There was one charwoman attached to a big block of buildings I once lived in, a little upright, dark, bright-eyed incarnation of energy—very different from most of the bent and wearied regiment—to whom I often gave a cup of tea and some work to do in my rooms just for the sake of hearing her opinions. Remarking to her one day that I supposed a great many daily workers, such as herself, had husbands, as many as half—the rest being widows, with the exception of a very small percentage of spinsters—she replied that well over two-thirds of them were either deserted wives or supporting their husbands in idleness. Her own husband had been a hard-working fellow and very good to her and her two children, till one time when he was out of work she had turned-to and gone out charing. From that time onward she had never had a penny from him, for herself or the children. For a time he had lived at home in idleness on her earnings; then—what an irony of fate!—got a good job and gone to live with another woman, who spent every penny of his wages on dress and luxuries, not even doling out to him sufficient for his weekly allowance of tobacco, as even the most niggardly wife would have done. But for the most part these defaulting husbands have “gone West”; and when a husband does that—leaving his wife behind to follow him later on, when he has got a job—she might as well ring down the curtain and realize at once that her married life, anyhow, as far as he is concerned, is at an end.
In the heart of each individual wife hope lingers for a little while: “her Bill,” or “her Jim,” is not like the others, and at first letters and an occasional remittance may come pretty regularly. But in the ears of those who merely look on at the game the words “going West” ring like a knell, and God only knows what history of struggling hope, of poverty, of disillusion, and toil might be gathered round that one little phrase. As I write these women seem to visualize before my eyes; the work-bowed figures, the roughened hands, the tired faces, with their bright, eager eyes, all victims of the golden lure of the West, where the Victorian husbands seem to cast their conscience as easily as a snake casts its skin.
Luckily for the Melbourne “char-lady”—I once heard a child severely rebuked by its middle-class mother for speaking of a washer-woman, and the female side of the Melbourne prison, referred to as “the place where the lady convicts are kept”—she is far better paid than her English sister, the minimum daily wage being four shillings, with dinner and sundry cups of tea, while she receives at least half a crown a week for attending to an ordinary small office or room, lighting the fire during the winter months, and sweeping and dusting it daily. It is wonderful how much of this sort of work a really smart woman can get through, and the one of whom I have spoken seldom did less than twenty rooms regularly each day—the offices the very first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night, and the living-rooms of the bachelors and more prosperous business girls between nine and twelve. After this she would race home, see to her own house, cook her children’s dinner and return about six to get a certain proportion of the offices ready for the next morning; doing her own washing, as she told me, on Sundays—a practice not greatly to be condemned, seeing how near a place cleanliness occupies to godliness. Her four children were always very models of neatness and cleanliness—as was their mother—indeed, the appearance of all working-women in Melbourne, of whatever class, strikes me as very far superior to what I remember it in England.
One summer when I lived out of town and went to work every morning by the eight o’clock train, I used to marvel at the way the girls going to business in shops and offices managed to turn themselves out at such an early hour; and the amount of real work that it must have occasioned them to wash and get up their fresh stiffly starched print or linen dresses—which certainly could not be worn for more than two days—their dainty white cuffs and collars and other etceteras of the toilet. One particularly trim girl, I remember, confessed to me that she only possessed one set of muslin cuffs and collar, and washed and starched them regularly every evening when she got home, ironing them out before she left each morning. On the whole these girls are a far fresher, healthier set than those who live right in the town, as much, I suspect, from the better food they have when they are living with their people as from the better air. Indeed, without any exaggeration, it is worth while going to Flinders Street Station, or Princes Bridge, any day between eight and nine, for the mere delight of seeing the dozens of fresh, happy-looking girls that the early trains disgorge; then to watch them branch off in every direction—up Flinders Street, and down Flinders Street, and along Swanston Street—to their places of business. It is as if the puffing suburban trains were each a veritable part of the heart of the town, pumping bright new blood through every artery, in the shape of the grey and dust-grimed street. The human freight brought in by the later trains is more exotic, and on the whole less robust; though whether the work, in which the girls who arrive between nine and ten are employed, is more sedentary, or the girls themselves come of a more refined and delicate stock, I cannot say; but certainly the employees in the large, well-lighted, and airy shops, factories, and public buildings, though they may have a lower social status, work under more healthy conditions than those in the smaller offices.
It used to amuse me to notice the books these girls read on their way to and from town. At one time I kept a list during several months, and found that, apart from the little penny English papers, like Home Notes and Home Chat, Mrs. Henry Wood topped the list; then came, oddly enough for people who could not know his world, Dickens; and, still more odd, Thackeray.
In the dressmaking trade, at which many of these girls are employed, there is, as in all other recognized trades, a fixed minimum wage of half a crown a week for beginners—with a fixed rate of increase—so that it is impossible for an employer to use a girl without any payment under the pretence of teaching her, and then dismiss her when the time comes for her to receive an adequate wage. Indeed, the work-girl is most carefully protected, and her hours regulated in accordance with her age. In the tailoring trade the wages of female pressers and buttonhole makers average 21s. a week. Dressmakers’ assistants, or ordinary hands, get 26s. a week; the woman in charge anything from £2 to £7; and ordinary machinists, 21s.
As in all countries, the makers of underclothing, or white workers, are the least well paid, averaging only 16s. a week, the people who wash the clothes after they are made having far the best of it, as a fair laundry-hand, or ironer, can easily command £1 a week. Women working in the straw-hat factories are paid from 20s. to 30s. a week, and so are the pressers in the dye-works; knitting machinists, from 20s. to 28s.; printers’ feeders (female), £1 a week; box-makers, 22s. to 25s. Factory wrappers and packers average from 15s. to 22s. a week; match-makers, 17s. 6d.; and warpers in the woollen factories, 25s.
Over four employees of either sex constitute a factory, the room in which they work being then under factory laws and the supervision of the factory inspector. On the other hand, the employment of but one Chinese also constitutes a factory, and I cannot help thinking that this is rather a mean little law; though in its own way far-seeing in the interests of Australia, for, of course, no laundry proprietor who wishes to engage, say, one or two hands to help herself and her family, is likely to engage a Chinaman, however quick, clean, and hard-working, when it means all the trouble of being registered as a factory, and the constant irritation of official inspection and interference.
Among domestic workers cooks get from 17s. a week to 30s.; house-maids, 12s. to 15s., with everything found; thereby being much better off than many typists—who have themselves to keep—and in an infinitely superior position, from a pecuniary point of view, to the tea-room girls. These are for the most part ladies, and therefore, I suppose, expected to support themselves and keep up a good appearance on from 10s. to 16s. a week; whereas the hotel waitress gets from 15s. to 20s. and her board and lodging, besides tips, which no one ever thinks of offering to the pretty, refined tea-room girl.
I remember one such girl saying to me bitterly that men, when they wanted to show their appreciation of her services, sent her a box of sweets—or lollies, as they are called out here. A subtle irony to one who was so sick of the sight of anything in the shape of food, and would have been so truly thankful for some of the ready-money that the more plebeian waitresses pocketed gaily each day.