trade has been for many years so prostrated,
that they are, as a rule, ill fed; though the
fluctuations in their earning power make it
difficult and somewhat delusive to speak of
their diet by the way of averages. So far as
averages go, they are, says Dr. Smith, below
the minimum by about a thousand grains of
carbon and a hundred and eighty grains of
nitrogen a week. They use, on an average,
nine and a half pounds of bread a week to each
adult. One man said, that in times of plenty
the consumption of bread in his family rises
from twenty-eight to forty-two pounds; nearly
all were found using potatoes at the rate of
about two pounds a week for each adult. One
family in three used other garden stuffs, but
in more than half of the families some use was
made of treacle as a substitute for butter. Two
in three were found to eat bacon in quantities
varying from a quarter of a pound to two pounds
in the week; two in seven were found to eat
butchers' meat in quantities varying from a
quarter of a pound to six pounds weekly. The
whole average is a little over two pounds of
meat weekly to each family. But this is had
irregularly. There would be none in bad weeks,
and it would be bought when work was better.
Or it would be bought for the Sunday's dinner;
often a baked sheep's head, or breast of mutton,
with the dripping kept for use throughout the
week, and what might be left of the meat eaten
next day. Only where there is great thrift,
and some sufficiency of income, is meat found to be
eaten daily. There is a general dislike to the
fat of meat, and a general desire for relishable
food, as herrings, cockles, shrimps, cooked fish,
stewed trotters, sausages, pickled pork, black-
puddings, liver and bacon. The average
allowance of milk was found to be a pint a week
for each adult; but at Macclesfield, where there
was no beer drunk, two or three times as much.
Tea was found to be used in every family but
one, the average consumption being two ounces a
week to a family, but in Spitalfields three
ounces and a half. Coffee was used in half the
families from among whom these general results
were got. All but two out of seventeen London
families of silk-weavers were found to drink
beer, nearly five pints a week being the quantity
per family of those who drank it. The average
cost of a week's food, was found to vary in
different places from twenty to thirty-three
pence for each adult; being lowest at Macclesfield,
where the greatest actual amount of
nourishment was got for a shilling, and highest
at Bethnal-green and Spitalfields, where the
food bought was the least nourishing. The
London weaver pays heavily for meat and tea,
buying both in the most costly way, bacon by
pennyworths, and tea by daily quarter ounces.
In London the children working away from
home, instead of taking with them dinner
prepared by the mother, are supplied with
three- halfpence or twopence a day, dinner
money, which they spend at a cook-shop: usually
a penny upon pudding and a halfpenny upon
potatoes. When they spend twopence, they
are permitted to sit down and have a little
gravy, or fat, added to their meal.

But of all classes the quality and quantity
of whose food was inquired into, the needle-
women were found to be faring the worst.
They have taken to their calling when other
resources failed, and are a very mixed class,
bound together only by the community of want.
The average income of each adult is just below
four shillings a week: there being complaint of
insufficient work in every department, and the
poor women sometimes remaining unemployed
for weeks together. Sometimes the needle-
woman receives a weekly loaf of bread from the
parish, to which she adds what else her earnings
will permit. The workers are all in feeble health,
and use tea at the average rate, for each adult,
of an ounce and a quarter weekly; some use
half an ounce a day, being refreshed and
sustained through hours of toil, though little
nourished by its costly stimulus. They do not
even put food into it by a free use of milk, which
is only bought by one needlewoman out of three,
and then usually at the rate of a farthing's-worth
a day. Of meat some buy two ounces for three-
halfpence, others two ounces of bacon daily;
others a quarter of a pound of cooked meat
three times a week, and half a pound on
Sunday; others only a pennyworth of sheep's
brains for the Sunday dinner, or a pennyworth of
black pudding for dinner or supper. The weekly
average cost of the needlewoman's food is two
and sevenpence, and she so spends a shilling as
to get less food for it than any other member of
the poorer labouring class.

In the south of England there is an extensive
manufacture of kid gloves, Yeovil being its
centre. Three and sixpence is paid for seaming
the backs of a dozen kid gloves; the stitcher,
who is obliged to stoop to the machine and
place her eyes very near her work, can only
live by working for twelve hours a day. In one
case the stitcher worked from, six in the morning
until eleven at night, to earn five and sixpence a
week. "It was lamentable," says Dr. Edward
Smith, " to see children from nine to fourteen
years of age kept at this employment during
the whole day, seeing nothing of the world
around them, and cut off from the amusements
and exertion so natural to children, and so
necessary at the period of growth. The needle-
women of London did not impress my mind so
unfavourably as the stitchers of gloves at Yeovil,
since the former were for the most part in middle
or advanced life, whilst here were children or
young women who were consuming their health
and losing the pleasures of life for the barest
pittance." The Derbyshire stocking and glove
weavers, who earn in their hamlets an average
of nine shillings a week each man, or nearly
seventeen shillings a week each family, make
their own bread, eat oatmeal gruel, make more
than an average use of peas and rice, have nearly
all of them small cottage gardens which supply
fresh vegetables, use meat and bacon, take an
average of six pints of milk to each family, and
use, in half the houses, eggs. The average cost