第58章

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 16cents 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.In the second case, 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, 4 1/2cents 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 civilized 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.

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 Death Rate Populationper 1000OvercrowdedSt.George's West...............10 13.2St.George's South..............35 23.7St.George's East...............40 26.4Then 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; while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung-disease in the majority of cases, and the woman who starts carding at seventeen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces at thirty.The chemical laborers, picked from the strongest and most splendidly built men to be found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight years.

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.'