CHANGES IN ENGLISH SOCIAL LIFE AFTER 1918

The most remarkable outward change of the Twenties was in the looks of women in the towns. The prematurely aged wife was coming to be the exception rather than the rule. Children were fewer and healthier and gave less trouble; labour-saving devices were introduced, especially for washing, cleaning, and cooking-the introduction of stainless plate and cutlery saved an appreciable amount of time daily and this was only one of a hundred such innovations. Provisioning also had become very much easier. The advertising of branded goods was simplifying shopping problems. Housewives came to count on certain brands of goods, which advertisers never allowed them to forget. The manufacturers' motto was: 'Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, but swear by constant advertising'. They made things very easy for the housewives by selling their foods in the nearest possible stage to table-readiness: the complicated processes of making custard, caramel, blanc-mange, jelly, and other puddings and sweets, were reduced to a single, short operation by the use of prepared powders. Porridge had once been the almost universal middle class breakfast food. It now no longer took twenty minutes to cook, Quick Quaker Oats reducing the time to two; but even so, cereals in the American style, eaten with milk, began to challenge porridge and bacon and eggs in prosperous homes, and the bread and margarine eaten by the poor. At first the only choice was Force and Grape-Nuts; but soon there was a bewildering variety of different 'flakes'; and grains of rice, wheat and barley 'puffed' by being fired at high velocity from a sort of air gun. Bottled and tinned goods grew more and more various and plentiful. When the war ended the only choice was soup, salmon, corned beef, Californian fruits, and potted meat; but by the Thirties almost every kind of domestic and foreign fruit, meat, game, fish, vegetable could be bought, even in country groceries. Foodstuffs that needed no tin-opener were also gradually standardized: eggs, milk, and butter were graded and guaranteed and greengrocers began selling branded oranges and bananas. Housewives could send or ring up for goods without inspecting them; more and more shops called daily or weekly for orders and delivered free of charge as light commercial vans displaced the horse and cart. The fish-van brought fresh fish to the door even in inland towns and villages. The cleanest and neatest shops secured the best custom; flies and wasps disappeared from grocers' counters, finding no open pots of treacle or boxes of sugar to attract them, and the butchers began keeping their carcases in refrigerators out of sight, not suspended bleeding from hooks in the full glare of the sun. By the Thirties cellophane, a cheap wood-pulp product, was coming into general use for keeping dry groceries and cigarettes fresh and clean, and soon also covered baskets of strawberries, lumps of dates, and even kippers and other cured fish.

Woolworth's stores were the great cheap providers of household utensils and materials. There had been a few '6d. Bazaars' before the war, but the Woolworth system was altogether new. It worked by small profits and quick returns in a huge variety of classified and displayed cut-price goods; some, such as excellent glass and hardware, were even sold below cost price to attract custom. The Daily Herald reported in 1924 that the T.U.C. was reviewing complaints about working conditions in Woolworth's-'the well-known bazaar-owners'-and that this was the more serious because the stores were patronized chiefly by the working-class. But the firm never had any difficulty in engaging unskilled sales-girls at a low wage; for 'the local Woolworth's' was increasingly the focus of popular life in most small towns. And the name of Woolworth was a blessed one to the general public; wherever a new branch was opened the prices of ironmongers, drapers, and household furnishers in the neighbourhood would drop twopence in the shilling. The middle class at first affected to despise Woolworth's goods, but they soon caught the working-class habit and would exclaim brightly among themselves: 'My dear - guess where I got this amazing object - threepence at Maison Woolworth! I don't know how they do it!'

Woolworth's, the Building Societies, and the Instalment System made it financially possible for people of small means to take over new houses. The instalment or 'never-never' system was being applied to all major household purchases, such as furniture, sewing-machines, vacuum-cleaners, gas-ovens, wireless sets. A Punch illustration showed a young mother, watching her husband writing out the monthly cheque to pay off the maternity-home debt: 'Darling, only one more instalment and Baby will be ours'.

(From The Long Weekend by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge)