Eggs
by Charles Knight (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.1 #7 (11 May 1850).
There is a curious illustration of the mode in which kings and legislators thought to make things cheap, in an Ordinance of Edward the Second, of the year 1314, in which it is set forth that there is 'an intolerable dearth, in these days, of oxen, cows, sheep, hogs, geese, capons, hens, chickens, pigeons, and eggs;' and therefore, amongst other regulations, it is prescribed that twenty eggs shall be sold for a penny, and that the eggs should be forfeited if the salesman would not take that price. Some years before (1274), the Lord Mayor of London, in a similar proclamation, shows us how the commerce of food was conducted, by ordaining that no huckster of fowl should go out of the city to meet the country people coming in with their commodities, but buy in the city after three o'clock, when the great men and citizens had supplied themselves at the first hand. Of course, these regulations did produce 'an intolerable dearth;' and Edward the Second had the candour to acknowledge this by a proclamation of 1315, in which he says, 'we have understood that such a proclamation, which at that time we believed would be for the profit of the people of our realm, redounds to their greater damage than profit.' Nevertheless, two centuries and a half later, the civic wisdom discovered that 'through the grievous covetousness of poulterers, the prices of all poultry wares are grown to be excessive and unreasonable;' and therefore the Lord Mayor decrees the prices of geese and chickens, and commands that eggs shall be five a penny. (Stow.) In 1597 we learn, that even an attorney-general could not have the benefit of such an enforced cheapness; for the household book of Sir Edward Coke shows us that his steward expended 4s. 8d. in one week of May, for his master's family in Holborn, by daily purchases of eggs at ten for a groat; while at his country house at Godwicke, in Norfolk, in the same year, he daily bought eggs at twenty a groat in July.
The fact that in 1597 eggs were double the price in Holborn as compared with the eggs of Godwicke, is one of the incidental proofs of an almost self-evident principle, that commercial intercourse, produced by facilities of communication, is one of the great causes of cheapness arising out of equalisation of prices. But such facilities further lower prices, by stimulating production. It is to be noted, that while the Attorney-General, when in the country, killed his own bullocks and sheep, and had green geese, capons, and chickens in profusion out of his own poultry-yard, he bought his eggs. We have no doubt that his occasional presence at Godwicke encouraged the cottagers in the provision of eggs for the great man's use. He did not produce them himself, for the carriage to London would have been most costly. But his purchases were irregular. When the family went to Holborn, the eggs had to seek an inferior market. If no one was at hand, the production declined. They did not go to London, to lower the price there, by increasing the supply.
Eggs at ten a groat, even, sound cheap. But while Coke bought his eggs at ten a groat, he only paid two shillings a stone for his beef. Ten eggs were, therefore, equivalent to about two pounds of beef. In this month of April, 1850, good eggs may be bought in London at sixteen for a shilling, which shilling would purchase two pounds of beef. Eggs are, therefore, more than one half cheaper in London now than two centuries and a half ago, by comparison with m«at. They are far cheaper when we regard the altered value of money. In the days of Queen Elizabeth eggs were a common article of food. We learn from no less an authority than the Chamberlain of a renowned inn in Kent, that the company who travelled with the carriers used eggs plentifully and luxuriously. 'They are up already, and call for eggs and butter.' (Henry IV. pt. 1.) But if we infer that the population of London, in those days of supposed cheapness, could obtain eggs with the facility with which we now obtain them, and that the estimated two hundred thousand of that population could call for them as freely as the pack-horse travellers at Rochester,—the inference may be corrected by the knowledge of a few facts, which will show by what means, then undiscovered, a perishable article is now supplied with unfailing regularity, and without any limit but that enforced by the demand, to a population of two millions and a quarter. That such a population can be so supplied without a continuing increase, or a perpetual variation of price, is an Illustration of Cheapness, which involves a view of some remarkable peculiarities of our age, and some important characteristics of our social condition.
In the days of Edward II., the villagers who dwelt within a few miles of London daily surrounded its walls with their poultry and eggs. The poulterers were forbidden to become their factors; but unquestionably it was for the interest of both parties that some one should stand between the producer and the consumer. Without this, there would have been no regular production. Perhaps the production was very irregular, the price very fluctuating, the dearth often intolerable. This huckstering had to go on for centuries before it became commerce. It would have been difficult, even fifty years ago, to imagine that eggs, a frail commodity, and quickly perishable, should become a great article of import. Extravagant would have been the assertion that a kingdom should be supplied with sea-borne eggs, with as much speed, with more regularity, and at a more equalised price, than a country market-town of the days of George III. It has been stated, that, before the Peace of 1815, Berwick-upon-Tweed shipped annually as many eggs to London as were valued at 30,000l. Before the Peace, there were no steam-vessels; and it is difficult to conceive how the cargoes from Berwick, with a passage that often lasted a month, could find their way to the London consumer in marketable condition. Perhaps the eaters of those eggs, collected in the Border districts, were not so fastidious in their tastes as those who now despise a French egg which has been a week travelling from the Pas de Calais. But the Berwick eggs were, at any rate, the commencement of a real commerce in eggs.
In 1820, five years after the Peace, thirty-one millions of foreign eggs found their way into England, paying a duty of 11,077l., at the rate of a penny for each dozen. They principally came from France, from that coast which had a ready communication with Kent and Sussex, and with the Thames. These eggs, liable as they were to a duty, came to the consumer so much cheaper than the Berwick eggs, or the Welsh eggs, or the eggs even that were produced in Middlesex or Surrey, that the trade in eggs was slowly but surely revolutionised. Large heaps of eggs made their appearance in the London markets, or stood in great boxes at the door of the butterman, with tempting labels of '24 a shilling,' or '20 a shilling.' They were approached with great suspicion, and not unjustly so; for the triumphs of steam were yet far from complete. But it was discovered that there was an egg-producing country in close proximity to London, in which the production of eggs for the metropolitan market might be stimulated by systematic intercourse, and become a mutual advantage to a population of two millions, closely packed in forty square miles of street, and a population of six hundred thousand spread over two thousand five hundred square miles of arable, meadow, and forest land, with six or eight large towns. This population of the Pas de Calais is chiefly composed of small proprietors. Though the farms are larger there than in some other parts of France, some of the peculiarities of what is called the small culture are there observable. Poultry, especially, is most abundant. Every large and every small farm-house has its troops of fowls and turkeys. The pullets are carefully fed and housed; the eggs are duly collected; the good-wife carries them to the markets of Arras, or Bethune, or St. Omer, or Aire, or Boulogne, or Calais: perhaps the egg-collector traverses the district with his cart and his runners. The egg-trade with England gradually went on increasing. In 1835, France consigned to us seventy-six millions of eggs, paying a duty of tenpence for 120. In 1849, we received ninety-eight millions of foreign eggs, paying a duty of tenpence-halfpenny per 120, amounting to 35,694l. These are known in the egg-market as eggs of Caen, Honfleur, Cherbourg, Calais, and Belgium.
In 1825 the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland was put upon the same footing as the coasting trade of the ports of England. Steam navigation between the two islands also had received an enormous impulse. The small farmers and cottiers of Ireland were poultry-keepers. Too often the poor oppressed tenants were wont to think—'The hen lays eggs, they go into the lord's frying-pan.' Steam navigation gave a new impulse to Irish industry. Before steam-vessels entered the Cove of Cork, an egg, at certain seasons, could scarcely be found in the market of that city. England wanted eggs; steam-boats would convey them rapidly to Bristol; the small farmers applied themselves to the production of eggs; Cork itself then obtained a constant and cheap supply. In 1835 Ireland exported as many eggs to England as were valued at 156,000l., being in number nearly a hundred millions. In 1847 it was stated by Mr. Richardson, in a work on Domestic Fowls, published in Dublin, that the export of eggs from Ireland to England was 'bordering on a million sterling.' The eggs are valued at 5s. Gd. for 124, which would indicate an export of about four hundred and fifty millions of eggs. We come to more precise results when we learn, on the authority of the secretary of the Dublin Steam-Packet Company, that in the year 1844-5 there were shipped from Dublin alone, to London and Liverpool, forty-eight millions of eggs, valued at 122,500l. In the census of 1841, the poultry of Ireland was valued at 202,000l., taking each fowl at Gd. per head. The return was below the reality; for the peasantry were naturally afraid of some fiscal imposition, worse even than the old tax of 'duty fowls,' when they had to account for their Dame Partletts. Eight millions of poultry, which this return indicates, is, however, a large number. The gross number of holdings in Ireland, as shown by the agricultural returns of 1847, was 935,000; and this would give above eight fowls to every cottage and farm,—a number sufficient to produce four hundred and fifty millions of eggs for exportation, if all could be collected and all carried to a port. One hundred and twenty eggs yearly is the produce of a good hen. It would be safe to take the Irish export of eggs at half the number,—an enormous quantity, when we consider what a trifling matter an egg appears when we talk of large culture and extensive commerce. Out of such trifles communities have grown into industrious and frugal habits and consequent prosperity. There was a time when the English farmer's wife would keep her house-hold out of the profits of her butter, her poultry, and her eggs; when she duly rose at five o'clock on the market-day morning, rode with her wares some seven miles in a jolting cart, and stood for six hours at a stall till she had turned all her commodity into the ready penny. The old thrift and the old simplicity may return, when English farmers learn not to despise small gains, and understand how many other things are to be done with the broad acres, besides growing wheat at a monopoly price.
The coast-trade brings English eggs in large numbers into the London markets. Scotch eggs are also an article of import. The English eggs, according to the 'Price Current,' fetch 25 per cent, more than the Scotch or Irish. The average price of all eggs at the present time, in the wholesale London market, is five shillings for 120—exactly a halfpenny each.
In the counties by which London is surrounded, the production of fresh eggs is far below the metropolitan demand. Poultry, indeed, is produced in considerable quantities, but there is little systematic attention to the profitable article of eggs. Where is the agricultural labourer who has his half-dozen young hens, from which number, with good management, nine hundred, and even a thousand eggs may be annually produced, that will obtain a high price—three times as high as foreign eggs? These six hens would yield the cottager a pleasant addition to his scanty wages, provided the egg-collection were systematised, as it is in Ireland. Mr. Weld, in his 'Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon,' says, 'The eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round, by runners, commonly boys from nine years old and upwards, each of whom has a regular beat, which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of his toil carefully stowed in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met with these boys on their rounds, and the caution necessary for bringing in their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of business and steadiness to their manner, unusual to the ordinary volatile habits of children in Ireland.'
Making a reasonable estimate of the number of foreign eggs, and of Irish and Scotch eggs that come into the port of London—and putting them together at a hundred and fifty millions, every individual of the London population consumes sixty eggs, brought to his own door from sources of supply which did not exist thirty years ago. Nor will such a number appear extravagant when we consider how accurately the egg-consumption is regulated by the means and the wants of this great community. Rapid as the transit of these eggs has become, there are necessarily various stages of freshness in which they reach the London market. The retail dealer purchases accordingly of the egg-merchant; and has a commodity for sale adapted to the peculiar classes of his customers. The dairyman or poulterer in the fashionable districts permits, or affects to permit, no cheap sea-borne eggs to come upon his premises. He has his eggs of a snowy whiteness at four or six a shilling, 'warranted new-laid;' and his eggs from Devonshire, cheap at eight a shilling, for all purposes of polite cookery. In Whitechapel, or Tottenham Court Road, the bacon-seller 'warrants' even his twenty-four a shilling. In truth, the cheapest eggs from France and Ireland are as good, if not better, than the eggs which were brought to London in the days of bad roads and slow conveyance—the days of road-waggons and pack-horses. And a great benefit it is, and a real boast of that civilisation which is a consequence of free and rapid commercial intercourse. Under the existing agricultural condition of England, London could not, by any possibility, be supplied with eggs to the extent of a hundred and fifty millions annually, beyond the existing supply from the neighbouring counties. The cheapness of eggs through the imported supply has raised up a new class of egg-consumers. Eggs are no longer a luxury which the poor of London cannot touch. France and Ireland send them cheap eggs. But France and Ireland produce eggs for London, that the poultry-keepers may supply themselves with other things which they require more than eggs. Each is a gainer by the exchange. The industry of each population is stimulated; the wants of each supplied.