ld do without puddings, and so save on flour and firing; and the man
would forego his tobacco--he had never any time to visit the
public-house, so that there was nothing to be saved in that direction.
Yet assuming all this, and assuming that the eldest daughter advanced a
few extra shillings, still the situation remains baffling. On what could
they save, out of eight shillings? Probably one or other of the
children, or may be the mother herself, would make an old pair of boots
serve just one more week, until there was money in hand again; and that
would go far to tide the family over. Yet the next week would then have
to be a pinched one; for, said the woman, "boots is the wust of all. It
wants a new pair for one or t'other of us purty near every week."

So far this woman's testimony. It is corroborated by what other
cottagers have told me. A man said, looking fondly at his children: "I
has to buy a new pair o' shoes for one or other of us every week. Or if
I misses one week, then next week I wants two pair." Others, again, have
told of spending five to six shillings a week on bread. But of the less
essential items one never hears. Even of clothes there is rarely any
talk, and of coal not often; nor yet often of meat, or groceries. I do
not suggest that meat and groceries are foresworn, but it would appear
that they come second in the household expenses. They are luxuries, only
to be obtained if and when more necessary things have been provided.
With regard to firing--a little coal is made to go a long way in the
labourer's cottage; and with regard to clothes--it is doubtful if
anything new is bought, in many families, from year's end to year's end.
At "rummage sales," for a few pence, the women are now able to pick up
surprising bargains in cast-off garments, which they adapt as best they
can for their own or their children's wear. Economies like this,
however, still hardly suffice to explain how the scanty resources are
really spread out. Apart from a few cases of palpable destitution, it is
not obvious that any families in the village suffer actual want; and
seeing that inquiries in the school in recent winters have failed to
discover more than two or three sets of children manifestly wanting
food, one is led to conclude that acute poverty is of rare occurrence
here. On the other hand, all the calculations suggest that a majority
perhaps of the labouring folk endure a less intense but chronic poverty,
in which, at som