In the hard winter days no morsel of meat is seen on the table; and if the potatoes are all consumed, then dry bread, and not much of it, is all the nourishment they get.
How does it happen that such valuable work fails to give a fair return? This, with a little knowledge, is easy to answer. It takes a very long time indeed to produce the most simple lace, and as to costly patterns of rich and tasteful designs, such as we give here as a cover to a lady’s sunshade—well, it would require for its production six to twelve months, or even longer, according to the pattern and the ability of the worker. This lace-cover is bought in the shops of our great towns for the ridiculously cheap sum of £5—perhaps £7 10s.—or, at the very highest, £15.
If you take into consideration the high duty on these articles, the worth of the raw material, which is generally the best silk, and the fee to the middle-man, you will see how much remains for the industrious artist at her cushion—never more than 2s. 1d. a day.
Supposing that a yard of pillow lace cost 7½d. in the shops, you must take off quite 2½d. for the purchase of material and the fee for the middle-man, which leaves the worker 5d. as the price of a day’s hard work, for she cannot make more than a yard a day.
The poverty of the pillow lace-maker is no doubt due also to the low market price of the lace, and this cannot be remedied, for lace being not an article of necessity, but only of luxury, the desire to buy will decrease with every rise in price, especially as the machine-made lace is produced so easily and in such perfection that it is difficult often to tell the true from the false.
For the last ten years it has seemed useless to think of bettering the position of the lace-maker, male or female. Any effort made is rather to prevent an excellent and artistic industry from dying out. The population has turned itself to other industries which pay somewhat better, merely taking up the lace-work when others fail.
For example, men who in summer seek their bread on the plains, either as bricklayers, labourers, or artisans, join the family circle in the winter in making lace, and it is wonderful to see what soft and delicate work is turned out by those hard hands. It is pleasant to see the wooden stools drawn round the table behind the glass globe filled with water, through which the lamplight falls sharp and clear on the spotless work, and watch the family, from the aged grandmother down to the toddling grandchild, take their places at their cushions or pillows. For those who have never seen pillow lace made, we will give a few words.
The pillow or cushion is of cylindrical form, and tightly stuffed. On this a number of pins are stuck, according to the pattern to be worked. The threads, fastened to small bobbins, are thrown across the cushion and placed round these pins; the threads, traversing from left to right, or vice versâ, often weave at once the pattern and the ground. There is a line in one of the Volkslied which runs—
“That bobbin lace may prosper ever.”
We echo the wish, but fear it will never be realised.