Prisoners of Poverty Abroad
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More than once this plaint has been made, and the sewing-machine accused as the cause of depression in wages, of deterioration of all hand needlework, and of the originality that once distinguished French productions; and there is some truth in the charge, not only for Paris, but for all cities to which needlewomen throng. Machinery has gradually revolutionized all feminine industries in Paris, and its effect is not only on the general system of wages, but upon the moral condition of the worker, and family life as a whole has become to the student of social questions one of gravest importance. On the one hand is the conviction, already quoted, that it has brought with it deterioration in every phase of the work; on the other, that it is an educating and beneficent agent, raising the general standard of wages, and putting three garments where once but one could be owned. It is an old story, and will give food for speculation in the future, quite as much as in the past. But in talking with skilled workers, from dressmakers to the needlewomen employed on trousseaux and the most delicate forms of this industry, each has expressed the same conviction, and this quite apart from the political economist's view that there must be a return to hand production, if the standard is not to remain hopelessly below its old place. Such return would not necessarily exclude machinery, which must be regarded as an indispensable adjunct to the worker's life. It would simply put it in its proper place, – that of aid, but never master. It is the spirit of competition which is motive power to-day, and which drives the whirring wheels and crowds the counters of every shop with productions which have no merit but that of cheapness, and the price of which means no return to the worker beyond the barest subsistence.
Subsistence in Paris has come to mean something far different from the facts of a generation ago. Wages have always been fixed at a standard barely above subsistence; but, even under these conditions, French frugality has succeeded not only in living, but in putting by a trifle month by month. As the great manufactories have sprung up, possibilities have lessened and altered, till the workwoman, however cheerfully she may face conditions, knows that saving has become impossible. If, in some cases, wages have risen, prices have advanced with them till only necessities are possible, the useful having dropped away from the plan, and the agreeable ceased to have place even in thought. Even before the long siege, and the semi-starvation that came to all within the walls of Paris, prices had been rising, and no reduction has come which even approximates to the old figures. Every article of daily need is at the highest point, sugar alone being an illustration of what the determination to protect an industry has brought about. The London workwoman buys a pound for one penny, or at the most twopence. The French workwoman must give eleven or twelve sous, and then have only beet sugar, which has not much over half the saccharine quality of cane sugar. Flour, milk, eggs, all are equally high, meat alone being at nearly the same prices as in London. Fruit is a nearly impossible luxury, and fuel so dear that shivering is the law for all but the rich, while rents are also far beyond London prices, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the utmost for the scanty sum at disposal. For the needlewoman the food question has resolved itself into bread alone, for at least one meal, with a little coffee, chiefly chicory, and possibly some vegetable for the others. But many a one lives on bread for six days in the week, reserving the few sous that can be saved for a Sunday bit of meat, or bones for soup. Even the system which allows of buying "portions," just enough for a single individual, is valueless for her, since the smallest and poorest portion is far beyond the sum which can never be made to stretch far enough for such indulgence.
"I have tried it, madame," said the same speaker, who had mourned over the degeneration of finish among the workwomen. "It was the siege that compelled it in the beginning, and then there was no complaining, since it was the will of the good God for all. But there came a time when sickness had been with me long, and I found no work but to stitch in my little room far up under the roof, and all the long hours bringing so little, – never more than two and a half francs, and days when it was even less; and then I found how one must live. I was proud, and wished to tell no one; but there was an ouvrière next me, in a little room, even smaller than mine, and she saw well that she could help, and that together some things might be possible that were not alone. She had her furnace for the fire, and we used it together on the days when we could make our soup, or the coffee that I missed more than all, – more, even, than wine, which is for us the same as water to you. It was months that I went not beyond fifty centimes a day for food, save the Sundays, and then but little more, since one grows at last to care little, and a good meal for one day makes the next that is wanting harder, I think, than when one wants always. But I am glad that I know; so glad that I could even wish the same knowledge for many who say, 'Why do they not live on what they earn? Why do they not have thrift, and make ready for old age?' Old age comes fast, it is true. Such years as I have known are double, yes, and treble, and one knows that they have shortened life. But when I say now 'the poor,' I know what that word means, and have such compassion as never before. It is the workers who are the real poor, and for them there is little hope, since it is the system that must change. It is the middleman who makes the money, and there are so many of them, how can there be much left for the one who comes last, and is only the machine that works?
"All that is true of England, and I have had two years there, and thus know well; all that is true, too, here, though we know better how we can live, and not be always so triste and sombre. But each day, as I go by the great new shops that have killed all the little ones, and by the great factory where electricity makes the machines go, and the women too become machines, – each day I know that these counters, where one can buy for a song, are counters where flesh and blood are sold. For, madame, it is starvation for the one who has made these garments; and why must one woman starve that another may wear what her own hands could make if she would? Everywhere it is occasions [bargains] that the great shops advertise. Everywhere they must be more and more, and so wages lessen, till there is no more hope of living; and, because they lessen, marriage waits, and all that the good God meant for us waits also."
On the surface it is all well. There is less incompetency among French than English workers, and thus the class who furnish them need less arraignment for their lack of thoroughness. They contend, also, with one form of competition, which has its counterpart in America among the farmers' wives, who take the work at less than regular rates. This form is the convent work, which piles the counters, and is one of the most formidable obstacles to better rates for the worker. Innumerable convents make the preparation of underwear one of their industries, and, in the classes of girls whom they train to the needle, find workers requiring no wages, the training being regarded as equivalent. Naturally, their prices can be far below the ordinary market one, and thus the worker, benefited on the one hand, is defrauded on the other. In short, the evil is a universal one, – an integral portion of the present manufacturing system, – and its abolition can come only from roused public sentiment, and combination among the workers themselves.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CITY OF THE SUN
It is only with weeks of experience that the searcher into the under world of Paris life comes to any sense of real conditions, or discovers in what directions to look for the misery which seldom floats to the surface, and which even wears the face of content. That there are no slums, and that acute suffering is in the nature of things impossible, is the first conviction, and it remains in degree even when both misery and its lurking-places have become familiar sights. Paris itself, gay, bright, beautiful, beloved of every dweller within its walls, so dominates that shadows seem impossible, and as one watches the eager throng in boulevard or avenue, or the laughing, chattering groups before even the poorest café, other life than this sinks out of sight. The most meagrely paid needlewoman, the most overworked toiler in trades, indoors or out, seizes any stray moment for rest or small pleasures, and from a half-franc bottle of wine, or some pretence of lemonade or sugar water, extracts entertainment for half a dozen. The pressure in actual fact remains the same. Always behind in the shadow lurks starvation, and there is one street, now very nearly wiped out, known to its inhabitants still as "la rue où l'on ne meurt jamais" – the street where one never dies, since every soul therein finds their last bed in the hospital. This is the quartier Mouffetard, where bits of old Paris are still discernible, and where strange trades are in operation; industries which only a people so pinched and driven by sharp necessity could ever have invented.
The descent to these is a gradual one, and most often the women who are found in them have known more than one occupation, and have been, in the beginning at least, needlewomen of greater or less degree of skill. Depression of wages, which now are at the lowest limit of subsistence, drives them into experiments in other directions, and often failing sight or utter weariness of the monotonous employment is another cause. These form but a small proportion of such workers, who generally are a species of guild, a family having begun some small new industry and gradually drawn in others, till a body of workers in the same line is formed, strong enough to withstand any interlopers.
"What becomes of the women who are too old to sew, and who have never gained skill enough to earn more than a bare living?" I asked one day of a seamstress whose own skill was unquestioned, but who, even with this in her favor, averages only three francs a day.
"They do many things, madame. One who is my neighbor is now scrubber and cleaner, and is happily friends with a 'concierge,' who allows her to aid him. That is a difficulty for all who would do that work. It is that the 'concierges,' whether men or women, think that any pay from the 'locataires' must be for them; and so they will never tell the tenant of a woman who seeks work, but will say always, 'It is I who can do it all. One cannot trust these from the outside.' But for her, as I say, there is opportunity, and at last she has food, when as 'couturière' it was quite – yes, quite impossible. There was a child, an idiot – the child of her daughter who is dead, and from whom she refuses always to be separated, and she sews always on the sewing-machine, till sickness comes, and it is sold for rent and many things. She is proud. She has not wished to scrub and clean, but for such work is twenty-five centimes an hour, and often food that the tenant does not wish. At times they give her less, and in any case one calculates always the time and watches very closely, but for her, at least, is more money than for many years; sometimes even three francs, if a day has been good. But that is but seldom, and she must carry her own soap and brush, and pay for all.
"That is one way, and there is another that fills me with terror, madame, lest I, too, may one day find myself in it. It is last and worst of all for women, I think. It is when they wear 'le cachemire d'osier.' You do not know it, madame. It is the chiffonieress basket which she bears as a badge, and which she hangs at night, it may be, in the City of the Sun. Voila, madame. There are now two who are on their way. If madame has curiosity, it is easy to follow them."
"But the City of the Sun? What is that? Do you mean Paris?"
"No, madame. It is a mockery like the 'cachemire d'osier.' You will see."
It is in this following that the polished veneer which makes the outward Paris showed what may lie beneath. Certainly, no one who walks through the Avenue Victor Hugo, one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe, and including some of the gayest and most brilliant life of modern Paris, the creation of Napoleon III. and of Baron Haussman, would dream that hint of corruption could enter in. The ancient Rue de la Révolte has changed form and title, and the beautiful avenue is no dishonor to its present name. But far down there opens nearly imperceptibly a narrow alley almost subterranean, and it is through this alley that the two figures which had moved silently down the avenue passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes passing over everything to which the man's hook had not first directed her.
Through the narrow way the pair passed into a sombre court, closed at the end by a door of wood with rusty latch, which creaks and objects as one seeks to lift it. Once within, and the door closed, the place has no reminder of the Paris just without. On the contrary, it might be a bit from the beggars' quarter in a village of Syria or Palestine, for here is only a line of flat-roofed huts, the walls whitewashed, the floors level with the soil, and the sun of the warm spring day pouring down upon sleeping dogs, and heaps of refuse alternating with piles of rags, in the midst of which work two or three women, silent at present, and barely looking up as the new comers lay down their burdens. A fat yet acrid odor rises about these huts, drawn out from the rags by the afternoon heat; yet, repulsive as it is, there is more sense of cleanliness about it than in the hideous basements where the same trade is plied in London or New York. There is a space here not yet occupied by buildings. The line of huts faces the south; a fence encloses them; and so silent and alone seems the spot that it is easy to understand why it bears its own individual name, and to the colony of chiffoniers who dwell here has long been known as the City of the Sun. Doors stand open freely; honesty is a tradition of this profession; and the police know that these delvers in dust heaps will bring to them any precious object found therein, and that he who should remove the slightest article from one of these dwellings would be banished ignominiously and deprived of all rights of association.
These huts are all alike; two rooms, the larger reserved for the bed, the smaller for kitchen, and in both rags of every variety. In the corner is a heap chiefly of silk, wool, and linen. This is the pile from which rent is to come, and every precious bit goes to it, since rent here is paid in advance, – three francs a week for the hut alone, and twenty francs a month if a scrap of court is added in which the rags can be sorted. On a fixed day the proprietor appears, and, if the sum is not ready, simply carries off the door and windows, and expels the unlucky tenant with no further formality. How the stipulated amount is scraped together, only the half-starved chiffoniers know, since prices have fallen so that the hundred kilogrammes (about two hundred pounds) of rags, which, before the war, sold for eighty francs, to-day bring precisely eight.
"In a good day, madame," said the woman, "we can earn three francs. We are always together, I and my man, and we never cease. But the dead season comes, that is, the summer, when Paris is in the country or at the sea; then we can earn never more than two francs, and often not more than thirty sous, when they clean the streets so much, and so carry away everything that little is left for us. It is five years that I have followed my man, and he is born to it, and works always, but the time is changed. There is no more a living in this, or in anything we can do. I have gone hungry when it is the sewing that I do, and I go hungry now, but I am not alone. It is so for all of us, and we care not if only the children are fed. They are not, and it is because of them that we suffer. See, madame, this is the child of my niece, who came with me here, and has also her man, but never has any one of them eaten to the full, even of crusts, which often are in what we gather."
The child ran toward her, – a girl three or four years old, wearing a pair of women's shoes ten times too large, and the remainder of a chemise. Other clothing had not been attempted, or was not considered necessary, and the child looked up with hollow eyes and a face pinched and sharpened by want, while the swollen belly of the meagre little figure showed how wretched had been the supply they called food. All day these children fare as they can, since all day the parents must range the streets collecting their harvest; but fortunately for such future as they can know, these little savages, fighting together like wild animals, have within the last twenty years been gradually gathered into free schools, the work beginning with a devoted woman, who, having seen the City of the Sun, never rested till a school was opened for its children. All effort, however, was quite fruitless, till an old chiffonier, also once a seamstress, united with her, and persuaded the mothers that they must prepare their children, or, at least, not prevent them from going. At present the school stands as one of the wisest philanthropies of Paris, but neither this, nor any other attempt to better conditions, alters the fact that twelve and fourteen hours of labor have for sole result from thirty to forty sous a day, and that this sum represents the earnings of the average women-workers of Paris, the better class of trades and occupations being no less limited in possibilities.
CHAPTER XVII.
DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS
"If a revolution come again, I think well, madame, it will be the great shops that will fall, and that it is workwomen who will bear the torch and even consent to the name of terror, pétroleuses. For see a moment what thing they do, madame. Everywhere, the girl who desires to learn as modiste, and who, in the day when I had learned, became one of the house that she served, and, if talent were there, could rise and in time be mistress herself, with a name that had fame even, – that girl must now attempt the great shop and bury her talent in always the same thing. No more invention, no more grace, but a hundred robes always the same, and with no mark of difference for her who wears it, or way to tell which may be mistress and which the servant. It is not well for one or the other, madame; it is ill for both. Then, too, many must stand aside who would learn, since it is always the machine to sew that needs not many. It is true there are still houses that care for a name, and where one may be artiste, and have pride in an inspiration. But they are rare; and now one sits all day, and this one stitches sleeves, perhaps, or seams of waists or skirts, and knows not effects, or how to plan the whole, or any joy of composition or result. It is bad, and all bad, and I willingly would see the great shops go, and myself urge well their destruction."
These words, and a flood of more in the same direction, came as hot protest against any visit to the Magasins du Louvre, an enormous establishment of the same order as the Bon Marché, but slightly higher in price, where hundreds are employed as saleswomen, and where, side by side with the most expensive productions of French skill, are to be found the occasions, – the bargains in which the foreigner delights even more than the native.
"Let them go there," pursued the little modiste, well on in middle life, whose eager face and sad dark eyes lighted with indignation as she spoke. "Let those go there who have money, always money, but no taste, no perception, no feeling for a true combination. I know that if one orders a robe that one comes to regard to say, 'Yes, so and so must be for madame,' but how shall she know well when she is blunted and dead with numbers? How shall she feel what is best? I, madame, when one comes to me, I study. There are many things that make the suitability of a confection; there is not only complexion and figure and age, but when I have said all these, the thought that blends the whole and sees arising what must be for the perfect robe. This was the method of Madame Desmoulins, and I have learned of her. When it is an important case, a trousseau perhaps, she has neither eaten nor slept till she has conceived her list and sees each design clear. And then what joy! She selects, she blends with tears of happiness; she cuts with solemnity even. Is there such a spirit in your Bon Marché? Is there such a spirit anywhere but here and there to one who remembers; who has an ideal and who refuses to make it less by selling it in the shops? Again, madame, I tell you it is a debasement so to do. I will none of it."
Madame, who had clasped her hands and half risen in her excited protest, sank back in her chair and fixed her eyes on a robe just ready to send home, – a creation so simply elegant and so charming that her brow smoothed and she smiled, well pleased. But her words were simply the echo of others of the same order, spoken by others who had watched the course of women's occupations and who had actual love for the profession they had chosen.
Questions brought out a state of things much the same for both Paris and London, where the system of learning the business had few differences. For both millinery and dressmaking, apprenticeship had been the rule, the more important houses taking an entrance fee and lessening the number of years required; the others demanding simply the full time of the learner, from two to four years. In these latter cases food and lodging were given, and after the first six months a small weekly wage, barely sufficient to provide the Sunday food and lodging. If more was paid, the learner lived outside entirely; and the first year or two was a sharp struggle to make ends meet. But if any talent showed itself, promotion was rapid, and with it the prospect of independence in the end, the directress of a group of girls regarding such talent as developed by the house and a part of its reputation. In some cases such girls by the end of the third year received often five or six thousand francs, and in five were their own mistresses absolutely, with an income of ten or twelve thousand and often more.
This for the exception; for the majority was the most rigid training, – with its result in what we know as French finish, which is simply delicate painstaking with every item of the work, – and a wage of from thirty to forty francs a week, often below but seldom above this sum.
In the early stages of the apprenticeship there was simply an allowance of from six to ten francs per month for incidental expenses, and even when skill increased and services became valuable, five francs a week was considered an ample return. In all these cases the week passed under the roof of the employer, and Sunday alone became the actual change of the worker. The excessive hours of the London apprentice had no counterpart here or had not until the great houses were founded and steam and electric power came with the sewing-machine. With this new regime over-time was often claimed, and two sous an hour allowed, these being given in special cases. But exhausting hours were left for the lower forms of needle-work. The food provided was abundant and good, and sharp overseer as madame might prove, she demanded some relaxation for herself and allowed it to her employés. The different conditions of life made over-work in Paris a far different thing from over-work in London. For both milliners and modistes was the keen ambition to develop a talent, and the workroom, as has already been stated, felt personal pride in any member of the force who showed special lightness of touch or skill in combination.
"Work, madame!" exclaimed little Madame M., as she described a day's work under the system which had trained her. "But yes, I could not so work now, but then I saw always before me an end. I had the sentiment. It was always that the colors arranged themselves, and so with my sister, who is modiste and whose compositions are a marvel. My back has ached, my eyes have burned, I have seen sparks before them and have felt that I could no more, when the days are long and the heat perhaps is great, or even in winter crowded together and the air so heavy. But we laughed and sang; we thought of a future; we watched for talent, and if there was envy or jealousy, it was well smothered. I remember one talented Italian who would learn and who hated one other who had great gifts; hated her so, she has stabbed her suddenly with sharp scissors in the arm. But such things are not often. We French care always for genius, even if it be but to make a shoe most perfect, and we do not hate – no, we love well, whoever shows it. But to-day all is different, and once more I say, madame, that too much is made, and that thus talent will die and gifts be no more needed."