Not alone from professional agitators, so called, but from philanthropists of every order, came the cry for help. The Factory and Workshop Act had not touched home labor. The sweating-system, born of modern conditions, had risen unsuspected, and ran riot, not only in East London, but even in back alleys of the sacred west, and in the swarming southwest region beyond London Bridge. The London "Lancet," the most authoritative medical journal of the world, conservative as it has always been, has at last found that it must join hands with socialist and anarchist, "scientific" or otherwise, with philanthropists of every order, against the new evil and its horrors. Rich and poor alike were involved. The virus of the deadly conditions under which the garments took shape was implanted in every stitch that held them together, and transferred itself to the wearer. Not only from London, but from every city of England, came the same cry; and the public faced suddenly an abyss of misery whose existence had been unknown and unsuspected, and the causes of which seemed inexplicable.
For many months of the year just ended (1892) parliamentary investigation has gone on. Report after report has been made to its committees; and as testimony from accredited sources poured in, incidentally a flood of light has been let in upon many forms of work outside the clothing-manufacturer. To-day, in four huge volumes of some thousand pages each, one may read the testimony, heart-sickening in every detail,—a noted French political economist, the Comte d'Haussonville, describing it, in a recent article in "La Revue des deux Mondes" as "The Martyrology of English Industries."
In such conditions inspection is inoperative. An army of inspectors would not suffice where every house represents from one to a dozen workshops under its roof, in each of which sanitary conditions are defied, and the working day made more often fourteen and sixteen hours than twelve. Even for this day a starvation wage is the rule; the sewing-machine operative, for example, while earning a wage of fifteen or eighteen pence, furnishing her own thread and being forced to pay rental on the machine.
A portion of a wage table is given here as illustrative of rates, and used as a reference table before the preparation of Mr. Booth's book, which gives much the same figures:—
Making paper bags, 41/2d. to 51/2d. per thousand; possible earnings, 5s. to 6s. per week.
Button-holes, 3d. a dozen; possible earnings, 8s. a week.
Shirts, 2d. each, worker finding her own cotton; can get six done between 8 A.M. and 11 P.M.
Sack sewing, 6d. for twenty-five; 8d. to 1s. 6d. per hundred. Possible earnings, 8s. per week.
Pill-box making, 9s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 8s. per week.
Shirt button-hole making, 1d. a dozen; can do three or four dozen a day.
Whip-making, 1s. a dozen; can do a dozen a day.
Trousers finishing, 3d. to 5d. each, finding one's own cotton; can do four a day.
Shirt-finishing, 3d. to 4d. a dozen; possible earnings, 6s. a week.
Outside of the cities, where the needle is almost the sole refuge of the unskilled worker, every industry is invaded. A recent report as to English nail and chain workers shows hours and general conditions to be almost intolerable, while the wage averages eightpence a day. In the mines, despite steady action concerning them, women are working by hundreds for the same rate. In short, from every quarter comes in repeated testimony that the majority of working Englishwomen are struggling for a livelihood; that a pound a week is a fortune, and that the majority live on a wage below subsistence point.
The enormous influx of foreign population is partly responsible for these conditions, but far less than is popularly supposed; since the Jews, most often accused, are in many cases juster employers than the Christians, and suffer from the same causes. For all alike, legislation is powerless to reach certain ingrained evils, and the recent sweating-commission ended its report with the words:—
"We express the firm hope that the faithful exposure of the evils that we have been called upon to unveil, will have the effect of leading capitalists to lend greater attention to the conditions under which work is done, which furnishes the merchandise they demand. When legislation has attained the limit beyond which it can no longer be useful, the amelioration of the condition of workers can result only from the increasing moral sense of those who employ them."
This conclusion, it may be added, is in full accord with that given in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., as well as with that of our most serious workers at home; our own government examination into the sweating-system, now embodied in a Congressional Report accessible to all, being simply confirmation of every point made in that for England. As a summary of many working conditions in London, I add part of a report made by an indefatigable student of social conditions, Margaret Harkness, associated now with Mr. Charles Booth, and as able an observer as her cousin and co-worker, Miss Beatrice Potter, whose report on the sweating-system makes part of Mr. Booth's first volume:[30]—
"I have, for the last six months, been attempting to find out something about the hours and wages of girls who work at various trades in the city. Had I known how difficult the task would be, I should probably never have attempted it. Last time I heard of Mr. Besant he was sitting in his office, overwhelmed with figures and facts. He said then that he did not expect to publish anything about the work of girls and women in the United Kingdom under a year or eighteen months. I do not wonder at it. Apart from the method of his inquiry, I know how exceedingly difficult it is to arrive at the truth; the tact and patience it needs to make such investigations. Employees and employers take very different views of the same circumstances; one must listen to both, and then split the difference.
"There are at the present time absolutely no figures to go upon if one wishes to learn something about the hours and wages of girls who follow certain occupations in the city. The factory inspectors (admirable men, but very much overworked) come, with the most naive delight, to visit any person who has information to give about the people over whose interests they are supposed to watch with fatherly interest. Clergymen shake their heads, or refer one to homes and charities. One has to find out the truth for one's self. Both employers and employees must be visited. Even then one must wait days and weeks to inspire them with confidence, for thus alone can one obtain a thorough knowledge of things as they really are, and arrive at facts unbiassed by prejudice.
"So far I have found that there are, at least, two hundred trades at which girls work in the city. Some employ hundreds of hands, and some only fifty or sixty. Printers give the greatest amount of work, perhaps; but there are at least two hundred other occupations in which girls earn a living; namely, brush-makers, button-makers, cigarette-makers, electric-light fitters, fur-workers, India-rubber-stamp machinist, magic-lantern-slide makers, perfumers, portmanteau-makers, spectacle-makers, surgical-instrument makers, tie-makers, etc. These girls can be roughly divided into two classes,—those who earn from 8s. to 14s., and those who earn from 4s. to 8s. per week. Taking slack time into consideration, it is, I think, safe to say that 10s. is the average weekly wage of the first class, and 4s. 6d. that of the second class. Their weekly wage often falls below this, and sometimes rises above it. The hours are almost invariably from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M., with one hour for dinner and a half-holiday on Saturday. I know few cases in which such girls work less; a good many in which over-time reaches to ten or eleven at night; a few in which over-time means all night. There is little to choose between the two classes. The second are allowed by their employers to wear old clothes and boots; the first must make 'a genteel appearance.'
"I often hear rich women say, 'Oh, working-girls cannot be very poor; they wear such smart feathers.' If these women knew how the girls have to stint in underclothing and food in order to make what their employers call 'a genteel appearance,' I think they would pass quite another verdict. I will give two typical cases: A girl living just over Blackfriars Bridge, in one small room, for which she pays 5s., earns 10s. a week in a printer's business. She works from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., then returns home to do all the washing, cleaning, cooking, etc., that is necessary in a one-room establishment. She has an invalid mother dependent on her efforts, and is out-patient herself at one of the London hospitals. She was sixteen last Christmas. Another girl, who lives in two cellars near Lisson Grove, with father, mother, and six brothers and sisters, earns 3s. 6d. a week in a well-known factory. She is seventeen years old, but does not look more than ten or eleven. Every morning she walks a mile to her work, arriving at eight o'clock; every evening she walks a mile back, reaching home about seven o'clock. If she arrives at the factory five minutes late, she is fined 7d. If she stays away a whole day, she is 'drilled,'—that is, kept without work a whole week. Her father has been out of employment for six months; so her weekly 3s. 6d. goes into the family purse. Her food consists of three slices of bread and butter, which she takes to the factory for dinner; one slice of bread and butter and some weak tea for supper and breakfast. These cases are not picked. They are to be found scattered all over London. Many and many a family is at the present time being kept by the labor of one or two such girls, who can at the most earn a few shillings. When one thinks what the life of a young girl is in happy families, all the joyousness of which she is capable, until sorrow sets its seal on her, one's heart aches for the sad lives of these girls in the city.
'And still her voice comes ringing
Across the soft still air,
And still I hear her singing,
"Oh, life, thou art most fair!"'
"A young girl is capable of feeling in one brief hour more intense delight than a boy of her age experiences in a fortnight. Yet all this joyousness is ruthlessly stamped upon by competition, and thousands of girls in London have no enjoyment except to gaze at monstrosities in penny gaffs, or to dance on dirty pavements; and generally these poor things are too tired even to do that. It is strange that the public take so little interest in these girls, considering they must become mothers of future citizens. 'The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity.' What sort of daughters are these girls with their pinched faces and stunted bodies likely to give England? What will posterity say of the girl labor that now goes on in the city? I have seen strong men weeping because they have no bread to give their children; I know at the London docks chains have been replaced by wooden barriers, because starving men behind pressed so hard on starving men in front, that the latter were nearly cut in two by the iron railings; I have watched a contractor mauled when he had no work to give, and have myself been nearly killed by a brick-bat that was hurled at a contractor's head by a man whose family was starving: but I deliberately say of all the victims of our present competitive system I pity these girls the most. They are so fragile. Honest work is made for them almost impossible; and if they slip, no one gives them a second chance, they are kicked and spat upon by the public. I know that the girl-labor question is but a portion of the larger labor question, that nothing can be done for them at present; but I wish that they were not the victims of the laissez-faire policy in two ways instead of one; I wish that their richer sisters were not so terribly apathetic about them."