Household Administration Part 9

The fundamental principle, as Marshall[87] states, is that the marginal utility of each separate division of expenditure should be equal. He means by this that our income should be so distributed that the last sixpence we spend on clothes should yield us the same amount of pleasure as the last sixpence expended on food or on books. And he rightly remarks that to the housekeeper the value of keeping accounts lies precisely in the fact that it makes the application of this principle easy.

If we know exactly how money has been spent, then it is possible to see that expenditure has been wrongly balanced, that impulsive extravagance on hats or on out-of-season delicacies has unduly curtailed the amount spent on holidays, books, or concerts. It is for this reason that itemised tables are more useful to the housekeeper than is the ordinary creditor and debtor method of account-keeping. She should of course be able to present an accurate statement of the money spent and received, but she should not be content with this. She should further show for each quarter the amount spent on rent, food, fuel, &c.

QUARTERLY SUMMARY OF HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE

Columns: A Food and Cleaning Materials.

B Household Was.h.i.+ng.

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 n.i.g.g.ardly 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-cla.s.s 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s than among the working-cla.s.ses. 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 antic.i.p.ated--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 unbia.s.sed 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 60, 12s. 7d. (3, 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-cla.s.s 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"?

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Smith, "Wealth of Nations," edited by J. S. Nicholson, pp. 135 and 280. It is of course true that Adam Smith meant by this merely what is in a way true, that domestic servants earn no profit for their employers. He does not deny (p. 136) that their labour "has a certain value." But, like all the economists who followed him, he is content to dismiss domestic workers with this cursory treatment and to identify labourers with the workers hired for profit-making purposes.

[14] See "Principles of Economics" (4th ed.), pp. 192, 772.

[15] Marshall, "Principles" (4th ed.), p. 764: "The working cla.s.ses had then no other beds than loose straw, reeking with vermin and resting on damp floors."

[16] Thorold Rogers is a partial exception.

[17] _e.g._ Rowntree, "Poverty: a Study of Town Life;" portions of Booth's "Life and Labour of the People;" reports to the Board of Trade on the cost of living.

[18] Webb, S. and B., "Industrial Democracy" (cheap edition), p. 674.

[19] Marshall, "Principles of Economics," vol. i. p. 159.

[20] There is an a.s.sumption here which needs perhaps some discussion, _i.e._ that expenditure or consumption of goods can be most conveniently studied on the basis of family life. This is obviously the case with house-room, food, fuel, cleanliness, &c., less so with regard to clothes or recreation; it was truer of the past than of the present, and is truer of the poor than of the rich. In some cla.s.ses, _e.g._ the professional cla.s.s, where marriage is commonly delayed and a considerable period may intervene between the end of education and the establishment of a fresh household, it may be necessary to supplement the study of family expenditure by a consideration of the standard of living of unmarried men and women. Attempts, too, must be made to deal with the various forms of inst.i.tutional life, varying from prisons and workhouses on the one hand to expensive boarding-schools and hotels on the other. But when all these necessary deductions have been made, it remains true that in order to study expenditure we must in the great majority of cases take the family as our basis of investigation. Consumption is organised on a family basis.

[21] See Marshall, "Principles," book ii. chap. ii.

[22] Ashley, "Economic History," vol. i. part ii. p. 262.

[23] The economic historian must always be prepared to acquiesce in a certain vagueness in the matter of dates. He is not dealing with definite events, such as battles and the enactment of special laws, but rather with social tendencies, each const.i.tuted by a large number of small events; such as, for instance, the replacement of hand labour by machinery, the appearance of limited liability companies in the place of the single employer, or the determination of middle-cla.s.s girls to earn their own living instead of remaining dependent on father or brothers.

Tendencies such as these appear at different times in different industries and in different parts of the country, and only a misleading precision can be gained by any mention of definite dates.

[24] Summarised from Seebohm, "Village Community," pp. 156-157.

[25] Gasquet, "English Monastic Life," p. 197.

[26] "Economic History," vol. i.

[27] Surtees Society, Boldon Book, p. 28.

[28] "English Monastic Life," p. 198.

[29] The English were famed in the Middle Ages for their preference for good bread. They would eat no bread

"That beans in come, But of c.o.c.ket[30] or clerematyn[30] or else of clean wheat."

--_Piers Plowman_, A. vii. 292.

[30] Better kinds of bread, but not the best (wastel).

[31] Walter of Henley, p. 29.

[32] Apparently, it is only within the last hundred years that the cow has ceased to be a normal possession of the agricultural labourer. See Slater, "English Peasantry and Common Fields," pp.

122-128.