WAGES
When I learned that in Lesser London there were 1,292,737 people who
received twenty-one shillings or less a week per family, I became
interested as to how the wages could best be spent in order to maintain
the physical efficiency of such families. Families of six, seven, eight
or ten being beyond consideration, I have based the following table
upon a family of five—a father, mother, and three children; while I
have made twenty-one shillings equivalent to $5.25, though actually,
twenty-one shillings are equivalent to about $5.11.
Rent $1.50 or 6/0
Bread 1.00 ” 4/0
Meat O.87.5 ” 3/6
Vegetables O.62.5 ” 2/6
Coals 0.25 ” 1/0
Tea 0.18 ” 0/9
Oil 0.16 ” 0/8
Sugar 0.18 ” 0/9
Milk 0.12 ” 0/6
Soap 0.08 ” 0/4
Butter 0.20 ” 0/10
Firewood 0.08 ” 0/4
Total $5.25 21/2
An analysis of one item alone will show how little room there is for
waste. _Bread_, $1: for a family of five, for seven days, one dollar’s
worth of bread will give each a daily ration of 2.8 cents; and if they
eat three meals a day, each may consume per meal 9.5 mills’ worth of
bread, a little less than one halfpennyworth. Now bread is the heaviest
item. They will get less of meat per mouth each meal, and still less of
vegetables; while the smaller items become too microscopic for
consideration. On the other hand, these food articles are all bought at
small retail, the most expensive and wasteful method of purchasing.
While the table given above will permit no extravagance, no overloading
of stomachs, it will be noticed that there is no surplus. The whole
guinea is spent for food and rent. There is no pocket-money left over.
Does the man buy a glass of beer, the family must eat that much less;
and in so far as it eats less, just that far will it impair its
physical efficiency. The members of this family cannot ride in busses
or trams, cannot write letters, take outings, go to a “tu’penny gaff”
for cheap vaudeville, join social or benefit clubs, nor can they buy
sweetmeats, tobacco, books, or newspapers.
And further, should one child (and there are three) require a pair of
shoes, the family must strike meat for a week from its bill of fare.
And since there are five pairs of feet requiring shoes, and five heads
requiring hats, and five bodies requiring clothes, and since there are
laws regulating indecency, the family must constantly impair its
physical efficiency in order to keep warm and out of jail. For notice,
when rent, coals, oil, soap, and firewood are extracted from the weekly
income, there remains a daily allowance for food of 4.5d. to each
person; and that 4.5d. cannot be lessened by buying clothes without
impairing the physical efficiency.
All of which is hard enough. But the thing happens; the husband and
father breaks his leg or his neck. No 4.5d. a day per mouth for food is
coming in; no halfpennyworth of bread per meal; and, at the end of the
week, no six shillings for rent. So out they must go, to the streets or
the workhouse, or to a miserable den, somewhere, in which the mother
will desperately endeavour to hold the family together on the ten
shillings she may possibly be able to earn.
While in London there are 1,292,737 people who receive twenty-one
shillings or less a week per family, it must be remembered that we have
investigated a family of five living on a twenty-one shilling basis.
There are larger families, there are many families that live on less
than twenty-one shillings, and there is much irregular employment. The
question naturally arises, How do _they_ live? The answer is that they
do not live. They do not know what life is. They drag out a
subterbestial existence until mercifully released by death.
Before descending to the fouler depths, let the case of the telephone
girls be cited. Here are clean, fresh English maids, for whom a higher
standard of living than that of the beasts is absolutely necessary.
Otherwise they cannot remain clean, fresh English maids. On entering
the service, a telephone girl receives a weekly wage of eleven
shillings. If she be quick and clever, she may, at the end of five
years, attain a minimum wage of one pound. Recently a table of such a
girl’s weekly expenditure was furnished to Lord Londonderry. Here it
is:—
s. d.
Rent, fire, and light 7 6
Board at home 3 6
Board at the office 4 6
Street car fare 1 6
Laundry 1 0
Total 18 0
This leaves nothing for clothes, recreation, or sickness. And yet many
of the girls are receiving, not eighteen shillings, but eleven
shillings, twelve shillings, and fourteen shillings per week. They must
have clothes and recreation, and—
Man to Man so oft unjust,
Is always so to Woman.
At the Trades Union Congress now being held in London, the Gasworkers’
Union moved that instructions be given the Parliamentary Committee to
introduce a Bill to prohibit the employment of children under fifteen
years of age. Mr. Shackleton, Member of Parliament and a representative
of the Northern Counties Weavers, opposed the resolution on behalf of
the textile workers, who, he said, could not dispense with the earnings
of their children and live on the scale of wages which obtained. The
representatives of 514,000 workers voted against the resolution, while
the representatives of 535,000 workers voted in favour of it. When
514,000 workers oppose a resolution prohibiting child-labour under
fifteen, it is evident that a less-than-living wage is being paid to an
immense number of the adult workers of the country.
I have spoken with women in Whitechapel who receive right along less
than one shilling for a twelve-hour day in the coat-making sweat shops;
and with women trousers finishers who receive an average princely and
weekly wage of three to four shillings.
A case recently cropped up of men, in the employ of a wealthy business
house, receiving their board and six shillings per week for six working
days of sixteen hours each. The sandwich men get fourteenpence per day
and find themselves. The average weekly earnings of the hawkers and
costermongers are not more than ten to twelve shillings. The average of
all common labourers, outside the dockers, is less than sixteen
shillings per week, while the dockers average from eight to nine
shillings. These figures are taken from a royal commission report and
are authentic.
Conceive of an old woman, broken and dying, supporting herself and four
children, and paying three shillings per week rent, by making match
boxes at 2.25d. per gross. Twelve dozen boxes for 2.25d., and, in
addition, finding her own paste and thread! She never knew a day off,
either for sickness, rest, or recreation. Each day and every day,
Sundays as well, she toiled fourteen hours. Her day’s stint was seven
gross, for which she received 1s. 3.75d. In the week of ninety-eight
hours’ work, she made 7066 match boxes, and earned 4s. 10.25d., less
her paste and thread.
Last year, Mr. Thomas Holmes, a police-court missionary of note, after
writing about the condition of the women workers, received the
following letter, dated April 18, 1901:—
Sir,—Pardon the liberty I am taking, but, having read what you said
about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per
week, I beg to state my case. I am a tie-maker, who, after working all
the week, cannot earn more than five shillings, and I have a poor
afflicted husband to keep who hasn’t earned a penny for more than ten
years.
Imagine a woman, capable of writing such a clear, sensible, grammatical
letter, supporting her husband and self on five shillings per week! Mr.
Holmes visited her. He had to squeeze to get into the room. There lay
her sick husband; there she worked all day long; there she cooked, ate,
washed, and slept; and there her husband and she performed all the
functions of living and dying. There was no space for the missionary to
sit down, save on the bed, which was partially covered with ties and
silk. The sick man’s lungs were in the last stages of decay. He coughed
and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist
him in his paroxysms. The silken fluff from the ties was not good for
his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers
and wearers of the ties yet to come.
Another case Mr. Holmes visited was that of a young girl, twelve years
of age, charged in the police court with stealing food. He found her
the deputy mother of a boy of nine, a crippled boy of seven, and a
younger child. Her mother was a widow and a blouse-maker. She paid five
shillings a week rent. Here are the last items in her housekeeping
account: Tea. 0.5d.; sugar, 0.5d.; bread, 0.25d.; margarine, 1d.; oil,
1.5d.; and firewood, 1d. Good housewives of the soft and tender folk,
imagine yourselves marketing and keeping house on such a scale, setting
a table for five, and keeping an eye on your deputy mother of twelve to
see that she did not steal food for her little brothers and sisters,
the while you stitched, stitched, stitched at a nightmare line of
blouses, which stretched away into the gloom and down to the pauper’s
coffin a-yawn for you.