November 1, 10s. was received. The rent was one week behind.
| s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|
| Rent (two weeks; the landlady downstairs was pressing) | 8 | 0 |
| Hat and socks | 0 | 2 |
| Soap, soda, etc. | 0 | 2½ |
| 8 | 4½ |
No coal, no gas. The great bargain of hat and socks for 2d. could not be passed by.
| s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|
| 3 loaves | 0 | 7½ |
| 1 tin of milk | 0 | 1 |
| Potatoes | 0 | 2 |
| Dripping | 0 | 3 |
| Tea | 0 | 1 |
| Meat | 0 | 4 |
| Fish | 0 | 2 |
| Onions | 0 | 2 |
| Sugar | 0 | 2 |
| Salt and pepper | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | 1½ |
In this instance we have 2s. 1½d. to divide between three persons—an average of 8½d. a week, or 1¼d. a day.
This woman eventually became an office cleaner at 12s. a week, and her case is referred to in a previous chapter.
However steady a man may be, however good a worker, he is never exempt from the fear of losing his job from ill-health or from other causes which are out of his control. His difficulty in getting into new work is often very great, because new work in his own trade requires time and patience to find. He may have to tramp from one place of business to another day after day, and week after week. His trouble is that if he spends the whole of his time doing this no money is coming in, and he and his must live. He is therefore forced to take odd jobs which bring in something, but which spoil his chances of regular work. Numbers of men who have a trade lose it, because they cannot afford the time necessary to find a new job of the same kind as the one they have lost. They are forced to take anything that turns up in order to keep afloat at all. So the friendly foreman who says, “You turn up every morning at seven o’clock, and I’ll call for you when I want a hand,” finds when he does call several days later that the man is not there. No amount of explaining next day that in order to keep his family he did a day’s work unloading a barge or sweeping snow is of avail against the fact that another man has got the job. Meantime, his clothes and his very muscles are depreciating, and work in his own trade becomes almost an impossibility to find. In some employments, where it is a common custom to give a man two, or three, or four days’ work a week and pay him by the day, it is demanded that he should turn up every day of the week and wait for his work, or lose the few days he has the chance of getting. The carters in certain well-known West End firms are employed on these terms. In many employments there are a number of extra men who take duty when the regular man has a holiday or fails to appear. These extra men live a life of great poverty and great uncertainty. The work they do may be skilled, and they are bound to keep their hand in, and bound to appear daily in order to secure a few days a week for a wage which would be barely sufficient did they get six full days. The lives of the children of the poor are shortened, and the bodies of the children of the poor are stunted and starved on a low wage. And to the insufficiency of a low wage is added the horror that it is never secure.