Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1891-09-05
THE LOWLY OF LIVERPOOL
Wakcman Tells What He Saw in
This Wonderful City.
A Readable Picture of the Lowiy as They
Are Seen Ia Their Homes and How They
Livc--There Is Plenty of Work,
but the Pay Is Meager.
Copyrighted 1917

Copyrighted 1917
LIVERPOOL. Aug. with its outly-
ing boroughs and suburbs, Liverpool
houses well nigh 100000 souls Its
maritime interests are enormous, and
commercially il no doubt ranks as the
second city in the empire. 1t isa hard.
practical city. Its business men and
factors are grim, severe fellows, stern
of decision as New York millionaires,
and restless, diligent and unconquera-
bic as the men who have set the killing
pace in Chicago.
There is little room for pleasant
things in Liverpool. Its chief and
almost sole gallery of paintings was
given the city by graduated rum
seller, whom Victoria, out of surprise
and wonder, no doubt, made baronet.
Although one of the worlds greatest
depots for the book collector, it has but
one library of note available to the
public. Charities are done in a per-
functory, petulant manner, although
the helpless were most ill-mannered in
selecting busy Liverpool to starve in.
And its hundreds of thousands of
working men and women are treated
with less consideration than cattle.
With few shining examples, it is a
city of commercial Grad
grinds on the one hand and public
house devil-fsh on the other
ltn ltr hntr end lnt hn.
tween them. Nobody here wants it
that way. A few men, like Sir James
Poole, are endeavoring TO help the
"a little time from business affairs to
do something practical and good.
But as a rule the men who own great
fleets, who exchange half the English
speaking worlds raw and manufac-
tured products, push forward in their
money grabbing career like autoGRa-
tons of stone. and their fellow humans
are counted as coal, iron, or cotton are
computed in loss or gain.
In studying the condition of the
lowly OF any great city, the demand
for labor, wages paid, and the cost of
living, are the first things to be con-
sidered. These things indicate how
the people might live If possessed of all
prudence and sobriety. How they really
live, and why, is another matter.
There is seldom dearth of labor in
any great seaport. Liverpool has
always stood high in percentage of
labor demand. The city has never
been subject To the relentley over
crowding OF manufacturing towns like
Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham,
or the destructive greed of tremendous
and endless immigration, as at New
York. 1t is the greatest entrepot in
Europe. The landing, handling and
reshipment of nearly all North and
South American products exported TO
Europe, and the reshipment to all
quarters of the globe of the greater
part of the stupendous quantities of
British manufactures are done at this
one port. Its warehouses and docks
are almost inconceivably numerous
and extensive. Fifty thousand men
are alone constantly required in the
various forms of dock labor. This fact
will sufficiently indicate the almost
measureless business ramifications re-
quiring uninterrupted service.
Steady labor and plenty of it is the
rule. The least possible wages upon
which the workers may exist also pre-
vail. The best paid men among the
$4,000 laborers employed upon the
docks are the stevedorses who load and
unload the ships-''l Jumpers" they are
called-who get 5 shillings per day.
and the dock porters or good" hand
lers, who receive q pence less. "Lor-
rymen" or cartmen with two horses
! tandem earn 80 shillings, and with one
horse 90 shillin-s. The police are paid
from 20 To 81 shillings, with corre-
spending deductions To eventually pay
for their own pensioning when too old
for further service. A gateman at
the Exchange railway station told me
he had been in the same service sixteen
years and had never received above 10
shili!ngs per week; and no manner of
employee about these great stations is
paid upwards of 20 shillings.
All grades of clerks, porters and
sales men and women about the mar
Lets receive from s To Is shillings.
Tram car drivers get as high as "a shil-
lings, but conductors, never above 81
shillings. BARRIERS, caretakers or jan
itors and watchmen, milkmen, bakers
men, grocery and market trap drivers,
freight collectors, receive only from 10
to eighteen shillings; while corporation
day laborers are paid from sixteen to
twenty shillings per week.
Liverpool cabmen are the most
| woe be-gone lot of their kind in the
| world. Cab owners occasionally rent
q hanson or brougham to trust
worthy fellow at stated sum, but
there are not fifty out of nearly 5000
that have arrived at this dignity in
their calling, The remainder get from
twelve to eighteen shillings per week.
One pities these fellows. They are
lame, halt, blind, veinous-nosed and
palsied, without sufficient spirit for
genuine viciousness l had thought
the Havana cocheros the most beggarly
set of these fellows on earth. But il
You wish to observe at one study all
that could be seen In all the British
worlShouses, reformatories and hos.
pitals for incurables, station yourself
anywhere on Crosshall street opposite
the municipal buildings, near ST.
Georges Hall, or at the landings on
any steamer arrival day, and cast a
glance down aIc.g line of waiting
Liverpool caDmen.
.Ti,e clerks of Liverpool are not to be
envied. Male clerks employed in the
great wasehouses, refineries, insurance
offices, in the gigantic cotton trade.
and in the myriad shipping offices, ar,
the victims of most iniquitous sys-
tenn. 1t is true that few head clerks,
accountants and officers receive from
20 To 40 shillings per week, and man
age to lead comparatively comfortable
lives. But fully 90 per cent. give their
best years, from l6 and Is to 80, Mt
from to Is and 20 shillings per week.
They are deluded into this sort of slav-
cry by the glittering hope of advance
ment." Tremendous wealth and its
power are all about them. They slave
like beasts and dream of ultimate place
among the money lxinrs of Iivernool