[-172-]
CHAPTER XV.
FACTORY-GIRLS.
FACTORY-GIRLS are divided by all who have intimate knowledge of them, and by
the girls themselves, into two classes-factory - girls proper and girls who work
at trades - i.e., City work-girls. This may be considered an arbitrary
distinction, but it exists nevertheless, and the girl who works at a trade would
be very much offended if any one called her a factory hand, although she comes
under the Factory Act.
A curious instance of this distinction has attracted our
notice. The eight homes for working girls which have been established throughout
London by Mr. John Shrimpton are open to all "homeless" girls, and the
low charges made in them for board and lodging are as follows- 2s., 2s. 6d, and
4s. per week for bedroom, including use of dining-room and sitting-rooms, with
library; 4s. 6d. per week for breakfast, dinner, and tea; or separate
meals at 2½d. for [-173-] breakfast, 6d.
for dinner, 2½d for tea, and 1½d.. for supper.
These homes are the greatest blessings the working girls of
the metropolis possess, and are frequented by girls engaged in all sorts of
trades, as well as by shop-girls and milliners. But the factory-girl proper does
not enter them, or if she does so by mistake, three days find her outside their
doors again. Her purse does not permit her to stay, and her nature is such that
she cannot bear any restraint, any approach to order and discipline.
The factory-girl proper ranks next to the flower-girl or the
street-seller in the social scale, and constantly she falls into the ranks of
the hawker-race. She picks hops and fruit in the summer, and does odd jobs when
work is slack. Instead of the casual, she has the unskilled labourer for a
father, while the City work-girl is generally the daughter of an artisan.
Readers would probably be very much astonished if they knew
how difficult it is to get accurate information about the girls who come under
the Factory Act. These girls make everything, from the beautifully-bound book in
the library of the student to the match in Bryant and May's factory, about which
we have heard so much lately. We shall deal first with the factory-girl proper
the child of the unskilled [-174-] labourer, and
then pass on to the City work-girl, the daughter of the artisan.
We may safely say that the average wage of the factory-girl
proper is from 4s. to 8s. a week throughout London. Some earn more than 8s., a
few earn less than 4s.; but if we take them en masse their
wage is from 4s. to 8s. per week. When they become young women
their wages increase, and as forewomen they earn more money but the
factory-girl, who is a drug in the market, gets the pittance of from 4s. to 8s.
a week.
The chief characteristic of the factory-girl is her want of
reverence. She has a rough appearance, a hard manner, a saucy tongue, and an
impudent laugh. We heard a lady regretting the other day that the factory-girls
in her district did not know the difference between the daughter of a peer and
the child of a dock-labourer. She had invited the daughter of a well-known
evangelical nobleman to see her club, which is attended by at least a hundred
and eighty factory-girls, and Lady ---- brought a lover with her. The factory
girls were tickled by the situation, and in a few minutes the daughter of the
evangelical nobleman and the lover had to beat a hasty retreat. This thing is
certain if asked to distinguish between the daughter of a peer and the daughter
of a dock-labourer, the factory-girls [-175-] would
call the former "a young person" and the latter "a young
lady."
But to see the real disposition of the factory- girl one must
watch her with her fellow-workers not with those who consider themselves to be
her betters. When she leaves the Board School and shakes off home discipline she
is like an untrained colt-she resents all attempts to put her into harness.
Those who know anything about girls are aware that at the age of fourteen or
fifteen they pass through a stage of sheer "cursedness," at which time
they are a terror to mothers and a scourge to governesses if they belong to the
upper classes. Now, these factory-girls are like the rest of their sex, only
they have no governesses to dog their heels, no mammas to talk to them about the
laws that govern society, no wish to be fashionable or correct. They either pay
their parents for board and lodging or go off to live, three and four together,
in a room near their work. It is no uncommon thing to find two girls using a
room by day and two more using the same room by night. Such girls are in every
sense of the word their own mistresses, and they fiercely resent interference on
the part of parents, pastors, masters, or any one else. But the girl who turns
her back on parents and family, who cheeks her employers, and laughs at
passers-by [-176-] in the street, is like wax when
a fellow-worker falls ill or a collection has to be made for a sick companion.
She lends her clothes and her boots if a friend can thus get a chance of
"bettering herself." She shares her last crust with a girl out of
work, and "cries her eyes out" over the grave of a fellow-worker.
Among no other class of young women does there appear to be so much camaraderie,
such a strong instinct that all must pull together, such a commune of food,
clothes, and halfpence as among the factory-girls of the metropolis.
At the time of the strike at Bryant and May's factory a girl
was asked why it had taken place.
"Well, it just went like tinder," she said ;
"one girl began, and the rest said 'yes,' so out we all went."
When the girls were being paid their week's wages in
Charrington's Hall on Mile End Waste after the strike, it was curious to see the
waves of feeling that rolled over their faces, how all seemed influenced at the
same time, and in the same manner, by what was said and done for them. And few
people could help being touched by the way in which the girls were determined to
stand together at all costs. "I can pawn this for you," "I'll
lend you that to take to my uncle's," was heard all about the room ; and in
[-177-] every direction girls might be seen
plotting how they could help one another on until Bryant and May gave them back
their "pennies."
We do not intend to say anything about this strike. Bryant
and May's factory is not worse than many other factories in the way it pays its
hands. The worst paid factory-girls are those who work in places where
butter-scotch and other sweet stuffs are made ; the best paid
factory-girls are those who make cigars and cigarettes.
A butter-scotch factory, that employs many girls, pays as
follows. The girls begin with 2s. 6d. per week, and 6d. good
conduct money; the elder girls earn from 5s. to 7s. 6d. per
week. This factory was formerly further north, and when it moved into its
present neighbourhood, twelve of the best girls struck for an extra 2d. per
day to pay for their omnibus. They were told that the firm could get girls in
the neighbourhood, so they all had to give in and go back. Work begins at 8.15
a.m.; and if a girl is late she is fined 7d.; an hour is allowed for
dinner, after which the girls go on working until 6 p.m. Saturday brings a half
holiday, of course, the girls being paid at 2 p.m., or at 1.30, according to the
whim of the brothers who manage the place. The girls complain bitterly of the
"drilling" that is practised in this factory. There are many kinds of
drill, from [-178-] keeping a girl standing an hour
to half the day or more but the drilling she finds hardest to bear is a week's
holiday, for then she has to meet the anger of parents, or to bear the pangs of
hunger. A day's illness sometimes means drill for a week.
This is a fair specimen of the lowest-class factory, to which
flock girls who have just passed the Fourth Standard. Girls like sweetstuff and
they are generally allowed "to get a sickening," after which they do
not eat much, but they generally have a sickly appearance. One of the saddest
sights in the metropolis is to see such girls being "taken on" on a
Monday morning. They struggle for work, and "slang" the manager ; they
use the most awful language, and act like little maniacs. The manager could get
them to work for almost nothing, only then they would faint at their work, and
be useless. The stories these girls tell of their privations must touch the
stoniest heart, and make the firmest believer in competition suffer from qualms
of conscience. A tobacco factory near Saffron Hill is a good specimen of the
highest class of factories. The girls begin there with 3s. a week, and are
allowed 6d. per hundred cigars directly they can use their fingers. They
are apprenticed for four years, after which time they receive 9d.,1s.,
1s. 6d., and 2s. per hundred [-179-] cigars,
according to the quality of their work. They can make from one to three hundred
cigars in the day, and their wages vary from 8s. to 23s. per week. The girls who
are especially skilful make more than this. The manager says that the work is
not suitable for women, because the strong smell of the tobacco affects their
health and the work requires so much practice. "I've had three or four
girls in a dead faint all at once," he said. "And I've got to keep a
bottle of sal volatile on the place. Then, directly they've got their hand well
in, they go and get married. We've men here that have been from fifteen to forty
years on the place. Girls are so easily upset." These girls work from 9 am,
to 6 p.m., with an hour off for dinner. They have no fines, and are under a very
popular forewoman. The happiness of factory-girls depends very much on the head
forewoman - or, as she is generally called, the labour-mistress. She is
generally chosen from among the staff of forewomen, but sometimes she is a
school-mistress who has broken down in health, the widow of a tradesman, or some
one of that description. The "hands" prefer a woman who has been
trained on the place, and who thoroughly understands the business.
Factory-girls vary very much in different parts of the
metropolis ; and any one who knows the [-180-] genus
well can say at once which quarter of London a factory-girl comes from by her
appearance. The East End girl is rough, and indulges in vulgar horse-play with
lads of her own age. She frequents penny-gaffs with her "round-the-corner
" (sweetheart), and lets him treat her to beer in the public-house.
Occasionally she visits the pit of a theatre, and cracks nuts there with her
teeth between the acts. The West End girl is vicious ; she speaks a lingo which
only her friends can understand, sings songs which have a hidden meaning, and
has an unpleasant way of carrying on dual conversations, one sentence aloud to
the general public, another in an undertone for the benefit of a companion.
Midway between these two is the girl who lives in the slums of the West Central
district. They all wear the same uniform ; a draggled, dark-coloured skirt,
which is covered up with an apron while in the factory; a long black jacket
bought by weekly instalments of a shilling or sixpence; and a black hat trimmed
with a gorgeous feather. A wisp of hair behind and a heavy fringe in front is
the approved headdress. This one may see in Bermondscy, Southwark, Hackney, and
other outlying districts, as well as in the City.
A great deal is done for these girls in different parts of
London. Many clubs are held for them, [-181-] and
they are sent into the country, either by private funds or in connection with
fresh-air missions. Mrs. De Fontaine's club in Southwark, Miss Canney's club in
Hatton Garden, and a dozen others have been visited by our Commissioners. The
latest attempt to help the girls is, of course, in connection with Trades
Unions, and as these are beginning to prove a success we may hope to see further
attempts at combination among factory-girls in different districts of the
metropolis. Girls meet with accidents every day in these factories. We have
heard of a ginger-beer factory in which they have one accident a week, such as
getting an eye blown out, and where the girls never think of claiming damages.
It is the same in places where girls make fireworks ; and in many cases the
managers take advantage of their employees' ignorance. Messrs. Bryant and May's
girls are developing a faculty for business ; so no doubt there are the same
powers of organization among other factory-girls of London.
The homes of these girls are, as a rule, very wretched. One
or two rooms, which they share with father, mother, brothers, and sisters, a
general purse, out of which they sometimes get a shilling on Saturday night, a
dirty court-these are the things they mean by "home." So many men are
now out of work that these girls become in many [-182-] cases
breadwinners for the whole family. The description of one "home" will
be sufficient.
Across Blackfriars Bridge, in a street at the back of the
first church, lives a girl of seventeen with her bedridden mother. She earns
10s. a week in a feather factory, where she works from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with an
hour off for dinner. After six o'clock she returns home to do the housework. She
is an out-patient at one of the London hospitals. The room costs 5s. a
week, so the mother and daughter have 2s. 6d. each a week to live upon.
The room is clean, but heaped up with boxes, and on washing day the fumes almost
stifle the sick woman. A flower or two in the window, a book from the parish
library, are the only comforts these poor things possess, yet one never hears a
word of complaint. The girl sometimes says that she finds her work monotonous;
but adds, "it's nothing like what mother has to put up with."
It is useless to pretend that factory-girls have much
religious feeling or high moral principles. Some have, the greater number have
not. On Sunday they hem bed all morning, and go for a walk with their "
round-the-corner" after dinner. Their theory seems to be "it's all
right if you're not found out;" and their love-making rarely means
marriage.