health by the food of the people. We can know
but imperfectly what goes to build up or destroy
the health of a people, if we give no heed to its
meat and drink. For due inquiry into the food
of the English labouring classes it was necessary
to pay some attention to the dietaries of the
working class in Scotland and Ireland. Of
course inquiry could be made only in a few
households that seemed to be fair samples of
their class, between five and six hundred in
England, about thirty in Scotland, and about
fifty in Ireland. As a general rule, too, it must
needs appear that the unmarried labourer had
the most money to spend upon himself, and that
the married labourer, who had to keep up the
strength by which he lived, usually fared better
than his wife and children, who were in some
counties miserably fed. The inquirer set out
with a theoretical view of the chemical elements
of life in fuel, food, and flesh-producing food,
and the quantity of each necessary to avert
starvation diseases. A woman, he said, must
have in her daily food at least three thousand
nine hundred grains of carbon, and a hundred
and eighty grains of nitrogen, or as much
nourishment as is contained in a half-quartern
loaf. A man wants usually about a ninth part
more. Now, there were examined forty-two
families of silk-weavers, and these did not quite
come up to the mark; and thirty-one families
of needlewomen, and these did not nearly come
up to the mark; and of the farm labourers'
families more than a third were below the mark;
and though the mark is a theoretical one, yet
that it is no bad standard of what is meant by
"just enough to eat," was shown when it was
applied in the preceding year to the Lancashire
operatives, for the average health was found to
be below par whenever the quantity of food
taken was pronounced by such a test to be
inadequate. There are more mysteries in the
matter of diet and nutrition, and the use of the
same food under different conditions of life, than
any man can express chemically; but there is
nothing very theoretical or far-fetched, or incredible,
in the assertion that a healthy working
woman must eat at least a half-quartern loaf every
day, and that a man must eat a loaf and a thick
slice off another, or get the same quantity of
nourishment in other victuals, and is likely to fail
in health if fed below that standard. We can all
understand that and believe it. And when the
food is below par, it is not only in food that
privation has been suffered. "It must be
remembered," says Mr. Simon, "that privation
of food is very reluctantly borne, and that, as
a rule, great poorness of diet will only come
when other privations have preceded it. Long
before insufficiency of diet is a matter of hygienic
concern, long before the physiologist would think
of counting the grains of carbon and nitrogen
which intervene between life and starvation, the
household will have been utterly destitute of
material comfort—clothing and fuel will have
been even scantier than food; against inclemencies
of weather there will have been no adequate
protection; dwelling space will have been stinted
to the degree in which over-crowding produces
or increases disease; of household utensils and
furniture there will have been scarcely any;
even cleanliness will have been found costly or
difficult; and if there be still self-respectful
efforts to maintain it, every such endeavour will
represent additional pangs of hunger. The
home, too, will be where shelter can be cheapest
bought—in quarters where commonly there is
least fruit of sanitary supervision, least drainage,
least scavenging, least suppression of public
nuisances, least, or worst, water supply, and, if
in towns, least light and air. Such are the
sanitary dangers to which poverty is almost
certainly exposed, when it is poverty enough to
imply scantiness of food. And while the sum
of them is of terrible magnitude against life,
the mere scantiness of food is in itself of very
serious moment."

But in respect of a large number of our
underfed poor, much can be done by the mere
diffusion of information. They don't know how to
make the most of their means. England, for
example, falls curiously behind Scotland and
Ireland in the use of milk, which, if its price be
compared with its great nourishing power, is
cheaper food than almost anything used in its
place. The oversight is not peculiar to the
English poor. Let any Highlander in an
English town, seeing a milkman on his summer
rounds, observe the size of his cans and ask him
how many families he supplies out of them, and
the answer will astonish him. Especially in a
house where there are children, it would be well if
every one remembered that milk is not a luxury
to be bought by ha'p'orths and used only for the
spoiling of tea, but that it is a cheap and
precious article of diet, which, if freely used, may
have its cost saved in less valuable and more
expensive articles of diet for the young, and,
especially, ten times and twenty times over in
doctors' bills. In Wales they take their milk
in the shape of cheese, which is very nourishing.

Dr. Edward Smith, in conducting his inquiry
into the food of our labouring classes, looked
for healthy, intelligent, and thrifty families,
living as carefully as they could by labour that
produced small earnings. The questions asked
were private, and their intrusiveness was met
with a cordial readiness to help to a good
end; there was reluctance to answer questions
only in half a dozen instances; wherever it was
shown, of course all questioning was desisted
from. With the readiest there was always
difficulty in calculating averages, for families with
small earnings are never equally well off at all
times of the year; their diet also, especially
where they have that important aid to health,
a patch of garden ground, or where there is
fish accessible, varies much with the season.
In the north of Scotland, says Dr. Smith, "the
idea of an average is a leading feature of the
mind," and it was easier to estimate the dietary
for all the year round.

But now to begin with the in-door workers,
and take first the silk-weavers and throwsters.
These are well paid when in full work, but their