THE PROBLEM OF HOME WORKERS
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth must speak, so in this
chapter I deal with an old, old subject. Generations come and go; in
a hundred directions improvement follows on the heels of improvement.
For most men the hours of toil have been considerably lessened. Factory
and workshop inspection has done wonders. Employers’ liability for
the health and safety of their servants has been forcibly brought
home. But, strange to say, the condition of the London home workers is
practically the same as it was in Hood’s time. True the silent ‘stitch,
stitch, stitch’ of the needle plied by ‘fingers weary and worn’ has
given place to the never-ceasing rattle of the sewing-machine; but
little else is altered, for the incessant toil and misery of the
workers remain as before--nay, worse--for a hundred other trades have
sprung up to the seamstresses’ company, the conditions of which are
equally bad, and in some cases worse, than the conditions under which
the seamstresses live and die. Commissions have sat, inquiries have
been made, Blue-Books have been filled with evidence, people have wept,
philanthropists have poured out their wealth, but all in vain, for the
evil is still with us, our sorrow and our shame.
It has often been urged against moving stories of fiction that, while
they stir the emotions, they provide no outlet for practical sympathy,
and that stirring the well-springs of pity out of mere caprice is but
to demoralize. I am afraid my last chapter is somewhat open to this
charge. I know it has touched the hearts of a good many people, for I
have received some hundreds of letters with regard to it; I also know,
and have good reasons for knowing, that most of the writers were not
content that their emotions should be stirred and no practical result
ensue.
‘You have saddened us.’ ‘What can we do?’ ‘What are you going to do?’
So wrote one lady, and she voiced the thoughts of many. Neither was it
the female heart alone that was stirred, for I soon became aware that
in writing on the sufferings of London’s oppressed women I had touched
the heart of humanity.
‘We are full of trouble here, and we have our own sorrows, but I send
you a draft for £25 to make some of those women happier.’ So wrote a
member of the Legislative Assembly of Natal. ‘I have been farming out
here for twenty-five years but I have never forgotten Hood’s “Song of
the Shirt.” I send you £10 to help those poor women.’ Thus wrote a
farmer in Cape Colony. From Australia and from Ireland, Scotland, and
Wales letters came, and the purport of them all was, ‘Can’t you do
something to make the poor women happier?’
For more years than I care to remember I had hoped and longed for a
Home of Rest for these women, to which I could send the poorest of
them. Africa and Australia gave me out of the goodness of their hearts
the nucleus of the fund that enabled me to do it.
But the women of London were not behindhand, for a number of them
formed themselves into a ‘Farthing League’ (they could not give large
sums) for the support of the Home.
‘The members of the league pledge themselves to subscribe to its funds
the odd farthing on every article and every yard of material bought at
a draper’s shop.’ Each member has a box into which the odd farthings or
pence, as the case may be, are dropped. The members appoint their own
secretary and treasurer: Even from our own Royal Family came a voice
wishing success to the Home of Rest, and some help for the undertaking.
But while these combined to make my task the easier, what made it
imperative was the sight of a weary-faced, bloodless woman that sat
on a chair in North London Police Court before the magistrate. ‘Give
her a seat,’ said the kindly magistrate; ‘she is too ill to stand in
the dock.’ She had tottered into one of our police stations and given
herself up for stealing a dozen skirts which had been given her to
make at 1s. 3d. per dozen, she finding machine and thread and paying
carriage of the articles to and from the factory. It was cold winter
time; she had four young children and a husband out of work. ‘You are
drunk,’ they said to her. ‘No, no; it’s the laudanum,’ she said. Her
skirts had been finished, she had no fire, and the children wanted
food. So she pawned them, kindled a fire, and fed her children. Then
fear took possession of her. ‘I am a thief; they will send me to
prison,’ she said. But she had a few coppers left. Laudanum was bought,
but not sufficient to quench the faint spark of life in her weak body.
‘I remand her for a week; take her to Holloway in a cab, and let the
doctor’s attention be called to her,’ said the worthy magistrate. In a
week’s time she was again before him, and was promptly discharged. ‘Do
what you can to help her,’ he said to me.
Help her! Why, she had scarcely flesh enough to cover her bones, nor
clothing enough to provide a semblance of warmth. She needed food,
clothing, rest, fresh air, and human sympathy. I knew that in her own
wretched home she could not get them, so I started my Seaside Home of
Rest for Weary Women. Here is a letter from her:
‘DEAR SIR,
‘I am constantly thinking of your kindness, and I think that I
should be ungrateful if I did not write to you. God has answered
my prayer, for I asked Him to take me out of my trouble. Oh, sir, I
have only had one day’s holiday in fifteen years, and that was when
I went with my first little boy to a Sunday-school treat. I feel
that I should like to have more faith in God. I believe in Him, I
tell Him my troubles, but I have no faith, and I forget His day
(she worked on Sundays). I want to be a happy woman, but my life
has been so hard, so very hard. I am feeling stronger, but I cannot
lose the horror of what I have done; but do believe me, for I am
grateful to the magistrate and you for the great kindness shown to
me.
‘Yours gratefully.’
Fifteen years of hopeless, unending toil and of practical starvation
are enough to quench the hope that is said to ‘spring eternal in the
human heart,’ and without hope there can be no faith. How could the
woman believe in a God of Love? Her story is common enough. Down to
my little Home at Walton there has been a procession of such women.
I wish that I could march them before my readers, each poor woman
carrying a ‘brown-paper parcel,’ for bags, portmanteaus, or boxes have
not been seen among them. No elastic step among them. Bent bodies,
faces wrinkled and like to discoloured parchment. Some younger bodies,
but still whitish and bloodless faces, whose eyes are dull, and no
sparkle of joy in them; plenty of passivity, but no glint of fire.
Some with a child each, some with two, for the children must be cared
for. Some, too, alas! bruised and battered, for even the passivity of
a wage-earning machine wife is no security against the brutality of a
husband when the ‘potion works within him.’
Such are the women for whom I have been compelled to care. Sometimes
I go down and spend a week-end with them, and I would that I could do
justice to a description of them. But I cannot. In the evening before
they retire to the strange luxuries of clean sheets we gather round the
piano and sing an evening hymn, and I listen to their quavering voices
in every key and in no key at all.
‘Watch by the sick, enrich the poor
With blessings from Thy boundless store.’
Then I feel there is something wrong, for my eyes get dim and my throat
lumpy. But I read to them, ‘Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing?
Not one shall fall without your Father’s knowledge. Fear not; ye are
of more value than many sparrows.’ I know they can make sure of the
Heavenly love. I would to God I could feel more sure of earthly love
and earthly store, too, for them, for they get precious little of
either!
But while I am writing this, February 6, a letter reaches me from the
matron, asking questions about my arrangement for the future life
of one of the women, and, like most ladies, she adds a postscript:
‘P.S.--Excuse this short letter, but they are making so much noise,
laughing and shouting and playing ping-pong, that I am bewildered.’
Sweated drudges, hopeless, broken women, laughing, shouting, and
playing ping-pong! I felt rewarded for my trouble. The sea air, good
food, and rest, are fine tonics even in the winter.
Appetite comes by eating. The desire to increase happiness increases by
giving happiness. I am not content, neither do I want to be content.
Did not old Augustine say, ‘The man that says “Enough!” that man’s
soul is lost?’ I have tasted the delight of making some of the poorest
and most miserable glad, and I long to see more fully the realization
of my hopes. I am told by some worthy people that I am ‘spoiling’
these women. I want to. ‘You will make them dissatisfied with their
own homes.’ I hope I may, for the apathetic content of the poor with
their dirt and misery constitutes the greatest danger. From such
content may God deliver them! But who can estimate the value to these
hard-working women of a few weeks’ rest and refreshment at a place
where the life-giving qualities of the sea may invigorate them and its
mighty diapason soothe them? But while the heart is touched and our
sympathies are quickened at the sufferings of these women, and while
it is easy to be charitable and philanthropic with regard to them,
what new condemnation can be brought against the social conditions
and the sanitary conditions under which they live and work? To me it
seems rank absurdity, savouring almost of national insanity, that a
country like ours, knowing what we know, and fearing what we fear,
should tolerate them. We have endless and learned talk about ‘germs’;
microbes are sought for and classified; sanitation is reduced to a
science; isolation in fever or small-pox cases is rigidly insisted
on. Yet in hundreds of fœtid and pestilential dens a thousand and one
articles of every-day use for the personal comfort or gratification of
every section of the community and for every period of life are made.
But Nature knows no pity, break her laws, and she arises and smites you
when and where you least expect it. As we sow we shall and must reap.
And I would like to force it upon the mind of the nation that, if we
continue to make our blouses, shirts, children’s pinafores, and babies’
clothing, our fur jackets and our cheap mantles, our tooth-brushes,
corsets, match-boxes, and artificial flowers in the mansions of misery,
in the dens of disease and death, then of a verity weeping and wailing
and the voice of mourning shall be heard in the land. Many must suffer,
but they may be the innocent. So kiss your darlings. Your first-born,
proud young mothers, put their pretty hats or bonnets on their sweet
little heads; but if you had but one glimpse of the room in which they
were made fear and trembling would take hold upon you. Hold up your
heads, brave young men, adjust your smart neckties; but if you saw the
rooms in which they were made and the fingers that made them you would
drop them into the fire with a pair of tongs. Here is a 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.’
Curiosity led me to that room, and though I had some difficulty in
squeezing myself into it, I was very soon glad to get out of it. There
he lay on a miserable bed, by no means clean. I had to sit on the side
of that bed, and I felt uneasy. It was partially covered with ties or
silk for making them, and he lay there with his decaying lungs, every
few minutes his cough troubling him. I did not stay long, but long
enough to see his wife three times put down her work to raise his head
that he might with difficulty expectorate.
Again:
‘SIR,
‘I see you are going to help Women Home Workers. I have begged two
shillings from poor friends, and send it to you, for my wife is one
of them. I have been ill for two years, and as I watch my wife at
her work night and day, and know how little she gets for it, I feel
more than I can tell.’
No address was given, so I never saw the room, but the fact remains
that for two years he had lain there ill, while ‘home work’ was
continually around him.
I have been in rooms and seen sometimes sick or dying children,
sometimes a dead child, where clothing for other children was being
made night and day; I have breathed, or, rather, swallowed, the
close, heavy, sickening atmosphere, and come away feeling faint, but
wondering into what homes the garments being made would go, and how
the children would fare that wore them. Ay, I thought, too, of the old
words, ‘Rachel weeping for her children because they are not.’ The
bodies of the poor folk who are engaged in these ‘home industries’ are
of necessity but poor bodies, so frightfully ill-nourished that they
fall an easy prey to all kinds of disease--not only to chest complaints
and fevers, but to all forms of disease; skin diseases especially
abound. The ill-nourished and sickly plant develops parasites; the
ill-nourished human does precisely the same. The weaker the animal
life, the more it becomes the prey of the myriads of relentless foes,
seen and unseen, that are greedily waiting for it; while filthy air and
water, vile rooms and insanitary accommodation, dirty bodies, endless
work, and hopeless apathy all combine to make Home Workers a danger to
the community.
I have no wish to raise any feelings of disgust; I am but stating bare
truths that might be enlarged upon, but I forbear. Far be it from me to
say one word that might divert an atom of sympathy from the poor; my
heart is with them, and I know, as few can know, the difficulties that
environ their lives. I know that it is impossible for them under their
present conditions to be clean, decent, and healthy. None the less, I
repeat that their dirt and misery are a national danger. But see how
this question appeals to the two primal instincts of humanity: First to
that touch of nature that makes all men kin, that leads men and women
to sacrifice themselves that they may save others; and, secondly, to
that instinct for self-preservation that is said to be Nature’s first
law. I would that we were true to either.
But I believe in the application of common-sense when difficulties
are to be solved, and I love justice. So I want my last words to be
practical. Why should this evil and danger exist at all? Its very
presence proclaims our lack of thought. It need not exist. It ought not
to exist. Consider the lives of these people. Do they work hard enough
and hours enough? Far too hard and far too many hours everyone admits.
Do they pay rent enough for the accommodation called their home? Most
people will say far, far too much. Do they pay highly enough for their
meagre quantities of wretched food? I may be told that the poor can get
things very cheap nowadays. Can they? Come and see.
I was visiting in the home of a widowed match-box maker. Her sister,
who had a crippled husband, lived with her, and was also a match-box
maker. This sister had gone with her broken-down perambulator to take
a shilling’s worth of finished boxes to the factory--the everlasting
baby underneath, the boxes on top. A lady friend was with me. While she
essayed to learn the art of box-making, I stood looking on till the
sister match-box maker returned. Evidently there had been something
wrong, for the woman was breathless, and when she recovered was a bit
hysterical. ‘What is the matter?’ her sister asked. ‘They gave me a bad
shilling at the factory, and I did not find it out till I got half-way
home.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘I gave a boy a penny to mind the baby, and
ran all the way back.’ ‘Did they change it for you?’ In reply a genuine
shilling was shown. But it was a near thing--a hair’s-breadth escape
from financial ruin.
How are those shillings spent? Again I say, come and see; for here
is the housekeeping account of another widow living in the same
neighbourhood, a blouse-maker. She had four children--a girl of twelve,
a boy of nine, a crippled boy of seven, and a younger child. The girl,
who was, of course, deputy mother, had been charged with stealing some
food, which undoubtedly she took to give to her younger brothers. In
my visitations I came across the widow’s rent-book--five shillings
weekly. Paid up to date. I found her wage-book with its pitiful tale
of hard work and poor pay. I saw also the widow’s housekeeping account
and her expenditure of her last shilling. Here it is: ‘Tea, ½d.; sugar,
½d.; bread, 1¼d.; margarine, 1d.; oil, 1d.; firewood, ½d.; and a bit
of bacon.’ When this story appeared in the press, I received 1,600
letters in a few days about the widow and her children, and England
seemed to weep over them. By the aid of the _Daily Telegraph_ we were
enabled to open five banking accounts, and place them above the fear
of poverty. But when that fear was gone, when the cupboard was full
of good food for which the children no longer cried, the youngest
boy died, for even a banking account could not save him. And so it
happened that a kind-hearted public clothed the family in mourning,
paid the undertaker’s bill and cemetery fees. Will the dark path of
the destroyer ever prove a way of light to a social heaven? Some day,
perhaps, when we have suffered more.
But to return to that widow’s housekeeping account. A notable business
man said to me: ‘Do you know what strikes me most about that widow’s
housekeeping account?’ I supposed the poverty of it. ‘Not at all,’
he said. ‘It is the horrible and senseless waste it tells of! Do you
suppose she gets a halfpennyworth of tea or sugar, or a pennyworth
of margarine for her money? No. She loses on every purchase; she is
bound to. The shopkeeper can’t lose, so she must. Multiply the loss
on that shilling by the number of shillings spent in a year. Why, it
is frightful!’ He went to the root of the matter at once. The poorer
people are, the greater the cost of living; the more abject their
poverty, and the greater their need of nourishing food, the dearer they
have to pay for the barest necessities. Come into a marketing street in
a poor neighbourhood toward midnight on Saturday, watch the butchers’
shops, and you will see a poorly-clothed and miserable woman standing
looking with wistful eyes at the meat. With a few hardly-earned coppers
she has to provide some pretence of a Sunday dinner for her family. The
joints are ticketed, and they are beyond even her dreams. She comes
nearer and looks at the inferior pieces, and timidly inquires the
price. Still too high. She looks again and again, until the butcher
says, and not unkindly, ‘Buy some of those nice pieces, ma’am?’ Nice
pieces! they have lain on the block all day, after being trimmed off
foreign meat, ticketed English--bits of mutton and shreds of beef on
which the wind has blown. On them the dust and dirt of the street has
found a resting-place; flies have paid them a visit; dirty fingers of
other speculative purchasers have turned them over again and again. She
finds her coppers, gets one pound and a half of the pieces, and takes
them to her own home--her one room, her larder and bedroom, workshop
and kitchen, in which the whole family sleeps--and on the Sunday makes
an inviting stew. But there are plenty who fare worse than this, and
to whom even the ‘pieces’ would be a Godsend, to whom even a bit of
‘macadamized cheese’ would represent luxury, and whose children from
very birth are fed with material that would test the stomach of a dog
or an ostrich. Can this go on, and the nation be free from the penalty?
Impossible! and the penalty is paid all round. Now, I have no wish
for all difficulties to be removed from the lives even of the poor.
Life without difficulty would be a poor thing, and hardly worth the
living. But I do claim that the poorest, the hardest worked of all
London’s toilers, should have the possibility of living in decency,
cleanliness, and some degree of comfort, and be able to obtain clean
and nourishing food. And it can be done--I know it can be done. But it
can only be by organization and combination, without which it will be
for ever impossible for the Home Workers to get value for their money.
I have had glimpses of a promised land, and in my fancy have seen the
Home Workers organized and living in sweet content--organized not for
strikes or lock-outs, but for health, virtue, happiness; not in filthy
slums enveloped with rank odours and moral and physical corruption;
near the town, but a little way out, where the free air of heaven
can enter their lungs and the silence of the country speak to them;
in their communities, where each family had its suite of rooms, and
each suite of rooms its bath-room; where children had rounded limbs
and merry hearts; where brave boyhood and sweet girlhood ripened and
matured; where poor women hovered not at midnight for scraps of dirty
meat, and where the miserable items--tea, ½d.; sugar, ½d.--were no
longer known, for they had their own stores. Some day we shall enter
this promised land in which the jerry-builder shall not enter, and in
which nothing that is unclean or maketh a lie shall be found. And when
we enter it we shall hear the deep roar of the nation as it rolls
its heavy curse on the buried past. We shall feel that the heart of
England is lighter, the hand of the oppressor has been stayed. Then the
mothers of England will buy clothing for their darlings without fear.
No nameless terrors will haunt the dainty brush, neither will men or
women’s clothing convey contagion, or the smart necktie disseminate the
seeds of death.
For all these things will be made in light and cleanliness, and the
brand of shame will be no longer upon them. Then the pioneers of the
Empire at the ends of the earth will be no longer sad when their
hearts, touched by remembrance, vibrate to the magnet of their soul,
their old country and home. For in the circuit of the sun gladness and
joy shall be felt in the knowledge that the poorest of the poor in the
world’s greatest city have a chance for health and virtue, for peace
and comfort.
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
FOOTNOTES:
[1] TOO OLD TO LIVE!
‘Aged forty-six, and out of work, a grocer’s assistant named Thomas
Harvey hanged himself at a house in Euston Road.
‘On a piece of paper in the suicide’s pocket was written:
‘“I cannot get work, so have to die in a so-called Christian
country. Young men only are employed, and the elders shoved aside
when too old for the trade, to do what they can, no matter how
meritorious their service to their employer may have been.”
‘At the inquest, yesterday, a verdict of “temporary insanity” was
returned.’--_Daily Express_, July 5, 1900.
[Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]