THE SONG OF THE SHRIMPER.
[A correspondent, writing (to the Daily Chronicle) from Harwich, describes the deplorable condition of work prevailing among the shrimp catchers. "These poor fellows," he says, "are at sea twelve hours a day catching, and have to devote four hours more to boiling and packing for London. And yet all the middlemen send them down is from fourpence to fivepence a gallon.">[
Toiling sixteen hours a day, and for precious little pay,
Seems a blend of prison labour and starvation,
Yet I do hear some suggestion that the "burning Labour Question"
Is the one that mainly agitates the nation!
No Trades Unions have we, and I do not rightly see
How "Co-operative Wholesales" help our like,
Who must slave in sun or shine, cramped and chilled in the salt brine,
With the choice of sheer starvation if we "strike."
Labour Questions? Well, here's one. When the I. L. P.'s have done
A-wrangling and a-jangling o' th' Election;
When Mister Chamberlain has done counting o' the slain,
And Keir Hardie a-explaining his rejection;
When Tillett and John Burns have both taken of their turns
At wildly lamming into one another,
It might help to "cool their parritch" if they cast a glance at Harwich,
And the state o' their poor shrimping "man and brother."
Ah! above our nets to stoop, and to scrape, and scratch, and scoop,
In loneliness laborious and risky,
Is not a task, in truth, to encourage sturdy youth,
Or make work-worn old age alert and frisky,
Then with sore and aching back we have got to boil and pack;
And then the hungry middleman's remittance,
When it comes, is precious small, what a docker-lad would call
A paltry and a belly-pinching pittance.
Yet the Fish-Rings, they do say, are quite prosperous and gay,
And Billingsgate is wealthy; and the skimpers
Who so cut our profits down, live like fighting-cocks in town,
On the ill-paid toil of fishermen and shrimpers!
Ah! That "Harvest of the Sea" is a sounding phrase, but we
Find such "poetry" for us has little meaning.
The "Fish-Farmers" may do well, as their profits plump and swell,
But, alas! for those who have to do the gleaning!