after all, not much; it is but little manure that can be
bought out of a total money-income of eighteen shillings a week; and
even good seed is, for the same reason, seldom obtained. The return for
the labour expended, therefore, is seldom equal to what it should be,
and we may surmise that he is a fortunate man, or an unusually
industrious one, who can make his gardening worth more than two
shillings a week to him in food. There must be many cottages in the
valley where the yield of the garden is scarcely half that value.

To complete the picture of the people's ways and means, it ought next to
be shown how the money income is spent by an average family. To do that,
however, would be beyond my power, even if it were possible to determine
what an "average family" is. I know, of course, that rent takes from
three and sixpence a week for the poorest hovels to six shillings for
the newer tenements on the outskirts of the parish; in other words, that
from a quarter to a third of the labourer's whole income goes back
immediately into the pockets of the employing classes for shelter alone.
I know also that payments into benefit societies drain away another
eightpence to a shilling a week. I realize that very often the weekly
bread bill runs away with nearly half the money that is left, and so I
can reckon that tea and groceries, boots and clothes, firing and light,
have somehow to be obtained at a cost of no more than seven or eight
shillings weekly. But these calculations fail to satisfy me. They leave
unsolved the problem of those last seven or eight shillings, on the
expenditure of which turns the really vital question which an inquiry
like this ought to settle. How do the people make both ends meet? Are
the seven shillings as a rule enough for so many purposes? or almost,
but not quite enough? or nothing like enough? After all, I do not know.
Information breaks down just at this point where information is most to
be desired.

There is no doubt at all, however, as to the strain and stress of the
general struggle to live in the valley, the sheer wear and tear of
temper and spirits involved in the daily grappling with that problem.
Everywhere one comes across symptoms of it--partial evidences--but the
most complete exposition that I have had was given, some years ago now,
by a woman who had no intention of complaining. She came to me with a
message from a neighbour who was ill, but, in explanation of her part in
helping h