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Taking the various industries in which women are employed, the needle, as usual, leading, and the shirt-makers being a large per cent of the number, there are in London nearly a million women, self-supporting and self-respecting, and often the sole dependence of a family.
Since then a considerable number of Unions have been formed among match-makers, dressmakers, milliners, mantle-makers, upholstresses, rope-makers, confectioners, box-makers, shirt-makers, umbrella-makers, brush-makers and others.
Think of the matchbox-makers, who turn out a gross for a few halfpence, out of which they must supply some of their own materials. Think of the seamstresses, the shirt-makers and tailors' assistants in the veritable dens of East London, who by slaving for fifteen hours out of twenty-four can earn eighteenpence a day, out of which four or five shillings must be paid weekly for rent.
This irregularity of work is not in its first aspect so much a deficiency of work, but rather a maladjustment While on the one hand we see large classes of workers who are habitually overworked, men and women, tailors or shirt-makers in Whitechapel, 'bus men, shop-assistants, even railway-servants, toiling twelve, fourteen, fifteen, or even in some cases eighteen hours a day, we see at the same time and in the same place numbers of men and women seeking work and finding none.
"How am I to begin?" She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with them; they did not want to women can exist under conditions where men cannot.
No wonder; they were made fully equal to those for which regular shirt-makers receive from seventy-five cents to a dollar a piece. "Don't you think you can make five such as these in a week or even six?" he asked, in a somewhat changed tone. "I'm afraid not," was the reply. "There's a good day's work on each one of them, and I cannot possibly sit longer than a few hours at a time.
"Your reference to the strike amongst the women shirt-makers in New York drove one of the richest men out of our church." "Yes; I saw him jump up and go out during the service. The women were making shirts for his house at thirty-five cents a dozen, finding their own thread and using their own machines.
That's more of a reminder to come in and order your fall outfit than it is anything else. But you can send him a check on account, if you feel like it." "A check?" repeated the neophyte blankly. "Must I have a bank account?" "Safer than a sock, my boy. And just as simple. To-morrow will do for that, when we call on the shirt-makers and the shoe sharps.
"Those are fine-sounding words," he said with a sneer; "but I doubt if the tailors and the shirt-makers will take them in payment. That's why I want that list." "Still " "It's I who shall pay. I do not mean to have another such scene as that of yesterday in my office. It must not be said that my son is a sharper and a cheat at the very moment when I find for my daughter a most unhoped-for match."
The women and girls are shirt-makers, tailoresses, jam-makers, biscuit-makers, match-makers, and rope-makers.
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