_Arsenal._ _Arsenal._ _Contractors._
1861. 1864. 1864.
Shirts, 17-1/2 15 8
Drawers, 12-1/2 10 7 @ 8
Infantry Pantaloons, 42-1/2 27 17 @ 20
Cavalry Pantaloons, 60 50 28 @ 30
Lined Blouses, 45 40 20
Unlined Blouses, 40 35 15 @ 20
Cavalry Jackets, 1.12-1/2 1.00 75 @ 80
Overalls, 25 20 8
Bed Sacks, 20 20 7
Covering Canteens, 4 2-1/2 --
Here was a state of things wholly without parallel in our previous
social history. On such wages women could not exist; they were the
strongest and surest temptation to the abandonment of a virtuous course
of life. Labor was here evidently cheated of its just reward. The
Government gave out the work by contract at the prices indicated in the
first two columns, and the contractors put it out among the sewing-women
at the inhuman rates set down in the third column. In this wrong the
Government participated; for it reduced its prices to the sewing-women,
while it was constantly increasing those it paid to every other class of
work-people. Even the freedmen on the sea-islands or in the contraband
camps made better wages,--while the liberated negro washer-woman, who
had never been paid wages during a life of sixty years, was suddenly
elevated to a position about the camps which enabled her to earn more,
every day, than thousands of intelligent and exemplary needle-women in
Philadelphia.
An extraordinary feature of the case was, that, while there was probably
four times as much sewing to be done, there were at least ten times as
many women to do it as before. The condition of things showed that this
must be the fact, because, though the work to be given out was enormous
in amount, yet there was a crowd and pressure to obtain it which was
even greater. I saw this myself on more than one occasion.
While congratulating ourselves that our women have not yet been degraded
to working at coal-mining, dressed in men's attire, or at gathering up
manure in the streets of a great city, we may be sure, that, if, in this
emergency, they were saved from actual starvation, it was not through
any generous, spontaneous outpouring of that sympathy whose fountain is
in the bottom of men's pockets. They pined, and worked, and saved
themselves.
At last they met together in public, common sufferers under a common
calamity, interchanged their experiences, and mingled their tears. If
the personal history of the pupils in my sewing-school was diversified,
in this assembly the domestic experience of each individual was in
mournful harmony with that of all. The great majority were wives of
soldiers who had gone forth to uphold the flag of our country. Hundreds
of them were clad in mourning,--their husbands had died in
battle,--their remittances of pay had ceased,--their dependence had been
suddenly cut off,--and they were thus thrown back upon the needle, which
they had laid down on getting married. Oh, how many hollow cheeks and
attenuated figures were to be seen in that sad meeting of working-women!
There was the dull eye, the pinched-up face, which betokened absolute
deprivation of necessary food,--yet withal, the careful adjustment of a
faded shawl or dress, the honest pride, even in the depth of misery, to
be at least decent, after the effort to preserve the old gentility had
been found vain.
It was the extraordinary number of the wives and daughters of the killed
and wounded in battle, who, suddenly added to the standing army of
sewing-women, had glutted the labor-market of the city, and whose
impatient necessity for employment had enabled heartless contractors to
cut down the making of a shirt to eight cents. I remember, when the
first rumor of the first battle reached our city, how the news-resorts
were thronged by these women to know whether they had been made widows
or not,--how the crowd pressed up to and surged around the placards
containing the lists of killed and wounded,--how those away off from
these centres of early intelligence waited feverishly for the morning
paper to tell them whether they were to be miserable or happy. I
remember, too, how, as the bloody contest went on, this impatient
anxiety died out,--use seemed to have made their condition a sort of
second nature,--they kept at home, hopeful, but resigned. Alas! how
many, in the end, needed all the resignation that God mercifully extends
to the stricken deer of the great human family!
They came together on the occasion referred to to compare grievances,
and devise whatever poor remedy might be found to be in the power of a
body of friendless needle-women. The straits to which many of these
deserving widows had been reduced were awful. The rich men of my native
city may hang their heads in shame over the recital of sufferings at
their very door. No generous movement had been made by any of them in
mitigation.
One widow, taking out shirts at the arsenal, earned two dollars and
forty cents in two weeks, but was denied permission to take them in when
done, though urgently needing her pay, being told that she would be
making too much money. Another made vests with ten button-holes and
three pockets for fifteen cents, furnishing her own cotton at twenty
cents a spool. A third, whose husband was then in the army, found the
price of infantry-pantaloons reduced from forty-two to twenty-seven
cents,--reduced by the Government itself,--but she made eight pair a
week, took care of five children, and was always on the verge of
starvation. She declared, that, if it were not for her children, she
would gladly lie down and die! A fourth worked for contractors on
overalls at five cents a pair! Having the aid of a sewing-machine, she
made six pair daily, but was the object of insult and abuse from her
employer.
The widow of a brave man who gave up his life at Fredericksburg worked
for the Government, and made eight pair of pantaloons a week, receiving
two dollars and sixteen cents for the uninterrupted labor of six days of
eighteen hours each. Another made thirteen pair of drawers for a dollar,
and by working early and late could sometimes earn two dollars in the
week. The wife of another soldier, still fighting to uphold the flag,
worked on great-coats for the contractors at thirty cents each, and
earned eighty cents a week, keeping herself and three children on that!
A wounded hero came home to die, and did so, after lingering six months
dependent on his wife. With six children, she could earn only two
dollars and a quarter a week, though working incessantly. She did
contrive to feed them, but they went barefoot all winter.
An aged woman worked on tents, making in each tent forty-six
button-holes, sewing on forty-six buttons, then buttoning them together,
then making twenty eyelet-holes,--all for sixteen cents. After working a
whole day without tasting food, she took in her work just five minutes
after the hour for receiving and paying for the week's labor. She was
told there was no more work for her. Then she asked them to pay her for
what she had just delivered, but was refused. She told them she was
without a cent, and that, if forced to wait till another pay-day, she
must starve. The reply was, "Starve and be d----d! That is none of my
business. We have our rules, and shall not break them for any ----."
A soldier's wife had bought coal by the bucketful all winter, at the
rate of sixteen dollars a ton, and worked on flannel shirts at a dollar
and thirty cents a dozen. She was never able to eat a full meal, and
many times went to bed hungry. A tailor gave to another sewing-woman a
lot of pantaloons to make up. The cloth being rotten, the stitches of
one pair tore out, but by exercising great care she succeeded in getting
the others made up. When she took them in, he accused her of having
ruined them, and refused to pay her anything. She threatened suit,
whereupon he told her to "sue and be d----d," and finally offered a
shilling a pair, which her necessities forced her to accept. Another
needle-woman worked on hat-leathers at two and a half cents a dozen. She
found her own silk and cotton, and put upwards of five thousand stitches
into the dozen leathers. How could such a slave exist? Her four children
and herself breakfasted on bread and molasses, with malt coffee
sweetened with molasses. They dined on potatoes, and made a quarter peck
serve for three meals!
So much for the mercy of the Government and the conduct of the trade.
Now for the doings of those who claimed to belong to the religious
class. One public praying man paid less than any other contractor, and
frequently allowed his hands to go unpaid for two or three weeks
together. Another would give only a dollar for making thirteen shirts
and drawers, of which a woman could finish but three in a day. One of
those in his employ, becoming weary of such low pay, applied for work at
another tailor's. There she found the inspector cursing an aged woman.
When solicited for work, he told the applicant to "clear out and be
d----d; he didn't want to see anything in bonnet or hoops again that
day."
What but fallen women must some of the subjects of such atrocious
treatment become? It was ascertained from a letter sent by one of this
class, that she had given way under the pressure of starvation. She
said,--
"I was once an innocent girl, the daughter of a clergyman. Left an
orphan at an early age, I tried hard to make a living, but, unable to
endure the hard labor and live upon the poor pay I received, I fell into
sin. Tell your public that thousands like me have been driven by want to
crime. Tell them, that, though it is well to save human souls from
pollution, it is better that they shall be kept pure, and know no
shame."
Another confessed as much; but how many more were driven to the same
alternative, who remained mute under their shame, no one can tell. Yet
the men who thus drove virtuous women to despair were amassing large
fortunes. Their names appeared in the newspapers as liberal contributors
to every public charity that was started,--to sanitary fairs, to
women's-aid societies, to the sick and wounded soldiers, to everything
that would be likely to bring their names into print. They figured as
respectable and spirited citizens. Of all men they were supremely loyal.
Loyal to what? Not to the cause of poor famishing women, but to their
own interest. Some of them were church-members, famous as class-leaders
and exhorters, powerful in prayer, especially when made in public,
counterparts of the Pharisees of old. Their wives and daughters wore
silk dresses, hundred-dollar shawls, and had boxes at the opera.
What would have been said of this unheard-of robbery by the men who won
victories at Gettysburg and Atlanta, had they known that it was
committed on the wives and mothers whom they had left behind? These
women gave up husbands and sons to fight the battles of the nation,
never dreaming that those who remained at home to make fortunes would
seek to do so by starving them. They considered the first sacrifice
great enough; but here was another. Who but they can describe how
terrible it was?
On this subject employers have generally remained silent, offering few
rebuttals to these charges of cruelty, extortion, and robbery. The
sewing-women and their friends have remonstrated, but the oppressors
have rarely condescended to reply. Even those of the same sex, who have
large establishments and employ numbers of women, have seldom done so.
This silence has been significant of inability, an admission of the
facts alleged.
Philanthropy has not been idle, however, while these impositions on
sewing-women have been practised. Numerous plans for preventing them,
and for otherwise improving the condition of the sex, have been
proposed, some of which have been put into successful operation,--the
object sought for being to diversify employment by opening other
occupations than that of the needle. It is a settled truism, that the
measure of civilization in a nation is the condition of its women. While
heathen and savage, they are drudges; when enlightened by education and
moulded by Christianity, they rise to the highest plane of humanity.
When a Neapolitan woman gave birth to a girl, it was, until very
recently, the custom of the poorer classes to display a black flag from
an upper window of the house, to avoid the unpleasant necessity of
informing inquirers of the sex of the infant. Even at the birth of a
child in the higher ranks, the midwife and physician who are in
attendance never announce to the anxious mother the sex of the newly
born, if a girl, until pressed to disclose it, because a female child is
never welcome.
It is much the fashion of the times to say that the sphere of woman is
exclusively within the domestic circle. It is highly probable that the
great majority desire no wider range; but even in the obscure quietude
of that circle they are subject to a thousand chances. We see what kind
of husbands many women obtain,--and that even the most deserving are at
times overtaken by sickness or poverty, and then are left with no
certain means of living. Poets and novelists may limit their destiny to
that of being beautiful and charming, but the wise and considerate have
long since seen that some comprehensive improvement in their condition
is needed. Their resources must be enlarged and made available. It will
increase their self-respect, and make them spurn dependence on the
charity of friends. I am inclined to think that all true women are
working-women,--at least they would be such, if they could obtain the
proper employment. American girls cannot all become house-servants,
and few of them are willing to be such. Their aspirations are
evidently higher. They have sought the factory, the bindery, the
printing-office,--thus graduating, by force of their own inherent
aptitude for better things, to a higher and more intellectual
occupation, leaving the Irish and Germans in undisputed possession of
the kitchen.
A volume has been printed, giving a list of employments suitable for
women, but meagre in practical suggestions how to secure them. It was
thought that the war would bring about a brisk demand for female labor,
as great armies cannot be collected without causing a corresponding
drain from many occupations into which women would thus find admission.
But the melancholy facts already recited show how fallacious the idea
is, that war can be in any way a blessing to the sex. If some have been
employed in consequence, multitudes who had been previously supported by
their husbands have been compelled to beg for work. The war has
everywhere brought poverty and grief to the humbler classes of American
women.
It is true that in the West, where the foreign population is large, the
German women go into the fields, and plough, and sow, and reap, and
harvest, with all the skill and activity of the men. It is equally true
of other sections of our country, in which no harvests would be
gathered, but for female help. But these are exceptional cases; and
these women can live without working on shirts at five to eight cents
apiece.
While the distress was greatest in our city, some one advertised for two
men, to be employed in a millinery establishment, who were acquainted
with trimmings, and before the day had passed, sixty applicants had
presented themselves for the situation: the men had not become scarcer.
Another shop, which advertised for three girls, at a dollar and a half a
week, "intelligent, genteel girls," as the advertisement read, was so
overrun before night with applications for even that pitiful
compensation, that the proprietor lost his temper under the annoyance,
and drove many away with insult and abuse. If the war gives employment
to women in the fields, it affords an insufficient amount of it in the
cities.
There are more female beggars in our streets, with infants in their
arms, than ever before. The saloons and beer-shops, stripped of their
male bar-tenders, have adopted female substitutes, driven by necessity
to take up with an employment that always demoralizes a woman. The
surgical records of the army show, that, among the wounded brought into
the hospitals, many women have thus been discovered as soldiers. Others
have been detected and sent home, Many of these heroines declared that
they entered the army because they could find no other employment. The
incognito they had preserved was strongly confirmatory of their
truthfulness. These are some of the minor effects of the war upon our
sex. Many have been sadly demoralizing, while probably very few have
been in any way beneficial.
It is one of the curiosities of the study how to improve the condition
of women, that the most eccentric plans have originated with their own
sex. The deportation of girls from England to Australia and other
colonies, where the majority of settlers are single men, is patronized
and presided over by ladies. It has been so extensive as to confer the
utmost benefit on distant settlements, equalizing the disparity of the
sexes, promoting a higher civilization by a proper infusion of female
society, and providing homes for thousands of virtuous, but friendless
and dependent girls, who had found the utmost difficulty in obtaining
even a precarious living. The exodus of American girls from New England
to California, as teachers first and wives afterwards, which some years
ago took place, originated with an American lady, who personally
superintended the enterprise. All through the West there are families
whose mothers are of the same enterprising class, while the South is not
without its representatives. There is a tribe of writers whose study it
is to ridicule and sneer at these humane and truly noble efforts to make
dependent women comfortable; but happily their sarcasm has been
unavailing.
I knew a young girl who was without a single relation in the world, so
far as she was aware. She had been picked up from a curb-stone in the
street, at the foot of a lamp-post, when perhaps only a week old,--her
mother having abandoned her to the charity of the first passer. She was
found by the watchman on his midnight beat, who, having no children,
adopted her as his own. One may feel surprised that foundlings are so
frequently adopted into respectable families, especially when infants of
only a few weeks old. But there are solitary couples whose hearts
instinctively yearn for the possession of children. Providence having
denied them offspring, they fill the void in their affections by taking
to their bosoms the helpless, friendless, and abandoned waifs of others.
Foundlings are preferred, because there is no chance of their
reclamation; the mother never troubles herself to demand possession of
her child; she may remember it, but it is only to rejoice at having cast
it off. The new parents are not annoyed by outside interference. The
foundling grows in their affections; they love it as they would their
own offspring; it cannot be torn away from them.
When only ten years of age, the protectors of the child referred to both
died, and she was turned loose to shift for herself. For three years she
underwent all the hardships incident to changing one bad mistress for
another, being poorly clothed, half fed, her education discontinued,
even the privilege of the Sunday school denied her, a total stranger to
kindness or sympathy.
An agent of a children's-aid society one day saw her washing the
pavement in front of her mistress's house, and being struck by her
shabby dress and evidently uncared-for condition, accosted her and
ascertained the principal facts of her little history. She was of just
the class whom it was the mission of the society to save from the
destitution and danger of a totally friendless position, by sending them
to good homes in the West. Thither she went, liberated from an
uncompensated bondage to the scrubbing-brush and washtub, and was
ushered into a new and joyous existence by the agency of one of the
noblest charities that Christian benevolence ever put it into the human
heart to extend to orphan children. The foundling of the lamp-post, thus
having an opening made for her, improved it and prospered. Out of the
atmosphere of city life, she grew up virtuous and respected. Her true
origin had been charitably concealed; she was known as an orphan; it
would have done no good to have it said that she was a foundling. She
married well, and became the mother of a family.
Hundreds of street-tramping orphan girls, with surroundings more
unfriendly to female purity than those of this foundling, have been
taken from the lowest haunts of a shocking city-life by the same noble
charity, and introduced into peaceful country homes, where they have
grown up to be respectable members of society. In this emigration effort
women have been conspicuous actors. In England they have been equally
prominent in promoting the emigration of nearly half a million of
unmarried females to the various colonies. They publish books, and
pamphlets, and magazines, and newspapers, in advocacy of the movement.
Educated and intellectual ladies leave wealthy homes and accompany their
emigrants on voyages of thousands of miles, to see that they are
comfortably cared for.
It would seem that in the ordering of Divine Providence there will
always be a multitude of women who do not marry. It is shown by the
census of every country in which the population is numbered
periodically, that there is an excess of females. In England there are
thirty women in every hundred who never marry, and there are three
millions who earn their own living. It is there contended that all
effort is improper which is directed toward making celibacy easy for
women, and that marriage, their only true vocation, should be promoted
at any cost, even at that of distributing through the colonies England's
half million of unmarried ones. Some declare that it is impossible to
make the labor of single women remunerative, or their lives free and
happy. But if the occupations of women were raised and diversified as
much as they might be, such impossibility would of itself be impossible.
If it is to be granted that a woman possesses only inferior powers, let
her be taught to use such powers as she has.
I doubt not that He who created woman has some mission, some purpose,
for those who, in His divine ordering, remain single. There is a church
which has taken note of this great fact, and devotes its single women to
cloisters or to hospitals, sometimes to useful objects, sometimes to
improper ones,--but seeing that they are a numerous class, it has
specifically appropriated them. I presume the lesson of a single life,
the necessity of living alone, must be a difficult one to learn. The
heart, the young heart always, is perpetually seeking for something to
love. Amid the duties of the household, around the domestic fireside,
this loving spirit has room for growth, expansion, and intensity. The
soft tendrils which it is ever throwing out find gentle objects to which
they may cling with indissoluble attachment. Solitude is fatal to the
household affections. The single woman lives in a comparative
solitude,--a solitude of the heart.
Yet it cannot be denied that even such hermitesses find compensations in
their retirement. If one resolve to remain single,--and it must require
strength of mind to come to this determination,--it is remarkable how
Nature fits such a woman for a position for which she could not have
been created. She takes her stand with a power of endurance not exceeded
by that of the other sex, and becomes more independent and at ease than
they. Let man's condition be what it may, whether rich or poor, he will
find his home cheerless and uncomfortable without the presence of a
woman. His desolateness at an hotel or boarding-house is proverbial. He
is unceasingly conscious that he has no home. But the single woman can
create one for herself.
Go into the cells of any prison for women, and those who never visited
such abodes will be astonished at the neatness, the order, the
embellishments, which many of them display. The home feeling that seems
to be natural to most of us develops itself here with affecting energy.
No man could surround his penitential cell with graces so profuse and
pleasing as do some of these unfortunate women.
Thus, go where a woman may, a native instinct teaches and qualifies her
to make a home for herself. If single, taste and housewifery are
combined within even the narrow limits of one or two rooms. Her
singleness need not chill the heart,--for there are other things to love
than men. The power to make tender friendships was born with her, and is
part of her nature; nor does it leave her now. She has, moreover, the
proud satisfaction of knowing that she has never lived to tempt others
to an act of sin and shame. But are the men who live equally solitary
lives as guiltless as she?