Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1891-08-01

the necessities of life. A large number of
establishments provide food and dormito-
ries for their stats. A regime of the ut
most severity exists. But employers thus
secnre the advantage of absolute surveil-
lance, of the miserable "truck" system in
another form where all they give is got
back with profit, and the docile, unques-
tioning labor of their prison-kept white
slaves, from eight in the morning until
eight and sometimes ten o'clock at night.
Looking at the great army of more low
ly toilers and house servants, the study is
certainly not pleasanter one. There are
large gangs of girls known as "cotton
pickers," who may be seen at the noon
hour wandering bareheaded through the
streets, their beggarly garments covered
with cotton lint. Those who are not bare
footed wear heavy clogs without stock
ings, and they will kick shins with any
rough in Liverpool for a pot of beer
Many cargoes of damaged cotton arrive
here. 1t is sold by auction to q class of
dealers who dry it, and prepare it a sec
ond time for the market. Two or three
thousand of the hoodlum class of young
women sort or ''pick" this stuff in filthy,
noisome pens. The employment is not
steady, and they get what the renovators
have mind to pay; all the way from four
to ten shillings per week. These girls and
women are about respectable as men.
would be under like circumstances: drink
gallons of beer per day while at work,
clubbing" their pennies for its purchase;
ferociously beat those who do not drink
fair" and live in any manner they may;
there being absolutely no effort on the
part of any person or society to better
their condition.
Plain cooks in houses, restaurants and
the common grade of inns will earn eight
shillings per week. a general house ser
want receives six shillings. A housemaid,
nurse and waitress combined, who is re-
garded as the highest grade of house SER
want, may receive eight shillings. Char
women or scrubwomen receive three shil-
lings per day and breakfast, that is, tea
and bread and butter, and they may pos
sibly secure two engagements per week.
Washerwomen are very glad to earn alto
gether ten shilling per week, and perhaps
their assistants may get from shilling to
one and four-pence q day and tea" or
'three ha'p'worth of bitter" which trans
lated means three cents worth of bitter
beer. Girls in tobacco, confectionery and
stationers' shops will receive from four to
six shillings per week; and mattresses in
restaurants, considering the severity and
hours of their labor, are the poorest paid
of all. Many of these girls are required
W ScINc III
and in offices, at all hours, after the man
ner of the Havana coolie cantineros, and
are subject to all manner of insult, which
they endure with a dogged bravery and
CHEEKY invulnerability emitting them to
be regarded as real heroines in any other
land.
There is very fine cafe at the head of
Dale street, where nearly thousand en-
ployers and clerks from the Cotton Ex-
change and neighboring offices lunch or
dine daily 1t will rank with our better
class American restaurants. The entire
service is by women. There are from
twenty-five to thirty as comely, cleanly,
bright, well educated and thoroughly re-
spectacle young women here as could be
found at any aristocratic levee in New
York or London. Having often been
served at the place, at the same table and
by the same waitress, / asked her the
amount of wages per week she was paid.
''Six shillings;" she replied cheerily
Cannot you find service at better wages
in Liverpooli" 1 inquired.
''Oh, no, sir; that is very good pay
here"
''Do you get any tips besidesi"
Very seldom, sir. Only occasionally
from strangers The clerks WHO come
here can't afford it. And the masters new
er do that in Liverpool"
"And this six shillings per week is all
you do earn, or can earn, after good edu-
cation. and while using the best years of
your life2''
"Oh, but you must remember, sir"-and
this triumphantly-"we get our own food
besides. And very good food it is, sir!''
There was no use of continuing the in
QUESTION. Here was the absolute limit of
a handsome, capable, well-educated and re-
oh ,oaccthilitiac on1
rations. because of her own absolute
knowledge in the matter, in this second
city of Britain.
"Ah, but money has twice the pur-
chasing power i'll Great Britain thun it
has in America" some one remarks.
There never was a cruelcr political or
other falsehood coined. 1t is absolutely
true that there is not a human need, l do
not say a luxury, which cannot be as
cheaply or more cheaply purchased in
America than in England, barring the one
item of habitation The burning fact is
that the lowly of this country are forced
to live twice or thrice as meagerly as our
own toilers. Here capital has with devil
ish ingenuity, as it may do with us in time
if immigration be not soon wholesomely
restricted ascertained to farthing on
how little human beings who labor may be
made to exist; and Britons who ''never,
never will be slaves,n are slaves of the
most hopeless character from the cradle to
the grave.
But what may be the amusements and
diversions of the Liverpool lowly! is nat
ural inquiry. They drink, drink, drink,
and 'scamping" the rents. Not all are
drunkards. Most of them are regular
drinkers. The horror of it all is, women
predominant From Saturday noon until
eleven at night, and again from Sunday
noon until ten ut night, excepting closing
hour between half-past two and six o'clock,
in the bar, smoking rooms, "snugs" and
parlors of each of the about two thousand
licensed public houses of the city and en-
virons, an average of fifty persons may be
found in all conditions of ''cheeriness"
and semi-consciousness. That will ac-
count for about one hundred thousand
persons. 1 do not know how often these
gatherings will wholly change their per-
sonel. But believe q quarter of mil
lion people in Liverpool drink whenever
they can get it; and that onehalf of that
number are confirmed tipplers and drunk
ards. The homes of most of these are
bare walls and squalid belongings. The
public-house is the only cheerful place
| they know in their lives Rent collectors
| assert that over ten thousand of such fam
| lilies "scamp the rents;" that is, get pos
| session of any sort of habitstion and re-
main rent free until warned out or thrown
| out by bailiff There is not in any ten
leading American cities as much actual
squalor and beastly hopelessness as may
be found in this one. And yet nearly eve
| ry one of this class does something and
earns something here. Whatever may be
the purchasing power" Of money in
America, it is good thing to remember
that American laborers are not yet the
subjects of such studies as these.
| EDGAR L. WAKEMAS.