healthy and strong, and when that consummation, however devoutly wished, is not realized, it quite as naturally follows that the parents will be distressed. But it is the petty, irritating, aggressive pinpricks that keep the domestic social sore in a state of inflammation and irritation, and these pinpricks are for ever cropping up in all directions, under all sorts of circumstances, and at most inopportune moments. Who is there, even amongst the advanced "democratic" writers of to-day, who fully appreciates the extent of suffering and even agony inflicted on many working-class homes by the late arrival at its destination of a workman's train? It would be a lesson in dynamics for realistic authors to be present at any of our great railway termini when the workman's train arrives ten minutes late in the morning. Long before the train comes to a standstill at the platform hundreds of men, women, boys, and girls are bundling out of the train and pelting along the platform as if to escape some dire disaster. Out into the street-at certain times of the year dark, stoppy, and miserable-hither and thither in all directions they continue their scramble in vain hope of being able to overtake the time lost by the delay of the train. Hot, tired, exhausted, and fatigued, they arrive at their workshop one minute after the gate is closed, there to wait and worry for a quarter of an hour, an hour, or a quarter of a day. And what does this mean? The loss of a few paltry pence? Ah, no! means, perchance, a long spell of unemployment, for some employers are so precise, and attach so much importance to punctuality that they will discharge a man immediately for being late in the morning. Or it may mean another week of shoeless feet for one of the children, or the lack of some necessary comfort for a delicate wife, or the difference between a Sunday's dinner and It a "makeshift," or a further accumulation of arrears of rent, and this in its turn may mean the hastening of the day of the broker's man's visit and of eviction from the place called "home." Those who talk glibly of the thousands of pounds lost in wages through a lockout or strike do not know that thousands of pounds of wages are lost every year by the workers through late trains, tramcar delays, cheap alarum clocks that will not "alarum," sleepless nights through toothache, baby's restlessness, wife's illness, and scores of other causes, and none of them due to any fault of the workers themselves, and with no balancing satisfaction of a righteous endeavor to improve bad conditions, such as is looked for in a strike. The struggles of industrial life are fraught with tragedy! It is a very simple matter to spend a few days, or even a few weeks, in the slums of the East End of London and then to sit down and write a number of pathetic articles on the miseries of the poor, to chronicle their daily habits, to eulogize their frugality and cleanliness, or, according to the whim of the writer to denounce and upbraid them for the lack of virtue and the superfluity of vices. This is all very easy and very clever; but it does not occur to these virtuous judges of proletarian vices that what appears a vice in the poor is almost a virtue among their class. To spend a couple of sovereigns on drink with men of erudition would be considered quite right and proper; but if a poor woman spends twopence on gin with her next-door neighbor whose husband has just died, she commits the unpardonable sin, and no words are too strong to be used in the denunciation of the habit. This, I say, is all very easy and very clever, but it butters no parsnips, and it does not tell you anything of the difficulties experienced by the working man to keep his home and his family up to the min imum of existence on a pound a week or less. Certain philanthropists and sympathetic men have instituted inquiries into the conditions of living among a particular class of workers, and have provided and tabulated statistics of income and expenditure of these classes, and have divided and sub-divided them into sections according to the different degrees of poverty. But they are merely cold, lifeless figures. They do not convey to the reader the slightest indication of the mental torture endured by loving parents when they see their children gradually but surely becoming weak and emaciated for want of wholesome food and home comforts! Can any of my readers shut themselves away effectually from their social comforts and realize my poor description of the agonizing tortures suffered by members of my class when they find their wage is not sufficient to procure the essentials of life for themselves and their families? Of course not. If you essayed an experiment-as a certain novelist is reputed to have done-there is always the inner consciousness that, when the worst comes to the worst, there is a banking account on which you can draw and immediately rehabilitate yourself. It is not so with the worker. He has no hope beyond his wage, and when he gets it all regularly -which is very seldom-it fails to supply his wants. Let me particularize. We hear of neurasthenia and nervous breakdown among the business men of to-day as being due to the rush and scramble of commercialism and the anxieties of City life. But not a word is said about the nerve strain and tension of the industrial population to keep pace with the speeding-up methods in Vogue everywhere. The business man has an appointment of great importance at 10 o'clock. His train is late, and he is not able to keep the appointment. It He is vexed, and justly worried. possibly may result in losing a large business order. But he has a way out of it. He dictates to his secretary an apology, and posts it off at once, and another time is fixed for an interview. May be he is kept in a condition of uncertainty for two or three days. Ultimately everything is adjusted and the trouble is over. Not so the worker. His mental and physical strain is permanent. From Monday morning to Sunday night, all the year round, difficulty after difficulty confronts him, and has to be surmounted somehow; and just as at the summit of the hill one. sees other hills in the distance, so the worker, having risen above one difficulty, finds many more waiting for him on the other side. By pluck, energy, and resolve-and the working man is the man of grit-he overcomes, one after another, the obstructions that lie in his path until at last he meets his match and succumbs. Look at this position: With a minimum wage of 308. weekly-considered too high by our comfortable legislators-and any number of hours per week from fifty upwards, a man is expected to turn out healthy and responsible citizens of a future generation. His weekly outlay is: in rent, 78.; travelling expenses, 28.; clubs and insurances, 38. (for a man must be thrifty and careful, no matter what his income, or he will be dubbed a "waster"); his church or mission, 6d. (for he is not respectable if he neglects these institutions); occasional gratuities to charitable objects, averaging 6d.; pocket-money for the children, 2d.; pinmoney for the wife, Od.; for breakfast and dinner away from home, 3s.; total, 16s. 2d. This leaves 13s. 10d. for food for the whole family for the week, his own tea and supper for the week, and all his meals for Sunday; also boots, clothes, fuel, and light, and for replenishing the home (for every business man allows for depreciation). What a travesty of life! And close on his heels, dogging his footsteps at every turn, follows the Nemesis of sickness, short time, wet weather, increase of family, and accidents! verses. We are all familiar with the "pairing time" of the young men and maidens of our cities and villages, and poets have immortalized the incident in many But there is little real poetry in the actual courtship of young people of the industrial class, especially where the home comforts and conveniences are extremely limited. There is an old saying that "love flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door," yet without the stimulus of love there would be very few marriages indeed in the artisan class (for the bestpaid clerk or artisan, and even some Civil servants, are unpleasantly familiar with the menace of the grim ogre of poverty). The young man who is earning his 30s., 358., or £2 a week as clerk or journeyman may have the greatest possible ambition to get married and settled down, but the realization of the ambition keeps flitting from his grasp like a will-o'-the-wisp. I am fully aware that there are many working men who would think themselves immensely lucky if they could see £2 a week coming in all the year round, and who would be ready to jump into matrimony at once if they were tolerably certain of such an income. Yes, that is it; and that is the reason that there are a number of unpleasant unions and unhappy homes among this particular class. The £2 a week is all right-all the year round is the dream. They marry on the "baseless fabric of a vision." But let me begin this revelation at the beginning: Here is a joiner who has served his apprenticeship and is fairly launched on the ocean of labor as a full-blown journeyman. His money is 10d. an hour, and his hours are 52 per week. These figures will, of course, vary with the district; but I am taking them merely as an illustration. Well, £2 38. 9d. a week seems a good round sum to get on with, and, as a single man, still living at home with his parents, he finds little difficulty in putting a portion of that sum in the bank. He will, probably, pay his mother 10s. or 12s. a week for washing, mending, and lodging, and a few meals. If he has all his meals at home he will assuredly pay more; but leave it at 12s.; that gives him 31s. 9d. for himself. Out of that he has to pay his clubs, his insurance, purchase some of his food, buy his boots and clothes, pay his travelling expenses, and spend a few shillings in enjoyment of some kind or other with his sweetheart. This will probably total up to 118. 9d., thus leaving him with the round pound to save for his house furnishing. Α pound a week for fifty-two weeks is £52; and in two years he will have £104 to spend for his home! That is the bright side of the picture; that is the alluring phantom that makes him plunge into engagement; that is the influence that brings out the light optimism of his nature; that is the impetus of anticipation of joys to come, and the desire to be settled in his own home and be his own master. He conveys his ideas and hopes to his "young lady," and he makes her feel that there is now a future of perpetual summer before them. Side by side, and hand in hand, they saunter along to the brilliantly-lighted shops. They gaze joyously into the windows. They talk of drawing-room suites, dining-room suites, and bedroom suites-ten guineas for this, six guineas for that, and eight guineas for the other. "That is only £25 48.; and I shall have £104 in two years!" Then they enumerate the other things they will want; little bookings are made in the pocket-book, addition sums appear on every page, and many sly digs and confidential squeez ing of hands are indulged in before the shop-windows. "In two years I will claim you for my dearest own"-words taken from some popular novel. And then But not one in 20,000, I should say, ever fully realizes these happy lovedreams! The real picture is mostly blurred with unexpected and unpreventable realities-a season of short time, a period of unemployment, a week or two of sickness, the loss of savings in a slate club, or a foolish gamble with a few pounds on a horse that does not win his race. These reverses are followed by periods of remorse and resentment. Every man is not a Stoic; every man is not a Job; some have hasty, vindictive tempers, others are sulky and morose; in each case the girl is the objective of their spleen. Cases are not rare where a rift in the lute has driven the man to drink and turned the girl's love to hate. Some girls are not angels, although many more would be if it were not for the haunting anxiety of their future or the constant shattering of their hopes and anticipations. Go into any of the cheaper class of restaurant where the girl "fairies" dance attendance on your order for a cup of coffee and a scone; mark their joyous disposition as closing-time approaches and the hour for meeting their "young man" draws nearer. Then visit them again next week and see the downcast look of misery and depression on their faces (for they all know the cause of Carrie's tears, and they all sympathize with her -the Scriptural injunction is carried out to the letter with these girls-they weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that do rejoice. It is no use asking any one of them the cause of their misery-they are as close as oysters in such matters-they would not tell you; but Carrie's constant use of her handkerchief, the inflamed eyelids, the repeated snufflings, and the bent LIVING AGE. VOL. LVI. 2922 shoulders and drooping head single her out as the leading sufferer. "Crossed in love" is the orthodox and heartless explanation; but it is more, far more than that. For months, perhaps years, she has been living a kind of dual life. She has been joyous, flippant, and even frivolous at the restaurant; but at home she has been a slave-a nurse, a mother, a wife, a sister, a maid-of-allwork rolled into one. The few shillings she received as wages were spent to keep home together. Her father had only a small wage, her mother was an invalid, her brothers and sisters (four in all) were not old enough to leave school. Carrie herself was only nineteen. But a few months ago she had a young man. Oh, such a nice young man! He was a carpenter, but when he was washed and dressed to meet Carrie at half-past seven you would not have known it. He had already talked about marriage, his prospects, his wages, and how he could "save a pound a week easy." And Carrie's heart leaped with joy. Was it love, or the prospect of freedom from her miserable surroundings and her artificial life? And now what was the matter? Why, her young man had been out of work a month, had become despondent, and had "given her up"! Crossed in love! Bah, it is an earthquake of future hopes. It is a sentence of penal servitude with hard labor for a girl not out of her teens. Foolish! What! foolish to hope for freedom? Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and with the industrial classes it is all hope and precious little realization. Follow the picture. The young carpenter repents. He seeks out Carrie and asks her forgiveness. She yields at once. But what are the prospects now? His mid-summer reverie, his castle-in-the-air, built of 104 golden sov ereigns, has materialized into a few shillings. He has nothing to buy his "home" with. The only alternative is to purchase on the hire system. He scans with interest the advertisement columns of the newspapers, and believes what they say. He makes the suggestion to Carrie, and she, poor girl, unschooled in the wickedness of the world and a stranger to the certainty of unemployment, falls in with the idea, and they get married. Soon after follow the rude awakenings. Our young wife has had a fairly good schooling in matters domestic as things go to-day. I do not say she is fully qualified to pass the standard which a workman's wife is expected to pass. That is a little too much to say. But she worked hard and assiduously, and bore her burden with a courage and heroism. But I venture to say there is no comparison between the alleged anxieties of middle-class women and the mental tortures perpetually endured by the wife of the average working man. I know our novelists can paint harrowing pictures of the love-trials through which certain of their characters pass. they are merely outbursts of passion. They do not endure. They recover quickly, and invariably "live and die happy ever after." It is not so, however, with the women of the industrial class. Their anxieties begin with their life and end with their life. A girl is immeasurably worse off than a boy. She starts household duties as soon as she is old enough to understand how to wash up crockery, sweep a floor, or tend to a baby. She has little, if any, time to play; and even her schooltime is abbreviated to do "something for mother." She may go to service, or may follow any one of the many occupations now open to girls. But even then she is expected to go straight home from work and help in the home in some way or the other. She is expected to make her own underlinen, her own dresses, and trim her own hats. She is religiously taught that her future happiness depends upon her capacity to cook, clean, superintend the house, do dressmaking and millinery, and have at least a first-aid knowledge of children's ailments and their remedies. And after having assimilated these multifarious duties she is considered qualified to become the wife of a working man and keep his home neat and tidy on a few shillings weekly! How many middle-class women would qualify for such a post? As things are today, it is absolutely distressing to see the wife of a working man go through the ordeal of a Saturday night's shopping. She has to ask the price of every article she wishes to purchase, and when she receives the reply from the shopman, a sum in mental arithmetic has to be done before she can decide whether to purchase or no. She is fully aware that cheap things are not the best, but the alternative she has to face is not cheap or dear, but cheap or nothing. Woollen goods, Dorset butter, or English meat are not for the working class; this a workman's wife soon learns. She has therefore to content herself with flannelette, margarine, and frozen meat-sans warmth, sans fat, and sans nourishment. too soon the effect shows itself on the children of her bosom and intensifies the agonies of her life. Finally, the constant worry tells, and the once buxom lass becomes an emaciated oldyoung woman. All Some idea of the culinary knowledge required by women of the working class may be gleaned by a recital of the task she is expected to perform, and the tasks multiply with every addition to the family. Sunday is generally, and almost universally, the weekly feast day of the British proletariat. On that day they have delicacies for breakfast, hot joint for dinner, and luxuries |