“I find that my average expenditure on boots and shoes for the year
I gave you and for the year just ended (September 30) is £4 14_s._
9_d._; I never kept my accounts before, so that I cannot be sure
about my permanent average, but I should say it was generally about 5
guineas. This year was a very dry year, and not so ruinous as usual,
and I cycled more and walked less.”
It should be noted that the three office workers who spend over £40
on dress are all dissatisfied with the result, and consider that they
have to exercise rigid economy to keep their expenditure down to that
limit. At the same time, all three are a little ashamed to find that
they spend so much. This arises from the fact that the expenditure is
always compared with that of the girl living at home on an allowance.
The comparison is not justifiable. The office worker wears out more
clothes and has no time for making or mending.
I lay stress on this because one difficulty in the way of obtaining
accounts is a fear of incurring the disapprobation of the censors who
think that to devote half one’s time to managing to dress well on £30
a year earned by some one else is less extravagant than to earn £300
a year and spend £50 of it on dress. I asked a journalist, one of the
very few working women of my acquaintance always suitably and prettily
dressed, if she would let me have her accounts. She owned she had not
the courage to confess what a large proportion of her income had to go
for clothes. Later on, after reading the journalistic comments on the
expenditure tables submitted to the British Association, she told me
how thankful she was she had withheld hers--“They call £40 a lavish
expenditure!” And yet I have little doubt that few people could under
the same circumstances produce so good a result at the same expense;
while at the same time from a business point of view such an outlay in
my friend’s branch of journalism repays itself with high interest.
My last set of tables, as I have already said, are not those of a
wage-earner. The average expenditure is here given for three sets of
three years, the personal allowance being £30, £40 and £50 for the
successive periods (rising to £60 during the last year of the third
period). Books and subscriptions and presents are the other items of
expenditure not given here.