End Road without her apron and in her best hat. It was a parade and
proclamation of an engagement. She told her mother, who was glad. “A
man,” she said, “is a better friend than a woman. He sticks.” Liz did
not tell the ladies of the club, but the other girls did, and the ladies
looked grave and spoke seriously to her about responsibilities.
George did stick to her. He was an honest lad; he had chosen his
sweetheart, and he stuck to her. When he had money he gave her treats.
He took her by train to Epping Forest, to North Woolwich Gardens, to the
theater, to the music-hall. In his way he loved the girl. She would not
leave the club, but she gave him part of every evening. He talked to her
about the country life he had left behind him. He told her the stories
about poachers which belong to every village ale-house. It pleased him
to recall the past he had thrown away. All day long he carried heavy
bales and boxes and burdens backward and forward. It was monotonous
work, cheered only by the striking of the hours and the thought of the
coming evening. The poor lad’s day was hallowed by his evening walk.
[Illustration: A Music-Hall.]
Six months later Liz was married. It was on the August bank-holiday. The
wedding took place at St. James’s Church, Ratcliffe. It was celebrated
in a style which did honor to the quarter. The bride was dressed in
heliotrope satin. She wore a large hat of purple plush. The bridesmaids
were brilliantly attired in frocks of velveteen, green and crimson and
blue. They too wore hats of plush. After the ceremony they adjourned to
the residence of the bride, where a great feast was spread. The
rejoicing lasted all day and all night. When the young couple began
their wedded life it was with an empty purse and a week of borrowed
food. I hope that George will not get drunk, will not knock his wife
down, and will not take the strap to her. If he does, we must comfort
ourselves with the thought that to Liz it will be no new thing, hitherto
unknown in the land, not an unnatural thing when the drink is in a man,
and, unless repeated in soberness, a trifle to be endured and forgotten
and forgiven, even seventy times seven.
Here we must leave our girl. She is now a wife. For a little while she
will go on at the factory; then she will stay at home. London Street
will be enriched by half a dozen children all her own. Like their
mother, these children will play in the dust and the mud; like her, they
will go to school and be happy; like her, they will go to work in the
factory. Liz will be repeated in her children. As long as she lives she
will know and enjoy the same life, with the same pleasures, the same
anxieties, the same luck. She will “do” for her girls when they grow up.
Now and then she will be taken on as a casual at the old factory. London
Street will always be her whole world; she will have no interests
outside, and when she dies it will be only the vanishing of one out of
the multitudes which seem, as I said at the beginning, to be all alike,
all living the same life, all enduring, hoping, loving, suffering,
sinning, giving, helping, condoling, mourning, in the same kindly,
cruel, beneficent, merciless, contradictory, womanly fashion that makes
up the life of London Street.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
THE KEY OF THE STREET
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
THE KEY OF THE STREET
DURING our walk along the riverside we passed here and there small
groups of men, either two and three together or in companies of ten or a
dozen. They were “hanging around,” hands in pockets, an empty pipe
between their lips, with a slouching, apathetic air; in every case a
public house was within very easy reach; in most cases the public house
afforded them door-posts and walls against which to lean. They were
observed in large numbers around the dock-gates and in long lines
leaning against the dock-walls. There was no alertness or activity in
the look or the carriage of any of these men; on the other hand, there
was no dejection or unhappiness. Had we stopped to ask any of them what
they were doing they would have assumed for the moment an imitation of
readiness indicated by a slight stiffening of the knee-joints, the
withdrawal of the hands from the pocket, and the attitude of attention
by which they gave the inquirer to understand that they were waiting for
a job.
This is their trade—waiting for a job; it appears to be a trade which
takes the spirit out of a man, which makes him limp, which makes him
unwilling to undertake that job when it arrives, which tempts him to
look for any other way of getting food than the execution of that job,
which narrows his views of life so that the haven where he would be is
nothing but the bar of the public house, and the only joy he desires is
the joy of endeavoring to alleviate a thirst that nothing can assuage.
This manner of life can hardly be reckoned among the more noble. It
demands no skill and no training. What they mean by a job is the
fetching or carrying something, either in the way of transferring cargo
from ship to quay or carrying something from one house to another. If it
is the former, if one of these fellows gets taken on at the docks, he
enters with a sigh; his work is not worth a fourth part of that done by
one of the regular staff, and as soon as he has earned enough for the
day’s wants he retires, he goes back to his street corner and his public
house, he once more seizes on the momentary rapture of a drink, and he
rejoins his limp companions.
I have considered the daily life of the factory girl. Let me now
consider that of the casual hand, almost as important an element on the
riverside as the girl.
In most cases he is a native of the place; he was born on the riverside;
he has been brought up on the riverside; he was born and brought up
conveniently near the public house, beside which he wastes the leaden
hours of his dreary life. A country lad cannot easily become a creature
so weak and limp; the father of the casual hand was himself in the same
profession, his mother was a factory girl like her of whom we have been
speaking.
[Illustration: The West India Dock Gates.]
This man—he never seems to be more than five-and-thirty, or less than
thirty—is one of the very few survivors of a numerous family; the
riverside families are very large if you count the graves, for the
mortality of the young fills the graveyards very rapidly; most of this
man’s brothers and sisters are dead—one can hardly, looking at the man
himself and his surroundings, say that they are “gone before”; it is
best to say only that they are gone, we know not whither. He himself has
been so unfortunate, if we may put the case plainly, as to escape the
many perils of infancy and childhood. He has not been “overlaid” as a
baby, nor run over as a child, nor carried off with diphtheria,
scarlatina, croup, or any other of the disorders which continually hover
about these streets, nor has he been the victim of bad nourishment and
food which was unsuited to him. He has become immune against contagion
and infection; wet feet and cold and exposure have been unable to kill
him; the close and fetid air of the one-family living room has carried
off his brothers and sisters, but has not been able to strike him down;
he is like a soldier who has come unscathed through a dozen battles and
a malarious campaign. Surely, therefore, this man ought to be a splendid
specimen of humanity, strong and upright. The contrary is the case,
however. You observe that he is by no means the kind of Briton we should
like to exhibit; he hath a sallow complexion, his shoulders are sloping
and narrow, his chest is hollow, his walk is shambling, he has no spring
in his feet, his hands betray by their clumsiness his ignorance of any
craft, he is flat-footed, his eye lacks intelligence, he is low-browed,
the intellectual side of him has not been cultivated or even touched; if
you talked with him you would find that he has few ideas, that his
command of language is imperfect, and that he is practically
inarticulate. The best thing that could happen to such a man would be
compulsory farm work, but no farmer would have him on any terms, and he
himself would refuse such work; he means to go on as he always goes on,
to wait outside the public house for the casual job.
As a child and as a boy he was made to attend school—indeed, he liked
nothing better than the hours of school. His mother, who found that in
order to send the children off clean and tidy to school she had herself
to get up early, and, besides, had to assume for herself some outward
appearance of cleanliness, threw every possible obstacle in the way of
school attendance. But she was firmly overruled by the school-board
visitor and by the magistrate. Therefore she abandoned opposition and
acquiesced, though with sadness too deep for words, in the inevitable.
The boy remained at school until his fourteenth year, when he was
allowed to leave, on passing the fourth standard. If you ask what he had
learned one might refer you to any of the “readers” used in London
Board-schools, but probably these interesting and valuable works are not
within easy reach. It must suffice, therefore, to explain, as in the
case of Liz, that the elementary school readers, as a rule, contain
selections, snippets, and scraps of knowledge, and that if a boy who
passed the fourth standard remembered them all, from the first to the
fourth inclusive, they would carry him a very little way indeed toward
the right understanding of the round world and all that is therein.
Now comes the question, What good will the boy’s education be to him in
the life that lies before him? Truly, in the case of the casual hand,
little or none. For, you see, although, apart from the encyclopedic
snippets and the scraps, the boy has learned to read and to write, he
never needs the latter accomplishment at all, and, as regards the
former, he has no books; his father had no books, his friends have no
books. But all the world read newspapers. Not all the world; there is a
considerable section, including the casual hand and certain others whom
we shall meet immediately, who never read the papers. This boy is not
going to read the papers; his father never did, his friends never do, he
will not. Why should he? The papers contain nothing that is of the least
importance to him; they are apparently in a conspiracy to make it
impossible for such as himself to drink unless they work. He speedily
forgets his scraps of information, and he gets no more from the usual
sources.
You must not, however, imagine that he never learns anything. It is
impossible for any boy to grow up in a crowded street in complete
ignorance. Something he must learn; some views of life he must be forced
to frame, though unconsciously. He will grow up in ignorance of the
things which form actual life in other circles, but it is with a
riverside lad as with a village lad. The latter, brought up in the
country, acquires insensibly a vast mass of information and knowledge
about the things of the country—the fields, the hedges, the woods, the
birds, the creatures—without book, without school, without master; so
the riverside lad, by running about on the Stairs and the foreshore,
acquires a vast mass of information about the port and the river and the
ships and the ways of those who go down to the deep. He knows the tides,
he knows the jetsam and the flotsam of the tides, he trudges and wades
in the mud of the foreshore to pick up what the tide leaves for him; he
knows all the ships, where they come from, whither they are bound, the
great liner which puts in at the West India docks, the packet boats, the
coasters, the colliers, the Norwegian timber ships, he knows them all;
he knows their rig, he knows their names and when to expect them—the
river and all that floats upon it are known to him as a book is known to
the student. Were it not for the work, the physical activity, the
discipline, the obedience, expected of the man before the mast, he would
be a sailor. Concerning the imports and the exports of London he knows
more than any official of the Board of Trade—that is to say, figures
concern him not, but he knows the bales and the casks and the crates and
the boxes: are not his friends engaged every day in discharging cargo
and taking it in? All this, you will acknowledge, means a good, solid
lump of knowledge which may occupy his brain and give him materials for
thought and conversation—if he ever did think, which is doubtful, and if
he could converse, which is not at all doubtful.
There is another kind of knowledge which the riverside lad picks up. It
is the knowledge of the various ways, means, tricks, craft, and cunning
by which many of his friends and contemporaries get through life without
doing any work. It is with him as with men in other lines; he knows how
things are done, but he cannot do them himself; he lacks courage, he
lacks the necessary manner, he lacks the necessary quickness; he would
be a rogue if he could; he admires successful roguery, but he is unable
to imitate or to copy or to practise roguery. Not everyone can defy the
law even for a brief spell between the weary periods of “stretch.”
[Illustration: The Barges that Lie Down the Thames.]
From picking up trifles unguarded and unwatched on the shore to doing
the same thing in the streets is but a step. There are plenty of these
lads who learn quite early to prey upon the petty trader. I have been
told by one of his victims how to watch for and to observe the youthful
prowler. You place yourself in one of the busy streets lined with shops
in some position, perhaps at a shop-door, where you may observe without
being suspected; it is like Jefferies’ rule for observing the wild
creatures; assume an attitude of immobility; the people pass up and
down, all occupied with their own affairs, unobservant; presently comes
along a boy, long-armed, long-legged; his step is silent and slouching,
his eyes beneath the peak of his cap glance furtively round; the stall
is unprotected; the goods exposed for sale are only guarded by a child,
who is looking the other way; then, in a moment, the hand darts out,
snatches something, and the lad with the long and slouching step goes on
without the least change in his manner, unsuspected. He is ready to pick
up anything—a loaf from the baker, an apple from the coster’s cart, an
onion from the green-grocer; nothing comes amiss. And he does it for the
honor and the glory of it and the joy in the danger. He is not going to
become an habitual criminal, not at all; that career requires serious
work; he is going to become a casual hand, and he will remember
pleasantly in his manhood the cunning and the sleight-of-hand with which
as a boy he knew how to lift things from shop and stall and barrow.
I have spoken of the unguarded things upon the foreshore at low tide.
There are still lingering by the riverside survivals of the good old
days when the whole people lived in luxury on the robberies they
committed from the ships loading and unloading in the river. There are
barges which go up and down with the tide. At ebb tide they lie in the
mud; the men in charge go ashore to drink; the boys then climb on board
in search of what they can get. If the barge is laden with sugar they
cut holes in the bags and fill their pockets, their hats, their boots,
their handkerchiefs with the stuff, which they carry ashore and sell.
They get a halfpenny a pound for their plunder. If the barge is laden
with coals they carry off all that their clothes will hold; one goes
before to warn the rest of danger; plenty of houses on the way are open
to them; it is a comparatively safe and certainly a pleasant way of
earning a penny or two. It is also a way which brings with it its own
punishment. For the great and ever present temptation with the riverside
lad is to shirk work; a physical shrinking from hard work is his
inheritance; every way by which he can be relieved from work strengthens
this physical shrinking; not at one step, not suddenly, does a young man
find work impossible for him; the casual hand grows slowly more casual;
the waiter on fortune’s jobs grows steadily more inclined to wait; he
finds himself tied to the lamp-post opposite the public house; chains
bind him to the doors; within is his shrine, his temple, his praying
place, his idol; he keeps his hands in his pockets while he keeps his
eyes on the swinging door and suffers his mind to dwell all day long on
the fragrance of the beery bar.
Every year there are thousands of boys who leave the London
Board-schools, their “education” completed, with no chance of an
apprenticeship to any trade, their hands absolutely untrained, just a
hanging pair of hands, prehensile, like the monkey’s tail. It is indeed
lucky that they are prehensile, otherwise what would be the lot of their
owners?
They leave school; they have to face the necessity of making a
livelihood for themselves, of earning their daily bread, perhaps for
sixty long years to come, without knowing any single one of the many
arts and crafts by which men live and provide for their families and
themselves. At the outset it appears to be a hopeless task. Of course,
it is the greatest possible misfortune for a lad to learn no trade. If
we consider the waste of intellectual power alone, where there is no
training to skilled labor, it must be acknowledged to be the greatest
misfortune that can befall a boy at the outset. Still, all is not lost.
For a steady lad, willing to work, this misfortune may be partly
overcome. There are many openings for such a boy. Let us consider, for
instance, what lines of work he may attempt, keeping only to those which
require no previous training and no skill.
He hears of these openings from other boys; he has heard of such
openings all his life. For instance, he would very much like to enter
the service of the City of London, as one of the boys whose business it
is to keep the streets clean. You may see these boys, in a red uniform,
running about among the horses and omnibuses in Cheapside; they are
always under the horses’ feet, but they never get run over; they are
active and smart lads; they seem to take a pride in doing their humble
work rapidly and thoroughly. They receive very good pay, which helps to
keep up their spirits—6_s._ 6_d._ a week, rising to 9_s._ or 10_s._ Even
better than this is the railway service, where a smart lad may very soon
get 9_s._ a week. He may then rise to the position of a railway porter.
Now, at the great London stations, in which the trains are coming in and
going out all day long, and every passenger with luggage is good for a
tip of threepence or sixpence, no one knows what the weekly earnings of
a railway porter may be. Things are whispered; nothing is known for
certain; the position, however, is recognized as one of the prizes in
the profession of the unskilled hand.
Then there are the factories—matches, jam, all kinds of factories—into
which, if a boy is fortunate enough to be taken, he may make at the
outset 5_s._ or 6_s._ a week. It is, however, generally felt that there
is a lack of interest about factory work. A much more enviable
occupation is that of a van boy, whose very simple duty is to sit behind
among the boxes and parcels, in order to take care that none of them are
stolen and that none drop off into the street. One is expected to assist
in loading and unloading, which means somewhat heavy work, but the
greater part of the day is spent in being pleasantly carried up and down
the streets of London and enjoying a moving panorama of the town in all
its quarters. There are great possibilities for the van boy; if he is
ambitious he may hope to become, in course of time, even driver of the
van, a post of real distinction and responsibility, with “good money,”
although the hours may be long.
Some boys, without taking thought for the future, jump at the post of
beer boy to a barge. It is attractive, it is light work, it is well
paid, but it leads to nothing. One would not recommend any young friend
to accept this post. Generally a barge is loaded and unloaded by one or
two gangs of men, seven in a gang. Each of these men pays the beer boy
twopence a day, so that if there are two gangs to the barge he will make
2_s._ 4_d._ a day, or 14_s._ a week, his simple duty being to carry beer
to the men at work from the nearest public house. The work seems easy,
but it requires activity; the gangs are thirsty, tempers are quick, and
cuffs are frequent.
This kind of errand situation is very easy to get; in every trade an
errand boy is wanted. I am surprised that no one has magnified the post
and preached upon the necessity, for the conduct of the internal trade
of the country, of the errand boy. As yet he has not found his prophet.
Thus a green-grocer is lost without his errand boys; a suburban
green-grocer in a flourishing way of business will have twenty boys in
his employ; every small draper, every shopkeeper, in fact, small or
great, must have his errand boy—but this is a post reserved for older
lads. Some one must carry round the things; it is the boy who has
learned no trade; the carriage of the basket is the first use to which
he puts his unskilled hands. I believe that five shillings a week is the
recognized pay for the situation. In one way or another, however, the
boy finds some kind of place and begins to earn a living.
As a rule, these boys live well. For breakfast they have bread and
butter and tea, with a “relish,” such as an egg or a piece of bacon; at
twelve they take their dinner at one of the humbler coffee-houses which
abound in the streets of East London; it consists of more bread and
butter and tea, with half a steak and potatoes. For tea they go to
another coffee-house; they can get two thick slices of bread for a
halfpenny each; butter or jam costs another halfpenny; a cup of coffee
costs a halfpenny, or a whole pint may be had for a penny. In the
evening their favorite supper is the dish familiarly known as “ha’porth
and ha’porth”—that is, fish and potatoes at a halfpenny each. So far
their life is healthy, with plenty of work and plenty of food, and, in
most cases, strong drink is neither desired nor taken. The craving for
drink comes later. The dangerous time of life is the age when the boy
passes into manhood. Then the simple meals at the coffee-house no longer
suffice. Then it becomes necessary to have beer, and beer in
ever-increasing quantities. Then the boy grows out of his work; he
becomes too big to carry beer for the bargees or to go round with the
newspapers, or to sit at the back of the van, or to carry about cabbages
in a basket.
What is he to do next?
[Illustration: East London Loafers.]
There are, even for a grown man, many situations which demand no
training and no apprenticeship. In all the warehouses, in the great
shops, in offices of every kind, there are wanted men to fetch and
carry, to load and unload, to pack and unpack. In the docks there are
wanted troops of men to load and to unload. In the markets and on the
railways there are wanted men to carry and to set out the goods. In
every kind of business servants must be had to do that part of the work
which requires no skill. Unfortunately the supply is greater than the
demand. There are many lads who get into the service of companies,
railways, or factories, and remain in steady work all their working
lives in the same employment. There are, on the other hand, a great
number who have to hang about on the outskirts of regular work, who are
taken on in times of pressure and find it difficult to get work when
times are slack; these are the men who become the casual hands; these
are the men who hang about the dock-gates and loaf round street corners.
The process of degeneration by which the promising lad sinks into the
casual hand is easy to follow.