A History of the Ministry of Information, 1939-46
HOME INTELLIGENCE
APPENDIX
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The Feeding of Young Workers between the ages of 14 and 18.
An abstract of an investigation by The Wartime Social Survey for The Ministry of Health.
1. Introduction .
The investigation was planned to find out:-
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The nature (but not the amount) of foods eaten by young workers.
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Whether they were receiving certain foods essential for health.
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The arrangements made at work for their feeding.
In addition, the following points were investigated:-
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Where the children were living - at home, in lodgings, or in hostels.
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Whether the children were doing housework as well as their other work.
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The time spent in working and travelling, and the amount of overtime worked.
2,271 interviews were carried out. Selection was by occupational and geographical grouping. The interviews were planned on the following basis:-
Table 1.
Owing to the excellent co-operation of the firms concerned, considerably more interviews than the planned number were obtained in the Engineering, Textile manufacturing and Clerical groups; slightly less were obtained in the Mining and Distributive groups.
The analysis of the sample by age and sex gave the following result:-
Table 2.
| Age : | Male : | Female : | Total : |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 190 | 159 | 349 |
| 15 | 271 | 277 | 548 |
| 16 | 321 | 276 | 597 |
| 17 | 241 | 256 | 497 |
| 18 | 115 | 148 | 263 |
| Over 18 | 12 | 5 | 17 |
| 1,150 | 1,121 | 2,271 |
Offices and shops were chosen at random, and approached either telephonically or directly. In addition, the Factories Department of the Ministry of Labour supplied a list of factories without canteens. Letters were written to the managements and in all but two cases, the firms were willing to co-operate. The purpose of the survey was fully explained to each of the children, and their voluntary co-operation sought. After the interviews, the workshops were visited, and thus a direct check on some of the childrens' statements was obtained.
2. Where the children lived .
“Do you live at home, in digs, or in a hostel?”
“Is this your home town?”
Only 4.0% of the children were living away from home - 87 (3.8%) in digs, and 5 (0.2%) in hostels - in spite of the fact that some of the towns selected had had a considerable influx of labour since the war. The probable reasons for this were:
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The lack of mobility of very young workers
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The restriction of the sample to firms without canteens, i.e. the smaller firms, which do not organise large-scale movements of juveniles by the establishment of hostels etc.
10.4% of the children were living away from their home towns. In many cases, the whole family had moved from the original home town.
3. The children's day
(a) “At what time do you get up?”
“At what time do you go to bed?”
(In the last 24 hours).
The hours up and the hours in bed were calculated. At the age of 14, the distribution of hours up is about the same for both boys and girls. As the ages increase, the proportion of boys spending more time up increases to a much greater extent than among the girls. The proportion of those up more than 16 hours is shown in the following table:-
Table 3.
| Ages: | 14 yrs . | 15 yrs . | 16 yrs . | 17 yrs . | 18 yrs . |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boys | 15.5% | 33.4% | 57.7% | 61.9% | 74.0% |
| Girls | 14.2% | 17.1% | 28.9% | 38.5% | 42.9% |
There were marked differences in the number of hours spent “up” in the different industries.
Among boys, those working at the pit-head had the shortest day, those in heavy engineering the next shortest, and those in light engineering the longest. Thus, there may be a relation between fatigue due to work and hours “up”.
Among girls, cotton workers had the shortest day. Next came the clerical and the distributive workers, the length of whose day was identical. Light engineering was again the longest.
(b) Hours worked .
Detailed questions were asked about the times of starting and stopping work, time spent on travelling, overtime, breaks, and the question of house-work. The main points about the hours of work per day are summarised below:-
The proportion of boys working 9 hours a day increases steadily with age, but no comparable trend is seen in the case of the girls. The boys, then, are working longer hours and getting less sleep than the girls.
An analysis was made of hours worked against the intensity of the job. It was found that the proportion of children working long hours tended to increase in the medium and heavy jobs.
(c) Overtime .
434 children (about one fifth) were working overtime. 427 of them had already worked for over 8 hours. The highest proportion were working 5 or 6 hours overtime per week (13.4% and 13.1%), with minima and maxima of 1 and 12 hours (6.4% and 3.0%).
While one child in four of those who travelled for ½ an hour per day worked overtime, less than one in seven of those travelling for 1 hour or more worked overtime.
38.6% of those working overtime had no tea break.
(d) Travel to and from work
Since dinner hour is a fixed period, time spent travelling at that time was not considered.
Over half the children spent an hour or more per day travelling to and from work. One fifth spent an hour and a half or more. And one tenth spent two hours or more. The girls spent a greater time in travelling than the boys.
The time spent in travelling makes a considerable addition to the working day. Thus, 69 children working 9 hours a day spent 1½ hours a day travelling.
(e) Breaks during the day .
Table 5.
| Children having: | No. | % |
|---|---|---|
| Neither lunch nor tea break | 1,099 | 48.8 |
| Tea break only | 174 | 7.7 |
| Lunch break only | 337 | 15.0 |
| Both lunch and tea breaks | 644 | 28.5 |
(f) Housework .
“Do you do housework regularly?”
41.3% of the children did housework regularly, over half of them in the evenings.
4. The Jobs .
The children were asked if their jobs involved muscular effort or the lifting of heavy weights. On the basis of the answers and by an inspection of the work, jobs were graded into light, medium, and heavy.
82.6% of the jobs were classed as light, 10.7% as medium and 6.7% as heavy. As would be expected, jobs in Mining, Textiles and Engineering have a higher proportion of medium and heavy jobs than Distributive and Clerical; similarly boys have a higher proportion of medium and heavy jobs than girls.
5. The Meals and the Food .
The meals studied were those eaten “yesterday”. In interviews made on Monday, Saturday's meals were asked about.
It is an interesting commentary on the so-called “qualitative” or “intuitive” non-statistical type of enquiry that the impressions gained by field workers about the food of the children was an entirely different one from that revealed by statistical analysis. It appears that a single “bad” impression imprints itself much more clearly in the mind than a much larger number of satisfactory impressions.
(a) Breakfast
“Did you have breakfast this morning?”
An analysis by industry suggests that the missing of breakfast is closely connected with the time of starting work. The proportion is lowest in the clerical (1.2%) and distributive (5.6%), and highest in the textile (8.8%) and light engineering (11.2%). Of girls in the light engineering industry, 22.0% missed breakfast.
It appears, therefore, that if they do not start work very early, girls are no more liable than boys to miss their breakfast, but in jobs which demand early hours, girls tend to choose to miss their breakfast and get up slightly later more often than boys i.e: they value bed more than breakfast.
(b) Types of meals eaten
In view of reports that large numbers of children were living almost exclusively on “bread and marge”, an analysis was made to discover the number of “bread and spread” meals eaten per day. (Spread = Butter, margarine jam or paste).
| 4 | children were having 4 bread and spread meals a day. |
| 30 | were having 3 such meals. |
| 231 | were having 2 such meals. |
| 840 | were having 1 such meal. |
Breakfasts .
| 37.0% | had a “cooked meal” (bacon, egg, fried bread, sausage, etc.). |
| 28.6% | had bread and spread. |
| 18.2% | had porridge or cereal |
| 2.3% | had tea or coffee only |
| 4.7% | had no breakfast. |
Lunch (mid-morning).
| 37.5% | had nothing. |
| 35.6% | had non-milk drink and something to eat-usually bread and spread. |
| only 2.3% | had milk, with or without something to eat. |
Dinner (mid-day)
In a great many cases, when sandwiches were eaten at mid-day, a cooked meal was had at tea-time.
Tea
| 9.4% | had nothing |
| 6.2% | had only tea to drink |
| 21.6% | had cakes, bread and butter etc. |
| 20.7% | had a cooked meal. |
| 12.8% | had a cooked meal and pudding |
| 11.4% | had bread and spread |
| 10.2% | had sandwiches. |
Supper
| 13.0% | had nothing |
| 8.5% | had a non-milk drink only |
| 17.9% | had a cooked meal (in many cases, fish and chips). |
| 14.3% | had cakes, bread and butter etc. |
| 12.9% | had bread and spread |
| 12.9% | had sandwiches. |
Supper was thus the only large meal which was missed by a large number of children.
(c) Analysis by sex .
Boys tended to have more substantial breakfasts than girls, but a greater proportion of boys than girls had no mid-morning lunch. There were no great differences between the dinners. More girls than boys went without tea. There were no great differences between the suppers. At both dinner and supper, boys ate more pies than girls. More girls than boys tended to make dinner the main meal, and more boys than girls tended to make tea the main meal.
(d) Analysis by age and by hours up .
No important differences emerged.
(e) Analysis by hours worked .
Two points emerge:-
Of children working 7 hrs., 25.0% have a cereal breakfast.
Of children working 9 hrs., 14.1% have a cereal breakfast.
The proportion of children working 7, 8 and 9 hours having cooked meals is about the same (115.7%, 114.5% and 119.3% - i.e. many were having more than one cooked meal). But the longer the hours worked, the greater is the emphasis on tea as a cooked meal, rather than supper.
(f) Analysis by intensity of work
59.9% of light workers had a cooked meal for dinner, as compared with 49.3% of heavy workers. But a greater proportion of heavy workers had cooked meals for tea and supper.
(g) Foods eaten .
“Yesterday, did you eat any:- Milk or cocoa made with milk - cheese - eggs - potatoes - meat - bacon - green vegetables - fish?”
These questions provided information about the intake of the most important foodstuffs, as well as a check on the actual description of the meals.
Table 7.
Number and proportion of children having certain foods, on day before interview.
On the above figures, the average egg consumption per child would be 1⅛ egg per week i.e. considerably more than the ration. More girls than boys took milk; more boys than girls took cheese.
Grouping the foods together:-
Milk, cheese, or eggs were not had by 34.5% on the day before interview.
Meat, bacon, or fish were not had by 8.4%
Green or other vegetables were not had by 28.4%
(h) Analysis by industry
There were no differences in egg consumption. The proportion having cheese was highest in light engineering; the proportion having potatoes was highest in hosiery, and lowest among mining surface workers; the proportion having meat was low in both the mining groups (62.9% and 66.2%); the proportions having bacon were high in both the engineering groups; most green vegetables were taken in the hosiery and light engineering groups; the proportions having fish were highest in the heavy engineering and hosiery groups.
Analysis by industry of those taking milk showed very considerable differences:-
Table 8.
Children receiving milk, analysed by industry.
Milk was available at the place of work in 24% of cases: 11.7% of children took it. An analysis by industry showed that milk is available to more engineering workers, particularly in light engineering (28.8%), than to workers in offices and shops (8.0% and 8.8%).
(i) Supplements
Questions were asked to find out what additional foods were taken outside regular meal times.
Table 9
| Male | Female | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweets | 9.8% | 18.8% | 14.3% |
| Chocolate | 15.0% | 22.6% | 18.8% |
| Pies | 4.4% | 2.0% | 3.2% |
| Chips | 7.9% | 5.0% | 6.5% |
| Fish | 3.0% | 1.6% | 2.4% |
| Ice-cream | 5.3% | 4.5% | 4.9% |
6. Where the midday meal is eaten
48.2% of the children ate their midday meal at home, 43.9% at work, and 7.3% in cafes or restaurants. There were no great differences on industrial breakdown, though rather more in the clerical and distributive groups (about 13.0%) ate their mid-day meals in cafes.
About 1/3 of the children eating at work stated that there was a special place set aside for eating.
In the Engineering trade, over 59% of children stated that there were facilities for making tea or heating food. In offices and shops, all had facilities for making tea.
7. Conclusions .
This investigation shows that working children between the ages of 14 and 18 are having a surprisingly relatively war time diet. Only a minute proportion are living largely on “bread and spread”, while the great majority are getting one or more cooked meat meals per day. The least satisfactory feature is the rather small proportion, who are taking milk daily. This result illustrates the danger of generalising from impressions. A single bad impression appears to imprint itself much more firmly on the mind than a larger number of satisfactory ones.
On the other hand, the hours being worked by the children, particularly when the hours spent in travelling are included, give a much less satisfactory picture. No evidence, however, has been collected to show what effect these long hours are having on health.