Henderson could not live on the salaries offered her. She could live if
she accepted the 'propositions' of her employers. The hope of an easier
life, the fear of death, and the natural clinging to life, turn many
working-women into the paths of shame." Miss Woodbridge further adds
that "in Paris it is an understood fact that women who are employed in
shops cannot exist without assistance from other questionable sources,
and," she continues, "unless something is done at once, this must also
become the case in our land, where we pride ourselves on our respect
for honest toil."
Helen Campbell, in her "Prisoners of Poverty," opens a little window
into the terrible temptation which comes to generous young souls under
this pressure of unrequited toil. In her true story of Rose Haggerty,
who was sewing her very life into the support of her orphan brothers
and sisters, we have a practical illustration of the results of this
injustice. "There came a Saturday night when she took her bundle of
work,--shirts again, and now eighty-five cents a dozen (it is worse
than that under some of our Boston sweaters); there were five dozen,
and when the dollar and a half was laid away for rent, it was easy to
see what was left for food, coal, and light. Clothing had ceased to be
a part of the question. The children were barefoot. They had a bit of
meat on Sunday; but for the rest, bread, potatoes, and tea were the
diet, with cabbage and a bit of pork, now and then, for luxuries.
"Nora (a little sick sister) had been failing, and to-night Rose
planned to buy her 'something with a taste to it,' and looked at the
sausages hanging in long links with a sudden reckless determination to
get enough for all. She was faint with hunger, and staggered as she
passed a basement restaurant, from which came savory smells, snuffed
longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was long in coming;
and as she laid her bundle on the counter, she saw suddenly that her
needle had 'jumped,' and that half an inch or so of band required
re-sewing. As she looked, the foreman's knife slipped under the place,
and in a moment half the band had been ripped. 'That's no good,' he
said. 'You are getting botchier all the time.' 'Give it to me,' Rose
pleaded. 'I'll do it over.' 'Take it if you like,' he said
indifferently, 'but there is no pay for that kind o' work.' He had
counted her money as he spoke, and Rose cried out as she saw the sum:
'Do you mean you will cheat me of the whole dozen, because half an inch
on one has gone wrong?' 'Call it what you like,' he said. 'R. & Co.
ain't going to send out anything but first-class work. Stand out of the
way and let the next have a chance. There's your three dollars and
forty cents.'
"Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost
her work altogether; but as she left the dark stairs, and felt again
the cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than
despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her
than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that
gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals.
"She turned toward it as the thought came; but some one had her arm,
and she cried out suddenly, and tried to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a
voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in
the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my
pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if
you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in,
and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked
toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly
food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had
fought her fight for twenty years, and it had been a vain struggle."
[Illustration: A BOSTON "BRIDGE OF SIGHS."]
When she poured her heart-breaking story into Helen Campbell's ears,
she said, "Let God Almighty judge who's to blame most--I that was
driven, or them that drove me to the pass I'm in."
Ah! but you say, even as you sigh over this fearful picture, "That is
in wicked New York." Yes, but Boston has its tragedies equally as
heartrending and shameful. During this past week a thoroughly
respectable young married woman, whose evidence is indisputable, and
who, prior to her marriage, had worked for several years as a
saleswoman in the Boston stores, told me that at one time her employer
told her that, on account of the dull season, he would have to
discharge her, but that he would give her a good recommendation, and if
she would take it to another prominent dry-goods house, which he named,
he thought she would at once secure employment. She took the letter of
commendation, and went as directed. The employing agent of the firm to
which she was sent asked her how much salary she had been receiving,
and she answered, "Five dollars a week." He replied, "I cannot pay you
that much, I can only give you three dollars a week;" to which she
answered, "I can hardly live on what I have now, and I could not
possibly live on three dollars a week." He replied, with an insulting
and meaning smile, "You would have to depend on the outside friend for
that." She looked him in the eye, and said, "I want to earn an honest
living, and I don't want any outside friend," and at that walked away.
She told her employer of her reception; and he said he did not intend
to discharge her, but had heard that this firm was in the habit of
doing that sort of thing, and was determined to find out if it were
true.
I received a letter from a gentleman in Conway, N. H., this week, who
writes, not knowing that I was intending to discuss this question:
"After you have given the sweating-system one round, can you not take
up the question of the girls working in the big stores? I have just
heard a well-authenticated account of a man high in authority in one of
the largest stores, suggesting the way to ruin to a young girl from the
country, who said, when she learned what her wages were to be, that
they would not be sufficient to give her a bare support. This not only
shows the attitude of these wealthy merchants to the souls of their
working-girls, but it shows that they are conscious of their attitude,
and have deliberately chosen to take it." I am told, upon undoubtedly
credible testimony, that another young woman who came to Boston from
the country, and sought work in several stores, was so outraged at the
vile suggestions which were made to her about means of adding to her
salary, that she went back to the house of her friend,--a lady of as
high standing as any in the city,--and cried and sobbed all night long.
She said she would beg or starve before she would submit herself to
such outrage again.
It is impossible to turn these incidents aside as exaggerations. They
are horrible, I know; but the most horrible thing about them is, that
they are true. You will say perhaps, as some have said during the past
few weeks of my exposure of the sweat-shops, "What good will it all do,
this harrowing of people's minds with these cruel stories?"
I do not know how much good will be done. I only know that I could not
retain my self-respect and keep silent.
Nothing is more foolish than for us to keep still, hoping that in some
way these wrongs will remedy themselves. Shall we look to the sweater,
the chattel-mortgage shark, the lecherous merchant, to reform
themselves? They do not care how long, nor at what a pittance, men and
women work, or to what fearful extremities they are driven. Reforms
will never come from the gold-box of Mammon. We must cry aloud and
spare not until these devilish cruelties and unblushing crimes are
impossible in our fair city.
The words of the Christ, as interpreted by James Russell Lowell, are
ringing in my ears:--
"With gates of silver and bars of gold,
Ye have fenced my sheep from their father's fold.
I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven these eighteen hundred years."
Then if we reply with the selfish assurance of some of these
pharisaical political economists who are criticising me to-day:--
"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold Thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all the land."
How his answer will put us to shame and confusion:--
"Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin,
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set He in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment-hem,
For fear of defilement, 'Lo here,' said He,
'The IMAGES ye have made of Me!'"
VI.
THE WAGES AND TEMPTATIONS OF WORKING-PEOPLE.
"Face to face with shame and insult
Since she drew her baby breath,
Were it strange to find her knocking
At the cruel door of death?
Were it strange if she should parley
With the great arch fiend of sin?"
--ALICE CARY: _The Edge of Doom._
I have been asked to give a reason for the faith that is in me in
regard to certain painful charges made by me in a recent sermon on
Wages and Morals--to the effect that the persons high in authority in
some respectable Boston stores regard favorably immoral relations on
the part of the employees, in order to make it possible for them to
live on the slender wages paid them.
Without repeating here any of the cases mentioned in my sermon, which
has had considerable publicity through the daily press, permit me to
quote Mr. Henry Chase, agent of the Society for the Prevention of
Crime. He says that in conversation with a leading Boston merchant, the
merchant said plainly that he had every reason to believe that some of
the men working in his store paid the room-rent and a trifling sum
besides to working-girls, and lived with them regularly. Another Boston
merchant said to Mr. Chase that he regarded that kind of life on the
part of his clerks favorably; that the wages these young men received
made it impossible for them to marry and support a wife.
I am informed of another case, upon perfectly credible authority, of
two young women, strangers in the city, who applied to a leading store
for a situation and were offered work, but when informed of the wages
they were to receive, exclaimed, "How could we live on such wages as
that?" The employment agent of the house replied, "It is presumed you
will have a gentleman friend to assist you." The girls looked at him
dumfounded for a moment; and when his meaning dawned upon the one who
had acted as spokesman, she burst into tears and they hurried from the
store. Only the dread of bringing unpleasant notoriety to these
thoroughly respectable young women saved this scoundrel from a
horsewhipping at the hands of their indignant male relatives.
A leading Boston lady of wealth and social standing, writing to thank
me for calling public attention to the subject, says that she herself
knew of a girl who was told to "'look to her gentleman friends' for the
means to eke out a bare livelihood supplied by her wages in a prominent
store;" and adds: "Such things are outrageous, and it is well you are
making them known." I have within the past week received another letter
from the president of the W. C. T. U. in one of the Boston wards, a
lady who has had more than twenty-five years' experience in practical
reform work in this city. She says: "I have just read in my
_Congregationalist_ the reference to your sermon of last Sunday on the
officials in two of our large Boston stores suggesting immoral means of
eking out their scanty wages to their employees. I want to thank you
for presenting this terrible wickedness existing among us, and if the
extent could only be known, every white-ribbon woman in Boston would
boycott those stores. I could call names of splendid young women,
thrown on their own resources, applying for situations, who were
cursed, as we might say, with a good face and a fine figure, fairly
insulted with offers made. More young girls have been ruined in that
way than in any other. In sheer desperation, not even earning enough to
pay the rent of a mean attic and keep hunger away, to say nothing of
clothing and other things, they have, after spending the last cent, and
not having anything to take them home, resorted to the last means."
This is a terrible letter--terribly true. I could go on, column after
column, with these details. "But," the critic says, "why don't you name
these firms, and put them in the pillory of public contempt?" I can
tell you why in a few words. You cannot name the firms without giving
the name of the young woman thus wickedly approached; and to name any
young woman in such a connection, no matter how innocent or pure she
is, is to put a mark upon her as long as she lives.
No woman is willing to run that gantlet; and so, in the very nature of
the case, it would rarely happen that you could publicly punish the
guilty party. "Well, then," says the critic, "you would better hold
your peace." Let us consider that a moment. If a burglary has been
committed in town, do you keep silent until you are prepared to name
the burglar and publicly indict him for trial? No, indeed. You tell all
the neighbors, and publish in all the newspapers, that such a house has
been invaded, that burglars are in town. What is the good of doing
this? Why, any school-boy knows that it is a blessing to every other
householder in the town. It puts people on their guard, and calls
special attention to their bolts and locks. If there is any good reason
why we should not follow the same common-sense course in this matter
under consideration, I do not know what it is.
I do not bring a broad, sweeping accusation against either class of
persons especially concerned in this article. I am no defamer of my
kind. I believe that the majority of Boston merchants are honest,
pure-minded men. I believe that the majority of Boston working-women,
old or young, are as pure and noble as any women in the world.
Nevertheless, I have stated in this article undeniable facts--facts
which I can substantiate to the satisfaction of any honest man or woman
who, still doubting, cares to see me personally about the matter. These
facts are serious enough to give us all reason for solemn and earnest
reflection.
VII.
BOSTON'S UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
"That each should in his house abide,
Therefore was the world so wide."
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON: _Fragments of Nature and Life._
When, over one-half of our land, there hung the black pall of African
slavery, no other one thing, perhaps, did more to reveal the terrible
cruelty of the system, and to arouse the indignation of the civilized
world, than Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
In June, 1882, when the _elite_ of American literature gathered at
Boston to celebrate her seventieth birthday, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes
read a poem in which Mrs. Stowe's share in the emancipation of the
colored race was recorded with equal wit and pathos:--
"When Archimedes so long ago
Spoke out so grandly, '_Dos pou sto_--
Give me a place to stand on;
I'll move your planet for you now,'
He little dreamed or fancied how
The _sto_ at last should find its _pou_
For woman's faith to land on.
Her lever was the wand of art,
Her fulcrum was the human heart,
Whence all unfailing aid is;
She moved the earth, its thunders pealed,
Its mountains shook, its temples reeled,
The blood-red fountains were unsealed,
And Moloch sunk to Hades."
Mrs. Stowe, in the preface of her son's biography of herself, aptly
quotes the words of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in the "Pilgrim's Progress:"
"My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my
courage and skill to him that can get it." May God grant us courage and
skill to use the memory of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to serve the "white
slaves" of our own time and city!
To begin by quoting from Mrs. Stowe's famous story: "The cabin of Uncle
Tom was a small log building close adjoining to 'the house,' as the
negro _par excellence_ designates his master's dwelling. In front it
had a neat garden-patch where every summer strawberries, raspberries,
and a variety of fruits and vegetables flourished under careful
training." This little log house was a small and crowded dwelling-place
for Uncle Tom and his wife and little ones, yet it had several things
in its favor. In the first place it had plenty of sunshine and pure
air. It was an individual cabin, occupied by Uncle Tom's family alone.
The climate was sunshiny; and when Uncle Tom's wife, Aunt Chloe, wanted
to wash, she could build a fire out in the open air, and spread her
clothing on the fragrant raspberry-bushes, while her woolly-headed
little flock were sent scampering over the pastures and fields.
Now let us look at the Boston cabins. In the first place, there are no
individual cabins for the poor. The price of land makes that
impossible. A big Boston tenement house means from four to ten cabins
on a floor, and from three to six floors under one roof. In a great
many of these sunlight is an impossibility. Boston is peculiarly cursed
with the rear tenement. All through the North End and some parts of the
West End and "the Cove," there abound dark courts, oftentimes reached
only by a tunnel, that are almost entirely barren of the sunlight. For
instance, there is a court off North Street, reached by a tunnel such
as I have described, where the tenement houses are three deep from the
street.
[Illustration: COURT OFF NORTH STREET.]
The inside tenement, facing on the court, through most of the year is
densely packed with people. For a large part of the length of the court
it is only four feet wide, and the front windows of the house, which is
three stories in height, look out on the dark wall which is only four
feet away. On a dark day there is scarcely any light at all in these
rooms; and on the brightest sunshiny day there is only a little light
during the middle of the day, and never any direct rays of the sun. I
found, up in one of these rooms, a young woman with her first-born in
her arms,--a pale, sickly little child, not yet a year old, that will
certainly die before the summer is out, if it stays there. This poor
young mother was born in Maine, and followed her husband down here from
the green fields and the breath of the pines. The husband works out of
the city during the day, coming home late in the evening and going out
in the morning; but all day long the mother and wife is kept here with
her invalid child. Their faces look like potato-vines that have
sprouted and grown in the cellar. They are dying for the lack of
sunshine and pure air.
[Illustration: CELLARWAY LEADING TO UNDERGROUND APARTMENTS.]
Modern science is imperative in its urgent emphasis on the influence of
light and sunshine on health; and we are told that children brought up
even in close valleys do not thrive so well as those raised on the
hillsides or the tablelands, and that families through the generations
grow smaller in stature, and less vigorous in physical and mental
force, if much excluded from light and sunshine. He was a wise old
father who lived out on the plains, and came to visit his son, who had
moved into a deep mountain gorge. At family prayers he thanked the Lord
that his son was still well, although he lived where the sun rose at
nine o'clock in the morning and set at four in the afternoon. But there
are scores of Boston tenement houses where the sun never rises at all,
except on the roof-tops, or now and then sends a slant ray, thrown down
into the dark court in seeming mockery. It is impossible for any one to
get from language alone, either spoken or written, an adequate idea of
the loneliness, the sense of gloom, the filth and squalor, of the
apartments in some of these Boston tenement houses. It requires a
strong stomach, and a still stronger determination that nothing shall
thwart you from knowing how your brothers and sisters live, to take you
the second time into such a place. Go with me into one that is not ten
minutes' walk from the mansions of wealth and luxury on Beacon Hill. We
go back through a narrow passage, where you can touch the walls on
either side of you, and then down some steps into a dark underground
court. Now you have to bend over almost double till you feel your way
to a door on your left, and knock. In answer to the "Come," you open
the door and go in, and are barely able to stand upright inside the
room. We are in a cellar about ten feet square, and this is separated
from others like it by a partition. We are really in one room of a big
cellar stretching under a crowded tenement house over our heads. We
look around us; and as soon as our eyes get accustomed to the
darkness--for the only light is from the narrow width of glass,
reaching from the ground up to the floor which forms the ceiling of the
room where we stand--we see that this is the den--for you cannot call
it anything else--of an old man and his wife. They have both passed
threescore. Their locks are white, and they are no longer able to work
as hard as formerly.
[Illustration: SICK MAN IN UNDERGROUND APARTMENT.]
They have had children, but they are dead. The two old people, waifs
from bonny Scotland, have probably made their last move, until the city
sends around its rough box and dead-cart to take them to their last
sleep in the Potter's Field. They used to live up-stairs; but as they
grew older, and were not so spry as formerly, they could no longer pay
the rent, and therefore moved down till at last they are at the bottom.
For this den of misery, in which a well-to-do Western farmer would not
think of keeping his hog, they pay one dollar per week. They have to
cook, eat, sleep, and do everything else pertaining to domestic life,
in this one dark, filthy hole. The combination of smells is
indescribable. But as you begin to sicken and are ready to flee, you
remember, with a shock, that what sickens you so in five minutes this
old white-headed man and his wife have to endure day after day, and
night after night, and on--and on--there is no hope of anything better
this side of a pauper's grave. Don't blame these old people for not
keeping their den clean. Nobody could keep it clean. There is no
sunshine, and only a little while in the day any light at all. It is
necessarily damp and mouldy. We talk with the old man. He goes fishing
and does such odd jobs as he is able. He says one of the worst things
with which they have to contend is the rats; and then he points out
places in the wall, down next to the ground, that he has filled with
little billets of wood, stuck in every-which-way, in his efforts to
keep the rats from preying on them, at night. Let us foot up the
column.
Old age, with its accompanying weakness and loss of hopefulness and
courage; darkness, with the brooding sense of gloom and melancholy that
goes with it; noisome smells, that make even a breath of the narrow,
crowded street seem like a draught from Paradise; filth, mould, and
rats that compete with you for what really has been taken from their
appropriate domain,--and yet remember that down there, in all that, and
more, for no tongue or pen can tell its wretchedness, live hundreds of
your brothers and sisters. Not the drunken and the dissolute only, for
about this place which I have described, or its tenants, there was not
the slightest suggestion of liquor anywhere. Down on North Street is an
old house which, the traditions tell us, was originally built for a
"wayside inn," in the good old days before the word hotel was so well
known as now. It is not a very large house, as tenement houses go, yet
the missionary who is with me assures me that he has found as many as
thirty families stowed away under its roof. A wall is built up around
the rear and on one side, corralling a little breathing-space or side
yard. A stable for two horses comes out of this space; and the stench
from these stalls mingles with the stench of the water-closets which
are all situated in this yard, and the united fumes rise to every rear
window of the establishment.