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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 819 
workmen’s families, that I desire especially to call attention. I have given else- 
where an account of his life and work.!' Broadly speaking, he set himself by the 
comparative study of workmen’s families in different countries of Europe to arrive at 
the causes of well-being and of misery among the labouring classes. The subject 
was too large to lead him in many directions to very precise conclusions. We are 
reminded in reading him of an incident at a dinner of the Political Economy Club 
in 1876, when Mr. Robert Lowe propounded the question, ‘What are the more 
important results which have followed from the publication of the “ Wealth of 
Nations” just one hundred years ago?’ Some of the most enthusiastic admirers of 
Adam Smith were present, Mr. Gladstone and M. Léon Say among the number ; 
and Mr. Lowe trenchantly declared that it all came to this: ‘ The causes of wealth 
are two, industry and thrift; the causes of poverty are two, idleness and waste.’ 
It was left to Mr. W. E. Forster to make the rugged remark, ‘ You don’t want 
to go to Adam Smith for that—you can get that out of the Proverbs of Solomon.’ 
And Le Play’s conclusions frequently go still further back, to the Decalogue. 
There are, however, many observations, suggestive and original, upon the material 
facts, the economic life, of the families he brought under review. And we are 
now concerned rather with his method than with his conclusions. Given half a 
dozen Le Plays applying their minds to the study of the consumption of wealth 
among the working classes of England, we might expect soon to see a greater 
advance in comfort, a greater rise in the standard of life, than improved arts of 
production alone are likely to yield in a generation. Certain English writers had, 
indeed, prepared family budgets before Le Play arose. But their method was 
usually incomplete, except for the specific purpose they had before them. David 
Davies and Sir F. Eden were chiefly concerned with the poor law, Arthur Young 
and Cobbett with agricultural politics, Dudley Baxter and Leone Levi with taxa- 
tion, Le Play may fairly be called the father of the scientific family budget. 
His studies of four English families* are the most complete economic pictures 
of English popular life to be found in literature. With the aid of some local 
authority he chose what was thought a fairly typical family, and then, frankly 
explaining his scientific object and securing confidence, he set himself to study it. 
Nothing of economic interest is too unimportant for him to record. A minute 
inventory and valuation of clothes, furniture, and household goods; a detailed 
account, item by item, of income from all sources and of expenditure upon all 
objects for a year, with the quantities and prices of foods, &e.; a description of the 
family, member by member, their past history, their environment, how they came 
to be where they are and to earn their living as they do; their resources in the 
present, their provision for the future; their meals, hygiene, and recreations ; 
their social, moral, political, and religious observances—nothing escapes him. And 
the whole is organised, classified, fitted into a framework identical for all cases, 
with the painstaking and methodical industry of the naturalist Contrasted with 
this the realism of novelists, the occasional excursions of journalists, the observa- 
tions of professed economists, are pitiably incomplete. As early as 1857 Le Play 
found one ardent admirer in England, Mr. W. L. Sargant, whose ‘Economy of 
the Labouring Classes,’ avowedly inspired by Le Play, is a valuable and interesting 
piece of work. Since then, however, with the magnificent exception of Mr. 
Charles Booth, little has been done to throw light upon the mode of life of the 
wage-earners of England. The Board of Trade heralded the formation of its 
Labour Department by issuing a Blue Book—unhappily without sequel—entitled 
‘ Returns of Expenditure by Working Men,’ 1889, and the Economic Club has 
published a useful collection of studies in ‘ Family Budgets,’ 1896. But we shall 
probably still depend very much upon foreign observers for fuller knowledge of 
the subject. M. René Lavollée, an adherent who may almost be called a col- 
league of Le Play, has devoted to England a whole volume of his important work 
‘ Les Classes Ouvriéres en Europe: études sur leur situation matérielle et morale.’ * 
1 Harvard Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. iv.1890; Journal of Royal Statis- 
tical Society, March 1893; Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, s.v. Le Play, 1896 
2 Les Owriers Européens, Paris, folio, 1855. 
8 Paris, 1896, tom. iii. 656 pp., large 8vo., 
3@2 
