HOW POOR LADIES MIGHT LIVE

AN ANSWER FROM THE WORKHOUSE

Ir may seem presumptuous to expect that any good thing may come from out of this place. Yet personal experiences are apt to be interesting, and may even be useful. And, judging of the state of the labour market and its inexorable requirements, I may at least claim, in one sense, to have touched bottom in what is often considered to be an unfathomable problem. There is perhaps some little danger lest Miss Frances Low's eloquent appeal and pitiful disclosures may serve only to depress the minds of those working women whom we are so anxious to raise out of their Slough of Despond. We owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Low, because she has brought many disquieting facts and wholesome deductions into the minds of a too comfortable and indifferent public. Yet there is another side to the question, and one that it is not less necessary to look upon.

All women have not yet grasped the fact that if they enter the labour market they must either abide by the rules that prevail there or else go under. Business is business; and the rest spells charity, which does not lie along the road towards independence of mind or a competence in money. Who wants work to do must do the work that is wanted. Who would be a valued servant must render valuable service to the community.

Miss Low speaks of teachers; but if one were to apply her maxims in her own profession, she would soon see that they would work ruin to employer and employed alike. Shall the editor of a newspaper print rubbish in his columns because the writer thereof needs the guineas? Or shall long-suffering editors subscribe, 'say, five shillings a week,' or take steps to insure maintenance so long as the recipient lives,' because once upon a time they had employed at fair market rates a person thereafter unable to earn a sufficient maintenance?

To be weak is to be miserable, doing or suffering.' The saying is true for all alike, and does not apply to poor ladies alone. But poor ladies are the only human beings who have resigned themselves to the idea that weakness and dependence are their becoming and

suitable attributes. Hence failure and misery, which follow naturally as the night the day.

Never was there for women such a time as the present. Miss Low speaks of 'the new channels of work that have been opened up to women' in the skilled labour market; though if she had her way, and the number of paid workers were limited to those compelled to be bread-winners,' she would not find those channels broadening; and had she had her way in the past they would be a good deal narrower than they now are. But it is not from the skilled labour market that are drawn these heartrending pictures of distress. After all, it is not highly skilled labour that fails to find its market, but the unskilled, wherein poor ladies, willy-nilly, fall under the laws that apply to labour everywhere.

I am a working woman myself—a title, as it seems to me, to be preferred to the much-abused title of lady, whose old significance is obscured in days when we have so few loaves to give, and are so deeply engaged seeking loaves for ourselves. But to be a lady, or even to be a gentlewoman, does not necessarily mean that the individual in question is a genius, or that she may take up any chosen calling or profession with a certainty of being at once placed in the front rank. And if she wishes to prove the gentility of her mind or manners, she might wisely begin by stripping herself of all bitterness and envy when she finds one whom she knows to be her social inferior occupying the post she covets. It does not follow that a lady of culture and refinement is more capable of imparting knowledge than the 'smart, sharp, semi-educated women' who win scholarships because from youth upwards they are trained for that special object. There are two things wanted in a teacher-knowledge, and imparting power; of the two, certainly the latter more easily finds its market. But let no one suppose for a moment that 'birth and culture' are qualities valueless in £ s. d. That teacher, the 'extremely able person,' who delivered her lesson with a Cockney pronunciation and a twang,' started on the race of life with a heavy handicap. And if she came to the top, it only shows how excellent her work must have been, or how indifferent the work done by her competitors of gentle speech and manners. It is, so I am told on good authority, a fact that in many of the best high-schools for girls a woman with 'a twang,' and especially a Cockney twang, has not the slightest chance of employment; and certainly in many more she would not be taken, except when there was no other good teacher to be had. Countess, to whom we all are grateful because she has sent her child to an excellent high-school, is, after all, the true aristocrat, for she is assured that if gentle birth means something more than a mere empty phrase, the daughter of a long line of noble ancestors is bound to win in the race of life; and that she never sits side by side with the local butcher's daughter, though it is for the good of both that

for a time she should appear to do so; and that, sharing lessons, she has more valuable possessions which she may never share.

But Miss Low's knowledge about high-schools is evidently limited. The Girls' Public Day School Company has enjoyed, not fifteen, but twenty-four years of existence; and it has opened, not twenty-four, but thirty-four schools. When the Company was first formed its schools were the only ones of the kind; now it only owns a few of the many hundreds of high-schools, endowed and unendowed, public, private and misnamed. There is no reason to believe that there is, or that there shortly will be, an increasing difficulty to get posts' for fully qualified women; though there are, of course, floating about the world some who have tried this profession and failed in it, and some who were employed and for various reasons are now employed no longer. But of what profession may not one say the same? As to salaries, again, Miss Low puts them, as it seems to me, much too disadvantageously. The Girls' Public Day School Company is probably the best paymaster in the profession, save and except a few wellendowed schools, who do not look for a dividend upon capital. 'A salary of 80l., or 90l., or even 100l.,' is nowhere the maximum that an assistant mistress reaches.' On the contrary, I should have said that it was nearer the minimum for women with university degrees.' The theory is that no woman with a degree or its equivalent should begin at less than 100l.; and I think many head mistresses would say that a woman who, after such advantages, was not worth her 100l., was not worth having at any price. As for the 'training-college education,' which Miss Low seems to place on an equality with a university degree, I have nothing to say about that, except that possibly 80l., rising to 100l., is all it is likely to be worth. University careers ensure certain intellectual attainments, and mean the outlay of a considerable capital, upon which, of course, the teachers expect, and get, good interest in the form of higher salaries. But facts are better than opinions. One of the Company's high-schools, about which I happen to know something, pays over 2,000l. in salaries, and, divided among the mistresses on the staff, it gives an average of 130l. per annum, or, reckoning assistant mistresses only, 114/. Most of these mistresses have no degree or its equivalent; therefore they have either got their capital out at interest, or else they never had any capital. And it is not professional women alone, but men also, who, starting on life without a shilling behind them, have a hard time in the present and many anxieties for their future. Are there no tales of the struggles of students in other professions? Does one never hear of nervous affections in the members of the Civil Service, of overstrain in the commercial world, of early breakdown in the lower ranks of workers? Things work out pretty equal in pathos throughout this world's history of brave struggle and patient endurance, where the race is ever to the swift and the battle to the strong. I too

could tell stories were I so minded: stories of medical students boarding themselves on 5s. a week, with half an egg to a pudding so as to last two days, and a weekly fast when dinner-time came that brought the expenses just within the right amount. But what would it show, except the dogged perseverance that goes to build up the finest qualities of our complex nature? Miserably sad from one point of view; gloriously triumphant against heavy odds on the other!

There are two ways of looking at everything. Why should a woman under thirty plead poverty or ask for pity when she is getting 60l. or 100l. a year? Many a City clerk has no more; and as for the items of expenditure that Miss Low gives, there are many that might be reduced without severe hardship. But, rightly or wrongly, highschool teachers have among those who know them the reputation of being apt to have their fling; let us say that they have the inestimable gift of a power of keen enjoyment. They travel and see the world; they stay in their own country, and see all the plays that are on. And they will tell you that they go on the cheap; but then, some of us do not go at all-we have not the time, for one thing. And in this matter of holidays the teacher usually has from two and a half to three months out of every twelve. Does any other professional man or woman get as much? Clerks and poor-law officers have but fourteen days, and in the case of the latter it is not claimable until after twelve months' service; and Saturdays and Sundays are not days of rest. Civil servants did get from three to four weeks (the last regulations have reduced the time), and that not always at the best time of year, many having to take for several years running November or some other inclement month. Yet these are all persons who reckon among their privileges that of getting a regular annual holiday. There are thousands who never get more than a day or two at a time, and tens of thousands who are not sure of that, unless or until they fall out of work. If it is not possible to alter the conditions of the labour market all round, it is not easy to see how these things are to be remedied. It has been stated that one of the reasons for Germans making their way so fast is on account of their greater perseverance and endurance; they drudge at the desk while the Englishman is out at play. Staying power is more than half the battle, and woe betide those, be they men or women, who are not of strong enough fibre to sustain the struggle. Why is it that so many women flock into the teaching profession, making it the very hotbed of indigent old age? Or, if they must teach, why do they not turn their attention to the despised Board schools, where good salaries and good work are to be found? For six years I was a member of a school board, and was much impressed by the independent outlet offered to women. Not only are the salaries good, but the expenses are much less; there are classes open for all sorts of culture; and before long some acceptable scheme of pensions is sure to be started.

Or why do not more ladies turn their attention to the workhouses? They might not like it; but it does not seem a question of what is liked, but of what is possible to be done in the way of earning an honourable living and a competence for old age. Apartments, fire, washing, clothing, cooking, attendance, good food, a salary, and a pension, are not advantages to be despised, to say nothing of a maintenance during times of sickness, when they would stand no chance of being cut adrift.

Twice during the past two years have officers in this workhouse been sent away for sickness which entailed two months' absence from duty. Yet a substitute was found; there was no deduction from salary, and all expenses were paid. Or how is it that lady-helps so signally failed, when on all sides we hear the cry for good cooks, for honest servants, for reliable housekeepers?

The answer is always the same: the social position is not so good as that of a high-school teacher. Perhaps it is not the workers themselves who are chiefly to blame; friends and relations put a false valuation on social position, and all along the line the meat is dropped for its shadow. Honest work is frowned upon and incompetence forgiven. 'I cannot dig; to beg I am [not] ashamed.' Moreover, what social position is possible when all the luxuries of life are wanting and the bare necessaries scant? Two instances rise before me: a working woman one, a lady the other. The one took up life on business lines: entered a Board school as monitor, went on to the pupil-teacher college, then became assistant mistress, and finally came to London, where she has a salary of 100l. a year with a possible headmistress-ship before her. The other lived at home, in a town where a morning school was kept for gentlefolks' children. The crash Forsaken by friends, she had nothing to fall back upon. She had no certificates and no profession. More fatal still, she had an utterly false estimate of the world she must face. Finally, she and her family left the town, and are now keeping a small school, and taking a boarder to eke out their scanty means. Which really has the more dignified position? That the world is hard cannot be denied, but for most of us at one time or another Hobson's choice has to be made. Charity is the only alternative, bringing with it contempt; as one of Miss Low's poor ladies admits when she says (with the tell-tale pathos of her faulty grammar) Every one seems to think they may talk to you like a dog.'

came.

Unfortunately, the poor ladies themselves make it still harder for one another by fixing their own standard, and are as hard as a flint to others who may choose a way of living that they consider menial. Witness Miss Low's poor lady-a poor sort of lady, indeed!—who vexed her soul because the same roof sheltered her and a policeman. Perhaps it might be a little awkward to introduce Miss So-and-So, Mrs. Somebody's cook, to Mrs. Nobody, who never did a day's good work