This girl was earning, by the bye, 17s. a week.
FLOWER SELLER.
The quite young girls are principally employed in packing chocolate into boxes, covering it with silver paper, which operation they perform with great dexterity, labelling, and other easy work of this nature. The rooms are large and well ventilated, and each department is under the care of a forewoman, who not only keeps a sharp look-out on the work, but exercises what control she can over behaviour and conversation. The discipline did not strike me as particularly severe, considering that the girls left their work en masse, as soon as one of their number had announced, referring to the artist, "She's takin' Em'ly's likeness." The hours, from 8 to 7, are certainly too long for girls in delicate health; but the work itself is light, and a capital dining-room is provided on the premises, where the girls can cook their dinners and make themselves tea. Nor are the prospects at all bad. Here is Alice C——, a girl of fourteen, the daughter of a flower carman, not always in work. She is a packer, and gets 6s. a week, which she hands over to her mother. She says she likes doing things with her hands, and would not like to be in service, as then she wouldn't have her Sundays to herself. If she stays on at Messrs. Allen's, her wages will be steadily raised to 18s. a week; and, if she ultimately becomes a piece-worker, she may make as much as 24s. or 25s. a week. Considering that a good many educated women are teaching in High Schools for salaries of £65 per annum, this is surely not bad.
Of course all factories are not as well managed as these chocolate works, and where the hardship comes in is where hands are turned off at certain periods of the year, or when the work itself, like match-making, is injurious to health.
Still more unfortunate is the lot of some of the little girl workers who assist their mothers at home in tailoring, button-holing, and dolls'-clothes making. The united work of mother and child yields only a wretched pittance, and, carried on as it is in a room where sleeping, eating, and living go on, is, of all forms of labour, the saddest and most unhealthy. Meals consist of bread and tea, and work is prolonged till midnight by the light of one candle, with the consequence that the children are prematurely aged and diseased. This is the most painful kind of child-labour that I have come across, and would be unbearable, if it were not ennobled by the touching affection that almost invariably exists between the worn-out mother and her old-woman-wise little daughter.
The lot of the child-vender in the streets would be almost as hard, if it were not, at any rate, healthier. Terrible as are the extremes of weather to which the little flower-girl or newspaper boy is exposed, the life is in the open air, and a hundred times preferable, even if it results in death from exposure, to existence in a foul-smelling garret where consumption works its deadly way slowly. Children find an endless variety of ways of earning a living in the streets. There are the boot-black boys, who form a useful portion of the community; newspaper boys, of whom the better sort are careful little capitalists, with an immense fund of intelligence and commercial instinct; "job chaps," who hang about railway stations on the chance of earning a few pence in carrying bags; flower-girls, match-girls, crossing-sweepers, who can make a fair living, if they are industrious; and lastly, although this enumeration by no means exhausts the list—street prodigies, such as pavement painters and musicians. All Londoners must be familiar with the figure of little Master Sorine, who sits perched up on a high stool diligently painting away at a marine-scape in highly coloured chalks.
This clever little artist of eleven is the principal support of his parents, who do a little in the waste-paper line when there is anything to be done. As a rule, Master Sorine is finishing his marine picture or landscape when I pass by, so that I have not had an opportunity of judging of his real ability; but his mother, who keeps guard over him, assures me that he can draw "anything he has seen"—an assertion which I shall one day test. The little fellow is kept warm by a pan of hot charcoal under his seat, which would seem to suggest rather an unequal distribution of heat. However, he seems to think it is "all right." His artistic efforts are so much appreciated by the multitude that on a "good day" he earns no less than 9s. or 10s., which mounts up to a respectable income, as he "draws in public" three days a week. Master Sorine, however, is exceptionally fortunate, and indeed there is something particularly taking about his little stool, and his little cap, and the business-like air with which he pursues his art studies. Nothing can be said in praise of such "loafing" forms of earning a livelihood as flower-selling, when the unhappy little vender has nothing but a few dead flowers to cover her begging; or of "sweeping," when the "crossing" of the young gentleman of the broom is often dirtier than the surrounding country. Now and again one comes across industrious, prosperous sweepers, who evince a remarkable amount of acuteness and intelligence. It may have been chance, but each of the three crossing-sweepers I questioned were "unattached," disdained anything in the way of families, and declined to name their residences on the ground that they were "jes' thinkin' o' movin'." This is a very precarious method of earning a livelihood, and is generally supplemented by running errands and hopping in summer. In a wealthy neighbourhood, frequented by several members of Parliament, who were regular customers, a very diligent young sweeper told me he made on an average in winter 2s. 6d. a week; but he added contemptuously: "Business ain't what it used to be. Neighbour'ood's goin' down, depend on it. I'm thinkin' of turnin' it up." This young gentleman supplemented his income by successful racing speculations, obtaining his information about "tips" from his good-natured clients. It seems sad to think how much good material is lost in these smart street boys, whose ability and intelligence could surely be turned to better account. The most satisfactory point—and one which no unprejudiced person can fail to recognise—in connection with the subject of child-labour is that healthy children do not feel it a hardship to work; and that, therefore, considering, in addition, how materially their earnings add to their own comfort, all legislation in the direction of restriction and prohibition ought to be very carefully considered.
I must express my best thanks to Mr. Redgrave, of the Home Office, for his help in obtaining entrance to factories, and to Mr. Hugh Didcott, the well-known theatrical agent, for his kind services in the matter of acrobats.
