Prisoners Of Poverty Abroad Part 4

"Whose is he?--whose?" she stammered.

"He is Herbert Stanley, junior," the lady said with a smile. "I'm Mrs.

Stanley. Good Heaven! what is it?"

Nelly had stood for a moment, her hands reaching out blindly, the card with its name and number still in them.

"I must go," she said. "I must look for the real Herbert. This is another." She fell as the words ended, still holding the card tight; and when they had revived her, only shook her head as questions were asked.

The boy stood looking at her with his father's eyes. There could be no doubt. Nelly rose and looked around; then, with no word to tell who she might be, went out into the night. She crossed the street, and stood hesitating; and as she stood a figure came swiftly down the street on the other side, and ran up the steps of the house she had left. There was no doubt any more; and with a long, bitter cry Nelly fled toward the river. There was no pause. She knew the way well, and if she had not, instinct would have led her, and did lead, through narrow alleys and turnings till the embankment was reached. No stop, even then. A policeman saw the flying figure, and a man who tried to hinder her heard the words, "I shall never be a lady now," but that was all; and when he saw her face again the river had done its work, and the story was plain, though for its inner pages only the man who was her murderer has the key.

CHAPTER VIII.

LONDON s.h.i.+RT-MAKERS.

Bloomsbury has a cheerful sound, and, like Hop Vine Garden and Violet Lane, and other t.i.tles no less rea.s.suring, seems to promise a breath of something better than the soot-laden atmosphere offered by a London winter. But Hop Vine Garden is but a pa.s.sage between a line of old buildings, and ends in a dark court and a small and dirty "public," the beer-pots of which hold the only suggestion of hops to be discovered.

Violet Lane is given over to cat's-meat and sausage makers, the combination breeding painful suspicions in the seeker's mind, and Bloomsbury has long since ceased to own sight or smell of any growing thing.

But, in a gray and forlorn old group of houses known as Clark's Buildings, will be found, on certain evenings in the month, a little knot of women, each with open account-book, studying over small piles of pence and silver, and if their looks are any indication, drawing very little satisfaction from the operation. They are the secretaries of the little societies organized by the late Mrs. Patterson, who, like many other philanthropists, came to see that till the workers themselves were roused to the consciousness of necessity for union, but little could be accomplished for them. A few of the more intelligent, stirred by her deep earnestness, banded together twelve years ago, and organized a society known as "The Society of Women Employed in s.h.i.+rt, Collar, and Under-linen Making;" and here may be found the few who have, from long and sharp experience, discovered the chief needs of workers in these trades. When outward conditions as they show themselves at present have been studied, when homes and hours and wages and all the details of the various branches have become familiar, it is to this dim little hall that one comes for a final puzzle over all that is wrong.

For it is all wrong; nor in any corner of working London, can any fact or figures make a right of the toil that is an old, old story; so old that there is even impatience if one tells it again. Numbers are unknown, each one who investigates giving a different result; but it is quite safe to say that five hundred thousand women live by the industries named in the society's t.i.tle, not one of whom has ever received, or ever will receive, under the present system, a wage which goes beyond bare subsistence. Here, as in New York, or any other large city of the United States, the conditions governing the trade are much the same. The women, untrained and unskilled in every other direction, turn to these branches of sewing as the possibility for all, and scores wait for any and every chance of work from manufactory or small house.

As with us, the work is chiefly put out, and necessarily at once arises the middle-man, or a gradation of middle-men, each of whom must have his profit, taken in every case--not from employer, but worker. The employer fixes his rates without reference to these. He is fighting, also, for subsistence, plus as many luxuries as can be added from the profits of his superior power over conditions. He may be, and often is, to those nearest him, kind, unselfish, eager for right. But the hands are "hands," and that is all; and the middle-man, of whom the very same statement may be true, deals with the hands with an equal obliviousness as to their connection with bodies and souls.

The original price per dozen of the garments made may be the highest in the market, but before the woman who works is reached there are often five, and sometimes more, transfers. Where workers are employed on the premises, they fare better, being paid by the piece. The minutest divisions of labor prevail, even more than with us--a s.h.i.+rt pa.s.sing through many hands, the weekly wage differing for each. The "fitter,"

for instance, must be a skilled workwoman, the flatness and proper set of the s.h.i.+rt front depending upon correct fitting at the neck. For this fitting in West End houses, the fitter receives a penny a s.h.i.+rt, and can in a week fit twenty dozen--this meaning a pound a week. But slack seasons reduce the amount, so that often she earns but nine or ten s.h.i.+llings, her average for the year being about fourteen. For the grades below her the sum is proportionately less. The most thoroughly skilled hand in either s.h.i.+rt-making or under-linen has been known to make as high as twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings a week ($7.00), but this is phenomenal; nor, indeed, does any such possibility remain, prices having gone down steadily for some years. A pound a week for a woman, as has been stated elsewhere, is regarded even by just employers as all that can be required by the most exacting; and with this standard in mind, a fall of three or four s.h.i.+llings seems a matter of slight importance.

Taking the various industries in which women are employed, the needle, as usual, leading, and the s.h.i.+rt-makers being a large per cent of the number, there are in London nearly a million women, self-supporting and self-respecting, and often the sole dependence of a family. This excludes the numbers of thriftless and otherwise helpless poor whose work is variable, and who, at the best, can earn only the lowest possible wages as unskilled laborers. For the skilled ones, doing their best in long days of work, never less than twelve hours, the average earnings, after all chances of slack seasons and accidents have been taken into account, is never over ten s.h.i.+llings a week. It is worth while to consider what ten s.h.i.+llings can do.

The allowance per head for rations for the old people in the Whitechapel Workhouse, one of the best of its cla.s.s, is according to the authorities, three s.h.i.+llings eleven pence (96c.) per week, the quant.i.ty falling somewhat below the amount which physiologists regard as necessary for an able-bodied adult. These supplies are purchased by contract, and thus a full third lower than the single buyer can command.

But she has learned that appet.i.te is not a point to be considered, and for the most part confines herself to tea and bread and b.u.t.ter, with a cheap relish now and then. Thus four s.h.i.+llings a week is made to cover food, and three s.h.i.+llings gives her a small back room. For such lights, fire, and was.h.i.+ng as cannot be dispensed with, must be counted another s.h.i.+lling. Out of the remaining two s.h.i.+llings must come her twopence a week, if she belongs to any trades-union, leaving one s.h.i.+lling and ten-pence for clothes, holidays, amus.e.m.e.nts, saving, and the possible doctor's bill, a sum for the year, at the utmost, of from four pounds fifteen s.h.i.+llings and ninepence, or a trifle under twenty dollars. These women are, every one of them, past-mistresses in the art of doing without; and they do without with a patient courage, and often a cheerfulness, that is one of the most pathetic facts in their story. It is the established order of things. Why should they cry or make ado?

Yet, as the workshop has its own education for men, and gives us the order known as the "intelligent workman," so it gives us also the no less intelligent workwoman, possessing not only the natural womanly gift of many resources, but the added power of just so much technical training as she may have received in her apprentices.h.i.+p to her trade.

Miss Simc.o.x, who has made a study of the whole question, comments on this, in an admirable article in one of the monthlies for 1887, emphasizing the fact that these women, fitted by experience and long training for larger work, must live permanently, with absolutely no outlook or chance of change, on the border-land of poverty and want.

They know all the needs, all the failings of their own cla.s.s. Many of them give time, after the long day's work is done, to attempts at organizing and to general missionary work among their order; and by such efforts the few and feeble unions among them have been kept alive. But vital statistics show what the end is where such double labor must be performed. These women who have character and intelligence, and unselfish desire to work for others, have an average "expectation of life" less by twenty years than that of the cla.s.s who know the comfortable ease of middle-cla.s.s life.

It is one of these workers who said not long ago, her words being put into the mouth of one of Mr. Besant's characters: "Ladies deliberately shut their eyes; they won't take trouble; they won't think; they like things about them to look smooth and comfortable; they will get things cheap if they can. _What do they care if the cheapness is got by starving women?_ Who is killing this girl here? Bad food and hard work.

Cheapness! What do the ladies care how many working girls are killed?"

The individual woman brought face to face with the woman dying from overwork, would undoubtedly care. But the workers are out of sight, hidden away in attic and bas.e.m.e.nt, or the upper rooms of great manufactories. The bargains are plain to see, every counter loaded, every window filled. And so society, which will have its bargains, is practically in a conspiracy against the worker. The woman who spends on her cheapest dress the utmost sum which her working sister has for dress, amus.e.m.e.nts, culture, and saving, preaches thrift, and it is certain the working cla.s.ses would be better off if they had learned to save. Small wonder that the workers doubt them and their professed friends.h.i.+p, and that the breach widens day by day between cla.s.ses and ma.s.ses, bridged only by the work of those who, like the workers in the Women's Provident League, know that it is to the rich that the need for industry must be preached, not to the poor. Organization holds education for both, and it is now quite possible to know something of the methods of prominent firms with their workwomen, and to shun those which refuse to consider the questions of over-time, of unsanitary workrooms, of unjust fines and reductions, and the thousand ways of emptying some portion of the workwoman's purse into that of the employer. It is women who must do this, and till it is done, justice is mute, and the voice of our sisters' blood cries aloud from the ground.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TALE OF A BARROW.

If the West End knows not the East End, save as philanthropy and Mr.

Walter Besant have compelled it, much less does it know Leather Lane, a remnant of old London, now given over chiefly to Italians, and thus a little more picturesquely dirty than in its primal state of pure English grime. The eager business man hurrying down "that part of Holborn christened High," is as little aware of the neighborhood of Leather Lane and what it stands for, as the New Yorker on Broadway is of Mulberry Street and the Great Bend. For either or both, entrance is entrance into a world quite unknown to decorous respectability, and, if one looks aright, as full of wonders and discoveries as other unknown countries under our feet. Out of Leather Lane, with its ancient houses swarming with inhabitants and in all stages of decay and foulness, open other lanes as unsavory, through which the costers drive their barrows, chaffering with dishevelled women, who bear a black eye or other token that the British husband has been exercising his rights, and who find bargaining for a bunch of turnips or a head of cabbage an exhilarating change.

There were many costers and many barrows, but among them all hardly one so popular as "old Widgeon," who had been in the business forty years; and as he had chosen to remain a bachelor, an absolutely unheard-of state of things, he was an object of deepest interest to every woman in Leather Lane and its purlieus. It was always possible that he might change his mind; and from the oldest inhabitant down to the child just beginning to ask questions, there was always a sense of expectation where Widgeon was concerned. He, in the meantime, did his day's work contentedly, had a quick eye for all trouble, and in such cases was sure to give overweight, or even to let the heavy penny or two fall accidentally into the purchase. His donkey had something the same expression of patient good-humored receptivity. The children climbed over the barrow and even on the donkey's back, and though Widgeon made great feint of driving them off with a very stubby whip, they knew well that it would always just miss them, and returned day after day undismayed. He "did for himself" in a garret in a dark little house, up a darker court; and here it was popularly supposed he had hidden the gains of all these forty years. They might be there or in the donkey's stable, but they were somewhere, and then came the question, who would have them when he died?

To these speculations Nan listened silently, in the pauses of the machines on which her mother and three other women st.i.tched trousers.

Nothing was expected of her but to mind the baby, to see that the fire kept in, just smouldering, and that there was always hot water enough for the tea. On the days when they all st.i.tched she fared well enough; but when she had carried home the work, and received the money, there was a day, sometimes two or three, in which gin ruled, and the women first shouted and sang songs, and at last lay about the floor in every stage of drunkenness. Gradually chances for work slipped away; the machines were given up, and the partners.h.i.+p of workers dissolved, and at twelve, Nan and the baby were beggars and the mother in prison for aggravated a.s.sault on a neighbor. She died there, and thus settled one problem, and now came the other, how was Nan to live?

Old Widgeon answered this question. They had always been good friends from the day he had seen her standing, holding the baby, crippled and hopelessly deformed from its birth. His barrow was almost empty, and the donkey pointing his long ears toward the stable.

"Get in," he said, "an' I'll give you a bit of a ride," and Nan, speechless with joy, climbed in and was driven to the stable, and once there, watched the unharnessing and received some stray oranges as she finally turned away. From that day old Widgeon became her patron saint.

She had shot up into a tall girl, shrinking from those about her, and absorbed chiefly in the crooked little figure, still "the baby;" but tall as she might be, she was barely twelve, and how should she hire a machine and pay room rent and live?

Widgeon settled all that.

"You know how to st.i.tch away at them trousers?" he had said, and Nan nodded.

"Then I'll see you through the first week or two," he said; "but, mind!

don't you whisper it, or I'll 'ave hevery distressed female in the court down on me, and there's enough hof 'em now."

Nan nodded again, but he saw the tears in her eyes, and regarded words as quite unnecessary. The sweater asked no questions when she came for a bundle of work, nor did she tell him that she alone was now responsible.

She had learned to st.i.tch. Skill came with practice, and she might as well have such slight advantage as arose from being her mother's messenger.

So Nan's independent life began, and so it went on. She grew no taller, but did grow older, her silent gravity making her seem older still. It was hard work. She had never liked tea, and she loathed the sight and smell of either beer or spirits, old experience having made them hateful. Thus she had none of the nervous stimulant which keeps up the ordinary worker, and with small knowledge of any cookery but boiling potatoes and turnips, and frying bacon or sprats, fared worse than her companions. But she had learned to live on very little. She st.i.tched steadily all day and every day, gaining more and more skill, but never able to earn more than fourteen s.h.i.+llings a week. Prices went down steadily. At fourteen s.h.i.+llings she could live, and had managed even not only to pay Widgeon but to pick up some "bits of things." She was like her father, the old people in the alley said. He had been a silent, decent, hard-working man, who died broken-hearted at the turn his wife took for drink. Nan had his patience and his faithfulness; and Johnny, who crawled about the room, and could light a fire and do some odds and ends of house-keeping, was like her, and saved her much time as he grew older, but hardly any bigger. He had even learned to fry sprats, and to sing, in a high, cracked, little voice, a song known throughout the alley:--

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night, When sprats they isn't dear, To fry a couple o' dozen or so Upon a fire clear."

There are many verses of this ditty, all ending with the chorus:--

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night!"

and Johnny varied the facts ingeniously, and shouted "bacon," or anything else that would fry, well pleased at his own ingenuity.

"He was 'wanting.' Nan might better put him away in some asylum," the neighbors said; but Nan paid no attention. He was all she had, and he was much better worth working for than herself, and so she went on.

Old Widgeon had been spending the evening with them. Nan had st.i.tched on as she must; for prices had gone down again, and she was earning but nine s.h.i.+llings a week. Widgeon seldom said much. He held Johnny on his knee, and now and then looked at Nan.

"It's a dog's life," he said at last. "It's far worse than a dog's.

You'd be better off going with a barrow, Nan. I'm a good mind to leave you mine, Nan. You'd get a bit of air, then, and you'd make--well, a good bit more than you do now."

Widgeon had checked himself suddenly. n.o.body knew what the weekly gain might be, but people put it as high as three pounds; and this was fabulous wealth.

"I've thought of it," Nan said. "I've thought of it ever since that day you rode me and Johnny in the barrow. Do you mind? The donkey knows me now, I think. He's a wise one."

"Ay, he's a wise one," the old man said. "Donkeys is wiser than folks think." He put Johnny down suddenly, and sat looking at him strangely; but Nan did not see. The machine whirred on, but it stopped suddenly as Johnny cried out. Widgeon had slipped silently from his chair; his eyes were open, but he did not seem to see her, and he was breathing heavily.