Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/130

 120 behind her. While money is owing for dress, the debtors may be pathetic on climbing boys, or wounded Poles, or Lancashire spinners, or Idiots, or Incurables, or spiritual destitution; but they cannot say a word on behalf of overworked dressmakers: and if their husbands do, the world asks whether it is in delusion or hypocrisy. When they ask the commonest question of all—“What can be done?”—the answer is plain: “One and all of you,—pay your tradesmen’s bills.”

It appears that the money can be found when credit is not in the case. The “Collector” speaks of “foreign hawkers” who sell ladies’ finery for cash, and without a licence. We country people know of no such traders, except the old-fashioned pedlars who may still be found in very remote mountain districts, and who certainly have a licence. Those whom it concerns, however, will know what is meant by complaints of these interlopers in London, and how it is that they can get paid for their wares when long-established houses are obliged to stop payment to get in their debts.

Next, we may turn to a published letter of a member of an Association formed for the protection of working milliners and dressmakers, under one of our occasional attacks of pain of mind on their behalf. It is impossible to touch on the matters of fact in this letter without exposing its weaknesses; but I will say as little of these as I can. By Lady Ellesmere’s account, the object of the Association was to prevail with the heads of millinery establishments to shorten the hours of work, to ventilate their rooms, to desist altogether from Sunday work, and, generally, to treat their workwomen well. There were subsidiary objects; but the grand point was to shorten the periods of toil. After ten years of effort or waiting, little or nothing was done, or likely to he done,—unless the diminution of Sunday work may be ascribed to the influence of these ladies. Their society has died out, for the most piteous set of reasons that the most unbusinesslike collection of women could venture to exhibit. I need not criticise them. It is enough to say that, as the event proves, these ladies had no comprehension of the depth and extent of the mischief. When they suggested palliatives and devices, the employers might well feel (though they dared not say) that they understood their own business better than their aristocratic customers could do; that the evils would not exist if they could be so easily precluded as their admonishers supposed; and that it was for no object of their own that they ran such risks with their workwomen,—the system in which they were involved leaving them, in fact, no choice.

Finding that hired helpers were said to spoil what they took in hand; that dresses were made all at once, in excessive hurry, lest the delicate material should spoil, and that ladies could not usually give timely orders, “as they could not always be certain of the number of dresses they might need,” these champions of the dressmaker have withdrawn, commending their task to“the Legislature.” Of course! Whatever is difficult or troublesome “the legislature” is called upon to do, whether the object be within the scope of parliamentary action or not.

Here I may refer to the minor consideration of what parliament might undertake in this case.

Lord Shaftesbury has reminded the House of Lords of what was done on a former occasion; and the reply of Ministers was that the three gentlemen who constituted the former Commission had been requested now to take up the question of what could be done towards redressing or ameliorating the system under which young workwomen suffer as at present.

It is easy to see what is the utmost that can come of this. These dressmakers are not children, liable to be ground down under a manufacturing system; nor women subject to irresistible pressure in a factory district. They are voluntary applicants for one employment among many that are open to them, and are so presumably able to take care of themselves, as to have no claim on parliament to afford them special protection against being overworked. In this direction they can look for no help from law.

The one thing in which they may be aided is about the external vital conditions of their existence, in regard to which their own ignorance and that of their employers exposes them to fatal injury. When we consider how absurd it would be to call in the law to insure the women having enough food to eat, we shall see how merely temporary and provisional must be any interference on behalf of the ventilation of the rooms in which the women live. Any employer who should try to half-starve the workers would soon have empty rooms. Nobody would come and work there in hunger and faintness. The case will be the same about supply of air when employers and employed understand its necessity as well as they know the necessity of sufficient food. At present, however, both parties are shockingly ignorant of the consequences of a defective air-supply; and it is a question whether the matter may not be looked to by the Officers of Health. While the persons most concerned do not know how much fresh air they need in the room in which they pass their days, and those in which they pass their nights; while they are unaware how much more is wanted where gas is burning; and while nobody thinks of setting up an air-test, as we put up a thermometer when it is of consequence to regulate the warmth of the room or house; it may be justifiable to invite the law to overstep its proper limits, and interfere with private arrangements which people should be able to manage much better for themselves.

The letter of Mary Ann Walkley’s employer to the “Times,” shows how little notion such persons have of the needs of their workwomen in regard to air. While he is proud of 300 cubic feet, or a little over, he has no idea that the allowance of 600 cubic feet per hour for each individual in a group, once supposed sufficient for health, has grown to 1,000, and is advancing towards 1,500. What do young workwomen know of such conditions, beyond feeling ill when the air is “close,” and ready to die when it becomes poisonous? While this helpless ignorance lasts, it may be well that authorised inspectors should keep watch over milliners’ work-rooms and lodging-rooms; but there are always disappointments and drawbacks