EAST LONDON—one cannot repeat it too often—is a city of working bees. As we linger and loiter among the streets multitudinous, we hear, as from a hive, the low, contented murmur of continuous and patient work. There are two millions of working-people in this city. The children work at school; the girls and boys, and the men and women, work in factory, in shop, and at home, in dock and in wharf and in warehouse; all day long and all the year round, these millions work. They are clerks, accountants, managers, foremen, engineers, stokers, porters, stevedores, dockers, smiths, craftsmen of all kinds. They are girls who make things, girls who sew things, girls who sell things. There are among them many poor, driven, sweated creatures, and the sweaters themselves are poor, driven, sweated creatures, for sweating once begun is handed on from one to the other as carefully and as religiously as any holy lamp of learning. They work from early morning till welcome evening. The music of this murmur, rightly understood, is like the soft and distant singing of a hymn of praise. For the curse of labor has been misunderstood; without work man would be even as the beasts of the field. It is the necessity of work that makes him human; of necessity he devises and discovers and invents, because he would die if he did not work; and because he has to subdue the animal within him. The animal is solitary; the man must be gregarious. He must make a friend of his brother, he must obey the stronger, he must make laws, he must fight with nature, and compel her to give up her secrets. It is only by means of work that man can rise; it is his ladder; in the sweat of his face he eats his bread—yea, the bread of life. It is not with any pity that we should listen to this murmur. It should be with pure contentment and gratitude, for the murmur, though it speaks partly of the whirr of ten thousand wheels and partly of those who stand and serve those wheels, speaks also of this blessed quality of work, that it enables men to use the body for the sake of the soul. Man must work.

Imagine, if you can, what would follow if you held up your hand and said: “Listen, all. There will be no more work. You may stop the engines, or they may run down of their own accord. You may take off your aprons and wash your hands. You may all sit down for the rest of your lives. Your food will be waiting for you when you want it. Eat, drink, and be happy if you can.” If they can! But can they, with nothing to do—no work to do, only, like the sheep in the field, to browse, or, like the wolves of the forest, to rend and tear and slay?

If you can use your eyes as well as your ears, look about you. It is really like looking at a hive of bees, is it not? There are thousands of them, and they are all alike; they are all doing the same thing; they are all living the same lives; they wake and work and rest and sleep, and so life passes by. If you look more closely you will observe differences. No two human creatures, to begin with, are alike in face. More closely still, and you will discover that in the greatest crowd, where the people are, like sheep in a fold, huddled together, every one is as much for himself—there is as much individuality here—as in the places where every one stands by himself and has room to move in and a choice to make.

Let us take a single creature out of these millions. Perhaps if we learn how one lives, how one regards the world, we may understand, in some degree, this agitated, confused, restless, incoherent, inarticulate mass.

I introduce you to a baby. Her name is Liz. She has as yet but a few days of life behind her. She is hardly conscious of hunger, cold, or uneasiness, or any of the things with which life first makes its beginning apparent to the half-awakened brain. She opens eyes that understand nothing—neither form, nor distance, nor color, nor any differences; she sees men, like trees, walking. When she is hungry she wails; when she is not hungry she sleeps. We will leave the child with her mother, and we will stand aside and watch while the springs and summers pass, and while she grows from an infant to a child, a girl, a woman.

The room where the baby lies is a first-floor front, in a house of four rooms and a ruinous garret, belonging to a street which is occupied, like all the streets in this quarter, wholly by the people of the lower working-class. This is London Street, Ratcliffe. It is a real street, with a real name, and it is in a way typical of East London of the lower kind. The aristocracy of labor, the foremen and engineers of shipyards and works, live about Stepney Church, half a mile to the north. Their streets are well kept, their doorsteps are white, their windows are clean, there are things displayed in the front windows of their houses. Here you will see a big Bible, here a rosewood desk, here a vase full of artificial flowers, here a bird-cage with foreign birds,—Avvadavats, Bengalees, love-birds, or a canary,—here a glass case containing coral or “Venus’s fingers” from the Philippines, here something from India carved in fragrant wood, here a piece of brasswork from Benares. There is always something to show the position and superiority of the tenant. It is the distinctive mark of the lower grades of labor that they have none of these ornaments. Indeed, if by any chance such possessions fell in their way they would next week be in the custody of the pawnbroker; they would “go in.”

We are, then, in a first-floor front. Look out of the window upon the street below: meanwhile the baby grows. The street contains forty houses. Each house has four rooms, two or three have six; most of the people have two rooms. There are, therefore, roughly speaking, about one hundred families residing in this street. The door-steps, the pavement, and the roadway are swarming with children; the street is their only playground. Here the little girl of six bears about in her arms, staggering under the weight, but a careful nurse, her little sister, aged twelve months; here the children take their breakfast and their dinner; here they run and play in summer and in winter. It seems to be never too hot or too cold for them. They are ragged, they are bareheaded, they are barefooted and barelegged, their toys are bits of wood and bones and oyster-shells, transformed by the imagination of childhood into heaven knows what of things precious and splendid. Of what they have not they know nothing; but, then, they mind nothing, therefore pity would be thrown away upon them. It is the only world they know; they are happy in their ignorance; they are feeling the first joy of life. By their ruddy faces and sturdy limbs you can see that the air they breathe is wholesome, and that they have enough to eat.

The room is furnished sufficiently, according to the standards of the family. There is a table, with two chairs; there is a chest of drawers with large glass handles. On this chest stands a structure of artificial flowers under a glass shade. This is the sacred symbol of respectability. It is for the tenement what the Bible or the coral in the window is for the house. So long as we have our glass shade with its flowers we are in steady work, and beyond the reach of want. On each side of the glass shade are arranged the cups and saucers, plates and drinking-glasses, belonging to the family. There are also exhibited with pride all the bottles of medicine recently taken by the various members. It is a strange pride, but one has observed it among people of a more exalted station. There are also set out with the bottles certain heart-shaped velvet pincushions, made by the sailors, and considered as decorations of the highest Æsthetic value. The chest of drawers is used for the clothes of the family—the slender supplement of what is on the family back. It is also the storehouse for everything that belongs to the daily life. There is a cupboard beside the chimney, with two shelves. Any food that may be left over, and the small supplies of tea and sugar, are placed on the upper shelf, coals on the lower. On the table stands, always ready, a teapot, and beside it a half-cut loaf and a plate with margarine, the substitute for butter. Margarine is not an unwholesome compound. It is perhaps better than bad butter; it is made of beef fat, clarified and colored to resemble butter. I am told that other people eat it in comfortable assurance that it is butter.

When the child grows old enough to observe things she will remark, from time to time, the absence of the chest of drawers. At other times she will discover that the drawers are empty. These vacuities she will presently connect with times of tightness. When money is scarce and work is not to be got things “go in” of their own accord; the pawnbroker receives them.

She will learn more than this; she will learn the great virtue of the poor, the virtue that redeems so many bad habits—generosity. For the chest of drawers and the best clothes are more often “in” to oblige a neighbor in difficulties than to relieve their own embarrassments. The people of Ratcliffe are all neighbors and all friends; to be sure, they are frequently enemies, otherwise life would be monotonous. Always some one is in trouble, always some of the children are hungry, always there is rent to pay, always there is some one out of work. Liz will learn that if one can help, one must. She will learn this law without any formula or written code, not out of books, not in church, not in school; she will learn it from the daily life around her. Generosity will become part of her very nature.

You will perceive, however, that this child is not born of the very poor; her parents are not in destitution; her father is, in fact, a docker, and, being a big, burly fellow, born and brought up in the country, he gets tolerably regular employment and very fair wages. If he would spend less than the third or the half of his wages in drink his wife might have a four-roomed cottage. But we must take him as he is. His children suffer no serious privation. They are clothed and fed; they have the chance of living respectably, and with such decencies as belong to their ideals and their standards. In a word, Liz will be quite a commonplace, average girl of the lower working-class.

The first duty of a mother is to “harden” the baby. With this view, Liz was fed, while still a tiny infant, on rusks soaked in warm water, and when she was a year old her mother began to give her scraps of beefsteak, slightly fried, to suck; she also administered fish fried in oil—the incense and fragrance of this delicacy fills the whole neighborhood, and hangs about the streets day and night like a cloud. For drink she gave the baby the water in which whiting had been boiled; this is considered a sovereign specific for building up a child’s constitution. Sometimes, it is true, the treatment leads to unforeseen results. Another child, for instance, about the same age as Liz, and belonging to the same street, was fed by its mother on red herring, and, oddly enough, refused to get any nourishment out of that delightful form of food. They carried it to the Children’s Hospital, where the doctor said it was being starved to death, and made the most unkind remarks about the mother—most unjust as well, for the poor woman had no other thought or intention than to “harden the inside” of her child, and all the friends and neighbors were called in to prove that plenty of herring had been administered.

As soon as Liz was three years of age she had the same food as her parents and elder sisters. You shall dine with the family presently. For breakfast and tea and supper, and for any occasional “bever” or snack, she had a slice of bread and margarine, which she cut for herself when, like Mrs. Gamp, so disposed. It was indeed terrifying to see the small child wielding a bread-knife nearly as big as herself. She got plenty of pennies when work was regular; nobody is so generous with his pennies as the man who needs them most. She spent these casual windfalls in sweets and apples, passing the latter round among her friends for friendly bites, and dividing the former in equal portions. This cheap confectionery for the children of the kerb and the door-step supplies the place of sweet puddings, for the mystery of the pudding is unfortunately little known or understood by the mothers of Ratcliffe.

In the matter of beer, Liz became very early in life acquainted with its taste. There is a kind of cheap porter, sold at three farthings a pint, considered grateful and comforting by the feminine mind of Ratcliffe. What more natural than that the child should be invited to finish what her mother has left of the pint? It would not be much. What more motherly, when one is taking a little refreshment in a public house, than to give a taste to the children playing on the pavement outside? And what more natural than for the children to look for these windfalls, and to gather round the public house expectant? It seems rough on the little ones to begin so early; it is contrary to modern use and custom, but we need not suppose that much harm is done to a child by giving it beer occasionally. Formerly all children had beer for breakfast, beer for dinner, and beer for supper. In Belgium very little children have their bock for dinner. The mischief in the case of our Liz and her friends was that she got into the habit of looking for drink more stimulating than tea, and that the habit remained with her and grew with her.

At three years of age Liz passed, so to speak, out of the nursery, which was the door-step and the kerb, into the school-room. She was sent to the nearest Board-school, where she remained under instruction for eleven long years. She began by learning certain highly important lessons; first, that she had to obey; next, that she had to be quiet; and, thirdly, that she had to be clean. As regards the first and second, obedience and order were not enforced in the nursery of London Street. They were, it is true, sometimes enjoined with accompaniment of a cuff and a slap, not unkindly meant, in the home. As for cleanliness, one wash a week, namely, on Sunday morning, had hitherto been considered sufficient. It was, however, a thorough wash. The unkempt locks, brown with the dust and grime of a week’s street play, came out of the tub a lovely mass of light-brown, silky curls; the child’s fair skin emerged from its coating of mud; her rosy cheeks showed their natural color; her round, white arms fairly shone and glowed in the sunshine. On Sunday morning Liz presented the appearance of a very pretty child, clean and fair and winsome. As soon as she went to school, however, she had to undergo the same process every morning except Saturday. If she appeared in school unwashed she had to go home again; not only that, but there was often unpleasantness in the matter of pinafore. Saturday is a school holiday, therefore no one washes on Saturday, and face and hands and pinafore may all go grimy together.

Liz remained at school from three to fourteen years of age. What she learned I do not exactly know. Some years ago I looked through some “readers” for Board-schools, and came to the conclusion that nothing at all could be learned from them, counting scraps as worth nothing. But I hear that they have altered their “readers.” Still, if you remember that no one has any books at all in London Street, that even a halfpenny paper is not often seen there, that no talk goes on which can instruct a child in anything, you will own that a child may be at school even for eleven years and yet learn very little. And since she found no means of carrying on her education after she left school, no free libraries, no encouragement from her companions, you will not be surprised to hear that all she had learned from books presently dropped from her like a cloak or wrapper for which she had no further use. Let us be reasonable. The Board-school taught her, besides a certain small amount of temporary and short-lived book-lore, some kind of elementary manners—a respect, at least, for manners; the knowledge of what manners may mean. The clergy and the machinery of the parish cannot teach these things. It can be done only at the Board-school. It is the school, and not the church, which softens manners and banishes some of the old brutality, because, you see, they do not go to church, and they must go to school. How rough, how rude, the average girl of Ratcliffe was before the Board-schools were opened, Liz herself neither knows nor comprehends. These schools have caused the disappearance of old characteristics once thought to be ingrained habits. Their civilizing influence during the last thirty years has been enormous. They have not only added millions to the numbers of those who read a great deal and perhaps—but this is doubtful—think a little, but they have abolished much of the old savagery. I declare that the life of this street as it was thirty or forty years ago simply could not be written down with any approach to truth in these pages.

Let me only quote the words of Professor Huxley, who began life by practising as a medical man in this quarter. “I have seen the Polynesian savage,” I once heard him say in a speech, “in his primitive condition, before the missionary or the blackbirder or the beach-comber got at him. With all his savagery, he was not half so savage, so unclean, so irreclaimable, as the tenant of a tenement in an East London slum.” These words open the door to unbounded flights of imagination. Leave that vanished world, leave the savage slum of Huxley’s early manhood, to the region of poetry and fancy, to the unwritten, to the suggested, to the half-whispered. It exists no longer; it has been improved.

Liz passed through school, then, from one standard to the next. We have seen that she learned manners, order, obedience, and the duty of cleanly clothes and cleanly language. She learned also to love teacher and school. Teacher came to see her when she was ill, and brought her nice things. Teacher kissed her. There were others, however, who took a mean advantage of her affectionate nature, and used it as a means of keeping her out of mischief—ladies who went in and out of the streets and houses, not afraid of anything; who gathered the children together on Sundays, and sang with them and talked to them, and gave them oranges. These ladies knew all the children. When they walked down the streets the very little ones ran after them, clinging to their skirts, catching at their hands, in the hope of a word and a kiss. Liz, among the rest, was easily softened by kindness. She had two schools,—that provided by the country and that provided by these ladies, who taught her more than books can teach,—and both schools, if you please, were provided for nothing. Whatever may happen to Liz in after life, her respect for manners and for the life of order will remain. And sometimes, when things look very black and there is real cause for sadness and repentance, this respect may be the poor girl’s most valuable asset.

At the age of fourteen, when she had to leave school, she was a sturdy, well-built girl, square-shouldered, rather short, but of a better frame than most of her companions, because her father was country-born; her features were sharp, her face was plain, but not unpleasing; her gray eyes were quick and restless, her lips were mobile; her cheek was somewhat pale, but not worn and sunken. She looked abounding in life and health; she was full of fun, and quick to laugh on the smallest provocation; she was ready-witted and prompt with repartee and retort; she danced as she went along the street, because she could not walk sedately; if a barrel-organ came that way she danced in the road, knowing half a dozen really pretty steps and figures. She had something in her quick movements, in the restlessness of her eyes, in the half-suspicious turn of the head, of the street sparrow, the only bird which she knew. If you grow up among street sparrows there is every reason for the adoption of some of their manners; the same resemblance to the sparrow, which is an impudent, saucy bird, always hungry, always on the lookout for something more, may be observed in other street children. She was affectionate with her companions, but always watchful for her own chance.

In her views of the conduct of life she was no strict moralist. She was ready to condone some things which more rigid maidens condemn. She would not, for instance, bear malice because her brother, for one of the smaller crimes, such as gambling on the pavement, got into trouble; nor would she judge him harshly if he was found in the possession of things “picked up”—unconsidered trifles; nor would she resent being knocked down by her brother when in drink. She had too often seen her mother cuffed by her father when he came home drunk to feel any resentment about such a trifle. In sober moments her brother did not use his fist upon her, nor did her father, except under the provocation of drink, drive the whole family flying into the street by “taking the strap” to everybody.

What did she know about the outer world? From her books and her school little enough. Her own country, like every other country, was to her a geographical expression. Even of London she knew nothing, though from the river stairs and foreshore she could see a good deal of it. Once a year, however, she had been taken for a day in the country, either by train to the nearest seaside place, or by brakes and wagonettes to Epping Forest. She was therefore by no means ignorant of green fields. Why, there was the “Island Garden,” in the Isle of Dogs, close at hand. But of trees and flowers and birds individually she knew nothing, and she never would know anything. A bird was a bird, a tree was a tree to her. On the whole of nature her mind was a blank. About her own country, its history, its position, its achievements, she had learned something, but it was rapidly becoming a vague and dim memory; of literature she knew nothing. She had learned a little singing, and had an ear for melody. She never read either newspapers or books, not even penny story-books, therefore she added nothing to her scanty knowledge.

What did she think about and what did she talk about? When one lives in a crowded street, where every family lives in one room, or in two at the most, there is an unfailing, perennial stream of interest in the fortune and the conduct, the good luck and the bad luck, of the neighbors. Liz and her companions did exactly what other people do in country towns much duller than London Street—they talked about one another and the people about them. They talked also of the time when they, like their elder sisters, would go about as they pleased: to the Queen’s Music-hall and to the Pavilion Theatre; when they could enjoy the delights of walking up and down their favorite boulevard—it is called Brook Street—all the long winter evening, each with her young man. The young girls always talk about the life before them. They know perfectly what it is going to be; they see it all round them. Who are they that they should expect anything but the common round, the common lot? They also, like their elder sisters, talk of dress. Already they plan and contrive for some extra bit of finery. Let us not believe that Liz was ever troubled with vacuity of mind or with lack of interest in her thoughts and conversation. There is in London Street even too much incident. Where there are always in the street men out of work, families whose “sticks” are all “in,” children who are kept alive by the generosity of other people, only not quite so poor as themselves; where there is always sickness, always violence, always drunkenness, always lads taken away by the man in blue, and always the joy of youth and the animation of children and young girls—why, Piccadilly is a waste by comparison, and Berkeley Square is like unto Tadmor in the desert.

In the case of Liz and her friends there was an additional interest in the river and the craft of all kinds. The children would stand on Ratcliffe Cross Stairs and gaze out upon the rushing tide and upon the ships that passed up and down. At low tide they ran out upon the mud, with bare feet, and picked up apronfuls of coal to carry home. Needs must that a child who lives within sight of ships should imagine strange things and get a sense of distance and of mystery. And sometimes a sailor would find his way to London Street—a sailor full of stories of strange lands across the seas, such as would make even the dullest of Ratcliffe girls launch out in imagination beyond the dim and dusty street.

Once, for instance, a cousin came. It was at Christmas. Never was such a Christmas. He was a sailor. He came from the West India docks—or was it from Limehouse Basin? It was the only time; he never came again. But could any one privileged to be present ever forget the celebration of that home-coming? He had money in his pocket—lots of money. He threw it all upon the table—nine pounds in gold, Liz remembered, and a heap of silver and copper. On Christmas eve the feast began. Relations and far-off cousins were found and invited. The family had two rooms. The company, with the guests, numbered twenty-one. A barrel of beer and any quantity of whisky and gin were laid in for the occasion. No more joyful family reunion was ever known. Outside, there were the usual Christmas rejoicings. In the street the drunken men reeled about; there was an occasional fight; the houses were all lighted up, but nowhere was a nobler spread or a longer feast or a more joyous Christmas known than in those two rooms. It took three days and three nights. From Friday, which was Christmas eve, till Monday, which was Boxing-day, this feast continued. During all this time not one among them, man, woman, or child, undressed or went to bed. The children fell asleep, with flushed faces and heavy heads, in corners, on the landing, anywhere; the others feasted and drank, danced and sang, for three days and three nights. Now and then one would drop out and fall prone upon the floor; the others went on regardless. Presently the sleeper awoke, sat up, recovered his wandering wits, and joined the revelers again.

For plenty and profusion it was like unto the wedding-feast of Camacho. There were roast geese and roast ducks, roast turkey and roast beef, roast pork and sausages and ham, and everything else that the shops at this festive season could supply.

On the third day, toward three in the afternoon of Monday, lo, a miracle! For the money was all gone, and the barrel of beer was empty, and the bottles were empty, and the bones of the geese and the turkeys were all that was left of the feast. The company broke up, the cousin departed, the family threw themselves upon the beds and slept the clock twice round. Who could forget this noble Christmas? Who could forget a feast that lasted for three whole days and three long nights?

Liz had got through her school-time; she must go to work.

Of course, she knew all along what awaited her. She must do as the others did, she must enter a factory. She contemplated the necessity without any misgiving. Why should she not go into a factory? It was all in the natural order of things, like getting hungry or waking up in the morning. Every girl had to be cuffed, every girl had to get out of the way when her father was drunk, every girl had to go to work as soon as she left school.

There is apparently a choice of work. There are many industries which employ girls. There is the match-making, there is the bottle-washing, there is the box-making, there is the paper-sorting, there is the jam-making, the fancy confectionery, the cracker industry, the making of ornaments for wedding-cakes, stockings for Christmas, and many others. There are many kinds of sewing. Virtually, however, this child had no choice; her sisters were in the jam factory, her mother had been in the jam factory, she too went to the jam factory.

There are many branches of work more disagreeable than the jam factory. Liz found herself at half-past seven in the morning in a huge building, where she was one among a thousand working women and girls, men and boys, but chiefly girls. The place was heavily laden with an overpowering fragrance of fruit and sugar. In some rooms the fruit was boiling in great copper pots; in some girls were stirring the fruit, after it had been boiled, to get the steam out of it; in some machinery crushed and ground the sugar till it became as fine as flour. The place was like a mill. The flour of sugar hung about the room in a cloud of dust; it lay in such dust on the tables and the casks; it got into the girls’ hair, so that they were fain to tie up their heads with white caps; it covered their clothes, and made them sticky; it made tables, benches, floor, all alike sticky. There were other developments of sugar; sometimes it lay on tables in huge, flat cakes of soft gray stuff like gelatine; they turned this mass, by their craft and subtlety, into innumerable threads of fine white silk; they drew it through machines, and brought it out in all the shapes that children love. Then there were rooms full of cocoanut. They treated casks full of dessicated cocoanut till that also became like flour. There were other rooms full of almonds, which they stripped and bleached and converted also into fine flour; or they turned boxes of gelatine into Turkish delight and jujubes. All day long and all the year round they made crackers; they made ornaments for wedding-cakes; they made favors; they made caramels; they made acidulated drops; they made things unnamed except by children. In all these rooms girls worked by hundreds, some sitting at long tables, some boiling the sugar, filling the pots with jam, stirring the boiling fruit, feeding machinery, filling molds; all were as busy as bees and as mute as mice. Some of them wore white caps to cover their hair, some wore white aprons, some wore coarse sacking tied all round for a skirt to keep off stickiness. All day long the machinery whirred and pulsed an accompaniment to the activity and industry of the place.

“I like the smell,” said Liz. First impressions are the best; she continued to like the smell and the factory and the work.

She was stouter and stronger than most girls. They gave her a skirt of sacking, and put her where her strength would be of use. She liked the movement, she liked the exercise of her strong arms, and she liked the noise of the place; she liked the dinner-hour, with its talking and laughing; she liked the factory better than the school; she liked the pay-day, and the money which she kept for herself.

I say that she liked the work and the sense of society and animation. About a year afterward, however, a strange and distressing restlessness seized her. Whether she was attracted by the talk of the other girls, or whether it was an instinctive yearning for change and fresh air, I know not. The thing was infectious. Many other girls compared their symptoms, and found them the same. Finally, the restlessness proving altogether too much for the children, they took hands, thirty of them, and one Saturday afternoon, without bag or baggage, they ran away.

They ran through Wapping and along Thames Street, which is empty on Saturday afternoon; they ran across London Bridge, they poured into London Bridge Station. One of the girls knew the name of the station they wanted; it was in Kent. They took tickets, and they went off.

They had gone hopping.

Thousands of Londoners in the season go hopping. I wish I could dwell upon the delights of the work. Unfortunately, like the summer, it is too soon over. While it lasts the hoppers sleep in barns, they work in the open, they breathe fresh air, they get good pay, they enjoy every evening a singsong and a free-and-easy. The beer flows like a rivulet; everybody is thirsty, everybody is cheerful, everybody is friendly.

When it was over Liz returned, browned and refreshed and strengthened, but fearful of the consequences, because she had deserted her work. But she was fortunate. They took her back into the factory, and so she went on as before.

Let us follow her through a single day. She had to be at the factory at half-past seven in the morning, and, with an hour off for dinner, to work till six. She made her breakfast on tea, bread and margarine, and a “relish.” The relish included many possibilities. It depended mainly on the day of the week. It is obvious that what one can afford on a Monday is unattainable on a Friday. On Monday it might be a herring or a haddock, an egg or a rasher of bacon. On Friday and Saturday it would be a sprig of water-cress or a pickle.

With all factory girls dinner is a continual source of anxiety and disappointment, for the ambitions of youth are lofty, and the yearnings of youth are strong, and the resources of youth are scanty. Within the factory there were, for those who chose to use them, frying-pans and a gas-stove. The girls might cook their food for themselves. There was also hot water for making tea; but the factory girl detests cooking, and may be trusted to spoil and make unfit for human food whatever cooking is intrusted to her. Besides, there were the eating-houses. Here, if you please, were offered to the longing eyes of Liz, always hungry at half-past twelve, daily temptations to extravagance. Just think what the bill of fare every day offered to a girl of discernment in the matter of dinner.

The mere choice between these delicacies was bewildering, and, alas! on many days only the cheapest were attainable. Every day Liz pondered over the list and calculated the price. The meat-pie at twopence—glorious! But could she afford twopence? The jam pudding at one halfpenny! It seems cheap, and a good lump too, with a thick slab of red jam—plum jam—laid all over the top. But yet, even a halfpenny is sometimes dear. You see that dinner is wanted on seven days in the week. It was impossible to afford jam pudding every day. Fagots, again. They are only a penny hot, and three farthings cold. A fagot is a really toothsome preparation. In appearance it is a square cake. In composition it contains the remnants and odd bits of a butcher’s shop—beef, veal, mutton, lamb, with fat and gristle contributed by all the animals concerned. The whole is minced or triturated. It is treated with spices and shreds of onion, and is then turned out in shapes and baked. No one in the position of our Liz can withstand the temptation of a fagot. The rich people who keep the shops, she believes, live exclusively on fagots. Wealth cannot purchase anything better than a fagot.

To begin with, she had only five shillings a week. When we consider the Sunday dinner, her clothes and her boots, her share of the rent, her breakfast, her amusements, her clubs, of which we shall speak immediately, I do not think that she was justified in laying out more than twopence, or at the most twopence halfpenny, on her daily dinner. A meat-pie with potatoes, a fagot with mustard pickles and greens, and a jam pudding would absorb the whole of her daily allowance. It left this growing girl hungry after eating all of it.

Meantime, the factory people are as careful about their girls as can be expected. They insist on their making a respectable appearance and wearing a hat. In many other ways they look after them. There is a good deal of paternal kindliness in the London employer, especially when he is in a large way.

The factory girls of East London have shown a remarkable power of looking after themselves. Once or twice they have even had a strike. On one occasion they made a demonstration which made the government give in. It is old history now. Once there was a certain statesman named Lowe—Bob Lowe, he was irreverently called. He made a considerable stir in his day, which was about five-and-twenty years ago. He was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. To-day I doubt if there are many young people in England under five-and-twenty who could pass an examination in the political career of Bob Lowe. He was a very fine scholar. He had been a fellow and lecturer of his college at Oxford; he had been a barrister practising in Australia, and he was believed to hold in contempt our colonial empire, and to hunger after the time when Great Britain would become a second Holland. Once he conceived the idea of a tax on matches. His scholarship supplied him with a punning motto, “Ex luce lucellum” (“from light a little profit”). The match-makers rebelled. They marched down to Westminster in their thousands. They demonstrated: they stated their grievance. Bob Lowe quailed, and the government withdrew the bill.

Our young friend Liz had nothing to do with this prenatal business, which, had it happened in her own time, she would have greatly enjoyed. Where she showed her native ability was in the establishment of clubs. They were practical clubs; they were organized upon an entirely new and original method. I can best explain it by giving an illustration. Thus, there is the one-pound club. Twenty girls agree to get up a one-pound club. For twenty weeks they have to subscribe each a shilling. To determine the order of taking the money they draw numbered tickets. The girl who draws No. 1 receives twenty shillings in a lump the first week; the girl who draws No. 2 takes the second week’s money, and so on. It is obvious that this method can be applied to anything, provided the girls who draw the earlier numbers play fair. It seems that they generally do. Should they shirk their duty, there are “ructions.” The girl Liz could not, at first, aspire to the one-pound club. But there were humbler clubs—sixpenny, even penny, clubs. Thus, there were boot clubs, calico clubs, petticoat clubs, tea-fight clubs, jewelry clubs, and, but secretly and among the older girls who had sweethearts to consider and to please, there were spirit clubs, for gin and whisky, not for supernatural manifestations. A girl cannot belong to all these clubs at once, but the convenience of belonging to two or three at a time is very great. It enables a provident girl to keep her wardrobe in order by small weekly savings which are not much felt. In the matter of boots, now; if one draws No. 1 there is a new pair at once; suppose the pair lasts for three months, after six weeks another boot club might give the same girl the last number instead of the first, and so on.

Her days were not spent wholly in the factory. At seven in the winter and at six in the summer she was free; she had also her Saturday afternoons and her Sundays. In other words, she had a fair five hours of freedom every day, ten hours of freedom on Saturdays, and the whole of Sunday. Now, five hours a day of continuous freedom from work is as much as in any working community can be expected. It is a third of the waking day. How did Liz get through that time?

She very soon got beyond her mother’s control. It is not, indeed, the custom with many mothers to exercise authority over a girl at work. Liz did what other girls did. She therefore spent most of her evenings in the boulevard of her quarter, a place called Brook Street. Here she walked about, or ran about, or danced arm in arm with other girls, chaffing the lads, whom she treated, if she had the money, to a drink. She went sometimes to a music-hall, where some of the factory girls “did a turn” or danced in the ballet. She wore no hat or bonnet in the street, and she retained the apron which is the badge of her class. She looked on with interest when there was a fight. She listened with a critical mind when there was an exchange of reproaches between two women.

Then a girls’ club got hold of her and persuaded her to come in. The club was run by some of those ladies of whom I have spoken, the same who trade on the affection of the children for their own purposes, which may be described as a mean and underhand attempt to make the little ones learn to prefer good to evil. At this club there was singing every night, there was dancing with one another, there was reading, there was talking; everybody behaved nicely, and for two or three hours it was a restful time, even though young girls do not feel the need of rest or understand its use.

When the club closed, the girls went away. If it was a fine night and not too cold they went back for a while to Brook Street, where there was neither rest nor quiet nor godly talk.

Besides her evenings, the girl had the four bank-holidays, and the holidays of Christmas and Easter. Nobody in London does any work between Thursday in Passion Week and Easter Tuesday, nor does any one work much between Christmas eve, when that falls on Thursday or Friday, and the following Tuesday.

These days and seasons are not only holidays, they are days reserved for weddings and christenings. It is necessary, of course, that a girl who respects herself should make a creditable appearance at such a time. She must therefore save, and save with zeal. Saving up for bank-holiday becomes a passion. Dinner is reduced to the lowest possible dimensions, even to a halfpenny lump of currant pudding, which is as heavy as lead and the most satisfying thing for the money that can be procured.

Bank-holiday demands a complete change of clothes, from the hat to the boots. Everything must be new. There must not be an old frock with a new hat, nor an old pair of boots with a new frock. This means a great deal of saving. It must also be accompanied by a general cleaning up of the windows, the door-steps, the stairs, the rooms. All over London Street before bank-holiday there is unusual movement. Chairs are brought out, and girls stand upon them to clean the ground-floor windows.

I have already spoken of the change that has come over this quarter. Formerly a holiday was celebrated after the manner of the ancient Danes, by long and barbaric drinking bouts. Early in the morning girls would be seen lying helpless on the pavement. Lads ran about carrying bottles of gin, which they offered to every one. These are customs of the past, though complete soberness is not yet quite achieved.

Still, however, the Ratcliffe girl likes to keep her bank-holiday at home among her own people, in her beloved Brook Street. She cheerfully saves up all she can, so that there may be a good sum for bank-holiday, enough for new clothes and something over, something to treat her friends with. And when the day is over she must go back to her work with an empty purse. Well for her if it is not also with an aching head.

When Liz was approaching the age of seventeen she had learned, from every point of view, all that she would ever learn; she had risen as high as she could rise in the factory; she made as good wages as she would ever make; she lived at home, sharing a room with two sisters; she paid her mother sixpence a week for bed and lodging; her character was formed; her acquaintance with good and evil was deep, wide, and intimate; she was steady, as girls of her class go, thanks to those ladies; if she ever drank too much she was ashamed of herself, and as yet she had no sweetheart. She was affectionate and responded to kindness, but she was self-willed, and would bear no thwarting. She was deficient on the side of imagination. She could not enter into the thoughts or the position of any one except herself; that was the natural result of her narrow, groove-like life. She had rules of conduct and of behavior; of religion she had little, if any, discoverable. She never went to church or chapel. She was fond of every kind of excitement, yet the emotional side of religion touched her not. The Irish girls, of whom there are many at Ratcliffe, were Catholics, and sometimes went to church. Once Liz went there, too, and seemed to like the music and the lights, but she did not repeat her visit.

This was her life all through the week. On Sunday, however, she made a difference.

On that morning she lay in bed till ten or eleven. She spent the time before dinner over her wardrobe; at one o’clock she sat down with the family to the most important ceremony of the week, the Sunday dinner. To other people besides the working-folk of Ratcliffe the Sunday dinner is an institution. Pope’s retired citizen, on Sundays, had, we know, two puddings to smoke upon the board. To all people of the middle class the Sunday dinner is the occasion for a little indulgence, for a glass of wine after dinner. To the resident in Ratcliffe it means a big feed, as much as a man can eat, and that of a popular and favorite dish. There are many dishes dear to the heart of the working-man. He loves everything that is confected with, or accompanied by, things of strong taste. If he knew of the delicacy called lobscouse he would have it nearly every Sunday; if he knew of that other delicacy called potato-pot he would order it frequently. As it is, he relies for the most part upon some portion of pig—that creature of “fine miscellaneous feeding.” He loves roast pork, boiled pork, fried pork, baked pork, but especially he loves pig’s head. His wife buys this portion of the animal, stuffs the ears and eyes thereof with sage and onions,—a great deal of sage and much onion,—and sends it to the bakehouse. Pig’s head thus treated and done to a turn is said to have no fellow. It is accompanied by beer, and beer in plenty. The family sit down to this meal when it is brought in from the baker, and continue eating until they can eat no longer. So, in Arabian deserts, if you would win the hearts of the Bedouin you give them a sheep, and they will eat until they can eat no longer. It is part of the Sunday dinner that there is to be no hint or suspicion of any limit, except that imposed by nature. They eat till they can eat no more.

When she was seventeen Liz found a sweetheart.

He was a young fellow of twenty or thereabouts. He had come out of his native village, some place in the quiet country, a dull place, to enjoy the life of London. He was a highly skilled agricultural laborer; there was nothing on the farm that he could not do. He knew the fields and the woods, the wild creatures and the birds; he knew how to plow and to reap; he could keep an allotment full of vegetables all the year round; he understood a stable and a dairy, a paddock and sheepfold. Yet with all this knowledge he came to London, where it was of no earthly use to him. He threw over the best work that a country lad can have, and he became nothing but a pair of hands like this girl’s father. He was a pair of hands; he was a strong back; his sturdy legs were fit to do the commonest, the heaviest, the most weary work in the world. One evening Liz was standing alone on the pavement, looking at something or other—a barrel-organ, a cheap Jack, one of the common sights and sounds—when this young fellow passed along, walking heavily, as one who has walked chiefly over plowed fields. He looked at her. Something in her face,—it was an honest face,—something in her attitude of alertness and the sharp look of her eye struck his imagination. He hitched closer. In Brook Street it is permissible, it is laudable, to introduce yourself. He said huskily: “I’ve seen you here before. What’s your name? Mine is George.”

That was the beginning of it. Presently the other girls met Liz walking proudly along Brook Street with a big, well-set-up young fellow. They moved out of her way. Liz had got a chap. When would their turn come?

Next night they met again. On Sunday she walked with him along the Mile End Road without her apron and in her best hat. It was a parade and proclamation of an engagement. She told her mother, who was glad. “A man,” she said, “is a better friend than a woman. He sticks.” Liz did not tell the ladies of the club, but the other girls did, and the ladies looked grave and spoke seriously to her about responsibilities.

George did stick to her. He was an honest lad; he had chosen his sweetheart, and he stuck to her. When he had money he gave her treats. He took her by train to Epping Forest, to North Woolwich Gardens, to the theater, to the music-hall. In his way he loved the girl. She would not leave the club, but she gave him part of every evening. He talked to her about the country life he had left behind him. He told her the stories about poachers which belong to every village ale-house. It pleased him to recall the past he had thrown away. All day long he carried heavy bales and boxes and burdens backward and forward. It was monotonous work, cheered only by the striking of the hours and the thought of the coming evening. The poor lad’s day was hallowed by his evening walk.

A Music-Hall.