CHAPTER XVIII--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 vegetates; 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 clay 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 per 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.
