How body and soul are kept together in the case of girls under such circumstances as have been detailed, it is not difficult though very painful to imagine. Working from dawn till night in hideous filth and squalor unutterable, for a wage which does not suffice to buy the barest necessaries (a wage cut down ever lower and lower by the fierce competition from the shoals of destitute foreigners landed in London week by week), hundreds, nay thousands of young women—Englishwomen, our sisters—eke out their wretched earnings by means of the street. The Pharisee and the Self-righteous pass by on the other side and condemn them; but it is not these poor unfortunates who are to be condemned, but the system which makes such a state of things possible. The Vicar of Old Ford, in his evidence before the House of Lords' Committee, mentioned cases he knew of where young girls of thirteen, who work in this cheap tailoring trade, were leading an immoral life.
In one instance, two sisters, one twelve and the other ten years of age, had already embarked upon a life of shame. One of these girls had been sent out by her stepmother, because the family "had to live."
Another instance, if possible more horrible still, was related to me by a clergyman in the East End of London, of a case which had come under his notice, though not before it was too late. It was that of a woman, an Englishwoman, a seamstress, who with her husband was engaged in the cheap tailoring trade at the usual sweating prices. All went fairly well for a time, for the two were able by their united efforts to earn a living, and to maintain themselves and their little children in a state of comparative decency and comfort. But one winter the husband, never a strong man, fell ill and died. The wife laboured on, managing by some almost superhuman effort to earn enough for herself and the children, and to keep body and soul together. Then the slack time, so greatly dreaded by all those engaged in the "sweating trade," came on, and there was nothing to be done for weeks and weeks. In despair this woman, who had hitherto led a blameless life, took to the streets. "It was wrong," the moralist and purist will say, "wrong and reprehensible to the last degree. Is there not the workhouse for such people, is there not parochial relief, are there not charitable agencies, free dinners, clothing clubs, district visitors without end? Could she not have applied to one of these instead of drifting into sin?" It may be so. All that I know is, that she and her children were starving, and that the sin brought its own punishment, for the poor woman never recovered from the horrors of that awful winter. The shame of it all seemed to settle on her as a blight, and the following year she died, broken-spirited, and broken-hearted, one more victim sacrificed to this infamous system of starvation prices and ruinous competition.
Most of the English girls to be seen at night in Oxford Street and the Strand, to say nothing of their even more degraded sisters in Whitechapel, are, or have been, tailoresses. How these poor creatures manage to exist at all, even when they eke out their wretched earnings by the price paid for their dishonour, it is not easy to see. The key of the mystery is to be found in their mutual help of one another. Even amid all their degradation and shame, many of them retain that divine instinct of self-sacrifice which in all ages has been the noblest part of womanhood. Dim it may be and undeveloped, but still it is there, evidenced daily by many little acts of kindness, many little generous deeds towards those who are more miserable and more suffering than themselves. "It is mostly the poor who help the poor." I will go further and say, it is mostly the wretched who help the wretched, for between them exists that intimate knowledge of each other's sorrows which is the truest bond of sympathy. Under happier circumstances these poor women might have lived honest and virtuous lives. As it is, they have to work side by side with men of all nationalities, under unhealthy and objectionable conditions—conditions subservient of all sense of decency. This, combined with the utterly inadequate wage, naturally leads to immorality, with its attendant satellites of drunkenness, disease, and death. Thus the burden of wretchedness and crime goes on, ever increasing in volume and intensity. How can it be otherwise when the ranks of the lost in our large cities, are thus being continually recruited from within and from without? Every now and then the public conscience is startled by the news of some awful tragedy—some poor creature done to her death in Whitechapel. It is but a bubble bursting on the surface, which oozes up from the black depths of vice and misery beneath.
One of the most potent causes of this vice and misery is undoubtedly the unlimited pouring in of destitute and objectionable foreigners. Again I ask, Can nothing be done to rescue these women—our sisters—from the attendant horrors of this fierce and degrading foreign competition? Can nothing be done to place the price of their labour upon such a level as to enable them by honest work to lead virtuous and happy lives?
Usque quo Domine? Lord, how long? Such is the bitter cry of the workwomen in East London.