Also, when strikes were afoot and he chanced to be working, he had at times been compelled to pay as high as seventeen shillings into the union's coffers for the relief fund.
One daughter, the elder, had worked as green hand for a dressmaker, for one shilling and sixpence per week- 37 1/2 cents per week, or a fraction over 5 cents per day.However, when the slack season came she was discharged, though she had been taken on at such low pay with the understanding that she was to learn the trade and work up.After that she had been employed in a bicycle store for three years, for which she received five shillings per week, walking two miles to her work, and two back, and being fined for tardiness.
As far as the man and woman were concerned, the game was played.
They had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit.
But what of the daughters? Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic innutrition, being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what chance have they to crawl up and out of the Abyss into which they were born falling?
As I write this, and for an hour past, the air had been made hideous by a free-for-all, rough-and-tumble fight going on in the yard that isback to back with my yard.When the first sounds reached me I took it for the barking and snarling of dogs, and some minutes were required to convince me that human beings, and women at that, could produce such a fearful clamor.
Drunken women fighting! It is not nice to think of; it is far worse to listen to.Something like this it runs:-Incoherent babble, shrieked at the top of the lungs of several women; a lull, in which is heard a child crying and a young girl's voice pleading tearfully; a woman's voice rises, harsh and grating, 'You 'it me! Jest you 'it me!' then, swat! challenge accepted and fight rages afresh.