing, "but last Bank holiday they all went for a country walk towards Dulwich—they live near Loughborough Junction—and hired a mail cart for the children three hours at id. an hour." The parents never go to a museum, a theatre, or an entertainment, and the children, have never been on a steamboat or on an excursion. "The man plays a little upon the flute," or "sitting, Goalless, before the fire of an evening, a boy on one knee and a girl on the other, he sings or whistles, and, as he says, "as a game with 'ern in my way.'" Later on he goes to his brother's to have a game at dominoes. But "neither trials in the past nor fears for the future have broken down their honesty, cheerfulness, or self-respect." It is the last-mentioned virtue, indeed, that keeps them from entering any public building. The man thinks that he or the children might be looked down upon as having "no right to be there" on account of their clothes. The loss of a child some months ago was made all the more bitter by the necessity of having only the cheapest funeral. They "could not have the little fall-things, wot shows respect." We are inclined to think that one of the best appreciated forms of charity would be a society after the fashion of the .Misericordia at Florence, which should undertake the conduct of poor funerals. No doubt the extravagance of the poor in this respect needs to be discouraged, but it should be dis- couraged by enabling them to pay proper respect to their dead without incurring foolish expense, not by weakening the desire to pay it.
We have dwelt on this one monograph, partly for its own interest and partly as showing how much is to be gained from this little volume over and above the statistical information which it was intended in the first instance to give. There are others—one especially of a Liverpool family, and another of a family in the colliery district of Leicestershire—which have the same fullness of detail. But when it comes to drawing any general conclusions from these narratives we must own ourselves at fault. The variations in circumstances are very great, and they are necessarily made greater by the variations in persons. We do not doubt that some day, as materials of this kind increase, and are more widely studied, the plan of the labyrinth will disclose itself. But that time is not yet, md in the interval we may well be grateful for the suggestions which Mr. Booth offers us as to the kind of information to be expected from such figures as these, and to be gained to some extent from those already collected. For example, the "widespread and well-founded notion" that the small consumer is placed at a great disadvantage by having to buy everything in small quantities has to be qualified by two considerations. One is that where children are the buyers, they are found to receive "sympathetic attention" from the very fact that they are small buyers. Where there is no definite measure for a " hafporth " they often get "the benefit of the doubt." The other is that the possession in the house of large quantities is believed, and probably rightly believed, to lead to greater consumption. In one case " the wife intentionally bought very small quantities of jam because of the rapidity with which her husband made it disappear if a larger quantity were put upon the table."
Another point which is suggested by some of these narratives is the multiplication of hasty or early marriages by reason of the "discomfort and swindling" to which workmen are subjected in lodgings. Hitherto most of what has been done to improve the housing of the poor— Lord Rowton's scheme excepted—has been concerned with families. But it may well be doubted whether the pro- vision of comfortable lodgings for unmarried men would not in the long-run be even more beneficial. Early and imprudent marriages might be somewhat checked if even one of the motives which prompt them were removed, and a young man who had been accustomed to decent living before marriage would hardly be indifferent to it after marriage. The greatest obstacle to real and permanent amendment in this direction is the indifference which t poor constantly show when the opportunity of being better housed is put in their way. This indifference must obviously be fostered by great discomfort endured by a man when living alone, with its resulting conviction that at any rate he cannot be worse off married. than he is single. A. third point, which is as yet only suggested, is "the importance of mobility as a means of securing industrial experience." The sense of this im- portance is apparently growing, especially in the London building trades, and if it goes on growing it will necessi- tate large changes in the provision made for the education of the workman. "In one aspect, for instance, it touches the whole question of apprenticeship." In another it puts a new difficulty in the way of anything like systematic training. Technical classes, for example, depend for their utility upon the aggregation of a sufficient body of learners in about the same stages of proficiency. But if it is found that the proverb of the rolling stone does not apply to the workman, and that what he has to guard against is rather the homely wits that belong to home- keeping youth, we shall have to seek the same end by different means.
And then last, but most important of all, is the lesson to be drawn from these statistics as from every other similar inquiry,—that it is character, not circumstances, that is at the bottom of the problem how to mend the conditions of life among the poor. The real value of a man's earnings "will by no means be altogether deter- mined by any ruling range of prices, but also to a very great extent by the habits and capacities of the wife."' Where these are good—and, it must be added, where the- husband recognises their goodness, which is but another aspect of the same question—wages fall into the second place. In days when the tendency is to treat everything as a question of averages and general laws, it cannot be too much borne in mind that social reform is worthless. without individual reform, that it is only valuable, indeed, as making an atmosphere in which individual reform may have a better chance.
Previous page
