of food was found to be twelve and sixpence a
week for each family, and although not in a high
state of health, they live well up to the minimum
of what is necessary for continued health. In
the shoemakers of Stafford and Northampton
health is not good, for there is want of thrift
and cleanliness, and as the wife and children are
very ill paid for their labour, the support of the
family falls on the husband. A pair of Blucher
boots at one-and-threepence, or of Clarence boots
at two-and-a-penny the pair, is rather less than
the day's work of a moderate workman, and the
fact that a pair of boots can be made in a day
has led to the habit of taking the work home for
daily payment, and of buying the food daily in
small quantities. In nine families where the
wife and children added something to the earnings,
the average income was a pound a week.
But two pounds a week is the extreme earning
power of a first-class workman.

As a general result of the inquiry among all
these classes, it appeared that of bread the
needlewomen eat least, the shoemakers most;
that of the persons interrogated in all classes,
only four—three of them being kid-glovers—
went wholly without sugar, the kid-glovers
generally using least sugar, the needlewomen
and stocking-makers most; the balance of carbon
in the diet being readjusted in these cases by an
exactly reverse proportion in the use of butter.
Only in five of the whole number of cases was
there no meat at all eaten, and the five were all
found among the silk-weavers of Macclesfield and
Coventry. But twenty in every hundred eat
butchers' meat in no appreciable quantity,
preferring to use bacon. Beer of the ordinary
strength was found to be drunk very generally
by the silk-weavers of London, and by the
shoemakers, and a very weak beer by the stocking-
makers of parts of Derbyshire. In half the
families who were taken as fair types of the
condition of the poorer labouring class, beer formed
no part of the household dietary.

From families sustained by in-door occupation
the inquiry turned to the labourers of
England out of doors. There is great variation
in the rate of living in different counties, besides
local peculiarities of dietary, as in the cider
counties of Devon and Worcester, and the oat
and barley district of the north of England.
The total income of the labourer's family is often
much greater than the wages of the husband;
thus, in two families in Wiltshire, the whole
earnings were twenty-six shillings a week,
although the wages of the husband were but
nine shillings. It is hard to reckon in averages
these variations, and the value of allowances
often made of wheat, potatoes, or potato ground,
barley, milk, beer, cider. "In Dorsetshire,
where the nominal wages are eight shillings a
week in money, there are also free rent of house
and garden, fuel cut and carried, a chain of
potato ground prepared and manured, and a
bushel of wheat (worth five shillings) monthly.
These are estimated at about four shillings a
week. A shilling is also given when sent on a
long journey. In summer-time twenty shillings
extra are allowed for harvest-work. One gallon
of cider per day, at fourpence per gallon, for
six months to the labourer, three pints of cider
per day during six months for the wife, and one
quart of cider for each working boy, during the
same period, are given. This estimate is derived
from Sir John Smith's property near to Maiden
Newton, and clearly shows that the wages in
money do not represent two thirds of the whole
income, but it must be added that these
advantages are not universal." The income of
the farm-labourer's family may also be increased
by employment of some members of it on straw-
work in Beds, Bucks, Essex, Herts, Oxford,
&c.; on gloving in Somerset, Wilts, Dorset,
Devon, &c.; on mining and metal work in
Gloucestershire, Derbyshire, Notts, Salop,
Northampton, Northumberland, Cumberland,
Yorkshire, &c.; on mill-work, and various kinds
of weaving in Derbyshire, Notts, and Yorkshire;
on dockyards in Devon; on needle-making in
Worcestershire; on blanket-making in Oxfordshire;
on the knitting of babies' boots in
Rutland, &c.; on railway labour, and brick-
making in many counties, and upon various
industries in agricultural districts on the
outskirts of large towns. Potato-ground is a great
comfort to the farm-labourer. When potatoes
have to be bought, he and his wife reckon them
to be dearer than bread, but when grown they
save bread, in some families as much as two
shillings a week, and they have the advantage
over bread, of enabling the housewife to make
up a hot meal with the morsel of meat or
bacon, that would otherwise be cold and
uninviting. Cabbage they cannot eat without
meat, unless fried in fat; slight use is made of
turnips; but onions, which can be eaten growing,
or can be kept for use, are a constant blessing
of savouriness in almost every cottage. In
some counties, the farm labourers are found to
regard sugar as a luxury; in Devon, where
milk is abundant, it is most rarely given to any
member of a family except the infant. Its
use is, of course, increased in the fruit season.
Only one family in a hundred was found, among
all the poorly paid labourers of England, living
wholly without meat; but thirty in a hundred
adopt bacon as their only meat, and forty-six in
a hundred use both butchers' meat and bacon.
There is a general belief that beef is better food
than mutton. As to bacon, though English
bacon costs eightpence or tenpence a pound, and
American bacon is now generally to be had for
fourpence and sixpence, it is the costly English
bacon that our poor buy, and consider cheapest
of all meats.

American bacon wastes much in the boiling,
and as the water in which it has been boiled
is usually thrown away, there are so many slices
said to have been lost. On the other hand, in
frying it does not waste with liquid fat, which is
the children's share out of the frying-pan, the
dripping for their bread. Good bacon is popular
with our poor because it does not shrink in boiling
as butchers' meat does, while it supplies fat
in which cabbage may be boiled; because it can