GROWTH UNDER STORMY SKIES. 203 



and wide publicity to my statements. Clergyman wrote to 

 me to bear testimony to the truth contained in my book. 



" Things are not so bad," wrote a Worcester curate 

 to me, " as they are in other places. I know a wagoner who 

 gets 153. a week, and who pays 2s. 6d. a week for a good cot- 

 tage ; and a cowman who gets 175. 6d. a week. From my 

 own point of view one of the worst things about the poverty 

 of the labourer is the absence of privacy." Here he struck 

 a note which few are sensitive enough to sound. 



The authors, however, who carried out the most pain- 

 staking investigations into labourers' budgets were Miss 

 May Kendall and Mr. Seebohm Rowntree. After many 

 visits to their homes to get as accurate details as possible, 

 the veil was drawn aside and the contents revealed in a 

 startling book, called How the Labourer Lives. \Ve have had 

 many prose poems written round Harvest Suppers. It was 

 left for Mr. Rowntree to write the prose poem of the age 

 on suppers of bread and margarine. 



These painstaking investigators delved into the hidden 

 mines of the dark larders of the cottagers and produced a 

 poignant human document, undecorated by literary adorn- 

 ment. Budget after budget, even in 1912-3, showed how 

 the labourer's wife was trying to make both ends meet out of 

 weekly earnings which did not exceed I2s. to 135., 14$. or 153. 

 a week. In the northern counties it showed how she man- 

 aged to luxuriate upon the higher wage of i6s.,i7s. or i a 

 week. Budget after budget revealed the fact that in coun- 

 ties overflowing with milk and meat, margarine was eaten 

 instead of butter, and that dinner consisted of suet pudding 

 and potatoes, varied by bread and margarine and cheese. 

 There was a Sunday joint, and occasionally during the week 

 bacon or fried liver. 



Invariably for breakfast and tea, bread and margarine 

 were repeated with monotonous reiteration. 



Nothing more completely shattered the townsman's 

 delusion that life is made easier in the country because 

 labourers can produce for themselves the necessaries of 

 life, than these household tragedies \vritten in tiny columns 

 of pence. A number of these labourers' budgets were ere- 



