I most sincerely agree with those who regret
that the labourer does not get more for his shilling than is usually the
case; the misfortune, however, does not arise from (what is so often most
unjustly reprobated) his being obliged to purchase the few articles
he has occasion for, from petty retail shops, but because either through
ignorance, custom or prejudice, he adheres to ancient
improvident systems in dress, diet, and in other branches of private
expenditure.... Instead of the ill-grounded complaints, which
have so often been reiterated by writers on the Poor, that the wages
of industry are in general too inadequate to provide the labourers with
those comforts and conveniences which are befitting his station in the
community, they would better serve the cause of the industrious peasant
and manufacturer by pointing out the best means of reducing their expenses,
without diminishing their comforts.
There seems to be just reason to conclude that the miseries of the labouring Poor arose, less from the scantiness of their income (however much the philanthropist might wish it to be increased) than from their own improvidence and unthriftiness; since it is the fact, and I trust will be demonstrated in a subsequent part of this work, that in many parts of the kingdom, where the earnings of industry are moderate, the condition of the labourers is more comfortable than in other districts where wages are exorbitant.... It must strike every one who has at all investigated the subject of diet, that there is not only a remarkable difference in the proportion of earnings appropriated to the purchase of subsistence by labourers in the North and South of England, but that their mode of preparing their food is no less dissimilar. In the South of England the poorest labourers are habituated to the unvarying meal of dry bread and cheese from week's end to week's end; and in those families whose finances do not allow them the indulgence of malt liquor, the deleterious produce of China constitutes their most usual beverage. If a labourer is rich enough to afford himself meat once a week, he commonly roasts it, or if he lives near a baker's he bakes it, and if he boils his meat he never thinks of making it into a soup, which would be as nourishing and more palatable. In the North of England, Scotland and Wales the poorest labourers, however, regale themselves with a variety of dishes unknown in the South.... To begin with: hasty pudding, which is made of oatmeal, water and salt, about 13 oz. of meal to a quart of water, which is sufficient for a meal for two labourers. It is eaten with a little milk or beer poured upon it, or with a little cold butter put into the middle, or with a little treacle. A good meal for one person, supposing the price of oats to be 20s. the quarter, will not exceed 1 d.
The principal advantage which the labourers in the
North of England possess over their countrymen in the South consists in
the great variety of cheap and savoury soups, which
the use of barley and barley bread affords them an opportunity of making.
The cheapness of fuel is, perhaps, another reason
why the meals of the Northern peasant are so much diversified, and his
table so often
supplied with hot dishes.
It must be confessed that the difficulty of introducing any species of food which requires much culinary preparation into the South of England arises in a great measure from the scarcity and high price of fuel. It is owing to this cause that even the labourer's dinner, of hot meat on a Sunday, is generally dressed at the baker's, and that his meals during the rest of the week consist almost wholly of bread purchased from the same quarter.
The diversity is not greater between the labourers
in the North and South of E;ngland, with respect to the manner in which
their
food is prepared than with regard to the modes they adopt of supplying
themselves with clothing. In the Midland and Southern counties, the labourer
in general purchases a very considerable portion, if not the whole, of
his clothes from the shopkeeper. In the vicinity of the metropolis,working
people seldom buy new clothes; they content themselves with a cast-off
coat, which may be usually purchased for about ss., and second-hand waistcoats
and breeches. Their wives seldom make up any article of dress, except making
and mending clothes for the children. In the North, on the contrary almost
every article of dress worn by farmers, mechanics and labourers, is manufactured
at home, shoes and hats excepted-that is, the linen thread is spun from
the lint, and the yarn from the wool, and sent to the weavers and dyers,
so that almost every family has its web of linen cloth annually, and often
one of woollen also, which is either dyed for coats or made into flannel
etc. Sometimes black and white wool are mixed, and the cloth which is made
from them receives no dye; it is provincially called kelt. There are, however,
many labourers so poor that they cannot even afford to purchase the raw
material necessary to spin thread or yarn at home, as it is some time before
a home manufacture can be rendered fit for use. It is generally acknowledged
that articles of clothing can be purchased in the shops at a much lower
price than those who made them at home can afford to sell them for, but
that in the wearing those manufactured by private families are very superior
both in warmth and durability.