AMONG THE SWEATERS.
"'Nine tailors to make a man,' they say. Well, now if it takes that
amount, and from some lots I've seen I should say it did, you've got to
multiply by nine again if you count in the women. Bless your 'art!" and
here, in his excitement, the inspector began to drop the _h_'s, which
the Board School had taught him to hold to with painful tenacity. "Bless
your 'art! a woman can't make a coat, and every tailor knows it, and
that's one reason 'e beats 'er down and beats 'er down till 'ow she
keeps the breath of life in the Lord only knows. Take the cheapest coat
going and there's a knack to every seam that a woman don't catch. She's
good for trousers and finishing, and she can't be matched for
button-holes when she gives her mind to it, but a coat's beyond her.
I've wondered a good bit over it. The women don't see it themselves,
but now and again there's one that's up to every dodge but a coat seam,
and she wants more money and couldn't be persuaded, no, not if Moses
himself came to try it, that she isn't worth the same as the men. That's
what I 'ear as I go, and I've been hup and down among 'em three years
and over. Their dodges is beyond belief, not the women's,--poor souls!
they're too ground down to 'ave mind enough left for dodges,--but the
sweaters; Parliament's after 'em. There's enough, but ther's no man
halive that I've seen that knows how to 'old a sweater to 'em. How's one
or two inspectors to get through every sweating place in Whitechapel
alone, let alone hall the East End? It's hup an' down an' hin and hout,
and where you find 'em fair and square in a reg'lar shop, or in rooms
plain to see, you'll find 'em in basements and backyards, and
washhouses, and underground,--anywheres like so many rats, though, I'm
blessed if I don't think the rats has the hadvantage. Now, the law says
no working over hours, and I go along in the evening, about knocking-off
time, and find everything all clear only a look in the sweater's heye
that I know well enough. It means most likely that 'e's got 'is women
locked up in a bedroom where the Parliament won't let me go, and that
when my back's turned 'e'll 'ave 'em out, and grin in his sleeve at me
and Parliament too. Or else 'e's agreed with 'em to come at six in the
morning instead of eight. It's a twelve-hour day 'e's a right to, from
eight to eight, but that way he make it fourteen and more, if I or some
other inspector don't appear along.
"Now, suppose I drop down unexpected,--an' that's the way,--before I've
made three calls, and likely nailed every one in the house for
violation, it's down the street like lightening that the hinspector's
after 'em. Then the women are 'ustled out anywhere, into the yard, or in
a dust bin. Lift up 'most anything and you'd find a woman under it. I've
caught 'em with their thimbles on, hot with sewing, and now they drop
'em into their pockets or anywhere. They'd lose a job if they peeped,
and so there's never much to be done for 'em. But why a woman can't
make a coat is what I study over. Did you ever think it out, ma'am? Is
it their 'ands or their heyes that isn't hup to it?"
This position of the little inspector's problem must wait, though in it
is involved that fatal want of training for either eye or hand which
makes the lowest place the only one that the average needlewoman can
fill. Their endurance equals that of the men, and often, in sudden
presses of work, as for a foreign order, work has begun at seven o'clock
on a morning and continued right on through the night and up to four or
five of the next afternoon. The law demands an hour for dinner and half
an hour for tea, but the first is halved or quartered, and the last
taken between the stitches, but with no more stop than is necessary for
swallowing. The penalties for violation of these acts are heavy and the
inspectors work very thoroughly, various convictions having been
obtained in 1886, the penalties varying from two pounds to ten pounds
and costs. But the sweaters, though standing in terror of such
possibility, have learned every device of evasion, and, as before
stated, the women necessarily abet them for fear of losing work
altogether.
Let us see now what the profit of the average sweater is likely to be,
and then that of the workwoman, skilled and unskilled, taking our
figures in every case from the Blue Book containing Mr. Burnett's report
and confirmed by many workers. A small sweater in Brunswick Street
employed a presser and a machinist, with two women for button-holes and
felling, his business being the production of tunics for postmen. For
each of these he received two shillings, or half a dollar a coat, which
he considered a very good price. He paid his presser 4_s._ 6_d._ ($1.12)
per day; his machinist 5_s._ ($1.25); his button-holer 2_s._ 6_d._
(60c.), from which she must find twist and thread; and the feller 1_s._
3_d._ (30c.), a total of thirteen shillings threepence. For twelve coats
he received twenty-four shillings, his own profit thus being ten
shillings and ninepence ($2.68) for his own labor as baster and for
finding thread, soap, coke, and machine. The hours were from seven in
the morning to ten in the evening, less time not sufficing to finish the
dozen coats, this bringing the rate of wages for the highest paid
worker to 4½_d._, or nine cents an hour. For the small sweater the
profit is slight, but each additional machine sends it up, till four or
five mean a handsome return. If work is slack, he has another method of
lessening expenses, and thus increasing profits, arranging matters so
that all the work is done the three last days of the week, starting on a
Thursday morning, for instance, and pressing the workers on for
thirty-three to thirty-six hours at a stretch, calling this two days'
work, and paying for it at this rate. If they work fractions of a day,
eight hours is called a half and four a quarter day, and the men submit
with the same patience as the women.
For the former this is in part a question of nationality, the sweater's
workmen being made up chiefly of German and Polish Jews and the poorer
foreign element. An English worker has generally learned the trade as a
whole, and is secure of better place and pay; but a Polish Jew, a
carpenter at home, goes at once into a sweater's shop, and after a few
weeks has learned one branch of the trade, and is enrolled on the list
of workers. For the women, however, there is a smaller proportion
comparatively of foreigners. The poor Englishwoman, like the poor
American, has no resource save her needle or some form of machine work.
If ambitious, she learns button-holing, and in some cases makes as high
as thirty shillings per week ($7.50). This, however, is only for the
best paid work. Out of this she must find her own materials, which can
never be less than two and sixpence (60c.). A woman of this order would
do in a day twelve coats with six button-holes each, for the best class
of work getting a penny a hole, or two cents. For commoner kinds the
prices are a descending scale: three-quarters of a penny a hole, half a
penny, eight holes for threepence, and the commonest kinds three holes
for a penny. These are the rates for coats. For waistcoats the price is
usually a penny for four button-holes, a skilled worker making sixteen
in an hour. Many of these button-hole makers have become sweaters on
their own account, and display quite as much ingenuity at cutting rates
as the men at whose hands they may themselves have suffered.
For the machinists and fellers the rates vary. A good machinist may
earn five shillings a day ($1.25), but this only in the busy season; the
feller, at the best, can seldom go beyond three or four, and at the
worst earns but six or eight per week; while learners and general hands
make from two to six shillings a week, much of their time being spent in
carrying work between the shops and the warehouses. Six shillings a week
represents a purchasing power of about forty cents a day, half of which
must be reserved for rent; and thus it will be seen that the English
workwoman of the lower grade is in much the same condition as the
American worker, hours, wages, and results being nearly identical. The
Jewish women and girls represent a formidable element to contend with,
as they are now coming over in great numbers, and the question has so
organized itself that each falls almost at once into her own place, and
works with machine-like regularity and efficiency.
In one of the houses in a narrow little street opening off from
Whitechapel, were three women whose cases may be cited as representative
ones. The first was a trouser machinist, and took her work from another
woman, a sweater, who had it from city and other houses. She was paid
threepence (6c.) a pair, and could do ten pairs a day, if she got up at
six and worked till ten or eleven, which was her usual custom. In the
next room was a woman who stitched very thick large trousers, for which
she received fourpence a pair. She also had them from a woman who took
them from a sub-contractor. She could make six and sometimes seven
shillings a week, her rent being two shillings and sixpence. On the
floor above was a waistcoat maker, who, when work was brisk, could earn
eight and sometimes nine shillings a week; but who now, as work was
slack, seldom went beyond six or seven. Out of this must be taken
thread, which she got for eightpence a dozen. She worked for a small
exporter in a street some ten minutes' walk away; but often had to spend
two hours or more taking back her work and waiting for more to be given
out. She fared better than some, however, as she knew women who many a
time had had to lose five or six hours--"just so much bread out of their
mouths."
"The work has to be passed," she said, "and there's never any doubt
about mine, because I was bound to the trade, and my mother paid a pound
for premium, and I worked three months for nothing--two months of that
was clear gain to them, for I took to it and learned quick. But it's a
starvation trade now, whatever it used to be."
"Why don't some of the best workers among you combine and get your work
direct from the city house?"
"I've 'ad that in me mind, but there's never money enough. There's a
deposit to be made for guarantee, and the machine-rent and all. No,
there's never money enough. It's just keeping soul and body together,
and barely that. We don't see butcher's meat half a dozen times a year;
it's tea and bread, and you lose your relish for much of anything else,
unless sprats maybe, or a taste of shrimps. I was in one workshop a
while where there was over-hours always, and one night the inspector
happened along after hours, and no word passed down, and the man turned
me into the yard and turned off the gas; but I had to work two hours
after he was gone. I'm better off than the woman in the next room. She
makes children's suits--coats and knickerbockers--for ha'penny a piece,
with tuppence for finishing, and her cotton to find; and, do 'er best,
she won't make over four shillings and threepence a week, sometimes
less. There's a mother and daughter next door that were bound to their
trade for three months, and the daughter gave three months' work to
learn it; but the most they make on children's suits is eight shillings
and sixpence the two, and they work fifteen and sixteen hours a day."
This record of a house or two in Whitechapel is the record of street
after street in working London. No trade into which the needle enters
has escaped the system which has been perfected little by little till
there is no loophole by which the lower order of worker can escape. The
sweaters themselves are often kind-hearted men, ground by the system,
but soon losing any sensitiveness; and the mass of eager applicants are
constantly reinforced, not only by the steady pressure of emigrants of
all nations, but by an influx from the country. In short, conditions
are generally the same for London as New York, but intensified for the
former by the enormous numbers, and the fact that outlying spaces do not
mean a better chance. This problem of one great city is the problem of
all; and in each and all the sweater stands as an integral part of
modern civilization. Often far less guilty than he is counted to be, and
often as much a sufferer as his workers from those above him, his
mission has legitimate place only where ignorant and incompetent workers
must be kept in order, and may well give place to factory labor. With
skill comes organization and the power to claim better wages; and with
both skilled labor and co-operation the sweater has no further place,
and is transformed to foreman or superintendent. Till this is
accomplished, the word must stand, as it does to-day, for all imaginable
evil that can hedge about both worker and work.