Year: 1864

DR.. Edward Smith, an English meical officer
has lately undertaken careful investigation
of the quantity and quality of food consumed
by the laboring classes in England especial
ly the farm laborers. For the purposes of his
enquiry he selected three hundred and seventy
families, from thirty-seven different counties
These families were induced to answer a series
of carefully prepared questions, and from the
results DR.. Smith has prepared set of very
interesting tables.


From a scrutiny of his report we get soma
curious gIimpses Of the Iaboring mans life in
overcrowded England. Housekeeping" is re-
duced, amongst the unfortunates. to narrow
limits All kinds of wretched economies are
adopted, which are frightful to read of. The
laborer, it seems as a rule, consumes much
the larger share of the food procured for the
household of which he is the head. In the
poorer districts he eats "nearly all the meat
and bacon" and DR.. Smith relates that the
quantity and also the nutritive quality of the
food obtained by the wife, and also by the
children at the period of rapid growth" is Of
ten insufficient to keep them in health. Bread
and potatoes appear to be the chief articles of
diet. In many parts of England the laborer
is still paid in kind, and receives part of his
wages in wheat or -four. White -four is pre-
ferred before that of darker; and it is held to
be a sign of bad management for wife to buy
bread of the baker, instead of baking at home.
Sugar or molasses is, in the poorer districts, a
luxury, but is used in nearly all cases at the
average rate of only half a pound per head,
weekly. 1t is held by these people to be not
cheap food, perhaps on the ground that it
is absorbed by the bread, and then does not
satisfy the children, the satisfaction Of the sight
being very pressing item in the arrangement
of the poor mans dietary


Butter is used almost universally. Of the
families visited, nearly a third-thirty per cent.
never ale butchers meat, and iu some of the
remaining cases the people taste meat only
when SICK sheep are killed on the farm, and
this diseased meat Is taken by them as part of
their wages. Where but small quantity of
meat is used, the whole is cooked for Sundays
dinner, and what is left over is set apart for
the husband, who eats it during the week, his
family having none. In this way, "if the fam
lily be thrifty, the husband will have a morsel
OF meat or bacon throughout the week, whilst
his wife and children eat it but once, and both





to be necessary to enable him to perform his
labor" Picked pork is the form in which
meat is most commonly used, we are told, aud
for the reason that it Is least liked by the chill
dren. The wife" says DR.. Smith, "has gain
ed by hard experience an acute perception as
to the food which will supply the greatest
number of meals" Only ene-fourth of the
families of these farm laborers ever drink new
milk, and another fourth never get milk 10 any
shape. Tea is in universal use; coffee, which
is the Indispensable draught OF our Western
farmers and their men, is used only ID forty
four per cent. of the cases examined by DR..
Smith. This is because coffee requires sugar
and milk; tea they can drink without ether
But this abstinence from coffee appears anolh-
er proof OF the wretched condition of these
people. The women and chileren consume
the greater share of the tea, as the men do OF
the meat.


Such is the living Of the farm laborers and
their families in England; and yet there are
persons found to tell this class that they ought
not to emigrate to America, that they cannot
better their condition heFe.-N. Y. Post.