CHAPTER VIII

LABOUR AS A COMMODITY 161

PART II

THE MINIMUM WAGE

CHAPTER I

EXISTING CHECKS 175

CHAPTER II

SUPPOSED REMEDIES 195

CHAPTER III

THE LESSONS OF THE COTTON TRADE 212

CHAPTER IV

THE MINIMUM WAGE IN PRACTICE 230

CHAPTER V

FOREIGN COMPETITION 260

CHAPTER VI

GAIN TO THE NATION 272

INDEX 277

INTRODUCTION

The sweating evil has long engaged the attention of social and

industrial workers in many fields. Some have approached it from the

philanthropic point of view, and have sought a remedy in voluntary means

such as consumers’ leagues; others have approached it from the point of

view of industrial organisation, and have sought to deal with it by the

extension of trade unionism and legislative action. So far all efforts

alike have been futile. The evil is too wide-spread and too remote in

its operations to be touched by charity. It involves a class too

forlorn, too isolated, and too impoverished to be reached by trade

unionism. The cry of the victims has hitherto been too feeble and

hopeless to command the attention of Parliament.

This has happily been changed by the object lesson presented by the

Sweating Exhibition organised by _The Daily News_ last May and opened by

the Princess Henry of Battenberg. That exhibition, held right in the

heart of West London, visited by thirty thousand people, and commanding

the attention of all serious students of our social system, brought the

question instantly into the sphere of practical politics. Sweating was

no longer a vague term concerning some more or less apocryphal wrongs.

It was made real and actual. It was seen to be not an excrescence on the

body politic, having no bearing upon its general health, but an organic

disease. It was seen to be an evil not simply affecting some obscure

lives in the mean streets of our cities, but an evil that wasted the

whole industrial physique—a running sore that affected the entire fabric

of society, a morass exhaling a miasma that poisoned the healthy

elements of industry. Its spectre haunted not only the fever dens of the

slums, but was present in the most costly garments of the most

fashionable West-End shops, in the rich embroideries of the wealthy as

well as in the household matchbox. Well dressed people who came with the

comfortable belief that sweated goods were necessarily cheap goods

realised with a shock that cheapness and sweating had no intrinsic

relationship. They saw with more or less clearness that sweating reduced

to its true meaning was not the oppression of the poor in the interests

of the poor; but the effort of an uneconomic system to extract from the

misery of the unorganised, ill-equipped worker the equivalent of

organised, well paid and well equipped industry. It was the competition

of flesh and blood with machinery. Sweating, it was seen, did not make

goods cheap: it only made human life cheap. It did not benefit the

consumer: it only benefited the man who set the slum to compete with the

workshop, the man or more often the woman and the child to compete with

the machine. It was seen that the evil lowered the whole vitality of

industry. It preyed upon the defenceless and used them to depress the

general industrial standard. It had no chance in a highly organised

community, and found its victims in the hopeless and the broken, among

the poor widows of the courts and alleys and all those who had lost

heart in the battle and were sunk into the lowest depths of the social

abyss.

Not the least disquieting revelation that emerged from the Exhibition

and the lectures which accompanied it was the bearing of the evil upon

our collective life. The sweated reacted upon the community. It was seen

that they not only lowered the industrial standard: they were a menace

to the communal good, a drain upon the resources of society in the

interests of the people who exploited them. They provided a reserve of

incredibly cheap labour which the community had to subsidise from the

rates. Having no power of combination or resistance they were beaten

down by the employer far below the barest means of subsistence, and the

task of keeping them alive was left to the public. This was the case

even when they were employed; but in many instances the work was

seasonal and subject to long periods of unemployment. Then their whole

existence depended upon a mingling of pauperism and charity until a

fresh demand for their labour sprang up, and the public purse was

relieved of some portion of the task of keeping them alive. It was seen,

in short, that sweating meant the maintenance out of the rates of a vast

mass of low class labour which enabled the sweater to compete

successfully with high class labour. Many of the complaints of high

rates in the East End for example came from the very firms whose high

dividends were actually being paid out of the rates in the form of poor

relief to the underpaid worker.

The bearing of the evil upon child life was made equally clear. It was

not merely that the children of the sweated were ill-nourished and

ill-clad. They were made to take their share in the incessant struggle

for food. They too became competitors with healthy industry, and by

increasing the family output actually served to still further lower the

starvation wages. For in this social morass there is no minimum. The

excess of labour is so great and the demand for food so urgent that the

tendency is constantly downward. It is a fight for bread in which the

sweater plays off the dire misery of these against the deeper misery of

those. And in this struggle the child life of the slums is used as a

counter in the game and a new generation of the physically unfit and

socially dead springs up like rank weeds to choke the hope and effort of

the future.

Finally, it was made clear that sweating is the enemy of the development

of industry. It makes it possible to extract from the necessities of the

poor what ought to be extracted from highly developed processes. It

checks the natural evolution of commercial effort by an uneconomic

substitute. Mr Sidney Webb states this point with much force in his

“Industrial Democracy” when he says:

“We arrive, therefore, at the unexpected result that the enforcement of

definite minimum conditions of employment positively stimulates the

invention and adoption of new processes of manufacture. This has been

repeatedly remarked by the opponents of Trade Unionism. Thus Babbage, in

1832, described in detail how the invention and adoption of new methods

of forging and welding gun-barrels was directly caused by the combined

insistence on better conditions of employment by all the workmen engaged

in the old process. ‘In this difficulty,’ he says, ‘the contractors

resorted to a mode of welding the gun-barrel according to a plan for

which a patent had been taken out by them some years before the event.

It had not then succeeded so well as to come into general use, _in

consequence of the cheapness of the usual mode of welding by hand

labour_, combined with some other difficulties with which the patentee

had had to contend. But _the stimulus produced by the combination of the

workmen for this advance of wages_ induced him to make a few trials, and

he was enabled to introduce such a facility in welding gun-barrels by

roller, and such perfection in the work itself, that in all probability

very few will in future be welded by hand-labour.’”

The profound impression made by the Exhibition found expression in a

universal desire for action. The question one heard again and again was

“What can we do? What can we do?” It was the question which the Princess

of Wales asked as she passed round the stalls where the workers were

engaged at their various forms of slavery. It was the question which

continued like a hopeless refrain throughout the six weeks of the

Exhibition. Most people came with vague ideas of the evil and went away

with vaguer ideas of the remedy. Many of them were doubtless glad to

forget this contact with that other forlorn world which seemed such a

disquieting challenge to the splendour and luxury of the world of

society. It was a painful interlude between a visit to the shops in the

morning and a visit to the theatre in the evening.

The general feeling however was not one of idle curiosity, but of grave

concern, and when the Exhibition closed it was felt that the public

conscience once awakened must not be allowed to go to sleep again. The

Exhibition had been an appeal to the individual; but all experience

showed that voluntary action on the part of the individual, while worthy

and desirable, would not touch the evil. Consumers’ leagues had been at

work in this country and still more in America; but they had done little

to reduce the vast sum of misery. If the Exhibition was to bear fruit it

must be in the direction of legislative action.

The immediate outcome was the formation of the Anti-Sweating League to

secure a minimum wage, and later in the year a three days’ conference,

opened by the Lord Mayor and representing two millions organised

workers, was held at the Guildhall. This conference, which was addressed

on various aspects of the evil and its remedy by authorities like Sir

Chas. Dilke, Lord Dunraven, Mr Pember Reeves, Mr Sidney Webb, Mr J. A.

Hobson, Mr Bernard Wise, Miss Clementina Black and others, unanimously

endorsed the programme of the League which was embodied in the Bill now

before Parliament. That Bill is purely experimental. It is based upon

the lines of the Victorian Wages Board system and is applied only to a

certain group of trades which furnish the best field for an experiment

which has become firmly established and generally operative in the

Australian colony. Many authorities prefer the Arbitration system of New

South Wales and New Zealand; but the difficulty in the way of the

adoption of that system in this country is the opposition of the trade

unions. All are agreed on the principle of the minimum wage, and the

Wages Board has been accepted as the only possible legislative

expression of that principle in this country. So far as can be seen,

then, the Bill offers the one available remedy for an evil which all are

agreed must be dealt with.

It is not necessary here to argue at length the case for the principle

of the minimum wage. Those interested in the subject will find it stated

in the addresses given at the Guildhall Conference and published in

pamphlet form by the National Anti-Sweating League, Salisbury Square,

E.C. It is forty-seven years since Ruskin shocked the economists of his

time by declaring for the regulation of wages irrespective of the demand

for labour.

“Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of human error,”

he said, “is the denial by the common political economist of the

possibility of thus regulating wages; while for all the important and

much of the unimportant labour on the earth, wages are already so

regulated.

“We do not sell our Prime-Ministership by Dutch auction; nor on the

decease of a bishop, whatever may be the general advantages of simony,

do we (yet) offer his diocese to the clergyman who will take the

episcopacy at the lowest contract. We (we exquisite sagacity of

political economy) do indeed sell commissions; but not openly,

generalships; sick, we do not inquire for a physician who takes less

than a guinea; litigious, we never think of reducing six-and-eightpence

to four-and-sixpence; caught in a shower, we do not canvass the cabmen,

to find one who values his driving at less than sixpence a mile.”

Ruskin was duly punished. The publishers closed their magazines against

such revolutionary teaching, and Carlyle’s “ten thousand sparrows”

chirped in one furious chorus the current equivalent for “Socialism” and

“Wastrel.”

To-day the minimum wage, like so much else of Ruskin’s teaching, is a

commonplace of the industrial system. No Government or municipality

to-day issues a contract which does not contain a fair wages clause

which is drawn up irrespective of the demand for labour, and every

healthy organised industry has a fixed scale which is dependent on

prices, it is true, but which is wholly independent of the demand and

supply of labour. The whole teaching of modern industry is that cheap

labour is dear labour, and that it is as important for successful

competition to have a well equipped human instrument as to have well

equipped machinery.

To take the example of the cotton trade. Sixty years ago the condition

of the Lancashire trade was deplorable. It was based largely on sweated

labour, including the labour of wretched little slaves drafted in groups

from the workhouses, and kept alive on porridge, their compound a shed

or barn on the premises. To-day there is no industry more highly

organised, and no class of worker—certainly no class of female

worker—more adequately paid. Trade unionism with its fixed wage has made

the Lancashire cotton trade the most wonderful industrial organism in

the world. Four thousand miles from its raw material, ten thousand miles

from its greatest market, it yet dominates the cotton industry as

completely as our shipping trade, with all its relative advantages in

regard to raw material and geographical situation, dominates the

shipping industry of the world. Not least important is the peace which

this high state of organisation has produced in the trade. It is many

years since there was a serious conflict in Lancashire.

The cotton trade in a word has had this enormous success not because

labour is cheap, but because labour is dear—and good; because the human

machine being kept at the highest point of perfection is the most

productive instrument of its kind in the world. It has succeeded, above

all, because the standard wage has removed the competition of low class,

sweated labour, which is not only iniquitous in itself, but which has

the effect of depreciating the whole currency of industry.

And in depreciating the currency of industry it lowers the general

standard of the community. Where wages are low, there the poor rate is

necessarily high, and the general trader shares in the universal

impoverishment. For it must be remembered that the working classes are

the bedrock of commerce. Their condition reacts immediately upon

society. The money they receive comes back instantly in a fertilising

stream to the grocer, the bootmaker, and the clothier. These get nothing

but bad debts and insolvency from the operations of the sweater, whose

poor instruments, moreover, in falling upon the public purse, still

further depress the shopkeeper.

What has happened in the cotton trade may be paralleled by the

experience of other trades. Wherever sweating has been eliminated by the

regulation of wages, the health of the trade is established. Wherever

the trade is only partly organised, as in the umbrella, the boot or the

tailoring trade, the wholesome part suffers by the competition of those

whose stock in trade is the misery of the unorganised poor. As an

illustration of this competition I may quote the following comparison

given by Miss Gertrude Tuckwell at the Guildhall Conference.

AMALGAMATED SOCIETY OF TAILORS AND TAILORESSES.

│

STATEMENT OF PRICES AS AGREED TO BETWEEN THIS BODY AND THE LONDON

MASTER TAILORS’ ASSOCIATION, AND OF THE “SWEATED” RATES FOR SIMILAR

WORK.

│

│ TRADE UNION. NON-UNION.

│

Making Dress Coat│£1. 5s. 6d. to £1. 7s. 6d. 10s. to 16s.

│ (6d. to 7d. per hour). (These are prices where

│ middleman is employed

│ —16s. rarely reached.)

Gentleman’s Frock│ Do. Do.

Coat │

Dress Vest │ 8s. to 9s. 3d. 2s. 6d.

Dress Trousers │ 7s. 3d. to 8s. 5d. 2s. to 4s.

Ladies’ Costume— │

Pressing │ With very little 2½d.

Machining │ extras) 30s. 9d.

Baisting │ 7d.

Felling │ 1¼d.

│ ——1s. 7¾d.

Ladies’ Jackets— │

Pressing │ 1¼d.

Baisting │ 23s. 3½d.

Machining │ 4½d.

Felling │ ½d.

│ ——9¾d.

Ninepence three farthings against twenty three shillings! How is it

possible for honest industry to compete against this exploitation of

flesh and blood subsidised by the ratepayer? It was staggering facts of

this sort that induced the Guildhall Conference to go beyond the scope

of its reference by passing an amendment calling for the abolition of

the outworker in all trades and the provision of workshop accommodation.

Trade unionism has succeeded in regulating wages in the great industries

whose operations can only be carried on on a great collective scale; but

trade unionism alone is clearly unable to destroy sweating in the many

industries in which the fabrication of the parts is let and sub-let

until the origin of the whole is found in the dim, one-roomed tenement

of the slum where the victim of the sweater carries on her tragic

struggle with famine.

“Isn’t the remedy Protection?” was a question frequently heard at the

lectures given at the Exhibition. Most of us would agree with Mr Bernard

Shaw who, in answering such a question, said he would be ready to

protect our industry against sweated competition. But the general

operation of Protection would be wholly in the interest of the sweater.

It would put a new premium upon his vocation. And the fact remains that

sweating is more rampant in protected countries even than in our own. It

was the Berlin Exhibition which suggested the _Daily News_ Exhibition,

and since that event there has been an exhibition in Philadelphia which

has shown that the horrors of sweating in Protectionist America go

deeper even than those in Free Trade England. And it is three of our

Protectionist colonies which, realising the social menace of this trade

in misery, have indicated the true path of reform. They have realised

that the community must protect not only the individual but itself

against a traffic which is slavery in the thinnest disguise, and which

is not only cruel to the individual but destructive of honest industry

and ruinous to social health. The policy which Australia has applied

holds the field as the one effective remedy discovered for dealing with

this appalling social evil. The victims cannot protect themselves. They

are beyond the reach of organisation. In their isolation and poverty

they have no defence against the raids of the conscienceless

sub-contractor who is as literal a slave-driver as any who ever wielded

a whip in the cotton fields, a slave-driver none the less because his

whip is hunger instead of thongs.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

How shall your loop’d and window’d raggedness defend you

From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta’en

Too little care of this.

It is the State alone which can take care of them, protect them against

the rapacity of the oppressor and, in protecting them, protect itself

also. For this is primarily not a problem for pity; but a duty to the

commonwealth. No Society can be sound in health which has at its base

this undrained morass of wretchedness—a morass which charity and the

cold mercy of the Poor Law only develop and which social justice can

alone drain dry.

PART I

SWEATED INDUSTRY

CHAPTER I

THE POOREST OF ALL

“Sweating”—General interpretation of the term—Work in the worker’s

home—Some special investigations—Characteristics of home

work—Match box making—The process—The payment—History of the

Jarvis family—Shirt making—Some individual cases—Paper-bag

making—Some cases—Some men home workers—Racquet balls—The

process—The payment—Health of home workers—The married woman and

the single woman as home workers—Brushmaking—Mrs Hogg’s

description—Tooth brushes—Other trades and rates of pay—Home work,

underpayment, and high priced goods.

The term “sweating,” to which at one time the notion of sub-contract was

attached, has gradually come to be applied to almost any method of work

under which workers are extremely ill paid or extremely overworked; and

the “sweater” means nowadays “the employer who cuts down wages below the

level of decent subsistence, works his operatives for excessive hours,

or compels them to toil under insanitary conditions.” It is in this wide

general sense that the word will be employed in these pages; and the

first part of this volume will be devoted to showing how wide-spread is

the prevalence of sweating throughout the whole field of British

industry.

Probably the most completely wretched workers in our country may be

found among those who ply their toil in their own poor homes. It is by

no means the case that all home work is sweated; but it is the fact that

a good deal of home work, in this country and in others, exists solely

because the home worker can be ground down to the lowest stage of

misery. As an acute French observer writes:—

“Home work, or at least an important fraction of that industry, is in

the odd condition of only surviving on account of its evils. Low pay and

long hours of work are among the chief conditions of its existence.”[1]

Into the conditions of women workers in this branch of industry—which,

however, is by no means confined to women—the Women’s Industrial Council

made an investigation, published in 1897.[2] Two inquiries were also

made by Miss Irwin, in Scotland, on behalf of the Scottish Council for

Women’s Trades; and particulars as to the home work of women in

Birmingham appear in _Women’s Work and Wages_.[3] All these records

exhibit much the same features: unremitting toil, a high degree of

mechanical speed and accuracy, and at the same time the lowest standard

of workmanship that will pass muster; above all, a cruelly heavy burden

resting on the shoulders of the woman who tries to be at the same time

mother, housekeeper, and bread-winner, and who in return for her endless

exertion seldom receives enough even to keep her properly fed, and never

enough to satisfy her own very modest standard of comfort.

The investigators of the Women’s Industrial Council visited personally

nearly four hundred workers. Perhaps the very poorest trade investigated

was matchbox-making, which, for the last fifteen years at least, has

occupied some hundreds of workers in East London alone. The women fetch

out from the factory or the middlewoman’s, strips of notched wood,

packets of coloured paper and sandpaper, and printed wrappers; they

carry back large but light bundles of boxes, tied up in packets of two

dozen. Inside their rooms the boxes, made and unmade and half-made,

cover the floor and fill up the lack of furniture. I have seen a room

containing only an old bedstead in the very last stage of dirt and

dilapidation, a table, and two deal boxes for seats. The floor and the

window-sill were rosy with magenta matchboxes, while everything else,

including the boards of the floor, the woodwork of the room and the

coverings of the bed, was of the dark grey of ingrained dust and dirt.

At first sight it is a pretty enough spectacle to see a matchbox made;

one motion of the hands bends into shape the notched frame of the case,

another surrounds it with the ready-pasted strip of printed wrapper,

which, by long practice, is fitted instantly without a wrinkle, then the

sandpaper or the phosphorus-paper, pasted ready beforehand, is applied

and pressed on so that it sticks fast. A pretty high average of neatness

and finish is demanded by most employers, and readers who will pass

their matchboxes in review will seldom find a wrinkle or a loose corner

of paper. The finished case is thrown upon the floor; the long narrow

strip which is to form the frame of the drawer is laid upon the bright

strip of ready-pasted paper, then bent together and joined by an

overlapping bit of the paper; the edges of paper below are bent flat,

the ready-cut bottom is dropped in and pressed down, and before the

fingers are withdrawn they fold over the upper edges of the paper inside

the top. Now the drawer, too, is cast on the floor to dry. All this,

besides the preliminary pasting of wrapper, coloured paper and

sandpaper, had to be done 144 times for 2¼d.; and even this is not all,

for every drawer and case have to be fitted together and the packets

tied up with hemp. Nor is the work done then, for paste has to be made

before it can be used, and boxes, when they are ready, have to be

carried to the factory. Let any reader, however deft, however

nimble-fingered, consider how many hundred times a day he or she could

manage to perform all these minute operations. But practice gives speed,

especially when stimulated by the risk of starvation.

The conditions of life secured in return for this continuous and

monotonous toil are such as might well make death appear preferable. The

poor dwelling—already probably overcrowded—is yet further crowded with

matchboxes, a couple of gross of which, in separated pieces, occupy a

considerable space. If the weather be at all damp, as English weather

often is, even in summer, there must be a fire kept up, or the paste

will not dry; and fire, paste, and hemp must all be paid for out of the

worker’s pocket. From her working time, too, or from that of her child

messenger, must be deducted the time lost in fetching and carrying back

work, and, too often, in being kept waiting for it before it is given

out. The history of one matchbox-making family visited by a

representative of the Women’s Industrial Council may be given in detail,

since no single member survives.

The Jarvis household consisted of a father, mother, and nine children.

They lived in an alley some fifty yards long and very narrow, entered

through a row of posts from a street that runs northward from

Whitechapel Road. Mr Booth’s “Poverty” map shows it coloured with the

dark blue that signifies “Very poor, casual. Chronic want.” The houses

in it, of which there were not many, were and are four-roomed cottages

of two floors, and the Jarvis family occupied the upper floor of No. 9.

Below them lived a young man with his wife and their baby, his mother,

and three sisters; sixteen persons thus inhabiting the four rooms. All

these people seem to have been industrious and respectable. Mr Jarvis,

who had poor health, worked in the last summer of his life at

matchbox-stamping, and earned “sometimes” 16s. a week. His wife worked

constantly at matchbox-making, two of the girls nearly all day, and two

of the boys out of school hours. The journey to and from the factory

took from an hour to an hour and a half. In the beginning of the winter

of 1897 the father fell ill, and had to go into the infirmary. The

mother and the children remained at home, and the combined earnings of

Mrs Jarvis and her four young helpers produced from 10d. to 1s. a day.

It was at this time that the investigator of the Women’s Industrial

Council paid her visit, and she notes in the brief space for “Remarks”:

“This house was very poor and bare.... Family is often nearly starving.”

At about half past six on the morning after Christmas Day—a Sunday

morning, when it was freezing hard and when there was a thick fog, the

young man who lived on the ground floor awoke and got up to make tea for

his wife. He found smoke in the room, and when he opened the door of the

room in which his mother and sisters were sleeping, a burst of smoke met

him. He succeeded in getting out his own family—in their

nightdresses—sent a neighbour to call the fire engine, and tried in

vain, as did a next door neighbour, to arouse the Jarvises. The firemen

arrived within a very few minutes—three minutes, indeed, from the time

of their summons—but the house was already in a blaze, the windows gone

and the roof fallen in. The engine could not get through the posts at

the entry of the court, but while it was being taken round to the back,

a ladder was carried in, and a fireman bravely attempted to enter the

burning house. But it was too late; all ten were already dead. All had,

it was believed, been suffocated before the first call of their

neighbour from below. The children had probably passed out of life

without warning, but the mother was found lying on the floor, with her

baby of seven months old in her arms, its body so protected by hers as

to be scarcely burned at all. The father died next day in the infirmary,

without having learned what fate had overtaken his wife and children;

and their poor neighbours—for whom the weeks after Christmas are the

leanest of the year—raised a subscription to defray the funeral expenses

of the eleven, who were buried together.

In all but its tragically sudden close the history of the Jarvis family

is the history of scores of East End households. In some there is a

husband in intermittent work; in some the mother is widowed; in all the

children, if children there are, help; in all the human beings are

slaves of the matchbox. The nine years since that December morning have

brought no change, unless it be that, impossible though it would have

appeared, pay has rather decreased than advanced, and that a recent

investigation, not yet completed, seems to reveal a higher proportion of

workers in receipt of out-relief.

Such matchbox makers, if they worked at the same rates in the factory

during the far shorter hours permitted by the Factory Acts, would earn

no less than they do now, for they would no longer waste time in putting

together box and drawer—whereby at present some other worker also wastes

time in separating them again before they can be filled—and the employer

would pay for paste and drying. That, indeed, is really the reason why

they are working at home.

But although matchbox-making is among the poorest of trades, there are

others but a shade better. The wages of shirtmaking, for instance, are

often extremely low, and are yet further reduced by the fact that the

home worker provides cotton for sewing. I remember seeing, seventeen

years ago, a young deserted wife who was trying to support herself and

two young children by making shirts. These were flannel shirts of a fair

quality, and were handed to her cut out. She did not sew on buttons nor

make button holes; but except for these items made the shirt throughout,

by machine, and put in a square of lining at the back of the neck. She

was paid 1s. 2d. a dozen, and bought the cotton herself. She could make

in a week “five dozen all but one”; for which the payment would be five

shillings, eightpence and a fraction of a penny, less the cost of

cotton, machine needles, oil, and perhaps hire of machine.

At the _Daily News_ Exhibition of Sweated Industries was to be seen an

elderly Scotchwoman cutting and making shirts from the first stitch to

the last, who was a singularly intelligent, skilful, and industrious

worker. For varying styles of shirts she received from 9½d. to 1s. 9½d.

per dozen. “For the shirts paid at 1s. 9½d. per dozen the following work

is required:—Make and line yoke and bottom bands, put in four gussets,

hem skirts, run and fell side seams, make sleeves and put them in....

The shirts paid at 9d. per dozen require her to hem necks, button-stitch

two stud holes, sew on six buttons and clip threads from all seams. The

shirts at 1s. per dozen have two rows of feather stitching, six button

holes, eight buttons, four seams bridged and eight fastenings made.”[4]

The better sorts of these shirts were such as are worn, not by poor, but

by well-to-do purchasers.

“Paper-bag making,” says the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1905, “is an

industry largely carried on in homes in Glasgow, and no trade is more

disturbing to the home. The paste seems to find its way everywhere, and

many more things than the bags are found firmly pasted together. I

visited two women, who, working usually in workshops, were, during the

enforced period of absence owing to the birth of a child, given

employment as outworkers. Nothing could exceed the misery and squalor

amongst which the work was done. In both cases the workroom was also the

living room and bedroom, and the whole of the available furniture,

including the bed, was covered with damp bags, some hundreds of which

had to be removed in one home before I could be shown the baby. The

surroundings were unpleasant ones for making bags destined to hold

pastry.” (p. 322.) Of another woman it is reported that “she personally

took out work until the day before her child’s birth, and found the load

of bags which had to be carried downstairs and upstairs very heavy and

tiring. This work is poorly paid. Bags, by no means of the smallest

size, are made for 3d. to 5d. a thousand, so that it is indeed a heavy

weight which has to be carried for the daily shilling.” (p. 320.)

Although the cases quoted hitherto are those of women, and although the

very worst instances of underpayment invariably occur among women, it

must not be supposed that all home workers are women. In the nail and

chain making districts many men as well as women work at forges in their

own backyards; and even in London there is quite a small population of

home working tailors, shoemakers, and cabinetmakers, to say nothing of

men who make toys and trifles of various sorts for hawking in the

streets.

In one afternoon last summer I was taken to visit some men working in

their own homes, all within a very short distance. Two were toy makers,

two manufactured pipes, and another cages for parrots; one was a

shoemaker, and the last was the most skilled handweaver in London. One

toy maker was engaged upon wooden hoops with handles and beaded spokes,

for South Africa. He also made wooden engines, finding all the

materials, iron wheels included, and for these he was paid 22s. a gross.

The selling price is sixpence each. In his workshop, too, were to be

seen attractive little waggons with sacks in them; and horses of that

archaic type which has a barrel body, straight legs, and harness of red

and blue paper. The other toy maker was making little go-carts adapted

to the use of good-sized dolls. All the material was found by the maker,

and the price received by him varied from 3s. 3d. to 6s. 6d. a dozen,

according to size. Here again iron wheels had to be provided. In both

these cases the wife and some other member of the family helped. The

pipes were roughly shaped by hand, then pressed in a mould, the seam

scraped smooth, and the pipes stacked in great clay pans and fired in an

oven. They are not made to order, but sold by the maker to private

customers—generally publicans—at 2s. 6d. or 3s. a gross. The cage maker,

a consumptive man, transforms bands of tin and thick wires into domed

cages, with a speed and dexterity amazing to the beholder. I have

mislaid my note of the prices paid for this skilful work, but I know

that they were horribly low. The elderly shoemaker and his

wife—interesting, intelligent people—were full of family cares and of

curious industrial reminiscences. They are now on a dry bank, as it

were, a foot or two above the deep waters of hopeless struggle, in which

the Jarvises, their neighbours, were immersed. The weaver was a survivor

from another period, and a child of another race. Face and name alike

proclaim him a descendant of the Huguenots; and not only is he a weaver

of silk, but also one of the very, very few hand weavers of velvet still

left in our country. The coronation robe of King Edward—perhaps the

finest velvet ever woven, was his handiwork.

Moreover, a little remnant is still left of the old silk-weaving trade

that came to Spitalfields and Bethnal Green when Louis XIV. was so ill

advised as to revoke the Edict of Nantes. Instances of man and wife

working at home together appear in the Report of the Factory Inspectors.

“Husband and wife, with two children, occupy one room only. The wife

weaves, while her husband is occupied in ‘finishing’ canvas boots in the

same room.” “Husband, wife, and six children occupy the workroom (which

contains two looms) and an attic.” “In the weaving room are three low

beds _under_ the looms, in which three adults sleep. They cannot sit

upright in bed, as they knock against and injure the warp.” (p. 322.)

Racquet balls are articles bought mainly by persons in prosperous

circumstances, few of whom would desire that women engaged in making

their tools of play should receive less than a living wage. Yet the

rates of pay are such that probably no coverer of racquet balls ever

subsisted without aid from other sources. The cores or centres of these

balls are made of shreds of rag, much compressed, and covered with

strands of wool. These are prepared in the factory, but the covering is

done by women working at home. The coverer receives a gross of cores,

together with a gross of squares of white leather and a skein or skeins

of a special thread. The squares of leather must be damped between wet

cloths. Laying one of these damp squares on her left palm, the worker

places upon it the core, “pulls the skin tightly over it, pares off with

a pair of sharp scissors any superfluous leather, and sews together with

neat regular stitches the edges at their meeting-places. While still

damp the ball must be rolled, so as to smooth down any projection of the

seam. This rolling is best effected between two slabs of marble, the

upper one of which need be only a little larger than the ball.

Considerable pressure is necessary, but in the hands of a practised

worker the process is a quick one. These slabs of marble are not

provided by the employer, and many women roll their balls between two

plates; to do this takes rather longer, because the plate will not bear

so much pressure as the slab. The scissors also have to be provided and

kept sharp by the worker.” For covering a gross of the smallest sized

balls (sold retail at 2d. or 3d.), the usual payment is 2s. per gross;

but there is one prosperous employer who still pays only 1s. 10d.

Working steadily for eleven to twelve hours a day, a superior young

woman known to me who covered balls before her marriage used to earn

about 5s. a week. She was quick and skilful, but obviously

ill-nourished, and an accidental sprain, from which a girl in good

health would quickly have recovered, developed in her case into an

ulcer, in consequence, said the doctor who saw her, of her anæmic

condition.

Ill-health, indeed, is the chronic state of the woman home worker. She

misses that regular daily journey to and from her work-place which

ensures to the factory worker at least a daily modicum of air and

exercise; and she misses also that element of changed scene and varied

human intercourse which makes for health and happiness. If she depends

upon her own exertions she will inevitably be ill fed and ill clothed;

and this is probably one reason for the fact, noted both by the

investigators of the Women’s Industrial Council and by Miss Irwin, that

the woman who is self-supported often earns less, even at the same rates

of pay, than the woman who is comfortably married. The half-starved and

apathetic human creature cannot maintain a high output of work; and even

the out-relief which is so frequent a factor in the income of the

widowed or single home worker, seldom suffices to keep her in more than

a half-starved condition. Her work grows, like herself, poorer and

poorer; and the employer thereupon declares that it is worth no more

than its poor price. From a national point of view it would pay better

to save the human machine from falling into that state of disrepair

wherein it ceases to be profitable.

Tooth brushes, again, are articles purchased by the wealthy even more

frequently than by the poor, and so are household brushes of all kinds.

Of brushmaking an account was written in 1897 by the late Mrs Hogg,[5]

and being still applicable, was printed in the Handbook of the Sweated

Industries Exhibition. “The brushes are given out in dozens, ready

bored, and the worker supplied with fibre or bristles, as the case may

be. Their work consists in selecting the little bundles of bristles from

the heap, fastening them securely in the centre with wire, and then,

with a sharp pull against the edge of the table, drawing them through

the hole. They are kept in position by a wire at the back of the brush,

and each row of bristles is trimmed with a large pair of shears fastened

to a table-vice. The fingers, though protected by a leather shield, are

often badly cut with the slipping of the wire, and the constant jerk of

the drawing causes a strain to the chest. All the women complain of

this. More serious accidents occasionally happen from the shears, which

are hard to manipulate, and often beyond the strength of these

exhausted, underfed workers. Materials, with the exception of lamp-black

for painting the backs of the brushes, are provided by the shop. As

lamp-black costs something, and soot can be had for nothing, a

concoction of soot and water boiled is often used as a substitute for

the more expensive pigment. But the shears are a serious outlay, costing

from 18s. to £1, and needing constant sharpening. Many of the drawers,

never having been in possession of the capital to buy them, or being

forced by hunger to ‘put them away,’ are obliged to get their trimming

done at the shop, at the cost of terrible waste of time and of

iniquitous and capricious deductions from the price given for the work.

Deductions are also made for short returns of fibre or bristle

sweepings, where these have to be returned to the shop. The material is

weighed out and weighed in. It is calculated that if the material

weighed so much, the clippings or sweepings ought to weigh so much; but

the worker is never told _how_ much, and has no means of checking the

calculation; yet if the amount is short, she either ‘gets the sack’ or

has to pay for the deficiency. The rate of payment varies with the

number of holes and the quality of brush, bristles always commanding a

higher rate than fibre. Coarse fibre scrubbing brushes fetch anything

from 3½d. to 1s. a dozen. One woman will make brushes with 145 holes for

10d., while another will get 9d. for brushes with only 100. There is no

uniformity of payment; it all depends, they tell you, on the shop you

work for.... The fibre drawers rarely make more than 7s. to 8s. for a

week of seventy-two hours. Taking into consideration the various lets

and hindrances to which they are subject, and the time wasted at the

shop, 6s. would fairly represent the average during the season when it

suits the masters to keep them regularly employed.... It is only by

seeing the homes of the brush drawers that it is possible to realise all

that is implied in the carrying on of a trade and of the travesty of

family life in one single room, or the misery of these lives of endless

toil, where the tragedy which endures on is so much more pitiful than

the tragedy to which death brings rest from labour.”

Tooth brushes, of which it is estimated that a worker can make four in

an hour, are paid at the rate of 4d. a dozen, and best hair brushes at

2d. each, or ¾d. for 100 holes.

These examples might be multiplied a hundredfold. Blouse makers

(receiving from 1s. 6d. a dozen), underclothing makers, trouser

finishers (from 2½d. a pair), sack makers (at 8d. or 9d. for a “turn” of

12, 15, or 18), makers of boot boxes (at 1s. 4d. a gross), of soap boxes

and tack boxes, makers of baby clothes and of children’s shoes,

finishers of woollen gloves, tassel makers, umbrella coverers,

artificial flower makers, forgers of chains and strikers of nails,

carders of buttons (at 3s. per 100 gross), and of hooks and eyes (at 8d.

and 9d. per 24 gross), cappers of safety pins (at 1s. 6d. per 100

gross)—all of these are busy among us hour after hour, and day after

day, for seven days a week, and are receiving in return a remuneration

ranging from ¾d. to 2d. per hour. Their work, in some shape or form,

comes into every house in this country. Our potatoes and our flour are

carried in sacks, although not perhaps to our doors; our eggs are sold

to us in cardboard boxes; our garments are fastened with buttons or with

hooks—or perchance with safety pins; the gentleman’s collar and tie and

the lady’s waist belt may probably be the handiwork of some half-starved

home worker whose life is being shortened by her poverty. Only ignorance

can flatter itself—as indeed ignorance is fond of doing—with the idea

that none but cheap goods or cheap shops are tainted with sweating. Any

person inclining to that opinion is advised to hang about the back doors

of leading shops soon after they open in the morning, or just before

they close at night, and to observe the furtive figures that pass in and

out with bundles. The taint is everywhere; there is no dweller in this

country, however well-intentioned, who can declare with certainty that

he has no share in this oppression of the poorest and most helpless

among his compatriots.

CHAPTER II

WORKERS IN FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS

Wherein factory workers are better off than home workers—Life on five

to ten shillings a week—Health—Ancillary processes—Paper

bags—Packers—Case of a cocoa filler—Of a cartridge filler—Jam

fillers—Pay sheets of confectionery workers—Observations of an

uninstructed observer—Slack times—Long hours—Some

cases—“Emergency” processes—Discomforts—Some cases—Danger of

fire—Lead poisoning—Instances—Washing appliances—Extremes of

temperature—Fines and deductions—Divergent views of two employers

upon fines—“Earned too much”—Summary.

The poorer class of workers in factories and workshops are financially

little better off—if, indeed, better off at all—than the poorer sort of

home workers; but they have some other advantages. Their hours and

conditions are in some degree regulated, and at least some degree of

change and variety enters into their lives. But for them too existence

is a hard battle. Upon a wage of from five to ten shillings a week life

cannot but be narrow and stinted. Food, clothing, and lodging must all

be of the poorest; an omnibus fare, a halfpenny newspaper, a penny stamp

are luxuries in which only the thriftless indulge; and good health, as

the middle class man or woman knows it, is a treasure seldom enjoyed.

There is, indeed, no fact more painfully forced upon the middle class

observer who becomes intimately acquainted with ill paid workers than

the frequency with which they succumb to ailments that would be regarded

in the observer’s own circle as trifling. Many girls injure themselves

permanently by going to work when they are actually seriously ill. To

stay away means loss of pay and possibly loss of employment, so they

hold out to the last gasp.

Many of the worst paid workers are engaged in various processes that

facilitate buying and selling, rather than in actual manufacture. The

paper-bags into which a civil shop assistant so obligingly pops our

small purchases are given nominally without charge to us, and are bought

in very large quantities at a very low rate by the shopkeeper, their

real cost being paid in flesh and blood by the women who make them. Some

of these women, as appears in the previous chapter, work at home; some,

possibly, in well-appointed workshops, but many, as the women factory

inspectors truly observe, “in the poorest kind of workshop, badly

lighted, ventilated, and heated. To these conditions, no doubt, the

weak, inflamed eyes so often seen among the workers are due, at least

partly. The workers themselves attribute it to the strain involved in

counting over the bags.”[6] This remark shows us that the simple and

time-saving plan of weighing instead of counting (which is employed for

wares so valuable as those of the Royal Mint) is not in use in paper-bag

manufactories. Packing of various kinds occupies vast numbers of women

and girls, most of whom are paid at low rates, by the dozen or the

gross, and some of whom attain a celerity almost incredible. No foreman

in the world can drive so hard as her own low wage drives the piece

worker who has to support herself and, often enough, to help to support

relatives. The most worn-out girl whom I remember ever to have seen was

engaged upon no harder task than the packing of cocoa. My attention was

called to her, in a room full of girls, by her ghastly appearance. She

may have been eighteen or nineteen; she was absolutely colourless, and

although there was no sign about her of any specific illness, seemed

exhausted literally almost to death. She sat day after day pouring

powdered cocoa into ready made square paper packets, of which she then

folded down the tops and pasted on the wrappers. She received a

halfpenny for every gross. In the week previous to that in which I saw

her she had earned 7s. Each shilling represented 24 gross of packets;

she had therefore filled, folded and pasted, in the week, 188 gross, or

21,792 packets. Her mother, who was present, said that the drive was

killing her and that she must leave. The cocoa was of a brand well known

in its day and sold in good shops, but the firm has now, I believe,

disappeared. Would that its methods had disappeared with it.[7]

Tea packers and jam fillers often receive wages barely higher. Girls

whom I have known personally have been paid at the following rates for

filling pots with boiling jam or marmalade: 11 lb. pots (in four trays

of thirty-six pots), 2d. per gross; 2 lb. jars (in six trays of

twenty-four jars) or 3 lb. jars (in nine trays of sixteen jars), 2½d.

per gross. Two girls worked together, and my informant reckoned that the

pair could fill a gross of the largest size in about half an hour. This

would bring the wages of each to the comparatively magnificent figure of

2½d. an hour, or over 11s. a week. In some factories these heavy trays

have to be lifted and stacked by the girls, the weight of the jars being

added to that of the contents.

I was fortunate enough, some years ago, to obtain possession of a number

of “pay sheets” showing the wages received in two consecutive weeks by

girls employed in a large London confectionery factory. For the first

week I had 107 sheets; for the second 98. Five sheets in the first week

and ten in the second were left out of my reckoning as probably not

representing a full week’s work; in each of these the total was below

4s. The highest net payment (there was a deduction for a compulsory sick

club) was, in the first week, 15s. 9½d.; in the second, 16s. 1½d. The

girls who received these wages (both well known to me) were superior

young women of from 22 to 25 years old; both helped to support widowed

mothers with younger children. There were, in the first week, 20 girls,

and in the second 24, who received from 10s. to 16s., and most of them

came much nearer to the lower than to the higher figure. In the first

week 78, and in the second 64, received from 5s. to 10s. (57 out of the

78, and 49 out of the 64 earning less than 8s.); while in the first week

9, and in the second week 10, received from 4s. to 5s. Two-thirds,

therefore, of the whole 190 sheets (excluding 15, which showed less than

4s. received) testified to a net weekly wage of less than 10s.—the

average being a fraction over 7s. 6d. a week. Yet so easy is it for the

inexperienced enquirer to be misled that a lady actually published an

account of this very factory, in which she assured the public of wages

“rising steadily to 18s. a week,” and declared that a girl, “if she

ultimately becomes a piece worker, may make as much as 24s. to 25s. a

week.” This lady was evidently not aware that piece work is not a state

“ultimately attained,” but the usual system throughout the

establishment. Nearly all—probably, indeed, every one—of those 190 pay

sheets represented piece work wages. Upon the basis of this illusory

wage of 24s. and upwards the writer proceeded to compare the payment of

confectionery “hands” with that of High School mistresses, forgetting,

however, to compare the hours of a school with those of a factory, or to

deduct those slack seasons to which the confectionery trade is so sadly

liable. A High School mistress, moreover, works forty weeks in the year

and is paid by the year; a confectionery worker often works for less

than forty weeks in the year, and since she is paid by the week her

blank weeks are blank to her exchequer, so that even if she did earn £1

a week (which she does not) she would not earn £52 a year.

Seasonality—the word is so useful that it must be admitted—though it

falls one degree less heavily upon the factory worker than upon the

worker at home, is to her too a terrible evil. The long “slack times” of

the West-End tailor or tailoress reduce a wage that looks handsome in a

pay sheet of May or June to a very meagre annual income; and many a West

End dressmaker who has worked overtime—as often as not without extra

pay—through the long hot evenings of the London season finds herself, in

January or February, shivering, without work or pay, beside her own

empty grate.

Long hours, which are in effect one form of low wages, have been checked

by the Factory Acts, but not yet ended. The inspector for West London

writes: “The Jew tailor of West London has an idea that seven days a

week is not too long to work his hands.”[8]

From Birmingham a case is reported of a Christmas card maker, who had

already been cautioned for keeping “female young persons,” _i.e._ girls

under eighteen, at work till 9 of an evening. He was found to be keeping

two women and a girl at work till 6.15 on Saturday, a day on which work

should, by law, end early, and was said to be keeping his hands at work

on Sundays also—a privilege which the law allows only to the laundry

proprietor. “On the succeeding Sunday,” writes the inspector, “the place

was inspected, but with difficulty. It was only after considerable delay

that admittance was obtained, and then, although the place had every

appearance that work had been going on, no females were found. The upper

parts of the premises were in use as residence, and I had reason to

think that women had been sent up there upon my arrival, but the

occupier would not allow me to go up. It has subsequently been admitted

that eight women and two female young persons were at work and hidden as

suspected.”[9]

That such cases would be not the exception, but the rule, if there were

no legal prohibition and no fear of fines, may be judged by the state of

things actually existing in laundries, where, although the law allows

the monstrous stretch of 14 consecutive hours of work, the permitted

hours are frequently exceeded. The report of the lady inspectors

contains a significant paragraph on this subject. “The hours worked in

London laundries by women and girls,” says Miss Vines, “seem to be

increasing in length, and to be more excessive than ever.... The firm I

prosecuted in February had employed several young women, one of them

only 17 years of age, for 28 consecutive hours, from 8 A.M. on Friday

till 12, midday, on Saturday; while their hours, including meals on the

previous days of the week, had numbered 14 on Thursday, 12 on Wednesday

and Tuesday, and 11 on Monday. The 28 hours’ period included 2½ hours’

interval during the night, when the girls were permitted to lie on the

floor of the calendar-room with their coats for pillows ‘for a rest!’ I

prosecuted the other firm twice in June, and on the second occasion it

was proved at the hearing of the case that an ironer had been employed

for 37 consecutive hours, including meal times and short breaks, and

another, an ironer and calendar worker, 32½ hours ... 14 days previously

I had taken proceedings against the same firm.... It was then proved

that, in one week, a young packer had been employed by them, exclusive

of meal hours and absence of work, for 73½ hours; and two girls, aged

respectively 16 and 17, for 68½ hours.”[10]

Very similar results ensue in the jam-making industry, where, on the

pretext of emergency, the law permits the working of prolonged hours.

“In more than one case,” writes the inspector, “I have found emergency

created by the simple expedient of allowing fruit to lie untouched at

the factory till the close of the normal working day, when workers from

all departments were turned on to it.”[11]

It must be remembered that, in the case of workers paid by the day, as

is usual in dressmaking establishments, and in some departments of

laundry work, there is frequently no extra payment made for overtime. I

have indeed heard a West-End working woman declare that overtime would

cease if the law made payment for it compulsory; and although that

assertion was much too sweeping, the experience of strong trade unions

shows that when employers are compelled to pay at a higher rate for

overtime, that necessity for overtime of which so much is heard whenever

the Factory Acts are under discussion, does diminish in a very

remarkable manner. Meanwhile, the law does its best to make undue hours

of work costly by prosecuting persistent offenders. In 1905 the fines

inflicted in the North-Western district of England alone, for illegal

overtime, amounted to no less than £728, 4s. 0d., and the accompanying

costs to £627, 16s. 0d.; and this in spite of the fact that magistrates

in certain localities are decidedly hostile, and inflict derisory

penalties. When we further reflect that the North-Western district

contains both a large number of highly-organised workers, ready to

complain of any breach of law, and also a large number of exceedingly

enlightened employers who believe long hours to be inimical to their own

true interests, we may fairly infer that there are other districts in

which things are considerably worse, and in which the inspectors,

zealous though they are, fail to discover all or nearly all the

offenders.

Sanitary conditions are still sometimes far from satisfactory, although

greatly bettered of late years. There is perhaps no point upon which the

influence of women inspectors has been more beneficial. A case is

reported to me, by a most trustworthy witness, of a box factory, where

“women and men worked together in a room in which was the lavatory, with

seldom a flush of water.” The same witness reports another case, in a

rope factory employing both men and women, the details of which are so

repulsive, that it is impossible I should print them.

Nor are long hours and underpayment the only ills from which factory

workers suffer. In spite of laws and of inspectors, dangers and

discomforts are still prevalent in many workplaces—especially in those

where workers are ill paid. Many instances may be gathered from a single

year’s Report of the factory inspectors; and of course the inspectors

neither discover all the instances nor print all that they discover.

Looking into the Report for 1905, we find, on p. 13, an account from

Southampton of the tea-room “provided by a high class dressmaker

employing about 60 females.” This apartment was “underground with

concrete floor and walls and the ceiling only 6 feet high, with no

ventilation and no natural light.” Not a few women employed by West-End

firms may be found at the present day, not only eating, but also

working, by artificial light, in basement-rooms that are little better

than cellars, or in cramped upper rooms, from which there would be

little hope of escape in case of fire. The law, in its wisdom, does not

require a special fire escape except in places where as many as 40

persons are at work; and certain frugal employers are careful,

therefore, to employ but 39. “In one such workshop,” writes Miss Squire,

“the condition of the 39 women working there seemed one of grave danger;

it is a large new rag sorting warehouse, so filled with bales that only

narrow passages down which one person can pass are left. On the second

floor the women rag sorters work, their tables ranged along a sort of

gallery ... the centre of the building being open for the hoisting of

bales; the only means of exit is a narrow wooden staircase with open

treads, at one end of the spacious floor. Were a fire to break out

below, all exit would be cut off very quickly. In this case the local

authority reply they have no bye-laws and can do nothing, as less than

40 persons are employed.”[12]

Another case is reported on the same page, in which a building

originally meant for offices only has been turned into a factory and

warehouses. “There is no second staircase and no exit on to the roof,

which is higher than the adjoining houses.... The third floor is

occupied ... by a blouse manufacturer employing between 50 and 60 women.

On the top floor there is a lace warehouse where 15 women are employed

finishing laces and veilings; a large amount of light inflammable

material is stored on both these floors; there are no fire buckets or

any means kept for extinguishing fire.” Miss Squire sent a notice to the

Corporation about this building; and the Corporation replied that it

“did not see its way to making any recommendations owing to the

impossibility of providing an outside staircase.” Miss Squire and the

City Surveyor in vain pointed out how an exit could be provided; six

months later nothing had been done, and, on again approaching the

Corporation, she found that authority “of opinion that no additional

means of escape can be provided at a reasonable expense.” “The chief

officer of the Fire Brigade told me he has himself reported this

building as unsafe to the Corporation years ago in vain.” From Bristol,

Mr Pendock reports a case of a clothing factory “employing about 50

females.” “The work is carried on, on the third and fourth floors, and

these are reached by means of an internal wooden, winding, narrow

staircase, always imperfectly lighted on account of its position.” The

local authority demanded an additional staircase. The owner, on the

strength of a decision in a previous appeal case, did nothing.

Immediately afterwards the premises were considerably damaged by fire

which, fortunately, took place in the meal time when all the workers had

left the factory. Since then work has been resumed under unimproved

conditions.[13]

None of these are cases of ignorance, or even of carelessness; they are

instances of the deliberate disregard, for money’s sake, of danger to

the lives of fellow creatures.

Scarcely less blameworthy is the criminal negligence shown by some

employers in carrying out those precautions prescribed by the law,

where, as in the potteries, there is a risk of lead poisoning. Thus,

Miss Vines remarks “how frequently one finds the necessary supply of

soap, nail brushes, and towels missing. Yet, when giving instructions as

to such irregularities, one is almost invariably met with an attitude of

_non possumus_. Over and over again managers defend themselves by the

assertion that these things, although provided by them, have been and

are constantly stolen by the workers.” She goes on to quote the

observation of a predecessor: “It is impossible not to believe that if

expensive and highly-finished ware disappeared from the factory with the

same speed and to the same degree that soap, nail brushes, and towels

disappear, steps would be taken to discover the offenders.”[14]

In one instance a girl of nineteen, after no more than six weeks’

employment at pottery dipping, suffered “acute pains, with weakness and

subsequent unconsciousness for several hours.” On the premises where she

had worked, the inspector found 17 persons engaged in dangerous

processes. “Notwithstanding, in the lavatory for their use, which was

extremely dirty, there was neither towel nor nail brush, and not more

than one tiny piece of soap. Eventually one small and very dirty towel

was discovered; this, it was stated, had been taken away by the foreman

to dry.... There was not a single clean towel in stock or in reserve on

the premises, and when I questioned the workers it appeared that this

condition of affairs was normal.”[15]

Even where no risk of poison occurs, the provision of decent washing

appliances would, to most of us, appear an essential part of a civilised

factory. Many employers, however, hold a different opinion. The authors

of “Women’s Work and Wages” write that “regulations against washing are

still found in many factories where excellence of work does not depend

upon cleanliness of handling. Painters and japanners are generally

provided with turpentine, etc., but the rank and file are fortunate if

they can get a bucket at the sink, and there do exist places where there

is a fine of 6d. for washing.”

I remember seeing girls, to the number of 50 or more, packing tea in a

large room where an old and grubby sink with one wash bowl and one towel

formed the sole provision for washing. Access to this room was gained by

one wooden ladder-stair. Yet the manager who exhibited this place to a

group of visitors was not only satisfied, but actually boastful. The

personal attention of the head of the firm was called to these defects,

and I am happy to say both of them have now been remedied.

The discomfort formerly undergone in many work-rooms during winter was

extreme. Until the law required the maintenance of “a reasonable

temperature” (generally interpreted by inspectors as 60 degrees

Fahrenheit), a very large proportion of women who worked for West End

dressmakers did so in rooms absolutely unwarmed, or warmed only by the

gas jets meant for lighting the room. I knew of a shirt factory in East

London, which was a wooden edifice erected in a back yard and entirely

unprovided with any means of warming, and have known women who worked

there during the bitterest days of a particularly cold winter.

On the other hand, some processes of manufacture are generally carried

on in overheated workplaces. “The temperature in starch drying stoves,”

says one inspector, “is the most consistently excessive I have found....

The manager of one starch works is of opinion that women stand the heat

better than men do, but says those whom he employs are all hard

drinkers; no temperate woman will stay.[16]

Some processes also of lacemaking and of cotton spinning are facilitated

by damp heat, and it can hardly be doubted that, but for the constant

vigilance, both of the organised workers and of the inspectors, there

would be still, as there were before the law intervened, many working

places in which such processes would be carried on without proper

ventilation or proper precautions for the health of the workers. Many

people now living have seen women and girls come out of a weaving shed

that has been kept full of steam, their clothes wet through and

presently frozen stiff upon them as they walked home through the cold

air.

The plan of reducing wages by fines and deductions is one dear to the

low type of employer; and as long as workers remain ill paid and

desperately afraid of being out of work, the evil will probably persist

to some extent, in spite of increasingly stringent Truck Acts. There are

many factories and work-rooms in which silence is more or less rigidly

enforced, and fines are inflicted for talking or laughing. In many,

again, some part of the material used is charged to the worker. I had in

my hands, some years ago, 14 or 15 wage books belonging to skilled

machinists employed in a provincial stay factory and paid by the piece.

The following are the figures of 3 books for 3 successive weeks. _A_

represents the highest, and _C_ the lowest sums received.

_A._ Nominal wage 9/8½ 8/– 10/2½

Deductions 1/4 9½ 1/6

Wage received 8/4½ 7/2½ 8/8½

_B._ Nominal wage 9/2½ 8/6 8/4

Deductions 2/2 1/7 1/11

Wage received 7/8½ 6/11 6/5

_C._ Nominal wage 5/3½ 5/3 5/5

Deductions 1/4 1/9 1/9

Wage received 3/11 1/5 3/8

These deductions represent mainly material—cotton, and tools—machine

needles. Some employers oblige their workers to pay hire for the sewing

machines used in the factory, and where these machines are worked by

steam, gas, or electricity, a charge varying from a halfpenny to

sixpence “for power” is not unusual. I have known instances in which the

rent of a factory has been partly—perhaps wholly—defrayed by a charge

upon the workers, who had to pay so much a week for their places in it.

“Cleaning, as well as rent, is sometimes met in the same way by a weekly

charge of 2d. or 3d. for cleaning the workroom. I am assured that one

ingenious employer pays a man 15s. a week for performing this duty in

addition to others, while the payments made by the women amount to 30s.

In a certain provincial town in a factory which I visited, there was no

apparent method of lighting. I was informed that in the winter the women

brought their own candles. A local competitor, more acute, provides gas,

and charges each girl 3d. a week throughout the dark seasons, at which

rate, according to his fellow townsmen, he must make a profit on his gas

bill.”[17]

In a large box factory deductions were made for glue, for gas to heat

the glue, for string to tie the boxes together, and for work

books—amounting in all to 1s. 6d. per week.

A charge for hot water to make tea is not unusual, and is sometimes

enforced on all workers, the resulting sum, where many are employed,

being ridiculously in excess of the cost of the boiling water. One young

woman known to me paid this tax (in her case 2d. a week) for six weeks,

and never once used the hot water.

Deductions for spoiled work or alleged damage are those which seem the

most to arouse heartburnings and that general feeling of grudge which it

is so greatly the interest of an employer to avoid arousing. Where, for

instance, glass or earthenware jars are filled with boiling preserve,

one or two jars in every few hundreds are sure to crack. “The breakage

will probably come to light under the hands of the girl who washes the

jar and sticks on the label, and in some factories she is made to pay.”

I have known a girl charged the full selling price for a seven-pound jar

from which the bits of glass were afterwards picked out and the preserve

reboiled and sold. Many instances of a similar kind from other trades

might be quoted if space allowed.

Other deductions are in the nature of punishment; and of these it may

safely be said that the master or foreman who cannot keep order without

the use of them does not know his business. One of the best employers

and kindest men whom I ever knew said, indignantly, when I asked him

whether there were fines in his factory: “If I could not run a factory

without fines I should be ashamed to run one at all.” My real reason for

the question was that an employer of a very different stamp had within

the same week defended himself against an accusation of excessive fining

by a public declaration that unless he inflicted fines his factory would

be a “bear-garden.” The contrast between these two men—carrying on

industries not at all dissimilar—between the two factories, and, above

all, between the manners, morals, and appearance of the young women

working for the one and of those working for the other, formed one of

the most instructive object lessons which it has ever been my lot to

receive.

Deductions for lateness are sometimes made a source of profit to the

employer. Men who pay a penny for an hour’s work will sometimes deduct

threepence for an hour’s absence; and piece workers—who, of course, lose

pay for the time of absence, are sometimes made to pay in addition. I

have seen the wage-book of an umbrella-coverer, which showed that in the

course of two years she had paid in fines (to the same employer) nearly

£6, chiefly for coming late in the morning. The case was particularly

flagrant, because she was a piece worker, and was not using a power

machine, and because work in this workshop was so irregular that when

she did come early she was often kept sitting unoccupied, while, if

orders happened to come in of an afternoon, the women were kept late to

fulfil them. Thus, although there might be no work for them, they were

fined if they came late; being piece workers, they were paid nothing for

the time spent in waiting for work, and they were paid at no extra rate

for work done late.

Worst of all, there are factories—though I hope but very few—in which

piece workers, when they have succeeded in making up a total slightly

better than usual, are liable to have the surplus deducted. I have in my

mind a factory where the foreman frequently deducted 1s. or 2s. from a

week’s payment, on the ground that the girl who should have received it

had “earned too much.”

To sum up then: workers in factories and workshops, although they are,

on the whole, better off in respect of hours, and although their lives

cannot at the worst, be so horribly monotonous as can that of the home

worker, are frequently exceedingly ill paid, even in trades demanding

considerable skill: not a few of them are employed in places that are

uncomfortable, unwholesome, or even actually dangerous; their poor wages

are apt to be docked by irritating fines and deductions; they have no

choice as to the companions with whom they spend their days, and they

share with the home worker the constant dread of being left without

employment and without means to pay for lodging or food. These are the

conditions in which hundreds and hundreds of young women in this country

are earning what it is customary to call “their living,” although all of

us are aware that no young woman can really live, in a large town, the

life of a civilised human being upon ten shillings a week or less.

CHAPTER III

SHOP ASSISTANTS, CLERKS, WAITRESSES

The daily life of the shop assistant—Her bedroom—“No pictures, photos,

etc.”—“Anything so left”—The dining-room—Meals—Impossibility of

ever being alone—Long hours—Fines and rules—Examples—Some notes on

health—Baths—Payment—“Premiums” and “intro” goods—“Taking the

book”—Diminished salary with commission on sales—Case of a

milliner’s assistant—The dictum of a draper—Why not domestic

service?—The social grade—Assistants who do not “live in”—Some

Scotch cases—Trade expenses of waitresses—Breakages—Clerks and

bookkeepers—Salaries offered to a competent young woman—Some shops

in fiction—The question of morals.

How many of us, as we sit at ease on the customer’s side of the counter,

reflect upon the life led by the spruce, black-coated young man or the

trim, deft young woman who stands upon the other? For myself, the

elaborate hairdressing of the shop-girl—all those curls and waves and

puffs that represent so much care and time—always sets me thinking of

the same girl before her looking-glass (taking her turn, probably, with

others). The dormitory in which she occupies a place is bare and

unhomelike, all the beds, chairs, and chests of drawers of the same

pattern; the walls unadorned, for the decoration of them is forbidden.

As the rule of one large establishment says, with equal harshness and

bad grammar: “No pictures, photos, etc., allowed to disfigure the walls.

Any one so doing will be charged with the repairs.” The room is chill in

winter and stuffy at all seasons, and her companions are chosen by

chance. Amid such surroundings she combs and rolls and twists with the

skill of a practised lady’s maid, in preparation, not for an evening’s

gaiety, but for a day’s toil. Hastily she crams into the small chest of

drawers which is her sole receptacle all her little apparatus of brush

and comb and curlers and wavers. For what says the rule? “Brushes,

bottles, etc., must not be left about in the room, but put away in the

drawers. Anything so left will be considered done for.” Carefully

dressed as to the head, but very inadequately washed—for baths are too

often lacking and hot water seldom provided in the mornings—the young

lady hurries down to breakfast in a dining-room which has the same

impersonal, depressing character as the dormitory. Too often it is a

basement room, and sometimes infested by black beetles. Here, among a

crowd of companions, she takes her meal, consisting in the great

majority of cases, of bread and butter and weak tea.

Twenty or twenty-five minutes later the assistant must be in the shop,

where, again among a crowd of fellow workers, she remains till the

midday dinner time. In many, indeed in most, shops the space behind the

counter is too narrow, and the assistant is jostled every time another

passes her. To a tired woman with aching back and feet the repetition of

this discomfort grows, towards the end of the day, almost intolerable.

The work itself is sometimes by no means light; in some departments the

boxes that have to be lifted down from high “fixtures” are of

considerable weight; the exhibiting of such things as mantles or coats

and skirts involves much carrying to and fro of heavy garments; so that

a young woman may well be physically exhausted by closing time.

Nervously exhausted she will surely be if the day has been busy, for the

whole of her occupation is a strain upon the nerves. She has to confront

strangers all day long; to touch without damaging numbers of articles,

often of a delicate kind; to fill up a number of forms, the omission of

any one of which will bring upon her reproof and probably a fine. She is

never alone. She eats her dinner to an accompaniment of clatter and

chatter in the same dull dining-room where she breakfasted. In many

shops that meal is neither good nor sufficient; and even if good the

food is monotonous. Each day of the week has generally its appointed

bill of fare. “In many houses the assistants know what the dinner will

be to-morrow, to-morrow week, to-morrow month, to-morrow year. I have an

Islington shop in my mind where the menu for years past has been this:—

Sunday: Pork.

Monday: Beef, hot.

Tuesday: Beef, cold.

Wednesday: Mutton, hot.

Thursday: Mutton, cold.

Friday: Beef, hot.

Saturday: Beef, cold, and resurrection pie.

On Thursday there is a roly-poly pudding, or stewed fruit densely

thickened with sago.

At a large Clapham house the week is mapped out thus:—

Monday: Mutton, hot.

Tuesday: Beef, hot.

Wednesday: Mutton, hot.

Thursday: Beef, cold.

Friday: Fish.

Saturday: Beef.[18]

These meals are often supplemented by private purchases; in some houses

the cook is allowed to supply extras at a price; in others the

assistants may bring in food; in yet others there is a refreshment bar

at which they may and do purchase food. In some establishments they are

actually fined for leaving any food on the plate.

From dinner the shop assistant returns, generally after a bare half

hour, to the counter. An extra interval of even ten minutes to be passed

in rest and solitude would be precious, and even the institution-like

dormitory would be a welcome refuge. But, no; rare indeed is the “house

of business” in which the assistant is allowed to enter his or her own

bedroom during the day, except by special permission from the

shopwalker.

For tea, which affords a welcome break at about five o’clock, a quarter

of an hour or twenty minutes will, as a rule, be allotted, and the meal

will in most cases consist of tea and ready-cut bread and butter. After

tea work will go on again till closing time. That happy hour varies

enormously according to the locality and nature of the shop. In the West

End of London most shops are closed by seven, and on Saturdays by two;

but in poorer districts shops will habitually be kept open until 9.30,

and on Saturdays until much later.

When the shop has been cleared of customers the business of tidying up

and covering in for the night begins. After that comes supper, rather a

Spartan meal as a rule; and then—then, the assistant is free till 11

P.M., or on Saturdays till 12. Fifteen minutes after that hour the gas

of the firm is turned out, and no private light must be kept burning.

“Any one having a light after that time will be discharged.” The “young

lady” may now sleep, if she can, in her narrow bed, with her companions

around her, until the morning’s bell calls her to rise, wash and

dress—still not alone—and begin another day like the last.

In lower-class shops the assistant does not always have even her bed to

herself, and has, of course, no choice as to the companion who shares

it. In such shops, where the hours are long, many young women never,

except on Sundays or holidays, go out of doors in the daylight. What

wonder that they grow anæmic, that they suffer continually from

headaches and indigestion and from all the long train of woes that lie

in wait for the overworked, underfed, and shut-in women.

In the matter of hours, of food, and of restrictions, young men are no

better off than young women. They also are subject to fines for every

petty error, and to a code of rules covering every detail of life and

work. I have inspected several such codes, and very curious reading I

have found them. I do not remember any instance in which the number of

rules was less than 50. Mr Whiteley’s, at the time when I saw them, were

159; those of another shop in the same district ran up to 198. Here are

a few sample rules, taken almost at random: “Young men coming to

business with dirty boots, soiled shirts or collars, etc., and young

ladies with soiled collars or cuffs, or otherwise appearing in business

in an untidy manner, fine 3d.” Of course the washing of these immaculate

collars, cuffs, and shirts is paid for by the wearer. “Gossiping,

standing in groups, or lounging about in an unbusinesslike manner, fine

3d.” “Assistants must introduce at least two articles to each customer,

fine 2d.” “Unnecessary talking and noise in bedrooms is strictly

prohibited, fine 6d.” “For losing copy of rules, 2d.” “For

unbusinesslike conduct, 6d.”[19]

It is needless to dwell upon the nagging, ungenerous tone that marks

such rules as these. That their harassing character helps towards that

collapse of health and nerves which is so frequent among women shop

assistants, I feel persuaded; and it is more than probable the abolition

of “living-in” with all its accompanying petty annoyances would lead to

a marked improvement in the health of the whole class.[20]

Here are a few notes upon the question of health made by a trustworthy

observer at close quarters.[21]

_A._ “During the fifteen weeks I spent at ——’s, three girls in my

department had to leave on account of illness. The department was

entered through others, and had no street door. In summer it was so

oppressively hot that even customers often complained. Out of the

sixteen assistants I worked with, one was anæmic, one had varicose

veins, one had a chronic cough, one chronic indigestion; all suffered

from lassitude and headache, and four frequently lost their voices

through weakness. One of those who left broke down from extreme

weakness, and had to give up altogether. Another was the case of

varicose veins. A vein burst, and the girl was taken to the hospital,

where she was told she must not stand much. She could not give up

business, however, and now wears elastic stockings above and below the

knee on both legs. Anæmia was common. At my table at dinner there were

six persons with the same colourless lips, leaden skins, and hollow

eyes. This house compares favourably with most business houses in

London.”

_B._ “I very clearly remember some very hot days ... behind the fancy

counter of a West-End house. The atmosphere was filled with fluff and

dust, the very board floors seemed to scorch one’s feet, and the effort

to drag a heavy lace box out of the fixtures made one faint and giddy.

One day my companion at the counter gave a little gasp and collapsed on

a heap of collar-boxes. The shopwalker carried her out of the shop to

the housekeeper’s room, and in about half an hour she regained

consciousness. In another half hour she was at the counter again. It was

only the heat and the standing! That night when we went to bed she

showed me her blistered feet and told me they had been very painful

during the day. She had been unable to bathe them for three days, for

there had only been enough water in the bedroom for washing in the

morning, and she hadn’t time to wash her feet then.”

_C._ “Only strong girls can manage to keep a berth in this house for any

length of time. Ailments: weakness, anæmia, and fainting attacks, with

frequent headaches and other symptoms of a low state of health.

Underground dining-room lit with gas; a damp unpleasant room. In summer

it is very close and infested with black beetles. The shops are warmed

with gas in winter.”

_D._ “The shops of this firm are bitterly cold in winter, as there is no

artificial heat. The assistants get thoroughly chilled and are not

allowed a fire in the sitting-room unless the weather is exceptionally

cold. Sanitary accommodation objectionable.”

The hours of work are in some localities very long. I have known of

shops in poor districts that remained open on Saturdays till 11, 11.30

or 12; and cases are cited by credible witnesses of 12.30 as the

Saturday closing time. Tobacconists’ and sweet shops are often open on

Sundays, and assistants employed in them are liable to a seven days’

week. On the other hand, in shops that are never open on a Sunday there

is often a tendency to discourage the presence of the assistants on the

premises during Sundays. It used to be not an uncommon practice actually

to turn the assistants out, from closing time on Saturday till Sunday

night or Monday morning; but it is a good many years now since I have

met with any instance of this. The cruelty and meanness of this form of

economy are sufficiently obvious; yet I have known it practised by a

draper who was a churchwarden and who was greatly surprised at receiving

from his vicar earnest remonstrances upon the subject.

Sad to say, a bath or bathroom is by no means regarded by employers as a

necessity. There are still houses of good repute in which the

assistants, male and female, have nothing but a basin in which to wash.

On the very day that I write these words a letter is published in the

_Daily News_ from a shop assistant who cites the case of “a large house

in the West-End where hundreds of young men and women ‘live in,’ and not

a single bath is provided for them.... When the poor assistant feels

inclined to take a bath he has to take it before the public baths close

at eight o’clock; and as there is no fire in the sitting-room he is

obliged to go straight to bed to avoid catching cold on a cold winter’s

night after taking his bath.”[22]

The salaries both of men and women are poor. The shopwalker and the

buyer may, in some instances, receive handsome salaries; but for the

ordinary saleswoman, £35 a year is high pay; indeed, there are many

young men receiving no more than £20 or £25. Out of this income the

assistant has to keep up the required standard of appearance, providing

black coats or gowns, as the case may be, and spotless starched linen.

Often the collar and cuffs of the young lady are of a regulation pattern

that may perhaps not suit her again if she goes into another house.

Towels are not generally included in the furnishing of the bedrooms; the

purchase and washing of these come out of the assistant’s pocket.

These wages are supposed to be supplemented by “premiums,” and the

subject of premiums is not without interest for the customer. Certain

goods, which for some reason it is particularly desired to sell, are

“premiumed,” _i.e._ a small commission is given to the assistant who

effects a sale of them. The premium, which is in proportion to the

selling price, is generally but a small sum. Half a crown is about the

highest figure, and would represent a purchase running to some pounds.

On small things the premium may be as low as a halfpenny. The existence

of premiums explains in great measure the annoyance to which all of us

have been subjected by the endeavours of an assistant to force upon us

goods for which we have not asked—goods known behind the counter as

“intro” (or introduced) goods. A rule quoted above shows that there are

shops in which an assistant is bound to press two “intro” articles, at

least, upon every customer. To dispose largely of “intro” goods is

obviously to the assistant’s interest, not only because the premiums

make a welcome addition to his small income, but also because the

disposal of these articles is viewed with favour by his superior

officers. To the customer who knows what she wants and is anxious to

spend no more than the needful time and money in getting it, “intro”

goods are an irritation and a burden—especially if she is sufficiently

behind the scenes to know their significance to the girl or youth who

compulsorily obtrudes them upon her. Such customers are apt to forget

the great commercial truth that shops exist not to supply the needs of

the public but to fill the pockets of the shopkeeper.

Nor is the premium the only instrument of pressure applied to the shop

assistant. There is, in most establishments, an unwritten law that each

assistant must, each week, sell goods to a certain amount. That total

goes by the name of the “book”; and each young man and young woman is

aware that repeated failure to “take” his or her “book” will be followed

by dismissal. One very capable employer has a different method. He

engages the assistant at a fixed salary; and when she has been at work

for a couple of months, she is informed that for the future her salary

will be diminished by a substantial deduction, and that she will receive

a commission of 1¼ per cent. upon her sales. The assistants are said not

to keep a reckoning of their commission, but to be of opinion that they

rather gain than lose. In the “wools” department, where sales would not

generally run to high figures, £10 was deducted from the £30 a year of

one assistant, and £8 from the £28 of another. From a salary of £35 in

the underclothing showroom, no less than £23 was taken off.

There are houses in which a list of weekly “takings” is posted up; and

some in which the names that stand low in the list are marked by the

employer with signs of disapprobation. To be a good salesman or

saleswoman is to be an adept in the art of inducing fellow creatures to

make purchases that they did not intend to make. Indeed, there are shops

where failure to effect a sale, if it occurs three times running, means

dismissal. I knew an instance (a good many years ago) in which a girl

was dismissed at a moment’s notice from a London millinery shop, because

she had failed to cajole a customer into buying any bonnet. She was

“living-in”; her home was not in London; the dismissal took place

between 5 and 6 o’clock, and she did not know of any lodging to which

she could go. Fortunately a policeman whom she consulted was able to

direct her to one of London’s many safe havens for young women. But what

of the employer, who, suddenly, and late in the day, turned a young girl

out of his house into the unknown world of London, her only fault being

that another woman had found in his shop no bonnet to suit her—and had

been resolute enough to resist buying one that did not?

It is related of a certain provincial draper that seeing a customer

depart having made no purchase, he called up the assistant who had

waited upon her. “Why did not that lady buy anything?” “We hadn’t what

she wanted, sir.” “Anybody can sell people what they want. Remember that

I keep you to sell people what they don’t want.” That in a nutshell is

the present condition of retail shopkeeping—especially, perhaps, in the

department of drapery; and that condition is one reason why some

customers find it preferable to deal at co-operative stores. The

business of the assistant in a private shop is to sell, reluctantly

perhaps, but under stern compulsion, articles that the shopkeeper

desires sold to a customer who does not really desire to buy them. Can

any employment be imagined more straining to the nerves, or more trying

to the temper of a refined and delicate minded person? And there are

many shop assistants of refinement and of delicate feeling; some of them

daughters of clergymen and of other professional men who have died

leaving their girls unprovided for.

At this point some reader will certainly be found to demand why these

young ladies do not, in a body, abandon the shop and enter domestic

service. The answer is a simple one enough. These girls, like the vast

majority of their compatriots, will endure much hardship rather than

lose caste; and, whatever may be the opinion of the wage-payers, there

can be no doubt that among wage-earners domestic service ranks as a

low-caste occupation. The middle class mother who will not send her

little girl to a public elementary school, the middle class father who

would rather see his son making a small income as a professional man

than a large income as a tradesman, ought rather to applaud than to

condemn the “young lady in business” who refuses to exchange her black

uniform and her title of “Miss” for the cap and apron and the name

without a handle of the domestic servant.

The question of class distinction has, as Mr Charles Booth has pointed

out, a marked influence upon the choice of employment; and this

influence, the authors of _Women’s Work and Wages_ truly observe has led

to curious economic anomalies, which are generally beneficial to the

employers.[23]

An observation somewhat to the same effect may be found on pp. 67, 68 of

_Women in the Printing Trades_.[24]

In Scotland “living-in” is not customary, but the advantages of freedom

have been, in the past, sometimes counterbalanced by serious drawbacks.

Here are some instances from one of Miss Irwin’s reports:—

“In some of these shops the girls are kept on duty continuously; this is

more especially the case where only one girl is employed.... In scarcely

any of the shops in this district is lavatory accommodation provided.

Witness said she knew of drapery shops where the hours are from 8 A.M.

to 9 P.M., and in some cases to 10 P.M.; while they are kept open till

11 P.M. and 12 midnight on Saturdays. In these shops the girls are

allowed half an hour off for breakfast and one hour for dinner. Total

hours worked per week 82 and 89 (not including meal hours). No seats are

provided and there is no sanitary accommodation. Witness stated that

there are frequent cases of girls completely breaking down in health in

these shops.”

“Witness 504 is about 24 years of age. She is saleswoman and manager in

a confectioner’s shop and is paid 7s. per week. The shop she keeps is an

East end branch belonging to a leading firm in this trade. The shops of

this firm in better localities are closed at 8 P.M. In the other the

following are the hours: open 9.30 A.M., close at 10 P.M. Saturdays,

open at 8.30 A.M., close at 11 P.M. As witness has sole charge of the

shop she cannot leave it to take her meals, or for any other purpose.

Her dinner is brought to her and she takes it as she can; tea is taken

in the same way. Witness has in all nine holidays in the year.”

“Witness 418 had been engaged as an assistant in a tea shop and gave the

following evidence: Her hours were from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M., five days in

the week; and from 9 A.M. to 11.30 P.M. on Saturdays. Witness had sole

charge of the shop and was not allowed to go out for meals, except on

such days as her employer, a commercial traveller, and seldom at home,

came to relieve her; frequently she was obliged to fast all day, and

finally she was obliged to leave on account of her health breaking down.

Total hours worked per day, 12; Saturdays, 14½; per week 74½ hours.”[25]

In restaurants, both in London and elsewhere, the hours are sometimes

excessive. I have known instances of girls who were employed at the

refreshment rooms of stations who were not allowed to leave until after

the last train had gone at night—which meant that they had to walk home

every night after midnight.

Miss Irwin, in her evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords

upon the early closing of shops, quotes a very similar instance: “In

another baker’s shop where six girls were employed, the hours were from

6.45 A.M. to 8 P.M., and to 11.30 on Saturdays. The girls had to provide

their own food, and all meals, including breakfast, were made and

partaken of on the premises, the girls having the use of the kitchen for

this. No regular time was allowed for meals, and they were kept running

backwards and forwards to the shop all the time. Very often they were

kept beyond the nominal closing hour of 11.15 P.M. and lost the last car

home. This was a great hardship to the girls who lived at a distance. My

informant said: ‘When I get home, I just sit down and cry with fatigue.’

The firm have a number of branch shops. There are in all twenty-eight

girls employed in them.”[26]

The nominal maximum hours in restaurants visited by her are given by

Miss Irwin as follows:—

“In 3 cases 16 hours on one or more days in the week 96 hours.

„ 1 „ 15½ „ „ „ 93 „

„ 1 „ 12 to 17 „ „ „ 93 „

„ 1 „ 15 „ „ „ 90 „

„ 2 „ 16 „ „ „ 87 „

„ 1 „ 14½ „ „ „ 87 „

„ 2 „ 13 to 14 „ „ „ 79 „

„ 4 „ 12½ to 15½ „ „ „ 78 „

„ 1 „ 17 „ „ „ 77 „

„ 3 „ 12 to 12½ „ „ „ 72 to 75 „

„ 1 „ 13 „ „ „ 70 „

“These,” adds Miss Irwin, “are the _nominal_ hours, but ... in several

cases the information was taken from the women assistants at a later

hour than the nominal closing time.”[27]

The expenses of a waitress are often considerable; she almost always has

to pay for the washing of the aprons, collars and cuffs that are a part

of her uniform, and in most cases to provide them. As nearly every

company has its different pattern the articles are apt to become useless

when employment is changed. Moreover in some restaurants and

refreshment-rooms, all breakages, whether made by them or by customers,

are paid for by the assistants. I have known girls subject to this

deduction who complained that they received no statement as to how the

amount deducted was made up. That the sum is in some cases not trifling

is shown by a newspaper correspondence that occurred in the year 1890. A

representative of Messrs Spiers & Pond, Ltd., wrote to a newspaper

complaining that the amounts habitually deducted at Waterloo Station had

been overstated, and assigned 1s. 9½d. as the weekly average for each

assistant. This being the firm’s own estimate, there can be no injustice

in quoting it. When we remember that the wages of waitresses average,

roughly, from 7s. to 14s. a week, less 8d. or 9d. for washing, we shall

probably regard an average deduction of 1s. 9½d. a week as by no means

inconsiderable. A certain proportion of breakages is manifestly

incidental to the refreshment trade and the renewal of crockery is as

much one of its natural expenses as the renewal of fuel. Either of these

items might just as fairly be laid upon the waitresses. It is often made

a reproach to schemes of industrial partnership that the employees share

the profits without sharing the losses. This particular form of

partnership, in which employees bear losses but take no share in gains

seems to have escaped the economists.

In the matters of poor pay, uncertainty of employment and compulsorily

“respectable” clothing, clerks and bookkeepers occupy much the same

position as shop assistants; and when their employment happens to be in

shops, their hours are equally long. A young woman known to me, a highly

competent clerk and book-keeper, showed me letters from employers with

whom she was in treaty. In one case she was to be cashier and

book-keeper in a very well known and flourishing shop; she was to be at

her post until 11 P.M. on Saturdays and until 8 (or it may have been

8.30) on other evenings. Her pay was to be 8s. a week, living out. I may

add that shortly afterwards I myself saw this shop open one evening, not

Saturday, at nearly 9 o’clock. The other post, again that of cashier and

book-keeper, was in the office of an extremely wealthy wholesale City

firm, where thousands of pounds would have passed through her hands

weekly and where the book-keeping would have been very complex. The

salary offered was 14s. a week.

Reviewing this chapter, I see that I have dealt almost exclusively with

large establishments. In smaller ones and especially in poor districts

the food and housing may be worse, and the payment will almost certainly

be lower. On the other hand the regulations will in all likelihood be

less rigid and sometimes the relations between employer and employed

will be quite human and even homelike.

Of the general conditions in a thoroughly low class shop, Mr Maxwell’s

_Vivien_ presents a picture faithful probably in most particulars. A

more typical case, illuminated by a spark of real genius, is portrayed

in Mr Wells’s _Kipps_; and there is an admirable vignette in Gissing’s

_The Odd Women_.

It is only just to add that neither the somewhat exhaustive

investigations made under the auspices of the Women’s Industrial Council

nor such information as, during a considerable course of years, I have

been able to collect personally, confirm those accusations of prevalent

immorality which might be suggested by such novels as Zola’s _Au Bonheur

des Dames_, and which are freely made in some quarters. No doubt

instances must from time to time occur in which a shopwalker or an

employer makes use of his position as a weapon of seduction; but such

instances are certainly the exception. There may also possibly have

existed, somewhere, at some time, a basis of fact for that persistent

legend of the employer who offers to young women the free use of a latch

key by way of compensation for low payment.

For the large majority of shop girls, however, the temptations of shop

life take the form not of illicit lovemaking within the shop but rather

of continued dulness, driving and discomfort, constantly pressing them

towards any offered means of escape. The passion that really prevails in

the modern shop is the passion for money, which, no less than more lurid

passions preferred by the romance writer, devours the youth and lives of

girls. It does not, however, consciously fall under the classification

of the decalogue, and the destroyers of these victims often honestly

believe themselves to be men of singular righteousness and virtue, the

pillars and bulwarks of an industrious, commercial nation. The feudal

baron, not improbably regarded himself in no very different light.

_Note._ The daily papers of the week in which this chapter was written

contained two cases that corroborate the statements made in it; and

that show the evils described to be by no means matters of the past. I

give them verbatim, except that in the second case I have concealed

the name of the accused lad.

George A. Evans, coffee-shop keeper, of Goldsmith’s Row, Hackney Road,

was summoned at Old Street for breaches of the Shop Hours Act by

employing two young persons as waitresses for more than 74 hours in

any one week.

Mr D. Carter, for the London County Council, explained that girls

under the age of 18 were denominated “young persons,” and while they

might be worked 12 hours for the first five days of the week, and 14

hours on a Saturday, all meal times were to be counted in as part of

the employment.

The defendant was found employing a girl aged 17 years and 7 months,

and another 16 years and 2 months, and both had in the week ending May

26th worked 85 hours each. Further, the defendant had no notice of the

hours of labour, as allowed by the Act, exhibited in his shop. He was

also summoned for that offence.

Defendant pleaded guilty, and Mr Dickinson imposed fines and costs

amounting to £4, 18s.—_Daily News_, 23rd August 1906.

A well dressed clerk, named Y. Z., aged 16, was charged at Marylebone

with having embezzled £2, 2s. belonging to his employers Ryland & Co.,

auctioneers of Edgeware Road. His duty was to collect rents, and it

was alleged that his defalcations amounted in all to £7, 10s. In

extenuation of the offence he pointed out that his wages only came to

12s. a week, out of which he had to pay 4s. rent and 2s. travelling

expenses, leaving him but 6s. a week with which to clothe and feed

himself. He took the £2, 2s. intending to pay it back, but he was

found out before he could do so. His hours were from 9 to 6. Mr Paul

Taylor said he was at a loss to know how Z. could have sustained life

on the small salary he was receiving. He remanded him to give the

missionary an opportunity of seeing what could be done for

him.—_Tribune_, 24th August 1906.

CHAPTER IV

TRAFFIC WORKERS

The traffic worker and the public safety—“Privileged

cabs”—Railway workers—The hours of signalmen—The seven day

week—“Blacklisting”—London’s omnibus men—Paying the police

for leave to work—“The rest of the evening”—What is required

of a driver—What is required of a conductor—Wages stopped

for fogs, fires and processions—Curiosities of an “Accident

Club”—How a motor man is “passed” for a licence—The “journey

system”—What it means to the passenger—What it means to the

men—Breakdowns—Wages in the garage—3d. a day for

uniform—“The bar up”—The best employer in London—Tram men

under the London County Council.

In these days of much journeying, there is scarcely one of us whose life

and safety do not depend, again and again, upon the skill, the

steadiness, the nerve and the judgment of the men who steer our public

conveyances. Not only in their own interests, therefore, but in the

interest of public security, it is essential that the men upon whom

rests so vast a responsibility should not be overworked, underpaid nor

harassed. The sad fact is, however, that the vast majority of them are

both overworked and harassed; and that, if not the majority, at least a

very appreciable minority are decidedly underpaid.

Of cabmen I do not propose to speak; the subject of their hours,

conditions and rates of pay being so intricate that anything like a

general view is difficult to present. I will content myself with

indicating, by means of a paragraph from a Parliamentary Report, the

kind of exactions to which cabmen are exposed. “Privileged cabs” are

those admitted, upon payment of a fixed charge, to ply in railway

stations. It appears that the lowest charge made by any company

maintaining the privileged cab system is 1s. per week. The smallest

number of cabs is “15, at Clapham Junction, and the largest number of

cabs, 290, at Paddington, which at 3s. per week provide the Great

Western Railway with the substantial sum of £2262 per annum.”[28]

The railway workers of Great Britain are, as a class, men of excellent

character, intelligent, careful, attentive and worthy of the trust

reposed in them. They have a strong trade union, and their secretary now

sits in Parliament. Yet this body of grown men, most of them voters, was

so unable to secure from its employers a reasonably short working day

that the legislature, unwilling though it has always shown itself to any

direct regulation of the working hours of men, felt compelled in the

interests of public safety, to intervene; and a special order of the

Board of Trade has, for many years past, limited the hours of railway

men. Yet, even now, there are porters, generally at small stations, who

are on duty for 16 hours a day; and 8 hours, which should be the longest

day of any signalman, are extended, except in the busiest boxes, to 10

and, in some cases, to 12. Many a porter works seven days a week for

16s., perhaps at some small station where “tips” are infrequent. In this

connection it is worthy of note that such companies as pay additionally

for Sunday labour find it possible to do with much fewer workers on

Sundays. Of how much improvement the railway man’s lot is still

susceptible may be judged from the programme of the union, drawn up at

the close of 1906, and about to be submitted to the various companies.

Its demands are as follows:—

An eight-hour day for trainmen, shunters and signalmen.

No railway employee to work more than ten hours a day.

An increase of 2s. per week in the wages of all grades receiving less

than 30s. per week.

Sunday labour to be paid for at the rate of time and a half; and

overtime at the rate of time and a quarter.[29]

The worst form of oppression, however, to which the railway man is

exposed is one very difficult to prove and very easy to deny:

“blacklisting.” A railway servant, on leaving the employ of one company,

(whether at the company’s instance or at his own) receives no written

character, nor can he refer any intending employer to the report of his

immediate superior. Enquiry must be made at headquarters; and it seldom

happens that a man who, for whatever cause, has left the service of one

company, succeeds in getting taken on by another. The men are convinced

that a deliberate understanding exists, and this conviction leads many

of them, unwillingly subservient, to endure the ills they have, rather

than face loss of employment and of pay. Any trade that is in the

hands—as the railway industry of course is—of comparatively few and very

powerful employers is especially liable to develop the tyranny of

“blacklisting.” The existence of the practice is almost invariably

denied, and can, in the nature of things, very seldom be substantiated;

but it is possible to remark that, as a matter of experience, one

company does not engage the man who has previously worked for another.

The men know, experimentally, that to leave their present employers

means, in the great majority of cases, leaving the industry altogether.

How much such knowledge must sap a man’s independence, how much it must

try his nerves and his temper, it is, surely, unnecessary to insist.

The railway workers have, in the course of years, conquered the immense

difficulties that beset the organising of men whose hours are long and

varying, and whose work brings them rather apart than together. Other

workers, whose employment is closely akin to theirs, are still involved

in those early struggles which seem to the men engaged in them almost

hopeless. Comparing their position with that of the railway men, we

shall see, once again, how great are the benefits which organisation can

bestow, and how powerless are even skilled and licensed workmen unless

backed by a strong union.

The omnibus men of London form a group of workers familiar to all

London’s citizens. The most tedious of “blocks” has been enlivened for

us by their “chaff”; the blackest of fogs and the most scorching of

dog-days have failed to destroy their patience and their good temper.

With the advent of the motor omnibus, however, a change has become

apparent which fills observant Londoners with foreboding. The motor man

is, to put it plainly, snappish; he hustles his passengers in and out;

he not infrequently turns a blind eye to the breathless pursuer; and he

is apt to be caustic in remarks upon the slowness of the aged or the

unwieldy traveller. To this impatience the jarring motion and irritating

jangle of the car may perhaps contribute; but the main reason of it may,

I believe, be found in the conditions under which the drivers and

conductors of motor omnibuses mostly work.

It may be of some interest to compare the conditions of three different

groups of men, all of whom are busied in the work of carrying London’s

inhabitants to and fro; especially since their cases exemplify a

transition which is in course of progress around us.

All drivers and conductors are compelled to pay for leave to exercise

their calling. It is considered that the security of the passenger

requires to be safeguarded, and that no person should be allowed to

officiate upon a public conveyance unless he has been licensed to do so.

In London the ultimate licensing authority is the Home Secretary, to

whom Section 8 of the Stage and Hackney Carriages (Metropolis) Act of

1869 has allowed a power little less than autocratic. These are the

terms of it: “A licence to the driver or conductor of a hackney or stage

carriage may be granted at such price, on such conditions, be in such

form, be subject to revocation or suspension in such events and

generally be dealt with in such manner as the said Secretary of State

may by order prescribe, subject to this provision, that any licence

shall, if not revoked or suspended, be in force for a year, and there

shall be paid in respect thereof to the Receiver of the Metropolitan

Police Fund such sum not exceeding 5s. as the said Secretary of State

may prescribe.” Successive Home Secretaries have seen fit to fix the

maximum charge of 5s. for each year’s licence; and between the 1st of

April, 1905 and the 31st of March, 1906, the Commissioners of Police

received as many sums of 5s. as sufficed to make up a total of £7928,

10s.[30]

Of the manner in which the police authorities exercise their power

something will appear later on; but, apart from any question of

administration, there is surely some injustice in taxing the men for a

licence demanded not at all in their interest, but solely in that of

their passengers. That the owners of public conveyances, who derive a

profit from running them on the public roads, and who in doing so assist

to wear out those roads, should pay for a licence may be not

inequitable; but that the paid servants of such owners should be taxed,

as a condition of entering that service, can hardly, when judicially

considered, be pronounced defensible, and it is not surprising that the

Select Committee should advise alteration. “The theory of the Home

Office,” says the Report, “seems to be that, in view of the special

benefits derived by the cab and omnibus trade from its connection with

the police, it is only fair that the trade should be specially taxed for

the maintenance of the police.... There seem, however, to be few other

classes of the community who are charged in this way for their own

police inspection, and in our opinion, the system requires

modification.”[31]

The drivers and conductors of horse omnibuses (though there have been

changes in their conditions) are still employed upon the system which

was once the only one in vogue, and are, at least nominally, paid by the

day. The length of day varies somewhat on different routes, but the

average is about fifteen hours—or very nearly twice the length of the

working day in the best managed industries. Moreover, the omnibus man

works as a rule thirteen days in a fortnight. His share of leisure is

pretty well described by the reply of an elderly driver who, in the

hearing of my informant, was asked by a passenger, at something after 11

P.M., whether this was the last journey. “Yes, sir,” the man answered

mildly, “this is our last journey—and the rest of the evening we have to

ourselves.”

Out of his nominal daily wage of 7s. or 8s., the driver has to provide

rugs, capes and whips. Custom requires of him “tips” to horse-keepers,

pullers-up, &c., the total of which is estimated at not far short of a

shilling a day. In only a few cases are the men near enough to their

homes at dinner time to be met by a small son or daughter carefully

conveying “Father’s dinner” in a covered dish or basin—an economy

possible to very many cabmen. Their meal, on this account, inevitably

costs them rather more than if it could be prepared at home; and the

same increase of cost attends their tea. Less than two meals in 15

hours, a man who works in the open air can scarcely do with.

Superhuman punctuality is expected of the omnibus. Should it arrive two

or three minutes late—or two or three minutes early—at one of its

“points,” its driver may be suspended from work for from two to seven

days. The conductor, whose nominal wage is 6s. a day, is liable to be

suspended or discharged if his takings fall below the average. When a

journey is stopped by fog, fire or the occurrence of a procession, the

proportion of pay for that journey is deducted from the wage of driver

and conductor alike, even although they may not succeed in bringing the

omnibus into the yard until after the usual hour, or even if, as happens

occasionally, they may have to stay out all night with it. As one of the

fraternity sardonically remarked to me: “It’s a new experience for them,

that’s all.”

At the present moment, the drivers and conductors of horse omnibuses are

face to face with the prospect of a lowered wage. On one line, there has

been a reduction of one journey _per diem_ (the working day having

previously been one of 16 hours) and a reduction in the day’s pay of 1s.

6d. for the driver (from 8s. to 6s. 6d.) and of 1s. for the conductor.

It is fully expected that men on other lines will, before long,

experience the same change.

It will, I am sure, surprise many readers to learn that the drivers and

conductors of omnibuses are expected to defray the expenses of

accidents. The men employed by one large company subscribe to a fund for

the purpose of meeting such expenses. I cannot learn that any direct

rule obliges them to belong to this so-called “Drivers’ and Conductors’

Accident Club,” but they are of opinion that any man who declined to

belong would not find himself, for long, in the employ of the company. I

have been fortunate enough to inspect the rules of this club, and have

carefully preserved a copy. It is a document equally remarkable for its

oppressiveness and for its grammar. The preamble runs thus: “This

Club ... is for the purpose of creating a fund by which the expenses so

frequently arising from accidental causes may be met without allowing

these expenses to fall unjustly upon the company, or subjecting the

individuals who may be the immediate cause of such expenses to perilous

and embarrassing circumstances, and, be it further understood, that each

Driver and Conductor are responsible for all damages to property or

person to the amount of Ten Pounds, and any Driver or Conductor not

conforming with the Club Rules will not be allowed any assistance from

the Funds thereof for any accident they may meet with.” Rule 1 requires

“Each Driver to pay 2s. entrance fee as soon as he is passed eligible to

drive an Omnibus belonging to the Club. Each Conductor to pay 1s.

entrance fee. Each Service Driver to pay 1s. per week contribution. Each

Service Conductor to pay 6d. per week contribution.” Rules 3 and 5 are

worth quoting. “Whatever accident may occur by any Driver and Conductor,

whether regular or spare men, he shall pay towards such accident not

less than one quarter of the amount the accident may cost the Club to

settle. If not able to pay the whole of such fourth in one payment it

must be paid by instalments of not less than 2s. 6d. per week. Should it

be further proved that such accident was brought about by intoxication

or any kind of neglect, the Committee shall, at their next meeting, have

power to levy any further sum they agree upon, and, whatever sum fixed,

may be paid by weekly instalments by such sums as may be agreed upon by

the Committee.” “Should any Member of the Club leave or be discharged

from the Company’s service within three months of his becoming a Member,

such Member shall forfeit all claims upon the Club funds.” Rule 7, after

providing for quarterly meetings, proceeds: “The fourth meeting to take

place on the most convenient date in December, when after putting away

as reserve fund, not less than £40, any surplus remaining to be equally

divided among the Members in accordance with what they may be entitled

to.” Rule 9 is, perhaps, the most remarkable piece of grammatical

construction that ever presented itself under the guise of English. “Any

Member having left the Club and is indebted thereto shall not be

entitled to share, unless all arrears be paid up. Any Member having left

the Club and is entitled to share must apply for same within the first

calendar month of the ensuing year, if not his share will be lost and

will be placed to the credit of the Club for the ensuing year.”

Thus the nominal wage of every driver in this company’s service is

really reduced by 1s. weekly, and that of every conductor by 6d.; while

a fund of “not less than £40,” saved up out of these men’s earnings, is

held in hand to indemnify the company for possible accidents, whether

such accidents are caused by the fault of the men or not. The conductor,

indeed, can seldom be even remotely responsible for an accident; yet the

conductor, no less than the driver, is made to pay this tax. It would be

interesting to know whether the law would uphold a man who should refuse

to pay anything at all towards the cost of an accident not caused by

neglect or misconduct. He would, of course, lose all chance of further

employment in the trade; but he might conceivably put an end, once and

for all, to these exactions.

It will hardly appear, from all that has been said, that the life of the

omnibus man is extraordinarily enviable; yet his situation is decidedly

preferable to that of the man who exchanges the society of a pair of

horses for that of a snorting and self-willed motor. Like the horse

driver, the motor driver must secure a licence, for which, when he gets

it, he must pay 5s. yearly to the Police Commissioners; and if

possessing a horse licence he desires to retain it he must pay an

additional 5s. per annum. Moreover, when he enters his application, he

has also to pay a fee of 5s. to the London County Council for

registration. The Commissioners have been known to refuse motor licences

to men who have been driving for years, but whose licence shows an

endorsement, sometimes of distant date and sometimes for an offence of

trivial character. To the lay mind it appears that a man, whose

misdemeanours were not too great to make him unfit for driving a horse

omnibus, is likely to be a safer driver for a motor than a man from some

other calling, quite inexperienced in the art of threading the maze of

London traffic. In any case it is clearly an injustice that such a man

should not be able to learn, before spending time and money upon special

training, that a licence will not be granted to him. The test of

competence applied is curious but probably effective. A certain

inspector, whose name I refrain from giving, collects a number of

candidates and places himself with one of them on the driving stand of a

motor omnibus, the remainder of the candidates occupying seats as

passengers. The driver, under orders from the inspector, steers the car

hither and thither until such time as his instructor dismisses him to

inaction, and selects another. Not until the party has returned home,

does any man learn his fate. Then the inspector remarks to each as the

case may be: “You have passed,” or “You must come up again.” The fiat of

this gentleman being unchecked, it is well that it appears to be

dictated by justice. Beloved, indeed, of his licencees he is not; but I

found myself hardly able to sympathise with complaints of his unsmiling

disposition. How should a man smile, whose calling in life it is to

imperil his existence at the hands of an endless succession of

unpractised motor drivers? A certain proportion of these candidates are

men who have never driven in the London streets—some of them never on

any road whatever. There is a legend of one, said to have been

originally a shop assistant, who entered upon his career unaware that he

was expected to drive to the left rather than to the right. I have

myself travelled in a motor omnibus the driver of which took the wrong

side of three refuges between Maida Vale and Tottenham Court Road.

Whether ignorance guided his course or a desire to achieve a full

complement of journeys _per diem_ I cannot, of course, tell.

Having secured his licence and an engagement, the motor driver is put

upon a certain route, to perform a shift, not of so many hours, but of

so many journeys. The “journey system,” which is responsible for nearly

all the ill temper and not a few of the accidents that attend the course

of the motor omnibus, is as follows. A certain number of journeys each

day is allotted to each car. Driver and conductor are paid by the

journey, and the required number of journeys is such that only under the

most favourable possible conditions can it be completed. At least one

car in every three will fail in the task. Let us consider, for instance,

the case of certain cars which, at one period, were timed to do four

journeys, but have recently been required to make six in the day. Two

shifts are worked, each set of men being supposed to make three

journeys. Since the very barest measure of time is allowed, the men are

constantly on the strain; they are tempted to take risks, and are

unwilling to pause long enough for the picking up and setting down of

passengers. At the close of the period allowed for the first shift, the

third journey will in all probability not be finished, but it may have

been begun, and will be concluded before the car is brought in. It thus

becomes more impossible than ever for the second set of journeys to be

compressed into the shortened hours left for the second shift, the

rather that the car will very probably have suffered from the strain put

upon it in the endeavour to get out of it the utmost amount of work. Two

journeys may be achieved, in which case the driver may receive from 4s.

to 5s., and the conductor from 3s. to 4s.; or only one may be completed,

in which case the payment of each will be but half as much. Is it

wonderful that the tempers of men working under such conditions display

some uncertainty, nor that accidents are frequent especially in the

latter half of the day? The wonder is that so many cautious City

gentlemen, who obviously regard their own lives as precious, should

continue to entrust their persons to vehicles so precarious.

On some lines, the men work early and late shifts in alternate weeks; on

others, they change twice a week. A driver, working on these terms,

explained to me how, on a certain evening in the week, he came off duty

about midnight, after which time he had to get home, to get himself

clean—no rapid process, as many an amateur motorist well knows—and to

get his supper. Soon after six, next morning, he was due at the garage

to take on his early shift, and was obliged, therefore, to leave home by

about half past five. His next leisure for a meal not arriving until

seven hours later, it behoves him to get his breakfast before he sets

out. How many hours’ rest fall to his share on such occasions, and how

fit he is, in the morning, to assume the responsibility of a motor

omnibus and its complement of passengers, readers may judge for

themselves.

Among other evils arising from this system we may note the way in which

every man’s hand is turned against his comrade. It becomes the interest

of the first shift to snatch time enough for their own journeys, to the

loss of the second shift; while the second shift would be more than

human if they did not resent the time thus lost. The employing company

alone profits by setting up an impossible, or almost impossible, task as

the measure of the day’s payment. By pretending that three journeys

instead of two form the task of one shift of workers, the payment for

each journey can be fixed at one-third instead of at one-half of what

may be reckoned as the wage of a man’s working day.

From the moment when the car breaks down—and how frequently it does so

our own eyes assure us—the payment of its driver and conductor cease.

They must remain by the disabled vehicle until a trolley comes to drag

it away; their period of waiting may stretch into several hours—it may

even extend through the night, but for that part of their time in which

they were not actually conveying passengers they will not receive a

penny. Some companies have indeed a rule upon their code that payment

will be made if the road engineer employed by the firm certifies that

the driver is not responsible for the accident. One can understand that

certificates, the granting of which means money out of pocket to the

company, are not likely to be very lavishly issued by an engineer in the

company’s employ; and there are men who declare that this rule is a dead

letter and that broken journeys are never paid for. Industrially

speaking, the history of the motor omnibus industry in London has been

unfortunate. One, at least, of the firms that appeared early in the

field followed the tactics rendered familiar by the example of American

trusts. It began, as the trust does, by underselling competitors, and

offered the passenger a longer journey for a penny. A hope was probably

entertained that these low fares would deter the older companies from

setting up motor conveyances. The older companies were not deterred; but

they found themselves compelled to compete on their rival’s terms; so

that, for a time, the curious alternative was offered to the Londoner,

of travelling from the Marble Arch to Victoria, either in a slow horse

omnibus, for 2d., or in a quick motor omnibus for 1d. To travel for 1d.

instead of for 2d. is the desire of every passenger; but the

gratification may be bought too dear, and danger is a high price to pay.

How much danger the passenger incurs, who travels in the motor omnibuses

of certain companies may be guessed by persons who have heard—as I

have—the drivers of these vehicles talking among themselves of the

accidents and of the hairbreadth escapes that have formed part of their

own experience. The running into the river of the Barnes omnibus was

foretold, less than a week before its occurrence, as a thing that must,

sooner or later, come to pass. The trained men who face them are fully

aware what risks they are running; and to some of them, no doubt, the

very risk is an attraction. No motor man need complain that modern life

lacks incident and adventure. The passenger, on the other hand, who,

when he sits behind a horse, can see for himself its weakness or its

restiveness, cannot possibly judge the strength or the weakness of

machinery that is not even open to his view. Some omnibuses, no doubt,

are in excellent condition; but it is equally certain that there are

others, the essential parts of which are perilously near to being worn

out. Accumulated experience has convinced even so technically unskilled

an observer as myself that there is at least one company whose vehicles

are not, in themselves, dangerous, and at least one other with whose

habitual passengers a prudent life insurance company should have nothing

to do. In the hands of an unskilled driver, or of a driver rendered

temporarily unskilled by fatigue, by too long a fast, or by too little

sleep, every motor omnibus is dangerous; and every hardship of the men

thus becomes a source of public danger.

The frequency of breakdowns has undoubtedly been increased by the

shortsighted policy of some owners who, for economy’s sake, have

employed in the repairing shop, not qualified engineers, but merely

“fitters,” or even those humbler persons known as “fitters’ mates.” The

lesson of experience, however, seems to be teaching wisdom in this

respect; and the motor companies are learning, as other employers have

learned before them, that to entrust costly property to unskilled hands

comes expensive, however low the wages paid. Meanwhile, we are informed

by the Report of the Select Committee upon the Cabs and Omnibuses

(Metropolitan) Bill, that during the period covered by that Report, 25%

of the cars were on an average always out of use. This means, of course,

that a certain ratio of the men employed upon such cars were always out

of a job. Most of these would be set to various kinds of work in the

garage, their payment while so employed being but 3s. 6d. a day, a rate

representing, for ten hours, less than fourpence an hour. These are

truths which should be recollected when persons familiar only with the

nominal figure of a wage that can hardly ever be earned, talk of the

good pay of motor drivers. Moreover, instances are quoted in which men

have not received even this pittance for the time spent in the garage,

but have been paid only for one day instead of for two or three. By one

company a notice has been posted up that, from the day upon which these

words are written, no work done in the garage will be paid for, unless a

certificate has been obtained from the superintendent of the garage.

It may be remarked that this principle of proportional deduction which

is so dear to the hearts of the companies is not applied in the matter

of the uniform, for which although it never becomes the wearer’s

property a charge of threepence a day is demanded, even though the day

may have been broken and the uniform worn only during an hour or two. A

tale is told of a conductor to whom, the car having come to grief early

in the shift, fourpence was handed as the fraction of wage to which he

was entitled, out of which sum he was requested to hand back threepence

in payment for his uniform. He had not presence of mind enough to reduce

this charge in proportion to the reduction of his own wages, and to

proffer a farthing as the nearest equivalent to one-fifteenth of

threepence, but weakly yielded to the demand and went away with a penny.

At threepence a day and 339 days in a year (_i.e._, deducting 26

Sundays) each man would pay £4, 4s. 3d. for his coat, cap, &c. It would

be interesting to know what price is paid for the articles by the

company.