“Ah, my dear, you did not expect to see me. I have brought thirteen of my girls to start this establishment. You will need me, I know, and I shall need you too; for girls are much more difficult to manage than boys. Come to your room, and let me make you feel at home at once.”
It was a great relief to Margaret to find that not only was Miss Wentworth at High Seathorpe, but that the work which she had come to commence was already successfully inaugurated. She looked in at the girls that night, and saw at a glance that the right ones were there. When she opened the door one of them was saying: “I don’t care! It isn’t nice to miss the courting, but my young man is a good fellow, and I mean to make the most of this chance and learn how to be a real good wife to him.”
That little sentence was like a tonic to Margaret; for her sympathy and interest were at once aroused, and she went away to dream once more of pleasant hours spent in the service of others.
The next morning she was ready for work, and before the day had passed the girls had decided that she was trustworthy, and that they would like her. One girl confided her love story to her also, and begged that she would teach her how to cut out and make some shirt collars with her own hands as a present for him. “There’s only one him in the world, you know, miss,” she said; “though I suppose it is a hymn that may be sung to the tune of the Old Hundred.”
CHAPTER XXXII.
A LETTER.
In the meantime the new Parliament had got to work, and the first thing it did was to make an appeal to the Churches. This appeal reminded the followers of Christ that it really rested with them, and not with Parliament, to bring about the social reforms for which the nation was crying. Parliament would do the Churches’ will, and make such laws as they unanimously asked for; but if the Churches were not united everything would be hindered. Everywhere the country was called upon to send to those lesser parliaments, town councils, county councils, local boards, school boards, and all representative bodies, only such men as were known to uphold and to illustrate in their own lives the principles and practices of Christianity. The flag of truce, therefore, was generally uplifted, and beneath it the men of Christ stood side by side without reference to name or party.
Proofs were abundant that the Churches were keenly alive to their powers and possibilities. A great revival had especially taken place in the Episcopal Church, and it was as much a revival of brotherhood as of anything. Its clergymen appealed to Nonconformists to help them, and the response was general. Mr. Macdonald was rousing the people to fever-heat. At the close of his addresses, when the collection was taken, it was not unusual to find jewellery on the plates, put there by ladies whose consciences had been aroused. But this was not the sort of thing he wanted. Both he and Arthur Knight were seeking not so much to alleviate the present sorrows of the poor, as to bring about an entire change in Society; and they scorned this giving of conscience money by those who, in their eagerness after cheap things or riches for themselves, had brought the poverty about. Years before, a lady had written a small booklet entitled, “Only a Factory Girl,” in which she showed how, in the East-end of London, young people live. “Each house in these crowded streets contains several families, and in many cases six or eight people occupy a single room. One of our girls sleeps with a family of six in one small room, that is let in the daytime to two women, who are out on the streets all night.” This writer had gone on to say:—“Factory girls by nature are like other girls; they crave a little pleasurable excitement, and aspire to personal improvement. Can anything be done to furnish them with what they need? Easily, if Christian women will only do it. The need is a great one, but, happily, it is one far more easily met than many others. All that is necessary is that there shall be in every neighbourhood where these girls reside an institute to which they may resort, where they will find instruction and sympathy, innocent amusement, the society of their companions, and food at a moderate price. Is it right that when their long and weary day’s work is done, and they turn out into the streets at night, they should find nothing open to them but the theatres, the music-halls, and the dancing saloons, in which they are ever welcome? Is it not sad that, besides these, the only other places to which they have the entrée are the ‘sing-song’ rooms connected with the larger public-houses—snares and traps of the evil one to ruin both body and soul? The haunts of vice and folly are open nightly to our factory girls, but should the Church of Christ leave it to the world, the flesh, and the devil to care for them?”
The Churches and Parliament together answered that question now, as it had not been answered before, with an emphatic No. They were not going to allow these mothers of the future to be tempted thus. The outcome of this pamphlet had been the excellent Shaftesbury Institute; for the writer had pleaded: “We have quite a sufficient number of volunteers to make the effort a success, and nothing hinders our entering on it except the lack of premises.” These had been long ago supplied, and excellent work was carried on within them. But the plea of “lack of premises” was not now anywhere to be allowed; so men sternly determined. Lack of premises, when there were churches and chapels with vestries and school-rooms, which the people’s money had paid for, shut up all the week? It would have fared ill with any one in the new times who kept the good work of rescue waiting, while complaining of lack of premises. But it was such endeavours as those of the author of “Only a Factory Girl” which had brought the happy change about.
And the new Parliament passed two short and simple rules which had an immediate effect. The first provided that no one was to employ a girl in work of any kind who did not pay her for her labour wages enough to enable her to live respectably. And the second made it actionable for any one to take rent without being assured that the rooms were only occupied by the right number and the right kind of persons.
Of course, there was a terrific howl from the quarters of vested interests. But this Parliament was as strong and sturdy as that of Oliver Cromwell, and a great deal more enlightened; so it simply closed its ears to all noises, and went straight on, doing its duty.