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.]