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--37.5 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 has been made hideous by a
free-for-all, rough-and-tumble fight going on in the yard that is back to
back with my yard.
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