Chapter 18 Wages

When I learned that in Lesser¹ London there were 1,292,737 people who received twenty-one shillings or less a week per family, I became interested as to how the wages could best be spent in order to maintain the physical efficiency of such families. Families of six, seven, eight or ten being beyond consideration, I have based the following table upon a family of five — a father, mother, and three children; while I have made twenty-one shillings equivalent to $5.25, though actually, twenty-one shillings are equivalent to about $5.11.

Rent     $1.50     or 6/0
Bread     1.00     “ 4/0
Meat     0.87.5     “ 3/6
Vegetables     0.62.5     “ 2/6
Coals     0.25     “ 1/0
Tea     0.18     “ 0/9
Oil     0.16     “ 0/8
Sugar     0.18     “ 0/9
Milk     0.12     “ 0/6
Soap     0.08     “ 0/4
Butter     0.20     “ 0/10
Firewood     0.08     “ 0/4
Total     $5.25     21/2

An analysis of one item alone will show how little room there is for waste. Bread, $1: for a family of five, for seven days, one dollar’s worth of bread will give each a daily ration² of 2.8 cents; and if they eat three meals a day, each may consume per meal 9.5 mills’ worth of bread, a little less than one halfpennyworth. Now bread is the heaviest item. They will get less of meat per mouth each meal, and still less of vegetates³; while the smaller items become too microscopic⁴ for consideration. On the other hand, these food articles are all bought at small retail⁵, the most expensive and wasteful⁶ method of purchasing.

While the table given above will permit no extravagance, no overloading⁷ of stomachs, it will be noticed that there is no surplus. The whole guinea is spent for food and rent. There is no pocket-money left over. Does the man buy a glass of beer, the family must eat that much less; and in so far as it eats less, just that far will it impair⁸ its physical efficiency. The members of this family cannot ride in busses or trams, cannot write letters, take outings, go to a “tu’penny gaff” for cheap vaudeville⁹, join social or benefit clubs, nor can they buy sweetmeats, tobacco, books, or newspapers.

And further, should one child (and there are three) require a pair of shoes, the family must strike meat for a week from its bill of fare. And since there are five pairs of feet requiring shoes, and five heads requiring hats, and five bodies requiring clothes, and since there are laws regulating indecency, the family must constantly impair its physical efficiency in order to keep warm and out of jail. For notice, when rent, coals, oil, soap, and firewood are extracted from the weekly income, there remains¹⁰ a daily allowance for food of 4.5d. to each person; and that 4.5d. cannot be lessened¹¹ by buying clothes without impairing¹² the physical efficiency.

All of which is hard enough. But the thing happens; the husband and father breaks his leg or his neck. No 4.5d. a day per mouth for food is coming in; no halfpennyworth of bread per meal; and, at the end of the week, no six shillings for rent. So out they must go, to the streets or the workhouse, or to a miserable¹³ den¹⁴, somewhere, in which the mother will desperately¹⁵ endeavour to hold the family together on the ten shillings she may possibly be able to earn.

While in London there are 1,292,737 people who receive twenty-one shillings or less a week per family, it must be remembered that we have investigated a family of five living on a twenty-one shilling basis. There are larger families, there are many families that live on less than twenty-one shillings, and there is much irregular employment. The question naturally arises, How do they live? The answer is that they do not live. They do not know what life is. They drag out a subterbestial existence until mercifully released by death.

Before descending¹⁶ to the fouler¹⁷ depths, let the case of the telephone girls be cited. Here are clean, fresh English maids, for whom a higher standard of living than that of the beasts is absolutely necessary. Otherwise they cannot remain clean, fresh English maids. On entering the service, a telephone girl receives a weekly wage of eleven shillings. If she be quick and clever, she may, at the end of five years, attain¹⁸ a minimum wage of one pound. Recently a table of such a girl’s weekly expenditure¹⁹ was furnished to Lord Londonderry. Here it is:—

    s.     d.
Rent, fire, and light     7     6
Board at home     3     6
Board at the office     4     6
Street car fare     1     6
Laundry     1     0
Total     18     0

This leaves nothing for clothes, recreation, or sickness. And yet many of the girls are receiving, not eighteen shillings, but eleven shillings, twelve shillings, and fourteen shillings per week. They must have clothes and recreation, and —

Man to Man so oft unjust,

Is always so to Woman.

At the Trades union Congress now being held in London, the Gasworkers’ union moved that instructions be given the Parliamentary Committee to introduce a Bill to prohibit the employment of children under fifteen years of age. Mr. Shackleton, Member of Parliament and a representative of the Northern Counties Weavers²⁰, opposed the resolution on behalf of the textile workers, who, he said, could not dispense²¹ with the earnings²² of their children and live on the scale of wages which obtained. The representatives of 514,000 workers voted against the resolution, while the representatives of 535,000 workers voted in favour of it. When 514,000 workers oppose a resolution prohibiting child-labour under fifteen, it is evident that a less-than-living wage is being paid to an immense number of the adult workers of the country.

I have spoken with women in Whitechapel who receive right along less than one shilling for a twelve-hour day in the coat-making sweat shops; and with women trousers finishers who receive an average princely and weekly wage of three to four shillings.

A case recently cropped up of men, in the employ of a wealthy business house, receiving their board and six shillings per week for six working days of sixteen hours each. The sandwich men get fourteenpence per day and find themselves. The average weekly earnings of the hawkers and costermongers are not more than ten to twelve shillings. The average of all common labourers, outside the dockers, is less than sixteen shillings per week, while the dockers average from eight to nine shillings. These figures are taken from a royal commission report and are authentic²³.

Conceive of an old woman, broken and dying, supporting herself and four children, and paying three shillings per week rent, by making match boxes at 2.25d. per gross. Twelve dozen boxes for 2.25d., and, in addition, finding her own paste and thread! She never knew a clay off, either for sickness, rest, or recreation. Each day and every day, Sundays as well, she toiled²⁴ fourteen hours. Her day’s stint²⁵ was seven gross, for which she received 1s. 3.75d. In the week of ninety-eight hours’ work, she made 7066 match boxes, and earned 4s. 10.25d., less per paste and thread.

Last year, Mr. Thomas Holmes, a police-court missionary²⁶ of note, after writing about the condition of the women workers, received the following letter, dated April 18, 1901:—

Sir — Pardon the liberty I am taking, but, having read what you said about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per week, I beg to state my case. I am a tie-maker, who, after working all the week, cannot earn more than five shillings, and I have a poor afflicted²⁷ husband to keep who hasn’t earned a penny for more than ten years.

Imagine a woman, capable of writing such a clear, sensible, grammatical letter, supporting her husband and self on five shillings per week! Mr. Holmes visited her. He had to squeeze to get into the room. There lay her sick husband; there she worked all day long; there she cooked, ate, washed, and slept; and there her husband and she performed all the functions of living and dying. There was no space for the missionary to sit down, save on the bed, which was partially²⁸ covered with ties and silk. The sick man’s lungs were in the last stages of decay. He coughed and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist him in his paroxysms. The silken fluff from the ties was not good for his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers and wearers of the ties yet to come.

Another case Mr. Holmes visited was that of a young girl, twelve years of age, charged in the police court with stealing food. He found her the deputy mother of a boy of nine, a crippled boy of seven, and a younger child. Her mother was a widow and a blouse-maker. She paid five shillings a week rent. Here are the last items in her housekeeping account: Tea. 0.5d.; sugar, 0.5d.; bread, 0.25d.; margarine, 1d.; oil, 1.5d.; and firewood, 1d. Good housewives of the soft and tender folk, imagine yourselves marketing²⁹ and keeping house on such a scale, setting a table for five, and keeping an eye on your deputy mother of twelve to see that she did not steal food for her little brothers and sisters, the while you stitched, stitched, stitched at a nightmare line of blouses, which stretched away into the gloom and down to the pauper’s coffin³⁰ a-yawn for you.

1 lesser   

adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地

参考例句：

• Kept some of the lesser players out.不让那些次要的球员参加联赛。
• She has also been affected,but to a lesser degree.她也受到波及，但程度较轻。

2 ration   

n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应

参考例句：

• The country cut the bread ration last year.那个国家去年削减面包配给量。
• We have to ration the water.我们必须限量用水。

3 vegetates   

v.过单调呆板的生活( vegetate的第三人称单数 )；植物似地生长；（瘤、疣等）长大

参考例句：

• This fungus usually vegetates vigorously. 蘑菇经常像植物一样旺盛地生长。 来自互联网

4 microscopic   

adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的

参考例句：

• It's impossible to read his microscopic handwriting.不可能看清他那极小的书写字迹。
• A plant's lungs are the microscopic pores in its leaves.植物的肺就是其叶片上微细的气孔。

5 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

6 wasteful   

adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的

参考例句：

• It is a shame to be so wasteful.这样浪费太可惜了。
• Duties have been reassigned to avoid wasteful duplication of work.为避免重复劳动浪费资源，任务已经重新分派。

7 overloading   

过载，超载，过负载

参考例句：

• Enables multiple users to search the site without overloading the server. 使多个用户搜索网站，而无需超载的服务器上。
• The driver got stripped down again for overloading his trunk. 那位卡车司机因为超载又受到责备。

8 impair   

v.损害，损伤；削弱，减少

参考例句：

• Loud noise can impair your hearing.巨大的噪音有损听觉。
• It can not impair the intellectual vigor of the young.这不能磨灭青年人思想活力。

9 vaudeville   

n.歌舞杂耍表演

参考例句：

• The standard length of a vaudeville act was 12 minutes.一个杂耍节目的标准长度是12分钟。
• The mayor talk like a vaudeville comedian in his public address.在公共演讲中，这位市长讲起话来像个歌舞杂耍演员。

10 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

11 lessened   

减少的，减弱的

参考例句：

• Listening to the speech through an interpreter lessened its impact somewhat. 演讲辞通过翻译的嘴说出来，多少削弱了演讲的力量。
• The flight to suburbia lessened the number of middle-class families living within the city. 随着迁往郊外的风行，住在城内的中产家庭减少了。

12 impairing   

v.损害，削弱( impair的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Carbon monoxide is definitely capable of impairing cardiovascular function. 一氧化碳确实能损害心血管机能。 来自辞典例句
• Could it be effected without impairing his reputation as well as his fortune? 他能否不损害他的声誉和财富而办到这一点呢？ 来自辞典例句

13 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

14 den   

n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室

参考例句：

• There is a big fox den on the back hill.后山有一个很大的狐狸窝。
• The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into tiger's den.不入虎穴焉得虎子。

15 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

16 descending   

n. 下行 adj. 下降的

参考例句：

• The results are expressed in descending numerical order . 结果按数字降序列出。
• The climbers stopped to orient themselves before descending the mountain. 登山者先停下来确定所在的位置，然后再下山。

17 fouler   

adj.恶劣的( foul的比较级 )；邪恶的；难闻的；下流的

参考例句：

• The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot. 纸愈白，污愈显。 来自互联网
• He that falls into dirt, the longer he stays there, the fouler he is. 陷入泥的人，待的时间越长，身上越脏。 来自互联网

18 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

19 expenditure   

n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗

参考例句：

• The entry of all expenditure is necessary.有必要把一切开支入账。
• The monthly expenditure of our family is four hundred dollars altogether.我们一家的开销每月共计四百元。

20 weavers   

织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Navajo are noted as stockbreeders and skilled weavers, potters, and silversmiths. 纳瓦霍人以豢养家禽，技术熟练的纺织者，制陶者和银匠而著名。
• They made out they were weavers. 他们假装是织布工人。

21 dispense   

vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施

参考例句：

• Let us dispense the food.咱们来分发这食物。
• The charity has been given a large sum of money to dispense as it sees fit.这个慈善机构获得一大笔钱，可自行适当分配。

22 earnings   

n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得

参考例句：

• That old man lives on the earnings of his daughter.那个老人靠他女儿的收入维持生活。
• Last year there was a 20% decrease in his earnings.去年他的收入减少了20%。

23 authentic   

a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的

参考例句：

• This is an authentic news report. We can depend on it. 这是篇可靠的新闻报道, 我们相信它。
• Autumn is also the authentic season of renewal. 秋天才是真正的除旧布新的季节。

24 toiled   

长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉

参考例句：

• They toiled up the hill in the blazing sun. 他们冒着炎炎烈日艰难地一步一步爬上山冈。
• He toiled all day long but earned very little. 他整天劳碌但挣得很少。

25 stint   

v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事

参考例句：

• He lavished money on his children without stint.他在孩子们身上花钱毫不吝惜。
• We hope that you will not stint your criticism.我们希望您不吝指教。

26 missionary   

adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士

参考例句：

• She taught in a missionary school for a couple of years.她在一所教会学校教了两年书。
• I hope every member understands the value of missionary work. 我希望教友都了解传教工作的价值。

27 afflicted   

使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• About 40% of the country's population is afflicted with the disease. 全国40%左右的人口患有这种疾病。
• A terrible restlessness that was like to hunger afflicted Martin Eden. 一阵可怕的、跟饥饿差不多的不安情绪折磨着马丁·伊登。

28 partially   

adv.部分地，从某些方面讲

参考例句：

• The door was partially concealed by the drapes.门有一部分被门帘遮住了。
• The police managed to restore calm and the curfew was partially lifted.警方设法恢复了平静，宵禁部分解除。

29 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

30 coffin   

n.棺材，灵柩

参考例句：

• When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
• The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。