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The work given is the same as that given to felons in gaol, oakum-picking and stone-breaking. The work, too, is excessive in proportion to what is received. Four pounds of oakum is a great task to an expert and an old hand. To a novice it can only be accomplished with the greatest difficulty, if indeed it can be done at all. It is even in excess of the amount demanded from a criminal in gaol.
It would be about as easy for a compositor to earn a living fresh from oakum-picking as for a tailor or a watchmaker; and I determined, if that task were set before me, to plead my trade and see what came of it I had no longer to wait than next morning; but when the work was given out it looked to my ignorant eye so inconsiderable that I forbore to make any complaint about it.
Work, apart from the fact that it is God's method of supplying the wants of man's composite nature, is an essential to his well-being in every way and on this Plan there is work, honourable work none of your demoralising stone-breaking, or oakum-picking business, which tantalises and insults poverty, Every worker will feel that he is not only occupied for his own benefit, but that any advantage reaped over and above that which he gains himself will serve to lift some other poor wretch out of the gutter.
Stone breaking's bad enough; but when it comes to oakum-picking it's all up with work for one while. There was another chap there last night, he went on, as I should take to be worse off than me. He's a watchmaker. Dressed very nice and tidy he was, and got a job to go to in the town this morning. He begged hard to be let off, and offered to pay for his night's lodgings if they'd let him.
This occupied them the whole evening during which there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not fail to remind them.
If you complain they take no notice. You then tie your clothes in a bundle, and they give you a nightshirt. At most places they serve supper to the men, who have to go to bed and eat it there. Some beds are in cells; some in large rooms. You get up at 6 a.m. and do the task. The amount of stone-breaking is too much; and the oakum-picking is also heavy. The food differs. At St.
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