Columns:
A Food and Cleaning Materials.
B Household Washing.
C Service.
D Coals.
E Gas.
F Electricity.
G Rent.
H Rates.
I Garden.
J Miscellaneous.
K Total.
L Guests.[88]
M Remarks.
+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|Weeks | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M |
|Ending. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|Jan. 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 16 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 23 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 30 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Feb. 6 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 13 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 20 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 27 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|March 6 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 13 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 20 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| " 27 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|April 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|TOTAL. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|Weekly | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Average. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
The table appended has been in actual use for some time, and has served
on more than one occasion to check expenditure which was unduly
increasing. It could easily be modified in various ways. Food could be
further subdivided, and headings for dress and other personal expenses
could be added. Probably, however, it will be found better to keep one
card for the quarterly household expenditure, and others for the
personal expenditure of the separate members of the household. The
amount of trouble involved is comparatively small, provided that the
different items are summed up and entered regularly each week when the
household books are examined. If the quarterly cards are then filed in
order, they afford a most valuable record of household management in a
small and easily handled form.
When deciding on the amount of money to be allotted to the separate
items, the first thing to be kept in mind is the necessity of
preserving efficiency; and brain-workers ought to remember that
thorough mental alertness and competency can only be secured by
well-chosen, well-cooked, and daintily served food, by sufficiency of
sleep, by frequent intervals of rest and recreation, and by thoroughly
invigorating holidays. Extravagance should of course be avoided, but
the journalist or scientist who is niggardly of expenditure on these
items will probably later on be obliged to spend his savings on
doctor's bills or a rest cure. A high standard of comfort and efficient
work is the cheapest way of living in the long run. Whether, however,
all the conventional necessaries now included by custom in the upper
middle-class expenditure are really essential to the brain-worker's
standard of life is perhaps another question.
The "simple life" which consists in doing without all the conveniences
of civilisation has been proved a failure by many experiments, but a
"simple life" which accepted the comforts of electric light, gas stoves,
and laid-on hot water, but abolished heavy curtains and carpets and that
multiplicity of ornaments and of dishes, which increases the complexity
of life without adding to its beauty, might turn out to be a success. In
many cases, however, conventional expenditure is essential for
professional advancement. The doctor, for instance, must live in a house
of a certain size and importance; the high school teacher or woman
journalist must be well dressed. Expenditure of this character is really
of the nature of advertisement, and it is foolish to endeavour to
curtail it.
After the claims of efficiency have been met, saving and insurance come
next. Life insurance is of course almost universal among the salaried
classes, and is a duty imperatively laid on every man whose death would
leave his family without means. But it is curious that other forms of
insurance are not more practised. A small yearly payment for each child,
commencing at its birth, would provide a convenient sum for its
education, its start in life, or, in the case of a girl, for her
trousseau and dowry. Insurance against illness also is much rarer among
the upper middle class than among the working-classes. Possibly this is
due to the fact that, save in the case of prolonged disease, salaries
are paid during illness, while wages cease as soon as the worker is
compelled to stay at home; also partly no doubt to the fact that
provision for contingencies is made in other ways.
Saving and insurance will be less necessary in the case of those whose
income is derived from land or from invested capital, but should be
considered absolutely essential by all those in receipt of a salary. In
addition a small sum saved and invested in some easily realisable
security will be most valuable to meet special emergencies.
If after all these needs have been met, _i.e._ (1) full "efficiency"
and "conventional" expenditure (including, of course, such an education
for the children as will prepare them in their turn to earn an income
in the same rank of life as their father), and (2) saving and
insurance to provide against all contingencies that may reasonably
be anticipated--if, then, a surplus still remains, its disposition
must be a matter of individual choice, and it is impossible to lay
down general rules.
In some cases it will be saved, in others it will be used to provide
more material and conventional luxuries, in others it will supply the
needs of what American writers rather unpleasingly call the "higher
life." Certainly the claims of generosity, charity, and culture should
first be met, and it is the right and wise disposition of this surplus
income which might well tax the highest powers of any human being. It is
commonly supposed to be a difficult thing to earn money, but a simple
matter to spend it. On the contrary, to spend with wisdom and discretion
is always hard, and is hardest when the income is so elastic that a
slight deviation from the best method is not immediately visited on the
head of the person who has offended.
The artisan's wife has no easy task, it must be confessed, but the
results of any mistakes she may make fall at once upon herself or her
children. But if the mistress of a large household is careless or
incompetent, then she may cause untold waste, inefficiency and
degeneration among her servants and tradespeople, and may never even be
aware of it.
A recent book by Mr. A. Ponsonby[89] gives some extraordinary instances
of unnecessary expenditure on food. Mr. Ponsonby is not, of course, to
be taken as an unprejudiced investigator; he is writing rather from the
standpoint of the preacher than from that of the unbiassed sociologist.
But his figures are not likely to be absolutely false, and it is safe to
say that if in a household containing four in family and fourteen
servants the food bills amounted in a week when there was little
entertaining to L60, 12s. 7d. (L3, 7s. 4d. per head),[90] either the
servants were being fed in a way that was quite absurdly lavish, or much
of the food was absolutely wasted, or there was dishonest collusion
between the housekeeper and chef and the tradespeople. In any case, the
ignorance and negligence of the mistress of the house were corrupting to
her staff.
(_d_) CONCLUSION
In short, in place of regarding the household as standing in no special
relation to the rest of the community, it ought to be understood that
the function of the housewife is of the utmost importance, not only to
her own family, but to the whole nation. It is she who is finally
responsible for the education of the children; it is she who, in the
quiet and restful charm of the home, provides (or should provide) for
her husband and grown-up children the recreation and refreshment which
they need. If she employs many servants, then the example of her
household will influence for good or for evil the homes of many
working-class couples. It is the demand of the household that determines
whether the labour of this country shall be employed on debased articles
of sham luxury or on well made and artistic goods.
The conscientious housewife could also to some extent discourage
sweating, if she refused to buy products which to her knowledge were
made under bad conditions. The responsibilities of the housewife place
her at every turn in economic relations to the rest of the community,
and therefore it is only right that coming housewives should be trained
not alone in the manual crafts of cooking and laundry-work, but also in
the general principles of economic science which underlie the
development and present organisation of the household. We may perhaps
hope too that the principles of household management may in turn react
on economic science, and may show to its professors that value in use,
though more difficult to detect and estimate than value in exchange, has
been unduly neglected both in theory and practice.
If to the management of our towns--which are, after all, only our homes
on a larger scale--were applied the principles used by a good
housekeeper in ordering her home, then cleanliness, beauty, and
convenience would increase around us. A science of economics so modified
would recall to a scholar the original meaning of the word; for what,
after all, did the craft of oikonomike, as first developed by Xenophon
and Aristotle, mean but just "the management of the home"?