rective to general statements that village 

 labourers and their families manage to live 

 well and healthily on their incomes. 



Or will you praise the homely, healthy fare, 

 Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share T 

 Oh ! trifle not with wants you cannot feel 

 Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal. 



The common feature of the labourer's diet 

 is its depressing sameness and the absence 

 once more of initiative and enterprise. 1 We 

 are struck by the meagre use made of vege- 

 tables, the almost complete absence of the 

 cheap and savoury soups which Continental 

 peasants prepare so deftly, the comparative 

 rarity of the fish which bulks so largely in the 

 dietary of our townsfolk. General criticism 

 directed against the " thriftlessness " of our 

 agricultural labourers' wives largely falls to 

 the ground in face of the mere fact that the 

 miserable wages " go round " at all, but when 

 a foreigner denies that our poorer housewives 

 know how to cook properly he is on surer 

 ground. The English race appears to have 

 little aptitude for clever cookery, and as long 

 as the better-off classes are content with chops 



1 For careful and accurate examples of an agricultural 

 labourer's dietary collected from various counties, see 

 Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's latest book, How the Labourer 

 Lives. 



