54 SOME RECENT MISINTERPRETATIONS OF THE 



In the next table we find illustrations of the correlations between 

 physical environment and indirect parental environment. I have in 

 this table purposely left out the correlations of mother's employment 

 with certain other factors for our experience has shown that its effect 

 is of a mixed nature. It may arise from extreme poverty, i.e. be 

 associated with low wage of father and thus with insufficiency of food, 

 or in other cases, especially in the textile towns, the young mother 

 almost invariably goes to work and this work is a source of increased 

 family income and better food supply. The high correlation given 

 above for emplovment of mother and income of family show that in 

 Rochdale the work of the mother is a source of prosperity 1 . 



TABLE VII. 



Inter correlations of Indirect Parental Environmental Factors. 

 Rochdale and Blackburn. 



Rochdale Blackburn 



Income of family and father's occupation ... ... ... -56 



,, ,, employment of mother ... ... -60 



Insufficiency of food and father's wage ... ... ... -45 



,, ,, ,, father's regularity of work ... -61 



,, ,, rent ... ... ... ... -48 



Father's wage and class of father's labour ... ... -75 



,, ,, ,, rent ... ... ... ... ... -34 



Mean ... ... -541 



We next turn to the intercorrelation of physical and indirect 

 parental factors in the following table (Table VIII). 



It will be seen that these intercorrelations are brought below -50 

 owing to the last two values for overcrowding. I doubt very much 

 whether overcrowding as measured by persons per room is to be 

 considered as a fair measure of bad environment; it frequently 

 denotes only numerous children in a possibly prosperous home. 

 There are obviously mixed causes at. work, largely depending on the 

 age of both father and mother, when we consider the association of 

 the wage of the former and the employment of the latter in relation 

 to overcrowding. 



1 In Blackburn the correlation of mother's employment with father's wage (not 

 total income of family) is -27, with insufficiency of food - -03 and with cleanliness 

 of home O2. All these results in my opinion show the influence of mixed causes, 

 poverty compelling to employment in some cases and the increase of prosperity 

 following from employment in fairly prosperous families actually bettering the home 

 conditions in other cases. 



