George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 167 George & The Fight For What's Right In Which He Did Not Participate. PART TWO

With paintings by Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970)

We saw in the last post that George took himself off to observe two of the meetings convened to support the striking workers of the Bryant and May match factory (July 1888). The morning meeting was held in Mile End Waste - in his letter to Algernon, he makes a sarcastic reference to its name, possibly because he is unfamiliar with its historic significance. Mile End Waste was not a dump or a soil pit; the term 'waste' when referring to urban land means undeveloped. Another English term for such an open space is 'common' - but that doesn't mean it's dog rough; it means it is for the common use. Mile End Waste was where large public meetings were held, just as Hyde Park was often used in a time when many of the populace were illiterate, for passing on information and discussing important ideas. A forum for the masses.

Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-Ring 1943

In this fascinating account of the area click we learn:
Between Mile End Gate and the famous music hall known as the 'Paragon' there was the area known as 'The Waste'. On here was an open market, with itinerant traders of all types, - baked chestnut barrow, hot baked potatoes, the toffee maker, the old clothes man, the negro sword swallower, 'jellied eels', cheap jack crockery, the whole lot was just one confusion, illuminated at night by countless flaring 'Naphtha' lamps which frequently conked out, and released a cloud of paraffin vapour over all and sundry. In one spot were rolls of sheet lead belonging to the builders merchant shop. I often wonder how long sheet lead would lay safe without protection on that spot today. The same stretch of pavement contained also the ancient almshouses of Trinity House, the Great Assembly Hall, and the ancient weather-boarded hostelry 'The Vine Tavern', the only pub in the Mile End Road, which was literally true, - it was actually in the road, isolated and alone.

Back to the striking workers. To recap, the women were being exploited and when the new cost-cutting practices introduced by management brought increased concerns for health and safety the workers complained, and they were fined or sacked. Luckily, the girls had some powerful friends, among them the socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, free-thinker, newspaper publisher and writer Ms Annie Besant. If ever there was a person deserving of the title 'hero' it is she and in the annals of Feminism, she has few equals. Such was her impact on Victorian society that many towns have streets named after her - I was raised just round the corner from Besant Road in my home town.

Beulah The Gypsy c 1925

George didn't really know why the girls were striking, and neither do the editors of his Complete Letters Vol 1, who wrongly attribute the cause of the strike to uppity girls whining about having to work harder despite the threat to their health and being resentful over fines imposed by employers. The implication here is that fines are justified where feckless working class girls are concerned. Luckily, we have some primary source material to make our own judgement.

When activist Annie Besant got to hear about it, she reported what was going on in the weekly publication she ran with WT Stead, The Link, as included here click:

From: Issue no. 21 (Saturday, 23 June, 1888)

White Slavery in London.

At a meeting of the Fabian Society held on June 15th, the following resolution was moved by H. H. Champion, seconded by Herbert Burrows, and carried nem. con. after a brief discussion:

"That this meeting, being aware that the shareholders of Bryant and May are receiving a dividend of over 20 per cent., and at the same time are paying their workers only 2¼d. per gross for making match-boxes, pledges itself not to use or purchase any matches made by this firm."

In consequence of some statements made in course of the discussion, I resolved to personally investigate their accuracy, and accordingly betook myself to Bromley to interview some of Bryant and May's employees, and thus obtain information at first hand. The following is the outcome of my enquiries:

Bryant and May, now a limited liability company, paid last year a dividend of 23 per cent. to its shareholders; two years ago it paid a dividend of 25 per cent., and the original £5 shares were then quoted for sale at £18 7s. 6d. The highest dividend paid has been 38 per cent.

Let us see how the money is made with which these monstrous dividends are paid. (The figures quoted were all taken down by myself, in the presence of three witnesses, from persons who had themselves been in the prison-house whose secrets they disclosed.)

The hour for commencing work is 6.30 in summer and 8 in winter; work concludes at 6 p.m. Half-an-hour is allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner. This long day of work is performed by young girls, who have to stand the whole of the time. A typical case is that of a girl of 16, a piece-worker; she earns 4s. a week, and lives with a sister, employed by the same firm, who "earns good money, as much as 8s. or 9s. per week". Out of the earnings 2s. is paid for the rent of one room; the child lives on only bread-and-butter and tea, alike for breakfast and dinner, but related with dancing eyes that once a month she went to a meal where "you get coffee, and bread and butter, and jam, and marmalade, and lots of it"; now and then she goes to the Paragon, someone "stands treat, you know", and that appeared to be the solitary bit of colour in her life. The splendid salary of 4s. is subject to deductions in the shape of fines; if the feet are dirty, or the ground under the bench is left untidy, a fine of 3d. is inflicted; for putting "burnts" - matches that have caught fire during the work - on the bench 1s. has been forfeited, and one unhappy girl was once fined 2s. 6d for some unknown crime. If a girl leaves four or five matches on her bench when she goes for a fresh "frame" she is fined 3d., and in some departments a fine of 3d. is inflicted for talking. If a girl is late she is shut out for "half the day", that is for the morning six hours, and 5d. is deducted out of her day's 8d. One girl was fined 1s. for letting the web twist round a machine in the endeavor to save her fingers from being cut, and was sharply told to take care of the machine, "never mind your fingers". Another, who carried out the instructions and lost a finger thereby, was left unsupported while she was helpless. The wage covers the duty of submitting to an occasional blow from a foreman; one, who appears to be a gentleman of variable temper, "clouts" them "when he is mad".

One department of the work consists in taking matches out of a frame and putting them into boxes; about three frames can be done in an hour, and ½d. is paid for each frame emptied; only one frame is given out at a time, and the girls have to run downstairs and upstairs each time to fetch the frame, thus much increasing their fatigue. One of the delights of the frame work is the accidental firing of the matches: when this happens the worker loses the work, and if the frame is injured she is fined or "sacked". 5s. a week had been earned at this by one girl I talked to.

The "fillers" get ¾d. a gross for filling boxes; at "boxing," i.e. wrapping papers round the boxes, they can earn from 4s. 6d. to 5s. a week. A very rapid "filler" has been known to earn once "as much as 9s." in a week, and 6s. a week "sometimes". The making of boxes is not done in the factory; for these 2¼d. a gross is paid to people who work in their own homes, and "find your own paste". Daywork is a little better paid than piecework, and is done chiefly by married women, who earn as much sometimes as 10s. a week, the piecework falling to the girls. Four women day workers, spoken of with reverent awe, earn - 13s. a week.

A very bitter memory survives in the factory. Mr. Theodore Bryant, to show his admiration of Mr. Gladstone and the greatness of his own public spirit, bethought him to erect a statue to that eminent statesman. In order that his workgirls might have the privilege of contributing, he stopped 1s. each out of their wages, and further deprived them of half-a-day's work by closing the factory, "giving them a holiday". ("We don't want no holidays", said one of the girls pathetically, for - needless to say - the poorer employees of such a firm lose their wages when a holiday is "given".) So furious were the girls at this cruel plundering, that many went to the unveiling of the statue with stones and bricks in their pockets, and I was conscious of a wish that some of those bricks had made an impression on Mr. Bryant's - conscience. Later they surrounded the statue - "we paid for it" they cried savagely - shouting and yelling, and a gruesome story is told that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble paid for, in very truth, by their blood. There seems to be a curious feeling that the nominal wages are 1s. higher than the money paid, but that 1s. a week is still kept back to pay for the statue and for a fountain erected by the same Mr. Bryant. This, however, appears to me to be only of the nature of a pious opinion.

Such is a bald account of one form of white slavery as it exists in London. With chattel slaves Mr. Bryant could not have made his huge fortune, for he could not have fed, clothed, and housed them for 4s. a week each, and they would have had a definite money value which would have served as a protection. But who cares for the fate of these white wage slaves? Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on the streets, provided only that the Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 per cent., and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks? Oh if we had but a people's Dante, to make a special circle in the Inferno for those who live on this misery, and suck wealth out of the starvation of helpless girls.

Failing a poet to hold up their conduct to the execration of posterity, enshrined in deathless verse, let us strive to touch their consciences, i.e. their pockets, and let us at least avoid being "partakers of their sins", by abstaining from using their commodities.

ANNIE BESANT.

Then:

Messrs. Bryant and May
From: Issue no. 22 (Saturday, 30 June, 1888), p.2

I was called out of a meeting against the sweating system on Wednesday night, by a workman friend of mine, who came to me from Bow with the news that Bryant and May's factory was in a state of commotion, and the girls were being bullied to find out who had given me the information printed last week. Cowards that they are! why not at once sue me for libel and disprove my statements in open court if they can, instead of threatening to throw these children out into the streets? But they hope thus to terrorise the girls from giving evidence, and so prevent their treatment of them from leaking out. They will not succeed in their despicable policy, for work will be found for the girls they "sack", and dismissal thus robbed of its terrors. On Wednesday Mr. Conybeare, M.P., gave me £1, a member of the Merchant Tailors Company 10s., another sympathiser 10s., and I had other promises of support, in defending any victims of Bryant and May, and carrying on the war. A big meeting to protest against the White Slavery will be called.

ANNIE BESANT

The meeting was the one held at Mile End Waste on July 8th 1888, the one George attended. So, it's clear that the girls were striking because of intimidation by their bosses. They had been threatened with dismissal because they had given information on their working conditions to Ms Besant, not, as George states, because they were being fined - which they were, egregiously, but that wasn't their reason for striking. And it wasn't because, as implied by the editors of the George Gissing Collected Letters Vol 1 because they resented the new rules on packing matches. That was part of their complaints because it required them to double productivity but at a cost to their physical wellbeing, but it wasn't why they came out.

The Great Parade 1928

In the July 23rd edition of The Link, Ms Besant reports that the system of fines levied on the girls for what the management determined were misdemeanours, had been stopped after the Factory Inspectorate ruled it unlawful. Bryant and May threatened to sue Ms Besant for libel - bullies and the self-important don't like anyone disagreeing with them, or pointing out their mistakes, do they? And then there was the money they were losing because customers were boycotting the product, which hit them where it really hurt - in their dividends. The girls who spoke about their working conditions to Ms Besant were sacked and left penniless, but money was raised by public donation to support ongoing action and to compensate strikers. Bryant and May hit back with the imposition of compulsory signing of gag orders for the remaining workers. Such was the general uproar caused by the public reaction to this that the girls were eventually reinstated and Bryant and May had to climb down and mend their ways. A real landmark in British social and political history, and every bit as significant to women's rights as the work of the Suffrage movement. For more contemporaneous coverage click.

From the paltry entries in the Diary and Letters, it seems the true significance of this piece of direct action passed George by. His jaded views don't really do justice to the raging debate the girls'action caused, and neither does he cover what the outcome was - all positive, and a genuine triumph of justice, a topic he claimed to care about. Speaking of justice, 1888 was the year George's first wife had died in deprivation and want - partly caused by his miserly alimony payments. George went into a deep depression and couldn't work for several months afterwards, a form of impotence that hit him where it really hurt - his ego and then his pocket. In July, he was in the the throes of finishing The Nether World, and perhaps the depression plus the writers' block he mentions (the night of the strike meeting July 8th) forced such things as a triumph for natural justice from his mind. However, he wasn't likely to report on positive outcomes for demands for workers' rights because of his long-standing dislike of the British poor and working class. For ordinary people to win a battle with their employers didn't fit with his anti-Demos mindset, and his political sensibilities were always with the bosses, never the workers - you only have to read 'Demos' to know that. And there was another social evil he despised - the rise of women's having a voice. He saw women's suffrage as the thin end of the wedge that would end in men having to change in order to make themselves acceptable to women's demands for fairer treatment and political and social freedoms. He definitely wouldn't have approved of working class women making demands - look what happened to his second wife, Edith, when she did that sort of thing!

What he doesn't mention about the positive result of this successful piece of political activism speaks to the false position George is often accorded as some sort of expert on the plight of the disadvantaged. He is often mentioned as one who rubbed shoulders with poverty and who thought he understood what made the poor happily accept their squalor - which could be summed up, according to George, as the natural order according to Charles Darwin meets the total lack of intelligence and innate laziness of the wasters at the bottom of the social pile.

Perhaps his lack of opinion was caused by a lack of reading matter - George often reserved opinion until he had researched what others said, so that he could welly in with his backing of the horse that won because it saved him sticking his neck out and risking looking like a fool when he was wrong. And then there is the jealousy. He was envious of those in the middle class who were Socialists and who succeeded in helping the poor or disadvantaged. When he was a Socialist he never really had much clout in the group and had to get at the back of the line, which is probably why he gave it up. The advantages of a public school education and the lower middle class start in Wakefield meant nothing when jostling for glory with the likes of Cunnighame Graham, Ms Besant and William Morris, because their backgrounds and independent wealth caused George to feel great inferiority and resentment - which is why he accused them of hypocrisy and self-serving motives. He once suggested William Morris should voice his political opinions in verse and not in activism, because poetry is the better enterprise!

The adjoining factory sites

The Nether World was George's last 'slum' novel. Maybe he did realise how his position as expert on the poor was no longer tenable and he quit whilst he was ahead. And what of the Bryant and May factory site? Nowadays, it is referred to as The Bow Quarter (pretentious or what haha) a gated community for the super rich - a typical one-bed studio apartment is half a million quid. You can see from the photo the factory was large, two contiguous sites, now looking like this: click

The front entrance with a blue plaque celebrating the association with Annie Besant (left side of door) - not commemorating any named Match Girl. Such is class.