the same way. But between the drunkard, whose household starves while he soaks away his wages, and the weakling, whose wife takes every penny and scarce gives him one back, there lie many degrees, and one of them a mean. Perhaps the bulk of workmen are of this middle sort or near it, and perhaps we can make a sufficiently fair estimate of the workman's budget; always remembering that, as among all of us, he and his neighbour are apt to differ in this matter as in others.

First, then, the budget must be considered in terms of weekly expenditure. The yearly or half-yearly balance-sheet, formal or informal, is for the man who reckons his income by the year, not for him who lives from Saturday to Saturday on weekly wages. The class we are considering is one of men earning from twenty or twenty-five to forty shillings a week, and for our instance we put the sum at thirty shillings, not as the average of a full week's wages, which would be a little higher, but as a general average, allowing for missed time, slack periods, and the like. Our particular example is of a man-a married man, of course-living in a humble though decent neighbourhood in London, at no very great distance from his work. We will suppose the children to be three, and of school age, though this need not hinder us from glancing as we pass at the effect on the exchequer of an increase both in numbers and in age.

When we examine this man's expenditure we observe one striking characteristic. We are of course assuming that his wife is not a fool, and, this postulate accepted, it is found that all that the family needs, with one single exception, can be bought at a cheaper rate than is paid for the same things by people of larger incomes. The single exception is house accommodation. Herein the workman is at a disadvantage. Rent varies of course with a dozen circumstances, but it is no very uncommon thing to find our thirty-shilling-a-week workman paying it to the amount of ten shillings a week-precisely a third of his income—or even more. Consider how a man with six hundred a year would be regarded who lived in a house with a rent of two hundred. course, the workman's rent includes rates and taxes, so that perhaps the comparison is not strictly fair. Let us then suppose the case of a cashier or managing clerk on three hundred a year whose employer suddenly discovers him flourishing in a house which, with the rates, costs a hundred; and let us imagine that employer's panic-stricken rush to overhaul his cashier's books.

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Ten shillings a week, however, would not be a fair average rent for our workman, taking all districts and all circumstances into the calculation. Let us say seven shillings-though indeed I write the sum with some misgiving that it should really be a little more. Mathematical accuracy in this matter, however, is an impossibility without an exact return of every workman's rent in London, so at seven shillings we will fix our man's rent. For that he will get three rooms-not very big rooms, as a general thingbeing the half of one of the six-roomed houses that make the bulk of the streets in East London. Thus it is seen that rather less than a quarter of the income goes in rent. It is a counsel of prudence among the middle classes, I believe, to pay no more than a tenth of the income in rent; though perhaps in practice the sum is commonly something nearer an eighth. The relatively higher rent of small houses arises from an excessive demand, and from the fact that a workman must live within a reasonable distance of his work. Workmen's trains are all very well, but he prefers not to begin and end a hard day's work with a long railway journey if he can avoid it. Further, ground in the neighbourhoods where factories and workshops abound is commercially valuable for the erection of those very buildings, and this brings a new and serious element of competition into the conditions governing rents.

But with the rent we have done with the workman's disadvantages in purchase. Everything else he buys cheaply, always supposing that his wife is neither too stupid nor too lazy to avail herself of the advantages that offer. And indeed, apart from the bad exceptions, the workman's wife is commonly no fool and no idler. I have met with perfectly amazing cases of masterly household management on slender means; and, brilliant instances aside, the average workman's 'missis' is a very good housewife. I wish she were half as good a cook, for her own sake and her family's. Sometimes I have had occasion to wish it for my own.

Let me enumerate some of the things that the workman's wife can buy cheaply. The housewife who gives her orders through her servants, and whose household requirements are delivered at the kitchen door from the tradesman's cart, would be mightily astonished if she were to take a walk of observation in one of the cheap market streets which are to be found about the less 'select' London suburbs. Rye Lane, Peckham; Angel Lane, Stratford; Chrisp Street, Poplar; the Old Kent Road; and Chapel

Street, Islington, are a few among the many of these places, and at any one of them she would find butcher's meat, fruit, vegetables and fish, all of equal quality and freshness to those sent to her own house, at somewhere about half the price. Beef of the best parts is sold at sixpence a pound, the cheaper parts going at from this price down to threepence; salt beef, twopence-halfpenny to sixpence. The best possible rump steak, which will figure in our housekeeping bills at eighteenpence, costs tenpence or perhaps sometimes elevenpence. Excellent mutton -it is from New Zealand, but still excellent mutton-goes at fourpence-halfpenny to fivepence-halfpenny for legs, and the breast is no more than three-halfpence, or at most twopence, a pound. Fillet of veal will be sevenpence-halfpenny, and in the season loin of pork can be bought at from fourpence-halfpenny to sixpence. I have seen an oxtail for twopence-halfpenny, and the biggest in the shop would only cost sixpence. As to fish, cod of the best cut is to be bought at threepence and the head and shoulder at twopence a pound; plaice is fourpence, lemon soles threepence, and Brighton soles fourpence to sixpence ; crimped skate threepence a pound or less. This is all fish of the best and freshest sort, for the workman's wife will not be put off with anything else; and the prices all round are nearer a third than a half of the prices charged by the more fashionable fishmonger. At the greengrocer's the tale is much the same. Here in the season peas cost from threepence to eightpence a peck, and a good cauliflower may cost as much as twopence-commonly less. English tomatoes range from fourpence to sixpence a pound, while the foreign are half the price. Excellent cooking apples may be had at a penny a pound, and good eating sorts at twopence and threepence. Potatoes vary with season and age, but are generally somewhere near half the price charged by the more expensive tradesman. Every purchase is for cash in hand, and the purchaser, of course, carries away the goods. Whether or not these two conditions, with perhaps a lower scale of shop-rent, sufficiently account for the wide difference between the prices in East and West London, I will not attempt to guess. But I know that the shopkeepers in the cheap markets do uncommonly well.

Of course, these advantages are for the sober and thrifty. The slovenly and improvident who run 'ticks' at small chandlers' shops, and who buy sugar, tea, butter, and bread in ha'porths and farthingsworths—these pay through the nose, and are ill served in

the matter of quality. Their poor living costs them more relatively than good living costs people of the middle classes. But again, we must remember that we are dealing with averages, and, as I have said, the average workman's wife is a good manager, and the average workman does not drink all his money.

And now to our balance-sheet. It is never-so far as I have seen-an actual sheet of paper worked upon with figures at the end of the week. Rather the wife works it out in rough and ready fashion, penny by penny, as the week goes. On the one side, as we have seen, is the thirty shillings of wages, and nothing else. We will suppose that thirty shillings is duly entered by being brought home whole on Saturday, which is the general pay-day, though some men are paid on Friday. The missis' begins the other side of the account by going shopping on Saturday evening, taking her husband with her he is a docile husband, this-to wait outside shops and carry the heavier parcels. She will probably visit the grocer's first, perhaps in the afternoon. Other shops and stalls are better dealt with in the evening, for then things grow cheaper. The competition of the stalls does not fairly begin till four o'clock or later; also, fresher goods are on sale at night, for of course it is the shopkeeper's policy to get rid of the staler goods first. Moreover, late in the evening one can bargain more effectually, by reason that the tradesman would rather take a small profit than keep perishable goods on his hands till Monday, itself the slackest day of the week. Indeed, there are butchers' shops in these places that never open on Monday at all. For these reasons late shopping is preferred, and this is why the workman's wife is the chief obstacle to the early closing movement. In very poor districts-Chapel Street, Islington, is one of them-much of the shopping is done on Sunday morning; but this is too often because the wreck of the week's money which is all that goes to housekeeping is not available till after Saturday's drink is accomplished and slept off.

Our housewife goes to the grocer's first, then, because his goods do not vary in price with the lateness of the hour, as do the fishmonger's, the butcher's, and the greengrocer's. It may also be noted that the grocer's prices do not differ from those of the West-End shops so extremely as do the prices of the other tradesmen. At the grocer's she sets herself up with grocery for the week. She buys a quarter of a pound of tea, which comes, nowadays, to fourpence-halfpenny. This may last the week with

care, but if a friend come to tea, or some other unexpected call be made on the supply, another ounce or so may be bought toward the week's end; but in ordinary circumstances a quarter of a pound will do. Next she has a quarter of a pound of coffee, ready ground -threepence. There is a deal of chicory in it, of course, at this price, but it is a curious fact that the workman and his wife prefer coffee in which the flavour of chicory-to most people suggestive of boiled crusts-predominates, and would regard pure coffee as insipid. Moreover, the mixture makes coffee of greater thickness and apparent strength than does the same quantity of a pure article. A pound of loaf sugar and two pounds of moist will be enough for the week, the former costing twopence and the latter, at three-halfpence a pound, threepence. Then she will buy a jar of jam, containing three pounds, for sevenpence-halfpenny. This sounds a little forbidding, perhaps, but as a matter of fact I believe it is a clean and wholesome enough article, made, it is said, largely from fruit which has already been partly bled to make jelly. It is turned out as 'mixed household' jam by firms of good reputation, and I believe with their manufacturing and buying facilities they are able to fill their jars with sound, though certainly 'mixed,' jam at a lower rate than adulteration would cost. The three-pound jar will probably last well over the week end, unless used for puddings, or made a substitute for butter in more than usual quantity, in which case it will last the week only. We will call the three pounds the week's supply, so that the surplus may represent the cost, say, of currants as an alternative for pudding, or the twopence or threepence that might be spent in apples, in the fruit season, for the same purpose.

The grocer may also be the cheesemonger, but whether so or not, the next purchase will be half a pound of butter, which will cost sixpence. This will be little more than half enough for the whole needs of the week, but it will be eked out by dripping and by the jam afore-mentioned. Eight eggs for sixpence, a pound of bacon rashers at eightpence, and half a pound of Cheddar cheese-probably American-which will cost threepence, and the grocer and cheesemonger is done with for the day.

The great purchase of the evening will be that of the joint for Sunday's dinner. It will consist of six or seven pounds of beef or mutton, bought with a sharp eye to price, quality and freedom from bone, and it will cost from two to three shillings-let us say half a crown. This will provide meat for best part of the week-hot on Sunday, cold two, or more probably three, days