Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/11

 useful article of furniture which they had hitherto rented. Thus, by slow degrees, the bed they sleep on, the table, the chairs, and household clock, are in due time all their own. Still they have not bought cheaply, and, while they owed the broker a bill for furniture hire, had a cogent reason for not disputing his price list.

The doctor's bill proves a heavy item, but the doctor is kind, and will wait till they can pay him; he will have a tolerable test of his kindness, I fear. In addition is the monthly call of the bagman-clothier for a contribution for a dress nearly worn out, but not nearly paid for; also of the bagman-shoemaker for boots in the same predicament. So that what with the rent and fixed outgoings, as well as incidental ones, the wife has looked trouble in the face, and trouble has returned the gaze, and stamped upon her countenance a careworn expression before she is one-and-twenty. There is also another confinement approaching, and this time there will be less difficulty in obtaining union relief, for the ice was broken on a former occasion, and if their case was good then, it is better now. In the mean time my specimen has joined his sick and benefit club. He had heard of several which offered various advantages, but nothing so good, he thinks, as the Black Bear Club, and so thinks the landlord who manages the club, which holds its meetings every other Saturday night. The club shall be described in its place. It is sufficient here to state that its cost (not counting extraordinary charges, such as for more beer than that supplied under rules, the cost of "regalia," and of the club-day) averages 9d. a week, which is hard upon 2l. a year. This sum my specimen does contrive to pay, notwithstanding that the pinch of poverty is pretty sharp upon him at the time when his family comprises half a dozen little children, not one of whom is strong enough to be worth 6d. a day as a perambulating scarecrow on the farm.

Time passes on, and the boys are worth money. The eldest lad works like a man for a shilling a day, and eats like two men. The second, hardly ten years of age, is employed as sheep-boy, or else on the land at 6d. a day.

The average weekly earnings and expenditure of the family are much as follows. We take the rate of living in a neighbourhood where rents, fuel, and repairs run high, and wages are correspondingly high:—