SLAVES OF TO-DAY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2381, 12 July 1892, Page 4

SLAVES OF TO-DAY.

THE NAIL-MAKERS OP THE BLACK COUNTRY. [Pearson's Weekly]. Almost in the centra of England lies a dark, drear expanse of hill and dale, roughly speaking, some forty miles square, throughout which the green fields are rapidly shrinking before the ceaseless advance of greyblack heaps of sing and cinders which, from pit and furnace, are vomited forth in ever increasing quantities to the increase of wealth and the destruction of such .poor relics of beauty as this grim, flame-breathing, lifeconsuming, Black country still possesses. All round this wilderness of dust and ashes stretches a ring of green, sloping pastures, wooded hills, and leafy vales, where may be found some of the fairest rural scenery in England. This is called THE GREEN BORDER OF THE BLACK COUNTRY, and if you could see the picture and j the frame from a balloon on a clear day, you would think that you were looking at one of the circles of the Inferno fringed with a section of Paradise. But it is not with the Paradise that we have here to do, so let us turn our reluctant backs upon it, and betake ourselves to one or two of the many spots on the outer edge of the Inferno where nails are made so cheaply as regards the money price of them, and so dearly as regards the life-price exacted for the privilege of earning a living by making them. Let us drop into Broomsgrove to begin with. This is one of the halfdozen scattered centres of the nailtrade, and as we enter its pleasant prosperous-looking streets, with their smart shops and well-built banks and offices, with here and there a church or chapel to remind us of better things than monay-making, you will begin to think that the Inferno lias been painted a good deal blacker than it is. But this is only one side of the picture. This is whsre some of the profits of nail selling are spent by the "foggers" and " changemen " and other highly respectable middlemen in the trade. If we want to see the other side of this stucco frontage of prosperity we have only got to turn down one of the little narrow entries that open on to the streets so modestly that one would hardly notice them unless looking specially for them. A few tteps take us, as it were, FROM VILLAPOM.TO BEGGARt>O}JT, From clean and comfortable shopkeeping we have come at a stride to a filthy place of squalid slavery, such as only the pen of Zola himself can fairly pourtray. We have all read, with righteous horror, of how the poor negroes of the Slave States had to hoe the rows or pick the cotton in the sunny fields of Louisiana or Carolina from morning till night, and we have duly marvelled how they could sing for very light-heartedness at the work; but here in these English slave-dens we see no sun and hear no song, only the glare of the forge and the ceaseless clang of the hammer on the anvil from morning till night, until fifteen hours of toil have earned the twelve or fifteen pence that commercial economy fixes as the due reward of it.

You would not think you were in the living-room of an English dwelling-house to look round the bnre, smoke-grimed walls, and breathe the hot, foul air, laden with the choking dust of the furnace in the corner. But when you notice that close to the forge-fire is slung, for the sake of warmth, a wizened little atom of humanity wrapped in a ragged blanket, you will see that it is not only a living-room but a nursery as well. The fact of it is that these

SLAVES OF THE ANVIL don't need any living-room apart from the forge, for the very simple reason that the conditions of their work compel them to spend the whole of their waking-time in making nails. The pay is so scant and the work is so hard that every moment between waking and going to sleep again, save only the few snatched to swallow the few mouthfuls of wretched food that they call meals, must be spent in toil if the meals aforesaid are to be forthcoming. You will have noticed that nearly all the nail makers whom we have so far seen have been women and girls. The explanation is t':at of the 1400 operatives in Bromsgrove over twothirds are females. Most of the ablebodied men of the district are employed in the mines, and with a fine commercial instinct, they give the preference of wooing a wife to girls who are " smart hands' ?t the hammer," so that if it pleases the lord and master of the household to ;< play'"' for a day or two, the toil of his wife and daughters may still bring some grist to the mill. , It is, indeed, this curiosity of I matrimony that renders the lot of the female nail-makers the hopeless slavery that it is, for their bondage is domestic as well as commercial. On the one side is the husband, who looks upon his wife and daughters as

WAGELES'S SERVANTS, for making money at work that it would be beneath the dignity of an able-bodied pit-man to do; and on the other, is the nail-master, who answers any appeal for higher wages by pointing to the machines, which do the same work better and want no wages at A\. The nail industry of the Black Count rv k one of those which are said ',■» ;.. siipt'fseded by machinery." ;\. ;;••/ i is one in which flesh and blood have to compete with iron and Bteun. and only just keep up the losin • :■• ht by working night and day it- - i'li.it would not pav to drive ij> i\-!:!iv.-s. Thus, to put the nj.aei- into actual figures, wefindthat in South Stafford and East Worcester girls under eighteen work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m, for six shillings a week until they outgrow the Factory Act, and then they will put in another three hours a day to earn another shilling a week, A grown woman,

working at the same rate, will earn, from seven to eight shillings a wee k and a fairly skilled man, nine shillings. The rod iron, from which the*-nails are made, is given out in bundles of fifty-eight to sixty pounds, and it is often too thick or too thin for the work required. This necessitates a visit to THE "CHANGE-MAX,"

who will charge the poor, underpaid wretches from a penny to three-pence for changing it for a less weight of the right thickness. Often the "fogger," who gives the iron out to the nailmakers, purposely gives out the wrong size, so that they may be compelled to go to the " change-man," and pay his toll. So finely is the "margin of subsistence " cut, that they cannot pay the few pence demanded unless they first borrow at about 10 per cent, a week interest from yet another shark who preys upon their misery. Last, but by no means least, comes the fuel bill. It might be thought that the masters would provide this themselves, but to do that would reduce their profits too much, and so they leave it as a charge on the wages of those who never had a profit and so will not feel the want of it. When all expenses are paid it is found that five women can make.sixty pounds of rods into fortynine ponnds of nails at a cost to the employer at 6s 10d, out of which the women have to pay for fuel. They make 5s a week for themselves. These nails are "tallied" at 1000 to five pounds weight, and when one learns that it takes from twenty-eight _to thirty-two separate blows to fashion each nail, one begins to form some vague notion as to what this special form of British slavery really means to the slaves.

At Halesowen and Old Hill we shall find just the same kind of work going on under very much the same conditions. In the former of these towns may yet be seen an old lady of sixtyfive bending over her anvil, hammering out "rag-nails" at thirty-two blows to the nail, and thinking herself lucky if she earns six shillings in as many days ; and in the former, an old man'of seventy—and people are very old at seventy in this district —is toiling thirteen'hours a day at hob-nail making, and every Saturday he pays a shilling out of his nine shillings wages for coal.

It seems somewhat curious that hundreds of thousands of these nails should be used in fitting up the interiors of places of Christian worship. The anomaly seems almost horrible to make the nails jump out of their" places and let the pews and pulpits fall to pieces as a protest.