[-258-]
CHAPTER XXIV.
YOUNG WOMEN.
WE propose to take a survey of the articles on Young Women in
London. We have noticed the following classes Flower-girls and street-hawkers;
factory-girls and City work- girls ; girls engaged in home industries ; East and
West End tailoresses; East and West End shirtmakers ; sempstresses,
upholsteresses, and laundresses ; servants ; barmaids ; and the girls engaged in
the boot and shoe industry.
It has been impossible to do more than glance at the work and
wages of these young women. The subject is very large, and our space is limited.
No paper, no individual, can deal with the mass of information which must be
obtained, and sifted, before the public can have accurate information about
London girls after they leave the Board Schools. But each investigation helps,
if it is honest ; for others gather up the threads and weave them into more
perfect knowledge. [-259-] It may interest our
readers to know that Mr. Charles Booth, who has done, and is doing, such
valuable statistical work in London, has added to his secretaries a lady whose
business it will be to inquire into the work and wages of girls in East London.
She will, let us hope, carry on similar investigations in
other parts of the Metropolis, and so, at last, we shall have an idea of female
labour in London. But it must be borne in mind that such investigations are, at
the best, only approximate. We may, in time, get enough facts to build up a
science of economics ; but we shall never have the truth, for facts change-the
truth is not stationary.
"When I want to laugh I read 'Adam Bede,'" remarked
a carpenter. " George Eliot's idea of my trade is funnier to me than
anything I come across in Ally Sloper."
Just as the novelist gives the shadows of men and women more
or less distinctly according to his talent for character-painting, so does the
investigator give tables of facts more or less accurately. It is all very well
for economists to smile because Mr. Walter Besant's inquiry into the work and
wages of women has collapsed - to say, "That is what one might expect of a
novelist." By his creation of Melenda, Mr. [-260-]
Besant first called attention to the working girl of London. The artist
suggests: the economist merely puts his suggestions into practice.
Our inquiry has taught us that the flower-girl, or street
hawker, is the daughter of the casual often Irish and a Roman Catholic,
generally improvident, and the victim of a loafer, who spends her money and
refuses to support his children unless she has her "lines, or marriage
certificate. We have seen that the factory-girl proper is the daughter of the
labouring-man ; well paid in first- class factories, but generally a drug in the
market, earning from 4s. to 8s. a week, which money goes into the family pocket.
The City work-girl we have found to be the daughter of the skilled artizan ;
often a stranger to London, where she suffers terribly in slack seasons, and has
to seek cheap lodgings, in which companions are met who, being stronger and more
skilful, lead her on step by step till the facile clescensus is complete.
The girls engaged in home industries we have discovered in the lowest depths of
poverty and distress in the East End districts. Our readers found our statements
too much for their feelings, and we were able to help some of the worst cases
through their kindness. The plain needle-women, the furpullers, the
brush-makers, and others we have unearthed in miserable dens, dragging out their
[-261-] lives amid dirt and wretchedness on the
pittance given to them by middlemen. Afterwards we had to state on the authority
of one who has lived for years among them, that 25,000 East End tailoresses are
working fifteen and sixteen hours a day for a penny an hour, when they can get
employment ; fetching their work from sweaters' shops, where they are kept
standing for hours, and then consuming the midnight oil in order that they may
earn a few pennies. The West End tailoress, who shines brightly in comparison,
had nevertheless a distinct grievance, which was, that the whole of the
tailoring trade is rapidly passing into the hands of foreigners, who are calling
in young men of their own nation to take the place of Englishwomen. East End
shirt-makers have been visited who finish shirts at one farthing each ;
laundresses who dress linen for shops, upholsteresses and sempstresses, have all
come under our notice. Servants versus mistresses, and mistresses versus
servants, occupied a considerable amount of our space; and we pointed out
that if the London Board Schools would affiliate themselves with the
Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, the poor little
trotters, alias strikers, alias slaveys, might be saved from the clutches of
those who now employ them in the place of proper apprentices, to the [-262-]
disadvantage of all trained workers. Our article on barmaids drew
attention to those "called to the bar." We told the public that these
girls work ten and twelve hours a day at many of the best-known restaurants,
receive an allowance of 10d. a day for spirits, and sleep below the
street in some of the Metropolitan stations. Last of all we spoke of the girls
who make the uppers of boots and shoes, and proved to our readers that such
workers are not likely to enjoy a very merry Christmas.
We have not space to discuss what can be done to improve the
condition of these young women. They are willing to emigrate, and we are told on
the best authority that the girls who are a drug here can have work in the
Colonies. But while foreigners come in to take their places we can scarcely say
that they ought to leave England. The most serious fact we have had to state is
that twenty thousand girls have of late years been added to the lists of those
who ply the only trade that has no slack times for women; and that many of these
are foreigners. That we want more factory inspectors H.M.I. Mr. Lakeman bore
witness before the Sweating Commission and that sanitary inspectors must
overhaul the workers in home industries is very evident. We would make one
suggestion. Let work be [-263-] found for the
unemployed men, and thus lift from the shoulders of their wives and daughters
the burden of bread-winning.
Miss Clementina Black, Secretary of the Women's Trades' Union
and Provident League, has given us active help ; and we are glad to hear that
her work is bearing fruit in the shape of Unions among the shop-assistants,
laundresses, and others.
We have also received much sympathy and assistance from the
secretaries of the Young Women's Christian Association. These ladies cannot
touch the economic question ; if they did, employers would quickly close upon
them the doors of factories and workshops. One of the greatest boons working
girls possess is a well-known eating-house in the City, where food is supplied
at low prices. A plate of meat costs threepence, vegetables one penny, soup one
halfpenny, puddings three-halfpence. This eating- house was started by a member
of the Y.W.C.A. some time ago, and is now almost self-supporting. The lady
wanted to put the girls of her district into a club, but the doctor would not
give them a certificate of health. He said, "Feed them first, and teach
them the Gospel afterwards.
Ii more educated women would take up the [-264-]
question of female labour, and work with as much charity and earnestness
as Miss Black and the secretaries of the Y.W.C.A., we should soon have a
different tale to tell about the work girls of London.
THE END.