CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. The people of the abyss, | ||
21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
The Precariousness of Life.
What do you work at? You look ill.It's me lungs. I make sulphuric acid.
You are a salt-cake man?
Yes.
Is it hard work?
It is damned hard work.
Why do you work at such a slavish trade?
I am married. I have children. Am I to starve and let them?
Why do you lead this life?
I am married. There's a terrible lot of men out of work in
St. Helen's.
What do you call hard work?
My work. You come and heave them three-hundred-weight lumps
with a fifty-pound bar, in that heat at the furnace door,
and try it.
I will not. I am a philosopher.
Oh! Well, thee stick to t' job. Ours is t' vary devil.
-From interviews with workmen by ROBERT BLATCHFORD.
I WAS TALKING WITH A VERY vindictive man. In his opinion, his wife had wronged him and the law had wronged him. The merits and morals of the case are immaterial. The meat of the matter is that she had obtained a separation, and he was compelled to pay ten shillings each week for the support of her and the five children. 'But look you,' said he to me, 'wot'll 'appen to 'er
He shook his head sadly. 'No 'ope for 'er. The best she cawn do is the work'ouse, an' that's 'ell. An' if she don't go to the work'ouse, it'll be worsen 'ell. Come along 'ith me an' I'll show you women sleepin' in a passage, a dozen of 'em. An' I'll show you worse, wot she'll come to if anythin' 'appens to me and the ten shillings.'
The certitude of this man's forecast is worthy of consideration. He knew conditions sufficiently to know the precariousness of his wife's grasp on food and shelter. For her the game was up when his working capacity was impaired or destroyed. And when this state of affairs is looked at in its larger aspect, the same will be found true of hundreds of thousands and even millions of men and women living amicably together and cooperating in the pursuit of food and shelter.
The figures are appalling; 1,800,000 people in London live on the poverty line and below it, and another 1,000,000 live with one week's wages between them and pauperism. In all England and Wales, eighteen per cent of the whole population are driven to the parish for relief, and in London, according to
It is interesting to go more into detail concerning the London people who die on charity. In 1886, and up to 1893, the percentage of pauperism to population was less in London than in all England; but since 1893, and for every succeeding year, the percentage of pauperism to population has been greater in London than in all England. Yet, from the Registrar General's Report for 1886, the following figures are taken:
In workhouses | ............................. | 9,909 |
In hospitals | .............................. | 6,559 |
In lunatic asylums | .......................... | 278 |
Total in public refuges | .............. | 16,746 |
Commenting on these figures, a Fabian writer says: 'Considering that comparatively few of these
These figures serve somewhat to indicate the proximity of the average worker to pauperism. Various things make pauperism. An advertisement, for instance, such as this, appearing in yesterday morning's paper: 'Clerk wanted, with knowledge of shorthand, typewriting, and invoicing; wages ten shillings ($2.50) a week. Apply by letter,' etc. And in today's paper I read of a clerk, thirty-five years of age and an inmate of a London workhouse, brought before a magistrate for non-performance of task. He claimed that he had done his various tasks since he had been an inmate; but when the master set him to breaking stones, his hands blistered, and he could not finish the task. He had never been used to an implement heavier than a pen, he said. The magistrate sentenced him and his blistered hands to seven days' hard labor.
Old age, of course, makes pauperism. And then there is the accident, the thing happening, the death or disablement of the husband, father, and bread-winner. Here is a man, with a wife and three children, living on the ticklish security of twenty shillings ($5.00) per week- and there are hundreds of thousands of such families in London. Perforce,
To show that this mother, with her three children to support, cannot compete in the sweating industries, I instance from the current newspapers the two following cases. A father indignantly writes that his daughter and a girl companion receive 17 cents per gross for making boxes. They made each day four gross. Their expenses were 16 cents for carfare, 4 cents for stamps, 5 cents for glue, and 2 cents for string, so that all they earned between them was 42 cents, or a daily wage each of 21 cents.
Yet this mother and her three children we are considering, have done no wrong that they should be so punished. They have not sinned. The thing happened, that is all; the husband, father, and bread-winner, was struck down. There is no guarding against it. It is fortuitous. A family stands so many chances of escaping the bottom of the Abyss, and so many chances of falling plump down to it. The chance is reducible to cold, pitiless figures, and a few of these figures will not be out of place.
1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.
1 of every 2500 workmen is totally disabled.
1 of every -300 workmen is permanently partially disabled.
1 of every ---8 workmen is temporarily disabled 3 or 4 weeks.
But these are only the accidents of industry. The high mortality of the people who live in the Ghetto plays a terrible part. The average age at death among the people of the West End is fifty-five years; the average age at death among the people of the East End is thirty years. That is to
In the West End eighteen per cent of the children die before five years of age; in the East End fifty-five per cent of the children die before five years of age. And there are streets in London where, out of every one hundred children born in a year, fifty die during the next year; and of the fifty that remain, twenty-five die before they are five years old. Slaughter! Herod did not do quite so badly- his was a mere fifty per cent bagatelle mortality.
That industry causes greater havoc with human life than battle does no better substantiation can be given than the following extract from a recent report of the Liverpool Medical Officer, which is not applicable to Liverpool alone:
In many instances little if any sunlight could get to the courts, and the atmosphere within the dwellings was always foul, owing largely to the saturated condition of the walls and ceilings, which for so many years had absorbed the exhalations of the occupants into their porous material. Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and Gardens Committee, who desired to brighten the homes of the poorest class by gifts of growing flowers and window-boxes; but these gifts could not be made in courts such as these, as flowers and plants were susceptible to the unwholesome surroundings, and would not live.
Mr. George Haw has compiled the following table on the three St. George's parishes (London parishes):
Percentage of Population Overcrowded | Death Rate per 1000 | |
St. George's West | 10 | 13.2 |
St. George's South | 35 | 23.7 |
St. George's East | 40 | 26.4 |
Then there are the 'dangerous trades,' in which countless workers are employed. Their hold on life is indeed precarious- far, far more precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life. In the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism;
Says Dr. Arlidge, of the potter's trade: 'Potter's dust does not kill suddenly, but settles, year after year, a little more firmly into the lungs, until at length a case of plaster is formed. Breathing becomes more and more difficult and depressed, and finally ceases.'
Steel dust, stone dust, clay dust, alkali dust, fluff dust, fibre dust- all these things kill, and they are more deadly than machine-guns and pom-poms. Worst of all is the lead dust in the white lead trades. Here is a description of the typical dissolution of a young, healthy, well-developed girl who goes to work in a white lead factory:
And here are a few specific cases of white lead poisoning:
Mary Ann Toler- a girl of seventeen, who had never had a fit in her life- three times became ill and had to leave off work in the factory. Before she was nineteen she showed symptoms of lead poisoning- had fits, frothed at the mouth, and died.
Mary A., an unusually vigorous woman, was able to work in the lead factory for twenty years, having colic once only during that time. Her eight children all died in early infancy from convulsions. One morning, whilst brushing her hair, this woman suddenly lost all power in both her wrists.
Eliza H., aged twenty-five, after five months at lead works, was seized with colic. She entered another factory (after being refused by the first one) and worked on uninterruptedly for two years. Then the former symptoms returned, she was seized with convulsions, and died in two days of acute lead poisoning.
Mr. Vaughan Nash, speaking of the unborn generation, says: 'The children of the white lead worker enter the world, as a rule, only to die from the convulsions of lead poisoning- they are either born prematurely, or die within the first year.'
And, finally, let me instance the case of Harriet A. Walker, a young girl of seventeen, killed while leading a forlorn hope on the industrial battlefield. She was employed as an enamelled ware brusher,
Depression in trade also plays an important part in hurling the workers into the Abyss. With a week's wages between a family and pauperism, a month's enforced idleness means hardship and misery almost undescribable, and from the ravages of which the victims do not always recover when work is to be had again. Just now the daily papers contain the report of a meeting of the Carlisle Branch of the Docker's Union, wherein it is stated that many of the men, for months past, have not averaged a weekly income of more than $1.00 to $1.25. The stagnated state of the shipping industry in the port of London is held accountable for this condition of affairs.
To the young working-man or working-woman, or married couple, there is no assurance of happy or healthy middle life, nor of solvent old age. Work as they will, they cannot make their future secure. It is all a matter of chance. Everything depends upon the thing happening, the thing with which they have nothing to do. Precaution cannot fend it off, nor can wiles evade it. If they remain on the industrial battlefield they must face it and take
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. The people of the abyss, | ||