Household Administration Part 7

It would be interesting, had I more s.p.a.ce at my disposal, to discuss mediaeval town life and the domestic arrangements of the monasteries, which are very fully and interestingly described in Abbe Gasquet's book, "English Monastic Life." But I must content myself solely with one or two extracts ill.u.s.trating the household furniture of the mediaeval town-dwellers.

In 1303, a certain Alan de Bedeford, a baker of London, was sold up for arrears of taxes, and the following were the goods seized by the inexorable tax-gatherer: "One bra.s.s pot weighing 18 lbs., value 2s. 6d., and another bra.s.s pot weighing 13 lbs., value 21d., and one kettle value 14d., the total whereof amounts to 5s 5d."[52]

In 1337, an inventory was preserved of the goods of a felon. It was probably exhaustive, and may therefore be taken as indicating with tolerable precision the standard of household comfort of a London burgess at that time. It is too long to quote in full (the list of garments in particular is rather tedious), but it is interesting to note that it includes a mattress, three feather-beds, five cushions, six blankets, seven linen-sheets, four table-cloths, six whole bra.s.s pots of varying value and one broken one, one candlestick and two plates of metal, two basins and one washing-vessel, a spit, a frying-pan, and a funnel.[53]

Further study of wills and inventories would yield a fresh store of information with regard to mediaeval household equipment, and might not improbably upset some preconceived ideas as to the ordinary standard of life at that time.

(_b_) THE POSITION OF THE HOUSEHOLD FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES

(1) _The First Industrial Revolution and its Effects_

The fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century were marked by great economic changes. The manorial system, modified before this period by the gradual commutation of labour dues and especially by the catastrophe of the Black Death, was replaced on the one hand by enclosures for sheep-farming and on the other by convertible husbandry, when the farmer possessed or rented his own separate holding and managed it as he pleased, using the same land alternately for pasturage and as arable.[54] At the same time, the gild organisation of industry was replaced by the system commonly known as domestic manufacture. This spread largely in the country districts, and profoundly influenced home life and the position of women. At the same time both home and foreign trade greatly increased, and "natural economy" was almost entirely replaced by "money economy," the necessities of life being no longer produced by the family for their own use; men worked instead for payment, and then with the money so earned bought in the market the goods they required.[55] These changes, like the corresponding changes at the end of the eighteenth century, brought greater wealth and pomp to some cla.s.ses, increased comfort to the bulk of the people, but called into existence a new cla.s.s of landless labourers, whose needs and importunities finally led to the establishment of the poor-law.

It would require a volume to describe how these changes reflected themselves in the daily life of the people, and at present I must content myself with noting very briefly the main effects of this first industrial revolution.

In the country two cla.s.ses appeared: the labourer, who, although he might possess a small piece of land of his own[56] or at the least had grazing rights over a neighbouring common, yet depended for his livelihood on the wages paid by his master. So far I have not discovered any reliable source of information with regard to the family expenditure of this cla.s.s.[57]

Next there was the farmer either renting or owning a farm. Very often farming would be combined with spinning or weaving wool. Agriculture of this kind, partly for subsistence and partly for the market, supplemented by the practice of domestic industries, remained the dominant type in England until the introduction of capitalist farming in the eighteenth century, and indeed can still be found in backward districts. The part played in it by women can be ill.u.s.trated by a curious account of the duties of the wife of a husbandman given in Fitzherbert's "Book of Husbandry" (1534).

"First in a morning when thou art waked and purposiste to rise, lyfte up thy hands and blesse thee.... And when thou art up and redy, then first sweep thy house, dress up thy dysshe-board, and sette all things in good order within thy house. Milk thy kye, suckle thy calves, sye up thy mylke, take up thy children and array them, and provide for thy husband's brekefaste, dinner, souper, and thy children and servants, and take thy part with them. And to ordayne corn and malt to the myll, to bake and brue withal whanne need is. And meete it to the mill and fro the mill, and see that thou have thy measure again beside the toll or else the miller dealeth not truly with the or els thy corn is not drye as it should be. Thou must make b.u.t.ter or cheese whan thou maist, serve thy swyne both morning and evening, and give thy poleyn[58] meat in the morning, and when tyme of the year cometh, thou must take heed how thy duckes henne and geese do lay and to gather up their eggs and when they wax brodie to get them.... And in the beginning of March or a little before is time for a wife to make her garden and to gette as many good seedes and herbes as she can and specially such as be good for the potte and to eat. [Then come lengthy and technical directions for sowing and working up flax and hemp] and thereof may they make shetes, bordclothes, towels, shirts, smocks and such other necessaries and therefore let thy distaff be always ready for a pastime that thou be not idle.... It is convenient for a husband to have shepe of his owne for many causes, and then maye his wife have part of the woll to make her husband and herself some clothes. And at the very least way she may have the locks of the sheep either to make clothes or blankets or coverlets or both. And if she have no wool of her own, she may take wool to spyn of cloth-makers and by that means she may have a convenient living.... It is a wife's occupation to wynowe all manner of corns, to make malt, to wa.s.she and wrynge, to make haye, shere corn, and in tiyme of nede to help her husband to fyll the muck-wain or dung-cart, drive the plough, to load hay, corn or such other. And to go or ride to the market, to sell b.u.t.ter, cheese, eggs, chekyns, capons, hennes, pigs, geese, and all manner of corns, and also to bye all manner of necessary things belonging to the household and to make a trewe reckoning and account to her husband what she hath paid. And if the husband go to the market to bye or sell, as they oft do, he then to show his wife in like manner."

It is interesting to note in this extract the mixture of natural and money economy, the appearance of domestic manufactures, and the energetic co-operation of the wife in the work of the farm. The sixteenth century would have had little sympathy with the sentimentalists who hold that womanhood in itself is a burden so heavy that all active occupations should be forbidden to the married woman.

According to Harrison[59] the standard of comfort among the agricultural cla.s.ses rose markedly at this time. Chimneys became common, pewter plates and silver or tin spoons are used in place of "tinn platters and wooden spoons." A farmer thinks his gains very small "if he have not a fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessels going about the house, three or four feather-beds, so manie coverlids or carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowl for wine if not a whole nest, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit."

Food, too, according to Harrison, was plentiful and varied. The increase in pasture farming and the decrease in arable land had made meat (often, it is true, salted) cheaper and corn-stuffs dearer, at least in proportion. This tendency can be traced in the menus and accounts of the period, and certainly appears in the following extract:[60] "The artificers and husbandmen make greatest account of such food as they may soonest come by and have it quickliest ready. Their food also consisteth princ.i.p.allie in beef and such meat as the butcher selleth; that is to saie, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, whereof he findeth great store in the markets adjoining, besides souse,[61] brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, fowles of sundrie sort, cheese, b.u.t.ter, eggs." A little lower down he notes that venison and a cup of wine are luxuries reserved for special occasions.

It is not easy to estimate the worth of Harrison's testimony to the social habits of a cla.s.s which he did not probably know intimately. It is certain, too, that he was not speaking here of the poorest cla.s.s of labourers,[62] those who later recruited the cla.s.s eligible for poor-law relief. But even making these admissions, his words seem to be evidence of a standard of comfort higher in some respects than could be attained by the corresponding cla.s.ses to-day. Chicken, for instance, practically never forms part of the dietary of even the well-to-do urban artisan of the present time.

In the organisation of the wealthy household, the economic changes of the time produced important alterations. The increase in buying and selling made the landlords more anxious to dispose of their surplus produce in the markets, and on the other hand provided new luxuries on which money could be spent. There resulted a tendency, which can be traced in all the household books of the period, to limit the numbers of servants and retainers. At the same time there was a growing desire for privacy, and a widening gulf between the upper and the lower cla.s.ses of society. Hence the hall, the general a.s.sembly-place for the entire household, lost its importance; dining-rooms and withdrawing-rooms for the exclusive use of the family and guests, took its place, and the servants were relegated to their own part of the house. Partly as cause of this, partly as effect, domestic administration ceases to be a career for men of better social rank, a tendency which would of course be intensified by the fact that in commerce, in literature, in exploration, &c., new opportunities were perpetually being opened up. Hence Elizabeth's reign is a turning-point for the history both of domestic service and of domestic architecture. It was probably about this time that women superseded men as cooks and cleaners, and it is certain that the increase in Elizabeth's reign of industries worked for profit must have diminished the production for use in the household of many articles of common domestic utility.[63]

(2) _Life in the Stuart Period_

For 150 years after the death of Elizabeth no startling changes occur in the organisation of the household or in its economic relations. The marked feature of this period is the existence of domestic manufactures, engaging the head of the household and his family, one or two apprentices, and sometimes a journeyman or two. It was common, indeed all but universal, for the small master manufacturers to board and lodge their employees, as it was common for farmers to board and lodge their labourers. The larger households carried on at home many of the operations--baking, brewing, washing, jam-making--which have now pa.s.sed to the factory. There was a steady growth of domestic luxury and of convenience. The development of commerce made available new commodities, such as tea, coffee, cocoa, and thereby influenced social life.

Furniture became more elegant, and perhaps at the same time more stuffy.

It would require much reading and research to elaborate the details of this progress, and for our present purpose it is hardly necessary, as it involved alteration in particulars but not in the general organisation of household economy. The difficulties of finding domestic servants begin, however, to make themselves felt, and are amusingly discussed by such writers as Defoe and Swift. It is at some time during this period that houses are first built in terraces and squares on an identical plan for letting purposes. But there are no sweeping changes, such as mark the eighty years before the accession of Victoria.

(3) _The Influence of the Second Industrial Revolution on the Home_

In the last half of the eighteenth century agriculture and industry were once more revolutionised, the former by the introduction of capitalist farming, the rotation of crops, and the further enclosure of common fields, commons, and wastes, the latter by the introduction of machinery and mechanical motor power. For a detailed account of the enormous changes consequent on these new methods of production, I must refer the reader to the special treatises on the subject,[64] but we must spend some time in considering the ways in which the home, family life, and the position of women have been modified by these industrial developments.

In the first place, the introduction of machinery meant the growth of the factory system, and in consequence work left the home, which ceased to be the inst.i.tution where productive industry was carried on, and became instead a centre solely of emotional and domestic life. At the same time, the alteration in the land system made it impossible any longer to combine home weaving, spinning, &c. with subsistence farming; the worker becomes an employee in a business where the capital is owned by his employer, and he depends absolutely on the skill of his own hands for his livelihood.

Nothing could be more curious than to contrast Defoe's celebrated picture of the wool-weaving districts of Yorkshire[65] with those districts in their present condition. Then the workers, semi-independent, farming small enclosures of two to six or seven acres, laboriously produced cloth by hand processes in their own houses. Now they work in enormous factories, fitted up with machinery which can spin and weave wool both easier and better than in earlier days. They return to their homes for rest and leisure alone. Work for wages and the home are now separated, and, unless the use of cheap electrical power brings about a counter-revolution, are likely to remain so. At the same time, since mobility is in modern economic conditions of prime importance, it is becoming less and less common for the manual worker, or indeed for the citizen of any cla.s.s, to own his house, and therefore the new trade of the speculative builder comes into existence, its place being taken in some cases, specially in mining districts, by the "company" houses provided by masters for their employees.

These alterations in the framework of society inevitably influenced home life, which was still further affected at a later period by an a.n.a.logous movement. Not merely the work done for wages left the home, but also many of the commodities formerly produced for its own use by each household came to be made by outside labour.

A very interesting and quite untouched field of inquiry here awaits the economist. Why, for instance, is it customary to bake bread at home in some districts and to buy it from a shop in others? Probably the explanation is to be found in the relative cheapness of fuel. Yorkshire and the North of England are close to abundant coalfields, and in the days before cheap and quick transit the difference in the price of coal in the South and North of England must have been even greater. At a time, too, before the improvement of ovens, owing to the introduction of the iron range and kitchener, the amount of fuel used for baking bread would be even larger than at present. Therefore in the south there grew up a race of housekeepers and servants unskilled in the making of the delicious, crusty home-baked loaf, while in the north, even though conditions have changed, the tradition still remains, and the weekly or bi-weekly baking day is a regular inst.i.tution. But this theory does not explain why bread is not baked at home in Scotland, even in Glasgow and the districts near it, or in Fife, which are all situated right in the coal-bearing areas.

And at present there is little material for describing how brewing, jam and cake-making, biscuit-making, the making and the washing of clothes, the cleaning of furniture and carpets, &c., pa.s.sed from the household to the factory and laundry. It is a process which has evidently been much quickened by the growth of town life, itself one of the most important effects of the industrial revolution.[66]

The aggregation of population in towns in the first place made the s.p.a.ce available for household operations much smaller than was the case when the kitchen was supplemented by rows of outhouses, a green and a garden. In modern conditions, washing at home results in the discomfort of the whole family, whether that family lives in a single room or in a decent middle-cla.s.s house of ten or twelve rooms. In the second place, the ma.s.sing into a comparatively small area of a h.o.m.ogeneous population makes it easy to arrange for other methods of cleansing clothes, either in the working-cla.s.s districts by the provision of munic.i.p.al washing-houses, or in the more well-to-do suburbs through the appearance of steam laundries. In the same way, when each household possessed a garden it was natural to pick the fruit and make it into jam. It is a different thing to buy fruit specially for the purpose. Many housewives find that when the cost of the fruit, sugar, and extra fuel is calculated, taking into account also the dislocation of the regular routine of the household caused by the extra work, it pays them better to buy the jam ready-made. On the other hand, the use of machinery, the existence of cheap methods of transit, and the multiplication of grocers' shops makes it increasingly possible to produce jam in large quant.i.ties actually cheaper than it can be made at home, and to distribute it quickly to the consumer.

The same cause, acting within and without the home in different ways, is resulting in a steady transference of these domestic avocations from the household. Moralists often lament this tendency, and attribute it entirely to increased love of ease and leisure among women. But it is no more possible to draw an indictment against a whole s.e.x than against a whole people, and an alteration in custom so widespread as this which we are discussing must have deeper roots than a personal defect of laziness in particular individuals.

This removal of production for domestic use from the home operates, however, in very different ways in different cases. Sometimes the article is produced much more cheaply outside the home than within, owing to the lower cost and greater efficiency of large-scale methods of manufacture. But this is not invariably the case. Laundry-work, for instance, is probably done more cheaply in the private household. The few attempts. .h.i.therto made to provide hot cooked food from a central kitchen at a reasonable price have not been successful. On the other hand, no individual household could hope to rival Messrs. Huntley & Palmer as producers of biscuits. The factors which prevent the full economies of the large-scale method of production from being realised in the making of certain commodities are twofold. (1) Some goods are of such a kind that they must be consumed where they are produced. Jam or even plum-puddings can be made in a factory in the North of England and afterwards transferred to London. But roast beef, omelettes, and rice-puddings must be eaten within at least a hundred yards of the place where they are cooked. This obvious fact effectually retains the supremacy of the home in the provision of hot cooked food, and disposes once and for all of the cruder arguments for co-operative housekeeping.

(2) Certain commodities must be made for or returned to individual owners. If, for instance, we did not trouble to receive our own sheets and towels from the laundry, but simply made a contract that each week we should be supplied with a certain number, then the washing and sorting could be done wholesale at a much cheaper rate. If we sent our own fruit to the factories to be made into jam, jam would be much more expensive.

Thus the household will compete successfully with outside agencies, in the case of all commodities which must be consumed on the spot, and the outside agencies will have only a small advantage--will do the washing or dressmaking more conveniently, but not much cheaper--when wholesale methods are forbidden by the personal interest of each consumer in one special portion of the commodities dealt with.[67]

Still, regarding the matter from the general economic standpoint, it cannot be denied that the result of the industrial revolution has been to transfer many branches of production both for profit and for use from the home to the factory.

(4) _The Position of Women as Affected by the Industrial Revolution_

This in its turn affected the position of women, and is probably, if not the sole, at least the most important reason for the discontent and unrest to be traced among women of many different cla.s.ses in the nineteenth century. But the women belonging to the manual labouring cla.s.s and the women belonging to the upper cla.s.ses were influenced in different ways.

The former had always been accustomed to work for their living, indirectly if not directly. On the little farms they looked after the cow, the hens, and the garden. They did the carding and the spinning of flax and of wool. True, these industries were carried on at home, and probably the decent "manufacturer," then literally a hand-worker, would have regarded himself as disgraced had his wife or daughters needed to go outside his home to find work.[68] But when the factory system came, with the horrible sufferings caused by the transition from one system of industry to another, the women and children always accustomed to toil at home followed their work to the factory, and there, owing to the new methods of compet.i.tion and to the absence of any regulation of industry, they suffered hardships of overwork and underpayment which seem to the present generation nearly incredible.

Home life for a time almost disappeared, and the suffering and degeneration was only checked by the series of Factory Acts, imposing ever fresh and fresh restrictions on the treatment of women and children.[69] The policy underlying these acts was much criticised at the time, and was indeed not fully comprehended until recently. But it is now all but universally admitted that the Factory Acts have in the main achieved their object, and have greatly improved the position of women in the districts most affected by them; and reformers are constantly urging their extension to fresh trades.

This movement was not understood, and was in consequence opposed by the women of the middle-cla.s.ses, whose position was affected quite differently by the industrial revolution. They too found their occupations within the home to a large extent destroyed. And in other ways their situation was altered. For some reason not yet explained, there appeared in the middle-cla.s.ses a surplus of women.

This is no doubt partly due to the colonial expansion of the period, which sent young men out to Australia, Canada, and South Africa, while their natural mates remained behind in England. It is not easy to give precise statistics, as our statistical tables make no distinction of cla.s.ses, but common observation and the description of social life in the novels of the nineteenth century afford evidence of this fact.

Some statistics bearing on the subject can be found in Miss Clara Collet's[70] article, "Prospects of Marriage for Women," and also in "Die Frauenfrage," by Lilie Braun, pp. 157 _ff._ Frau Braun, whose book is marked throughout by characteristic German thoroughness, sums up:[71] "Es hat sich gezeigt, da.s.s die Zunahme der allein stehenden Frauen, die Abnahme der Heiratsfrequenz und die wirtschaftliche Not als Ursache der Frauenbewegung in aller Lande anzusehen sind."

But it was not merely the decreased chance of marriage which made the lives of middle-cla.s.s women difficult in the last century. There was also a change in the position of the fathers, which decreased their opportunity for providing for their unmarried daughters. The middle-cla.s.s man is now less and less frequently at the head of a business of his own, and is more and more frequently a salaried clerk, manager, or engineer.

Formerly the shop or farm when it pa.s.sed to the eldest son was burdened with the charge of the spinster sisters, who often would help in the dairy or behind the counter. Now, when a middle-cla.s.s man dies, his hold on the industrial world, so to speak, pa.s.ses away with him, unless he has been at once able and willing to lay by savings out of his salary, a duty too often neglected. Briefly, therefore, the unmarried woman of the middle-cla.s.ses is less likely to marry, has less to occupy her at home, and cannot so easily be provided for by her father if she remains a spinster.

Is it then to be wondered at if women insist, in increasing numbers, upon a thorough education as well as the right to enter a profession in which they can be self-supporting?[72] But the first women who decided that a way must be opened by which they could earn for themselves honourable maintenance not unnaturally fell into what we cannot but regard now as regrettable mistakes, however unavoidable these errors may have been at the time. Their great difficulties were to win admission to the universities and permission to practise what had hitherto been regarded as men's professions. Therefore they dreaded all restrictions liable to be laid upon the entrance of women to occupations, and were led in consequence to oppose the Factory Acts, designed for the protection of women of the working-cla.s.ses. It is only to-day and only partially that the woman teacher, doctor, or journalist has come to understand that the position and problems of the factory-hand are very different from her own, and that confusion is created if she insists on judging them from her own standpoint.

In the next place, they were almost forced to become masculine and aggressive in their manners and outlook upon life. In particular, the need of conformity to a system of education framed for men and not for women led to an undervaluation of domestic pursuits. It was not realised that in managing a household and in bringing up children there was scope for the most developed character and the finest education.

But with the twentieth century,[73] college-trained women themselves are coming to see that their previous neglect of those principles of science and economics which underlie household administration was unwise and unwarranted. Of that change of att.i.tude, the new courses in home science at King's College are the firstfruits, and this book is a small contribution to a movement which is destined, perhaps, to revolutionise housekeeping, as a band of devoted women succeeded some few years since in revolutionising the profession of nursing.

The main lines on which the influence of the industrial revolution on women's position has operated can be but briefly indicated in this very summary sketch. Want of s.p.a.ce prevents me from doing more than allude to other aspects of the question, such as the employment of married women, the status of women in government offices, women's trade unions, homework and sweating, the prevention of infant mortality, the work of women in the administration of charity and in local government, together with many other developments of the one cause--the alteration between the relations of the home and of society due to the changes in our commercial and manufacturing system.

I must turn now to a study of the economics of the household as it actually exists to-day.

III. THE PRESENT ORGANISATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD

To begin with, it is perhaps worth while to notice certain broad distinctions which differentiate the household, considered merely as an economic inst.i.tution, from other agencies engaged in the production of commodities and services.