of these miserable outcasts. The poverty, we mean, of those who try to
live honestly; for notwithstanding the sickening revelations of
immorality which have been disclosed to us, those who endeavour to earn
their bread by honest work far outnumber the dishonest. And it is to
their infinite credit that it should be so, considering that they are
daily face to face with the contrast between their wretched earnings and
those which are the produce of sin. A child seven years old is known
easily to make 10s. 6d. a week by thieving, but what can he earn by such
work as match-box making, for which 2¼d. a gross is paid, the maker
having to find his own fire for drying the boxes, and his own paste and
string? Before he can gain as much as the young thief he must make 56
gross of match-boxes a week, or 1296 a day. It is needless to say that
this is impossible, for even adults can rarely make more than an average
of half that number. How long then must the little hands toil before
they can earn the price of the scantiest meal! Women, for the work of
trousers finishing (_i.e._, sewing in linings, making button-holes and
stitching on the buttons) receive 2½d. a pair, and have to find their
own thread. We ask a woman who is making tweed trousers, how much she
can earn in a day, and are told one shilling. But what does a day mean
to this poor soul? _Seventeen hours!_ From five in the morning to ten at
night--no pause for meals. She eats her crust and drinks a little tea as
she works, making in very truth, with her needle and thread, not her
living only, but her shroud. For making men's shirts these women are
paid 10d. a dozen; lawn tennis aprons, 3d. a dozen; and babies' hoods,
from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a dozen. In St. George's-in-the-East large
numbers of women and children, some of the latter only seven years old,
are employed in sack-making, for which they get a farthing each. In one
house was found a widow and her half idiot daughter making palliasses at
1¾d. each. Here is a woman who has a sick husband and a little child to
look after. She is employed at shirt finishing at 3d. a dozen, and by
the utmost effort can only earn 6d. a day, out of which she has to find
her own thread. Another, with a crippled hand, maintains herself and a
blind husband by match-box making, for which she is remunerated on the
liberal scale mentioned above; and out of her 2¼d. a gross she has to
pay a girl a penny a gross to help her. Others obtain at Covent Garden
in the season 1d. or 2d. a peck for shelling peas, or 6d. a basket for
walnuts; and they do well if their labour brings them 10d. or a shilling
a day. With men it is comparatively speaking no better. "My master,"
says one man visited by a recent writer in the _Fortnightly Review_,
"gets a pound for what he gives me 3s. for making." And this it is easy
to believe, when we know that for a pair of fishing boots which will be
sold at three guineas, the poor workman receives 5s. 3d. if they are
made to order, or 4s. 6d. if made for stock. An old tailor and his wife
are employed in making policemen's overcoats. They have to make, finish,
hot-press, put on the buttons, and find their own thread, and for all
this they receive 2s. 10d. for each coat. This old couple work from
half-past six in the morning until ten at night, and between them can
just manage to make a coat in two days. Here is a mother who has taken
away whatever articles of clothing she can strip from her four little
children without leaving them absolutely naked. She has pawned them, not
for drink, but for coals and food. A shilling is all she can procure,
and with this she has bought seven pounds of coals and a loaf of bread.
We might fill page after page with these dreary details, but they would
become sadly monotonous, for it is the same everywhere. And then it
should not be forgotten how hardly upon poverty like this must press the
exorbitant demand for rent. Even the rack-renting of Ireland, which so
stirred our indignation a little while ago, was merciful by comparison.
If by any chance a reluctant landlord can be induced to execute or pay
for some long-needed repairs, they become the occasion for new
exactions. Going through these rooms we come to one in which a hole, as
big as a man's head, has been roughly covered, and how? A piece of
board, from an old soapbox, has been fixed over the opening by one nail,
and to the tenant has been given a yard and a half of paper with which
to cover it; and for this expenditure--perhaps 4d. at the
outside--_threepence a week has been put upon the rent_. If this is
enough to arouse our indignation, what must be thought of the following?
The two old people referred to above have lived in one room for 14
years, during which time it has only once been partially cleansed. The
landlord has undertaken that it shall be done shortly, and for the past
three months has been taking 6d. a week extra for rent for what he is
thus _going to do_. This is what the helpless have to submit to; they
are charged for these pestilential dens a rent which consumes half the
earnings of a family, and leaves them no more than from 4d. to 6d. a day
for food, clothing and fire; a grinding of the faces of the poor which
could scarcely be paralleled in lands of slavery and of notorious
oppression. This, however, is not all; for even these depths of poverty
and degradation are reached by the Education Act, and however beneficent
its purpose, it bears with cruel weight upon the class we have
described, to whom twopence or a penny a week for the school fees of
each of three or four children, means so much lack of bread.
Amidst such poverty and squalor it is inevitable that one should be
constantly confronted with scenes of