EXPENDITURE OF THE WORKING CLASSES. 535 



longevity is owing to the use of open fireplaces"; probably a consider- 

 able part is owing to it. We all know how close and stifling is the 

 atmosphere of a room heated by a stove, and how much more difficult 

 it is to keep a room perfectly ventilated in summer than it is in winter, 

 when the fire is constantly changing the air. It may be true that three 

 fourths of the heat of our fireplaces passes up the chimney and is lost 

 to us; but we gain far more advantage by the fresh air constantly in- 

 troduced into the room. Now, with improved grates and improved 

 fireplaces we may retain all the advantages of the open fire without so 

 great a waste either of the substance of the consumer or of the national 

 stock of coal; and attention is already being devoted to this fact in 

 middle-class households, but some time must yet elapse before the 

 advantage is reaped by the working classes. At a former meeting of 

 this Association Mr. Edward Atkinson exhibited a portable oven or 

 cooking-stove, which was a marvel of simplicity and economy. He has 

 described it at length in his 'Science of Nutrition,' 1892. He argues 

 that the attempts to combine cooking with the warming of a room or 

 house are absurdly wasteful; that almost the whole of the fuel used in 

 cooking is wasted; and that nine tenths of the time devoted to watching 

 the process of cooking is wasted; and he estimates the waste of food 

 from bad cooking in the United States at $1,000,000,000 a year. I 

 have not, however, heard of his oven being at all extensively used. 



Upon the thorny subject of dress it is perilous to venture; but it is 

 impossible to be in the neighborhood of a London park on a Sunday 

 afternoon without feeling that the efforts of domestic servants to follow 

 the rapidly changing vagaries of fashion are carried to a pernicious de- 

 gree of waste. The blouse of the French workman and the bare head 

 of the Parisian factory-girl or flower-girl are infinitely more pleasing 

 than the soiled and frowsy woolens or the dowdy hats of their English 

 fellows, nor does the difference of climate afford an adequate explana- 

 tion of the difference of habit. We must perhaps admit a greater dis- 

 like in England to any external indication of a difference in wealth by 

 a costume different in kind. M. Lavollee, after referring to the low 

 price of the ready-made suits which the English factories "fling by the 

 million on the markets of the world, including their own," adds: "This 

 extraordinary cheapness is, however, not always without inconvenience 

 to the consumer. If the clothes he buys cost little, they are not lasting, 

 and their renewal becomes in the long run very burdensome. This re- 

 newal is, too, the more frequent in that the wife of the English work- 

 man is in general far from skillful in sewing and mending. Whether 

 she lacks inclination, or the necessary training, or whether the fatigues 

 of a too frequent maternity make her role as a housewife too difficult 

 for her to support, the woman of the people is generally, on the other 

 side of the Channel, a rather poor cook, an indifferent needle-woman 



