shillings a
day, besides at least one substantial meal. The meal is a consideration,
and obviously good for the women. In bad times, when the men and even
the children go rather hungry, it often happens that the mother of the
family is able to keep her strength up, thanks to the tolerable food she
gets three or four days a week in the houses where she goes scrubbing
and cleaning.

A few women--so few that they really need not be mentioned--earn a
little at needlework, two or three of them having a small dressmaking
connection amongst their cottage neighbours and with servant-girls. It
will be realized that the prices which such clients can afford to pay
are pitifully small.

In one or other of these ways most of the labouring class women do
something to add to the earnings of their husbands, so that in
prosperous times the family income may approach twenty-four shillings a
week. Yet the average must be below that sum. The woman's work is very
irregular, and just when her few shillings would be most
useful--namely, when she has a baby or little children to care for--of
course her employment stops. If not, it is unprofitable in the end; for,
involving as it does some neglect of the children, as well as of the
woman's own health, it leads to sickness and expenses which may
impoverish the whole family for years.

With regard to the minor sources of income, I have often wondered at the
eagerness of the average labourer to earn an odd shilling, and at the
amount of work he will do for it, after his proper day's work is over. I
know several men who frequently add two or three shillings to their
week's money in this way. To give an instance of how they go on, one
evening recently I was unexpectedly wanting to send a heavy parcel into
the town. Going out to seek somebody who would take it, I chanced upon a
man--very well known to me--who was at work just within the hedge of a
villa garden, where he was erecting on a pole a notice-board announcing
a "sale of work" shortly to be held. He had obviously nearly done, so I
proposed my errand to him. Yes; he would go as soon as he had finished
what he was doing. Then, perceiving that he looked tired, I commented on
the fact. He smiled. "I bin mowin' all day over there at ...," and he
mentioned a farm two or three miles distant. Still, he could go with my
parcel. This was at about seven o'clock in the evening, and would mean a
two-mile walk for him. The very next evening, when it wa