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 CONDUCT- ING 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 THB PURPOSE OP 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;
on,
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,
Sorrw? $Y CONNER 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 Mut- ton, 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
AoDiTiON.-^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, \vhich affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to indivi- duals or to a nation. A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world, not so much by the num- ber of its people as by the ability and character of that people ; and the ability and character of a people de- pend, 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,
1*
<5 INTRODUCTION. [No,
a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.
4. In every view of the matter, therefore, it is de- sirable, 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 manage- ment.
5. I lay it down as a maxim, that for a family to be happy, they must be well supplied withybotZ and rai- ment. 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 per- nicious 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, there- fore, 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 iood and raiment and lodging necessary to health and decency ; and not that imaginary poverty, of which some per- sons 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
L] INTRODUCTION. 7
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 con- tented 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 hap- piness 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 Eng- lish 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
8 INTRODUCTION. [No.
necessary to support the government and defend the country, he has no reason to complain. If the large- ness 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 advanta- ges. 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 im- pulses 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 addition- al 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 al- most 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 mom 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-learn- ing, with which, nine times out of ten, it has nothing at all to do. It is, indeed, proper, and it is the duty
I.] INTRODUCTION. 9
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, com- paratively 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 con- ceited : into some course of desperation he falls ; and the end is but too often not only wretched but ignomi- nious.
12. Understand me clearly here, however ; for it is the duty of parents to give, if they be able, book-learn- ing 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 idle- ness 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, there- fore, of a very different kind. You should bear con- stantly 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 rea-
•• son 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.
10 INTRODUCTION. [No.
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 attempt- ting 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 encou- raged 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. A nd, bear in mind, that if the state of the labourer has its disadvantages when compared with other call- ings 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
1J INTRODUCTION. Jl
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 pro- pose 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 fami- ly 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, sleek- headed 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 fana- tic 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 recom- mend 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 ?
12 INTRODUCTION. [No.
Can it be religion to regard, as marks of his grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend pur 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 de- scription ; 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 obedi- ence. 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 compe~ tence," 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 duly of every man. "Two things," says AGUE, "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
L] BREWING. 13
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 pld^man and a large fanner, in Sussex, has recently given in evidence, be- fore 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 lax upon hops. These have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink. They still drink beer, but, in gene- ral, it is of the brewing of common brewers, and in public-houses, of which the common brewers have be- come 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,
2
14 BREWING. [No.
or a new system must be adopted ; and the nation will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of 4s. 6d* a bushel, and the barley costs only 3s. This brings the bushel of malt to Ss. 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 3s. 3d. a bushel ; because a bushel of barley makes more than a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amount, causes great expenses of va- rious sorts to the maltster. The hops pay a tax of 2cZ.f a pound ; and a bushel of malt requires, in ge- neral, 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 pre- sent 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 com-
* 4s. 6d. English, equal to one dollar. t 2d, English, equal to four cents, nearly.
I.] BREWING. 15
municates 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 ap- plicable 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 two- pence 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 conies the great article of all, the time employed in this tea-making aifair. 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 hc/urs. 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, top, 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 after- wards lags heavily aloii£. 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
16 BREWING. [NO.
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.
' 18Ib. of tea . . . 4 10 0
541b. of sugar . . . 1 11 6
365 pints of milk . . . 1 10 0 Tea tackle . . .050
200 fires . ... 0 16 8
30 days' work . . . 0 15 0
Loss by going to public-house 1 19 0
L.ll 7 2*
25. I have here estimated every thing at its very lowest. The entertainment which I have here pro- vided is as poor, as mean, as miserable as any thing short of starvation can set forth ; and yet the wretch- ed thing amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer's wages ! For this money, he and his
* The above items may be converted into United States' money by reckoning 4s. 6d. to the dollar : Thus As 4*. 6d. ; 1 dollar: ; III. 7s, 2d. J 50 dollars 48 cents.
I.] BREWING. 17
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. Hdwever, I shall suppose, in order to make my comparison as little complicated as pos- sible, 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 drunk- ards. Here are 1097 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now, a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of bet- ter 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 brew- er, 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. Weil, then, to brew this ample supply of good beer for a labourer's family, these 274 gallons, re- quires 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 2*
18 BREWING. [NO.
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 . . . 600 15 pounds of hops . . . 0 15 0 Wear of utensils . . . 0 10 0
£.7 5 0
27. Here, then, is the sum of four pounds two shil- lings and twopence saved every year. The utensils for brewing are, a brass kettle, a mashing tub, cool- ers, (for which washing tubs may serve,) a half hogsnead, with one end taken out, for a tun tub, about four nine-gallon casks, and a couple of eigh- teen-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 ex- ceed 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 prac- tice of drinking tea. The saving of each succeed- ing year would, if you chose it, purchase a silver mug to hold half a pint at least. However, the sa- ving 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 import- ance, 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 de- cent dress, it is impossible to look at this waste with- out feelings of sorrow not wholly unmixed with those of a harsher description.
• To convert these sums into United States' money, see page 16.
I.] BREWING. 19
29. But, I look upon the thing in a still more seri- ous light. I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an en feebler 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 hirh 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, mise- rable 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 there- fore let us now rouse ourselves, and shake from us the degrading curse, the effects of which have been much more extensive and infinitely more mischiev- ous than men in general seem to imagine.
32. It must be evident to every one, that the prac- tice 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.
20 BREWING, [No.
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 everlast- ing 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 some- thing 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 can- not 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 meat with a frown, with a turning off, and pauper- ism 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
I.] BREWING. 21
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 acci- dent, some illness, is the probable consequence; to the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home ; the mischiev- ous 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 brew- ing; 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 trades- men, 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 roji, or a quarter of an acre, of ground ; l)ut at the same time, what I have to say will be applicable to larger estab- lishments, in all the branches of domestic economy : and especially to that of providing a family with beer.
22 BREWING. [No.
36. The kind of beer, for a labourer's family, that is to say, the degree of strength, must depend on cir- cumstances ; 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 men- tioned 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 experi- ence has proved, is best suited to the purpose. A ju- dicious 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 se- veral 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 bar- ley amongst it, the malt being taxed and the barley not I Let us hope that this is seldom the case ; yet, when we do know that this terrible system of taxation
II.] BREWING. 23
induces the beer-selling gentry to supply their custom- ers 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
food. If you have your malt ground, there is. not, as 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 nei- ther expensive nor troublesome, as will appear, when I come to speak o£ flour. If the barley be well malted, there is still a variety nrthe 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
24 BREWING. [NO.
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 4s. Qd. tax upon every bushel of our own bar- ley, turned into malt, when the barley itself is not worth 3s. a bushel, is a horrid thing ; but, as long as the owners of the land shall be so dastardly as to suf- fer 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 our- selves, as the -submission may be. \
39. With regard to hops, the quality is very various. At times when some sell for 5s. a pound, others sell for sixpence. Provided the purchaser understand the article, the quality is, of course, in proportion to thp 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 orbits 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 gath- ering, 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. How- ever, 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 fa- rina ; 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
II.] BREWING. 25
used them at ten years old, and should have no fear of using them at twenty. They lose none of their bit- terness ; none of their power of preserving beer ; but they lose the other quality ; and therefore, in the mak- ing 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 qual- ity, 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 un- der 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 stag- nant 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 bitter- ness 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
3
26 BREWING. [No.
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 it 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 wait 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 conveni- ence 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 quan- tity 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 lor the hops, and for the liquor that goes ofi^n steam. SECOND, a ma$hing~tvb to contain sjxty gallons; for the malt is to be in this along with the water. THIRD, an underbuck, or shallow tub to go under the
II.] BREWING. 27
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 "bot- tom, 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, be- fore 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 bot- tom 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
28 BREWING. [No.
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 suf- ficient 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 sepa- rate 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 gal- lons of ale. But, perhaps, you must have thirty gal- lons 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 pro- per 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
IL] BREWING. 29
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, cheap- est 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 mash ing-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 tbe 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 cel- lar • and shall then return to the small-beer.
45. As you draw off the ale-wort into the under- buck, 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 ha ye 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
3*
30 BREWING. t^O.
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 altera- tion in that respect, till you have the liquor so distri- buted 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 de- grees ; 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 de- grees is but just warm, a gentle luke-warmth. No- thing like heat. A little experience makes perfect- ness in such a matter. When at the proper heat, or nearly, (for the liquor will cool a little in being re- moved,) 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 Para- graph 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
II."] BREWING. 31
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 con- tains 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, per- haps, 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 no- thing. When your liquor is thus properly put into the tun-tub and set a working, cover over the top of the tub by laving across it a sack or two, or some- thing 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 slow- ly, for about forty-eight hours. But, the length of time required for the working depends on various cir- cumstances; so that no precise time can be fixed. The best way is, to take off the froth (which is in- deed yeast) at the end of about twenty-four hours, with a common skimmer, arid put it into a pan or vessel of some sort ; then, in twelve hours' time, take it off again in the s^ime 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
32 BREWING. [No.
strong beer) put it into the cask by means of a fun- nel. 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 con- tracting 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 pla- ces 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 Jill 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 dif- ficulties. 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
II.] BREWING. 33
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 ; be- cause 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 de- cide'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
34 BREWING. |N<X
advantage; it being almost impossible to make the bell-casks thoroughly clean, without taking the head outj 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; Ihe mash- ing-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
II.] BREWING. 35
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 beef, it should be put into the cask, not quite cold, but a tittle warm, ; or else it will not work at aft in the barrel, which it ought to do. It will not work so strongly of 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, 51. ; the mash ing-tub, new, 30.?.; the tun-tub, not new, 5s.; the underbuck and three coolers, not new, 20s. The whole cost is 71. 10s. 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 fox 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 ma- chine is, that it can he removed. You can brew with- out a brew-house. — You can set the boiler up against any fire-place, or any window. You can brew un- der 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 welj 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
36 BREWING. [No,
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 to- gether, and then you boil them together with the hops.
59. A Correspondent at Morpeth says, the whcle 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 shilling's. 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 com- paratively low price of wages rendered the people too poor and miserable to be able to brew at all. A Cor- respondent 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 Is. 6cZ., though the bar- ley cost but 2s. 6.d; and though the malt, tax and all, ought to cost him about 5s. (yd. 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.
II.] BREWING. 37
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 ; be- cause, if the casks be not Jilted 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 express- ing 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
fiven the detail of above, may be completed in a day; ut, by the word day, I mean to include the morning, beginning at four o'clock.
4 ;
38 BREWING. [No.
68. The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hour's work for a servant woman, or a trades- man's or a farmer's wife. There is no heavy work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the busi- ness, otherwise I would not recommend it to be per- formed by the women, who, though so amiable in them- selves, 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 per- haps in another place or two (of the last edition,)- 1 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 read- ing them, will bear in mind what has been now said relative to the machine. The inventor of that ma- chine deserves great praise for his efforts to promote private brewing ; and, as I said before, in certain con- fined 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 considera- tion, the machine may possibly be found to be an use- ful 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 brewing1 beer without once more adverting to its many advantages, as set forth in the foregoing Number of this work.
II.l BREWING. 39
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 Jive barrels of good por- ter. 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-liquor- ice, '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 com- position ! What a mess of drugs ! But, if the brew- ers openly avow this, what have we to expect from the secret practices of them, and the retailers of the arti- cle ! When we know, that beer-doctor and brewers1- druggist are professions, practised as openly as those of bug-man and rdt-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 convict- ed, in the Court of Excise, for using potent and dan- gerous 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 nine- ty 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 re- lish: they. communicate a momentary exhilaration: but, they give no force to the body, which, on the con- trary, 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.
40 BREWING. [No.
73. But, look again at the receipt for making por- ter. Here are eight bushels of malt to 180 gallons" of beer ; that is to say, twenty-five gallons from the bushel. Now the malt is eight shillings a bushel, and eight pounds of the very best hops will cost but a shil- ling 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 notjive- pence a gallon; and yet, not content with this enor- mous 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 govern- ment ; the law it is that checks, in this way, the pri- vate brewing, and that prevents jfree and fair competi- tion 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 propri- ety. 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/. upon a hundred acres. Thus 40/. would go, in the end, a fourth, perhaps to the farmer, and three- fourths to the landlord, This is the kind of work to
III.] MAKING BREAD, 41
reduce poor-rates, and to restore husbandry to prospe- rity, 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 se- riously 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 impedi- ment 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 ac- count of the modern custom of using potatoes to sup- ply 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 mo- ment, in this place, from having read, in the evidence recently given before the Agricultural Committee, that many labourers, especially in the West of Eng- land, use potatoes instead of bread to a very great ex- tent. 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 tenden- cy to bring English labourers down to the state of the Irish, whose mode of living, as to food, is but one re- move from that of the pig, and of the ill-fed pig too.
78. I was, in reading the above-mentioned Evi-
4*
42 MAKING BREAD. [No.
dence, glad to find, that Mr. EDWARD WAKEFIELD, the best informed and most candid of all the wit- nesses, 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 engen- dered amongst the labouring classes by constantly lift- ing 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 mo- ment, 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 estab- lished, 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 561b. a bushel, the acre will yield l,8301b. of nutritious mat- ter. Now mind, a bushel of wheat, weighing 601b. will make of household bread (that is to say, taking out only the bran) 651b. Thus, the acre yields 2,0801b. 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
III.] MAKING BREAD. 43
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 bush- els 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 scra- pings 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 boil- ed, 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 re- ceive 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 compa- rative view, more immediately applicable to a labour- er'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 ave- rage 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
44 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 nu- tritious matter equal to bread ; and while the bushel of wheat will yield sixty-five pounds of bread, be- sides 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 shil- lings ! (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 Ire- land to her lazy root," if she choose still to adhere to it. It is the root, also, of slovenliness, filth, mi- sery, 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 Jifty-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.
III.] MAKING BREAD. 45
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 7s. 6d. ;* then 3d. for yeast ; then not more than 3d. for grind ingj because you have about thirteen pounds of offal, 'which is worth more than a $d. a pound, while the grinding is 9d. a bushel. Thus, then, the bushelof bread of fifty-nine pounds costs you eight shillings ; and it yields you the weight of thirteen and a half quartern loaves : these quartern loaves now (Dec. 1821) sell at Kensington, at the baker's shop, at Is. ^d. ; that is to say, the thirteen quartern loaves and a half cost 14s. 7-J-d I omitted to mention the salt, which would cost you 4d. more. So that, here is 6s. 3$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; pro- bably, a penny in the loaf ; which would still, how- ever, leave a saving of 5s. 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, but 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 4s. 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 51. 4s. 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 shame-
* All the calculations in this work, it must be remembered, are m English money but may be turned into United States' money as before directed, page 16.
46 MAKING BREAD* [No.
ful, for a labourer's wife to go to the baker's shop; and how negligent, how criminally careless of the wel- fare of his family, must the labourer be, who per- mits 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 hun- dred, the fuel for heating the oven costs very little. The hedgers, the copsers, the woodmen of all de- scriptions, 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 6d. 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 quar- tern loaf and a half, making nearly fifteen quartern loaves but 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 peo- ple upon the face of the earth live better than the Long Islanders. Yet nine families out of ten sel- dom 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
III.] MAKING BREAD. 47
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 pro- ceeding 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 lit- . tie 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 5s. 9d. at present prices of grain ; that is to say, you would get it for about 5d. the quartern loaf, all expenses included; thus you have nine pounds and ten ounces of bread a day for about 5s. 9d. 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 earn- ing 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 in- formed, how it is possible for a labouring man, who earns, upon an average, 1O. a week, who has not
48 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 6s. a bushel, can possibly have children crying for bread !
84. Cry, indeed, they must, if he will persist in
fiving 135. for a bushel of bread instead of 5s. 9d. uch 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 ; bat we think it no degradation to eat wheaten bread, too. I am for depriving the la- bourer 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 them- selves 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
III.] MAKING BREAD. 49
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 consump- tion. 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 Iww 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 5
50 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 mat- ters 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 de- ficient 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 in- deed 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 rela- tion. 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 use- ful 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 hus- band? The lover is blind; but the husband has eyes to see with. He soon discovers that there is
III.] MAKING BREAD, 51
something wanted besides dimples and cherry cheeks ; and I would have fathers seriously reflect, and to be well assured, that the way to mate 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 pre- parations for these, and all the ministry necessary to them, belong to the wife ; and I hold it to be impos- sible, 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 hesita- tion 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 it- self to be sufficient, is the contempt in which a hus- band 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 men- tioned, is really a skilful person; a person whorthy 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 in- terest had not the weight which they have, such valuable persons will be treated with respect. They know their own worth ; and, accordingly, they are
52 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 hap- piness 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 econo- my. " 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 confin- ed, 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 ac- tually 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 commu-
III.] MAKING BREAD. 53
irity ? It is very certain, that if the practice were as prevalent as I could wish, there would be a large de- duction 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 ac- count, all pecuniary advantage out of the question. It is impossible to conceive any thing more contemp- tible than a crowd of men and women living together in a house, and constantly looking out of it for peo- ple 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 cer- tainly the happiest state of life that any one can en- joy. 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 fami- lies of any considerable number of persons, the mill has, with me, been more than once a subject of obser- vation in print. I for a good while experienced the
5*
54 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 incon- veniency' 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 an- swer 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 far- mer, 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 recom- mend 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 f which is not and seldom can be the case) to be hired lor 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
III.] MAKING BREAD. 55
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 cer- tain, 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 craving's of the kitchen, nor quiet the clamorous up- roar 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 cir- cumstances, hand-mills and horse-mills should not, long ago, have become of more general use ; espe- cially 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
56 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 Mer^- chant, and a Huckster, every one of whom does and must have a profit out of the flour, arising from wheat
frown upon, and sent away from, your very farm ! 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 under- stand 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 mo- ney, 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?
III.] MAKING BREAD. 57
The dresser is so contrived as to give you at once, meal, of four degrees of fineness ; . so that, for cer- tain purposes, you may take the very finest ; and, in- deed, 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, re- quiring less labour, and yet quite sufficient for a family. Mills of this sort, very good, and at a rea- sonable price, are to be had of Mr. PARKES, in Fen- church-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 can- not 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 aban- don the use of " Ireland's lazy root." Nevertheless, so extensive is the erroneous opinion relative to this yillanous root, that I really began to despair of check- ing 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 tuld the Committee that the labourers in his part of Somersetshire were " almost wholly sup- plied with potatoes, breakfast and dinner, brought them in the fields, and nothing but potatoes ; and that they used, in better timesj to get a certain portion of bacon and cheese, which, on account of their " pover- ty, they do not eat now." It is impossible that men can be contented in such a state of things : it is un- just to desire them to be contented : it is a state of misery and degradation to which no part of any com- munity can have any show of right to reduce another
58 MAKING BREAD. [No.
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 la- bourer; 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 1 they seem to be approaching to their end ! Money is- re- suming 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. ' i
[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 receiv- ing 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 nave said that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the ye.ar round upon the pro- duce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, forty rods, of land ; and, in* my next, I will make good my promise.
III.] MAKING BREAD. *>9
No. IV
MAKING BREAD — (CONTINUED.)
101. IN the last number, at Paragraph 86, 1 observ- ed 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 in- structions 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 wa- ter 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 si- tuation 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 per- ceive 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
60 MAKING BREAD. [No.
the fate 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 01 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 Jists must go hear- tily into it. It must be rolled over ; pressed out ; folded up and pressed out again, until it be com- pletely 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 la- bour ; but, what is exercise other than4abour ? 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 ope- ration. 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
IV.] MAKING BREAD* 61
through.^ Bush-wood tnat 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 pro- perly 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 beau- tiful 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, whole- some 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 po- tatoes, how many fires ! what a washing, what a boiling, what a peeling, what a slopping, and what a
62 BREWING BEER. [No.
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 wish- ing to fall upon some means of rendering the prac- tice beneficial to those who are unable to purchase brewing utensils, have recommended the lending1 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 gen- tleman Charles II., there is a penalty of 50/. for lend- ing or letting brewing utensils. However, it has this limit ; that the penalty is confined to Cities, Corpo- rate Torfhs, 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 pub- lic brewhouse; and in all towns not corporate or
IV.] BREWING BEER. 63
market j 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 can- not 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 kere. 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 coun- try gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.
1 10. 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/. 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 ypu 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 trans- parent) 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 ; arid would, if kept moist, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you hav"e 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;
64 KEEPING COWS. [No.
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 pro- ceeds 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 cpw 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 butter- milk, 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 fieldte at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of sir, helping his .father to reap, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure ;
KEEPING COWS.
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, thtose 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 hap- piness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to reap. The crea- ture that is in want must be a slave ; and to be ha- bituated to labour cheerfully is the only means of pre- venting 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 re- peated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called edu- cating 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 rnilk 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 drin&ed 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 6*
66 KEEPING COW3. [No.
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 mat- ter ; 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 tim,es, I think it is, as much butter in it, as the half pint that comes out first. I tried the milk often 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, be- sides 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 1 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 hap- pens that a labourer has more than 40 rods of ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some corn- won, 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
IV.] KEEPING COWS. 67
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 unshad- ed ; 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 treat- ing his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with cur- rant 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 thrush- es. 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, how- ever, 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 fur- rows (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
6$ KEEPING COWS. [No.
will grow fast and be straight and strong. 1 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 ma- nure, and then transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will stand the winter ; and you must see that the slu'gs do not eat them. If any plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out ; for your 36 rods will notVequire more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very hard, and bady for plants, you cannot cover 36 rods ; but you may the bed where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw0 or dead grass, or fern, laid along be- tween the rows and the plants, not to cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people com- plain 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 aud soils ; but, generally speaking, by the first of
IV.] KEEPING COW3. 69
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 Sep- tember.
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 cab- bages, plant cabbages ; and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last plant- ing 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 Mo.y 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 out the latest cabbages to carry you through November, and perhaps into De- cember. 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
70 KEEPING COWS. [No.
are now going to see. When you plant out your cab- bages 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 man- agement.
125. The Swedish turnips are raised in this man- ner. You will bear in mind the four rods of ground in which you have sowed and pricked out your cab- bage 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 Jive 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
IV.] KEEPING COWS. 71
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 eild 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 im- portant 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 arn 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
72 KEEPING -COWS. [No.
smell, will give a bad taste and smell to milk and but- ter, 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 no- ticed, kept, from the 1st of May to the 22d of October, five cows upon the grass of two acres and a quarter oj 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 allow- ance, though they were not very small when they be- gan 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 to- gether, had the butter so fine from Swedish turnips, that nobody could well distinguish it from grass-but- ter. 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 nere a case of delicacy of smell so refined as to faint at any thing that meets it except the stink of per- fumes. 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
V.] KEEPING COWS. 73
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 be- tween that plant and rape. I am sure the seedsman did not wilfully deceive me. He was deceived him- self. 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
7
74 KEEPING COWS. [No.
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.*
131. As to the place to keep the cow in, much will depend upon situation and circumstances. I am al- ways 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 com- nion. 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 erec- tion ; 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 un- fit 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 neglect-
* Be sure, now, before you go any further, to go to the end of the book, and there read about MANGLE WURZLE. Be sure to do this. And there read also about COBBBTT'S CORN. Be sure to do this before you go any further.
V.] KEEPING COWS. 75
ed. 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 necessa- ry 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 turn- ed 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. Accord- ing to the present practice, a miserable " toilet" of bad hay is, in such cases, the winter provision for the cow. It can scarcely be called food ; and the conse- quence 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 con- tributes. 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 trod*
76 KEEPING COWS. [N0,
den 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 nb more care about manure; for, and especially if you have a pig also, you must have enough annually for an acre of ground. And
cessary, crop; fc
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. Never- theless, 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
V.] KEEPING COWS. 77
would have more than enough dung to exchange against ttfls straw.
1 33. 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 Jive complete dig- gings, 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 li^ht long before six in the morn- ing, 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 Wilt- shire, 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, stand- ing in the trench while she performed the act of planting, which she did with great nimbleness and precision. Nothing could be more skilfully or beau- tifully 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 temp- tation 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 gar- den on Sunday, if the good of his family demand it ; 7*
7& KEEPING COWS. [No,
and if he cannot, without injury to that family, find other time to do it in. Shepherds, carters, jHgfeeders, drovers, coachmen, cooks, footmen, printers, and nu- merous others, work on the Sunaays. 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 ne- cessity 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 reli- gious 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 sup- pose 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 ; what- ever 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,* and the girls to make butter. And
* To me the follow-in? has happened within the last year. A youn? man, in the country, hud agreed to be my servant; but it was found that, he conld not milk ; and the bargain was set aside. About a month afterwards a young man, who said he w.is a. farmer's son, anJ who came from Herefordshire, offered himself to me at Kensington. "Can you milk ?" He could not ; but would learn ! Ay, but in the learn- ing, he might dry up my cows! What a shame to the parents of u»«se young men ! Both of them were in want of employment. Th«
V.J KEEPING COWS. 79
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 oi 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 ihe 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 nave never seen an animal in which they had any interest. They are careless by habit. This mon- strous 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 disso- lution 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 com- mon ; 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
latter had come more than a hundred miles in search of work ; and here he was left to hunger still, and to be exposed to all sorts of ill* because he could not milk.
SO KEEPING COWS. [No.
months old cannot be equal to the half of the value of the two months' milk. It is pure weakness to call it " c 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 suf- ferings 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 for- merly 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 hos- tile 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 vi- tiated : 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
V.] KEEPING COWS. 81
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 thou- sand times. Now, how much garden ground does it require to supply even a large family with garden vegetables? The market gardeners round the metro- polis of this wen-headed country ; round this Wen of all wens ; * round this prodigious and monstrous col- lection 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 & fourth of that quan- tity. 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 gar- dens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from Brompton to Hammersmith, ex- tending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and to the Bayswater road on the other side, ajid leaving out
* London.
82 KEEPING COW3. [No.
roads, lanes, nurseries, pastures, corn-fields, and plea- sure-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 gar- dens, 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 rais- ing 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
V.] SEEPING COWS. 83
them away. I once saw not less than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all bear- ing 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 pro- ceed. 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 fol- low 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 vigi- lance and industry are not to be expected in a servant; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert him- self for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one of the persons is that I have spo- ken of in Paragraph 137 ; that is to say, if I had a gar- den of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vege- tables 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 furnisn 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 succes- sively ; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea, who digged forty rods in one single
84 KEEPING PIGS. [NO.
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 ba- con as you can milk, merely out of the garden. There must be something more. A couple of flitches of ba- con 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 do- mestic 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 Cot- tagers 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, in- deed, some suppose, that she ought to be rather bare offiesh at the pigging time. Never was a greater mistake; for if she be in this state, she presently be- comes 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
V.] KEEPING PIGS. 85
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 na- ture 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 far- mer'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 Malihus, 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 descrip- tion that were sold the other day at Newbury market, for fifteen pence a piece, and which were, I dare sayj 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 8
86 KEEPING PIGS. [NO.
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 es- pecially 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 tne keeping of a cow. I once,
VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 87
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 parishion- ers, 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 dig- ging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a single man would agree to my proposal ! One, a bull- frog 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 chil- dren. 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 par- ticularly 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 ; no- thing 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. Ii must, how- ever, be confessed, that very little, comparatively speaking, is to be accomplished by the individual ef- forts 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 thing's. It is by general and indirect means, and not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so
88 KEEPING PIGS. [No.
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 ot opinion, that they will come too late to prevent something very much resembling a disso- lution 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 rjork 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 de- grees, 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 frequent- ly 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
VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 89
both sides of every cost, would as soon think of shoot- ing 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 profes^ sion, 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 Eng- land, and all over America. But the Hampshire way, and the best way, is to burn the hair off'. There is a
treat deal of difference in the consequences. The rst 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
Eut at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the air. 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 8*
90 KEEPING PIGS. [No.
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, laterinlife, will be found absolutely ne- cessary 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, gris- kins, 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
VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 01
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 evan- gelical 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 whicli 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 <*ives 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 fiitches-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 cir- culation of air : confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than trie mid-day sun accompanied with a breeze. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon
92 KEEPING PIGS. [No.
as in a close and damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in cold water, and one of the same size before a hotjire, 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 burn- ing 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 /arm-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
VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 03
coal. Stubble or litter .might do ; but the trouble would be great. Fir, or deal, smoke is not fit for the pur- pose. 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 10 the hard- ness 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 be- coming rusty, the Americans, whose country is so hot in summer, have two methods. They smoke no part of the ho^ 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 be- ing 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
94 KEEPING PIGS- [No.
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 sub- stantial 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 espe- cially 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
VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 95
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,* "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 mo- ney, Peel's flimsy dresses, Wilberforce's potatoe diet, Castlereagh's and Mackintosh's oratory, Walter Scott's poems, Walter's and Stoddart'sj 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