HOME INDUSTRIES AND HOME HEROISM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 104, 20 June 1900, Page 4

HOME INDUSTRIES AND HOME HEROISM.

(Thomas Holmes in Contemporary Meciew.) (Continued.) Come with me on a Sunday afternoon into one of our slums, and I will show you some mote " home industries !" A married man has been sent to prison for six months for grossly assaulting his wife, the mother of eight children; and richly he merited his sentence. But the home must be kept together, and the children must be fed. So the wife becomes the prey of the " sweater." We knock at the door, but no one answers, The glass panel in the door being broken, there is no difficulty in gaining access. The various families in the different rooms take no notice of us as we go upstairs to a room, the door of which stands open. We stand on the threshold and take in the whole scene. A woman, facing the window that overlooks a miserable " yard," is seated at a sew-ing-machine, the incessant rattle of which tells us that she is working for her life; her back is towards wards us, so she neither sees nor hears us. So before she finishes the seam we have time to notice that the floor is covered with ladies' blouses. She is a blousemaker, and gets the fancy price of lOd. per dozen for her work, finding her own machine and thread. Last week she made twelve dozen blouses—two dozen per day. She sat at that machine 108 hours for her 10s.—somewhere about Id. per hour. But her seam is finished, and as she turns to take another she catches sight of us, utters a frightened exclamation, and falls off her seat into the heap of work. Poor j woman, as we gather her up we cannot' fail to perceive her condition, soon' again to be a mother. What can we do but pity her, take away the strap of her machine and leave her 45., the price of fifty-forty hours' work, In a few days we call again and find her in bed, waited on by a girl of ten, who has now another " little sister." She inquires for the strap of her machine, for she wants to be about her work, and in less than a week from her confinement the rattle of the machine is again heard in the room. Let me explain this " home industry " of blousemaking. The price paid at the factory where they are given out in hundreds is as much as Is. per dozen. Being cut out on the premises and given out in large quantities, the blouses have to be returned complete and finished so as to pass inspection. Now, poor women like my friend cannot go to the factory for a supply, and if they did they would not get it. So they fall into the hands of another, and are subsweated ; for the poor with all their kindness sweat the poor. A married woman in the vicinity, who probably has no children, and a husband in I regular, work, gets two or three, imachines on the hire system, takes! | uvo or three girls to teach them the I trade, and arranges with the factory I for a large supply of blouses. She is then in a position to allow her poorer neighbours to have some of the work. But she must have her profit on the work, and 2d. per dozen represents that profit. So one might go through the whole of these " home industries "—slippermaking, mantle-making, "ready-made clothing." Yes, ladies, and even fursewing and artificial flowers, for your' sealskin jackets and '-Parisian" bonnets might have strange tales to tell. Name me any one of these industries, and I will tell you of a tragedy' connected with it. We have our " Tales of Mean Streets"; the dirt and immorality, the drunkenness and cruelty of the poor are pretty well known; their bad grammar and slang amuse if they do not edify us. But [when shall the poet of the poor arise that shall sing of their patience and endurance, their fortitude and demotion? Politicians know them not, for these heroic women have no votes, i Trade-unions know them not, for these women have no cohesion; they are only isolated bits of humanity, dumb aud impotent. And many gently born come down into this Inferno. I have met many cultured women thus struggling for a pittance. In a poor room in a mews I have found the daughter of a wellknown British officer trying to keep body and soul together. In a cellar, with a street-grating over the only window, I have found two educated sisters, one dying of consumption, the other getting old and grey, with failing eyes, trying to support herself and sister by making ladies' underclothing and children's pinafores, with no machine, but with straining eyes in the semi-darkness stitching away for dear life. One is since dead—the other's ambition is a pair of of good spectacles to strengthen her poor old eyes. [To be continued.]