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And this is no fancy picture. I have now in my mind one Wilkins, a steady, rough, honest, sober labourer, fairly intelligent, and the father of thirteen children. The two eldest, girls of fourteen and fifteen, are already out at service; but the eleven younger, being under age, are still kept at school and supported by their father. He earns 1l. regularly. They rent the whole house at 12s. a week, and, letting off part, stand themselves at a weekly rent of 5s. for three small rooms. Less than that, as the mother says, ‘I could not nohow do with, what with all the washing for such a heavy family, and bathing the little ones, and him coming home tired of an evening, and needing a place to sit down in.’ The wife is a decent body, but rough and uncultured; and as she is ignorant of the proper proportions of nitrogenous and carbonaceous substance necessary for the preservation of healthy life, as well as of the kinds of food in which they can be best found, she feeds her family even less nutritiously than she could do if she were better informed. Still the whole wage could only feed them if it were all expended ever so wisely, leaving no margin for the requirements already mentioned.