something about the hours and wages of girls who work at various
trades in the city. Had I known how difficult the task would be, I
should probably never have attempted it. Last time I heard of Mr.
Besant he was sitting in his office, overwhelmed with figures and
facts. He said then that he did not expect to publish anything
about the work of girls and women in the United Kingdom under a
year or eighteen months. I do not wonder at it. Apart from the
method of his inquiry, I know how exceedingly difficult it is to
arrive at the truth; the tact and patience it needs to make such
investigations. Employees and employers take very different views
of the same circumstances; one must listen to both, and then split
the difference.
"There are at the present time absolutely no figures to go upon if
one wishes to learn something about the hours and wages of girls
who follow certain occupations in the city. The factory inspectors
(admirable men, but very much overworked) come, with the most naive
delight, to visit any person who has information to give about the
people over whose interests they are supposed to watch with
fatherly interest. Clergymen shake their heads, or refer one to
homes and charities. One has to find out the truth for one's self.
Both employers and employees must be visited. Even then one must
wait days and weeks to inspire them with confidence, for thus alone
can one obtain a thorough knowledge of things as they really are,
and arrive at facts unbiassed by prejudice.
"So far I have found that there are, at least, two hundred trades
at which girls work in the city. Some employ hundreds of hands, and
some only fifty or sixty. Printers give the greatest amount of
work, perhaps; but there are at least two hundred other occupations
in which girls earn a living; namely, brush-makers, button-makers,
cigarette-makers, electric-light fitters, fur-workers,
India-rubber-stamp machinist, magic-lantern-slide makers,
perfumers, portmanteau-makers, spectacle-makers,
surgical-instrument makers, tie-makers, etc. These girls can be
roughly divided into two classes,--those who earn from 8s. to 14s.,
and those who earn from 4s. to 8s. per week. Taking slack time into
consideration, it is, I think, safe to say that 10s. is the average
weekly wage of the first class, and 4s. 6d. that of the second
class. Their weekly wage often falls below this, and sometimes
rises above it. The hours are almost invariably from 8 A.M. to 7
P.M., with one hour for dinner and a half-holiday on Saturday. I
know few cases in which such girls work less; a good many in which
over-time reaches to ten or eleven at night; a few in which
over-time means all night. There is little to choose between the
two classes. The second are allowed by their employers to wear old
clothes and boots; the first must make 'a genteel appearance.'
"I often hear rich women say, 'Oh, working-girls cannot be very
poor; they wear such smart feathers.' If these women knew how the
girls have to stint in underclothing and food in order to make what
their employers call 'a genteel appearance,' I think they would
pass quite another verdict. I will give two typical cases: A girl
living just over Blackfriars Bridge, in one small room, for which
she pays 5s., earns 10s. a week in a printer's business. She works
from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., then returns home to do all the washing,
cleaning, cooking, etc., that is necessary in a one-room
establishment. She has an invalid mother dependent on her efforts,
and is out-patient herself at one of the London hospitals. She was
sixteen last Christmas. Another girl, who lives in two cellars near
Lisson Grove, with father, mother, and six brothers and sisters,
earns 3s. 6d. a week in a well-known factory. She is seventeen
years old, but does not look more than ten or eleven. Every morning
she walks a mile to her work, arriving at eight o'clock; every
evening she walks a mile back, reaching home about seven o'clock.
If she arrives at the factory five minutes late, she is fined 7d.
If she stays away a whole day, she is 'drilled,'--that is, kept
without work a whole week. Her father has been out of employment
for six months; so her weekly 3s. 6d. goes into the family purse.
Her food consists of three slices of bread and butter, which she
takes to the factory for dinner; one slice of bread and butter and
some weak tea for supper and breakfast. These cases are not picked.
They are to be found scattered all over London. Many and many a
family is at the present time being kept by the labor of one or two
such girls, who can at the most earn a few shillings. When one
thinks what the life of a young girl is in happy families, all the
joyousness of which she is capable, until sorrow sets its seal on
her, one's heart aches for the sad lives of these girls in the
city.
'And still her voice comes ringing
Across the soft still air,
And still I hear her singing,
"Oh, life, thou art most fair!"'
"A young girl is capable of feeling in one brief hour more intense
delight than a boy of her age experiences in a fortnight. Yet all
this joyousness is ruthlessly stamped upon by competition, and
thousands of girls in London have no enjoyment except to gaze at
monstrosities in penny gaffs, or to dance on dirty pavements; and
generally these poor things are too tired even to do that. It is
strange that the public take so little interest in these girls,
considering they must become mothers of future citizens. 'The youth
of a nation are the trustees of posterity.' What sort of daughters
are these girls with their pinched faces and stunted bodies likely
to give England? What will posterity say of the girl labor that now
goes on in the city? I have seen strong men weeping because they
have no bread to give their children; I know at the London docks
chains have been replaced by wooden barriers, because starving men
behind pressed so hard on starving men in front, that the latter
were nearly cut in two by the iron railings; I have watched a
contractor mauled when he had no work to give, and have myself been
nearly killed by a brick-bat that was hurled at a contractor's head
by a man whose family was starving: but I deliberately say of all
the victims of our present competitive system I pity these girls
the most. They are so fragile. Honest work is made for them almost
impossible; and if they slip, no one gives them a second chance,
they are kicked and spat upon by the public. I know that the
girl-labor question is but a portion of the larger labor question,
that nothing can be done for them at present; but I wish that they
were not the victims of the _laissez-faire_ policy in two ways
instead of one; I wish that their richer sisters were not so
terribly apathetic about them."
For Scotland, industries, wages, and general conditions are much the
same as those of England. Factory life has been at many points improved,
and the superior thrift and education of the working-class shows in the
large amount of their savings. But Glasgow has faced conditions almost
as terrible as those given in "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with a
result not yet attained by the latter city, having destroyed hundreds of
foul tenements to make room for improved dwellings.
For Ireland, though Irish linen, poplins, and woollens are the synonym
of excellence, the proportion of women workers in these industries is
comparatively small. In a few counties in the south Irish lace is made,
but the women are chiefly agricultural laborers. Thanks to the efforts
of Parnell, in 1885, there was formed "The Association for the Promotion
of Irish Industries," then chiefly destroyed by the "Act of Union" which
permitted England to levy protective tariffs on all Irish manufactures.
Statistics on these points are hidden in English Blue-books, and we have
no very reliable data as to the number of women and children employed.
The efforts of the Countess of Aberdeen, during the term of her husband
as Viceroy of Ireland, and of the Countess of Dunraven on the Dunraven
estates in the county of Limerick, have done much to re-establish the
lace industry,--with such success that the work compares favorably with
that of some of the French convents.
In Wales, as in the North of England, women and children are employed in
the mines, and there is constant evasion of the laws regulating hours,
with a wage as inadequate as the work is heavy. Heavy woollens and
corduroy employ a small proportion in their manufacture, wage and hours
being the same as those of England.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] "The Destruction of Infants," by Mr. F.W. Lowndes, M.R.C.S.,
British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report for 1870, p.
586.
[27] Journal of the Statistical Society, Sept., 1870, vol. xxxiii. pp.
323-326.
[28] Parliamentary Paper, No. 372, July 20, 1871: Collected Series, vol.
vii. p. 606.
[29] Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1863, pp.
454-462. Parliamentary Paper, 1864, No. 3,416, vol. xxviii.
[30] Labor and Life of the People, vol. i.: East London. Edited by
Charles Booth, p. 564.
VIII.
GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL WORKERS.
For France the census of 1847 showed a list of 959 women workers in
Paris earning sixty centimes a day; 100,000 earning from sixty centimes
to three francs, and 626 earning over three francs. That for 1869 showed
17,203, earning from fifty centimes to one franc twenty-five centimes
daily; 11,000 of these workers being furnished lodging, food, and
washing. Of the entire number 88,340 earned from one franc fifty
centimes to four francs a day; 767 earned from four francs fifty
centimes to ten francs daily, most of the latter class being heads of
work rooms or shops. The rise in wages affected the better orders of
worker, but left the sewing-woman's wage nearly unchanged. Levasseur[31]
tells us that toward the end of the reign of Louis Philippe the wage of
a woman varied ordinarily from twelve to twenty-five sous, exceptionally
from twenty to forty; that of children being from six to fifteen sous;
of men from thirty sous for ordinary laborers, to forty or forty-five
for skilled work.
The census for 1851 gave for Paris 112,891 workwomen, 60,000 of whom
were sewers. Convent sewing, that of the prisons and reformatories, and
the competition of women who had homes and worked simply for pin-money,
kept the wage at a minimum; and these conditions still operate toward
that end, precisely as they do for all countries where the needle is a
means of support, the evil being felt most severely in our cities. The
facts in the life of a French seamstress are much the same as those of
the Englishwoman. To earn two francs a day she must make eight chemises,
working from fourteen to sixteen hours daily to accomplish this. The
income of the average sewer does not exceed, at the best, five hundred
francs, and most usually falls below. Rents are so high that a garret
requires not less than one hundred francs a year. In his researches into
conditions, Jules Simon[32] found that this sum compelled deprivations
of every order. Expenses were as follows: Rent, 100 francs; clothing,
bedding, etc., 115 francs; washing, 36 francs; heat and light, 36
francs. These sums amounted to 286.50 francs, the amount remaining for
food being 215.50 or a little less than twelve sous a day,--the amount
expended by two of our own seamstresses in New York in 1887, the items
being given by the earner.[33]
Existence on French soil, whether in Paris, the manufacturing towns, or
the provinces, has come to mean something very different from the facts
of a generation ago. Then, with wages hardly above "subsistence point,"
the thrifty Frenchwoman not only lived, but managed to put by a trifle
each month. Wages have risen, but prices have at the same time advanced.
Every article of daily need is at the highest point,--sugar, which the
London workwoman buys at a penny a pound, being twelve cents a pound in
Paris; and flour, milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear that
shivering is the law for all save the wealthy; and rents are no less
dear, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the most for the scant
sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, chiefly chiccory, make one meal;
bread alone is the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for Sunday.
Hours are frightfully long, the disabilities of the French needleworker
being in many points the same as those of her English sister. In short,
even skilled labor has many disabilities, the saving fact being that
unskilled is in far less proportion than across the Channel, the present
system of education including many forms of industrial training.
Generations of freer life than that of England, and many traditions in
her favor give certain advantages to the woman born on French soil. It
is taken for granted that she will after marriage share her husband's
work or continue her own, and her keen intelligence is relied upon to a
degree unknown to other nations. Repeated wars, and the enrolment of all
her men for fixed periods of service, have developed the capacity of
women in business directions, and they fill every known occupation. The
light-heartedness of her nation is in her favor, and she has learned
thoroughly how to extract the most from every centime. There is none of
the hopeless dowdiness and dejection that characterize the lower order
of Englishwoman. Trim, tidy, and thrifty, the Frenchwoman faces poverty
with a smiling courage that is part of her strength, this look changing
often for the older ones into a patience which still holds courage.
Thus far there is no official report of the industries in which they are
engaged, and figures must be drawn from unofficial sources. M. Paul
Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political economist, in his history of "The
Labor of Women in the Nineteenth Century," computes the number of women
at work in the manufactories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen,
and silk, as nearly one million; and outside of this is the enormous
number of lace-makers and general workers in all occupations. There are
over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from
eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment
for Swiss lace-workers is the same.
During the Congrès Féministe held in the autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent,
an ardent champion of women wage-earners, presented statistics, chiefly
from private sources, showing that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France,
there are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages or dividends nearly
$500,000,000 a year. Their wage is much less in proportion to the work
they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty-five per cent of the
entire sum spent in wages. In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing
business on an independent footing; and of 3,858 suits judged in 1892 by
the Workingman's Council, 1,674 concerned women. In spite of these
numbers and the abuses known to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has
refused practically to extend to women workers the law for the
regulation of the conditions of work in workshops. The refusal is
disguised under the form of adjournment of the matter, the reason
assigned being that the grievances of women are by no means ripe enough
for discussion. Women themselves are not at all of the same mind; and
the result has already been a move toward definite organization of
trades, and united action for all women engaged in them,--a step
hitherto regarded as impossible. The first effect of this has been a
protest from Paris shopgirls against the action of the Chamber of
Deputies, and the formation of committees whose business will be to
enlist the interest and co-operation of women throughout the entire
country,--a slow process, but one that will mean both education and
final release from some at least of the worst disabilities now weighting
all women workers.
"La femme devenue ouvrière, n'est plus une femme," wrote Jules Simon in
a burst of despair at the conditions of the Paris workwoman; and he
repeated the word as his investigations extended to manufacturing
France, and he found everywhere the home in many cases abolished, the
_crèche_ taking its place till the child, vitally dependent upon a care
that included love, gave up the struggle for existence, rendering its
tiny quota to the long list of infant mortality. M. Leroy-Beaulieu had
described years before the practical extinction of the family and the
government interference[34] brought about by the discoveries made by the
government inspecting committee, upon whom consternation seized as they
found decadence of morals, enfeebled physique, and that the ordinary
girl-worker at sixteen or seventeen could not sew a seam, or make a
broth, or care for a child's needs or the simplest demands of a home.
Appalled at these conditions, France set about the organization of
industrial schools, and these have altered the whole face of affairs.
Generations of abuses had made, up to the time of the investigation, the
history of the working-class in France. One of their best-known
scientific observers, the statistician Villermé, examined in person, and
as one of the government inspecting committee reported on the condition
of dwellings in Lille, Amiens, and other manufacturing towns of France.
The weavers and spinners of Lille lived in caves, of which thirty-six
hundred were found occupied by families,--father, mother, and children
as soon as old enough, employed in the mills, and returning at night to
these dens, where filth and darkness periodically did their work of
decimation, and where infant mortality had reached the maximum.
Horrified at the discoveries made, three thousand of these dwellings
were at once destroyed. But for unknown and quite inscrutable reasons
six hundred were allowed to remain and receive double the original
number of tenants.[35] Years passed before the last cave was filled up,
the children born in them providing an enormous percentage for prison
and galleys. At Douai, Rouen, Roubaix, and many other points, such
hideous filth marked the homes of the working-class that Villermé
reported: "The walls are covered with a thousand layers of ordure." The
women, exhausted and depleted by a day's labor of from twelve to
fourteen hours, had no time to think of cleanliness. In fact, its
meaning had never been taught; and though industrial schools increase,
hours are now shortened, and inspection is active, it remains true that
almost the same conditions perpetuate themselves at many points,--the
descriptions given by the great realist, Zola, of women and children in
the mines, and the hideousness of their home life, being very literal
and unexaggerated fact.
As to conditions of the work itself, many trades and occupations require
for their proper carrying on methods and surroundings absolutely
destructive to health. In all preparation of hemp and oakum dust is
excessive; far beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself breeds
consumption. In the spinning of flax great heat and water are both
necessities. "Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules Simon, "than a
linen-spinner's surroundings. Water covers the brick floor. The odor of
the linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty-five Reaumur fill the
workroom with an intolerable stench. The majority of the workwomen,
obliged to put off most of their garments, are huddled together in this
pestilential atmosphere, imprisoned in the machines, pressed one against
the other, their bodies streaming with sweat, their feet bare to the
ankle; and when a day, nominally of twelve hours but really of thirteen
and a half, is over, they quit the workroom for home, the rags they wear
barely protecting them from cold and damp."
Details of the same order abound in the work of the political economist
M. Leroy-Beaulieu,[36] who seeks at all points to give the most
favorable impression possible. In each and every case the great
authorities appear to be of one mind as to the disastrous effects upon
the children born to these mothers. That the _crèche_ is now
practically a part of every factory makes little or no difference.
"The _crèche_," writes Jules Simon, "abolishes maternity in all save its
pains. The working mother is defrauded of her own means of growth, bound
up in the training of the child; and the child loses its right to be
loved and guarded by love." In short, for all continental countries, as
well as for England and our women, the question of child labor and the
destiny of the child are inextricably bound up in that of the working
mother, and are vital factors in working out the problem of woman as a
wage-earner. What proportion of wage-earning women recruit the ranks of
prostitution, is a question often asked. In Paris, which is in one sense
the focus of French labor, its many opportunities drawing to it a large
contingent from the provinces, it is popularly supposed that the ranks
of the sewing-women give large proportion to houses of prostitution.
This opinion is the prevailing one for all large cities, whether in
Europe or America, yet is disproved on all sides. For Paris
Parent-Duchalet states that in the statistics given by the prefecture of
police, in a table including forty-one categories, women with no
occupation had first rank as prostitutes, domestic service giving the
second, and sewing-women the smallest proportion. This is the more
surprising when one considers that their wage is often below the point
of subsistence, and that temptation of every order waits upon them. At
the best the wage falls far below that of men, even when both engage in
the same work. The present movement toward organization is the first
step toward a general bettering of all trades and their wage; and for
fullest details of this, and work in connection with the admirable
Bourse du Travail, one of its most important features of working life
to-day in Paris, the reader must turn to the reports themselves,
beginning with the first one, issued in 1887-88.[37] The same facts may
be said to form the story of labor in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Italy,
and at all points where women or children are at work, whether in
factory or mine or workshop. For Belgium the situation is summed up in a
very important and minute report of the government inquiry commission
into the labor of women and children,--the first made in 1867 and
followed by one in 1874, the latest having been made in 1891.[38]
A comprehensive law, promulgated Nov. 2, 1892, and regulating the labor
of women and children in factories and mines, was amended in May, 1893,
by the addition of very specific regulations as to all employments
affecting health and morals. The Presidential decree consists of two
parts,--the first dealing with the employment of women and children in
connection with machinery when in motion, or in which the dangerous
parts are not fully protected, in glass-blowing and in carrying weights.
The second part of the decree consists of three tables, of which A
enumerates certain industries, chiefly the manufacture of acids, dyes,
chemicals, etc., also manures and glass, crystal, and metal polishing,
in which female and child labor are prohibited; B those in which
children under eighteen must not work, chiefly the manufacture of
explosives; and C, a large variety of other industries in which female
and child labor is only allowed conditionally. The great majority of
these are industries involving special risk through the disengagement of
dust-particles or vapors; while a few are ranked as dangerous, owing to
risk of fire and the contraction of special diseases, etc.
Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, has known some of the worst
abuses discoverable on continental soil, thousands of women and children
in her mines having toiled from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with
often no Sunday rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In
"Germinal," Zola, who spent months observing every phase of their life,
has given a picture, unsurpassed in any literature, of the misery and
degradation of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at
some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of
the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more;
but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes
discernible.