week 'sometimes.' The making of boxes is not done in the factory; for these 2Vtd. a gross is paid to people who work in their own homes, and 'find your own paste.' Daywork is a little better paid than piecework, and is done chiefly by married women, who earn as much sometimes as 10s. a week, the piecework falling to the girls. Four women day workers, spoken of with reverent awe, earn? 13s. a week.
A very bitter memory survives in the factory. Mr. Theodore Bryant, to show his admiration of Mr. Gladstone2 and the greatness of his own public spirit, bethought him to erect a statue to that eminent statesman. In order that his workgirls might have the privilege of contributing, he stopped Is. each out of their wages, and further deprived them of half-a-day's work by closing the factory, 'giving them a holiday.' ('We don't want no holidays,' said one of the girls pathetically, for?needless to say?the poorer employees of such a firm lose their wages when a holiday is 'given.') So furious were the girls at this cruel plundering, that many went to the unveiling of the statue with stones and bricks in their pockets, and I was conscious of a wish that some of those bricks had made an impression on Mr. Bryant's conscience. Later on they surrounded the statue?'we paid for it' they cried savagely?shouting and yelling, and a gruesome story is told that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble paid for, in very truth, by their blood. . . .
Such is a bald account of one form of white slavery as it exists in London. With chattel slaves Mr. Bryant could not have made his huge fortune, for he could not have fed, clothed, and housed them for 4s. a week each, and they
2. William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), leader of the Liberal Party from 1868 to 1875 and from 1880 to 1894 and prime minister four times.
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CHEW: A LIVING WAGE FOR FACTORY GIRLS AT CREWE / 1579
would have had a definite money value which would have served as a protection. But who cares for the fate of these white wage slaves? Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on the streets,3 provided only that the Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 per cent, and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks? Oh if we had but a people's Dante, to make a special circle in the Inferno for those who live on this misery,4 and suck wealth out of the starvation of helpless girls.
Failing a poet to hold up their conduct to the execration of posterity, enshrined in deathless verse, let us strive to touch their consciences, i.e. their pockets, and let us at least avoid being 'partakers of their sins,' by abstaining from using their commodities.
1888
3. Become prostitutes. ent levels, or circles, for different kinds of sinners, 4. In his Inferno the Italian poet Dante Alighieri with each sin carrying its own specific (1265-1321) describes hell as divided into differ-punishments. ADA NIELD CHEW
Born on a farm in North Staffordshire, Chew (1870?1945) left school at the age of eleven to help her mother with taking care of house and family. In her early twenties she worked as a tailor in a factory in Crewe. She wrote a series of letters to the Crewe Chronicle about working conditions in the factory. When her identity was discovered, an uproar ensued, and she was fired. She became active in politics and continued to write for political causes.
A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe, 5 May 1894
Sir,
?Will you grant me space in your sensible and widely read paper to complain of a great grievance of the class?that of tailoresses in some of the Crewe factories?to which I belong? I have hoped against hope that some influential man (or woman) would take up our cause and put us in the right way to remedy?for of course there is a remedy?for the evils we are suffering from. But although one cannot open a newspaper without seeing what all sorts and conditions of men are constantly agitating for and slowly but surely obtain- ing?as in the miners' eight hour bill1?only very vague mention is ever made of the under-paid, over-worked 'Factory Girl.' And I have come to the conclusion, sir, that as long as we are silent ourselves and apparently content with our lot, so long shall we be left in the enjoyment [?] of that lot.
The rates paid for the work done by us are so fearfully low as to be totally
1. Bill limiting miners' work shifts to eight hours.
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1 58 0 / INDUSTRIALISM: PROGRESS OR DECLINE?
inadequate to?I had almost said keep body and soul together. Well, sir, it is a fact which I could prove, if necessary, that we are compelled, not by our employers, but by stern necessity, in order to keep ourselves in independence, which self-respecting girls even in our class of life like to do, to work so many hours?I would rather not say how many?that life loses its savour, and our toil, which in moderation and at a fair rate of remuneration would be pleasurable, becomes drudgery of the most wearisome kind.
To take what may be considered a good week's wage the work has to be so close and unremitting that we cannot be said to 'live'?we merely exist. We eat, we sleep, we work, endlessly, ceaselessly work, from Monday morning till Saturday night, without remission. Cultivation of the mind? How is it possible? Reading? Those of us who are determined to live like human beings and require food for mind as well as body are obliged to take time which is necessary for sleep to gratify this desire. As for recreation and enjoying the beauties of nature, the seasons come and go, and we have barely time to notice whether it is spring or summer.
Certainly we have Sundays: but Sunday is to many of us, after our week of slavery, a day of exhaustion. It has frequently been so in my case, and I am not delicate. This, you will understand, sir, is when work is plentiful. Of course we have slack times, of which the present is one (otherwise I should not have time to write to you). It may be said that we should utilise these slack times for recruiting our bodies and cultivating our minds. Many of us do so, as far as is possible in the anxious state we are necessarily in, knowing that we are not earning our 'keep,' for it is not possible, absolutely not possible, for the average ordinary 'hand' to earn enough in busy seasons, even with the overtime I have mentioned, to make up for slack ones.
'A living wage!' Ours is a lingering, dying wage. Who reaps the benefit of our toil? I read sometimes of a different state of things in other factories, and if in others, why not those in Crewe? I have just read the report of the Royal Commission on Labour. Very good, but while Royal Commissions are enquiring and reporting and making suggestions, some of the workers are being hurried to their graves.
1 am afraid I am trespassing a great deal on your space, sir, but my subject has such serious interest for me?I sometimes wax very warm as I sit stitching and thinking over our wrongs?that they, and the knowledge that your columns are always open to the needy, however humble, must be my excuse.
