All of us children were sent to the public school as soon as we were old
enough. There was no urgency required to get us off in the morning, as
we were too fond of books and reading to be found lagging as to time,
neither were we often caught at the tail of a class. Fred was
particularly smart in his studies, and was generally so much in advance
of myself as to be able to give me great assistance in things that I did
not fully understand, and there was so much affection between us that he
was always ready to play the teacher to us at home.
When fifteen years old, I was taken from school,--my education was
finished,--that is to say, I had received all I was to get, and that was
supposed to be enough for me: I was not to shine in the world. Though
far short of what the children of wealthy parents receive at fashionable
establishments, yet it was quite sufficient for my station in life,
which no one expected me to rise above. I had not studied either French
or music or dancing, nor sported fine dresses or showy bonnets; for our
whole bringing up was in keeping with our position. Was I not to be a
sewing-girl?--and how improper it would have been to educate me with
tastes which all the earnings of a sewing-girl would be unable to
gratify! I presume, that, if we had had the means, notwithstanding our
peculiarly strict training, we should have been indulged in some of
these superfluities. I know that I could easily have learned to enjoy
them quite as much as others do. But we were so taught at home that the
desire for them was never so strong as to occasion grief because it
could not be gratified. I think we were quite as happy without them.
As soon as I had left school, my mother installed me as her assistant
seamstress. She had at intervals continued to work for the slop-shops,
in spite of the low prices and the discourteous treatment she received;
and now, when established as her regular helper, I saw and learned more
of the trials inseparable from such an employment. I had also grown old
enough to understand what they were, and how mortifying to an honorable
self-respect. But I took to the needle with almost as great a liking--at
least at the beginning--as to my books. The desire to assist my mother
was also an absorbing one. I was as anxious to make good wages as she
was; for I now consumed more stuff for dresses, as well as a more costly
material, and in other ways increased the family expenses. It was the
same with Fred and Jane,--they were growing older, and added to the
general cost of housekeeping, but without being able to contribute
anything toward meeting it.
A girl in my station in life feels an honorable ambition to clothe
herself and pay for her board, as soon as she reaches eighteen years of
age. This praiseworthy desire seems to prevail universally with those
who have no portion to expect from parents, if their domestic training
has been of the right character. It does not spring from exacting
demands of either father or mother, but from a natural feeling of duty
and propriety, and a commendable pride to be thus far independent. If
able to earn money at any reputable employment, such girls eagerly
embrace it. They pay their parents from their weekly wages as
punctually as if boarding with a stranger, and it is to many of them a
serious grief when dull times come on and prevent them from earning
sufficient to continue these payments.
So unjustly low is the established scale of female wages, that girls of
this class are rarely able to save anything. They earn from two to three
dollars per week, and in thousands of cases not more than half of the
larger sum. It is because of these extremely small wages that the price
of board for a working-woman is established at so low a figure,--being
graduated to her ability to pay. But low as the price may be, it
consumes the chief part of her earnings, leaving her little to bestow on
the apparel in which every American woman feels a proper pride in
clothing herself. She must dress neatly at least, no matter how the
doing so may stint her in respect of all bodily or mental recreation;
for, with her, appearance is everything. A mean dress would in many
places exclude her from employment,--while a neat one would insure it.
Then, if working with other girls in factories, or binderies, or other
places where girls are largely employed, and where even a fashionable
style of dress is generally to be observed, she feels it necessary to
maintain a style equal to that of her fellow-workers. Thus the tax
imposed upon her by the absolute necessity of keeping up a genteel
appearance absorbs all the remainder of her little earnings.
Not so with the servant-girl in a family. She pays no board-tax,--her
earnings are all profit. But thus having more to spend on dress, she
clothes herself in expensive fabrics, until she generally outshines even
her mistress. So numerous is this class in our country, so high are
their wages, and so uniformly do they spend their earnings in costly
goods of foreign manufacture, all now paying an excessive import duty,
that I am half inclined to think these foreign cooks and chambermaids
may even be depended on to pay the interest of the public debt, if not
the great bulk of the debt itself. Their consumption of imported fabrics
on which a high duty is levied is very large, and no increase of price
seems to prevent them from continuing to purchase. Whoever shall inquire
of a shopkeeper on this subject will be told that this class of women
generally buy the most expensive goods. Indeed, one has only to observe
them in the street to see that they all have silks as essential to their
outfit, with abundance of laces and other foreign stuffs.
The change from the low wages, the hard work, and the mean fare in
Ireland to the high pay, the light work, and the abundant food of the
kitchens in this country, seems to produce a total revolution in their
habits and aspirations. Look at them as they land upon our wharves, all
of them in the commonest attire, the very coarsest shoes, many without
bonnets. Mark the contrast in their appearance which only a few months'
employment as cooks or chambermaids produces. Every thread of the cheap
home-made fabrics in which they came to this country has disappeared;
and in place of them may be seen flashy silks or equally flashy chintzes
or delaines, all the product of foreign looms. Every dollar they may
have thus far earned has been spent in personal adornment. At home,
extremely low wages and scanty employment made money comparatively
unattainable. Here, high wages and an active competition for their
services have put money into their hands so plenteously as to open to
them a new life. They see that American women generally dress
extravagantly; that even their own countrywomen whom they meet on their
arrival here are expensively attired; and the power of these pernicious
examples is such, that, when aided by that natural fondness for personal
decoration which I freely confess to be inherent in my sex, they begin
their new career by imitating them. At home, public example taught them
to be saving of their money; here, it teaches no other lesson than to
spend it. There, it came slowly and painfully, and was consequently
valued; here, it comes readily and for the asking, and is parted with
almost as quickly as it has been earned. I have never been the victim of
this common infatuation, to spend my last dollar on a dress that would
not become my station; I have been the architect of my own bonnets; I
have never been the owner of a silken outfit.
The idea of this class of women being large enough to pay the interest
on our public debt, in the shape of duties on the imported goods which
they consume, will of course excite a smile in all to whom it is
suggested. It will be a wonder, moreover, how the attention of a quiet
sewing-girl like myself should have been drawn to a subject so
exclusively within the domain of masculine thought. But all know that
the nation has been feeling the pressure of a universal rise of prices.
When any woman comes to buy the commonest article of dry goods for the
family, she finds that foreign fabrics are generally much higher in
price than goods of the same quality made in this country. On asking the
reason for this difference, she is told it is owing to the tariff, to
the greatly enhanced duty that has been put on foreign goods, and that
those who buy and consume them must pay this duty in the shape of an
increase of price. I have resolutely refused to purchase the imported
goods, and preferred those made at home, thus unconsciously becoming a
member of the woman's league for the support of domestic manufactures.
But it is not so with the army of foreign servant-girls among us. They
choose the finest and most expensive articles, loaded as they are with a
heavy duty. There are millions of American women who purchase in the
same way. This craving after foreign luxuries seems to be unconquerable
by anything short of absolute inability to indulge in it. But I suppose
there must always be somebody to purchase and consume these imported
goods. And perhaps, after all, it is well that there should be; for if
the nation is to pay a great sum every year for interest out of its
import duties, it could hardly raise the means, unless there were an
army of thoughtless American women and Irish servant-girls to help it do
so. If they are willing to undertake the task, I am sure they have my
consent.
If the reader should be surprised at the idea of the interest on the
public debt being paid from the extravagance of one class of women, he
will be more so at the assertion made by a speaker in the highest
deliberative body in the country, that another class would be able to
pay the debt itself. He said our dairy-women alone were able to do
it,--that in ten years they would churn it out,--because within that
short period they would produce butter enough to discharge the whole
amount. This may be all true; for how should I know the number of cows
in this country, or the disposition of the dairy-maids? But I presume he
had not consulted them as to whether they were willing to milk cows and
churn butter for a term of ten years for the sole benefit of the nation.
I am inclined to think they would make no such patriotic sacrifice,
except on compulsion. But with tawdry servant-girls and equally tawdry
ladies, the case is widely different; the latter pursue their great task
voluntarily; indeed, it would seem that they rather enjoy it; so that
the more one reflects on the idea, the less absurd does it appear.
It is very certain that the Irish who come among us have for many years
been sending home millions of dollars to pay the passage hither of
friends whom they had left behind. When these friends arrive here, and
have earned money enough, they repeat the process of sending for others
whom they in turn have left. The most limited inquiry will show how
universal this system of thus helping one another has become. Thus the
stream of remittances swells annually. The millions of money so
transmitted proves the ability of this class to achieve great pecuniary
results in a certain direction. That they thus exert themselves is
strong evidence of the intense affection existing among them. There are
innumerable instances of the father of a large family of children coming
out as a pioneer, then sending for the most useful child, and their
joint savings being devoted to sending for others, until finally the
amount becomes large enough to bring the mother with the younger
children,--the latter being meanwhile generally supported at home from
savings remitted with affectionate punctuality from this country, until
the happy day when they, too, receive the order for a passage. Many
times the entire family of a widowed mother, with the mother herself,
has been thus transferred to our shores from the savings of the son or
daughter who first ventured over. I refer to this remarkable trait in
the Irish character, not to censure, but to praise.
But they remit only a fraction of their total earnings, yet that
fraction constitutes a very large sum. The remainder, which so many of
them spend principally in dress, must be enormous. I have neither the
taste nor the talent for reducing it to figures; but the more one looks
at this question, the more reasonable does the idea seem that the Irish
servant-girls, together with the flash women of this country, have
deliberately undertaken to pay the interest on our great national debt.
How much it costs to clothe one of these gaudy creatures I cannot say;
but the silks and finery worn by them are known to every shopkeeper as
expensive articles. As I have never been able to indulge in such, I have
been content to admire them as they flirted by me in the street, or
swept up the aisles of our church on Sunday. It is so natural for a
woman to admire ornament in dress, that I could not avoid being struck
with the finish of an exquisite bonnet, the shape of a fashionable
cloak, or the pattern of an elegant collar. All these were paraded
through the streets and in the church, as much to my gratification as to
that of the wearers. They felt a pride in making the display, and a
pleasure in beholding it. I was like the poor lodger in the upper story
of an old house, the windows of which overlooked a magnificent garden.
The wealthy proprietor had lavished on his domain all that taste and art
and money could command to make it gorgeous with shrubbery and flowers.
The poor lodger, equally fond of floral beauties, beheld their glories,
and inhaled their soft perfumes, as fully and as appreciatively as the
owner. No emotion of envy disturbed her,--no longing to possess that of
which she enjoyed gratuitously so abundant a share. Her mere oversight
was all the possession she desired.
It was ever thus with me when the fine dresses of others swept by me
over the pavement. I confess that I admired, but no repining thought
ever came to disturb the perfect contentment with which I regarded my
plainer costume. It was no grief to me to be unable to indulge in these
luxuries. I saw them all, which was more than even the wearers could
say. They wore them for the gratification of the crowd of lookers-on;
and if the crowd were gratified, their mission was fulfilled. But I did
sometimes think upon the cost of these expensive outfits,--how some
girls equally poor with me must toil and struggle to obtain means for an
indulgence so unbecoming their position,--how others, the wealthy ones,
who, having never earned a dollar, knew nothing of its value, clothed
themselves with all the lavish finery that money could command, while
the meek sewing-girl who passed them on her way to the tailor's might
perhaps be kept from starving by the sums expended on the rich silks
which hung round them in superfluous flounces, or the costly brilliants
which depended from their ears.
It was said by Solomon, that "every wise woman buildeth her house." It
was averred by another wise man, that the mother of a family must
furnish it with brains, and that he never knew a man or woman of large
capacity who had a foolish mother. It is historically true that the
great men of all ages have been the children of wise and careful
mothers. Such women understand the art of skilfully managing the whole
machinery of the family. Taste and manners come to such by nature. They
cultivate the heart, the mind, and the conscience. They moderate the
aspirations of their daughters, and purify and elevate those of their
sons. It is from the influence which such mothers exercise over the
household that respectability and happiness result. My mother taught us
moderation in our views, and conformity to our position in life,
especially to avoid overstepping it in the article of dress. She was at
the very foundation of our house; it may be said that she built it.
While, therefore, our appearance was uniformly neat and genteel, none of
us were at any time dressed extravagantly. Thus educated from childhood,
it became a fixed habit of the mind to feel no envious longings at the
display which others made.
But curiosity could not be repressed. It was always interesting to know
the cost of this or that fine article which others wore. There was
little difficulty in obtaining this information as to the outfits of our
neighbors. The fine lady invariably told her acquaintances how much her
cloak or bonnet cost, and from these the information was communicated to
the servants, whence it quickly radiated over the entire neighborhood.
The pride seemed to be, not that the new bonnet was a superb affair, but
that such a fashionable artist produced it, and that it cost so much
money. Had it been equally beautiful at half the cost, or the handiwork
of an obscure milliner, it would have been considered mean. Thus,
instead of a necessity for being extravagant, it struck me there was a
desire to be so, and principally in order that others, when they looked
on the display, might be awed into deference, if not into admiration, by
exact knowledge of the number of dollars which dangled from the
shoulders of the fashionable butterfly. This boastful parade of
information as to how much one expends in this or that article implies
an undertone of vulgarity peculiar to those who have nothing but money
to be proud of. The cultivated and truly genteel mind is never guilty of
it. Yet it somehow prevails too extensively among American women.
Display is a sort of mania with too many of them. A family in moderate
circumstances marries off a daughter with a portion of only two or three
thousand dollars, yet it is all laid out in furnishing a house which is
twice as spacious as a first start in life can possibly require. Not a
dollar is saved for the future. The wedding also has its shams. Costly
silver plate is hired in large quantities from the manufacturer, and
spread ostentatiously over tables, to which the wedding-guests are
invited, that they may admire the pretended presents thus insincerely
represented as having been made to the bride. When the feast is over, it
is all returned to the maker. Truth is sacrificed to display. The latter
must be had, no matter what may become of the former.
As I was animated by the common ambition of all properly educated girls
in my position, to pay my own way, so I worked with my needle with the
utmost assiduity. I worked constantly on such garments as my mother
could obtain from the shops, going with her to secure them, as well as
to deliver such as we had made up, each of us very frequently carrying a
heavy bundle to and fro. Should the tailor sell the cheapest article in
his shop, scarcely weighing a pound, he was all courtesy to the buyer,
and his messenger would be despatched half over the city to deliver it.
Not so, however, with the sewing-women. There was no messenger to wait
on them; their heavy bundles they must carry for themselves.
The prices paid to us were always low. As the character of the work
varied, so did the price. Sometimes we brought home shirts to make up at
only twenty cents apiece, sometimes pantaloons at a trifle more, and
sometimes vests at a shilling. No fine lady knows how many thousand
stitches are required to make up one of these garments, because she has
never thus employed her fingers. But I know, because I have often sat a
whole day and far into the night, in making a single shirt. No matter
how sick one might feel, or how sultry and relaxing the weather, the
work must go on; for it must be delivered within a specified time. I
have seen the most heartless advertisements in the newspapers, calling
on some one, giving even her name and the place of her residence, to
return to the tailor certain articles she had taken to make up, with a
threat to prosecute her, if they were not returned immediately. But the
poor sewing-girl thus publicly traduced as a thief may have been taken
ill, and been thus disabled from completing her task; she may have lived
a great distance from the shop, and had no one to send with notice of
her illness, so as to account for the non-delivery of the work; yet in
her helplessness the stigma of dishonesty has been cruelly cast upon
her.
One of my schoolmates, the eldest child of a widow who had five others
to provide for, had just begun working for a shop situated a full mile
from her mother's residence. She was a bright, lively, and highly
sensitive girl of sixteen. The day after bringing home a heavy bundle of
coarse pantaloons, she was taken down with brain-fever. It was believed
that she had been overcome by the effort required of her young and
fragile frame in carrying the great burden under a hot noonday sun. She
languished for days, but with intervals of consciousness, during which
her inability to finish the work at the stipulated time was her constant
anxiety. Her mother soothed her apprehension by assurances that a delay
of a few days in the delivery could be of no consequence; and so
believing, in fact, she sent no message to the tailor that her child was
ill and unable to complete her task. A week of suffering thus passed.
Saturday came and went without the work being delivered to her employer.
But the poor girl was better, even convalescent; another week would
probably enable her to resume the needle. On Sunday I went to see her.
She was quiet, and in her right mind, but still anxious about her
failure to be punctual.
I volunteered to call the next morning and inform the employer of her
illness. I did so. He was in a mean shop, whose whole contents had been
displayed in thick festoons, of jackets, shirts, and pantaloons, on the
outside, where a man was pacing to and fro upon the pavement, whose
vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by
who chanced even to look, at his goods. I was most unfavorably impressed
with all that I saw about the shop. When I went in, the impression
deepened. There sat the proprietor in his shirt-sleeves, a
vulgar-looking creature, smoking a cigar; neither did he rise or cease
to puff when I accosted him. Why should he? I was only a sewing-girl. I
told him my business,--that my friend had been ill and unable to
complete her work, but that she was now recovering, and would return it
before many days. Putting on a sneer so sinister and vicious that it was
long before I ceased to carry it in my memory, he replied,--
"It's of no consequence,--I've seen to it. She's too late."
Though the man's manner was offensive, yet I attached no particular
meaning to his words. But on reaching home, my mother showed me an
advertisement in a widely circulated penny-paper which we took, warning
the poor sick sewing-girl to return her work immediately, on pain of
being prosecuted. There was her name in full, and the number of the
house in the little court where she lived. My mother was almost in tears
over the announcement. We knew the family well; they were extremely
poor, had been greatly afflicted by sickness, while the mother was a
model of patient industry, with so deep a sense of religious obligation
that nothing but her perfect reliance on the wisdom and goodness of God
could have supported her through all her multiplied afflictions. Her
husband had been for years a miserable drunkard, as well as dreadfully
abusive of his wife and family. The daughter had sat next to me at
school, to and from which we had been in the daily habit of going
together. I had a strong affection for her. It was natural that I should
be overwhelmed with indignation at the man who had perpetrated this
wanton outrage, and excited with alarm for my poor friend, should she be
made acquainted with it. All day I was in an agony of apprehension for
her. It was impossible for me to go to her, as she lived a great way
off, and we, too, had work on our hands which was pressingly required at
the end of the week.
But that evening I stole off to see her. I had no sooner set foot within
the narrow court than it was apparent that something had gone wrong.
There was a group of neighbors gathered round the door, conversing in a
subdued tone, as if overtaken by a common calamity. They told me that my
poor young friend was dying! Some one, at the very hour when I was in
the shop of the unfeeling tailor, excusing the delinquency of his sick
sewing-girl, had incautiously gone up into her chamber with the morning
paper, and, in the absence of her mother, had read to the unfortunate
girl the terrible proclamation of her shame. The effect was immediate
and violent. The fever on her brain came back with renewed intensity,
and absolute madness supervened. All day she raved with agonizing
incoherency, no medical skill availing to mitigate the violence of the
attack. As evening came on, it brought exhaustion of strength, with
indications of speedy dissolution. When I reached the bedside, the poor
body lay calm and still; but the yet unconquered mind was breaking forth
in occasional flashes of consciousness. Suddenly starting up and looking
round the group at her bedside, she exclaimed,--
"A thief, mother! I am not a thief!"
Oh, this death-bed--the first that I had ever seen--was awful! But my
nervous organization enabled me to witness it without trepidation or
alarm. Love, sympathy, regret, and indignation were the only emotions
that took possession of my heart. I even held in my own the now almost
pulseless hand of this poor victim of a brutal persecution, and felt the
lessening current of her innocent life become weaker and weaker. For
three long hours--long indeed to me, but far longer to her--we watched
and prayed. Suddenly the restlessness of immediate dissolution came over
her. Turning to her mother, she again exclaimed, as if perfectly
conscious,--
"Dear mother, tell them I was not a thief!"
Oh, it was grievous unto heart-breaking to see and hear all this! But it
was the last effort, the last word, the closing scene. I felt the
pulsation stop short; I looked into her face; I saw that respiration had
ceased; I saw the lustre of the living eye suddenly disappear: her
gentle spirit had burst the shackles which detained it here, and winged
its flight, we humbly trusted, to a mansion of eternal rest.
Not until then did a single tear come to relieve me. We sat by the poor
girl's bedside in weeping silence. No heavier heart went to its pillow
that night than mine.
I have related this incident as an illustration of the hazards to which
needle-women are exposed when dealing with the more unprincipled
employers. I will not say that tragedies of this character are of
frequent occurrence,--or that the provocation to them has not been too
often given. There have no doubt been frequent instances of employers
being defrauded by sewing-women who have dishonestly failed to return
the work taken out, even giving to them a fictitious name and residence.
In such cases, an effort to obtain redress by public exposure, the only
apparent remedy, might seem excusable. But though the fraud is
vexatious, yet, as the utmost that a sewing-girl could steal would be of
small value, the resort to newspaper exposure seems to be a very harsh
mode of obtaining restitution. It appears to me that vengeance, more
than restitution, is the object of him who hastily adopts it. It may
lead to sad and even fatal mistakes,--fatal to life itself, as well as
to the purest reputation, the only capital which too many sewing-women
possess.
My weekly earnings with the needle, while a girl, never reached a sum
more than enough to board and clothe me. But I felt proud of being able
to accomplish even what I did. When any little sum for recreation was
wanted, it was cheerfully handed out to me, but our recreations were
rare and cheap, for we selected those which were moderate and homely. My
father taught me to work in the garden; and there I spent many odd hours
in hoeing among the vegetables and flowers, clearing the beds of weeds,
and raking the ground smooth and even. This employment was beneficial to
health and appetite, and afforded an excellent opportunity for
reflection. He taught me all the botanical names that he had picked up
from the gentlemen for whom he worked, having acquired an amusing
fondness for remembering and repeating them. I learned them all, because
he desired me to do so, and because I saw it gratified him for me to
take an interest in such things. I do not think this kind of knowledge
did him much good; for he was unable to give reasons when I inquired for
them.
But for the use of these sonorous designations for common things was a
sort of conversational hobby with him. I cannot say that he was unduly
proud of the little draughts of learning he had thus taken at the
neighboring fountains, but rather that it became a sort of passion with
him, yet regulated by a sincere desire to impart to his children all the
knowledge he had himself acquired. There was great merriment among us
when he first began to use some of these hard botanical names. He did so
with the utmost gravity of countenance, which only increased our
amusement. I remember one summer evening he told Fred, on leaving the
supper-table, to go out and pull up a _Phytolacca_ that was going to
seed just over the garden-fence. Fred stopped in amazement at hearing so
strange a word; and I confess that it bewildered even me. Then followed
the very explanation which father had intended to give. He told us it
was a poke-bush.
"Oh," said Fred, with a broad laugh, "is that all?"
But the word was forthwith written down, so as to impress it on our
memories, and none of us have yet forgotten it. It was singular,
moreover, how the imitative faculty gained strength among us. We
children acquired the habit of speaking of all our garden-plants by such
outlandish names as father then taught us,--not seriously, of course,
but as a capital piece of fun. We knew no more of relations and
affinities than he, and so used these names much as parrots repeat the
chance phrases they sometimes learn; still, the faint glimmerings of
knowledge thus early shed upon our minds came back to us in after life,
and, explained and illustrated by study and observation, now serve as
positive lights to the understanding.
I thus learned a great deal by working in the garden, and at the same
time became extremely fond of it, taking the utmost delight in planting
the seeds and watching the growth of even a cabbage-head, as well as in
keeping the ground clear of interloping weeds. I even learned to combine
the useful with the beautiful, which some have declared to be the
highest phase of art. Fred did all the digging, and in dry times was
very ready to water whatever might be suffering from drought.
My mother encouraged these labors as aids to health. The time they
occupied could be spared from the needle, as the garden required
attention but a few months, and only occasionally even then, while the
needle could be employed the whole year round. Besides, the family
earnings were not all absorbed by our weekly expenses. We had no rent to
pay, and there was nothing laid out in improvements. Hence a small
portion of father's earnings was carefully laid by every week,--not
enough to make us rich, but still sufficient to prevent us, if
continued, from ever becoming poor.
While thus industriously working with the needle, we began to feel the
effect on female labor which the introduction of sewing-machines had
occasioned. The prices given by the tailors were not only becoming less
and less, but our employers were continually more exacting as to the
quality of the work, and evidently more independent of us. In very busy
seasons, when they really needed all the clothing we could make up, they
were courteous enough, because they were then unable to do without us.
But the introduction of sewing-machines seemed to revolutionize their
behavior. As every movement of the machine was exactly like every other,
so there was an astonishing uniformity in the work it performed; and if
it made the first stitch neatly, all the succeeding ones must be equally
neat. Hence the beautiful regularity of the work it turned out. It
looked nicer than any we could do by hand, though in reality not more
substantial. Its amazing rapidity of execution was another element of
superiority, against which, it was believed, no sewing-woman could
successfully contend.
Heretofore, I had noticed that our employers had, on numerous occasions,
set up the most frivolous pretexts for reducing our wages. In all my
experience they never once advanced them, even when crowding us so hard
as to compel us to sew half the night. The standing cry was that we must
work for less, but there was never a lisp of giving us more. At one time
the reason was--for reasons were plenty enough--that the merchant had
advanced the prices of his cloths; at another, that a new tariff had
enhanced the cost of goods; at another, that the men in their employ had
struck for higher wages. Generally, the reason alleged for the new
imposition on us was foolish and unsatisfactory, and to most women, who
knew so little of merchandise and tariffs, quite incomprehensible. The
whole drift was, that, as others laid it on the tailors, the latter must
lay it on the sewing-women. But all the reasons thus set before us I
turned over in my mind, and thought a great deal about. I never had the
uncomplaining timidity of my mother, when dealing with these men,--and
so, on more than one occasion, was bold enough to speak out for our
rights. It struck me, from the various pretexts set up for cutting down
our scanty wages, that they were untrue, and had been trumped up for the
sole purpose of cheapening our work. Some of them were so transparently
false that I wondered how any one could have the impudence to present
them. Those who did so must have considered a sewing-woman as either too
dull to detect the fallacy, or too timid to expose and resent it.
We had on one occasion just begun sewing for a tailor who was considered
to be of the better class,--that is, one who kept a shop in a
fashionable street, and sold a finer and better description of goods
than were to be found in the slop-shops,--and while making up a dozen
fine vests, were congratulating ourselves on having advanced a step in
our profession. The man was very civil to us, and had justly acquired
the reputation, among the sewing-women, of dealing fairly and
courteously with those he employed. When our first dozen vests were
done, we took them in. There was a decided commendation as to the
excellence of the work,--it was entirely satisfactory,--the price was
paid,--but if we wanted more, he would have to pay us so much less. This
was at the very beginning of the season, when such vests would be in
demand. Had it been at the close, when sales were dull and little work
needed, I could have understood why a reduction was demanded, or why no
more vests were to be given out; but now I could not, and felt mortified
and indignant.
My mother said nothing. On such occasions she invariably submitted to
the imposition without remonstrance. It is the misfortune of most
sewing-women to be obliged to bear these hard exactions in silence.
Continued employment is with them so great a necessity as to compel them
to do so. But not feeling this urgency myself, and being now grown a
little older, and no doubt a little bolder, I ventured to address the
tailor in reply.
"Why do you ask us to take less for our work, Sir?"
"Goods have gone up, Miss," he responded. "The importers charge us
twenty per cent more."
"Do you require _them_ to take less, as you do us?"
"Oh," said he, "they're very independent. We may buy or not, they say,
just as we please. Everybody wants these goods,--they are very scarce in
the market, and we must pay the advance or go without them."
"Then," I added, "if the goods are so scarce and desirable, the vests
made of them ought to be equally so, and thus command a corresponding
advance from the consumer."
"Certainly," he quickly replied, "we put the advanced cost on the
buyer."
"Then the same reason holds good to make him pay more and us to take
less," I replied, with an impetuosity of tone and manner that I could
not resist, "If you get the advance out of him, why do you take it off
of us?"