Foreign News: How People Rise & Fall

When Napoleon I sneered at England as “a nation of shopkeepers,” he was maligning (and at the same time acknowledging the importance of) Britain’s middle class, backbone of the nation’s social structure since it emerged from feudalism. Nowadays in warbled Britain all classes are having a tough time, but the middle class is having the worst time of all. The moneyed aristocrats (formerly known as the “ruling class”) have to dip into their capital, but they are still vastly better off than anybody else. The working classes have had wage raises to meet the cost of living, and are otherwise taken care of by a solicitous Labor government.

The middle class, living on fixed or nearly fixed incomes, is ground between the millstones. As a class, its members are tempted toward extinction by two routes: 1) stepping down to an easier way of life on the proletarian level; 2) maintaining their own standards as individuals by not permitting themselves the costly luxury of having children.

The Labor government, many of whose members are middle-class intellectuals, is acutely aware of the problem. So are Britain’s social scientists. In a report published recently, the Nuffield Foundation (endowed by upper middle-class Motor Magnate Lord Nuffield) disclosed a grant of $80,000 to the London School of Economics for an exhaustive five-year study of the middle-class problem. Captained by Caradog Jones, M.A., a retired middle-class professor whose last big job was a survey of the depressed Merseyside area (around Liverpool), the researchers will study not only present problems but “how people rise and fall in this [Britain’s] complicated caste-system.”

Hocked to the Ears. As an example of what they will find, a TIME correspondent last week reported the plight of Geoffrey Jackson,* 39, sales manager for a London food concern. Geoffrey has an attractive 30-year-old wife, Mary, and a three-month-old baby girl, Jean. Son of a prosperous wholesale grocer in Shropshire, Geoffrey had a solid upbringing and a good education.

When Geoffrey and Mary married, in 1938, they had a snug life. They paid $7 a week for their house in Surrey, went to theaters and movies, treated themselves to an occasional night on the town in London, entertained friends at home, ran a small car.

Now Geoffrey earns $60 a week. They live in a pleasant, tree-lined suburban road at Heston, in a house with three bedrooms and two living rooms. Geoffrey hocked himself to the ears to buy the house. Before the war, it would have cost $3,800; as it was, it cost $9,600. Geoffrey put down $400 saved from his war pay, borrowed $4,800 from a building society and another $4,400 from an uncle.

Out of his $60 a week, Geoffrey pays $10 in government taxes and $16 to the building society. He allows himself $5 for lunches—which means, he says, “either I give myself a good feed and nothing to drink, or sandwiches and a pint of wallop [beer].” Mary spends $12 a week for food (50% more than prewar), $4 for local taxes, light and heat. Their 23¢ meat ration lasts for only two meals, so Mary supplements it with items like mushrooms and canned salmon. This is costly but the Jacksons consider it an investment in good health.

“Just Give Me a Chance.” The Jacksons try to lay aside $8 a week for interest and retirement of the debt to the uncle. When this is done, there is only $5 left for clothes and nothing at all for luxuries. They have not been to a movie for two months and they have not had a night on the town since the war. They cannot afford to serve drinks at home—a situation which Geoffrey bitterly resents. When cigarets went up to 70¢ for 20, he cut out smoking entirely. About once every half hour, he still reaches nervously into a pocket for a Smoke before he remembers.

The Jacksons have bought only one suit the last year; Geoffrey’s cost $80 and is already shabby. They would not have had a child if Mary’s doctor had not advised it for “psychological reasons.” The baby’s equipment cost $300 (although Mary made most of the layette herself) and the confinement took another $480. The baby is not costing much now, but later on Geoffrey wants her to go to a private school (around $200 a year). “I want her,” he says, “to grow up a little lady. I want her to be able to walk into any room and mix easily.” But, if things go on as they are now, he doesn’t see how he can afford it.

The Jacksons would find life less trying if they gave up their middle-class standards, lived, in a workers’ district, took advantage of canteen meals, free education and other working-class amenities, But they won’t do it— unless the pressure becomes unbearable. Says Geoffrey: “I don’t want the state to support me. Just give me a chance to stand on my own hind legs and we’ll make out somehow.” This is the kind of last-ditch living which Jones will investigate and which Laborite Herbert Morrison, a proletarian, has called “a difficult and painful reduction in [middle-class] living standards.” The government will follow the Jones findings with attention if only because (in Morrison’s words) “many of them voted for us and it’s very important to the government that we should retain that support.”

*Fictitious name.