[3] The San Francisco bricklayer receives twenty shillings per day, and at present is on strike for twenty–four shillings.
Chapter XXI
The Precariousness of Life
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 if I don't py up the ten shillings? S'posin', now, just s'posin' a accident 'appens to me, so I cawn't work. S'posin' I get a rupture, or the rheumatics, or the cholera. Wot's she goin' to do, eh? Wot's she goin' to do?"
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 a worse '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 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 co–operating 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 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 the statistics of the London County Council, twenty–one per cent. of the whole population are driven to the parish for relief. Between being driven to the parish for relief and being an out–and–out pauper there is a great difference, yet London supports 123,000 paupers, quite a city of folk in themselves. One in every four in London dies on public charity, while 939 out of every 1000 in the United Kingdom die in poverty; 8,000,000 simply struggle on the ragged edge of starvation, and 20,000,000 more are not comfortable in the simple and clean sense of the word.
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:–
Out of 81,951 deaths in London (1884):–
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 are children, it is probable that one in every three London adults will be driven into one of these refuges to die, and the proportion in the case of the manual labour class must of course be still larger."
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 to–day'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 labour.
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 per week—and there are hundreds of thousands of such families in London. Perforce, to even half exist, they must live up to the last penny of it, so that a week's wages (one pound) is all that stands between this family and pauperism or starvation. The thing happens, the father is struck down, and what then? A mother with three children can do little or nothing. Either she must hand her children over to society as juvenile paupers, in order to be free to do something adequate for herself, or she must go to the sweat– shops for work which she can perform in the vile den possible to her reduced income. But with the sweat–shops, married women who eke out their husband's earnings, and single women who have but themselves miserably to support, determine the scale of wages. And this scale of wages, so determined, is so low that the mother and her three children can live only in positive beastliness and semi–starvation, till decay and death end their suffering.
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 8.5d. per gross for making boxes. They made each day four gross. Their expenses were 8d. for car fare, 2d. for stamps, 2.5d. for glue, and 1d. for string, so that all they earned between them was 1s. 9d., or a daily wage each of 10.5d.
In the second ewe, before the Luton Guardians a few days ago, an old woman of seventy–two appeared, asking for relief. "She was a straw–hat maker, but had been compelled to give up the work owing to the price she obtained for them—namely, 2.25d. each. For that price she had to provide plait trimmings and make and finish the hats."
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.
Sir A. Forwood calculates that—
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 say, the person in the West End has twice the chance for life that the person has in the East End. Talk of war! The mortality in South Africa and the Philippines fades away to insignificance. Here, in the heart of peace, is where the blood is being shed; and here not even the civilised rules of warfare obtain, for the women and children and babes in the arms are killed just as ferociously as the men are killed. War! In England, every year, 500,000 men, women, and children, engaged in the various industries, are killed and disabled, or are injured to disablement by disease.