legislators thought to make things cheap, in an Ordinance of Edward the
Second, of the year 1314, in which it is set forth that there is ‘an
intolerable dearth, in these days, of oxen, cows, sheep, hogs, geese,
capons, hens, chickens, pigeons, and eggs;’ and therefore, amongst other
regulations, it is prescribed that twenty eggs shall be sold for a
penny, and that the eggs should be forfeited if the salesman would not
take that price. Some years before (1274), the Lord Mayor of London, in
a similar proclamation, shows us how the commerce of food was conducted,
by ordaining that no huckster of fowl should go out of the city to meet
the country people coming in with their commodities, but buy in the city
after three o’clock, when the great men and citizens had supplied
themselves at the first hand. Of course, these regulations did produce
‘an intolerable dearth;’ and Edward the Second had the candour to
acknowledge this by a proclamation of 1315, in which he says, ‘we have
understood that such a proclamation, which at that time we believed
would be for the profit of the people of our realm, redounds to their
greater damage than profit.’ Nevertheless, two centuries and a half
later, the civic wisdom discovered that ‘through the grievous
covetousness of poulterers, the prices of all poultry wares are grown to
be excessive and unreasonable;’ and therefore the Lord Mayor decrees the
prices of geese and chickens, and commands that eggs shall be five a
penny. (Stow.) In 1597 we learn, that even an attorney-general could not
have the benefit of such an enforced cheapness; for the household book
of Sir Edward Coke shows us that his steward expended 4_s._ 8_d._ in one
week of May, for his master’s family in Holborn, by daily purchases of
eggs at ten for a groat; while at his country house at Godwicke, in
Norfolk, in the same year, he daily bought eggs at twenty a groat in
July.
The fact that in 1597 eggs were double the price in Holborn as compared
with the eggs of Godwicke, is one of the incidental proofs of an almost
self-evident principle, that commercial intercourse, produced by
facilities of communication, is one of the great causes of cheapness
arising out of equalisation of prices. But such facilities further lower
prices, by stimulating production. It is to be noted, that while the
Attorney-General, when in the country, killed his own bullocks and
sheep, and had green geese, capons, and chickens in profusion out of his
own poultry-yard, he bought his eggs. We have no doubt that his
occasional presence at Godwicke encouraged the cottagers in the
provision of eggs for the great man’s use. He did not produce them
himself, for the carriage to London would have been most costly. But his
purchases were irregular. When the family went to Holborn, the eggs had
to seek an inferior market. If no one was at hand, the production
declined. They did not go to London, to lower the price there, by
increasing the supply.
Eggs at ten a groat, even, sound cheap. But while Coke bought his eggs
at ten a groat, he only paid two shillings a stone for his beef. Ten
eggs were, therefore, equivalent to about two pounds of beef. In this
month of April, 1850, good eggs may be bought in London at sixteen for a
shilling, which shilling would purchase two pounds of beef. Eggs are,
therefore, more than one half cheaper in London now than two centuries
and a half ago, by comparison with meat. They are far cheaper when we
regard the altered value of money. In the days of Queen Elizabeth eggs
were a common article of food. We learn from no less an authority than
the Chamberlain of a renowned inn in Kent, that the company who
travelled with the carriers used eggs plentifully and luxuriously. ‘They
are up already, and call for eggs and butter.’ (Henry IV. pt. 1.) But if
we infer that the population of London, in those days of supposed
cheapness, could obtain eggs with the facility with which we now obtain
them, and that the estimated two hundred thousand of that population
could call for them as freely as the pack-horse travellers at
Rochester,—the inference may be corrected by the knowledge of a few
facts, which will show by what means, then undiscovered, a perishable
article is now supplied with unfailing regularity, and without any limit
but that enforced by the demand, to a population of two millions and a
quarter. That such a population can be so supplied without a continuing
increase, or a perpetual variation of price, is an Illustration of
Cheapness, which involves a view of some remarkable peculiarities of our
age, and some important characteristics of our social condition.
In the days of Edward II., the villagers who dwelt within a few miles of
London daily surrounded its walls with their poultry and eggs. The
poulterers were forbidden to become their factors; but unquestionably it
was for the interest of both parties that some one should stand between
the producer and the consumer. Without this, there would have been no
regular production. Perhaps the production was very irregular, the price
very fluctuating, the dearth often intolerable. This huckstering had to
go on for centuries before it became commerce. It would have been
difficult, even fifty years ago, to imagine that eggs, a frail
commodity, and quickly perishable, should become a great article of
import. Extravagant would have been the assertion that a kingdom should
be supplied with sea-borne eggs, with as much speed, with more
regularity, and at a more equalised price, than a country market-town of
the days of George III. It has been stated, that, before the Peace of
1815, Berwick-upon-Tweed shipped annually as many eggs to London as were
valued at 30,000_l._ Before the Peace, there were no steam-vessels; and
it is difficult to conceive how the cargoes from Berwick, with a passage
that often lasted a month, could find their way to the London consumer
in marketable condition. Perhaps the eaters of those eggs, collected in
the Border districts, were not so fastidious in their tastes as those
who now despise a French egg which has been a week travelling from the
Pas de Calais. But the Berwick eggs were, at any rate, the commencement
of a real commerce in eggs.
In 1820, five years after the Peace, thirty-one millions of foreign eggs
found their way into England, paying a duty of 11,077_l._, at the rate
of a penny for each dozen. They principally came from France, from that
coast which had a ready communication with Kent and Sussex, and with the
Thames. These eggs, liable as they were to a duty, came to the consumer
so much cheaper than the Berwick eggs, or the Welsh eggs, or the eggs
even that were produced in Middlesex or Surrey, that the trade in eggs
was slowly but surely revolutionised. Large heaps of eggs made their
appearance in the London markets, or stood in great boxes at the door of
the butterman, with tempting labels of ‘24 a shilling,’ or ‘20 a
shilling.’ They were approached with great suspicion, and not unjustly
so; for the triumphs of steam were yet far from complete. But it was
discovered that there was an egg-producing country in close proximity to
London, in which the production of eggs for the metropolitan market
might be stimulated by systematic intercourse, and become a mutual
advantage to a population of two millions, closely packed in forty
square miles of street, and a population of six hundred thousand spread
over two thousand five hundred square miles of arable, meadow, and
forest land, with six or eight large towns. This population of the Pas
de Calais is chiefly composed of small proprietors. Though the farms are
larger there than in some other parts of France, some of the
peculiarities of what is called the small culture are there observable.
Poultry, especially, is most abundant. Every large and every small
farmhouse has its troops of fowls and turkeys. The pullets are carefully
fed and housed; the eggs are duly collected; the good-wife carries them
to the markets of Arras, or Bethune, or St. Omer, or Aire, or Boulogne,
or Calais: perhaps the egg-collector traverses the district with his
cart and his runners. The egg-trade with England gradually went on
increasing. In 1835, France consigned to us seventy-six millions of
eggs, paying a duty of tenpence for 120. In 1849, we received
ninety-eight millions of foreign eggs, paying a duty of
tenpence-halfpenny per 120, amounting to 35,694_l._ These are known in
the egg-market as eggs of Caen, Honfleur, Cherbourg, Calais, and
Belgium.
In 1825 the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland was
put upon the same footing as the coasting trade of the ports of England.
Steam navigation between the two islands also had received an enormous
impulse. The small farmers and cottiers of Ireland were poultry-keepers.
Too often the poor oppressed tenants were wont to think—‘The hen lays
eggs, they go into the lord’s frying-pan.’ Steam navigation gave a new
impulse to Irish industry. Before steam-vessels entered the Cove of
Cork, an egg, at certain seasons, could scarcely be found in the market
of that city. England wanted eggs; steam-boats would convey them rapidly
to Bristol; the small farmers applied themselves to the production of
eggs; Cork itself then obtained a constant and cheap supply. In 1835
Ireland exported as many eggs to England as were valued at 156,000_l._,
being in number nearly a hundred millions. In 1847 it was stated by Mr.
Richardson, in a work on Domestic Fowls, published in Dublin, that the
export of eggs from Ireland to England was ‘bordering on a million
sterling.’ The eggs are valued at 5_s._ 6_d._ for 124, which would
indicate an export of about four hundred and fifty millions of eggs. We
come to more precise results when we learn, on the authority of the
secretary of the Dublin Steam-Packet Company, that in the year 1844–5
there were shipped from Dublin alone, to London and Liverpool,
forty-eight millions of eggs, valued at 122,500_l._ In the census of
1841, the poultry of Ireland was valued at 202,000_l._, taking each fowl
at 6_d._ per head. The return was below the reality; for the peasantry
were naturally afraid of some fiscal imposition, worse even than the old
tax of ‘duty fowls,’ when they had to account for their Dame Partletts.
Eight millions of poultry, which this return indicates, is, however, a
large number. The gross number of holdings in Ireland, as shown by the
agricultural returns of 1847, was 935,000; and this would give above
eight fowls to every cottage and farm,—a number sufficient to produce
four hundred and fifty millions of eggs for exportation, if all could be
collected and all carried to a port. One hundred and twenty eggs yearly
is the produce of a good hen. It would be safe to take the Irish export
of eggs at half the number,—an enormous quantity, when we consider what
a trifling matter an egg appears when we talk of large culture and
extensive commerce. Out of such trifles communities have grown into
industrious and frugal habits and consequent prosperity. There was a
time when the English farmer’s wife would keep her household out of the
profits of her butter, her poultry, and her eggs; when she duly rose at
five o’clock on the market-day morning, rode with her wares some seven
miles in a jolting cart, and stood for six hours at a stall till she had
turned all her commodity into the ready penny. The old thrift and the
old simplicity may return, when English farmers learn not to despise
small gains, and understand how many other things are to be done with
the broad acres, besides growing wheat at a monopoly price.
The coast-trade brings English eggs in large numbers into the London
markets. Scotch eggs are also an article of import. The English eggs,
according to the ‘Price Current,’ fetch 25 per cent. more than the
Scotch or Irish. The average price of all eggs at the present time, in
the wholesale London market, is five shillings for 120—exactly a
halfpenny each.
In the counties by which London is surrounded, the production of fresh
eggs is far below the metropolitan demand. Poultry, indeed, is produced
in considerable quantities, but there is little systematic attention to
the profitable article of eggs. Where is the agricultural labourer who
has his half-dozen young hens, from which number, with good management,
nine hundred, and even a thousand eggs may be annually produced, that
will obtain a high price—three times as high as foreign eggs? These six
hens would yield the cottager a pleasant addition to his scanty wages,
provided the egg-collection were systematised, as it is in Ireland. Mr.
Weld, in his ‘Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon,’ says, ‘The
eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round, by
runners, commonly boys from nine years old and upwards, each of whom has
a regular beat, which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of
his toil carefully stowed in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met
with these boys on their rounds, and the caution necessary for bringing
in their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of
business and steadiness to their manner, unusual to the ordinary
volatile habits of children in Ireland.’
Making a reasonable estimate of the number of foreign eggs, and of Irish
and Scotch eggs that come into the port of London—and putting them
together at a hundred and fifty millions, every individual of the London
population consumes sixty eggs, brought to his own door from sources of
supply which did not exist thirty years ago. Nor will such a number
appear extravagant when we consider how accurately the egg-consumption
is regulated by the means and the wants of this great community. Rapid
as the transit of these eggs has become, there are necessarily various
stages of freshness in which they reach the London market. The retail
dealer purchases accordingly of the egg-merchant; and has a commodity
for sale adapted to the peculiar classes of his customers. The dairyman
or poulterer in the fashionable districts permits, or affects to permit,
no cheap sea-borne eggs to come upon his premises. He has his eggs of a
snowy whiteness at four or six a shilling, ‘warranted new-laid;’ and his
eggs from Devonshire, cheap at eight a shilling, for all purposes of
polite cookery. In Whitechapel, or Tottenham Court Road, the
bacon-seller ‘warrants’ even his twenty-four a shilling. In truth, the
cheapest eggs from France and Ireland are as good, if not better, than
the eggs which were brought to London in the days of bad roads and slow
conveyance—the days of road-waggons and pack-horses. And a great benefit
it is, and a real boast of that civilisation which is a consequence of
free and rapid commercial intercourse. Under the existing agricultural
condition of England, London could not, by any possibility, be supplied
with eggs to the extent of a hundred and fifty millions annually, beyond
the existing supply from the neighbouring counties. The cheapness of
eggs through the imported supply has raised up a new class of
egg-consumers. Eggs are no longer a luxury which the poor of London
cannot touch. France and Ireland send them cheap eggs. But France and
Ireland produce eggs for London, that the poultry-keepers may supply
themselves with other things which they require more than eggs. Each is
a gainer by the exchange. The industry of each population is stimulated;
the wants of each supplied.
MUSIC IN HUMBLE LIFE.
Music—that is, classical music—has of late years been gradually
descending from the higher to the humbler classes. The Muse is changing
her associates; she is taking up with the humble and needy, and leaves
nothing better to her aristocratic friends than their much-loved Italian
Opera. It is to the masses that she awards some of her choicest
scientific gifts. She has of late years permeated and softened the hard
existence of the artisan and the labourer.
It was not always thus. There was an ‘olden time’ in England when Music
was more assiduously cultivated among the higher and educated classes
than it has been in more modern days. In the sixteenth century,
knowledge of music, and skill in its performance were deemed
indispensable to persons of condition. Queen Elizabeth, among her other
vanities, was proud of her musical powers, and not a little jealous of
her unhappy rival, the Queen of Scots, on account of her proficiency in
this accomplishment. The favourite vocal music of that day consisted of
the madrigals of the great Italian and English masters—those wonderful
works of art, which, like the productions of ancient Grecian sculpture,
have baffled all attempts at modern imitation. Yet every well-educated
lady or gentleman was expected to take a part in those profound and
complicated harmonies; and at a social meeting, to decline doing so, on
the score of inability, was regarded as a proof of rudeness and
low-breeding. In Morley’s very curious book, the ‘_Introduction to
Practical Music_,’ a gentleman is represented as seeking musical
instruction in consequence of a mortification of this kind. ‘Supper
being ended,’ says he, ‘and musicke books, according to the custom,
being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with
a part, earnestly requesting me to sing; but when, after many excuses, I
protested unfainedly that I could not, every one began to wonder, yea,
some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up.’
Music declined in England along with manners. In the middle of the last
century, a period rivalling the days of Charles the Second in moral
profligacy, Lord Chesterfield, who of course expressed the fashionable
feeling of the time, advised his son to eschew the practice of music as
unbecoming a gentleman. This feeling, we need scarcely say, has long
passed away; some of our most accomplished amateurs of both sexes being
found in the highest circles of society.
Traces, however, of the ancient and extensive cultivation of music were
never entirely obliterated; and, as might be expected, they existed,
along with more primitive manners, in the more remote districts of the
country. In some of the northern counties, particularly Lancashire and
Yorkshire, the inhabitants have from time immemorial been remarkable for
skill in vocal harmony, and for their knowledge of the old part-music of
the English school. As these districts have gradually become the seats
of manufactures, the same musical habits have been kept up among the
growing population; and so salutary have these habits been found—so
conducive to order, temperance, and industry—that many great
manufacturers have encouraged them by furnishing to their workpeople the
means of musical instruction.
The Messrs. Strutt, of Derby, trained some of their brawny workmen into
a band, and many of them could step from the forge into the orchestra,
and perform some of the most complicated pieces, by English and foreign
composers, in a creditable style.
Another set of harmonious blacksmiths awaken the echoes of the remotest
Welsh mountains. The correspondent of a London paper, while visiting
Merthyr, was exceedingly puzzled by hearing boys in the Cyfarthfa works
whistling airs rarely heard except in the fashionable ball-room,
opera-house, or drawing-room. He afterwards discovered that the
proprietor of the works, Mr. Robert Crawshay, had established among his
men a brass band, which practises once a week throughout the year. They
have the good fortune to be led by a man (one of the ‘roll-turners’) who
must have had somewhere a superior musical education. ‘I had the
pleasure of hearing them play, and was astonished at their proficiency.
They number sixteen instruments. I heard them perform the Overtures to
Zampa, The Caliph of Bagdad, and Fra Diavolo, Vivi tu, some concerted
music from Roberto, Don Giovanni, and Lucia, with a quantity of Waltzes,
Polkas, and dance music. The bandmaster had them under excellent
control; he everywhere took the time well, and the instruments preserved
it, each taking up his lead with spirit and accuracy; in short, I have
seldom heard a regimental band more perfect than this handful of
workmen, located (far from any place where they might command the
benefit of hearing other bands) in the mountains of Wales. The great
body of men at these works are extremely proud of their musical
performances, and like to boast of them. I have been told it cost Mr.
Crawshay great pains and expense to bring this band to its present
excellent condition. If so, he now has his reward. Besides this, he has
shown what the intellectual capacity of the workman is equal to, and,
above all, he has provided a rational and refined amusement for classes
whose leisure time would otherwise probably have been less creditably
spent than in learning or listening to music.’
The habits and manners of these men appear to have been decidedly
improved by these softening influences. They are peaceful and simple.
‘During a stay of several weeks in the town,’ says the same authority,
‘I neither saw nor heard of altercations or fighting. The man, on his
return from labour, usually washes (the colliers and miners invariably
wash every day from head to foot), puts on another coat, and sits down
to his meal of potatoes, meat, and tea, or broth, and bread and cheese,
as the case may be. His wife and children, comfortably clothed and
cheerful, sit down with him. Afterwards he goes to a neighbour’s house,
or receives some friends of his own, when they discuss the news and
light gossip affecting their class, or talk over the success or
difficulties attending their work and their prospects as regards the
future. Visiting many of their houses at night, I saw numbers of such
groups; in one instance only I saw them drinking beer, and that was at a
kind of house warming, one of the body having that night taken
possession of the neatly furnished house where I found them assembled.’
These are, indeed, only insulated good effects wrought by private
individuals; but their beneficial effects have led to and helped on the
systematic cultivation of music as a branch of popular education under
the direct sanction and authority of the Government; and the labours of
Mr. Hullah, who was chosen as the agent in this good work, have been
attended with a degree of success far beyond anything that could have
been anticipated.