MARKET-GARDEN WOMEN.

While the fruit-harvest is in progress, travellers through the western outskirts of London will doubtless have noticed the numerous gangs of women employed in gathering and packing fruit and vegetables for market; the railway in that district running for several miles through market-gardens and orchards. The peculiar dress of these women—consisting of a large calico sun-bonnet, brightly coloured neckerchief, short skirts reaching scarcely below the knee, and large holland aprons—is alone sufficient to attract attention, even in the momentary glimpse one obtains of them as the train sweeps past. Daily, in sunshine and rain, these women are busy collecting the fruit and vegetables which are nightly conveyed to the London markets; and as some knowledge of their manner of life and the amount of their earnings may prove interesting, we offer to our readers the substance of a conversation held with a member of one of the gangs during the earlier part of the season.

'Do we get pretty good wages? Well, you see, sir, it all depends on the season. Just now, when strawberries are in and peas, we can earn as much as thirty shillings a week—some weeks more. Raspberries and beans we do pretty well with, but gooseberries and currants ain't so good: eight-and-twenty shillings a week is as much as we can make at those, working hard and long for that. Of course we have to work long hours, beginning at four or five o'clock in the morning, and keeping at it till eight and sometimes later at night, generally taking about an hour's rest at dinner-time. But as we gather all the fruit by piece-work, and so to speak, our time is our own, what dinner-time we take depends on what sort of a morning's work we've made—sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. You see, this is how we work. In my gang there's six of us, that have always worked together for a good many years now. We get one on each side of a row of strawberries or raspberries or peas, or what not; and when one basket is full, we puts a few handfuls in our apron, always managing so as to take in all the baskets full together; and then at night, when our work is counted up, we share it equally amongst us. We always know every night how much we have made, but only get paid once a week, on Saturdays: Saturday, you know, being an easy day with us, on account of there being no market on Sunday. Our missis is very good that way: every Saturday, afore twelve o'clock, there is our money, much or little; though there is some of the masters as think nothing of keeping their women waiting about till six or seven o'clock at night before they pay them, and perhaps then only gives 'em a part of it; which comes hard on folks as live from hand to mouth, as we have to do; the shop at which we deal only giving one week's credit—pay up one Saturday night, and run on as much as you like till the next; or if you don't pay up, no more credit till you does.

'Apples and pears and such-like fruit we have nothing to do with—men gather them in. In fact as often as not the master sells the fruit as it stands on the tree, and the buyer has to get his own men to pluck it. But there's always some sort of fruit or vegetables to be gathered from the beginning of spring till the end of summer as we can do by piecework; and then the potatoes come in, which we pick up after they've been turned out of the ground by men or by a machine; but that we does by day-work, getting one-and-sixpence a day when we work from six to six; and one-and-twopence when we work from eight till dark. In winter-time there's always something to be done dibbing in cabbage-plants, weeding, and such-like; but what with sharp frosts and heavy snows, we don't earn much then, perhaps doing three or four days' work in a week. Of course if we haven't had the sense to put by some of the money we make in the good times of summer, times come cruel hard on us in the winter; and very few of us like to apply to the parish if we can anyhow help it. Not but what our missis is good to us in that way, often finding us a day's work when it ain't needed, and always giving us a half-pint of beer at the end of the day; which we can't claim, you know.

'We don't take much count of rain either winter or summer, because, you see, people will have their fruit and vegetables fresh gathered; and so we wrap ourselves well up and make the best of it. As I said before, Saturday we don't do much; but then we have to make up for it on Sundays, so as to send the fruit fresh to Monday's market.

'Don't we suffer from rheumatics? Well, you mightn't think so, but it ain't often any of us ails much. You see,