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220
1910]
In reference to the domestic conditions it is noteworthy that the poorest homes are
seldom the least satisfactory from this standpoint. Genuine poverty is rarely associated with
squalor. Unfortunately to the uninitiated dirt is taken as a symbol of want, and deserving
and needy persons and families who resolutely maintain a tidy cleanliness are passed over
for the lazy and thriftless, whose chief asset is their neglected home and miserable children.
This also applies to the homeworkers' premises.
In those registered as unsatisfactory the income is as high, or even higher, than
that of the majority of the workers. It is sheer lazy thriftlessness that causes the conditions
found in these cases; and that appears to be undermining the whole of the lower
working class life; nor (judging from the reports of teachers and employers of youths and
girls), is it likely to be remedied by our present system of elementary education. It affects
the economic conditions of the labour market as well as the home.
Employers agree that it is a rare thing to get a boy or girl to stay in any situation
where there is hard work to be done, or sustained effort required. The old saw that there
is "no royal road to learning" receives confirmation here, for the drudgery of school work
being removed and everything made as pleasant as possible, the results are similarly
evanescent, while the children leave school apparently thoroughly imbued with the idea
that all hard work and anything that calls for endurance is to be as rigorously excluded
from life, as it was from the school curriculum.
The girls go from factory to factory, without any sense of responsibility and drift
into marriage (or not) in the same careless way, reproducing in their children a generation
a little more shiftless than themselves.
It is a serious problem that should be faced, but is seldom recognised and named
for what it is.
For this reason it has been a pleasure to visit some of the older women, who, trained
in the school of necessity, and with only their own efforts to assist them, have yet upheld
a respectable independence.
There are hundreds of single women; and widows who have honorably maintained
their children, and who, though now advanced in years, continue to work and keep a tidy
home, and whose chief source of happiness lies in their sturdy independence. One woman
of 68 has worked for one firm 52 years and continues to work, at the same time looking
after her mother, an old woman of 94.
Another having worked for one firm for 50 years was pensioned by her friends,
but she still does a little to help an invalid sister. These are not exceptional cases; except
perhaps in the length of time lived : they are typical of the women workers of the past
generation. One regrets that the struggle was rendered doubly hard by the underpaid
conditions that prevailed; but the doubt remains as to whether the swing of the pendulum
towards avoidance of the difficulties is not too far in the other direction, judging from
the evidence already quoted as to the powers of industry and independence shown by the
rising generation.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
(Mrs.) A. CATHERINE YOUNG