Thrift Part 25

The connection is close and intimate between physical and moral health, between domestic well-being and public happiness. The destructive influence of an unwholesome dwelling propagates a moral typhus worse than the plague itself. Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character becomes depraved; and too often--eager to s.n.a.t.c.h even a momentary enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,--the miserable victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery, infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness.

This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly thing. It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children made fatherless, by typhus. It costs them also a great deal in disease; for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children. It costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries, infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the dest.i.tute. It costs the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only capital. In this is invested their all: if they lose it, their docket is struck, and they are bankrupt. How frightful is the neglect, whether it be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of his health, and makes his life a daily death!

Why, then, is not sanitary science universally adopted and enforced? We fear it is mainly through indifference and laziness. The local authorities--munic.i.p.alities and boards of guardians--are so many Mrs.

Maclartys in their way. Like that dirty matron, they "canna be fashed."

To remove the materials of disease requires industry, constant attention, and--what is far more serious--increased rates. The foul interests hold their ground, and bid defiance to the attacks made upon them. Things did very well, they say, in "the good old times,"--why should they not do so now? When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that n.o.body is to blame.

That terrible n.o.body! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by n.o.body than by all the world besides. n.o.body adulterates our food. n.o.body poisons us with bad drink. n.o.body supplies us with foul water. n.o.body spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes. n.o.body leaves towns undrained. n.o.body fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict stations. n.o.body makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards.

n.o.body has a theory too--a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two words--_Laissez faire_--Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, "Let alone" is the remedy. When _Cocculus indicus_ is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, "n.o.body did it." Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: _Caveat emptor_. When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone. Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.

"It matters nothing to me," said a rich man who heard of a poor woman and her sick child being driven forth from a town for begging. The workhouse authorities would have nothing to do with her, and sent her away. But the poor woman went and sat down with her child at the rich man's door; the child died there; the contagion of typhus was wafted into the gilded saloon and the luxurious bed-chamber and the rich man's child fell a victim to the disease.

But n.o.body has considerably less power in society than he once had: and our hope is, that he may ultimately follow in the wake of Old Bogie, and disappear altogether. Wherever there is suffering and social depression, we may depend upon it that Somebody is to blame. The responsibility rests somewhere; and if we allow it to remain, it rests with us. We may not be able to cope with the evil as individuals, single-handed; but it becomes us to unite, and bring to bear upon the evil the joint moral power of society in the form of a law. A Law is but the expression of a combined will; and it does that for society, which society, in its individual and separate action, cannot so well or efficiently do for itself. Laws may do too much; they may meddle with things which ought to be "let alone;" but the abuse of a thing is no proper argument against its use, in cases where its employment is urgently called for.

Mere improvement of towns, however,--as respects drainage, sewerage, paving, water supply, and abolition of cellar dwellings,--will effect comparatively little, unless we can succeed in carrying the improvement further,--namely, into the Homes of the people themselves. A well-devised system of sanitary measures may ensure external cleanliness,--may provide that the soil on which the streets of houses are built shall be relieved of all superfluous moisture, and that all animal and vegetable refuse shall be promptly removed,--so that the air circulating through the streets, and floating from them into the houses of the inhabitants, shall not be laden with poisonous miasmata, the source of disease, suffering, and untimely death. Cellar dwellings may be prohibited, and certain regulations as to the buildings hereafter to be erected may also be enforced. But here munic.i.p.al or parochial authority stops: it can go no further; it cannot penetrate into the Home, and it is not necessary that it should do so.

The individual efforts of the community themselves are therefore needed; and any legislative enactments which dispensed with these would probably be an evil. The Government does not build the houses in which the people dwell. These are provided by employers and by capitalists, small and large. It is necessary, therefore, to enlist these interests in the cause of sanitary improvement, in order to ensure success.

Individual capitalists have already done much to provide wholesome houses for their working people, and have found their account in so doing, by their increased health, as well as in their moral improvement in all ways. Capitalists imbued with a benevolent and philanthropic spirit can thus spread blessings far and wide. And were a few enterprising builders in every town to take up this question practically, and provide a cla.s.s of houses for workpeople, with suitable accommodation; provided with arrangements for ventilation, cleanliness, and separation of the s.e.xes, such as health and comfort require; they would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it would not be easy to overestimate.

But there also needs the active co-operation of the dwellers in poor men's homes themselves. They, too, must join cordially in the sanitary movement; otherwise comparatively little good can be effected. You may provide an efficient water supply, yet, if the housewife will not use the water as it ought to be used,--if she be lazy and dirty,--the house will be foul and comfortless still. You may provide for ventilation, yet, if offensive matters be not removed, and doors and windows are kept closed, the pure outer air will be excluded, and the house will still smell fusty and unwholesome. In any case, there must be a cleanly woman to superintend the affairs of the house; and she cannot be made so by Act of Parliament! The Sanitary Commissioners cannot, by any "Notification," convert the slatternly shrew into a tidy housewife, nor the disorderly drunkard into an industrious, home-loving husband. There must, therefore, be individual effort on the part of the housewife in every working man's Home. As a recent writer on Home Reform observes,--

"We must begin by insisting that, however much of the physical and moral evils of the working cla.s.ses may be justly attributable to their dwellings, it is too often the case that more ought, in truth, to be attributed to themselves. For, surely, the inmate depends less on the house, than the house on the inmate; as mind has more power over matter than matter over mind. Let a dwelling be ever so poor and incommodious, yet a family with decent and cleanly habits will contrive to make the best of it, and will take care that there shall be nothing offensive in it which they have power to remove. Whereas a model house, fitted up with every convenience and comfort which modern science can supply, will, if occupied by persons of intemperate and uncleanly habits, speedily become a disgrace and a nuisance. A sober, industrious, and cleanly couple will impart an air of decency and respectability to the poorest dwelling; while the spendthrift, the drunkard, or the gambler will convert a palace into a scene of discomfort and disgust. Since, therefore, so much depends on the character and conduct of the parties themselves, it is right that they should feel their responsibility in this matter, and that they should know and attend to the various points connected with the improvement of their own Homes."

While this important truth should be kept steadily in view, every possible exertion ought, at the same time, to be made to provide a greater abundance of comfortable, decent, and comely dwellings for the working cla.s.ses; for it is to be lamented that, in many districts, they are, as it were, forced by the necessities of their condition to gravitate into localities, and to inhabit dwellings where decency is rendered almost impossible, where life becomes a slow dying, and where the influences operating on the entire human energies, physical and moral, are of the most deleterious character.

Homes are the manufactories of men, and as the Homes are, so will the men be. Mind will be degraded by the physical influences around it,--decency will be destroyed by constant contact with impurity and defilement,--and coa.r.s.eness of manners, habits, and tastes, will become inevitable. You cannot rear a kindly nature, sensitive against evil, careful of proprieties, and desirous of moral and intellectual improvement, amidst the darkness, dampness, disorder, and discomfort which unhappily characterize so large a portion of the dwellings of the poor in our large towns; and until we can, by some means or other, improve their domestic accommodation, their low moral and social condition must be regarded as inevitable.

We want not only a better cla.s.s of dwellings, but we require the people to be so educated as to appreciate them. An Irish landlord took his tenantry out of their mud huts, and removed them into comfortable dwellings which he had built for their accommodation. When he returned to his estate, he was greatly disappointed. The houses were as untidy and uncomfortable as before. The pig was still under the bed, and the hens over it. The concrete floor was as dirty as the mud one had been.

The panes of the windows were broken, and the garden was full of weeds.

The landlord wrote to a friend in despair. The friend replied, "You have begun at the wrong end. You ought to have taught them the value of cleanliness, thriftiness, and comfort." To begin at the beginning, therefore, we must teach the people the necessity of cleanliness, its virtues and its wholesomeness; for which purpose it is requisite that they should be intelligent, capable of understanding ideas conveyed in words, able to discern, able to read, able to think. In short, the people, as children, must first have been to school, and properly taught there; whereas we have allowed the majority of the working people to grow up untaught, nearly half of them unable to read and write; and then we expect them to display the virtues, prudence, judgment, and forethought of well-educated beings!

It is of the first importance to teach people cleanly habits. This can be done without teaching them either reading or writing. Cleanliness is more than wholesomeness. It furnishes an atmosphere of self-respect, and influences the moral condition of the entire household. It is the best exponent of the spirit of Thrift. It is to the economy of the household, what hygiene is to the human body. It should preside at every detail of domestic service. It indicates comfort and well-being. It is among the distinctive attributes of civilisation, and marks the progress of nations.

Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of pollution. He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any other description. People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent, industrious, and self-respecting. Unclean people are uncivilized. The dirty cla.s.ses of great towns are invariably the "dangerous cla.s.ses" of those towns. And if we would civilize the cla.s.ses yet uncivilized, we must banish dirt from amongst them.

Yet dirt forms no part of our nature. It is a parasite, feeding upon human life, and destroying it. It is hideous and disgusting. There can be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it.

Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers have clearly made out that the dirty cla.s.ses are the drunken cla.s.ses; and that they are p.r.o.ne to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul conditions in which they live.

We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency.

We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are, to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and circ.u.mstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings and the intellectual powers.

Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers. Among the eastern nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion. They esteem it not only as next to G.o.dliness, but as a part of G.o.dliness itself. They connect the idea of internal sanct.i.ty with that of external purification. They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they worship to come into His presence covered with impurity. Hence the Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to that of mosques; and alongside the place of worship is usually found the place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of purification previous to their act of worship.

"What worship," says a great writer, "is there not in mere washing!

perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool of a running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness--that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection--how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences to thy very soul! thou hast an increased tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages, with joy and holy grat.i.tude, had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker's gift and will."

The common well-being of men, women, and children depends upon attention to what at first sight may appear comparatively trivial matters. And unless these small matters be attended to, comfort in person, mind, and feeling is absolutely impossible. The physical satisfaction of a child, for example, depends upon attention to its feeding, clothing, and washing. These are the commonest of common things, and yet they are of the most essential importance. If the child is not properly fed and clothed, it will grow up feeble and ill-conditioned. And as the child is, so will the man be.

Grown people cannot be comfortable without regular attention to these common matters. Every one needs, and ought to have, comfort at home; and comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity, industry,--in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the mending of a shirt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the washing and dressing of a baby, are all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do these, before the management of a household, however poor, is entrusted to her.

"Why," asked Lord Ashburton in a lecture to the students of the Wolvesey training-schools, "why was one mother of a family a better economist than another? Why could one live in abundance where another starved?

Why, in similar dwellings, were the children of one parent healthy, of another puny and ailing? Why could this labourer do with ease a task that would kill his fellow? It was not luck nor chance that decided those differences; it was the patient observation of nature that suggested to some gifted minds rules for their guidance which had escaped the heedlessness of others."

It is not so much, however, the patient observation of nature, as good training in the home and in the school, that enables some women to accomplish so much more than others, in the development of human beings, and the promotion of human comfort. And to do this efficiently, women as well as men require to be instructed as to the nature of the objects upon which they work.

Take one branch of science as an ill.u.s.tration--the physiological. In this science we hold that every woman should receive some instruction.

And why? Because, if the laws of physiology were understood by women, children would grow up into better, healthier, happier, and probably wiser, men and women. Children are subject to certain physiological laws, the observance of which is necessary for their health and comfort.

Is it not reasonable, therefore, to expect that women should know something of those laws, and of their operation? If they are ignorant of them they will be liable to commit all sorts of blunders, productive of suffering, disease, and death. To what are we to attribute the frightful mortality of children in most of our large towns--where one-half of all that are born perish before they reach their fifth year? If women, as well as men, knew something of the laws of healthy living, about the nature of the atmosphere, how its free action upon the blood is necessary to health--of the laws of ventilation, cleanliness, and nutrition,--we cannot but think that the moral, not less than the physical condition of the human beings committed to their charge, would be greatly improved and promoted.

Were anything like a proper attention given to common things, there would not be such an amount of discomfort, disease, and mortality amongst the young. But we accustom people to act as if there were no such provisions as natural laws. If we violate them, we do not escape the consequences because we have been ignorant of their mode of operation. We have been provided with intelligence that we might _know_ them; and if society keep its members blind and ignorant, the evil consequences are inevitably reaped. Thus tens of thousands perish for lack of knowledge of even the smallest, and yet most necessary conditions of right living.

Women have also need to be taught the important art of domestic economy.

If they do not earn the family income, at least they have to spend the money earned; and their instruction ought to have a view to the spending of that money wisely. For this purpose, a knowledge of arithmetic is absolutely necessary. Some may say, "What use can a woman have for arithmetic?" But when men marry, they soon find this out. If the woman who has a household to manage be innocent of addition and multiplication; and if she fail to keep a record of her income or expenditure, she will, before long, find herself in great trouble. She will find that she cannot make the ends meet, and then run into debt. If she spend too much on dress, she will have too little for food or education. She will commit extravagances in one direction or another, and thus subject her household to great discomfort. She may also bring her husband into trouble through the debts she has contracted, and make a beginning of his misfortunes and sometimes of his ruin.

Much might be said in favour of household management, and especially in favour of improved cookery. Ill-cooked meals is a source of discomfort in many families. Bad cooking is waste,--waste of money and loss of comfort. Whom G.o.d has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and ill-boiled potatoes have very often put asunder. Among the "common things" which educators should teach the rising generation, this ought certainly not to be overlooked. It is the commonest and yet most neglected of the branches of female education.

The greater part of human labour is occupied in the direct production of the materials for human food. The farming cla.s.ses and their labourers devote themselves to the planting, rearing, and reaping of oats and other cereals; and the grazing farmer to the production of cattle and sheep, for the maintenance of the population at large. All these articles--corn, beef, mutton, and such-like--are handed over to the female half of the human species to be converted into food, for the sustenance of themselves, their husbands, and their families. How do they use their power? Can they cook? Have they been taught to cook? Is it not a fact that, in this country, cooking is one of the lost or undiscovered arts?

Thousands of artizans and labourers are deprived of half the actual nutriment of their food, and continue half-starved, because their wives are utterly ignorant of the art of cooking. They are yet in entire darkness as to the economizing of food, and the means of rendering it palatable and digestible.

Even the middle cla.s.ses are badly served in this respect. "If we could see," says a public writer, "by the help of an Asmodeus, what is going on at the dinner hour of the humbler of the middle cla.s.s,--what a spectacle of discomfort, waste, ill-temper, and consequent ill-conduct it would be! The man quarrels with his wife because there is nothing he can eat, and he generally makes up in drink for the deficiencies in the article of food. There is thus not only the direct waste of food and detriment to health, but the further consequent waste of the use of spirits, with its injury to the habits and the health."

On the other hand, people who eat well, drink moderately; the satisfaction of the appet.i.te dispensing with the necessity for resorting to stimulants. Good humour too, and good health, follow a good meal; and by a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well dressed in its way. A rich man may live very expensively and very ill; and a poor man may live frugally and very well, if it be his good fortune to have a good cook in his wife or in his servant.

The most worthless unit in a family is an ill-managing wife, or an indolent woman of any sort. The fair s.e.x are sometimes very acute in what concerns themselves. They keep a tight hand over their dressmakers and milliners. They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or a tuck too deep. But if their knowledge only extends to their own dress, they are not help-meets, but inc.u.mbrances. If they know nothing of their kitchen, and are at the mercy of the cook, their table will soon become intolerable. Bad soup, soft and flabby fish, meat burnt outside and raw within. The husband will soon fly from the Barmecide feast, and take refuge in his club, where he will not only find food that he can digest, but at the same time fly from the domestic discord that usually accompanies ill-cooked victuals at home.

Mr. Smee says that "diseases of the digestive organs greatly exceed in England the relative number found in other countries." The reason is, that in no other country do men eat so much ill-cooked food. The least observant of travellers must have been struck with admiration at the readiness with which a dinner of eight or ten dishes of various eatables makes its appearance in foreign inns; particularly when he remembers the perpetual mutton chop and mashed potatoes of the English road. The author remembers arriving at a roadside inn, in a remote part of Dauphiny, immediately under the foot of the Pic du Midi. On looking at the clay floor, and the worn state of the furniture, he remarked to his friend, "Surely we can get no dinner here." "Wait till you see," was his answer. In about half-an-hour, the table (though propped up) was spread with a clean table-cloth; and successive dishes of soup, fowl, "ros-bif," pomme-de-terre frite, French beans, with wholesome bread and b.u.t.ter, made their appearance. In the princ.i.p.al inns of most provincial towns in England, it would not have been possible to obtain such a dinner.

Great would be the gain to the community if cookery were made an ordinary branch of female education. To the poor, the gain would be incalculable. "Among the prizes which the Bountifuls of both s.e.xes are fond of bestowing in the country, we should like to see some offered for the best boiled potato, the best grilled mutton chop, and the best seasoned hotch-potch, soup, or broth. In writing of a well-boiled potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt of many for attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so common. But the fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the origin of contempt, from their ignorance--there being not one person in a hundred who has ever seen and tasted that great rarity--a well-boiled potato."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Examiner_.]

In short, we want common sense in cookery, as in most other things. Food should be used, and not abused. Much of it is now absolutely wasted, wasted for want of a little art in cooking it. Food is not only wasted by bad cooking; but much of it is thrown away which French women would convert into something savoury and digestible. Health, morals, and family enjoyments, are all connected with the question of cookery. Above all, it is the handmaid of Thrift. It makes the most and the best of the bounties of G.o.d. It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account.

Every Englishwoman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the members of her household.

"It appears to me," said Mrs. Margaretta Grey, "that with an increase of wealth unequally distributed, and a pressure of population, there has sprung up amongst us a spurious refinement, that cramps the energy and circ.u.mscribes the usefulness of women in the upper cla.s.s of society. A lady, to be such, must be a lady, and nothing else.... Ladies dismissed from the dairy, the confectionery, the store-room, the still-room, the poultry-yard, the kitchen-garden, and the orchard" [she might have added, the spinning-wheel], "have hardly yet found for themselves a sphere equally useful and important in the pursuits of trade and art, to which to apply their too abundant leisure.

"When, at any time, has society presented, on the one hand, so large an array of respectably educated individuals, embarra.s.sed for want of a proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a mult.i.tude of untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their misery and degradation? What an obstruction to usefulness and all eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly connected, to work at anything!"[1]

[Footnote 1: _Memoir of John Grey, of Dalston_. p. 290.]

Many intelligent, high-minded ladies, who have felt disgusted at the idleness to which "society" condemns them, have of late years undertaken the work of visiting the poor and of nursing--a n.o.ble work. But there is another school of usefulness which stands open to them. Let them study the art of common cookery, and diffuse the knowledge of it amongst the people. They will thus do an immense amount of good; and bring down the blessings of many a half-hungered husband upon their benevolent heads.

Women of the poorer cla.s.ses require much help from those who are better educated, or who have been placed in better circ.u.mstances than themselves. The greater number of them marry young, and suddenly enter upon a life for which they have not received the slightest preparation.

They know nothing of cookery, of sewing or clothes mending, or of economical ways of spending their husbands' money. Hence slatternly and untidy habits, and uncomfortable homes, from which the husband is often glad to seek refuge in the nearest public-house. The following story, told by Joseph Corbett, a Birmingham operative, before a Parliamentary Committee, holds true of many working people in the manufacturing districts.

"My mother," he said, "worked in a manufactory from a very early age.

She was clever and industrious, and, moreover, she had the reputation of being virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early. She became the mother of eleven children: I am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important duties of a wife and mother. But she was lamentably deficient in domestic knowledge. In that most important of all human instruction--how to make the home and the fireside to possess a charm for her husband and children--she had never received one single lesson. She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so everything like comfort disappeared altogether. The power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She knew not the value of cherishing in my father's mind a love of domestic objects. Not one moment's happiness did I ever see under my father's roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother.