25
Rolls 5
__
Carried forward 80

Pf.
Brought forward 80
1/4 lb. butter 25
1/4 lb. coffee and chicory 25
Sugar 15
1 lb. flour 14
Salt 1
Light 10
Washing 5
------
1m. 75
======

Meat is of course out of the question, and in discussing another
budget Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth shows that a family of eight people could
only afford three quarters of a pound a week. Their yearly expenses
amounted to 455 m. 26 pf., so each one of the eight had to be fed and
clothed for about 1s. 1d. a week. Women are still terribly overworked
in the fields. They used to begin at four o'clock in the morning, and
go on till nine at night,--a working day, that is, of seventeen hours
for a wife and the mother of a family. When the family at the mansion
had the great half-yearly wash, the village women called in to help
began at midnight, and stood at the washtub till eight o'clock next
evening, twenty hours, that is, on end. In 1880 the working day was
shortened, and only lasts now from five in the morning till seven at
night, with a two hours' pause for dinner and shorter pauses for
breakfast and vesper. But, on the other hand, women do work now that
only men did in former times. The threshing of corn has fallen
entirely into their hands, and they follow a plough yoked with oxen.
Both kinds of work are heavy and unpleasant. But women are glad to get
the threshing in winter time when other work fails, and it is often on
this account that the proprietors do not introduce threshing machines.

At certain times of the year Poles swarm over the frontier into the
eastern provinces of Germany, but Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth says that they
do not work for lower wages. The women have no house-keeping to do,
and can therefore give more hours to field labour. One woman prepares
a meal for a whole gang of her country people, and they live almost
entirely on bread, potatoes, and brandy. They do not mix with the
Germans, but spend their evenings and Sundays in playing the
harmonium, dancing,