Cottage Economy, to Which is Added The Poor Man's Friend
by William Cobbett · English · Gutenberg #32863 · 477,703 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Cottage Economy, to Which is Added The Poor Man's Friend
Author: William Cobbett
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COTTAGE ECONOMY;
CONTAINING
INFORMATION RELATIVE TO THE BREWING OF BEER, MAKING OF BREAD,
KEEPING OF COWS, PIGS, BEES, EWES, GOATS, POULTRY, AND RABBITS,
AND RELATIVE TO OTHER MATTERS DEEMED USEFUL IN THE CONDUCTING
OF THE AFFAIRS OF A LABOURER'S FAMILY; TO WHICH ARE ADDED,
INSTRUCTIONS RELATIVE TO THE SELECTING, THE CUTTING AND THE
BLEACHING OF THE PLANTS OF ENGLISH GRASS AND GRAIN, FOR THE
PURPOSE OF MAKING HATS AND BONNETS; AND ALSO INSTRUCTIONS
FOR ERECTING AND USING ICE-HOUSES, AFTER THE VIRGINIAN MANNER.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
THE POOR MAN'S FRIEND;
OR,
A DEFENCE OF THE RIGHTS OF THOSE WHO DO THE WORK,
AND FIGHT THE BATTLES.
BY WILLIAM COBBETT.
New York:
Published by John Doyle, 12, Liberty-St.
Stereotyped by Conner & Cooke.
1833.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year of our Lord 1833, by
John Doyle, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern
District of New-York.
CONTENTS.
No.
I.--Introduction. To the Labouring Classes of this
Kingdom--Brewing Beer, 5
II.--Brewing Beer, continued, 23
III.--Making Bread, 41
IV.--Making Bread, continued--Brewing Beer--Keeping Cows, 59
V.--Keeping Cows, continued,--Keeping Pigs, 73
VI.--Keeping Pigs, continued--Salting Mutton, and Beef, 86
VII.--Bees, Geese, Ducks, Turkeys, Fowls, Pigeons, Rabbits,
Goats, and Ewes, Candles and Rushes, Mustard, Dress
and Household Goods, and Fuel, Hops, and Yeast, 98
VIII.--Selecting, Cutting and Bleaching the Plants of English
Grass and Grain, for the purpose of making Hats and
Bonnets--Constructing and using Ice-houses, 122
ADDITION.--Mangel Wurzel--Cobbett's Corn, 151
INDEX, 158
COTTAGE ECONOMY.
No. I.
INTRODUCTION.
TO THE LABOURING CLASSES OF THIS KINGDOM.
1. Throughout this little work, I shall _number_ the Paragraphs, in order
to be able, at some stages of the work, to refer, with the more facility,
to parts that have gone before. The last Number will contain an _Index_,
by the means of which the several matters may be turned to without loss of
time; for, when _economy_ is the subject, _time_ is a thing which ought by
no means to be overlooked.
2. The word _Economy_, like a great many others, has, in its application,
been very much abused. It is generally used as if it meant parsimony,
stinginess, or niggardliness; and, at best, merely the refraining from
expending money. Hence misers and close-fisted men disguise their
propensity and conduct under the name of _economy_; whereas the most
liberal disposition, a disposition precisely the contrary of that of the
miser, is perfectly consistent with economy.
3. ECONOMY means _management_, and nothing more; and it is generally
applied to the affairs of a house and family, which affairs are an object
of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals or to a
nation. A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world, not so
much by the number of its people as by the ability and character of that
people; and the ability and character of a people depend, in a great
measure, upon the _economy_ of the several families, which, all taken
together, make up the nation. There never yet was, and never will be, a
nation _permanently great_, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched
and miserable families.
4. In every view of the matter, therefore, it is desirable; that the
families of which a nation consists should be happily off: and as this
depends, in a great degree, upon the _management_ of their concerns, the
present work is intended to convey, to the families of the _labouring
classes_ in particular, such information as I think may be useful with
regard to that management.
5. I lay it down as a maxim, that for a family to be happy, they must be
well supplied with _food_ and _raiment_. It is a sorry effort that people
make to persuade others, or to persuade themselves, that they can be happy
in a state of _want_ of the necessaries of life. The doctrines which
fanaticism preaches, and which teach men to be _content_ with _poverty_,
have a very pernicious tendency, and are calculated to favour tyrants by
giving them passive slaves. To live well, to enjoy all things that make
life pleasant, is the right of every man who constantly uses his strength
judiciously and lawfully. It is to blaspheme God to suppose, that he
created man to be miserable, to hunger, thirst, and perish with cold, in
the midst of that abundance which is the fruit of their own labour.
Instead, therefore, of applauding "_happy_ poverty," which applause is so
much the fashion of the present day, I despise the man that is _poor_ and
_contented_; for, such content is a certain proof of a base disposition, a
disposition which is the enemy of all industry, all exertion, all love of
independence.
6. Let it be understood, however, that, by _poverty_, I mean _real want_,
a real insufficiency of the food and raiment and lodging necessary to
health and decency; and not that imaginary poverty, of which some persons
complain. The man who, by his own and his family's labour, can provide a
sufficiency of food and raiment, and a comfortable dwelling-place, is not
a _poor man_. There must be different ranks and degrees in every civil
society, and, indeed, so it is even amongst the savage tribes. There must
be different degrees of wealth; some must have more than others; and the
richest must be a great deal richer than the least rich. But it is
necessary to the very existence of a people, that nine out of ten should
live wholly by the sweat of their brow; and, is it not degrading to human
nature, that all the nine-tenths should be called _poor_; and, what is
still worse, _call themselves poor_, and be _contented_ in that degraded
state?
7. The laws, the economy, or management, of a state may be such as to
render it impossible for the labourer, however skilful and industrious, to
maintain his family in health and decency; and such has, for many years
past, been the management of the affairs of this once truly great and
happy land. A system of paper-money, the effect of which was to take from
the labourer the half of his earnings, was what no industry and care could
make head against. I do not pretend that this system was adopted _by
design_. But, no matter for the _cause_; such was the effect.
8. Better times, however, are approaching. The labourer now appears likely
to obtain that hire of which he is worthy; and, therefore, this appears to
me to be the time to press upon him the _duty_ of using his best exertions
for the rearing of his family in a manner that must give him the best
security for happiness to himself, his wife and children, and to make him,
in all respects, what his forefathers were. The people of England have
been famed, in all ages, for their _good living_; for the _abundance of
their food_ and _goodness of their attire_. The old sayings about English
roast beef and plum-pudding, and about English hospitality, had not their
foundation in _nothing_. And, in spite of all refinements of sickly minds,
it is _abundant living_ amongst the people at large, which is the great
test of good government, and the surest basis of national greatness and
security.
9. If the labourer have his fair wages; if there be no false weights and
measures, whether of money or of goods, by which he is defrauded; if the
laws be equal in their effect upon all men: if he be called upon for no
more than his due share of the expenses necessary to support the
government and defend the country, he has no reason to complain. If the
largeness of his family demand extraordinary labour and care, these are
due from him to it. He is the cause of the existence of that family; and,
therefore, he is not, except in cases of accidental calamity, to throw
upon others the burden of supporting it. Besides, "little children are as
arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed is the man that hath his
quiver full of them." That is to say, children, if they bring their
_cares_, bring also their _pleasures_ and _solid advantages_. They become,
very soon, so many assistants and props to the parents, who, when old age
comes on, are amply repaid for all the toils and all the cares that
children have occasioned in their infancy. To be without sure and safe
friends in the world makes life not worth having; and whom can we be so
sure of as of our children? Brothers and sisters are a mutual support. We
see them, in almost every case, grow up into prosperity, when they act the
part that the impulses of nature prescribe. When cordially united, a
father and sons, or a family of brothers and sisters, may, in almost any
state of life, set what is called misfortune at defiance.
10. These considerations are much more than enough to sweeten the toils
and cares of parents, and to make them regard every additional child as an
additional blessing. But, that children may be a blessing and not a curse,
care must be taken of their _education_. This word has, of late years,
been so perverted, so corrupted; so abused, in its application, that I am
almost afraid to use it here. Yet I must not suffer it to be usurped by
cant and tyranny. I must use it: but not without clearly saying what I
mean.
11. _Education_ means _breeding up_, _bringing up_, or _rearing up_; and
nothing more. This includes every thing with regard to the _mind_ as well
as the _body_ of a child; but, of late years, it has been so used as to
have no sense applied to it but that of _book-learning_, with which, nine
times out of ten, it has nothing at all to do. It is, indeed, proper, and
it is the duty of all parents, to teach, or cause to be taught, their
children as much as they can of books, _after_, and not before, all the
measures are safely taken for enabling them to get their living by labour,
or for _providing them a living without labour_, and that, too, out of the
means obtained and secured by the parents out of their own income. The
taste of the times is, unhappily, to give to children something of
_book-learning_, with a view of placing them to live, in some way or
other, _upon the labour of other people_. Very seldom, comparatively
speaking, has this succeeded, even during the wasteful public expenditure
of the last thirty years; and, in the times that are approaching, it
cannot, I thank God, succeed at all. When the project has failed, what
disappointment, mortification and misery, to both parent and child! The
latter is spoiled as a labourer: his book-learning has only made him
conceited: into some course of desperation he falls; and the end is but
too often not only wretched but ignominious.
12. Understand me clearly here, however; for it is the duty of parents to
give, if they be able, book-learning to their children, having _first_
taken care to make them capable of earning their living by _bodily
labour_. When that object has once been secured, the other may, if the
ability remain, be attended to. But I am wholly against children wasting
their time in the idleness of what is called _education_; and particularly
in schools over which the parents have no control, and where nothing is
taught but the rudiments of servility, pauperism and slavery.
13. The _education_ that I have in view is, therefore, of a very different
kind. You should bear constantly in mind, that nine-tenths of us are, from
the very nature and necessities of the world, born to gain our livelihood
by the sweat of our brow. What reason have we, then, to presume, that our
children are not to do the same? If they be, as now and then one will be,
endued with extraordinary powers of mind, those powers may have an
opportunity of developing themselves; and if they never have that
opportunity, the harm is not very great to us or to them. Nor does it
hence follow that the descendants of labourers are _always_ to be
labourers. The path upwards is steep and long, to be sure. Industry, care,
skill, excellence, in the present parent, lay the foundation of _a rise_,
under more favourable circumstances, for his children. The children of
these take _another rise_; and, by-and-by, the descendants of the present
labourer become gentlemen.
14. This is the natural progress. It is by attempting to reach the top at
a _single leap_ that so much misery is produced in the world; and the
propensity to make such attempts has been cherished and encouraged by the
strange projects that we have witnessed of late years for making the
labourers _virtuous_ and _happy_ by giving them what is called
_education_. The education which I speak of consists in bringing children
up to labour with _steadiness_, with _care_, and with _skill_; to show
them how to do as many useful things as possible; to teach them to do them
all in the best manner; to set them an example in industry, sobriety,
cleanliness, and neatness; to make all these _habitual_ to them, so that
they never shall be liable to fall into the contrary; to let them always
see a _good living_ proceeding from _labour_, and thus to remove from them
the temptation to get at the goods of others by violent or fraudulent
means; and to keep far from their minds all the inducements to hypocrisy
and deceit.
15. And, bear in mind, that if the state of the labourer has its
disadvantages when compared with other callings and conditions of life, it
has also its advantages. It is free from the torments of ambition, and
from a great part of the causes of ill-health, for which not all the
riches in the world and all the circumstances of high rank are a
compensation. The able and prudent labourer is always _safe_, at the
least; and that is what few men are who are lifted above him. They have
losses and crosses to fear, the very thought of which never enters his
mind, if he act well his part towards himself, his family and his
neighbour.
16. But, the basis of good to him, is _steady and skilful labour_. To
assist him in the pursuit of this labour, and in the turning of it to the
best account, are the principal objects of the present little work. I
propose to treat of brewing Beer, making Bread, keeping Cows and Pigs,
rearing Poultry, and of other matters; and to show, that, while, from a
very small piece of ground a large part of the food of a considerable
family may be raised, the very act of raising it will be the best possible
foundation of _education_ of the children of the labourer; that it will
teach them a great number of useful things, _add greatly to their value
when they go forth from_ their father's home, make them start in life with
all possible advantages, and give them the best chance of leading happy
lives. And is it not much more rational for parents to be employed in
teaching their children how to cultivate a garden, to feed and rear
animals, to make bread, beer, bacon, butter and cheese, and to be able to
do these things for themselves, or for others, than to leave them to prowl
about the lanes and commons, or to mope at the heels of some crafty,
sleekheaded pretended saint, who while he extracts the last penny from
their pockets, bids them be contented with their misery, and promises
them, in exchange for their pence, everlasting glory in the world to come?
It is upon the hungry and the wretched that the fanatic works. The
dejected and forlorn are his prey. As an ailing carcass engenders vermin,
a pauperized community engenders teachers of fanaticism, the very
foundation of whose doctrines is, that we are to care nothing about this
world, and that all our labours and exertions are in vain.
17. The man, who is doing well, who is in good health, who has a blooming
and dutiful and cheerful and happy family about him, and who passes his
day of rest amongst them, is not to be made to believe, that he was born
to be miserable, and that poverty, the natural and just reward of
laziness, is to secure him a crown of glory. Far be it from me to
recommend a disregard of even outward observances as to matters of
religion; but, can it be _religion_ to believe that God hath made us to be
wretched and dejected? Can it be _religion_ to regard, as marks of his
grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend our neglect to
use the means of obtaining a competence in worldly things? Can it be
_religion_ to regard as blessings those things, those very things, which
God expressly numbers amongst his curses? Poverty never finds a place
amongst the _blessings_ promised by God. His blessings are of a directly
opposite description; flocks, herds, corn, wine and oil; a smiling land; a
rejoicing people; abundance for the body and gladness of the heart: these
are the blessings which God promises to the industrious, the sober, the
careful, and the upright. Let no man, then, believe that, to be poor and
wretched is a mark of God's favour; and let no man remain in that state,
if he, by any honest means, can rescue himself from it.
18. Poverty leads to all sorts of evil consequences. _Want_, horrid want,
is the great parent of crime. To have a dutiful family, the father's
principle of rule must be _love_ not _fear_. His sway must be gentle, or
he will have only an unwilling and short-lived obedience. But it is given
to but few men to be gentle and good-humoured amidst the various torments
attendant on pinching poverty. A competence is, therefore, the first thing
to be thought of; it is the foundation of all good in the labourer's
dwelling; without it little but misery can be expected. "_Health_,
_peace_, and _competence_," one of the wisest of men regards as the only
things needful to man: but the two former are scarcely to be had without
the latter. _Competence_ is the foundation of happiness and of exertion.
Beset with wants, having a mind continually harassed with fears of
starvation, who can act with energy, who can calmly think? To provide a
_good living_, therefore, for himself and family, is the _very first duty_
of every man. "Two things," says AGUR, "have I asked; deny me them not
before I die: remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty
nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny
thee; or lest I be poor and steal."
19. A _good living_ therefore, a _competence_, is the first thing to be
desired and to be sought after; and, if this little work should have the
effect of aiding only a small portion of the Labouring Classes in securing
that competence, it will afford great gratification to their friend
WM. COBBETT.
_Kensington, 19th July, 1821._
BREWING BEER.
20. Before I proceed to give any directions about brewing, let me mention
some of the inducements to do the thing. In former times, to set about to
show to Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses
would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist, that they ought to
endeavour not to lose their breath; for, in those times, (only forty years
ago,) to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr.
ELLMAN, an old man and a large farmer, in Sussex, has recently given in
evidence, before a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact; that,
_forty years ago_, there was not a labourer in his parish that did not
_brew his own beer_; and that _now_ there is _not one that does it_,
except by chance the malt be given him. The causes of this change have
been the lowering of the wages of labour, compared with the price of
provisions, by the means of the paper-money; the enormous tax upon the
barley when made into _malt_; and the increased tax upon _hops_. These
have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink.
They still drink _beer_, but, in general, it is of the brewing of _common
brewers_, and in public-houses, of which the common brewers have become
the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper-money, obtained a
_monopoly_ in the supplying of the great body of the people with one of
those things which, to the hard-working man, is almost a necessary of
life.
21. These things will be altered. They must be altered. The nation must be
sunk into nothingness, or a new system must be adopted; and the nation
will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of 4_s._ 6_d._[1]
a bushel, and the barley costs only 3_s._ This brings the bushel of malt
to 8_s._ including the maltster's charge for malting. If the tax were
taken off the malt, malt would be sold, at the present price of barley,
for about 3_s._ 3_d._ a bushel; because a bushel of barley makes more than
a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amount, causes great expenses
of various sorts to the maltster. The hops pay a tax of 2_d._[2] a pound;
and a bushel of malt requires, in general, a pound of hops; if these two
taxes were taken off, therefore, the consumption of barley and of hops
would be exceedingly increased; for double the present quantity would be
demanded, and the land is always ready to send it forth.
22. It appears impossible that the landlords should much longer submit to
these intolerable burdens on their estates. In short, they must get off
the malt tax, or lose those estates. They must do a great _deal more_,
indeed; but that they must do at any rate. The paper-money is fast losing
its destructive power; and things are, with regard to the labourers,
coming back to what they were _forty years ago_, and therefore we may
prepare for the making of beer in our own houses, and take leave of the
poisonous stuff served out to us by common brewers. We may begin
_immediately_; for, even at _present prices_, home-brewed beer is the
_cheapest_ drink that a family can use, except _milk_, and milk can be
applicable only in certain cases.
23. The drink which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general,
been _tea_. It is notorious that tea has no _useful strength_ in it; that
it contains nothing _nutritious_; that it, besides being _good_ for
nothing, has _badness_ in it, because it is well known to produce want of
sleep in many cases, and in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It
is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and
deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body;
it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It
is, then, of no _use_. And, now, as to its _cost_, compared with that of
_beer_. I shall make my comparison applicable to a year, or three hundred
and sixty-five days. I shall suppose the tea to be only five shillings the
pound; the sugar only sevenpence; the milk only twopence a quart. The
prices are at the very lowest. I shall suppose a tea-pot to cost a
shilling, six cups and saucers two shillings and sixpence, and six pewter
spoons eighteen-pence. How to estimate the firing I hardly know; but
certainly there must be in the course of the year, two hundred fires made
that would not be made, were it not for tea drinking. Then comes the great
article of all, the _time_ employed in this tea-making affair. It is
impossible to make a fire, boil water, make the tea, drink it, wash up the
things, sweep up the fire-place, and put all to rights again, in a less
space of time, upon an average, than _two hours_. However, let us allow
_one hour_; and here we have a woman occupied no less than three hundred
and sixty-five hours in the year, or thirty whole days, at twelve hours in
the day; that is to say, one month out of the twelve in the year, besides
the waste of the man's time in hanging about waiting for the tea! Needs
there any thing more to make us cease to wonder at seeing labourers'
children with dirty linen and holes in the heels of their stockings?
Observe, too, that the time thus spent is, one half of it, the best time
of the day. It is the top of the morning, which, in every calling of life,
contains an hour worth two or three hours of the afternoon. By the time
that the clattering tea tackle is out of the way, the morning is spoiled;
its prime is gone; and any work that is to be done afterwards lags heavily
along. If the mother have to go out to work, the tea affair must all first
be over. She comes into the field, in summer time, when the sun has gone a
third part of his course. She has the heat of the day to encounter,
instead of having her work done and being ready to return home at any
early hour. Yet early she must go, too: for, there is the fire again to
be made, the clattering tea-tackle again to come forward; and even in the
longest day she must have _candle light_, which never ought to be seen in
a cottage (except in case of illness) from March to September.
24. Now, then, let us take the bare cost of the use of tea. I suppose a
pound of tea to last twenty days; which is not nearly half an ounce every
morning and evening. I allow for each mess half a pint of milk. And I
allow three pounds of the red dirty sugar to each pound of tea. The
account of expenditure would then stand very high; but to these must be
added the amount of the tea tackle, one set of which will, upon an
average, be demolished every year. To these outgoings must be added the
cost of beer at the public-house; for some the man will have, after all,
and the woman too, unless they be upon the point of actual starvation. Two
pots a week is as little as will serve in this way; and here is a dead
loss of ninepence a week, seeing that two pots of beer, full as strong,
and a great deal better, can be brewed at home for threepence. The account
of the year's tea drinking will then stand thus:
_L._ _s._ _d._
18lb. of tea 4 10 0
54lb. of sugar 1 11 6
365 pints of milk 1 10 0
Tea tackle 0 5 0
200 fires 0 16 8
30 days' work 0 15 0
Loss by going to public-house 1 19 0
------------
_L._ 11 7 2[3]
25. I have here estimated every thing at its very lowest. The
entertainment which I have here provided is as poor, as mean, as miserable
as any thing short of starvation can set forth; and yet the wretched thing
amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer's wages! For this
money, he and his family may drink good and wholesome beer; in a short
time, out of the mere savings from this waste, may drink it out of silver
cups and tankards. In a labourer's family, _wholesome_ beer, that has a
little life in it, is all that is wanted in _general_. Little children,
that do not work, should not have beer. Broth, porridge, or something in
that way, is the thing for them. However, I shall suppose, in order to
make my comparison as little complicated as possible, that he brews
nothing but beer as strong as the generality of beer to be had at the
public-house, and divested of the poisonous drugs which that beer but too
often contains; and I shall further suppose that he uses in his family two
quarts of this beer every day from the first of October to the last day of
March inclusive: three quarts a day during the months of April and May;
four quarts a day during the months of June and September; and five quarts
a day during the months of July and August; and if this be not enough, it
must be a family of drunkards. Here are 1097 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now,
a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of better beer than that which
is sold at the public-houses. And this is precisely a gallon for the price
of a quart. People should bear in mind, that the beer bought at the
public-house is loaded with a _beer tax_, with the tax on the public-house
keeper, in the shape of license, with all the taxes and expenses of the
brewer, with all the taxes, rent, and other expenses of the publican, and
with all the _profits_ of both brewer and publican; so that when a man
swallows a pot of beer at a public-house, he has all these expenses to
help to defray, besides the mere tax on the malt and on the hops.
26. Well, then, to brew this ample supply of good beer for a labourer's
family, these 274 gallons, requires _fifteen_ bushels of malt and (for let
us do the thing well) _fifteen pounds of hops_. The malt is now eight
shillings a bushel, and very good hops may be bought for less than a
shilling a pound. The _grains_ and yeast will amply pay for the labour and
fuel employed in the brewing; seeing that there will be pigs to eat the
grains, and bread to be baked with the yeast. The account will then stand
thus:
_L._ _s._ _d._
15 bushels of malt 6 0 0
15 pounds of hops 0 15 0
Wear of utensils 0 10 0
-----------
_L._ 7 5 0[4]
27. Here, then, is the sum of four pounds two shillings and twopence saved
every year. The utensils for brewing are, a brass kettle, a mashing tub,
coolers, (for which washing tubs may serve,) a half hogshead, with one end
taken out, for a tun tub, about four nine-gallon casks, and a couple of
eighteen-gallon casks. This is an ample supply of utensils, each of which
will last, with proper care, a good long lifetime or two, and the whole of
which, even if purchased new from the shop, will only exceed by a few
shillings, if they exceed at all, the amount of the saving, arising _the
very first year_, from quitting the troublesome and pernicious practice of
drinking tea. The saving of each succeeding year would, if you chose it,
purchase a silver mug to hold half a pint at least. However, the saving
would naturally be applied to purposes more conducive to the well-being
and happiness of a family.
28. It is not, however, the _mere saving_ to which I look. This is,
indeed, a matter of great importance, whether we look at the amount
itself, or at the ultimate consequences of a judicious application of it;
for _four pounds_ make a great _hole_ in a man's wages for the year; and
when we consider all the advantages that would arise to a family of
children from having these four pounds, now so miserably wasted, laid out
upon their backs, in the shape of a decent dress, it is impossible to look
at this waste without feelings of sorrow not wholly unmixed with those of
a harsher description.
29. But, I look upon the thing in a still more serious light. I view the
tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an
engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker
of misery for old age. In the fifteen bushels of malt there are 570 pounds
weight of _sweet_; that is to say, of nutricious matter, unmixed with any
thing injurious to health. In the 730 tea messes of the year there are 54
pounds of sweet in the sugar, and about 30 pounds of matter equal to sugar
in the milk. Here are 84 pounds instead of 570, and even the good effect
of these 84 pounds is more than over-balanced by the corrosive, gnawing
and poisonous powers of the tea.
30. It is impossible for any one to deny the truth of this statement. Put
it to the test with a lean hog: give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and
he will repay you in ten score of bacon or thereabouts. But give him the
730 tea messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing
else, and he is dead with hunger, and bequeaths you his skeleton, at the
end of about seven days. It is impossible to doubt in such a case. The tea
drinking has done a great deal in bringing this nation into the state of
misery in which it now is; and the tea drinking, which is carried on by
"dribs" and "drabs;" by pence and farthings going out at a time; this
miserable practice has been gradually introduced by the growing weight of
the taxes on malt and on hops, and by the everlasting penury amongst the
labourers, occasioned by the paper-money.
31. We see better prospects however, and therefore let us now rouse
ourselves, and shake from us the degrading curse, the effects of which
have been much more extensive and infinitely more mischievous than men in
general seem to imagine.
32. It must be evident to every one, that the practice of tea drinking
must render the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe
weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing
the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, an
effeminacy, a seeking for the fire-side, a lurking in the bed, and, in
short, all the characteristics of idleness, for which, in this case, real
want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the
public-house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon
as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to
whom the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the
brothel. At the very least, it teaches them idleness. The everlasting
dawdling about with the slops of the tea tackle, gives them a relish for
nothing that requires strength and activity. When they go from home, they
know how to do nothing that is useful. To brew, to bake, to make butter,
to milk, to rear poultry; to do any earthly thing of use they are wholly
unqualified. To shut poor young creatures up in manufactories is bad
enough; but there, at any rate, they do something that is useful; whereas,
the girl that has been brought up merely to boil the tea-kettle, and to
assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of
food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so
unfortunate as to fix his affections upon her.
33. But is it in the power of any man, any good labourer, who has attained
the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life,
without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England? Where is
there such a man, who cannot trace to this cause a very considerable part
of all the mortifications and sufferings of his life? When was he ever
_too late_ at his labour; when did he ever meet with a frown, with a
turning off, and pauperism on that account, without being able to trace it
to the tea-kettle? When reproached with lagging in the morning, the poor
wretch tells you that he will make up for it by _working during his
breakfast time_! I have heard this a hundred and a hundred times over. He
was up time enough; but the tea-kettle kept him lolling and lounging at
home; and now, instead of sitting down to a breakfast upon bread, bacon,
and beer, which is to carry him on to the hour of dinner, he has to force
his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness, and at dinner time to
swallow his dry bread, or slake his half-feverish thirst at the pump or
the brook. To the wretched tea-kettle he has to return at night, with legs
hardly sufficient to maintain him; and thus he makes his miserable
progress towards that death, which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner
than he would have found it had he made his wife brew beer instead of
making tea. If he now and then gladdens his heart with the drugs of the
public house, some quarrel, some accident, some illness, is the probable
consequence; to the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home; the
mischievous example reaches the children, corrupts them or scatters them,
and misery for life is the consequence.
34. I should now proceed to the _details_ of brewing; but these, though
they will not occupy a large space, must be put off to the _second
number_. The custom of brewing at home has so long ceased amongst
labourers, and, in many cases, amongst tradesmen, that it was necessary
for me fully to state my reasons for wishing to see the custom revived. I
shall, in my next, clearly explain how the operation is performed; and it
will be found to be so _easy a thing_, that I am not without hope, that
many _tradesmen_, who now spend their evenings at the public house, amidst
tobacco smoke and empty _noise_, may be induced, by the finding of better
drink at home, at a quarter part of the price, to perceive that home is by
far the pleasantest place wherein to pass their hours of relaxation.
35. My work is intended chiefly for the benefit of _cottagers_, who must,
of course, have some _land_; for, I purpose to show, that a large part of
the food of even a large family may be raised, without any diminution of
the labourer's earnings abroad, from forty rod, or a quarter of an acre,
of ground; but at the same time, what I have to say will be applicable to
larger establishments, in all the branches of domestic economy: and
especially to that of providing a family with _beer_.
36. The _kind of beer_, for a labourer's family, that is to say, the
_degree of strength_, must depend on circumstances; on the numerousness of
the family; on the season of the year, and various other things. But,
generally speaking, beer _half_ the strength of that mentioned in
paragraph 25 will be quite strong enough; for that is, at least, one-third
stronger than the farm-house "_small beer_," which, however, as long
experience has proved, is best suited to the purpose. A judicious labourer
would probably always have some _ale_ in his house, and have small beer
for the general drink. There is no reason why he should not keep
_Christmas_ as well as the farmer; and when he is _mowing_, _reaping_, or
is at any other hard work, a quart, or three pints, of _really good fat
ale_ a-day is by no means too much. However, circumstances vary so much
with different labourers, that as to the _sort_ of beer, and the number of
brewings, and the times of brewing, no general rule can be laid down.
37. Before I proceed to explain the uses of the several brewing utensils,
I must speak of the _quality_ of the materials of which beer is made; that
is to say, the _malt_, _hops_, and _water_. Malt varies very much in
quality, as, indeed, it must, with the quality of the barley. When good,
it is full of flour, and in biting a grain asunder, you find it bite
easily, and see the _shell thin_ and filled up well with flour. If it bite
_hard_ and _steely_, the malt is bad. There is _pale_ malt and _brown_
malt; but the difference in the two arises merely from the different
degrees of heat employed in the drying. The main thing to attend to is,
the _quantity of flour_. If the barley was bad; _thin_, or _steely_,
whether from unripeness or blight, or any other cause, it will not _malt_
so well; that is to say, it will not send out its roots in due time; and a
part of it will still be barley. Then, the world is wicked enough to
think, and even to say, that there are maltsters who, when they send you a
bushel of malt, _put a little barley amongst it_, the malt being _taxed_
and the barley _not_! Let us hope that this is seldom the case; yet, when
we _do know_ that this terrible system of taxation induces the
beer-selling gentry to supply their customers with stuff little better
than poison, it is not very uncharitable to suppose it possible for some
maltsters to yield to the temptations of the devil so far as to play the
trick above mentioned. To detect this trick, and to discover what portion
of the barley is in an unmalted state, take a handful of the _unground_
malt, and put it into a bowl of cold water. Mix it about with the water a
little; that is, let every grain be _just wet all over_; and whatever part
of them _sink_ are not good. If you have your malt _ground_, there is not,
as I know of, any means of detection. Therefore, if your brewing be
considerable in amount, _grind your own malt_, the means of doing which is
very easy, and neither expensive nor troublesome, as will appear, when I
come to speak of _flour_. If the barley be _well malted_, there is still a
variety in the quality of the malt; that is to say, a bushel of malt from
fine, plump, heavy barley, will be better than the same quantity from thin
and light barley. In this case, as in the case of wheat, the _weight_ is
the criterion of the quality. Only bear in mind, that as a bushel of
wheat, weighing _sixty-two_ pounds, is better worth _six_ shillings, than
a bushel weighing _fifty-two_ is worth _four_ shillings, so a bushel of
malt weighing _forty-five_ pounds is better worth _nine_ shillings, than a
bushel weighing _thirty-five_ is worth _six_ shillings. In malt,
therefore, as in every thing else, the word _cheap_ is a deception, unless
the quality be taken into view. But, bear in mind, that in the case of
_unmalted_ barley, mixed with the malt, the _weight_ can be no rule; for
barley is _heavier_ than malt.
No. II.
BREWING BEER--(_continued._)
38. As to using _barley_ in the making of beer, I have given it a full and
fair trial twice over, and I would recommend it to neither rich nor poor.
The barley produces _strength_, though nothing like the malt; but the
beer is _flat_, even though you use half malt and half barley; and flat
beer lies heavy on the stomach, and of course, besides the bad taste, is
unwholesome. To pay 4_s._ 6_d._ tax upon every bushel of our own barley,
turned into malt, when the barley itself is not worth 3_s._ a bushel, is a
horrid thing; but, as long as the owners of the land shall be so dastardly
as to suffer themselves to be thus deprived of the use of their estates to
favour the slave-drivers and plunderers of the East and West Indies, we
must submit to the thing, incomprehensible to foreigners, and even to
ourselves, as the submission may be.
39. With regard to _hops_, the quality is very various. At times when some
sell for 5_s._ a pound, others sell for _sixpence_. Provided the purchaser
understand the article, the quality is, of course, in proportion to the
price. There are two things to be considered in hops: the _power of
preserving beer_, and that of giving it a _pleasant flavour_. Hops may be
_strong_; and yet not _good_. They should be _bright_, have no _leaves_ or
bits of branches amongst them. The hop is the _husk_, or _seed-pod_, of
the hop-vine, as the _cone_ is that of the fir-tree; and the _seeds_
themselves are deposited, like those of the fir, round a little soft
stalk, enveloped by the several folds of this pod, or cone. If, in the
gathering, leaves of the vine or bits of the branches are mixed with the
hops, these not only help to make up the _weight_, but they give a _bad
taste_ to the beer; and indeed, if they abound much, they spoil the beer.
Great attention is therefore necessary in this respect. There are, too,
numerous _sorts_ of hops, varying in size, form, and quality, quite as
much as _apples_. However, when they are in a state to be used in brewing,
the marks of goodness are an absence of _brown colour_, (for that
indicates perished hops;) a colour _between green_ and _yellow_; a great
_quantity of the yellow farina_; seeds _not too large nor too hard_; a
_clammy feel_ when rubbed between the fingers; and a _lively_, pleasant
smell. As to the _age_ of hops, they retain for twenty years, probably,
their _power of preserving beer_; but not of giving it a pleasant flavour.
I have used them at _ten years old_, and should have no fear of using
them at twenty. They lose none of their _bitterness_; none of their power
of preserving beer; but they lose the other quality; and therefore, in the
making of fine ale, or beer, new hops are to be preferred. As to the
_quantity_ of hops, it is clear, from what has been said, that that must,
in some degree depend upon their _quality_; but, supposing them to be good
in quality, a pound of hops to a bushel of malt is about the quantity. A
good deal, however, depends upon the length of time that the beer is
intended to be kept, and upon the season of the year in which it is
brewed. Beer intended to be kept a long while should have the full pound,
also beer brewed in warmer weather, though for present use: half the
quantity may do under an opposite state of circumstances.
40. The _water_ should be soft by all means. That of brooks, or rivers, is
best. That of a _pond_, fed by a rivulet, or spring, will do very well.
_Rain-water_, if just fallen, may do; but stale rain-water, or stagnant
pond-water, makes the beer _flat_ and difficult to keep; and _hard water_,
from wells, is very bad; it does not get the sweetness out of the malt,
nor the bitterness out of the hops, like soft water; and the wort of it
does not ferment well, which is a certain proof of its unfitness for the
purpose.
41. There are two descriptions of persons whom I am desirous to see
brewing their own beer; namely, _tradesmen_, and _labourers_ and
_journeymen_. There must, therefore, be two _distinct scales_ treated of.
In the former editions of this work, I spoke of a _machine_ for brewing,
and stated the advantages of using it in a family of any considerable
consumption of beer; but, while, from my desire to promote _private
brewing_, I strongly recommended the _machine_, I stated that, "if any of
my readers could point out any method by which we should be more likely to
restore the practice of private brewing, and especially to the _cottage_,
I should be greatly obliged to them to communicate it to me." Such
communications have been made, and I am very happy to be able, in this new
edition of my little work, to avail myself of them. There was, in the
_Patent Machine_, always, an objection on account of the _expense_; for,
even the machine for _one bushel of malt_ cost, at the reduced price,
_eight pounds_; a sum far above the reach of _a cottager_, and even above
that of a small tradesman. Its _convenience_, especially in _towns_, where
room is so valuable, was an object of great importance; but there were
_disadvantages_ attending it which, until after some experience, I did not
ascertain. It will be remembered that the method by the brewing machine
requires the malt to be put into _the cold water_, and for the water to
make the malt _swim_, or, at least, to be in such proportion as to prevent
the fire beneath from burning the malt. We found that our beer was _flat_,
and that it did _not keep_. And this arose, I have every reason to
believe, from this process. The malt should be put _into hot water_, and
the water, at first, should be but just sufficient in quantity to _stir
the malt in_, and _separate it well_. Nevertheless, when it is merely to
make _small beer_; beer _not wanted to keep_; in such cases the brewing
machine may be of use; and, as will be seen by-and-by, a moveable _boiler_
(which has nothing to do with the _patent_) may, in many cases, be of
great convenience and utility.
42. The two _scales_ of which I have spoken above, are now to be spoken
of; and, that I may explain my meaning the more clearly, I shall suppose,
that, for the tradesman's family, it will be requisite to brew eighteen
gallons of ale and thirty-six of small beer, to fill three casks of
eighteen gallons each. It will be observed, of course, that, for larger
quantities, larger utensils of all sorts will be wanted. I take this
quantity as the one to give directions on. The utensils wanted here will
be, FIRST, a _copper_ that will contain _forty gallons_, at least; for,
though there be to be but thirty-six gallons of small beer, there must be
space for the hops, and for the liquor that goes off in steam. SECOND, a
_mashing-tub_ to contain sixty gallons; for the malt is to be in this
along with the water. THIRD, an _underbuck_, or shallow tub to go under
the mash-tub, for the wort to run into when drawn from the grains.
FOURTH, a _tun-tub_, that will contain thirty gallons, to put the ale into
to work, the mash-tub, as we shall see, serving as a tun-tub for the small
beer. Besides these, a couple of _coolers_, shallow tubs, which may be the
heads of wine buts, or some such things, about a foot deep; or if you have
_four_ it may be as well, in order to effect the cooling more quickly.
43. You begin by filling the copper with water, and next by making the
water _boil_. You then put into the mashing-tub water sufficient _to stir
and separate the malt in_. But now let me say more particularly what this
mashing-tub is. It is, you know, to contain _sixty gallons_. It is to be a
little broader at top than at bottom, and not quite so deep as it is wide
across the bottom. Into the middle of the bottom there is a hole about two
inches over, to draw the wort off through. In this hole goes a stick, a
foot or two longer than the tub is high. This stick is to be about two
inches through, and _tapered_ for about eight inches upwards at the end
that goes into the hole, which at last it fills up closely as a cork. Upon
the hole, before any thing else be put into the tub, you lay a little
bundle of _fine birch_, (heath or straw _may_ do,) about half the bulk of
a birch broom, and well tied at both ends. This being laid over the hole
(to keep back the grains as the wort goes out,) you put the tapered end of
the stick down through into the hole, and thus _cork_ the hole up. You
must then have something of weight sufficient to keep the birch steady at
the bottom of the tub, with a hole through it to slip down the stick;
otherwise when the stick is raised it will be apt to raise the birch with
it, and when you are stirring the mash you would move it from its place.
The best thing for this purpose will be a _leaden collar_ for the stick,
with the hole in the collar plenty large enough, and it should weigh three
or four pounds. The thing they use in some farm-houses is the iron box of
a wheel. Any thing will do that will slide down the stick, and lie with
weight enough on the birch to keep it from moving. Now, then, you are
ready to begin brewing. I allow _two bushels_ of malt for the brewing I
have supposed. You must now put into the mashing-tub as much boiling water
as will be sufficient to _stir the malt in_ and _separate it well_. But
here occur some of the nicest points of all; namely, the _degree of heat_
that the water is to be at, before you put in the malt. This heat is _one
hundred and seventy degrees_ by the thermometer. If you have a
thermometer, this is ascertained easily; but, without one, take this rule,
by which so much good beer has been made in England for hundreds of years:
when you can, by looking down into the tub, _see your face clearly in the
water_, the water is become cool enough; and you must not put the malt in
before. Now put in the malt and _stir it well in the water_. To perform
this stirring, which is very necessary, you have a stick, somewhat bigger
than a broom-stick, with two or three smaller sticks, eight or ten inches
long, put through the lower end of it at about three or four inches
asunder, and sticking out on each side of the long stick. These small
cross sticks serve to search the malt and separate it well in the stirring
or _mashing_. Thus, then, the _malt is in_; and in this state it should
continue for about a quarter of an hour. In the mean while you will have
filled up your copper, and made it _boil_; and now (at the end of the
quarter of an hour) you put in boiling water sufficient to give you your
eighteen gallons of _ale_. But, perhaps, you must have thirty gallons of
water in the whole; for the grains will retain at least ten gallons of
water; and it is better to have rather too much wort than too little. When
your proper quantity of water is in, stir the malt again well. Cover the
mashing-tub over with _sacks_, or something that will answer the same
purpose; and there let the mash stand for _two hours_. When it has stood
the two hours, you draw off the wort. And now, mind, the mashing-tub is
placed on a _couple of stools_, or on something, that will enable you to
put the _underbuck_ under it, so as to receive the wort as it comes out of
the hole before-mentioned. When you have put the underbuck in its place,
you let out the wort by pulling up the stick that corks the whole. But,
observe, this stick (which goes six or eight inches through the hole) must
be raised by degrees, and the wort must be let out _slowly_, in order to
keep back the _sediment_. So that it is necessary to have something to
_keep the stick up_ at the point where you are to raise it, and wish to
fix it at for the time. To do this, the simplest, cheapest and best thing
in the world is a _cleft stick_. Take a _rod_ of ash, hazel, birch, or
almost any wood; let it be a foot or two longer than your mashing-tub is
wide over the top; _split_ it, as if for making hoops; tie it round with a
string at each end; lay it across your mashing-tub; pull it open in the
middle, and let the upper part of the wort-stick through it, and when you
raise that stick, by degrees as before directed, the cleft stick _will
hold it up_ at whatever height you please.
44. When you have drawn off the _ale-wort_, you proceed to put into the
mashing tub water for the _small beer_. But, I shall go on with my
directions about the _ale_ till I have got it into the _cask_ and
_cellar_; and shall then return to the small-beer.
45. As you draw off the ale-wort into the underbuck, you must lade it out
of that into the tun-tub, for which work, as well as for various other
purposes in the brewing, you must have a _bowl-dish_ with a handle to it.
The underbuck will not hold the whole of the wort. It is, as before
described, a shallow tub, to go _under_ the mashing-tub to draw off the
wort into. Out of this underbuck you must lade the ale-wort into the
_tun-tub_; and there it must remain till your _copper_ be emptied and
ready to receive it.
46. The copper being empty, you put the wort into it, and put in after the
wort, or before it, _a pound and a half of good hops_, well rubbed and
separated as you put them in. You now make the copper boil, and keep it,
with the lid off, at a good _brisk_ boil, for a _full hour_, and if it be
an hour and a half it is none the worse.
47. When the boiling is done, put out your fire, and put the liquor into
the _coolers_. But it must be put into the coolers _without the hops_.
Therefore, in order to get the hops out of the liquor, you must have a
_strainer_. The best for your purpose is a small _clothes-basket_, or any
other wicker-basket. You set your coolers in the most convenient place. It
may be in-doors or out of doors, as most convenient. You lay a couple of
sticks across one of the coolers, and put the basket upon them. Put your
liquor, hops and all, into the basket, which will _keep back the hops_.
When you have got liquor enough in one cooler, you go to another with your
sticks and basket, till you have got all your liquor out. If you find your
liquor deeper in one cooler than the other, you can make an alteration in
that respect, till you have the liquor so distributed as to cool equally
fast in both, or all, the coolers.
48. The next stage of the liquor is in the _tun-tub_, where it is _set to
work_. Now, a very great point is, the _degree of heat_ that the liquor is
to be at when it is set to working. The proper heat is seventy degrees; so
that a thermometer makes this matter sure. In the country they determine
the degree of heat by merely putting a finger into the liquor. Seventy
degrees is but _just warm_, a gentle _luke-warmth_. Nothing like _heat_. A
little experience makes perfectness in such a matter. When at the proper
heat, or nearly, (for the liquor will cool a little in being removed,) put
it into the _tun-tub_. And now, before I speak of the act of setting the
beer to work, I must describe this _tun-tub_, which I first mentioned in
Paragraph 42. It is to hold _thirty gallons_, as you have seen; and
nothing is better than an old _cask_ of that size, or somewhat larger,
with the head taken out, or cut off. But, indeed, any tub of sufficient
dimensions, and of about the same depth proportioned to the width as a
cask or barrel has, will do for the purpose. Having put the liquor into
the tun-tub, you put in the _yeast_. About _half a pint_ of good yeast is
sufficient. This should first be put into a thing of some sort that will
hold about a gallon of your liquor; the thing should then be nearly filled
with liquor, and with a stick or spoon you should mix the yeast well with
the liquor in this bowl, or other thing, and stir in along with the yeast
a handful of _wheat or rye flour_. This mixture is then to be poured out
clean into the tun-tub, and the whole mass of the liquor is then to be
agitated well by lading up and pouring down again with your bowl-dish,
till the yeast be well mixed with the liquor. Some people do the thing in
another manner. They mix up the yeast and flour with some liquor (as just
mentioned) taken out of the coolers; and then they set the little vessel
that contains this mixture down _on the bottom of the tun-tub_; and,
leaving it there, put the liquor out of the coolers into the tun-tub.
Being placed at the bottom, and having the liquor poured on it, the
mixture is, perhaps, more perfectly effected in this way than in any way.
The _flour_ may not be necessary; but, as the country people use it, it
is, doubtless, of some use; for their hereditary experience has not been
for nothing. When your liquor is thus properly put into the tun-tub and
set a working, cover over the top of the tub by laying across it a sack or
two, or something that will answer the purpose.
49. We now come to the _last stage_; the _cask_ or _barrel_. But I must
first speak of the place for the tun-tub to stand in. The place should be
such as to avoid too much warmth or cold. The air should, if possible, be
at about 55 degrees. Any cool place in summer and any _warmish_ place in
winter. If the weather be _very cold_, some cloths or sacks should be put
round the tun-tub while the beer is working. In about six or eight hours,
a _frothy_ head will rise upon the liquor; and it will keep rising, more
or less slowly, for about forty-eight hours. But, the _length of time_
required for the working depends on various circumstances; so that no
precise time can be fixed. The best way is, to take off the froth (which
is indeed _yeast_) at the end of about twenty-four hours, with a common
skimmer, and put it into a pan or vessel of some sort; then, in twelve
hours' time, take it off again in the same way; and so on till the liquor
has _done working_, and sends up no more yeast. Then it is _beer_; and
when it is _quite cold_ (for _ale_ or _strong beer_) put it into the
_cask_ by means of a _funnel_. It must be cold before you do this, or it
will be what the country-people call _foxed_; that is to say, have a rank
and disagreeable taste. Now, as to the _cask_, it must be _sound_ and
_sweet_. I thought, when writing the former edition of this work, that the
_bell-shaped_ were the best casks. I am now convinced that that was an
error. The bell-shaped, by contracting the width of the top of the beer,
as that top descends, in consequence of the draft for use, certainly
prevents the _head_ (which always gathers on beer as soon as you begin to
draw it off) from breaking and mixing in amongst the beer. This is an
advantage in the bell-shape; but then the bell-shape, which places the
widest end of the cask uppermost, exposes the cask to the admission of
_external air_ much more than the other shape. This danger approaches from
the _ends_ of the cask; and, in the bell-shape, you have the _broadest_
end wholly exposed the moment you have drawn out the first gallon of beer,
which is not the case with the casks of the common shape. Directions are
given, in the case of the bell-casks, to put _damp sand_ on the top to
keep out the air. But, it is very difficult to make this effectual; and
yet, if you do not keep out the air, your beer will be _flat_; and when
flat, it really is good for nothing but the pigs. It is very difficult to
_fill_ the bell-cask, which you will easily see if you consider its shape.
It must be placed on the _level_ with the greatest possible _truth_, or
there will be a space left; and to place it with such truth is, perhaps,
as difficult a thing as a mason or bricklayer ever had to perform. And
yet, if this be not done, there will be an _empty space_ in the cask,
though it may, at the same time, run over. With the common casks there are
none of these difficulties. A common eye will see when it is well placed;
and, at any rate, any little vacant space that may be left is not at an
_end_ of the cask, and will, without great carelessness, be so small as to
be of no consequence. We now come to the act of putting in the beer. The
cask should be placed on a stand with legs about a foot long. The cask,
being round, must have a little wedge, or block, on each side to keep it
steady. _Bricks_ do very well. Bring your beer down into the cellar in
buckets, and pour it in through the funnel, until the cask be full. The
cask should _lean a little on one side_, when you fill it; because the
beer will _work again_ here, and send more yeast out of the bung-hole;
and, if the cask were not a little on one side, the yeast would flow over
both sides of the cask, and would not descend in _one stream_ into a pan,
put underneath to receive it. Here the bell-cask is extremely
inconvenient; for the yeast works up all _over the head_, and _cannot run
off_, and makes a very nasty affair. This _alone_, to say nothing of the
other disadvantages, would decide the question against the bell-casks.
Something will _go off in this working_, which may continue for two or
three days. When you put the beer in the cask, you should have a _gallon
or two left_, to keep filling up with as the working produces emptiness.
At last, when the working is completely over, _right_ the cask. That is to
say, block it up to its level. Put in a handful of _fresh hops_. Fill the
cask quite full. Put in the bung, with a bit of _coarse linen_ stuff round
it; hammer it down tight; and, if you like, fill a coarse bag with sand,
and lay it, well pressed down, over the bung.
50. As to the length of time that you are to keep the beer before you
begin to use it, that must, in some measure, depend on taste. _Such beer_
as this _ale_ will keep almost any length of time. As to the mode of
_tapping_, that is as easy almost as _drinking_. When the cask is _empty_,
great care must be taken to cork it _tightly up_, so that no air get in;
for, if it do, the cask is _moulded_, and when once moulded, it is
_spoiled for ever_. It is never again fit to be used about beer. Before
the cask be used again, the grounds must be poured out, and the cask
cleaned by several times scalding; by putting in _stones_ (or a _chain_,)
and rolling and shaking about till it be quite clean. Here again the round
casks have the decided advantage; it being almost impossible to make the
bell-casks thoroughly clean, without _taking the head out_, which is both
troublesome and expensive; as it cannot be well done by any one but a
_cooper_, who is not always at hand, and who, when he is, must be _paid_.
51. I have now done with the _ale_, and it remains for me to speak of the
_small beer_. In Paragraph 47 (which now see) I left you drawing off the
_ale-wort_, and with your copper full of boiling water. Thirty-six gallons
of that boiling water are, as soon as you have got your ale-wort out, and
have put down your mash-tub stick to close up the hole at the bottom; as
soon as you have done this, thirty-six gallons of the boiling water are to
go into the mashing-tub; the grains are to be well stirred up, as before;
the mashing-tub is to be covered over again, as mentioned in Paragraph 43;
and the mash is to stand in that state for _an hour_, and not two hours,
as for the ale-wort.
52. When the small beer mash has stood its hour, draw it off as in
Paragraph 47, and put it into the tun-tub as you did the ale-wort.
53. By this time your copper will be _empty_ again, by putting your
ale-liquor to cool, as mentioned in Paragraph 47. And you now put the
small beer wort _into the copper_, with the hops that you used before, and
with _half a pound of fresh hops_ added to them; and this liquor you boil
briskly for _an hour_.
54. By this time you will have taken the grains and the sediment clean out
of the mashing-tub, and taken out the bunch of birch twigs, and made all
clean. Now put in the birch twigs again, and put down your stick as
before. Lay your two or three sticks across the mashing-tub, put your
basket on them, and take your liquor from the copper (putting the fire out
first) and pour it into the mashing-tub through the basket. Take the
basket away, throw the hops to the dunghill, and leave the small beer
liquid _to cool in the mashing-tub_.
55. Here it is to remain to be _set to working_ as mentioned for the ale,
in Paragraph 48; only, in this case, you will want _more yeast in
proportion_; and should have for your thirty-six gallons of small beer,
three half pints of good yeast.
56. Proceed, as to all the rest of the business, as with the ale, only, in
the case of the small beer, it should be put into the cask, not _quite
cold_, but a _little warm_; or else it will not work at all in the barrel,
which it ought to do. It will not work so strongly or so long as the ale;
and may be put in the barrel much sooner; in general the next day after it
is brewed.
57. All the utensils should be well cleaned and put away as soon as they
are done with; the _little_ things as well as the great things; for it is
_loss of time_ to make new ones. And, now, let us see the _expense_ of
these utensils. The copper, _new_, 5_l._; the mashing-tub, _new_, 30_s._;
the tun-tub, not new, 5_s._; the underbuck and three coolers, not new,
20_s._ The whole cost is 7_l._ 10_s._ which is ten shillings less than the
_one bushel machine_. I am now in a farm-house, where the _same set_ of
utensils has been used for _forty years_; and the owner tells me, that,
with the same use, they may last for _forty years longer_. The machine
will not, I think, last _four years_, if in any thing like regular use. It
is of sheet-iron, _tinned on the inside_, and this tin _rusts_
exceedingly, and is not to be kept clean without such _rubbing_ as must
soon take off the tin. The great advantage of the machine is, that it can
be _removed_. You can brew without a _brew-house_.--You can set the boiler
up against any fire-place, or any window. You can brew under a cart-shed,
and even out of doors. But all this may be done with _these utensils_, if
your _copper_ be moveable. Make the boiler of _copper_, and not of
sheet-iron, and fix it on a stand with a fire-place and stove-pipe; and
then you have the whole to brew out of doors with as well as in-doors,
which is a very great convenience.
58. Now with regard to the _other_ scale of brewing, little need be said;
because, all the principles being the same, the utensils only are to be
proportioned to the _quantity_. If only one sort of beer be to be brewed
at a time, all the difference is, that, in order to extract the whole of
the goodness of the malt, the mashing ought to be at _twice_. The two
worts are then put together, and then you boil them together with the
hops.
59. A Correspondent at _Morpeth_ says, the whole of the utensils used by
him are a twenty-gallon _pot_, a mashing-tub, that also answers for a
tun-tub, and a shallow tub for a cooler; and that these are plenty for a
person who is any thing of a contriver. This is very true; and these
things will cost no more, perhaps, than _forty shillings_. A nine gallon
cask of beer can be brewed very well with such utensils. Indeed, it is
what used to be done by almost every labouring man in the kingdom, until
the high price of malt and comparatively low price of wages rendered the
people too poor and miserable to be able to brew at all. A Correspondent
at Bristol has obligingly sent me the model of utensils for _brewing on a
small scale_; but as they consist chiefly of _brittle ware_, I am of
opinion that they would not so well answer the purpose.
60. Indeed, as to the country labourers, all they want is the ability to
_get the malt_. Mr. ELLMAN, in his evidence before the Agricultural
Committee, said, that, when he began farming, forty-five years ago, there
was not a labourer's family in the parish that did not brew their own beer
and enjoy it by their own fire-sides; and that, _now, not one single
family did it, from want of ability to get the malt_. It is the _tax_ that
prevents their getting the malt; for, the barley is cheap enough. The tax
causes a monopoly in the hands of the maltsters, who, when the tax is
_two_ and _sixpence_, make the malt, cost 7_s._ 6_d._, though the barley
cost but 2_s._ 6_d._; and though the malt, tax and all, ought to cost him
about 5_s._ 6_d._ If the tax were taken off, this _pernicious monopoly_
would be destroyed.
61. The reader will easily see, that, in proportion to the quantity wanted
to be brewed must be the size of the utensils; but, I may observe here,
that the above utensils are sufficient for three, or even four, bushels of
malt, if stronger beer be wanted.
62. When it is necessary, in case of falling short in the quantity wanted
to fill up the ale cask, some may be taken from the small beer. But, upon
the _whole brewing_, there ought to be no falling short; because, if the
casks be not _filled up_, the beer will not be good, and certainly will
not _keep_. Great care should be taken as to the _cleansing_ of the
_casks_. They should be made perfectly _sweet_; or it is impossible to
have good beer.
63. The cellar, for beer to keep any length of time, should be cool. Under
_a hill_ is the best place for a cellar; but, at any rate, a cellar of
good depth, and _dry_. At certain times of the year, beer that is kept
long will ferment. The vent-pegs must, in such cases, be loosened a
little, and afterwards fastened.
64. Small beer may be tapped almost directly. It is a sort of joke that it
should _see a Sunday_; but, that it may do before it be two days old. In
short, any beer is better than water; but it should have some strength and
some _weeks_ of age at any rate.
65. I cannot conclude this Essay without expressing my pleasure, that a
law has been recently passed to authorize the general retail of beer. This
really seems necessary to prevent the King's subjects from being
_poisoned_. The brewers and porter quacks have carried their tricks to
such an extent, that there is _no safety_ for those who drink brewer's
beer.
66. The best and most effectual thing is, however, for people to _brew
their own beer_, to enable them and induce them to do which, I have done
all that lies in my power. A longer treatise on the subject would have
been of no use. These few plain directions will suffice for those who have
a disposition to do the thing, and those who have not would remain unmoved
by any thing that I could say.
67. There seems to be a _great number of things to do_ in brewing, but the
greater part of them require only about a _minute_ each. A brewing, such
as I have given the detail of above, may be completed in _a day_; but, by
the word _day_, I mean to include the _morning_, beginning at four
o'clock.
68. The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hour's work
for a servant woman, or a tradesman's or a farmer's wife. There is no
_heavy_ work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business,
otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who,
though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they
are _useful_; and as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at
_play_, there is nothing to make them stand to their love like seeing them
at _work_. In conclusion of these remarks on beer brewing, I once more
express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax
on _malt_, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of
England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine,
and civil war.
69. In Paragraph 76, in Paragraph 108, and perhaps in another place or two
(of the last edition,) I spoke of the _machine_ for brewing. The work
being _stereotyped_, it would have been troublesome to alter those
paragraphs; but, of course, the public, in reading them, will bear in mind
what has been _now_ said relative to the _machine_. The inventor of that
machine deserves great praise for his efforts to promote private brewing;
and, as I said before, in certain confined situations, and where the beer
is to be merely _small beer_, and for _immediate use_, and where _time_
and _room_ are of such importance as to make the _cost_ of the machine
comparatively of trifling consideration, the machine may possibly be found
to be an useful utensil.
70. Having stated the inducements to the brewing of beer, and given the
plainest directions that I was able to give for the doing of the thing, I
shall, next, proceed to the subject of _bread_. But this subject is too
large and of too much moment to be treated with brevity, and must,
therefore, be put off till my next Number. I cannot, in the mean while,
dismiss the subject of _brewing beer_ without once more adverting to its
many advantages, as set forth in the foregoing Number of this work.
71. The following instructions for the making of _porter_, will clearly
show what sort of stuff is sold at _public-houses_ in London; and we may
pretty fairly suppose that the public-house beer in the country is not
superior to it in quality, "A quarter of malt, with these ingredients,
will make _five barrels of good porter_. Take one quarter of high-coloured
malt, eight pounds of hops, nine pounds of _treacle_, eight pounds of
_colour_, eight pounds of sliced _liquorice-root_, two drams of _salt of
tartar_, two ounces of _Spanish-liquorice_, and half an ounce of
_capsicum_." The author says, that he merely gives the ingredients, as
_used by many persons_.
72. This extract is taken from a _book on brewing_, recently published in
London. What a curious composition! What a mess of drugs! But, if the
brewers _openly avow_ this, what have we to expect from the _secret
practices_ of them, and the _retailers_ of the article! When we know, that
_beer-doctor_ and _brewers'-druggist_ are professions, practised as openly
as those of _bug-man_ and _rat-killer_, are we simple enough to suppose
that the above-named are the _only_ drugs that people swallow in those
potions, which they call _pots of beer_? Indeed, we know the contrary; for
scarcely a week passes without witnessing the detection of some greedy
wretch, who has used, in making or in _doctoring_ his beer, drugs,
forbidden by the law. And, it is not many weeks since one of these was
convicted, in the Court of Excise, for using potent and dangerous drugs,
by the means of which, and a suitable quantity of water, he made _two buts
of beer into three_. Upon this occasion, it appeared that no less than
_ninety_ of these worthies were in the habit of pursuing the same
practices. The drugs are not unpleasant to the taste; they sting the
palate: they give a present relish: they communicate a momentary
exhilaration: but, they give no force to the body, which, on the contrary,
they enfeeble, and, in many instances, with time, destroy; producing
diseases from which the drinker would otherwise have been free to the end
of his days.
73. But, look again at the receipt for making porter. Here are _eight_
bushels of malt to 180 gallons of beer; that is to say, twenty-fire
gallons from the bushel. Now the malt is eight shillings a bushel, and
eight pounds of the very _best hops_ will cost but a shilling a pound. The
malt and hops, then, for the 180 gallons, cost but _seventy-two
shillings_; that is to say, only a little more than _fourpence three
farthings a gallon_, for stuff which is now retailed for _sixteen pence a
gallon_! If this be not an abomination, I should be glad to know what is.
Even if the treacle, colour, and the drugs, be included, the cost is not
_fivepence a gallon_; and yet, not content with this enormous extortion,
there are wretches who resort to the use of other and pernicious drugs, in
order to increase their gains!
74. To provide against this dreadful evil there is, and there can be, no
_law_; for, it is _created by the law_. The _law_ it is that imposes the
enormous tax on the _malt_ and _hops_; the _law_ it is that imposes the
_license tax_, and places the power of granting the license at the
discretion of persons appointed by the government; the _law_ it is that
checks, in this way, the private brewing, and that prevents _free and fair
competition_ in the selling of beer, and as long as the _law_ does these,
it will in vain endeavour to prevent the people from being destroyed by
slow poison.
75. Innumerable are the benefits that would arise from a repeal of the
taxes on malt and on hops. Tippling-houses might then be shut up with
justice and propriety. The labourer, the artisan, the tradesman, the
landlord, all would instantly feel the benefit. But the _landlord_ more,
perhaps, in this case, than any other member of the community. The four or
five pounds a year which the day-labourer now drizzles away in tea-messes,
he would divide with the farmer, if he had untaxed beer. His wages would
_fall_, and fall to his _advantage_ too. The fall of wages would be not
less than 40_l._ upon a hundred acres. Thus 40_l._ would go, in the end, a
fourth, perhaps to the farmer, and three-fourths to the landlord. This is
the kind of work to _reduce poor-rates_, and to restore _husbandry to
prosperity_. Undertaken this work _must_ be, and _performed too_; but
whether we shall see this until the estates have passed away from the
_present race_ of landlords, is a question which must be referred to
_time_.
76. Surely we may hope, that, when the American farmers shall see this
little Essay, they will begin seriously to think of leaving off the use of
the liver-burning and palsy-producing _spirits_. Their _climate_, indeed,
is something: _extremely hot_ in one part of the year, and _extremely
cold_ in the other part of it. Nevertheless, they may have, and do have,
very good beer if they will. _Negligence_ is the greatest impediment in
their way. I like the Americans very much; and that, if there were no
other, would be a reason for my not hiding their faults.
No. III.
MAKING BREAD.
77. Little time need be spent in dwelling on the necessity of _this_
article to all families; though, on account of the modern custom of using
_potatoes_ to supply the place of _bread_, it seems necessary to say a few
words here on the subject, which, in another work I have so amply, and, I
think, so triumphantly discussed. I am the more disposed to revive the
subject for a moment, in this place, from having read, in the evidence
recently given before the Agricultural Committee, that many labourers,
especially in the West of England, use potatoes _instead_ of bread to a
very great extent. And I find, from the same evidence, that it is the
custom to allot to labourers "_a potatoe ground_" in part payment of their
wages! This has a tendency to bring English labourers down to the state of
the Irish, whose mode of living, as to food, is but one remove from that
of the pig, and of the ill-fed pig too.
78. I was, in reading the above-mentioned Evidence, glad to find, that
Mr. EDWARD WAKEFIELD, the best informed and most candid of all the
witnesses, gave it as his opinion, that the increase which had taken place
in the cultivation of potatoes was "_injurious to the country_;" an
opinion which must, I think, be adopted by every one who takes the trouble
to reflect a little upon the subject. For leaving out of the question the
slovenly and beastly habits engendered amongst the labouring classes by
constantly lifting their principal food at once out of the earth to their
mouths, by eating without the necessity of any implements other than the
hands and the teeth, and by dispensing with everything requiring skill in
the preparation of the food, and requiring cleanliness in its consumption
or preservation; leaving these out of the question, though they are all
matters of great moment, when we consider their effects in the rearing of
a family, we shall find, that, in mere quantity of food, that is to say of
_nourishment_, bread is the preferable diet.
79. An acre of land that will produce 300 bushels of potatoes, will
produce 32 bushels of wheat. I state this as an average fact, and am not
at all afraid of being contradicted by any one well acquainted with
husbandry. The potatoes are supposed to be of a _good sort_, as it is
called, and the wheat may be supposed to weigh 60 pounds a bushel. It is a
fact clearly established, that, after the _water_, the _stringy_
substance, and the _earth_, are taken from the potatoe, there remains only
one _tenth_ of the rough raw weight of nutritious matter, or matter which
is deemed equally nutritious with bread, and, as the raw potatoes weigh
56lb. a bushel, the acre will yield 1,830lb. of nutritious matter. Now
mind, a bushel of wheat, weighing 60lb. will make of _household bread_
(that is to say, taking out only the _bran_) 65lb. Thus, the acre yields
2,080lb. of bread. As to the _expenses_, the seed and act of planting are
about equal in the two cases. But, while the potatoes _must_ have
cultivation during their growth, the wheat needs none; and while the wheat
straw is worth from three to five pounds an acre, the haulm of the
potatoes is not worth one single truss of that straw. Then, as to the
expense of gathering, housing, and keeping the potatoe crop, it is
enormous, besides the risk of loss by frost, which may be safely taken, on
an average, at a tenth of the crop. Then comes the expense of _cooking_.
The thirty-two bushels of wheat, supposing a bushel to be baked at a time,
(which would be the case in a large family,) would demand _thirty-two
heatings of the oven_. Suppose a bushel of potatoes to be cooked every day
in order to supply the place of this bread, then we have _nine hundred
boilings of the pot_, unless _cold potatoes_ be eaten at some of the
meals; and, in that case, the diet must be _cheering_ indeed! Think of the
_labour_; think of the _time_; think of all the peelings and scrapings and
washings and messings attending these _nine hundred boilings of the pot_!
For it must be a considerable time before English people can be brought to
eat potatoes in the Irish style; that is to say, scratch them out of the
earth with their paws, toss them into a pot without washing, and when
boiled, turn them out upon a dirty board, and then sit round that board,
peel the skin and dirt from one at a time and eat the inside. Mr. Curwen
was delighted with "_Irish hospitality_," because the people there receive
no parish relief; upon which I can only say, that I wish him the exclusive
benefit of such hospitality.
80. I have here spoken of a large quantity of each of the sorts of food. I
will now come to a comparative view, more immediately applicable to a
labourer's family. When wheat is _ten_ shillings the bushel, potatoes,
bought at best hand, (I am speaking of the country generally,) are about
_two_ shillings (English) a bushel. Last spring the average price of wheat
might be _six and sixpence_, (English;) and the average price of potatoes
(in small quantities) was about _eighteen-pence_; though, by the
wagon-load, I saw potatoes bought at a _shilling_ (English) a bushel, to
give to sheep; then, observe, these were of the coarsest kind, and the
farmer had to fetch them at a considerable expense. I think, therefore,
that I give the advantage to the potatoes when I say that they sell, upon
an average, for full a _fifth_ part as much as the wheat sells for, per
bushel, while they contain four pounds less weight than the bushel of
wheat; while they yield only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter
equal to bread; and while the bushel of wheat will yield _sixty-five
pounds of bread_, besides the ten pounds of bran. Hence it is clear, that,
instead of that _saving_, which is everlastingly dinned in our ears, from
the use of potatoes, there is a _waste of more than one half_; seeing
that, when wheat is _ten shillings_ (English) the bushel, you can have
_sixty-five pounds of bread for the ten shillings_; and can have out of
potatoes only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter equal to bread
for _two shillings_! (English.) This being the case, I trust that we shall
soon hear no more of those _savings_ which the labourer makes by the use
of potatoes; I hope we shall, in the words of Dr. DRENNAN, "leave Ireland
to her _lazy_ root," if she choose still to adhere to it. It is the root,
also, of slovenliness, filth, misery, and slavery; its cultivation has
increased in England with the increase of the paupers: both, I thank God,
are upon the decline. Englishmen seem to be upon the return to beer and
bread, from water and potatoes: and, therefore, I shall now proceed to
offer some observations to the cottager, calculated to induce him to bake
his own bread.
81. As I have before stated, sixty pounds of wheat, that is to say, where
the Winchester bushel weighs sixty pounds, will make sixty-five pounds of
bread, besides the leaving of about ten pounds of bran. This is household
bread, made of flour from which the bran only is taken. If you make fine
flour, you take out pollard, as they call it, as well as bran, and then
you have a smaller quantity of bread and a greater quantity of offal; but,
even of this finer bread, bread equal in fineness to the baker's bread,
you get from _fifty-eight to fifty-nine_ pounds out of the bushel of
wheat. Now, then, let us see how many quartern loaves you get out of the
bushel of wheat, supposing it to be fine flour, in the first place. You
get thirteen quartern loaves and a half; these cost you, at the present
average price of wheat (seven and sixpence a bushel,) in the first place
7_s_. 6_d._;[5] then 3_d._ for yeast; then not more than 3_d._ for
grinding; because you have about thirteen pounds of offal, which is worth
more than a 1/2_d._ a pound, while the grinding is 9_d._ a bushel. Thus,
then, the bushel of bread of fifty-nine pounds costs you _eight
shillings_; and it yields you the weight of thirteen and a half quartern
loaves: these quartern loaves _now_ (Dec. 1821) sell at Kensington, at the
baker's shop, at 1_s._ 1/2_d._; that is to say, the thirteen quartern
loaves and a half cost 14_s._ 7-1/2_d._ I omitted to mention the salt,
which would cost you 4_d._ more. So that, here is 6_s._ 3-1/2_d._ saved
upon the baking of a bushel of bread. The baker's quartern loaf is indeed
cheaper in the country than at Kensington, by, probably, a penny in the
loaf; which would still, however, leave a saving of 5_s._ upon the bushel
of bread. But, besides this, pray think a little of the materials of which
the baker's loaf is composed. The _alum_, the _ground potatoes_, and other
materials; it being a notorious fact, that the bakers, in London at least,
have _mills_ wherein to grind their potatoes; so large is the scale upon
which they use that material. It is probable, that, out of a bushel of
wheat, they make between _sixty_ and _seventy_ pounds of bread, though
they have no more _flour_, and, of course, no more nutritious matter, than
you have in your fifty-nine pounds of bread. But, at the least, supposing
their bread to be as good as yours in quality, you have, allowing a
shilling for the heating of the oven, a clear 4_s._ saved upon every
bushel of bread. If you consume half a bushel a week, that is to say about
a quartern loaf a day, this is a saving of 5_l._ 4_s._ a year, or full a
sixth part, if not a fifth part, of the earnings of a labourer in
husbandry.
82. How wasteful, then, and, indeed, how shameful, for a labourer's wife
to go to the baker's shop; and how negligent, how criminally careless of
the welfare of his family, must the labourer be, who permits so scandalous
a use of the proceeds of his labour! But I have hitherto taken a view of
the matter the least possibly advantageous to the home-baked bread. For,
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fuel for heating the oven costs
very little. The hedgers, the copsers, the woodmen of all descriptions,
have fuel for little or nothing. At any rate, to heat the oven cannot,
upon an average, take the country through, cost the labourer more than
6_d._ a bushel. Then, again, fine flour need not ever be used, and ought
not to be used. This adds six pounds of bread to the bushel, or nearly
another quartern loaf and a half, making nearly fifteen quartern loaves
out of the bushel of wheat. The finest flour is by no means the most
wholesome; and, at any rate, there is more nutritious matter in a pound of
household bread than in a pound of baker's bread. Besides this, rye, and
even barley, especially when mixed with wheat, make very good bread. Few
people upon the face of the earth live better than the Long Islanders. Yet
nine families out of ten seldom eat wheaten-bread. Rye is the flour that
they principally make use of. Now, rye is seldom more than two-thirds the
price of wheat, and barley is seldom more than half the price of wheat.
Half rye and half wheat, taking out a little more of the offal, make very
good bread. Half wheat, a quarter rye and a quarter barley, nay, one-third
of each, make bread that I could be very well content to live upon all my
lifetime; and, even barley alone, if the barley be good, and none but the
finest flour taken out of it, has in it, measure for measure, ten times
the nutrition of potatoes. Indeed the fact is well known, that our
forefathers used barley bread to a very great extent. Its only fault, with
those who dislike it, is its sweetness, a fault which we certainly have
not to find with the baker's loaf, which has in it little more of the
_sweetness_ of grain than is to be found in the offal which comes from
the sawings of deal boards. The nutritious nature of barley is amply
proved by the effect, and very rapid effect, of its meal, in the fatting
of hogs and of poultry of all descriptions. They will fatten quicker upon
meal of barley than upon any other thing. The flesh, too, is sweeter than
that proceeding from any other food, with the exception of that which
proceeds from _buck wheat_, a grain little used in England. That
proceeding from Indian corn is, indeed, still sweeter and finer; but this
is wholly out of the question with us.
83. I am, by-and-by, to speak of the _cow_ to be kept by the labourer in
husbandry. Then there will be _milk_ to wet the bread with, an exceedingly
great improvement in its taste as well as in its quality! This, of all the
ways of using skim milk, is the most advantageous: and this great
advantage must be wholly thrown away, if the bread of the family be bought
at the shop. With milk, bread with very little wheat in it may be made far
better than baker's bread; and, leaving the milk out of the question,
taking a third of each sort of grain, you would get bread weighing as much
as fourteen quartern loaves, for about 5_s._ 9_d._ at present prices of
grain; that is to say, you would get it for about 5_d._ the quartern loaf,
all expenses included; thus you have nine pounds and ten ounces of bread a
day for about 5_s._ 9_d._ a week. Here is enough for a very large family.
Very few labourers' families can want so much as this, unless indeed there
be several persons in it capable of earning something by their daily
labour. Here is cut and come again. Here is bread always for the table.
Bread to carry a field; always a hunch of bread ready to put into the hand
of a hungry child. We hear a great deal about "_children crying for
bread_," and objects of compassion they and their parents are, when the
latter have not the means of obtaining a sufficiency of bread. But I
should be glad to be informed, how it is possible for a labouring man, who
earns, upon an average, 10_s._ a week, who has not more than four
children (and if he have more, some ought to be doing something;) who has
a garden of a quarter of an acre of land (for that makes part of my plan;)
who has a wife as industrious as she ought to be; who does not waste his
earnings at the ale-house or the tea shop: I should be glad to know how
such a man, while wheat shall be at the price of about 6_s._ a bushel,
_can possibly have children crying for bread_!
84. Cry, indeed, they must, if he will persist in giving 13_s._ for a
bushel of bread instead of 5_s._ 9_d._ Such a man is not to say that the
bread which I have described is _not good enough_. It was good enough for
his forefathers, who were too proud to be paupers, that is to say, abject
and willing slaves. "Hogs eat barley." And hogs will eat wheat, too, when
they can get at it. Convicts in condemned cells eat wheaten bread; but we
think it no degradation to eat wheaten bread, too. I am for depriving the
labourer of none of his rights; I would have him oppressed in no manner or
shape; I would have him bold and free; but to have him such, he must have
bread in his house, sufficient for all his family, and whether that bread
be fine or coarse must depend upon the different circumstances which
present themselves in the cases of different individuals.
85. The married man has no right to expect the same plenty of food and of
raiment that the single man has. The time before marriage is the time to
lay by, or, if the party choose, to indulge himself in the absence of
labour. To marry is a voluntary act, and it is attended in the result with
great pleasures and advantages. If, therefore, the laws be fair and equal;
if the state of things be such that a labouring man can, with the usual
ability of labourers, and with constant industry, care and sobriety; with
decency of deportment towards all his neighbours, cheerful obedience to
his employer, and a due subordination to the laws; if the state of things
be such, that such a man's earnings be sufficient to maintain himself and
family with food, raiment, and lodging needful for them; such a man has
no reason to complain; and no labouring man has reason to complain, if the
numerousness of his family should call upon him for extraordinary
exertion, or for frugality uncommonly rigid. The man with a large family
has, if it be not in a great measure his own fault, a greater number of
pleasures and of blessings than other men. If he be wise, and _just_ as
well as wise, he will see that it is reasonable for him to expect less
delicate fare than his neighbours, who have a less number of children, or
no children at all. He will see the justice as well as the necessity of
his resorting to the use of coarser bread, and thus endeavour to make up
that, or at least a part of that, which he loses in comparison with his
neighbours. The quality of the bread ought, in every case, to be
proportioned to the number of the family and the means of the head of that
family. Here is no injury to health proposed; but, on the contrary, the
best security for its preservation. Without bread, all is misery. The
Scripture truly calls it the staff of life; and it may be called, too, the
pledge of peace and happiness in the labourer's dwelling.
86. As to the act of making bread, it would be shocking indeed if that had
to be taught by the means of books. Every woman, high or low, ought to
know how to make bread. If she do not, she is unworthy of trust and
confidence; and, indeed, a mere burden upon the community. Yet, it is but
too true, that many women, even amongst those who have to get their living
by their labour, know nothing of the making of bread; and seem to
understand little more about it than the part which belongs to its
consumption. A Frenchman, a Mr. CUSAR, who had been born in the West
Indies, told me, that till he came to Long Island, he never knew _how the
flour came_: that he was surprised when he learnt that it was squeezed out
of little grains that grew at the tops of straw; for that he had always
had an idea that it was got out of some large substances, like the yams
that grow in tropical climates. He was a very sincere and good man, and I
am sure he told me truth. And this may be the more readily believed, when
we see so many women in England, who seem to know no more of the
constituent parts of a loaf than they know of those of the moon. Servant
women in abundance appear to think that loaves are made by the baker, as
knights are made by the king; things of their pure creation, a creation,
too, in which no one else can participate. Now, is not this an enormous
evil? And whence does it come? Servant women are the children of the
labouring classes; and they would all know how to make bread, and know
well how to make it too, if they had been fed on bread of their mother's
and their own making.
87. How serious a matter, then, is this, even in this point of view! A
servant that cannot make bread is not entitled to the same wages as one
that can. If she can neither bake nor brew; if she be ignorant of the
nature of flour, yeast, malt, and hops, what is she good for? If she
understand these matters well; if she be able to supply her employer with
bread and with beer, she is really _valuable_; she is entitled to good
wages, and to consideration and respect into the bargain; but if she be
wholly deficient in these particulars, and can merely dawdle about with a
bucket and a broom, she can be of very little consequence; to lose her, is
merely to lose a consumer of food, and she can expect very little indeed
in the way of desire to make her life easy and pleasant. Why should any
one have such desire? She is not a child of the family. She is not a
relation. Any one as well as she can take in a loaf from the baker, or a
barrel of beer from the brewer. She has nothing whereby to bind her
employer to her. To sweep a room any thing is capable of that has got two
hands. In short, she has no useful skill, no useful ability; she is an
ordinary drudge, and she is treated accordingly.
88. But, if such be her state in the house of an employer, what is her
state in the house of a _husband_? The lover is blind; but the husband has
eyes to see with. He soon discovers that there is something wanted
besides dimples and cherry cheeks; and I would have fathers seriously
reflect, and to be well assured, that the way to make their daughters to
be long admired, beloved and respected by their husbands, is to make them
skilful, able and active in the most necessary concerns of a family.
Eating and drinking come three times every day; the preparations for
these, and all the ministry necessary to them, belong to the wife; and I
hold it to be impossible, that at the end of two years, a really ignorant,
sluttish wife should possess any thing worthy of the name of love from her
husband. This, therefore, is a matter of far greater moment to the father
of a family, than, whether the Parson of the parish, or the Methodist
Priest, be the most "_Evangelical_" of the two; for it is here a question
of the daughter's happiness or misery for life. And I have no hesitation
to say, that if I were a labouring man, I should prefer teaching my
daughters to bake, brew, milk, make butter and cheese, to teaching them to
read the Bible till they had got every word of it by heart; and I should
think, too, nay I should know, that I was in the former case doing my duty
towards God as well as towards my children.
89. When we see a family of dirty, ragged little creatures, let us inquire
into the cause; and ninety-nine times out of every hundred we shall find
that the parents themselves have been brought up in the same way. But a
consideration which ought of itself to be sufficient, is the contempt in
which a husband will naturally hold a wife that is ignorant of the matters
necessary to the conducting of a family. A woman who understands all the
things above mentioned, is really a skilful person; a person worthy of
respect, and that will be treated with respect too, by all but brutish
employers or brutish husbands; and such, though sometimes, are not very
frequently found. Besides, if natural justice and our own interest had not
the weight which they have, such valuable persons will be treated with
respect. They know their own worth; and, accordingly, they are more
careful of their character, more careful not to lessen by misconduct the
value which they possess from their skill and ability.
90. Thus, then, the interest of the labourer; his health; the health of
his family; the peace and happiness of his home; the prospects of his
children through life; their skill, their ability, their habits of
cleanliness, and even their moral deportment; all combine to press upon
him the adoption and the constant practice of this branch of domestic
economy. "Can she _bake_?" is the question that I always put. If she can,
she is _worth a pound or two a year more_. Is that nothing? Is it nothing
for a labouring man to make his four or five daughters worth eight or ten
pounds a year more; and that too while he is by the same means providing
the more plentifully for himself and the rest of his family? The reasons
on the side of the thing that I contend for are endless; but if this one
motive be not sufficient, I am sure, all that I have said, and all that I
could say, must be wholly unavailing.
91. Before, however, I dismiss this subject, let me say a word or two to
those persons who do not come under the denomination of labourers. In
London, or in any very large town where the space is so confined, and
where the proper fuel is not handily to be come at and stored for use, to
bake your own bread may be attended with too much difficulty; but in all
other situations there appears to me to be hardly any excuse for not
baking bread at home. If the family consist of twelve or fourteen persons,
the money actually saved in this way (even at present prices) would be
little short of from twenty to thirty pounds a year. At the utmost here is
only the time of one woman occupied one day in the week. Now mind, here
are twenty-five pounds to be employed in some way different from that of
giving it to the baker. If you add five of these pounds to a woman's
wages, is not that full as well employed as giving it in wages to the
baker's men? Is it not better employed for you? and is it not better
employed for the community? It is very certain, that if the practice were
as prevalent as I could wish, there would be a large deduction from the
regular baking population; but would there be any harm if less alum were
imported into England, and if some of those youths were left at the
plough, who are now bound in apprenticeships to learn the art and mystery
of doing that which every girl in the kingdom ought to be taught to do by
her mother? It ought to be a maxim with every master and every mistress,
never to employ another to do that which can be done as well by their own
servants. The more of their money that is retained in the hands of their
own people, the better it is for them altogether. Besides, a man of a
right mind must be pleased with the reflection, that there is a great mass
of skill and ability under his own roof. He feels stronger and more
independent on this account, all pecuniary advantage out of the question.
It is impossible to conceive any thing more contemptible than a crowd of
men and women living together in a house, and constantly looking out of it
for people to bring them food and drink, and to fetch their garments to
and fro. Such a crowd resemble a nest of unfledged birds, absolutely
dependent for their very existence on the activity and success of the old
ones.
92. Yet, on men go, from year to year, in this state of wretched
dependence, even when they have all the means of living within themselves,
which is certainly the happiest state of life that any one can enjoy. It
may be asked, Where is the mill to be found? where is the wheat to be got?
The answer is, Where is there not a mill? where is there not a market?
They are every where, and the difficulty is to discover what can be the
particular attractions contained in that long and luminous manuscript, a
baker's half-yearly bill.
93. With regard to the mill, in speaking of families of any considerable
number of persons, the mill has, with me, been more than once a subject of
observation in print. I for a good while experienced the great
inconvenience and expense of sending my wheat and other grain to be ground
at a mill. This expense, in case of a considerable family, living at only
a mile from a mill, is something; but the inconveniency and uncertainty
are great. In my "Year's Residence in America," from Paragraphs 1031 and
onwards, I give an account of a horse-mill which I had in my farm yard;
and I showed, I think very clearly, that corn could be ground cheaper in
this way than by wind or water, and that it would answer well to grind for
sale in this way as well as for home use. Since my return to England I
have seen a mill, erected in consequence of what the owner had read in my
book. This mill belongs to a small farmer, who, when he cannot work on his
land with his horses, or in the season when he has little for them to do,
grinds wheat, sells the flour; and he takes in grists to grind, as other
millers do. This mill goes with three small horses; but what I would
recommend to gentlemen with considerable families, or to farmers, is a
mill such as I myself have at present.
94. With this mill, turned by a man and a stout boy, I can grind six
bushels of wheat in a day and dress the flour. The grinding of six bushels
of wheat at ninepence a bushel comes to four and sixpence, which pays the
man and the boy, supposing them (which is not and seldom can be the case)
to be hired for the express purpose out of the street. With the same mill
you grind meat for your pigs; and of this you will get eight or ten
bushels ground in a day. You have no trouble about sending to the mill;
you are sure to have your _own wheat_; for strange as it may seem, I used
sometimes to find that I sent white Essex wheat to the mill, and that it
brought me flour from very coarse red wheat. There is no accounting for
this, except by supposing that wind and water power has something in it to
change the very nature of the grain; as, when I came to grind by horses,
such as the wheat went into the hopper, so the flour came out into the
bin.
95. But mine now is only on the petty scale of providing for a dozen of
persons and a small lot of pigs. For a farm-house, or a gentleman's house
in the country, where there would be _room_ to have a walk for a horse,
you might take the labour from the men, clap any little horse, pony, or
even ass to the wheel; and he would grind you off eight or ten bushels of
wheat in a day, and both he and you would have the thanks of your men into
the bargain.
96. The cost of this mill is twenty pounds. The dresser is four more; the
horse-path and wheel might, possibly, be four or five more; and, I am very
certain, that to any farmer living at a mile from a mill, (and that is
less than the average distance perhaps;) having twelve persons in family,
having forty pigs to feed, and twenty hogs to fatten, the savings of such
a mill would pay the whole expenses of it the very first year. Such a
farmer cannot send less than _fifty times_ a year to the mill. Think of
that, in the first place! The elements are not always propitious:
sometimes the water fails, and sometimes the wind. Many a farmer's wife
has been tempted to vent her spleen on both. At best, there must be horse
and man, or boy, and, perhaps, cart, to go to the mill; and that, too,
observe, in all weathers, and in the harvest as well as at other times of
the year. The case is one of imperious necessity: neither floods nor
droughts, nor storms nor calms, will allay the cravings of the kitchen,
nor quiet the clamorous uproar of the stye. Go, somebody must, to some
place or other, and back they must come with flour and with meal. One
summer many persons came down the country more than fifty miles to a mill
that I knew in Pennsylvania; and I have known farmers in England carry
their grists more than fifteen miles to be ground. It is surprising, that,
under these circumstances, hand-mills and horse-mills should not, long
ago, have become of more general use; especially when one considers that
the labour, in this case, would cost the farmer next to nothing. To grind
would be the work of a wet day. There is no farmer who does not at least
fifty days in every year exclaim, when he gets up in the morning, "What
shall I set _them_ at to-day?" If he had a mill, he would make them pull
off their shoes, sweep all out clean, winnow up some corn, if he had it
not already done, and grind and dress, and have every thing in order. No
scolding within doors about the grist; no squeaking in the stye; no boy
sent off in the rain to the mill.
97. But there is one advantage which I have not yet mentioned; and which
is the greatest of all; namely, that you would have the power of supplying
your married labourers; your blacksmith's men sometimes; your
wheelwright's men at other times; and, indeed, the greater part of the
persons that you employed, with good flour, instead of their going to
purchase their flour, after it had passed through the hands of a Corn
Merchant, a Miller, a Flour Merchant, and a Huckster, every one of whom
does and must have a profit out of the flour, arising from wheat grown
upon, and sent away from, your very farm! I used to let all my people have
flour at the same price that they would otherwise have been compelled to
give for worse flour. _Every Farmer_ will understand me when I say, that
he ought to pay for nothing in _money_, which he can pay for in any thing
but money. His maxim is to keep the money that he takes as long as he can.
Now here is a most effectual way of putting that maxim in practice to a
very great extent. Farmers know well that it is the Saturday night which
empties their pockets; and here is the means of cutting off a good half of
the Saturday night. The men have better flour for the same money, and
still the farmer keeps at home those profits which would go to the
maintaining of the dealers in wheat and in flour.
98. The maker of my little mill is Mr. HILL, of Oxford-street. The expense
is what I have stated it to be. I, with my small establishment, find the
thing convenient and advantageous; what then must it be to a gentleman in
the country who has room and horses, and a considerable family to provide
for? The dresser is so contrived as to give you at once, meal, of four
degrees of fineness; so that, for certain purposes, you may take the very
finest; and, indeed, you may have your flour, and your bread of course, of
what degree of fineness you please. But there is also a _steel mill_, much
less _expensive_, requiring _less labour_, and yet quite sufficient for a
_family_. Mills of this sort, very good, and at a reasonable price, are to
be had of Mr. PARKES, in _Fenchurch-street_, London. These are very
complete things of their kind. Mr. PARKES has, also, excellent Malt-Mills.
99. In concluding this part of my Treatise, I cannot help expressing my
hope of being instrumental in inducing a part of the labourers, at any
rate, to bake their own bread; and, above all things, to abandon the use
of "Ireland's _lazy_ root." Nevertheless, so extensive is the erroneous
opinion relative to this villanous root, that I really began to despair of
checking its cultivation and use, till I saw the declaration which Mr.
WAKEFIELD had the good sense and the spirit to make before the
"AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEE." Be it observed, too, that Mr. WAKEFIELD had
himself made a survey of the state of Ireland. What he saw there did not
encourage him, doubtless, to be an advocate for the growing of this root
of wretchedness. It is an undeniable fact, that, in the proportion that
this root is in use, as a _substitute for bread_, the people are wretched;
the reasons for which I have explained and enforced a hundred times over.
Mr. WILLIAM HANNING told the Committee that the labourers in his part of
Somersetshire were "almost wholly supplied with potatoes, _breakfast_ and
_dinner_, brought them _in the fields_, and nothing but potatoes; and that
they used, in better times, to get a certain portion of bacon and cheese,
which, on account of their "poverty, they do not eat now." It is
impossible that men can be _contented_ in such a state of things: it is
unjust to desire them to be contented: it is a state of misery and
degradation to which no part of any community can have any show of right
to reduce another part: men so degraded have no protection; and it is a
disgrace to form part of a community to which they belong. This
degradation has been occasioned by a silent change in the value of the
money of the country. This has purloined the wages of the labourer; it has
reduced him by degrees to housel with the spider and the bat, and to feed
with the pig. It has changed the habits, and, in a great measure, the
character of the people. The sins of this system are enormous and
undescribable; but, thank God! they seem to be approaching to their end!
Money is resuming its value, labour is recovering its price: let us hope
that the wretched potatoe is disappearing, and that we shall, once more,
see the knife in the labourer's hand and the loaf upon his board.
[This was written in 1821. _Now_ (1823) we have had the experience of
1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a
people, plunged into all the horrors of _famine_, at a moment when the
government of that nation declared _food to be abundant_! Yes, the year
1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving
the _extreme unction_ preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of
food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in
that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name
of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from
many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in
general, the acknowledgment, that the _misery_ and _degradation_ of the
Irish were chiefly owing to the _use of the potatoe as the almost sole
food of the people_.]
100. In my next number I shall treat of the _keeping of cows_. I have said
that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the year round upon
the produce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, _forty rods_, of
land; and, in my next, I will make good my promise.
No. IV
MAKING BREAD--(CONTINUED.)
101. In the last number, at Paragraph 86, I observed that I hoped it was
unnecessary for me to give any directions as to the mere _act_ of making
bread. But several correspondents inform me that, without these
directions, a conviction of the utility of baking bread at home is of _no
use to them_. Therefore, I shall here give those directions, receiving my
instructions here from one, who, I thank God, does know how to perform
this act.
102. Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this flour into a
_trough_ that people have for the purpose, or it may be in a clean smooth
tub of any shape, if not too deep, and if sufficiently large. Make a
pretty deep hole in the middle of this heap of flour. Take (for a bushel)
a pint of good fresh yeast, mix it and stir it well up in a pint of _soft_
water milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. Then take a
spoon and work it round the outside of this body of moisture so as to
bring into that body, by degrees, flour enough to make it form a _thin
batter_, which you must stir about well for a minute or two. Then take a
handful of flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as
to _hide_ it. Then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it _warm_;
and this covering, as well as the situation of the trough, as to distance
from the fire, must depend on the nature of the place and state of the
weather as to heat and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen
enough to make _cracks_ in the flour that you covered it over with, you
begin to form the whole mass into _dough_, thus: you begin round the hole
containing the batter, working the flour into the batter, and pouring in,
as it is wanted to make the flour mix with the batter, soft water
milk-warm, or milk, as hereafter to be mentioned. Before you begin this,
you scatter the _salt_ over the heap at the rate of _half a pound_ to a
bushel of flour. When you have got the whole _sufficiently moist_, you
_knead it well_. This is a grand part of the business; for, unless the
dough be _well worked_, there will be _little round lumps of flour in the
loaves_; and, besides, the original batter, which is to give fermentation
to the whole, will not be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well
worked. The _fists_ must go heartily into it. It must be rolled over;
pressed out; folded up and pressed out again, until it be completely
mixed, and formed into a _stiff_ and _tough dough_. This is _labour_,
mind. I have never quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy
fellow, in a bakehouse in France, kneading bread with his _naked feet_!
His feet looked very _white_, to be sure: whether they were of that colour
_before he got into the trough_ I could not tell. God forbid, that I
should suspect that this is ever done _in England_! It is _labour_; but,
what is _exercise_ other than labour? Let a young woman bake a bushel once
a week, and she will do very well without phials and gallipots.
103. Thus, then, the dough is made. And, when made, it is to be formed
into a lump in the middle of the trough, and, with a little dry flour
thinly scattered over it, covered over again to be kept warm and to
ferment; and in this state, if all be done rightly, it will not have to
remain more than about 15 or 20 minutes.
104. In the mean while _the oven is to be heated_; and this is much more
than half the art of the operation. When an oven is properly heated, can
be known only by _actual observation_. Women who understand the matter,
know when the heat is right the moment they put their faces within a yard
of the oven-mouth; and once or twice observing is enough for any person of
common capacity. But this much may be said in the way of _rule_: that the
fuel (I am supposing a brick oven) should be _dry_ (not _rotten_) wood,
and not mere _brush-wood_, but rather _fagot-sticks_. If larger wood, it
ought to be split up into sticks not more than two, or two and a half
inches through. Bush-wood that is _strong_, not green and not too old, if
it be hard in its nature and has some _sticks_ in it, may do. The _woody_
parts of furze, or ling, will heat an oven very well. But the thing is, to
have a _lively_ and yet _somewhat strong_ fire; so that the oven may be
heated in about 15 minutes, and retain its heat sufficiently long.
105. The oven should be hot by the time that the dough, as mentioned in
Paragraph 103, has remained in the lump about 20 minutes. When both are
ready, take out the fire, and wipe the oven out clean, and, at nearly
about the same moment, take the dough out upon the lid of the baking
trough, or some proper place, cut it up into pieces, and make it up into
loaves, kneading it again into these separate parcels; and, as you go on,
shaking a little flour over your board, to prevent the dough from adhering
to it. The loaves should be put into the oven as _quickly_ as possible
after they are formed; when in, the oven-lid, or door, should be fastened
up _very closely_; and, if all be properly managed, loaves of about the
size of quartern loaves will be sufficiently baked in about _two hours_.
But they usually take down the _lid_, and _look_ at the bread, in order to
see how it is going on.
106. And what is there worthy of the name of _plague_, or _trouble_, in
all this? Here is no dirt, no filth, no rubbish, no _litter_, no _slop_.
And, pray, what can be pleasanter to _behold_? Talk, indeed, of your
pantomimes and gaudy shows; your processions and installations and
coronations! Give me, for a beautiful sight, a neat and smart woman,
heating her oven and setting in her bread! And, if the bustle does make
the sign of labour glisten on her brow, where is the man that would not
kiss that off, rather than lick the plaster from the cheek of a duchess.
107. And what is the _result_? Why, good, wholesome food, sufficient for a
considerable family for a week, prepared in three or four hours. To get
this quantity of food, fit to be _eaten_, in the shape of potatoes, _how
many fires_! what a washing, what a boiling, what a peeling, what a
slopping, and what a messing! The cottage everlastingly in a litter; the
woman's hands everlastingly wet and dirty; the children grimed up to the
eyes with dust fixed on by potato-starch; and ragged as colts, the poor
mother's time all being devoted to the everlasting boilings of the pot!
Can any man, who knows any thing of the labourer's life, deny this? And
will, then, any body, except the old shuffle-breeches band of the
Quarterly Review, who have all their lives been moving from garret to
garret, who have seldom seen the sun, and never the dew except in print;
will any body except these men say, that the people ought to be taught to
use potatoes as a _substitute for bread_?
BREWING BEER.
108. This matter has been fully treated of in the two last numbers. But
several correspondents wishing to fall upon some means of rendering the
practice beneficial to those who are _unable to purchase_ brewing
utensils, have recommended the _lending_ of them, or letting out, round a
neighbourhood. Another correspondent has, therefore, pointed out to me _an
Act of Parliament_ which touches upon this subject; and, indeed, what of
Excise Laws and Custom Laws and Combination Laws and Libel Laws, a human
being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares
say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing
utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a
basket, _he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or
at the next door_? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act
5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II.,
there is a penalty of 50_l._ for lending or letting brewing utensils.
However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to _Cities_,
_Corporate Towns_, and _Market Towns_, WHERE THERE IS A PUBLIC BREWHOUSE.
So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in _any_ place where
there is _no public brewhouse_; and in all towns not _corporate or
market_, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places.
109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in
the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use
of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive
answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing
laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by
_subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_!
However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as
this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated;
for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike
to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.
110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_.
But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_!
Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then,
are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And
as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of
labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now!
Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You
soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.)
and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the
root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry,
take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through
the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the shoot that
would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the _point_ of the
barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it
goes on towards the other end; and would, if _kept moist_, come out at
that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you
have got the _root to start_, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is
_on its way_. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now
observe; when the _point of the spear_ has got along as far as the
_middle of the barley-corn_, you should take your barley and _dry it_. How
easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were
not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the "unkent places"
before mentioned, dry the malt in their _oven_! But let us hope that the
labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to
punishment as a _violater of the law_.
KEEPING COWS.
111. As to the _use_ of _milk_ and of that which proceeds from milk, in a
family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are
_all_ that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for
children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to _drink_. In the making of
puddings, and in the making of _bread_ too, how useful is it! Let any one
who has eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste bread
home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what
the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in _hot
weather_, bread mixed with milk will not _keep so long_ as that mixed with
water. It will of course turn _sour_ sooner.
112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in
the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk,
and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child,
or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make _some butter_ at any
rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong
food enough for any children's breakfast, even when they begin to go to
work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory
experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself
till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full
four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular
pleasure to see a boy, just turned of _six_, helping his father to _reap_,
in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was
_something_. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before
him; and when he came up to the place, he found a _sheaf_ cut; and, those
who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then
a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to
be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an
age when "young masters" have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for
them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down
stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses' bellies. Was not this
father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have
been by sending him to a place called a _school_? The boy is in a school
here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must
hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that
teaching children to _read_ tends so much to their happiness, their
independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to
_reap_. The creature that is in _want_ must be a _slave_; and to be
habituated _to labour cheerfully_ is the only means of preventing
nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here;
but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often
repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot,
for what is falsely called _educating_ the people, and when some would do
this by a _tax_ that would compel the single man to give part of his
earnings to teach the married man's children to read and write.
113. Before I quit the _uses_ to which milk may be put, let me mention,
that, as mere _drink_, it is, unless perhaps in case of heavy labour,
better, in my opinion, than any beer, however good. I have drinked little
else for the last five years, at any time of the day. Skim-milk I mean. If
you have not milk enough to wet up your bread with (for a bushel of flour
requires about 16 to 18 pints,) you make up the quantity with water, of
course; or, which is a very good way, with water that has been put,
boiling hot, upon _bran_, and then drained off. This takes the goodness
out of the bran to be sure; but _really good bread_ is a thing of so much
importance, that it always ought to be the very first object in domestic
economy.
114. The cases vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down rules for
the application of the produce of a cow, which rules shall fit all cases.
I content myself, therefore, with what has already been said on this
subject; and shall only make an observation on the _act of milking_,
before I come to the chief matter; namely, the _getting of the food for
the cow_. A cow should be milked _clean_. Not a drop, if it can be
avoided, should be left in the udder. It has been proved that the half
pint that comes out _last_ has _twelve times_, I think it is, as much
butter in it, as the half pint that comes out _first_. I tried the milk of
ten Alderney cows, and, as nearly as I, without being very nice about the
matter, could ascertain, I found the difference to be about what I have
stated. The udder would seem to be a sort of milk-pan in which the cream
is uppermost, and, of course, comes out last, seeing that the outlet is at
the bottom. But, besides this, if you do not milk clean, the cow will give
less and less milk, and will become dry much sooner than she ought. The
_cause_ of this I do not know, but experience has long established the
fact.
115. In providing food for a cow we must look, first, at the _sort of
cow_; seeing that a cow of one sort will certainly require more than twice
as much food as a cow of another sort. For a cottage, a cow of the
smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best; and such a
cow will not require above 70 or 80 pounds of good moist food in the
twenty-four hours.
116. Now, how to raise this food on 40 rods of ground is what we want to
know. It frequently happens that a labourer has _more_ than 40 rods of
ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some _common_, some
_lane_, some little out-let or other, for a part of the year, at least. In
such cases he may make a different disposition of his ground; or may do
with less than the 40 rods. I am here, for simplicity's sake, to suppose,
that he have 40 rods of clear, unshaded land, besides what his house and
sheds stand upon; and that he have nothing further in the way of means to
keep his cow.
117. I suppose the 40 rods to be _clean_ and _unshaded_; for I am to
suppose, that when a man thinks of 5 quarts _of milk a day_, on an
average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be
encumbered by apple-trees that give him only the means of treating his
children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes,
which, though their fruit do very well to _amuse_, really give nothing
worthy of the name of _food_, except to the blackbirds and thrushes. The
ground is to be _clear_ of trees; and, in the spring, we will suppose it
to be _clean_. Then, dig it up _deeply_, or, which is better, _trench_ it,
keeping, however, the top _spit_ of the soil _at the top_. Lay it in
_ridges_ in April or May about two feet apart, and made high and sharp.
When the weeds appear about three inches high, turn the ridges into the
furrows (_never moving the ground but in dry weather_,) and bury all the
weeds. Do this as often as the weeds get three inches high; and by the
fall, you will have really clean ground, and not poor ground.
118. There is the ground then, ready. About the 26th of August, but _not
earlier_, prepare a rod of your ground; and put some _manure_ in it (for
_some_ you must have,) and sow one half of it with Early York Cabbage
Seed, and the other half with Sugar-loaf Cabbage Seed, both of the _true_
sort, in little drills at 8 inches apart, and the seeds thin in the drill.
If the plants come up at two inches apart (and they should be thinned if
thicker,) you will have a plenty. As soon as fairly out of ground, hoe the
ground nicely, and pretty deeply, and again in a few days. When the plants
have six leaves, which will be very soon, dig up, make fine, and manure
another rod or two, and prick out the plants, 4000 of each in rows at
eight inches apart and three inches in the row. Hoe the ground between
them often, and they will grow fast and be _straight_ and strong. I
suppose that these beds for plants take 4 rods of your ground. Early in
November, or, as the weather may serve, a little earlier or later, lay
some manure (of which I shall say more hereafter) between the ridges, in
the other 36 rods, and turn the ridges over on this manure, and then
transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will
stand the winter; and you must see that the slugs do not eat them. If any
plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out; for your
36 rods will not require more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very
hard, and bad for plants, you cannot _cover_ 36 rods; but you may the
_bed_ where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw, or
dead grass, or fern, laid along between the rows and the plants, not to
cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people complain of
_all_ their plants being "_cut off_," they have, in fact nothing to
_complain_ of but their own extreme carelessness. If I had a gardener who
complained of _all_ his plants being cut off, I should cut him off pretty
quickly. If those in the 36 rods fail, or fail in part, fill up their
places, later in the winter, by plants from the bed.
119. If you find the ground dry at the top during the winter, hoe it, and
particularly near the plants, and rout out all slugs and insects. And when
March comes, and the ground _is dry_, hoe deep and well, and earth the
plants up close to the lower leaves. As soon as the plants begin to
_grow_, dig the ground with a spade clean and well, and let the spade go
as near to the plants as you can without actually _displacing the plants_.
Give them another digging in a month; and, if weeds come in the
mean-while, _hoe_, and let not one live a week. Oh! "what a deal of
_work_!" Well! but it is for _yourself_, and, besides, it is not all to be
done in a day; and we shall by-and-by see what it is altogether.
120. By the first of June; I speak of the South of England, and there is
also some difference in seasons and soils; but, generally speaking, by the
first of June you will have _turned-in cabbages_, and soon you will have
the Early Yorks _solid_. And by the first of June you may get your cow,
one that is about to calve, or that has just calved, and at this time such
a cow as you will want will not, thank God, cost above five pounds.
121. I shall speak of the place to keep her in, and of the manure and
litter, by-and-by. At present I confine myself to her mere food. The 36
rods, if the cabbages all stood till they got _solid_, would give her food
for 200 days, at 80 pounds weight per day, which is more than she would
eat. But you must use some, at first, that are not solid; and, then, some
of them will split before you can use them. But you will have pigs to help
off with them, and to gnaw the heads of the stumps. Some of the
sugar-loaves may have been planted out in the spring; and thus these 36
rods will get you along to some time in September.
122. Now mind, in March, and again in April, sow more _Early Yorks_, and
get them to be fine stout plants, as you did those in the fall. Dig up the
ground and manure it, and, as fast as you cut cabbages, plant cabbages;
and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last
planting will be about the middle of August, with _stout plants_, and
these will serve you into the month of November.
123. Now we have to provide from _December to May inclusive_; and that,
too, out of this same piece of ground. In November there must be, arrived
at perfection, 3000 turnip plants. These, _without the greens_, must
weigh, on an average, 5 pounds, and this, at 80 pounds a day, will keep
the cow 187 days; and there are but 182 days in these six months. The
greens will have helped put the latest cabbages to carry you through
November, and perhaps into December. But for these six months, you must
_depend_ on nothing but the Swedish turnips.
124. And now, how are these to be had _upon the same ground that bears_
the cabbages? That we are now going to see. When you plant out your
cabbages at the out-set, put first a row of Early Yorks, then a row of
Sugar-loaves, and so on throughout the piece. Of course, as you are to use
the Early Yorks first, you will cut every other row; and the Early Yorks
that you are to plant in summer will go into the intervals. By-and-by the
Sugar-loaves are cut away, and in their place will come Swedish turnips,
you digging and manuring the ground as in the case of the cabbages: and,
at last, you will find about 16 rods where you will have found it too
late, and _unnecessary_ besides, to plant any second crop of cabbages.
Here the Swedish turnips will stand in rows at two feet apart, (and always
a foot apart in the row,) and thus you will have three thousand turnips;
and if these do not weigh five pounds each on an average, the fault must
be in the _seed_ or in the management.
125. The Swedish turnips are raised in this manner. You will bear in mind
the _four rods_ of ground in which you have sowed and pricked out your
cabbage plants. The plants that will be left there will, in April, serve
you for _greens_, if you ever eat any, though bread and bacon are very
good without greens, and rather better than with. At any rate, the pig,
which has strong powers of digestion, will consume this herbage. In a part
of these four rods you will, in March and April, as before directed, have
sown and raised your Early Yorks for the summer planting. Now, in the
_last week of May_, prepare a quarter of a rod of this ground, and sow it,
precisely as directed for the Cabbage-seed, with Swedish turnip-seed; and
sow a quarter of a rod _every three days_, till you have sowed _two rods_.
If the _fly appear_, cover the rows over in the _day-time_ with cabbage
leaves, and take the leaves off at night; hoe well between the plants; and
when they are safe from the fly, _thin_ them to four inches apart in the
row. The two rods will give you nearly _five thousand plants_, which is
2000 more than you will want. From this bed you draw your plants to
transplant in the ground where the cabbages have stood, as before
directed. You should transplant none much _before_ the middle of July, and
not much _later_ than the middle of August. In the two rods, whence you
take your turnip plants, you may leave plants to come to perfection, at
two feet distances each way; and this will give you _over and above_, 840
pounds weight of turnips. For the other two rods will be ground enough for
you to sow your cabbage plants in at the end of August, as directed for
last year.
126. I should now proceed to speak of the manner of harvesting,
preserving, and using the crops; of the manner of feeding the cow; of the
shed for her; of the managing of the manure, and several other less
important things; but these, for want of room here, must be reserved for
the beginning of my next Number. After, therefore, observing that the
Turnip plants must be transplanted in the same way that Cabbage plants
are; and that both ought to be transplanted in _dry_ weather and in ground
just _fresh digged_, I shall close this Number with the notice of two
points which I am most anxious to impress upon the mind of every reader.
127. The first is, whether these crops give an _ill taste_ to milk and
butter. It is very certain, that the taste and smell of certain sorts of
cattle-food will do this; for, in some parts of America, where the wild
_garlick_, of which the cows are very fond, and which, like other
bulbous-rooted plants, springs before the grass, not only the milk and
butter have a strong taste of garlick, but even the _veal_, when the
calves suck milk from such sources. None can be more common expressions,
than, in Philadelphia market, are those of _Garlicky Butter_ and _Garlicky
Veal_, I have distinctly tasted the _Whiskey_ in milk of cows fed on
distiller's wash. It is also certain, that, if the cow eat _putrid_ leaves
of cabbages and turnips, the butter will be offensive. And the
white-turnip, which is at best but a poor thing, and often half putrid,
makes miserable butter. The large _cattle-cabbage_, which, when loaved
hard, has a strong and even an offensive smell, will give a bad taste and
smell to milk and butter, whether there be putrid leaves or not. If you
boil one of these rank cabbages, the water is extremely offensive to the
smell. But I state upon positive and recent experience, that Early York
and Sugar-loaf Cabbages will yield as sweet milk and butter _as any food
that can be given to a cow_. During this last summer, I have, with the
exception about to be noticed, kept, from the 1st of May to the 22d of
October, _five cows_ upon the grass _of two acres and a quarter of ground,
the grass_ being generally _cut up for them_ and given to them in the
stall. I had in the spring 5000 cabbage plants, intended for my pigs,
eleven in number. But the pigs could not eat _half_ their allowance,
though they were not very small when they began upon it. We were compelled
to resort to the aid of the cows; and, in order to see _the effect on the
milk and butter_, we did not _mix_ the food; but gave the cows two
_distinct spells_ at the cabbages, each spell about 10 _days in duration_.
The cabbages were cut off the stump with little or no care about _dead
leaves_. And sweeter, finer butter, butter of a finer colour, than these
cabbages made, never was made in this world. I never had better from cows
feeding in the sweetest pasture. Now, as to _Swedish turnips_, they do
give a little taste, especially if boiling of the milk pans be neglected,
and if the greatest care be not taken about _all_ the dairy tackle. Yet we
have, for months together, had the butter so fine from Swedish turnips,
that nobody could well distinguish it from grass-butter. But to secure
this, there must be no _sluttishness_. Churn, pans, pail, shelves, wall,
floor, and all about the dairy, must be clean; and, above all things, the
pans must be _boiled_. However, after all, it is not here a case of
delicacy of smell so refined as to faint at any thing that meets it except
the stink of perfumes. If the butter do taste a little of the Swedish
turnip, it will do very well where there is plenty of that sweet sauce
which early rising and bodily labour are ever sure to bring.
128. The _other point_ (about which I am still more anxious) is the
_seed_; for if the seed be not _sound_, and especially if it be not _true
to its kind_, all your labour _is in vain_. It is best, if you can do it,
to get your seed from some friend, or some one that you know and can
trust. If you save seed, observe all the precautions mentioned in my book
on _Gardening_. This very year I have some Swedish turnips, _so called_,
about 7000 in number, and should, if my seed had been _true_, have had
about _twenty tons_ weight; instead of which I have about _three_! Indeed,
they are not _Swedish turnips_, but a sort of mixture between that plant
and _rape_. I am sure the seedsman did not wilfully deceive me. He was
deceived himself. The truth is, that seedsmen are compelled to _buy_ their
seeds of this plant. _Farmers_ save it; and they but too often pay very
little attention to the manner of doing it. The best way is to get a dozen
of fine turnip plants, perfect in all respects, and plant them in a
situation where the smell of the blossoms of nothing of the cabbage or
rape or turnip or even _charlock_ kind, can reach them. The seed will keep
perfectly good for _four years_.
No. V
KEEPING COWS--(_continued._)
129. I have now, in the conclusion of this article, to speak of the manner
of _harvesting_ and _preserving_ the _Swedes_; of the place _to keep the
cow in_; of the _manure_ for the land; and of the _quantity of labour_
that the cultivation of the land and the harvesting of the crop will
require.
130. _Harvesting and preserving the Swedes._ When they are ready to take
up, the tops must be cut off, if not cut off before, and also the _roots_;
but neither tops nor roots should be cut off _very close_. You will have
room for ten bushels of the _bulbs_ in the house, or shed. Put the rest
into ten-bushel heaps. Make the heap _upon_ the ground in a _round form_,
and let it rise up to a point. Lay over it a little litter, straw, or dead
grass, about three inches thick, and then earth upon that about six inches
thick. Then cut a thin round _green turf_, about eighteen inches over, and
put it upon the crown of the heap to prevent the earth from being washed
off. Thus these heaps will remain till wanted for use. When given to the
cow, it will be best to _wash_ the Swedes and cut each into two or three
pieces with a spade or some other tool. You can take in ten bushels at a
time. If you find them _sprouting_ in the spring, open the remaining
heaps, and expose them to the sun and wind; and cover them again slightly
with straw or litter of some sort.[6]
131. _As to the place to keep the cow in_, much will depend upon
_situation_ and circumstances. I am always supposing that the cottage is a
real _cottage_, and not a house in a town or village street; though,
wherever there is the quarter of an acre of ground, the cow _may_ be kept.
Let me, however, suppose that which will generally happen; namely, that
the cottage stands by the side of a road, or lane, and amongst fields and
woods, if not on the side of a common. To pretend to tell a country
labourer how to build a shed for a cow, how to stick it up against the end
of his house, or to make it an independent erection; or to dwell on the
materials, where poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and
cooper-chips, are all to be gotten by him for nothing or next to nothing,
would be useless; because a man who, thus situated, can be at any loss for
a shed for his cow, is not only unfit to keep a cow, but unfit to keep a
cat. The warmer the shed is the better it is. The floor should _slope_,
but not too much. There are _stones_, of some sort or other, every-where,
and about six wheel-barrow-fulls will _pave_ the shed, a thing to be by no
means neglected. A broad trough, or box, fixed up at the head of the cow,
is the thing to give her food in; and she should be fed three times a day,
at least; always at _day-light_ and at _sun-set_. It is not _absolutely
necessary_ that a cow ever quit her shed, except just at calving time, or
when taken to the bull. In the former case the time is, nine times out of
ten, known to within forty-eight hours. Any enclosed field or place will
do for her during a day or two; and for such purpose, if there be not room
at home, no man will refuse place for her in a fallow field. It will,
however, be good, where there is no _common_ to turn her out upon, to have
her led by a string, two or three times a week, which may be done by a
child only five years old, to graze, or pick, along the sides of roads and
lanes. Where there is a _common_, she will, of course, be turned out in
the day time, except in very wet or severe weather; and in a case like
this, a smaller quantity of ground will suffice for the keeping of her.
According to the present practice, a miserable "_tallet_" of bad hay is,
in such cases, the winter provision for the cow. It can scarcely be called
food; and the consequence is, the cow is both _dry_ and _lousy_ nearly
half the year; instead of being dry only about fifteen days before
calving, and being sleek and lusty at the end of the winter, to which a
_warm lodging_ greatly contributes. For, observe, if you keep a cow, any
time between September and June, out in a field or yard, to endure the
chances of the weather, she will not, though she have food precisely the
same in quantity and quality, yield above _two-thirds_ as much as if she
were lodged in house; and in _wet_ weather she will not yield _half_ so
much. It is not so much the _cold_ as the _wet_ that is injurious to all
our stock in England.
132. _The Manure._ At the _beginning_ this must be provided by collections
made on the road; by the results of the residence in a cottage. Let any
man clean out _every place_ about his dwelling; rake and scrape and sweep
all into a heap; and he will find that he has a _great deal_. Earth of
almost any sort that has long lain on the surface, and has been trodden
on, is a species of manure. Every act that tends to neatness round a
dwelling, tends to the creating of a mass of manure. And I have very
seldom seen a cottage, with a plat of ground of a quarter of an acre
belonging to it, round about which I could not have collected a very large
heap of manure. Every thing of animal or vegetable substance that comes
into a house, must _go out of it again_, in one shape or another. The very
emptying of vessels of various kinds, on a heap of common earth, makes it
a heap of the best of manure. Thus goes on the work of _reproduction_; and
thus is verified the words of the Scripture, "_Flesh is grass_, and there
is _nothing new under the sun_." Thus far as to the _outset_. When you
have _got the cow_, there is no more care about manure; for, and
especially if you have a _pig_ also, you must have enough annually for _an
acre_ of ground. And let it be observed, that, after a time, it will be
unnecessary, and would be injurious, to manure _for every crop_; for that
would produce more stalk and green than substantial part; as it is well
known, that wheat plants, standing in ground too full of manure, will
yield very thick and long _straws_, but grains of little or no substance.
You ought to depend more on the spade and the hoe than on the dung-heap.
Nevertheless, the greatest care should be taken to preserve the manure;
because you will want _straw_, unless you be by the side of a common which
gives you rushes, grassy furze, or fern; and to get straw you must give a
part of your dung from the cow-stall and pig-sty. The best way to preserve
manure, is to have a pit of sufficient dimensions close behind the
cow-shed and pig-sty, for the run from these to go into, and from which
all runs of _rain water_ should be kept. Into this pit would go the
emptying of the shed and of the sty, and the produce of all sweepings and
cleanings round the house; and thus a large mass of manure would soon grow
together. Much too large a quantity for a quarter of an acre of ground.
One good load of wheat or rye straw is all that you would want for the
winter, and half of one for the summer; and you would have more than
enough dung to exchange against this straw.
133. Now, as to _the quantity of labour_ that the cultivation of the land
will demand in _a year_. We will suppose the whole to have _five complete
diggings_, and say nothing about the little matters of sowing and planting
and hoeing and harvesting, all which are a mere trifle. We are supposing
the owner to be _an able labouring man_; and such a man will dig 12 rods
of ground in a day. Here are 200 rods to be digged, and here are little
less than 17 days of work at 12 hours in the day; or 200 _hours'_ work, to
be done in the course of the long days of spring and summer, while it is
light long before _six_ in the morning, and long after six at night. What
_is it_, then? Is it not better than time spent in the ale-house, or in
creeping about after a miserable hare? Frequently, and most frequently,
there will be a _boy_, if not two, big enough to help. And (I only give
this as a _hint_) I saw, on the 7th of November last (1822,) _a very
pretty woman_, in the village of _Hannington, in Wiltshire, digging_ a
piece of ground and planting it with Early Cabbages, which she did as
handily and as neatly as any gardener that ever I saw. The ground was
_wet_, and therefore, _to avoid treading the digged ground in that state_,
she had her line extended, and put in the rows as she advanced in her
digging, standing _in the trench_ while she performed the act of planting,
which she did with great nimbleness and precision. Nothing could be more
skilfully or beautifully done. Her clothes were neat, clean, and tight
about her. She had turned her handkerchief down from her neck, which, with
the glow that the work had brought into her cheeks, formed an object which
I do not say would have made me _actually stop my chaise_, had it not been
for the occupation in which she was engaged; but, all taken together, the
temptation was too strong to be resisted. But there is the _Sunday_; and I
know of no law, human or divine, that forbids a labouring man to dig or
plant his garden on Sunday, if the good of his family demand it; and if
he cannot, without injury to that family, find other time to do it in.
Shepherds, carters, pigfeeders, drovers, coachmen, cooks, footmen,
printers, and numerous others, work on the Sundays. Theirs are deemed by
the law _works of necessity_. Harvesting and haymaking are allowed to be
carried on on the Sunday, in certain cases; when they are always carried
on by _provident farmers_. And I should be glad to know the case which is
more a _case of necessity_ than that now under our view. In fact, the
labouring people _do work on the Sunday_ morning in particular, all over
the country, at something or other, or they are engaged in pursuits a good
deal less religious than that of digging and planting. So that, as to _the
200 hours_, they are easily found, without the loss of any of the time
required for constant daily labour.
134. And what a _produce_ is that of a cow! I suppose only an average of
5 _quarts of milk a day_. If made into butter, it will be _equal every
week to two days of the man's wages_, besides the value of the skim milk:
and this can hardly be of less value than another day's wages. What a
thing, then, is this cow, if she earn half as much as the man! I am
greatly under-rating her produce; but I wish to put all the advantages at
the lowest. To be sure, there is work for the wife, or daughter, to milk
and make butter. But the former is done at the two ends of the day, and
the latter only about once in the week. And, whatever these may subtract
from the _labours of the field_, which all country women ought to be
engaged in whenever they conveniently can; whatever the cares created by
the cow may subtract from these, is amply compensated for by the
_education_ that these cares will give to the children. They will _all_
learn to milk,[7] and the girls to make butter. And which is a thing of
the very first importance, they will all learn, from their infancy, to
_set a just value upon dumb animals_, and will grow up in the _habit_ of
treating them with gentleness and feeding them with care. To those who
have not been brought up in the midst of rural affairs, it is hardly
possible to give an adequate idea of the importance of this part of
_education_. I should be very loth to intrust the care of my horses,
cattle, sheep, or pigs, to any one whose father never had cow or pig of
his _own_. It is a general complaint, that servants, and especially
farm-servants, are not _so good as they used to be_. How should they? They
were formerly the sons and daughters of _small farmers_; they are now the
progeny of miserable property-less labourers. They have never seen an
animal in which they had any interest. They are careless by habit. This
monstrous evil has arisen from causes which I have a thousand times
described; and which causes must now be speedily removed; or, they will
produce a dissolution of society, and give us a _beginning afresh_.
135. The circumstances vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down
precise rules suited to all cases. The cottage may be on the side of a
forest or common; it may be on the side of a lane or of a great road,
distant from town or village; it may be on the skirts of one of these
latter: and then, again, the family may be few or great in number, the
children small or big, according to all which circumstances, the extent
and application of the cow-food, and also the application of the produce,
will naturally be regulated. Under some circumstances, half the above crop
may be enough; especially where good commons are at hand. Sometimes it may
be the best way to sell the calf as soon as calved; at others, to fat it;
and, at others, if you cannot sell it, which sometimes happens, to knock
it on the head as soon as calved; for, where there is a family of small
children, the price of a calf of two months old cannot be equal to the
half of the value of the two months' milk. It is pure weakness to call it
"_a pity_." It is a much greater pity to see hungry children crying for
the milk that a calf is sucking to no useful purpose; and as to the cow
and the calf, the one must lose her young, and the other its life, after
all; and the respite only makes an addition to the sufferings of both.
136. As to the pretended _unwholesomeness_ of milk in certain cases; as to
its not being adapted to _some constitutions_, I do not believe one word
of the matter. When we talk of the _fruits_, indeed, which were formerly
the chief food of a great part of mankind, we should recollect, that those
fruits grew in countries that had a _sun to ripen_ the fruits, and to put
nutritious matter into them. But as to _milk_, England yields to no
country upon the face of the earth. Neat cattle will touch nothing that is
not wholesome in its nature; nothing that is not wholly innoxious. Out of
a pail that has ever had grease in it, they will not drink a drop, though
they be raging with thirst. Their very breath is fragrance. And how, then,
is it possible, that unwholesomeness should distil from the udder of a
cow? The milk varies, indeed, in its quality and taste according to the
variations in the nature of the food; but no food will a cow touch that is
any way hostile to health. Feed young puppies upon _milk from the cow_,
and they will never die with that ravaging disease called "_the
distemper_." In short, to suppose that milk contains any thing essentially
unwholesome is monstrous. When, indeed, the appetite becomes vitiated:
when the organs have been long accustomed to food of a more stimulating
nature; when it has been resolved to eat ragouts at dinner, and drink
wine, and to swallow "a devil," and a glass of strong grog at night; then
milk for breakfast may be "_heavy_" and disgusting, and the feeder may
stand in need of tea or laudanum, which differ only as to degrees of
strength. But, and I speak from the most ample experience, milk is not
"_heavy_," and much less is it _unwholesome_, when he who uses it rises
early, never swallows strong drink, and never _stuffs_ himself with flesh
of any kind. Many and many a day I scarcely taste of meat, and then
chiefly at _breakfast_, and that, too, at an early hour. Milk is the
natural food of _young people_; if it be too rich, _skim_ it again and
again till it be not too rich. This is an evil easily cured. If you have
now to _begin_ with a family of children, they may not like it at first.
But _persevere_; and the parent who does not do this, having the means in
his hands, shamefully neglects his duty. A son who prefers a "devil" and a
glass of grog to a hunch of bread and a bowl of cold milk, I regard as a
pest; and for this pest the father has to thank himself.
137. Before I dismiss this article, let me offer an observation or two to
those persons who live in the vicinity of towns, or in towns, and who,
though they have _large gardens_, have "_no land to keep a cow_," a
circumstance which they "_exceedingly regret_." I have, I dare say,
witnessed this case at least a thousand times. Now, how much garden ground
does it require to supply even a large family with _garden vegetables_?
The market gardeners round the metropolis of this wen-headed country;
round this Wen of all wens;[8] round this prodigious and monstrous
collection of human beings; these market gardeners have about _three
hundred thousand families to supply with vegetables_, and these they
supply well too, and with summer fruits into the bargain. Now, if it
demanded _ten rods to a family_, the whole would demand, all but a
fraction, _nineteen thousand acres of garden ground_. We have only to cast
our eyes over what there is to know that there is not a _fourth_ of that
quantity. A _square mile_ contains, leaving out parts of a hundred, 700
acres of land; and 19,000 acres occupy more than _twenty-two square
miles_. Are there twenty-two square miles covered with the Wen's market
gardens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from
Brompton to Hammersmith, extending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and
to the Bayswater road on the other side, and leaving out loads, lanes,
nurseries; pastures, corn-fields, and pleasure-grounds, do not, in my
opinion, cover _one square mile_. To the north and south of the Wen there
is very little in the way of market garden; and if, on both sides of the
Thames, to the eastward of the Wen, there be _three square miles_ actually
covered with market gardens, that is the full extent. How, then, could the
Wen be supplied, if it required _ten rods_ to each family? To be sure,
potatoes, carrots, and turnips, and especially the first of these, are
brought, for the use of the Wen, from a great distance, in many cases.
But, so they are for the use of the persons I am speaking of; for a
gentleman thinks no more of raising a large quantity of these things in
his _garden_, than he thinks of _raising wheat there_. How is it, then,
that it requires half an acre, or eighty rods, in a _private_ garden to
supply a family, while these market gardeners supply all these families
(and so amply too) from ten, or more likely, five rods of ground to a
family? I have shown, in the last Number, that nearly fifteen tons of
vegetables can be raised in a year upon forty rods of ground; that is to
say, _ten loads for a wagon and four good horses_. And is not a fourth, or
even an eighth, part of this weight, sufficient to go down the throats of
a family in a year? Nay, allow that only _a ton_ goes to a family in a
year, it is more than _six pound weight a day_; and what sort of a family
must that be that really _swallows_ six pounds weight a day? and this a
market gardener will raise for them upon less than _three rods_ of ground;
for he will raise, in the course of the year, even more than fifteen tons
upon forty rods of ground. What is it, then, that they _do_ with the
eighty rods of ground in a private garden? Why, in the first place, they
have _one crop_ where they ought to have _three_. Then they do not half
_till_ the ground. Then they grow things that are _not wanted_. Plant
cabbages and other things, let them stand till they be good for nothing,
and then wheel them to the rubbish heap. Raise as many radishes, lettuces,
and as much endive, and as many kidney-beans, as would serve for ten
families; and finally throw nine-tenths of them away. I once saw not less
than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all
bearing _seed_. Seed enough for half a county. They cut a cabbage _here_
and a cabbage _there_, and so let the whole of the piece of ground remain
undug, till the _last_ cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even
in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten rid of, if the
main part were not _thrown away_. The rubbish heap always receives
four-fifths even of the _eatable_ part of the produce.
138. It is not thus that the market gardeners proceed. Their rubbish heap
consists of little besides mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop _on_
the ground than they settle in their minds what is to follow it. They
_clear as they go_ in taking off a crop, and, as they clear they dig and
plant. The ground is never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus,
in the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of vegetables from
eighty rods of ground. Such vigilance and industry are not to be expected
in a _servant_; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert himself
for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one
of the persons is that I have spoken of in Paragraph 137; that is to say,
if I had a garden of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would
out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vegetables for my family, and
would make it yield enough for a _cow_ besides. I should go a short way to
work with my gardener. I should put _Cottage Economy_ into his hands, and
tell him, that if he could furnish me with vegetables, and my cow with
food, he was my man; and that if he could not, I must get one that could
and would. I am not for making a man toil like a slave; but what would
become of the world, if a well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in
tilling and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I have known
many men _dig_ thirty rods of garden ground in a day; I have, before I was
fourteen, digged twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days
successively; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea,
who digged forty rods in one single day, between daylight and dark. So
that it is no slavish toil that I am here recommending.
KEEPING PIGS.
139. Next after the _Cow_ comes the _Pig_; and, in many cases, where a cow
cannot be kept, a pig or pigs may be kept. But these are animals not to be
ventured on without due consideration as to the means of _feeding_ them;
for a starved pig is a great deal worse than none at all. You cannot make
bacon as you can milk, merely out of the garden. There must be _something
more_. A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist
sermons and religious tracts. The sight of them upon the rack tends more
to keep a man from poaching and stealing than whole volumes of penal
statutes, though assisted by the terrors of the hulks and the gibbet. They
are great softeners of the temper, and promoters of domestic harmony. They
are a great blessing; but they are not to be had from _herbage_ or _roots_
of any kind; and, therefore, before a _pig_ be attempted, the means ought
to be considered.
140. _Breeding sows_ are great favourites with Cottagers in general; but I
have seldom known them to answer their purpose. Where there is an outlet,
the sow will, indeed, keep herself by grazing in summer, with a little
_wash_ to help her out: and when her pigs come, they are many in number;
but they are a heavy expense. The sow must live as well as a _fatting
hog_, or the pigs will be good for little. It is a great mistake, too, to
suppose that the condition of the sow _previous to pigging_ is of no
consequence; and, indeed, some suppose, that she ought to be rather _bare
of flesh_ at the pigging time. Never was a greater mistake; for if she be
in this state, she presently becomes a mere rack of bones; and then, do
what you will, the pigs will be poor things. However fat she may be before
she farrow, the pigs will make her lean in a week. All her fat goes away
in her milk, and unless the pigs have a _store_ to draw upon, they pull
her down directly; and, by the time they are three weeks old, they are
starving for want; and then they never come to good.
141. Now, a cottager's sow cannot, without great expense, be kept in a way
to enable her to meet the demands of her farrow. She may _look_ pretty
well; but the flesh she has upon her is not of the same nature as that
which the _farm-yard_ sow carries about her. It is the result of grass,
and of poor grass, too, or other weak food; and not made partly out of
corn and whey and strong wash, as in the case of the farmer's sow. No food
short of that of a fatting hog will enable her to keep her pigs _alive_;
and this she must have for _ten weeks_, and that at a great expense. Then
comes the operation, upon the principle of _Parson Malthus_, in order to
_check population_; and there is some risk here, though not very great.
But there is the _weaning_; and who, that knows any thing about the
matter, will think lightly of the weaning of a farrow of pigs! By having
nice food given them, they seem, for a few days, not to miss their mother.
But their appearance soon shows the want of her. Nothing but the very best
food, and that given in the most judicious manner, will keep them up to
any thing like good condition; and, indeed, there is nothing short of
_milk_ that will effect the thing well. How should it be otherwise? The
very richest cow's milk is poor, compared with that of the sow; and, to be
taken from this and put upon food, one ingredient of which is _water_, is
quite sufficient to reduce the poor little things to bare bones and
staring hair, a state to which cottagers' pigs very soon come in general;
and, at last, he frequently drives them to market, and sells them for less
than the cost of the food which they and the sow have devoured since they
were farrowed. It was, doubtless, pigs of this description that were sold
the other day at Newbury market, for _fifteen pence a piece_, and which
were, I dare say, dear even as a gift. To get such a pig to _begin_ to
grow will require _three months_, and with good feeding too in winter
time. To be sure it does come to be a hog at last; but, do what you can,
it is a dear hog.
142. The _Cottager_, then, can hold no competition with the _Farmer_ in
the _breeding_ of pigs, to do which, with advantage, there must be _milk_,
and milk, too, that can be advantageously applied to no other use. The
cottager's pig must be bought ready weaned to his hand, and, indeed, at
_four months old_, at which age, if he be in good condition, he will eat
any-thing that an old hog will eat. He will graze, eat cabbage leaves, and
almost the stumps. Swedish turnip tops or roots, and such things, with a
little wash, will keep him along in very good growing order. I have now to
speak of the time of purchasing, the manner of keeping, of fatting,
killing, and curing; but these I must reserve till my next Number.
No. VI.
KEEPING PIGS--(_continued._)
143. As in the case of cows so in that of pigs, much must depend upon the
situation of the cottage; because all pigs will _graze_; and therefore, on
the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept, if
the family be considerable; and especially if the cottager brew his own
beer, which will give him grains to assist the wash. Even in _lanes_, or
on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from
May to November; and if he be _yoked_, the occupiers of the neighbourhood
must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance.
144. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the
truly excellent conduct of Lord WINCHILSEA and Lord STANHOPE, who, as I
read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates
comfortable, by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the
keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the
copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood, that we should petition
the Bishop of Winchester, who was lord of the manors thereabouts, to grant
titles to all the numerous persons called _trespassers on the wastes_; and
also to give titles to others of the poor parishioners, who were willing
to make, on the skirts of the wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre
each. This I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving
the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have
been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a
single man would agree to my proposal! One, a bullfrog farmer (now, I
hear, pretty well sweated down,) said it would only make them _saucy_! And
one, a true disciple of _Malthus_, said, that to facilitate their rearing
of children _was a harm_! This man had, at the time, in his own
occupation, land that had formerly been _six farms_, and he had, too, ten
or a dozen children. I will not mention names; but this farmer will _now_,
perhaps, have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when
his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain,
as he was a very industrious, civil, and honest man. Never was there a
greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just
and kind treatment. _Slaves_ are always lazy and saucy; nothing but the
lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never
met with a _saucy_ Yankee (New Englander) in my life. Never servile;
always civil. This must necessarily be the character of _freemen living in
a state of competence_. They have nobody to envy; nobody to complain of;
they are in good humour with mankind. It must, however, be confessed, that
very little, comparatively speaking, is to be accomplished by the
individual efforts even of benevolent men like the two noblemen before
mentioned. They have a strife to maintain against the _general tendency of
the national state of things_. It is by general and indirect means, and
not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so great a good
as that which they generously aim at can be accomplished. When we are to
see such means adopted, God only knows; but, if much longer delayed, I am
of opinion, that they will come too late to prevent something very much
resembling a dissolution of society.
145. The cottager's pig should be bought in the spring, or late in winter;
and being then four months old, he will be a year old before killing time;
for it should always be borne in mind, that this age is required in order
to insure the greatest quantity of meat from a given quantity of food. If
a hog be more than a year old, he is the better for it. The flesh is more
solid and more nutritious than that of a young hog, much in the same
degree that the mutton of a full-mouthed wether is better than that of a
younger wether. The pork or bacon of young hogs, even if fatted on corn,
is very apt to _boil out_, as they call it; that is to say, come out of
the pot smaller in bulk than it goes in. When you begin to fat, do it by
degrees, especially in the case of hogs under a year old. If you feed
_high_ all at once, the hog is apt to _surfeit_, and then a great loss of
food takes place. Peas, or barley-meal is the food; the latter rather the
best, and does the work quicker. Make him _quite fat_ by all means. The
last bushel, even if he sit as he eat, is the most profitable. If he can
walk two hundred yards at a time, he is not well fatted. Lean bacon is the
most wasteful thing that any family can use. In short, it is uneatable,
except by drunkards, who want something to stimulate their sickly
appetite. The man who cannot live on _solid fat_ bacon, well-fed and
well-cured, wants the sweet sauce of labour, or is fit for the hospital.
But, then, it must be _bacon_, the effect of barley or peas, (not beans,)
and not of whey, potatoes, or _messes_ of any kind. It is frequently said,
and I know that even farmers say it, that bacon, made from corn, _costs
more than it is worth_! Why do they take care to have it then? They know
better. They know well, that it is the very _cheapest_ they can have; and
they, who look at both ends and both sides of every cost, would as soon
think of shooting their hogs as of fatting them on _messes_; that is to
say, for _their own use_, however willing they might now-and-then be to
regale the Londoners with a bit of potato-pork.
146. About _Christmas_, if the weather be coldish, is a good time to kill.
If the weather be very mild, you may wait a little longer; for the hog
cannot be too fat. The day before killing he should have no food. To kill
a hog nicely is so much of a profession, that it is better to pay a
shilling for having it done, than to stab and hack and tear the carcass
about. I shall not speak of _pork_; for I would by no means recommend it.
There are two ways of going to work to make bacon; in the one you take off
the hair by _scalding_. This is the practice in most parts of England, and
all over America. But the _Hampshire_ way, and the best way, is to _burn
the hair off_. There is a great deal of difference in the consequences.
The first method slackens the skin, opens all the pores of it, makes it
loose and flabby by drawing out the roots of the hair. The second tightens
the skin in every part, contracts all the sinews and veins in the skin,
makes the flitch a solider thing, and the skin a better protection to the
meat. The taste of the meat is very different from that of a scalded hog;
and to this chiefly it was that Hampshire bacon owed its reputation for
excellence. As the hair is to be _burnt_ off it must be _dry_, and care
must be taken, that the hog be kept on dry litter of some sort the day
previous to killing. When killed he is laid upon a narrow bed of straw,
not wider than his carcass, and only two or three inches thick. He is then
covered all over thinly with straw, to which, according as the wind may
be, the fire is put at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the hair. It
requires two or three coverings and burnings, and care is taken, that the
skin be not in any part burnt, or parched. When the hair is all burnt off
close, the hog is _scraped_ clean, but never touched with _water_. The
upper side being finished, the hog is turned over, and the other side is
treated in like manner. This work should always be done _before
day-light_; for in the day-light you cannot so nicely discover whether the
hair be sufficiently burnt off. The light of the fire is weakened by that
of the day. Besides, it makes the boys get up very early for once at any
rate, and that is something; for boys always like a bonfire.
147. The _inwards_ are next taken out, and if the wife be not a slattern,
here, in the mere offal, in the mere garbage, there is food, and delicate
food too, for a large family for a week; and hog's puddings for the
children, and some for neighbours' children, who come to play with them;
for these things are by no means to be overlooked, seeing that they tend
to the keeping alive of that affection in children for their parents,
which, later in life, will be found absolutely necessary to give effect to
wholesome precept, especially when opposed to the boisterous passions of
youth.
148. The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is
_filled with meat_! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs,
chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and
the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But
about this time, it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will
pay you a visit. It is remarked in America, that these gentry are
attracted by the squeaking of the pigs, as the fox is by the cackling of
the hen. This may be called slander; but I will tell you what I did know
to happen. A good honest careful fellow had a spare-rib, on which he
intended to sup with his family after a long and hard day's work at
coppice-cutting. Home he came at dark with his two little boys, each with
a nitch of wood that they had carried four miles, cheered with the thought
of the repast that awaited them. In he went, found his wife, the Methodist
parson, and a whole troop of the sisterhood, engaged in prayer, and on the
table lay scattered the clean-polished bones of the spare-rib! Can any
reasonable creature believe, that, to save the soul, God requires us to
give up the food necessary to sustain the body? Did Saint Paul preach
this? He, who, while he spread the gospel abroad, _worked himself_, in
order to have it to give to those who were unable to work? Upon what,
then, do these modern saints; these evangelical gentlemen, found their
claim to live on the labour of others.
149. All the other parts taken away, the two sides that remain, and that
are called _flitches_, are to be cured for _bacon_. They are first rubbed
with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed, one on the other,
the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round
its edges to drain away the _brine_; for, to have sweet and fine bacon,
the flitches must not lie sopping in brine; which gives it that sort of
taste which barrel-pork and sea-jonk have, and than which nothing is more
villanous. Every one knows how different is the taste of fresh, dry salt,
from that of salt in a dissolved state. The one is savoury, the other
nauseous. Therefore, _change the salt often_. Once in four or five days.
Let it melt, and sink in; but let it not lie too long. Change the
flitches. Put that at bottom which was first put on the top. Do this a
couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt, or
rather in _taxes_, than the _sopping mode_; but without it, your bacon
will not be sweet and fine, and _will not keep so well_. As to the _time_
required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on
circumstances; the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the
place wherein the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick
than for a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry, than in damp weather; it
takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog
of twelve score, in weather not very dry or very damp, about six weeks may
do; and as yours is to be _fat_, which receives little injury from
over-salting, give time enough; for you are to have bacon till Christmas
comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool,
but always admit of a _free circulation of air_: _confined_ air, though
_cool_, will taint meat sooner than the mid-day sun accompanied with a
breeze. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon as in a close and
damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in _cold water_, and one of the same size
before a _hot fire_, and the former will dissolve in half the time that
the latter will. Let me take this occasion of observing, that an ice-house
should never be _under ground_, or _under the shade of trees_. That the
bed of it ought to be three feet above the level of the ground; that this
bed ought to consist of something that will admit the drippings to go
instantly off; and that the house should stand in a place _open to the sun
and air_. This is the way they have the ice-houses under the burning sun
of Virginia; and here they keep their fish and meat as fresh and sweet as
in winter, when at the same time neither will keep for twelve hours,
though let down to the depth of a hundred feet in a well. A Virginian,
with some poles and straw, will stick up an ice-house for ten dollars,
worth a dozen of those ice-houses, each of which costs our men of taste as
many scores of pounds. It is very hard to imagine, indeed, what any one
should want ice _for_, in a country like this, except for clodpole boys to
slide upon, and to drown cockneys in skaiting-time; but if people must
have ice in summer, they may as well go a right way as a wrong way to get
it.
150. However, the patient that I have at this time under my hands wants
nothing to cool his blood, but something to warm it, and, therefore, I
will get back to the flitches of bacon, which are now to be _smoked_; for
smoking is a great deal better than merely _drying_, as is the fashion in
the dairy countries in the West of England. When there were plenty of
_farm_-houses there were plenty of places to smoke bacon in; since farmers
have lived in gentleman's houses, and the main part of the farm-houses
have been knocked down, these places are not so plenty. However, there is
scarcely any neighbourhood without a chimney left to hang bacon up in. Two
precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where no _rain_
comes down upon them: second, not to let them be so near the fire as to
_melt_. These precautions taken, the next is, that the smoke must proceed
from _wood_, not turf, peat, or coal. Stubble or litter might do; but the
trouble would be great. _Fir_, or _deal_, smoke is not fit for the
purpose. I take it, that the absence of wood, as fuel, in the dairy
countries, and in the North, has led to the making of pork and dried
bacon. As to the _time_ that it requires to smoke a flitch, it must depend
a good deal upon whether there be a _constant fire beneath_, and whether
the fire be large or small. A month may do, if the fire be pretty
constant, and such as a farm-house fire usually is. But over smoking, or,
rather, too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon _rust_. Great
attention should, therefore, be paid to this matter. The flitch ought not
be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly
dry. Before you hang it up, lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh-side
pretty thickly over with bran, or with some fine saw-dust other than that
of deal or fir. Rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it. This
keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of
crust to be dried on; and, in short, keeps the flesh cleaner than it would
otherwise be.
151. To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from nasty things that
they call _hoppers_; that is to say, a sort of skipping maggots,
engendered by a fly which has a great relish for bacon: to provide against
this mischief, and also to keep the bacon from becoming rusty, the
Americans, whose country is so hot in summer, have two methods. They smoke
no part of the hog except the hams, or gammons. They cover these with
coarse linen cloth such as the finest hop-bags are made of, which they sew
neatly on. They then _white-wash_ the cloth all over with _lime_
white-wash, such as we put on walls, their lime being excellent
stone-lime. They give the ham four or five washings, the one succeeding as
the former gets dry; and in the sun, all these washings are put on in a
few hours. The flies cannot get through this; and thus the meat is
preserved from them. The _other_ mode, and that is the mode for you, is,
to sift _fine_ some clean and dry _wood-ashes_. Put some at the bottom of
a box, or chest, which is long enough to hold a flitch of bacon. Lay in
one flitch; then put in more ashes; then the _other flitch_; and then
cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. This will effectually
keep away all flies; and will keep the bacon as fresh and good as when it
came out of the chimney, which it will not be for any great length of
time, if put on a rack, or kept hung up in the open air. _Dust_, or even
_sand_, very, very _dry_, would, perhaps, do as well. The object is not
only to keep out the flies, but the _air_. The place where the chest, or
box, is kept, ought to be _dry_; and, if the ashes should get damp (as
they are apt to do from the salts they contain,) they should be put in the
fire-place to dry, and then be put back again. Peat-ashes, or turf-ashes,
might do very well for this purpose. With these precautions, the bacon
will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day; and it will
keep two, and even three years, perfectly good, for which, however, there
can be no necessity.
152. Now, then, this hog is altogether a capital thing. The other parts
will be meat for about four or five weeks. The _lard_, nicely put down,
will last a long while for all the purposes for which it is wanted. To
make it keep well there should be some salt put into it. Country children
are badly brought up if they do not like sweet lard spread upon bread, as
we spread butter. Many a score hunches of this sort have I eaten, and I
never knew what poverty was. I have eaten it for luncheon at the houses of
good substantial farmers in France and Flanders. I am not now frequently
so hungry as I ought to be; but I should think it no hardship to eat
_sweet_ lard instead of butter. But, now-a-days, the labourers, and
especially the female part of them, have fallen into the taste of
_niceness_ in food and _finery in dress_; a quarter of a bellyful and rags
are the consequence. The food of their choice is high-priced, so that, for
the greater part of their time, they are half-starved. The dress of their
choice is _showy_ and _flimsy_, so that, to-day, they are _ladies_, and
to-morrow ragged as sheep with the scab. But has not Nature made the
country girls as pretty as ladies? Oh, yes! (bless their rosy cheeks and
white teeth!) and a great deal prettier too! But are they _less_ pretty,
when their dress is plain and substantial, and when the natural
presumption is, that they have smocks as well as gowns, than they are when
drawn off in the frail fabric of Sir Robert Peel,[9] "where tawdry colours
strive with dirty white," exciting violent suspicions that all is not as
it ought to be nearer the skin, and calling up a train of ideas extremely
hostile to that sort of feeling which every lass innocently and
commendably wishes to awaken in her male beholders? Are they prettiest
when they come through the wet and dirt safe and neat; or when their
draggled dress is plastered to their backs by a shower of rain? However,
the fault has not been theirs, nor that of their parents. It is _the
system_ of managing the affairs of the nation. This system has made all
_flashy_ and _false_, and has put all things out of their place.
Pomposity, bombast, hyperbole, redundancy, and obscurity, both in speaking
and in writing; mock-delicacy in manners; mock-liberality, mock-humanity,
and mock-religion. Pitt's false money, Peel's flimsy dresses,
Wilberforce's potatoe diet, Castlereagh's and Mackintosh's oratory, Walter
Scott's poems, Walter's and Stoddart's[10] paragraphs, with all the bad
taste and baseness and hypocrisy which they spread over this country; all
have arisen, grown, branched out, bloomed, and borne together; and we are
now beginning to taste of their fruit. But, as the fat of the adder is, as
is said, the antidote to its sting; so in the Son of the great worker of
Spinning-Jennies, we have, thanks to the Proctors and Doctors of Oxford,
the author of that _Bill_, before which this false, this flashy, this
flimsy, this rotten system will dissolve as one of his father's pasted
calicoes does at the sight of the washing-tub.
153. "What," says the cottager, "has all this to do with hogs and bacon?"
Not directly with hogs and bacon, indeed; but it has a great deal to do,
my good fellow with your affairs, as I shall, probably, hereafter more
fully show, though I shall now leave you to the enjoyment of your flitches
of bacon, which, as I before observed, will do ten thousand times more
than any Methodist parson, or any other parson (except, of course, those
of _our_ church) to make you happy, not only in this world, but in the
world to come. _Meat in the house_ is a great source of _harmony_, a great
preventer of the temptation to commit those things, which, from small
beginnings, lead, finally, to the most fatal and atrocious results; and I
hold that doctrine to be _truly damnable_, which teaches that God has made
any selection, any condition relative to belief, which is to save from
punishment those who violate the principles of _natural justice_.
154. _Some_ other meat you may have; but, bacon is the great thing. It is
always ready; as good cold as hot; goes to the field or the coppice
conveniently; in harvest, and other busy times, demands the pot to be
boiled only on a Sunday; has twice as much strength in it as any other
thing of the same weight; and in short, has in it every quality that tends
to make a labourer's family able to work and well off. One pound of bacon,
such as that which I have described, is, in a labourer's family, worth
four or five of ordinary mutton or beef, which are great part _bone_, and
which, in short, are gone in a moment. But always observe, it is _fat
bacon_ that I am talking about. There will, in spite of all that can be
done, be _some_ lean in the gammons, though comparatively very little; and
therefore you ought to begin at that end of the flitches; for, _old lean
bacon_ is not good.
155. Now, as to the _cost_. A pig (a _spayed sow_ is best) bought in March
four months old, can be had now for fifteen shillings. The cost till
fatting time is next to nothing to a Cottager; and then the cost, at the
present price of corn, would, for a hog of twelve score, not exceed _three
pounds_; in the whole _four pounds five_; a pot of poison a week bought at
the public-house comes to _twenty-six shillings_ of the money; and more
than _three times the remainder_ is generally flung away upon the
miserable _tea_, as I have clearly shown in the First Number, at Paragraph
24. I have, indeed, there shown, that if the tea were laid aside, the
labourer might supply his family well with beer all the year round, and
have a fat hog of even _fifteen score_ for the _cost of the tea_, which
does him and can do him _no good at all_.
156. The feet, the cheeks, and other bone, being considered, the _bacon
and lard_, taken together, would not exceed _sixpence a pound_. Irish
bacon is "_cheaper_." Yes, _lower-priced_. But, I will engage that a pound
of mine, when it comes _out_ of the pot (to say nothing of the _taste_,)
shall weigh as much as a _pound and a half_ of Irish, or any dairy or
slop-fed bacon, when that comes out of the pot. No, no: the farmers joke
when they say, that their bacon _costs them more than_ they could buy
bacon for. They know well what it is they are doing; and besides, they
always forget, or, rather, remember not to say, that the fatting of a
large hog yields them three or four load of dung, really worth more than
ten or fifteen of common yard dung. In short, without hogs, farming _could
not go on_; and it never has gone on in any country in the world. The hogs
are the great _stay_ of the whole concern. They are _much in small space_;
they make no _show_, as flocks and herds do; but with out them, the
cultivation of the land would be a poor, a miserably barren concern.
SALTING MUTTON AND BEEF.
157. _VERY FAT_ Mutton may be salted to great advantage, and also smoked,
and may be kept thus a long while. Not the shoulders and legs, but the
_back_ of the sheep. I have never made any flitch of _sheep-bacon_; but I
will; for there is nothing like having a _store_ of meat in a house. The
running to the butchers daily is a ridiculous thing. The very idea of
being fed, of a _family_ being fed, by daily supplies, has something in it
perfectly _tormenting_. One half of the time of a mistress of a house,
the affairs of which are carried on in this way, is taken up in talking
about what is to be got for dinner, and in negotiations with the butcher.
One single moment spent at table beyond what is absolutely necessary, is a
moment very shamefully spent; but, to suffer a system of domestic economy,
which unnecessarily wastes daily an hour or two of the mistress's time in
hunting for the provision for the repast, is a shame indeed; and when we
consider how much time is generally spent in this and in equally absurd
ways, it is no wonder that we see so little performed by numerous
individuals as they do perform during the course of their lives.
158. _Very fat parts of Beef_ may be salted and smoked in a like manner.
Not the _lean_; for that is a great waste, and is, in short, good for
nothing. Poor fellows on board of ships are compelled to eat it, but it is
a very bad thing.
No. VII.
BEES, FOWLS, &C. &C.
159. I now proceed to treat of objects of less importance than the
foregoing, but still such as may be worthy of great attention. If all of
them cannot be expected to come within the scope of a labourer's family,
some of them must, and others may: and it is always of great consequence,
that children be brought up to set a just value upon all useful things,
and especially upon all _living things_; to know the _utility_ of them:
for, without this, they never, when grown up, are worthy of being
entrusted with the _care_ of them. One of the greatest, and, perhaps, the
very commonest, fault of servants, is their inadequate care of animals
committed to their charge. It is a well-known saying that "the _master's
eye_ makes the horse fat," and the remissness to which this alludes, is
generally owing to the servant not having been brought up to feel _an
interest_ in the well-being of animals.
BEES.
160. It is not my intention to enter into a history of this insect about
which so much has been written, especially by the French naturalists. It
is the _useful_ that I shall treat of, and that is done in not many words.
The best _hives_ are those made of clean unblighted _rye-straw_. Boards
are too cold in England. A swarm should always be put into a _new_ hive,
and the sticks should be _new_ that are put into the hive for the bees to
work on; for, if the hive be old, it is not so _wholesome_, and a thousand
to one but it contain the embryos of _moths_ and other insects injurious
to bees. Over the hive itself there should be a cap of thatch, made also
of clean rye straw; and it should not only be _new_ when first put on the
hive; but a new one should be made to supply the place of the former one
every three or four months; for when the straw begins to get rotten, as it
soon does, insects breed in it, its smell is bad, and its effect on the
bees is dangerous.
161. The hive should be placed on a bench, the legs of which mice and rats
cannot creep up. Tin round the legs is best. But even this will not keep
down _ants_, which are mortal enemies of bees. To keep these
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