The Spending of Leisure
Tae New Survey of London Life and Labour. and Leisure. (P. 8. King. 17s. 6d.)
Vol. IX : Lite It' you compare (as the " New Survey " has) London today with London forty years ago, beyond question one of the main differences for the working class is the great increase of leisiire and the greatly increased variety of the ways in which it may be spent. When Charles Booth surveyed the metro- polis between 3886 and 1900, there were no cinemas, no motoring, no greyhound racing, no dirt tracks, no dance-halls of the modern type, and no wireless. What is more, even if they had existed, the masses of the working-class could not have found leisure and money for them, as they do now.
I am' not sure whether Sir H. Llevirellyn Smith, the Director of tbe new survey, who in this concluding volume displays afresh his great gift for putting the different parts of a picture into peripective, has done'sufficient justice to one of the biggest faciers.in the change. This is the limitation of families. He puts in the fOreground the reduction in hours of wage-work. Between 1890 and 1028 it reckoned at 17 per cent. for un- skilled Jahour .and 12 per cent. for skilled ;' and though the average distance between home. and work is longer than it used to be, quicker transport has cancelled the difference in terms of time. Now all that is iiuportant and accounts for'a good deal ; but it may well be qucslioned if it is the largest influence. At the cinemas 76 per cent. of the attendance is ferninine, and though there are no figures to measure the pro.; portiOn of risarried women, unquestionably it is high. At the dirt-trackraees it is estimated that women spectators outer number men by five to one. Anyone who at this time of year meets the daily exodus of pleasure coaches running out along the Commercial Road or the Whitechapel.Road will, I think, be struck by the same thing. Some, of course, carry men on " beans " ; but the majority carry women, and among them married women of the working class form a large element.
This side of the matter comes out at the end of the volume,
where there are interesting 'printed. some very descriptions by working-class men ,and women of their own lives. Seven of , the writers are railwaymen, and six are Bermondsey housewives. Omitting one of the former, who is unmarried, the remaining 12 persons, have 23 children altogether--an average of just under two per family—and none of them has more than three ; moreover, they are in all eases well spaced out. Similar families early in the century would have run to six or eight living children (with more dead) ; the spacing would have been closer ; and the maximum might easily have been ten or, a .dozen. The ,change has not come alone ; gas stoves and many other domestic gadgets have lightened housework enormously. Reading between the lines of the housewives' papers, you see that they give a good deal of time and thought to buying and cooking meals, but otherwise have not much on their hands. " I do not go to any sports meetings or picture theatres," writes an L.N.E.R. shop worker, " but I do not prevent my wife from going if she so desires." Just so.
This is worth emphasizing, not only because the transfor- mation of. London working-class women from a drudge class to a class which often has considerable leisure is in itself to be welcomed, but because much of the difference in quality between the amusements of Booth's period and our own reflects a feminine influence. Contrast , the bibulous and sometimes raffish " free-and-easies " of the late nineteenth century with the cheap cinemas of today, and you will see that the latter differ not merely as catering for a public wit Ii raised standards of comfort and education, but as catering for one predominantly feminine. The change is very much in line with those in the contents of pewspapers with a popular circulation. Even at the " non-vocational " evening in- stitutes run for .adults by the L.C.C. the women outnumber the men, by two to one. There arc a " greater number of women and girls whoSe home or other .dutica allow them to attend evening classes."
Another very marked feature of today, is the multiplying of recreational facilities for children, and adolescents. Forty years ago the Boys'. Brigade existed, but bay scouts and girl guides did not. The organization of boys' clubs, too, was on a much smaller scale, and those that there were tended niticil oftener to be annexes to the work of religious missions. Now
the idea of club organization " suited alike by its comradeship; its self-govetiimekt, and its 'games to train the whole boy for the part which he has to play in the world " has tended to replace the earlier and narrower notion of the club as a " bait to entice the boy to church." The change is largely attributed to the boys' club work of the university settlements.
About a third of this volume is given to the darker sides of leisured life—drink, gambling, sex-delinquency, and crime. The immense decrease in drunkenness ranks among the greatest gains which our generation has achieved. Against it may be set a widespread growth of gambling ; but the " Survey," while "admitting this to be " certainly responsible for- a good deal of distress and corruption," doubts " whether it is so damaging as its extreme opponents declare, or as the• drink habit was a generation ago." In regard to sex-delin- quency the obvious change has been one rather of character than of scale. Commercial prostitution has greatly declined; but there has come to be in some quarters much laxity towards " extra-marital sexual relations of a non-commercial kind." But this, we are told, has been much less marked " in the working than in the middle class.
It is worth noting that the evidence points to poverty's playing a very small part in the causation of vine and crime. The proportion of very poor found in public-houses is small: Unemployment increases crime, but " static " poverty has seemingly not much to do with it. The incidence of sex- delinquency and crime alike is greatly affected by the character of the home ; but it is not a poor home but a discordant home, that does the mischief.
This is a fine volume, and brings to a worthy conclusion a great enterprise, which from first to last has occupied an able team of workers for about six years.
IL C. K. ENSOR.
Previous page
