"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night,When sprats they isn't dear,To fry a couple o' dozen or soUpon a fire clear."
"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night,When sprats they isn't dear,To fry a couple o' dozen or soUpon a fire clear."
"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night,
When sprats they isn't dear,
To fry a couple o' dozen or so
Upon a fire clear."
There are many verses of this ditty, all ending with the chorus:—
"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night!"
"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night!"
"Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night!"
and Johnny varied the facts ingeniously, and shouted "bacon," or anything else that would fry, well pleased at his own ingenuity.
"He was 'wanting.' Nan might better put him away in some asylum," the neighbors said; but Nan paid no attention. He was all she had, and he was much better worth working for than herself, and so she went on.
Old Widgeon had been spending the evening with them. Nan had stitched on as she must; for prices had gone down again, and she was earning but nine shillings a week. Widgeon seldom said much. He held Johnny on his knee, and now and then looked at Nan.
"It's a dog's life," he said at last. "It'sfar worse than a dog's. You'd be better off going with a barrow, Nan. I'm a good mind to leave you mine, Nan. You'd get a bit of air, then, and you'd make—well, a good bit more than you do now."
Widgeon had checked himself suddenly. Nobody knew what the weekly gain might be, but people put it as high as three pounds; and this was fabulous wealth.
"I've thought of it," Nan said. "I've thought of it ever since that day you rode me and Johnny in the barrow. Do you mind? The donkey knows me now, I think. He's a wise one."
"Ay, he's a wise one," the old man said. "Donkeys is wiser than folks think." He put Johnny down suddenly, and sat looking at him strangely; but Nan did not see. The machine whirred on, but it stopped suddenly as Johnny cried out. Widgeon had slipped silently from his chair; his eyes were open, but he did not seem to see her, and he was breathing heavily. Nan ran into the passage and called an old neighbor, and the two together, using all their strength, managed to get him to the bed.
"It's a stroke," the woman said. "Lord love you, what'll you do? He can't stay here. He'd better be sent to 'ospital."
"I'll be 'anged first," said old Widgeon, who had opened his eyes suddenly and looked at them both. "I was a bit queer, but I'm right enough now. Who talks about 'ospitals?"
He tried to move and his face changed.
"I'm a bit queer yet," he said, "but it'll pass; it'll pass. Nan, you'll not mind my being in your way for a night. There's money in me pocket. Maybe there's another room to be 'ad."
"There's a bit of a one off me own that was me John's, an' him only gone yesterday," said the woman eagerly; "an' a bed an' all, an' openin' right off of this. The door's behind that press. It's one with this, an' the two belongs together, an' for two an' six a week without, an' three an' six with all that's in it, it's for anybody that wants it."
"I'll take it a week," said old Widgeon, "but I'll not want the use of it more than this night. I'm a bit queer now, but it'll pass; it'll pass."
The week went, but old Widgeon was still "a bit queer;" and the doctor, who was at last called in, said that he was likely to remain so. One side was paralyzed. It might lessen, but would never recover entirely. He would have to be looked out for. This was his daughter? She must understand that he needed care, and would not be able to work any more.
Old Widgeon heard him in silence, and then turned his face to the wall, and for hours made no sign. When he spoke at last, it was in his usual tone.
"I thought to end my days in the free air," he said, "but that ain't to be. And I'm thinking the stroke's come to do you a good turn, Nan. There's the donkey and the barrow, and everybody knowing it as well as they know me. I'll send you to my man in Covent Garden. He's a fair 'un. He don't cheat. He'll do well by you, an' you shall drive the barrow and see what you make of it. We'll be partners, Nan. You look out for me a bit, an' I'll teach you the business and 'ave an heye to Johnny. What do you say? Will you try it? It'll break me 'art ifthat donkey and barrow goes to hanybody that'll make light of 'em hand habuse 'em. There hain't such another donkey and barrow in all London, and you're one that knows it, Nan."
"Yes, I know it," Nan said. "You ought to know, if you think I could do it."
"There's nought that can't be done if you sets your mind well to it," said old Widgeon. "And now, Nan, 'ere's the key, and you get Billy just by the stable there to move my bits o' things over here. That court's no place for you, an' there's more light here. Billy's a good 'un. He'll 'elp you when you need it."
This is the story of the fresh-faced, serious young woman who drives a donkey-barrow through certain quiet streets in northwest London, and has a regular line of customers, who find her wares, straight from Covent Garden, exactly what she represents. Health and strength have come with the new work, and though it has its hardships, they are as nothing compared with the deadly, monotonous labor at the machine. Johnny, too, shares the benefit, and holds the reins or makes change, at least once or twice a week,while old Widgeon, a little more helpless, but otherwise the same, regards his "stroke" as a providential interposition on Nan's behalf, and Nan herself as better than any daughter.
"I've all the good of a child, and none o' the hups hand downs o' the married state," he chuckles; "hand so, whathever you think, I'm lucky to the hend."
"With hall the click there is to a woman's tongue you'd think she could 'patter' with the best of the men, but, Lor' bless you! a woman can't 'patter' any more'n she can make a coat, or sweep a chimley. And why she can't beats me, and neither I nor nobody knows."
"To patter" is a verb conjugated daily by the street seller of any pretensions. The coster needs less of it than most vendors, his wares speaking for themselves; but the general seller of small-wares, bootlaces, toys, children's books, and what not, must have a natural gift, or acquire it as fast as possible. To patter is to rattle off with incredible swiftness and fluency, not only recommendations of the goods themselves, but any side thoughts that occur; and often a street-selleris practically a humorous lecturer, a student of men and morals, and gives the result in shrewd sentences well worth listening to. Half a dozen derivations are assigned to the word, one being that it comes from the rattled offpaternostersof the devout but hasty Catholic, who says as many as possible in a given space of time. Be this as it may, it is quite true that pattering is an essential feature of any specially successful street-calling, and equally true that no woman has yet appeared who possesses the gift.
In spite of this nearly fatal deficiency, innumerable women pursue street trades, and, notwithstanding exposure and privation and the scantiest of earnings, have every advantage over their sisters of the needle. Rheumatism, born of bad diet and the penetrating rawness and fogs of eight months of the English year, is their chief enemy; but as a whole they are a strong, hardy, and healthy set of workers, who shudder at the thought of bending all day over machine or needle, and thank the fate that first turned them toward a street-calling. So conservative, however, is working England, that the needlewoman,even at starvation point, feels herself superior to a street-seller; and the latter is quite conscious of this feeling, and resents it accordingly. With many the adoption of such employment is the result of accident, and the women in it divide naturally into four classes: (1) The wives of street-sellers; (2) Mechanics, or laborers' wives who go out street-selling while their husbands are at work, in order to swell the family income; (3) The widows of former street-sellers; (4) Single women.
Trades that necessitate pushing a heavy barrow, and, indeed, most of those involving the carrying of heavy weights, are in the hands of men, and also the more skilled trades, such as the selling of books or stationery,—in short, the business in which patter is demanded. Occasionally there is a partnership, and man and wife carry on the same trade, she aiding him with his barrow, but for the most part they choose different occupations. In the case of one man in Whitechapel who worked for a sweater; the wife sold water-cresses morning and evening, while the wife of a bobbin turner had taken tosmall-wares, shoe-laces, etc. as a help. Both tailor and turner declared that, if things went on as they were at present, they should take to the streets also; for earnings were less and less, and they were "treated like dirt, and worse."
The women whose trades have been noted are dealers in fish, shrimps, and winkles, and sometimes oysters, fruit, and vegetables,—fruit predominating, orange-women and girls being as much a feature of London street life as in the days of pretty Nelly Gwynne. Sheep-trotters, too, are given over to women, with rice-milk, which is a favorite street-dainty, requiring a good deal of preparation; they sell curds and whey, and now and then, though very seldom, they have a coffee or elder-wine stand, the latter being sold hot and spiced, as a preventive of rheumatism and chill. To these sales they add fire-screens and ornaments (the English grate in summer being filled with every order of paper ornamentation), laces, millinery, cut flowers, boot and corset laces, and small-wares of every description, including wash-leathers, dressed and undressed dolls, and every variety of knitted articles, mittens, cuffs, socks, etc.
It will be seen that the range in street trades is far wider for the English than for the American woman, to whom it would almost never occur as a possible means of livelihood. But London holds several thousands of these women, a large proportion Irish, it is true, with a mixture of other nationalities, but English still predominating. The Irishwoman is more fluent, and can even patter in slight degree, but has less intelligence, and confines herself to the lower order of trades. For both Irish and English there is the same deep-seated horror of the workhouse. All winter a young Irishwoman has sat at the corner of a little street opening from the Commercial Road, a basket of apples at her side, and her thin garments no protection against the fearful chill of fog and mist. She had come to London, hoping to find a brother and go over with him to America; but no trace of him could be discovered, and so she borrowed a shilling and became an apple-seller.
"God knows," she said, "I'd be betther off in the house [workhouse], for it's half dead I am entirely; but I'd rather live on twopence a day than come to that."
Practically she was living on very little more. An aunt, also a street-seller, had taken her in. She rented a small room near by, for which they paid two shillings a week, their whole expenses averaging sixpence each a day. Naturally they were half starved; but they preferred this to "the house," and no one who has examined these retreats can blame them.
It is the poor who chiefly patronize these street-sellers, and they swarm where the poor are massed. The "Borough," on the Surrey side of the river, with its innumerable little streets and lanes, each more wretched than the last, has hundreds of them, no less than the better-known East End. Leather Lane, one of the most crowded and distinctive of the quarters of the poor, though comparatively little known, has also its network of alleys and courts opening from it, and is one of the most crowded markets in the city, rivalling even Petticoat Lane. The latter, whose time-honored name has foolishly been changed to Middlesex Street, is an old-clothes market, and presents one of the most extraordinary sights in London; but the trade is chiefly inthe hands of men, though their wives usually act as assistants and determine the quality of a garment till the masculine sense has been educated up to the proper point. Any very small, very old, and very dirty street at any point has its proportion of street-sellers, whose dark, grimy, comfortless rooms are their refuge at night. Other rooms of a better order are occupied, it may be, by some relative or child to be supported; and higher still rank those that are counted homes, where husband and wife meet when the day's work is done.
Like the needlewomen, the diet of the majority is meagre and poor to a degree. The Irishwoman is much more ready to try to make the meal hot and relishable than the Englishwoman, though even she confines herself to cheap fish and potatoes, herring or plaice at two a penny.
A quiet, very respectable looking woman, the widow of a coster, sold cakes of blacking and small-wares, and gave her view of this phase of the question.
"It's cheaper, their way of doing. Oh, yes, but not so livening. I could live cheaper on fish and potatoes than tea and bread andbutter; but that ain't it. They're more trouble, an' when you've been on your legs all day, an' get to your bit of a home for a cup of tea, you want a bit of rest, and you can't be cooking and fussing with fish. There's always a neighbor to give you a jug of boiling water, if you've no time for fire, or it's summer, and tea livens you up a bit where a herring won't. I take mine without milk, and like it better without, and often I don't have butter on me bread. But I get along, and, please God, I'll be able to keep out of the 'house' to the end."
The married women fare better. The men decline to be put off with bread and tea, and the cook-shops and cheap markets help them to what they call good living. They buy "good block ornaments," that is, small pieces of meat, discolored but not dirty nor tainted, which are set out for sale on the butcher's block. Tripe and cowheel are regarded as dainties, and there is the whole range of mysterious English preparations of questionable meat, from sausage and polonies to saveloys and cheap pies. Soup can be had, pea or eel, at two or three pence a pint, and beer,an essential to most of them, is "threepence a pot [quart] in your own jugs." A savory dinner or supper is, therefore, an easy matter, and the English worker fares better in this respect than the American, for whom there is much less provision in the way of cheap food and cook-shops. In fact the last are almost unknown with us, the cheap restaurant by no means taking their place. Even with bread and tea alone, there is a good deal more nourishment, since English bread is never allowed to rise to the over-lightness which appears an essential to the American buyer. The law with English breads and cakes of whatever nature appears to be to work in all the flour the dough can hold, and pudding must be a slab, and bread compact and dense to satisfy the English palate. Dripping is the substitute for butter, and the children eat the slice of bread and dripping contentedly. Fat of any sort is in demand, the piercing rawness of an English winter seeming to call for heating food no less than that of the Esquimaux for its rations of blubber and tallow. But the majority of the women leave dripping for the children, and if a scrap ofbutter cannot be had, rest contented with bread and tea, and an occasional pint of beer. For workingwomen as a class, however, there is much less indulgence in this than is supposed. To the men it is as essential as the daily meals, and the women regard it in the same way. "We do well enough with our tea, but a man must have his pint," they say; and this principle is applied to the children, the girls standing by while the boys take their turn at the "pot of mild."
This for the best order of workers. Below this line are all grades of indulgence ending with the woman who earns just enough for the measure of gin that will give her a day or an hour of unconsciousness and freedom from any human claim. But the pressure of numbers and of competing workers compels soberness, the steadiest and most capable being barely able to secure subsistence, while below them is every conceivable phase of want and struggle, more sharply defined and with less possibility of remedy than anything found in the approximate conditions on American soil.
"It's the ladies that's in the way, mum. Once get a lady to think that a girl isn't idling because she's sitting down, and the battle's won. But a lady comes into a shop blacker 'n midnight if every soul in it isn't on their feet and springing to serve her. I've got seats, but, bless you! my trade 'd be ruined if the girls used them much. 'Tisn't that I'm not willing, and me brother as well. It's the customers, the lady customers, that wouldn't stand it. Its them that you've got to talk to."
Once more it is a woman who is apparently woman's worst enemy, and London sins far more heavily in this respect than New York, and for a very obvious reason, that of sharply defined lines of caste, and the necessity of emphasizing them felt by all whose position doesnot speak for itself. A "born lady" on entering a shop where women clerks were sitting, might realize that from eleven to fourteen hours' service daily might well be punctuated by a few moments on the bits of board pushed in between boxes, which do duty for seats, and be glad that an opportunity had been improved. Not so the wife of the prosperous butcher or baker or candlestick maker, rejoicing, it may be, in the first appearance in plush and silk, and bent upon making it as impressive as possible. To her, obsequiousness is the first essential of any dealing with the order from which she is emerging; and her custom will go to the shop where its outward tokens are most profuse. A clerk found sitting is simply embodied impertinence, and the floor manager who allows it an offender against every law of propriety; and thus it happens that seats are slipped out of sight, and exhausted women smile and ask, as the purchase is made, "And what is the next pleasure?" in a tone that makes the American hearer cringe for the abject humility that is the first condition of success as seller.
Even the best shops are not exempt from this, and as one passes from west to east the ratio increases, culminating in the oily glibness of the bargain-loving Jew, and his no less bargain-loving London brother of Whitechapel, or any other district unknown to fashion.
This, however, is a merely outward phase. The actual wrongs of the system lie deeper, but are soon as apparent. For the shop-girl, as for the needlewoman or general worker of any description whatsoever, over-time is the standing difficulty, and a grievance almost impossible to redress. That an act of parliament forbids the employment of any young person under eighteen more than eleven hours a day, makes small difference. Inspectors cannot be everywhere at once, and violations are the rule. In fact, the law is a dead letter, and the employer who finds himself suddenly arraigned for violation is as indignant as if no responsibility rested upon him. A committee has for many months been doing self-elected work in this direction, registering the names of shops where over-hours are demanded, informing the clerks of the law andits bearings, and urging them to make formal complaint. The same difficulty confronts them here as in the attempts to reduce over-time for tailoresses and general needlewomen—the fear of the workers themselves that any complaint will involve the losing of the situation; and thus silent submission is the rule for all, any revolt bringing upon them instant discharge.
In a prolonged inquiry into the condition of shop-girls in both the West and East End, the needs to be met first of all summed themselves up in four: (1) more seats and far more liberty in the use of them; (2) better arrangements for midday dinner—on the premises if possible, the girls now losing much of the hour in a hurried rush to the nearest eatinghouse; (3) with this, some regularity as to time for dinner, this being left at present to the caprice of the manager, who both delays and shortens time; (4) much greater care in the selection of managers. A fifth point might well be added, that of a free afternoon each week. This has been given by a few London firms, and has worked well in the added efficiency and interest of thegirls, but by the majority, is regarded as a wild and very useless innovation.
The first point is often considered as settled, yet for both sides of the sea is actually in much the same case. Seats are kept out of sight, and for the majority of both sellers and buyers, there is the smallest comprehension of the strain of continuous standing, or its final effect. It is the popular conviction that women "get used to it," and to a certain extent this is true, the strong and robust adjusting themselves to the conditions required. But the majority must spend the larger portion of the week's earnings on the neat clothing required by the position, and to accomplish this they go underfed to a degree that is half starvation. It is this latter division of shop girls who suffer, not only from varicose veins brought on by long standing, but from many other diseases, the result of the same cause; yet, till women, who come as purchasers to the shops where women are employed, realize and remember this, reform under this head is practically impossible. The employer knows that, even if a few protest against the custom, his trade wouldsuffer were it done away with; and thus buyer and seller form a combination against which revolt is impossible.
The inquiry brought one fact to light, which, so far as I know, has as yet no counterpart in the United States, and this is, that in certain West End shops every girl must conform to a uniform size of waist, this varying from eighteen to twenty inches, but never above twenty. Tall or short, fat or lean, Nature must stand aside, and the hour-glass serve as model, the results simply adding one more factor of destruction to the number already ranged against the girl.
The matter of regular meals has also far less attention than is necessary. Dinner is a "movable feast." The girls are allowed to go out only two or three at once, and often it is three o'clock or even later before some have broken the fast. Though there is often ample room for tea and coffee urns, the suggestion seems to be regarded as a dangerous innovation, holding under the innocent seeming, a possible social revolution. The thing that hath been shall be, and the obstinate hide-bound conservatism of the Englishshop-keeper is beyond belief till experience has made it certain. A few employers consider this matter. The majority ignore it as beneath consideration.
The question of suitable floor managers is really the comprehensive one, including almost every evil and every good that can come to the shop girl, whether in the East or West End. Here, as with us, the girl is absolutely in his power. He governs the whole system of fines, one uncomfortable but necessary feature of any large establishment, and injustice in these can have fullest possible play.
"The fines are an awful nuisance, that they are," said a bright-faced girl in one of the best-known shops of London—a great bazar, much like Macy's. "But then it all depends on the manager. Some of them are real nasty, you know, and if they happen not to like a girl, they stick on fines just to spite her. You see we're in their power, and some of them just love to show it and bully the girls no end. And worse than that, they're impudent too if a girl is pretty, and often she doesn't dare complain, for fear of losing theplace, and he has it all his own way. This department's got a very fair manager, and we all like him. He's careful about fines, and plans about our dinners and all that, so we're better off than most. The manager does what he pleases everywhere."
These facts are for the West End, where dealings are nominally fair, and where wages may, in some exceptional case, run as high as eighteen shillings or even a pound a week. But the average falls far below this, from ten to fourteen being the usual figures, while seven and eight may be the sum. This, for the girl who lives at home, represents dress and pocket-money, but the great majority must support themselves entirely. We have already seen what this sum can do for the shirt-maker and general needlewoman, and it is easy to judge how the girl fares for whom the weekly wage is less. In the East End it falls sometimes as low as three shillings and sixpence (84c.). The girls club together, huddling in small back rooms, and spending all that can be saved on dress. Naturally, unless with exceptionally keen consciences, they find what is called "sin" an easier fact than starvation;and so the story goes on, and out of greed is born the misery, which, at last, compels greed to heavier poor rates, and thus an approximation to the distribution of the profit which should have been the worker's.
Here, as in all cities, the place seems to beckon every girl ambitious of something beyond domestic service. There are cheap amusements, "penny-gaffs" and the like, the "penny-gaff" being the equivalent of our dime museum. There is the companionship of the fellow-worker; the late going home through brightly-lighted streets, and the crowding throng of people,—all that makes the alleviation of the East End life; and there is, too, the chance, always possible, of a lover and a husband, perhaps a grade above, or many grades above, their beginning or their present lives. This alone is impulse and hope. It is much the same story for both sides of the sea; and here, as in most cases where woman's work is involved, it is with women that any change lies, and from their efforts that something better must come.
Now and then, in the long search into the underlying causes of effects which are plain to all men's eyes, one pauses till the rush of impressions has ceased, and it is possible again to ignore this many-sided, demanding London, which makes a claim unknown to any other city of the earth save Rome. But there is a certain justification in lingering at points where women and children congregate, since their life also is part of the quest, and nowhere can it better be seen than in and about Covent Garden Market,—a thousand thoughts arising as the old square is entered from whatever point.
It is not alone the first days of the pilgrim's wanderings in London that are filled with the curious sense of home coming thatmakes up the consciousness of many an American. It is as if an old story were told again, and the heir, stolen in childhood, returned, unrecognized by those about him, but recalling with more and more freshness and certainty the scenes of which he was once a part. The years slip away. Two hundred and more of them lie between, it is true; but not two hundred nor ten times two hundred can blot out the lines of a record in which the struggle and the hope of all English-speaking people was one. For past or present alike, London stands as the fountain-head; and thus, whatever pain may come from the oppressive sense of crowded, swarming life pent up in these dull gray walls, whatever conviction that such a monster mass of human energy and human pain needs diffusion and not concentration, London holds and will hold a fascination that is quite apart from any outward aspect.
To go to a point determined upon beforehand is good. To lose oneself in the labyrinth of lanes and alleys and come suddenly upon something quite as desirable, is even better; and this losing is as inevitable as thefinding also becomes. The first perplexity arises from the fact that a London street is "everything by turns and nothing long," and that a solitary block of buildings owns often a name as long as itself. The line of street which, on the map, appears continuous, gives a dozen changes to the mile, and the pilgrim discovers quickly that he is always somewhere else than at or on the point determined upon. Then the temptation to add to this complication by sudden excursions into shadowy courts and dark little passages is irresistible, not to mention the desire, equally pressing, of discovering at once if Violet Lane and Hop Vine Alley and Myrtle Court have really any relation to their names, or are simply the reaching out of their inhabitants for some touch of Nature's benefactions. Violet Lane may have had its hedgerows and violets in a day long dead, precisely as hop vines may have flung their pale green bells over cottage paling, for both are far outside the old city limits; but to-day they are simply the narrowest of passages between the grimiest of buildings, given over to trade in its most sordid form, with nevera green leaf even to recall the country hedgerows long since only memory.
It is a matter of no surprise, then, to find that Covent Garden holds no hint of its past save in name, though from the noisy Strand one has passed into so many sheltered, quiet nooks unknown to nine tenths of the hurrying throng in that great artery of London, that one half expects to see the green trees and the box-bordered alleys of the old garden where the monks once walked. Far back in the very beginning of the thirteenth century it was the convent garden of Westminster, and its choice fruits and flowers rejoiced the soul of the growers, who planted and pruned with small thought of what the centuries were to bring. Through all chances and changes it remained a garden up to 1621, when much of the original ground had been swallowed up by royal grants, and one duke and another had built his town-house amid the spreading trees; for this "amorous and herbivorous parish," as Sidney Smith calls it, was one of the most fashionable quarters of London. The Stuart kings and their courts delighted in it, and the square was filledwith houses designed by Inigo Jones, the north and east side of the market having an arcade called the "Portico Walk," but soon changed to the name which it has long borne,—the "Piazza." The market went on behind these pillars, but year by year, as London grew, pushed itself toward the centre of the square, till now not a foot of vacant space remains. At one of its stalls may still be found an ancient marketman, whose name, Anthony Piazza, is a memory of a parish custom which named after this favorite walk many of the foundling children born in the parish.
There is nothing more curious in all London than the transformations known to this once quiet spot. Drury Lane is close at hand, and Covent Garden Theatre is as well known as the market itself. The convent has become a play-house. "Monks and nuns turn actors and actresses. The garden, formal and quiet, where a salad was cut for a lady abbess, and flowers were gathered to adorn images, becomes a market, noisy and full of life, distributing its thousands of fruits and flowers to a vicious metropolis." Twoquaint old inns are still here; two great national theatres, and a churchyard full of mouldy but still famous celebrities,—the church itself, bare and big, rising above them. In the days of the Stuarts, people prayed to be buried here hardly less than in Westminster Abbey, and the lover of epitaph and monument will find occupation for many an hour. This strange, squat old building, under the shadow of the church, is the market, its hundred columns and chapel-looking fronts always knee-deep and more in baskets and fruits and vegetables, while its air still seems to breathe of old books, old painters, and old authors.
"Night and morning are at meeting," for Covent Garden makes small distinction between the two, and whether it is a late supper or an early breakfast that the coffee-rooms and stalls are furnishing, can hardly be determined by one who has elected to know how the market receives and how it distributes its supplies. In November fog and mist, or the blackness of early winter, with snow on the ground, or cold rain falling, resolution is needed for such an expedition,and still more, if one would see all that the deep night hides, and that comes to light as the dawn struggles through. This business of feeding a city of four million people seems the simplest and most natural of occupations; but the facts involved are staggering, not alone in the mere matter of quantities and the amazement at the first sight of them, but in the thousands of lives tangled with them. Quantity is the first impression. Every cellar runs over with green stuff, mountains of which come in on enormous wagons and fill up all spaces left vacant, heaving masses of basket stumbling from other wagons and filling with instant celerity. In the great vans pour, from every market garden and outlying district of London, from all England, from the United Kingdom, from all the world, literally; for it is soon discovered that these enormous vehicles on high springs and with immense wheels, drawn by Normandy horses of size and strength to match, are chiefly from the railway stations, and that the drivers, who seem to be built on the same plan as the horses and vans, have big limbs and big voices and a high color, and that thebulging pockets of their velveteen suits show invoices and receipt books.
Not alone from railway stations and trains, from which tons of cabbages, carrots, onions, and all the vegetable tribe issue, but from the docks where steamers from Rotterdam and Antwerp and India and America, and all that lie between, come the contributions, ranged presently in due order in stall and arcade. There is no hint of anything grosser than the great cabbages, which appear to be London's favorite vegetable. Meat has its place at Smithfield, and fish at Billingsgate, but the old garden is, in one sense, true to its name, and gives us only the kindly fruits of the earth, with their transformations into butter and cheese.
In the central arcade fruit has the honors, and no prettier picture can well be imagined. For once under these gray skies there is a sense of color and light, and there is no surprise in hearing that Turner came here to study both, and that even the artist of to-day does not disdain the same method.
It is the flower-market, however, to which one turns with a certainty gained at once thatno disappointment follows intimate acquaintance with English flowers. There are exotics for those who will, but it is not with them that one lingers. It is to the hundreds upon hundreds of flower-pots, in which grow roses and geraniums and mignonette and a score with old-fashioned but forever beloved names. There are great bunches of mignonette for a penny, and lesser bunches of sweet odors for the same coin, while the violets have rows of baskets to themselves, as indeed they need, for scores of buyers flock about them,—little buyers chiefly, with tangled hair and bare feet and the purchase-money tied in some corner of their rags; for they buy to sell again, and having tramped miles it may be to this fountain-head, will tramp other miles before night comes, making their way into court and alley and under sunless doorways, crying "Violets! sweet violets!" as they were cried in Herrick's time. A ha'penny will buy one of the tiny bunches which they have made up with swift fingers, and they are bought even by the poorest; how, heaven only knows. But, in cracked jug or battered tin, the bunch of violets sweetens the foulair, or the bit of mignonette grows and even thrives, where human kind cannot.
So, though Covent Garden has in winter "flowers at guineas apiece, pineapples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a quart,"—these for the rich only,—it has also its possibilities for the poor. They throng about it at all times, for there is always a chance of some stray orange or apple or rejected vegetable that will help out a meal. They throng above all in these terrible days when the "unemployed" are huddling under arches and in dark places where they lay their homeless heads, and where, in the hours between night and morning, the cocoa-rooms open for the hungry drivers of the big vans, who pour down great mugs of coffee and cocoa, and make away with mountains of bread and butter. A penny gives a small mug of cocoa and a slice of bread and butter, and the owner of a penny is rich. Often it is shared, and the sharer, half drunk still, it may be, and foul with the mud and refuse into which he crawled, can hardly be known as human, save for this one gleam of something beyond the human. Gaunt formsbarely covered with rags, hollow eyes fierce with hunger, meet one at every turn in this early morning; and for many there is not even the penny, and they wait, sometimes with appeal, but as often silently, the chance gift of the buyer. Food for all the world, it would seem, and yet London is not fed; and having once looked upon these waifs that are floated against the pillars of the old market, one fancies almost a curse on the piles of food that is not for them save as charity gives it, and the flowers that even on graves will never be theirs.
Men and women huddle here, and under the arches, children skulk away like young rats, feeding on offal, lying close in dark corners for warmth, and hunted about also like rats. It is a poverty desperate and horrible beyond that that any other civilized city can show; and who shall say who is responsible, or what the end will be?
So the question lingers with one, as the market is left, and one passes on and out to the Strand and its motley stream of life, lingering through Fleet Street and the winding ways into the City, past St. Paul's, andstill on till London Bridge is reached and the Borough is near. Fare as one may, north or south, west or east, there is no escape from the sullen roar of the great city, a roar like the beat of a stormy sea against cliffs. An hour and more ago, that perplexed and baffled luminary the sun has struggled up through strange shapes and hues of morning cloud, and for a few minutes asserted his right to rule. But the gleam of gold and crimson brought with him has given way to the grays and black which make up chiefly what the Londoners call sky, and over London Bridge one passes on into the dim grayness merging into something darker and more cheerless. On the Borough Road there should be some escape,—that Borough Road on which the Canterbury Pilgrims rode out on a morning less complicated, it is certain, by fog and mist and smoke and soot than mornings that dawn for this generation. Every foot of the way is history; the old Tower at one's back, and the past as alive as the present. "Merrie England" was at its best, they say, when the pages we know were making; but here as elsewhere, the nameis a tradition, belied by every fact of the present.
The old inns along the way still hold their promise of good cheer, and the great kitchens and tap-rooms have seen wild revelry enough; but even for them has been the sight of political or other martyr done to death in their court-yards, while no foot of playground, no matter how much the people's own, but has been steeped in blood and watered with tears of English matron and maid. If "Merrie England" deserved its name, it must have come from a determination as fixed as Mark Tapley's, to be jolly under any and all circumstances, and certainly circumstances have done their best to favor such resolution. The peasant of the past, usually represented as dancing heavily about a Maypole, or gazing contentedly at some procession of his lords and masters as it swept by, has no counterpart to-day, nor will his like come again. For here about the old Borough, where every stone means history and the "making of the English people," there are faces of all types that England holds, but no face yet seen carries any sense of merriment, or any goodthing that might bear its name. It is the burden of living that looks from dull eyes and stolid faces, and a hopelessness, unconscious it may be but always apparent, that better things may come. The typical Englishman, as we know him, has but occasional place, and the mass, hurrying to and fro in the midst of this roar of traffic, are thin and eager and restless of countenance as any crowd of Americans in the same type of surroundings. Innumerable little streets, each dingier and more sordid than the last, open on either side. Hot coffee and cocoa cans are at every corner, their shining brass presided over by men chiefly. Here, as throughout East London, sellers of every sort of eatable and drinkable thing wander up and down.
Paris is credited with living most of its life under all men's eyes, and London certainly may share this reputation as far as eating goes. In fact, working London, taking the poorest class both in pay and rank, has small space at home for much cookery, and finds more satisfaction in the flavor of food prepared outside. The throats, tanned and parched by much beer, are sensitive only tosomething with the most distinct and defined taste of its own; and so it is that whelks and winkles and mussels and all forms of fish and flesh, that are to the American uneatably strong and unpleasant, make the luxuries of the English poor. They are conservative, also, like all the poor, and prefer old acquaintances to new; and the costers and sellers of all sorts realize this, and seldom go beyond an established list.
It is always "somethin' 'ot" that the workman craves; and small wonder, when one has once tested London climate, and found that, nine months out of twelve, fog and mist creep chill into bones and marrow, and that a fire is comfortable even in July. November accents this fact sharply, and by November the pea-soup and eel-soup men are at their posts, and about market and dock, and in lane and alley, the trade is brisk. Near Petticoat Lane, one of the oddest of London's odd corners, small newsboys rush up and take a cupful as critically as I have seen them take waffles from the old women purveyors of these delicacies about City Hall Park and Park Row, while hungry costers andworkmen appear to find it the most satisfactory of meals.
One must have watched the eel baskets at Billingsgate, and then read the annual consumption, before it is possible to understand how street after street has its eel-pie house, and how the stacks of small pies in the windows are always disappearing and always being renewed. It would seem with eel pies as with oysters, of which Sam Weller stated his conviction that the surprising number of shops and stalls came from the fact that the moment a man found himself in difficulties he "rushed out and ate oysters in reg'lar desperation." It is certain that some of the eaters look desperate enough; but the seller is a middle-aged, quiet-looking man, who eyes his customers sharply, but serves them with generous cupfuls. The sharpness is evidently acquired, and not native, and he has need of it, the London newsboys, who are his best patrons, being ready to drive a bargain as keen as their fellows on the other side of the sea. His stand is opposite a cat's-meat market, a sausage shop in significant proximity, and he endures much chaffing as to themake-up of his pea soup, which he sells in its season. But it is eels for which the demand is heaviest and always certain, and the eel-soup man's day begins early and ends late, on Saturdays lasting well into Sunday morning. He is prosperous as such business goes, and buys four "draughts" of eels on a Friday for the Saturday's work, a "draught" being twenty pounds, while now and then he has been known to get rid of a hundred pounds.
This stall, to which the newsboys flock as being more "stylish" than most of its kind, is fitted with a cast-iron fireplace holding two large kettles of four or five gallon capacity. A dozen pint bowls, or basins as the Englishman prefers to call them, and an equal number of half-pint cups, with spoons for all, constitute the outfit; and even for the poorest establishment of the sort, a capital of not less than a pound is required. This stall has four lamps with "Hot Eels" painted on them, and one side of it is given to whelks, which are boiled at home and always eaten cold with abundance of vinegar, of which the newsboy is prodigal. At times fried fish are added tothe stock, but eels lead, and mean the largest profit on the amount invested.
Dutch eels are preferred, and the large buyer likes to go directly to the eel boats at the Billingsgate Wharf and buy the squirming draughts, fresh from the tanks in which they have been brought. To dress and prepare a draught takes about three hours, and the daughter of the stall-owner stands at one side engaged in this operation, cleaning, washing, and cutting up the eels into small pieces from half an inch to an inch long. These are boiled, the liquor being made smooth and thick with flour, and flavored with chopped parsley and mixed spices, principally allspice. For half a penny, from five to seven pieces may be had, the cup being then filled up with the liquor, to which the buyer is allowed to add vinegar at discretion. There is a tradition of one customer so partial to hot eels that he used to come twice a day and take eight cupfuls a day, four at noon and four as a night-cap.
The hot-eel season ends with early autumn, and pea soup takes its place, though a small proportion of eels is always to be had. Splitpeas, celery, and beef bones are needed for this, and it is here that the cat's-meat man is supposed to be an active partner. In any case the smell is savory, and the hot steam a constant invitation to the shivering passers-by. This man has no cry of "Hot Eels!" like many of the sellers.
"I touches up people's noses; 't ain't their heyes or their hears I'm hafter," he says, though the neat stall makes its own claim on the "heyes."
In another alley is another pea-soup man, one-legged, but not at all depressed by this or any other circumstance of fate. He makes, or his wife makes, the pea soup at home, and he keeps it hot by means of a charcoal fire in two old tin saucepans.
"Hard work?" he says. "You wouldn't think so if you'd been on your back seven months and four days in Middlesex Orspital. I was a coal heaver, and going along easy and natural over the plank from one barge to another, and there come the swell from some steamers and throwed up the plank and chucked me off, and I broke my knee against the barge. It's bad now. I'd ought to 'adit hoff, an' so the surgeons said; but I wouldn't, an' me wife wouldn't, and the bone keeps workin' out, and I've 'ad nineteen months all told in the 'orspital, and Lord knows how me wife and the young uns got on. I was bad enough off, I was, till a neighbor o' mine, a master butcher, told me there was a man up in Clare Market, makin' a fortune at hot eels and pea soup, and he lent me ten shillings to start in that line. He and me wife's the best friends I've ever had in the world; for I've no memory of a mother, and me father died at sea. My oldest daughter, she's a good un, goes for the eels and cuts 'em up, and she an' me wife does all the hard work. I've only to sit at the stall and sell, and they do make 'em tasty. There's no better. But we're hard up. I'd do better if I'd a little more money to buy with. I can't get a draught like some of the men, and them that gets by the quantity can give more. The boys tells me there's one man gives 'em as much as eight pieces; that's what they calls a lumping ha'p'worth. And the liquor's richer when you boils up so many eels. What's my tin pot ag'in' hisfive-gallon one? There's even some that boils the 'eads, and sells 'em for a farthing a cupful; but I've not come to that. But we're badly off. The missus has a pair o' shoes, and she offs with 'em when my daughter goes to market, and my boy the youngest 's got no shoes; but we do very well, and would do better, only the cheap pie shop takes off a lot o' trade. I wouldn't eat them pies. It's the dead eels that goes into 'em, and we that handles eels knows well enough that they're rank poison if they ain't cut up alive, and the flesh of 'em squirming still when they goes into the boiling water. Them pies is uncertain, anyway, whatever kind you buy. I've seen a man get off a lot a week old, just with the dodge of hot spiced gravy poured out of an oil can into a hole in the lid, and that gravy no more'n a little brown flour and water; but the spice did it. The cat's-meat men knows; oh, yes! they knows what becomes of what's left when Saturday night comes, though I've naught to say ag'in' the cat's-meat men, for it's a respectable business enough.
"I've thought of other ways. There'sthe baked-potato men, but the 'ansome can and fixin's for keeping 'em 'ot is what costs, you see. Trotters is profitable, too, if you've a start, that is, though it's women mostly that 'andles trotters, blest if I know why! I've a cousin in the boiled pudding business—meat puddings and fruit, too;—but it's all going out, along of the bakers that don't give poor folks a chance. They has their big coppers, and boils up their puddings by the 'undred; but I dare say there's no more need o' street-sellers, for folks go to shops for most things now. She's in Leather Lane, this cousin o' mine, and makes plum-duff as isn't to be beat; but she sells Saturday nights mostly, and for Sunday dinners. Ginger nuts goes off well, but there again the shops 'as you, and unless you can make a great show, with brass things shining to put your eyes out, and a stall that looks as well as a shop, you're nowhere. There's no chance for the poor anyhow, it seems to me; for even if you get a start, there's always some one with more money to do the thing better, and so take the bread out of your mouth. But 'better' 's only more show often, and me wifecan't be beat for tastiness, whether it's hot eels or pea soup, and I'll say that long as I stand."
So many small trades have been ruined by the larger shops taking them up, that the street-seller's case becomes daily a more complicated one, and the making a living by old-fashioned and time-honored methods almost impossible. It is all part of the general problem of the day, and the street-sellers, whether costers or those of lower degree, look forward apprehensively to changes which seem on the way, and puzzle their untaught minds as to why each avenue of livelihood seems more and more barred against them. For the poorest there seems only a helpless, dumb acquiescence in the order of things which they are powerless to change; but the looker-on, who watches the mass of misery crowding London streets or hiding away in attic and cellar, knows that out of such conditions sudden fury and revolt is born, and that, if the prosperous will not heed and help while they may, the time comes when help will be with no choice of theirs. It is plain that even the most conservative begin to feel this, andeffort constantly takes more practical form; but this is but the beginning of what must be,—the inauguration of a social revolution in ideas, and one to which all civilization must come.
As investigation progresses, it becomes at times a question as to which of two great factors must dominate the present status of women as workers; competition, which blinds the eyes to anything but the surest way of obtaining the proper per cent, or the inherited Anglo-Saxon brutality, which, in its lowest form of manifestation, makes the English wife-beater. It is certain that the English workingwoman has not only the disabilities which her American sister also faces,—some inherent in herself, and as many arising from the press of the present system,—but added to this the apparent incapacity of the employer to see that they have rights of any description whatsoever. Even the factory act and the various attempts to legislate in behalf of women and child workers strikes the average employer as a gross interference withhis constitutional rights. Where he can he evades. Where he cannot he is apt to grow purple over the impertinence of meddling reformers who cannot let well-enough alone.
Such a representative of one class of English employers is to be found in a little street, not a stone's throw from Fleet Street, the great newspaper centre, where all day long one meets authors, editors, and journalists of every degree. Toward eight in the morning, as at the same hour in the evening, another crowd is to be seen, made up of hundreds upon hundreds of girls hurrying to the countless printing establishments of every grade, which are to be found in every street and court opening from or near Fleet Street. It is not newspaper interests alone that are represented there. The Temple, Inner, Outer, and Middle, with the magnificent group of buildings, also a part of the Temple's workings—the new courts of law, have each and all their quota of law printing, and a throng made up of every order of ability, from the reader of Greek proof down to the folder of Mother Siegel's Almanac, hurries through Fleet Street to the day's work.
In a building devoted to the printing and sending out of a popular weekly of the cheaper order, the lower rooms met all requisitions as to space and proper ventilation.
"We have nothing to hide," said the manager, "nothing at all. You may go from top to bottom if you will."
This was said at what appeared to be the end of an hour or two of going from room to room, watching the girls at work at the multitudinous phases involved, and wondering how energy enough remained after twelve hours of it, for getting home.
A flight of dark little stairs led up to a region even darker, and he changed color as we turned toward them.
"This is all temporary," he said hastily. "We are very much crowded for space, and we are going to move soon. We do the best we can in the mean time. It's only temporary."
This was the reason for the darkness. Stumbling up the open stairs, hardly more than a ladder, one came into a half story added to the original building, and so low that the manager bowed his head as heentered; nor was there any point at which he could stand freely upright, this well-fed Englishman nearly six feet tall. For the girls there was no such difficulty, and nearly two hundred were packed into the space, in which folding and stitching machines ran by steam, while at long tables other branches of the same work were going on by hand. The noise and the heat from gas-jets, steam, and the crowd of workers made the place hideous. The girls themselves appeared in no worse condition than many others seen that day, but were all alike, pale and anemic. Their hours were from 8A. M.to 8P. M., with an hour for dinner, usually from one to two. The law also allows half an hour for tea, but in all cases investigated, this time is docked if the girl takes it. Cheap "cocoa rooms" are all about, where a cup of tea or cocoa and a bun may be had for twopence; but even this is a heavy item to a girl who earns never more than ten shillings ($2.50) a week, and as often from four to seven or eight. No arrangement for making tea on the premises was to be found here or anywhere.
"We mean to have a room," the employerssaid, "but we have so many expenses attendant on the growing business that there doesn't seem any chance yet."
This employer brought his wage-book forward and showed with pride that several of his girls earned a pound a week ($5.00). But on turning back some pages, the record showed only fourteen and sixteen shillings for these same names, and after a pause the manager admitted that the pound had been earned by adding night work.
This question of whether night work is ever done had been a most difficult one to determine. The girls themselves declared that it often was, and that they liked it because they got three shillings and their breakfast; but the managers had in more than one case denied the charge with fury.
"It's over-work," the present one said, his eyes on the rows of figures.
"When?" asked my companion quietly, and he burst into a laugh.
"You've got me this time," he said. "You've given your word not to mention names, so I don't mind telling you. It's like this. There's a new firm to be floated, andthey want two hundred thousand circulars on two days' notice. Of course it has to be night-work, and we put it through, but we give the girls time for supper, and provide a good breakfast, and there's hundreds waiting for the chance. But you've seen for yourselves. Some of them make a pound a week. What in reason does a woman want of more than a pound a week?"
This remark is the stereotyped one of quite two-thirds the employers, whether men or women. The old delusion still holds that a man works for others, a woman solely for herself, and although each woman should appear with those dependent upon her in entire or partial degree arranged in line, it would make no difference in the conviction. It is quite true that many married women work for pocket-money, and having homes, can afford to underbid legitimate workers. But they are the smallest proportion of this vast army of London toilers, whose pitiful wage is earned by a day's labor which happily has no counterpart in length with us, save among the lowest grade of needlewomen.
In the case under present consideration payfor over-time was allowed at the rate of fourpence an hour and a penny extra. If late five minutes the workwoman is fined twopence, and if not there by nine is "drilled," that is, sent away, or kept waiting near until two, when she goes on for half a day. If tardy, as must often happen with fogs and other causes, she is often "drilled" for a week, though "drilling" in this trade is used more often with men than with women, who are less liable to irregularities caused by drink. In some establishments the bait of sixpence a week for good conduct is offered, but this is deducted on the faintest pretext, and the worker fined as well, for any violation of regulations tacit or written.
In another establishment piece-work alone was done, a popular almanac being folded at fourpence a thousand sheets. Railway tickets brought in from eight to ten shillings a week, and prize packages of stationery, fourpence a score, the folding and packing of prize doubling the length of time required and thus lessening wages in the same ratio.
I have given phases of this one trade indetail, because the same general rules govern all. The confectionery workers' wages are at about the same rate, although a pound a week is almost unknown, the girls making from three shillings and sixpence (84c.) to fourteen and sixteen shillings weekly. A large "butter-scotch" factory pays these rates and allows the weekly good-conduct sixpence which, however, few succeed in earning. This factory is managed by two brothers who take alternate weeks, and the younger one exacts from the girls an hour more a day than the older one. Here the factory act applies, and inspectors appear periodically; but this does not hinder the carrying out of individual theories as to what constitutes a day. If five minutes late, sevenpence is deducted from the week's wages, which begin at three and sixpence and ascend to nine, the latter price being the utmost to be earned in this branch of the trade.
In the cocoa rooms which are to be found everywhere in London where business of any sort is carried on, the pay ranges from ten to twelve shillings a week. The work is hard and incessant, although hours are oftenshorter. In both confectionery factories and the majority of factory trades, an hour is allowed for dinner, but the tea half hour refused or deducted from time. London in this respect, and indeed in most points affecting the comfort and well-being of operatives of every class, is far behind countries, the great manufacturing cities of which are doing much to lighten oppressive conditions and give some possibility of relaxation and improvement. Some of the best reforms in a factory life have begun in England, and it is thus all the more puzzling to find that indifference, often to a brutal degree, characterizes the attitude of many London employers, who have reduced wages to the lowest, and brought profits to the highest, attainable point. It is true that he is driven by a force often quite beyond his control, foreign competition, French and German, being no less sharp than that on his own soil. He must study chances of profit to a farthing, and in such study there is naturally small thought of his workers, save as hands in which the farthings may be found. Many a woman goes to her place of work, leaving behind her children who have breakfasted with her on"kettle broth," and will be happy if the same is certain at supper time.
"There's six of us have had nought but kettle broth for a fortnight," said one. "You know what that is? It's half a quarter loaf, soaked in hot water with a hap'orth of dripping and a spoonful of salt. When you've lived on that night and morning for a week or two, you can't help but long for a change, though, God forgive me! there's them that fares worse. But it'll be the broth without the bread before we're through. There's no living to be had in old England any more, and yet the rich folks don't want less. Do you know how it is, ma'am? Is there any chance of better times, do you think? Is it that theywantus to starve? I've heard that said, but somehow it seems as if there must be hearts still, and they'll see soon, and then things'll be different. Oh, yes, they must be different."
Will they be different? It is unskilled workers who have just spoken, but do the skilled fare much better? I append a portion of a table of earnings, prepared a year or two since by the chaplain of theClerkenwell prison, a thoughtful and earnest worker among the poor, this table ranking as one of the best of the attempts to discover the actual position of the workingwoman at present:—
"Making paper bags, 4½d.to 5½d.per thousand; possible earnings, 5s.to 9s.a week. Button-holes, 3d.per dozen; possible earnings, 8s.per week."Shirts 2d.each, worker finding her own cotton; can get six done between 6A. M.and 11P. M."Sack-sewing, 6d.for twenty-five, 8d.to 1s.6d.per hundred; possible earnings, 7s.per week."Pill-box making, 1s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 1s.3d.a day."Button-hole making, 1d.per dozen; can do three or four dozen between 5A. M.and dark."Whip-making, 1s.per dozen; can do a dozen per day."Trousers-finishing, 3d.to 5d.each, finding own cotton; can do four per day."Shirt-finishing, 3d.to 4d.per dozen."
"Making paper bags, 4½d.to 5½d.per thousand; possible earnings, 5s.to 9s.a week. Button-holes, 3d.per dozen; possible earnings, 8s.per week.
"Shirts 2d.each, worker finding her own cotton; can get six done between 6A. M.and 11P. M.
"Sack-sewing, 6d.for twenty-five, 8d.to 1s.6d.per hundred; possible earnings, 7s.per week.
"Pill-box making, 1s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 1s.3d.a day.
"Button-hole making, 1d.per dozen; can do three or four dozen between 5A. M.and dark.
"Whip-making, 1s.per dozen; can do a dozen per day.
"Trousers-finishing, 3d.to 5d.each, finding own cotton; can do four per day.
"Shirt-finishing, 3d.to 4d.per dozen."
So the list runs on through all the trades open to women. A pound a week is a fortune; half or a third of that amount the wages of two-thirds the women who earn in working London; nor are there indications that the scale will rise or that better days are instore for one of these toilers, patient, heavy-eyed, well-nigh hopeless of any good to come, and yet saying among themselves the words already given:—
"There must be hearts still, and they'll see soon, and then things'll be different. Oh, yes, they must be different."