ABSTRACT
This volume commemorates Seebohm Rowntree's survey of social life and conditions in York a century ago. It is often forgotten, however, that Rowntree was not interested only in problems of 'town life'. He co-wrote (with May Kendall) a study of rural life, How the Labourer Lives (Rowntree and Kendall, 1913), based on the detailed analysis of 42 domestic budgets; and in 1910 he explored the differences between agricultural conditions in Britain and Belgium (Rowntree, 191 0). He continued to take an interest in agricultural matters in the interwar period, arguing for wider provision of allotments and gardens, as well as commenting on the condition of the agricultural labourer (Rowntree and Astor, 1935, pp.84, 87-88). Indeed, it might be argued that Rowntree's urban work cannot be fully appreciated without reference to his views on aspects of rural life; and by extension that the history of the investigation of the urban poor cannot be understood without a knowledge of rural developments. P.J. Waller, from an urban historian's perspective, has adapted Kipling's famous dictum, asking 'what should they know of towns and cities who only towns and cities know? Unless the rural scene is surveyed, the measure of what was special about the urban scene will be misconceived' (Waller, 1983, p.l85). This chapter offers a brief survey of the rural investigative scene, identifying some particular methodological and conceptual problems encountered by investigators of rural conditions. It also asks 'what shall they know of social surveys who only social surveys know?' and stresses the importance of the less rigorously economic and statistical, and more impressionistic and cultural, studies of working-class life. The personal study of rural life often commented on a small area and looked at the totality of the social life and conditions of the area under consideration, particularly the social relations of a village or parish, and was often as effective in conveying information about rural working-class
life as the economic study which concentrated on poverty. The two kinds of study often complemented each other well, in urban as well as rural areas. It must be remembered that no social survey, however 'scientific', was carried out in an ideological vacuum, and that any survey or investigation of rural conditions in this period took place amid a widespread conception of rural life as morally and culturally superior to urban life. Furthermore, a need was perceived in this period not only to obtain accurate knowledge of the economic condition of the agricultural labourer, but also to achieve some insight into his thought processes and outlook.
