First, The absolute necessity of bread.
Second, A natural ability, physical and psychical; and an attraction
inherent in the ability.
Third, An absolute want of the moral nature.
Having treated these in turn, I propose to show you what practical
opposition man offers to her advance; what fault lies in herself; how
much more numerous are the occupations open than is generally supposed;
and what social obstructions have prevented her taking advantage of
them.
In this connection, I shall speak of those women who have opened a way
for their sex; and shall offer to you certain plans of action, by which,
it seems to me, the convenience and the happiness of the employer and
the employed may be materially advanced, especially as regards our own
city. Like a wise child, who from his fretful pillow takes the pill
first, and the conserve afterwards, I shall open the most painful branch
of my subject in this lecture, and turn from it as soon as the needed
impression has been made.
I ask for woman, then, free, untrammelled access to all fields of labor;
and I ask it, first, on the ground that she needs to be fed, and that
the question which is at this moment before the great body of working
women is "death or dishonor:" for lust is a better paymaster than the
mill-owner or the tailor, and economy never yet shook hands with crime.
Do you object, that America is free from this alternative? I will prove
you the contrary within a rod of your own doorstep.
Do you assert, that, if all avenues were thrown open, it would not
increase the quantity of work; and that there would be more laborers in
consequence, and lower wages for all?
Lower wages for _some_, I reply; but certainly higher wages for women;
and they, too, would be raised to the rank of partners, and personal ill
treatment would not follow those who had position and property before
the law.
You offer them a high education in vain till you add to it the stimulus
of a free career. In this lecture, I undertake to prove to you, that a
large majority of women stand in such relations to their employers, that
they are compelled to death or a life of shame. Why not choose death,
then?
So I asked once of a woman thus pressed to the wall. "Ah, madam!" she
answered, "I chose it long ago for myself; but what shall I do for my
mother and child?"
The superior has a right to every advantage which he can honestly gain,
as well as the inferior; but he has no right to increase any natural
difference in his favor, if he believe it to exist, by laws or customs
which cripple the inferior. If, as political economists tell us, it is
chiefly by man, collectively taken, that the property of society is
created; and if, on that very ground, man's interest has the first claim
to consideration,--does it not follow, that every friend of woman will
try to induce her to become a capitalist, and open to her, as her first
path to safety, the way to honorable independence? And, in this
connection, I must repeat what some of you have often heard me say, that
a want of respect for labor, and a want of respect for woman, lies at
the bottom of all our difficulties, low wages included.
I will not admit that the argument of the political economist has, as
yet, any rightful connection with the price of woman's work. "The price
of labor will always rise or fall," he says, "as the number of laborers
is small or large; and it is because there are too many women for a few
avenues of labor that the wages are so low." If man believes this, let
him help us to open new avenues, and so reduce the number in any one.
But I claim that he has increased the natural difference in his own
favor, supposing that there be any such, by laws and customs which
cripple woman; and that his own lust of gain stands in the way of her
daily bread. Just so in hydraulics, men tell us, that water rises
everywhere to the level of its source; but you may raise it a thousand
feet higher by the aid of your forcing-pump, or drop it from a siphon a
thousand feet below. And a forcing-pump and a siphon has man imposed
upon the natural currents of labor. If, in my correspondence with
employers last winter, one man told me with pride that he gave from
eight to fifty cents for the making of pantaloons, including the
heaviest doeskins, he _forgot_ to tell me what he charged his customers
for the same work. Ah! on those bills, so long unpaid, the eight cents
sometimes rises to thirty, and the fifty cents _always_ to a dollar or a
dollar and twenty-five cents.
The most efficient help this class of workwomen could receive would be
the thorough adoption of the cash system, and the establishment of a
large workshop in the _hands of women_ consenting to moderate profits,
and superintended by those whose position in society would win respect
for labor. When I said, six months ago, that ten Beacon-street women,
engaged in honorable work, would do more for this cause than all the
female artists, all the speech-making and conventions, in the world, I
was entirely in earnest.
It is pretty and lady-like, men think, to paint and chisel:
philanthropic young ladies must work for nothing, like the angels. _Let_
them, when they rise to angelic spheres; but, here and now, every woman
who works for nothing helps to keep her sister's wages down,--helps to
keep the question of death or dishonor perpetually before the women of
the slop-shop.
Why? Because she helps to depress the estimate of woman's ability. What
is persistently given for nothing is everywhere thought to be worth
nothing. I throw open a door here for some stifled sufferer at the West
End: let her open a clothing establishment, and employ her own sex; let
her make money by it, and watch for the end. When an Employment Society
or a Needle-woman's Friend becomes bankrupt in purse, it is bankrupt in
morals and argument as well. The wheels of the world move on the
grooves of good management, of success. Set these once firmly
underneath, and the outcry against our moral Fultons will be hushed.
In country villages and farming districts, there is a great deal of
harmful competition with the girls of the slop-shops, which can never be
ended until it is considered respectable for women openly to earn money.
The stitching of wallets, hat-linings, and shoe-bindings, the more
delicate labor on linen collars and shirt-bosoms, is carried on now not
merely by so-called benevolent societies who want to build churches,
lecture-rooms, and so on, but by rich farmers' wives, who keep or do not
keep servants, in the long, summer afternoons and winter evenings,
because it is work that can be done privately, and is sought to supply
them with jewelry and dress. If they will not educate their minds by
profitable reading, it is earnestly to be desired they should work, but
openly, for money, and at such trades as naturally fall to their lot.
Herb and fruit drying, distilling, preserving, pickling,
market-gardening, may yet lay the foundations of ample fortune for many
a woman. I have passed a summer amid lovely landscapes, where the women
found neither fruit nor vegetables for their table, but let the brown
earth plead to them in vain; while they stitched, stitched, stitched the
long hours away, every broken needle bearing witness against the broken
lives of women who needed in distant cities, where they stood homeless
and starving, the work their sisters pilfered, sitting at their ease
beside the hearth-stone. Their ignorance was their excuse. Let it not be
ours.
And, first, for a few general statements.
An indispensable requisite for what the Germans call a "bread study" is,
that, for average talent, it should command moderate success. "Of all
causes of prostitution in Paris," says Duchâtelet, "and probably in all
great towns, none is so active as the want of work, or inadequate
remuneration. What are the earnings of our laundresses, seamstresses,
and milliners? Compare the price of labor with the price of dishonor,
and you will cease to be surprised that women fall. Out of 5,183
prostitutes in Paris, I found that 2,696 had been driven to the streets
by starvation; and 89, to feed starving parents or children. That is 300
over one-half of the whole number."
"It is well known," writes Miss Craig, in Edinburgh, "how brief is the
career that our female criminals run. How they are recruited, it is not
hard to guess in a country where there are fifty thousand women working
for less than sixpence a day, and a hundred thousand for less than one
shilling."
When, a few years ago, the "Edinburgh Review" collected the statistics
of female labor, it found the wages about half what were paid to men.
But no reason was assigned for this difference; only, one master
gardener ventured to assert, that women ate less than men!
An advertisement in London for fifty dressmakers brought seven hundred
applicants to the door of the warehouse; and, after long waiting, a
police-officer brought the employer to explain why they could not all be
hired. Sir James Clarke tells us, that the results of the inquiry into
the condition of this class of women exceeded in horror those of the
factory commission. Eighteen hours a day was the allotted time for work;
and nothing but strong coffee enabled them to ply their needles. Fifteen
hundred employers keep fifteen thousand girls. In driving times, they
work all night. One girl testified that she had worked through the whole
Sunday fifteen times in two years.
The lace-makers also work from twelve to twenty hours; and, in families
where a peculiar "knack" is thought to be transmitted, children are put
to this work from the age of two years. There is no regular time for
food or sleep in certain stages of the manufacture; and many of these
overworked women become vagrants.
A terrible letter from a Manchester mantle-maker was lately published,
in which she pleads to be permitted to earn twopence an hour, when
compelled to work overtime (that is, over twelve hours a day); and says,
pitifully, that, if the present regulations go on, nothing but death can
save her from dishonor.
A Persian traveller, who visited the bazaar in Soho, was greatly shocked
when he found that all those young women were earning their own living;
and plumed himself on the superior happiness of the women of his own
country. What would he have said, could he have followed the clergyman's
daughter, as we must do, from a happy home and fine sewing, down,
through all the degradations of the slop-shop, to the very gutter?
But this is England.
Out of two thousand women who work for their daily bread in New York,
five hundred and thirty-four receive a dollar a week. "How many men,"
asks Dr. Chapin, "would keep off death and conquer the Devil on such
wages? One woman had to do it by making caps at two cents each! Think of
this, women who like to buy things cheap: for, if the veil could be
lifted from your eyes, _you_ would see--the angels _do_ see--on your
gay, white dresses many a crimson stain; and among the dewy flowers with
which you wreathe your hair, the grass that grows on graves!"
Seven thousand eight hundred and fifty ruined women walk the streets of
New York,--five hundred ordinary omnibus-loads. They are chiefly young
women under twenty, and the average length of the lives they lead is
just four years. Every four years, then, seven thousand eight hundred
and fifty women are drawn from their homes, many of them from simple,
rural hearths, to meet this fate. What drives them to it? The want of
bread.
Last October, two vagrant women came before a Liverpool court, who
testified that they had been driven to evil courses by blows, and forced
to support in idleness, by their vice, the father of one, and the
husband of the other.
This statement shocks you: but poor pay strikes as heavy a blow as a
husband's right arm; and these seven thousand eight hundred and fifty
women in New York supported hundreds of men in ease, before they dropped
from the seamstress's chair to the curbstone and the gutter.[12]
Tait says that the permanent prostitution of any city bears a recognized
numerical relation to its means of occupation. You ask for proof.
Out of two thousand cases in the city of New York, five hundred and
twenty-five pleaded destitution as the cause.
One of the police-officers testified of one girl, "She struggled hard
before she fell; living on bread and water, and sleeping in
station-houses. In three years, I have known more than fifty such
cases."
A young girl of seventeen was left with the care of a sick, crippled
sister. They were left to touch the very brink of despair. A kindly,
fair-faced woman brought work which saved them from death. More was
promised, on conditions that you can guess; and the toils so skilfully
woven, that the young and healthy longed for her sister's sickly face
and broken limb to ward off her fate.
"When a whole day's work brings only a few pennies," said another to
Dr. Sanger, "a smile will buy me a dinner."
Out of these two thousand women, one thousand eight hundred and eighty
had been brought up "_to do nothing_:" but, of all the trades,
dressmaking furnished the largest proportion; and yet you think you pay
your dressmakers well!
Out of the two thousand, all but fifty-one had been religiously
educated.
"It has been shown elsewhere," says Dr. Sanger, "that the public are
responsible for this evil, because they persist in excluding women from
many kinds of employment for which they are fitted, while for work that
is open they receive inadequate compensation. The community are equally
responsible for non-interference with openly acknowledged evils."
Thus far I have spoken of New York. I might speak to you of Philadelphia
and Boston, and tell you of ruin wrought under my own eyes; of the
daughter of a State-street merchant found in the gutters of Toronto
years ago; of a daughter whom that wealthy father dared not deny, when I
wrote to him, though he refused to furnish the bread that would have
kept her from sin. I know how hard it is for a true and good man to open
his eyes to the wickedness and misery near at hand. I have no desire to
draw down upon myself the local wrath of small clothiers and petty
officials. You know what wages are in England: let us go thither for our
concluding facts.
There are five hundred thousand single women in England, and one out of
every thirteen is a thing of shame; that is, there are thirty-eight
thousand four hundred and sixty-one women of the town.
Almost none of these women are drawn from domestic service. Many were
found in New York who had lived out for twenty-five cents a week, and
from that dropped to moral death.
You know what to expect from the lot of English dressmakers,
mantlemakers, and laceweavers; but does it not chill you with horror to
think that the class of governesses and private teachers furnishes also
a certain number?
There is in London a Governesses' Benevolent Institution. There were
lately before its committee a hundred and twenty candidates for
annuities of a hundred dollars a year. Ninety-nine were unmarried,
eighty-three were literally penniless, all of them were over fifty years
of age, and forty-nine of them were over sixty.
One woman had labored for twenty-six years, supporting a mother and five
brothers and sisters, all of whom she had educated at her own expense;
but she had not saved a penny. Three were ruined by attempting to
sustain their fathers in business. Six had invalid sisters dependent
upon them. These are the histories of pure, untarnished names: fancy for
yourselves the tales told by dishonored lips. The labors of Mr. Mayhew
among this forsaken class of women are probably familiar by name to you
all. To deepen the impression which I wish to make, I shall quote some
of the evidence offered by him in his letters to the "Morning
Chronicle," and close this branch of my subject. Eleven thousand women
under twenty are employed in the slop-shops. If their own words do not
touch you, mine, of course, will fail.
_1st Case._--"I work from six, A.M., to ten, P.M. In the best weeks, I
clear a dollar and fifty cents; but I only average seventy-five cents
the year round. My mother is sixty-seven, and seldom gets a day's work.
She scours pots for the publicans at thirty-seven cents a day, but is
otherwise dependent upon me. I was a good girl when I first went to
work, and struggled hard to keep pure; but I had not enough to eat. Then
I took up with a young man, turned of twenty, who said he would make me
his lawful wife; but I _hardly cared, so I could feed myself and
mother_.[13] Many young girls tempted me,--they were so happy with
enough to eat and drink. Could I have honestly earned enough for food
and clothes, I would never have gone wrong; no, never. I fought against
it to the last. If I had been born a lady, it would _not have been hard
to act like one_."
_2d Case._--"I earn seventy-five cents a week clear. My husband has been
dead seven year, and I have buried three children. I was happy so long
as he lived (here she hid her face in a rusty shawl, and burst into
tears). I was always true to him, so help me God! I was an honest woman
up to the time my security[14] died. I swear it. I am glad my children
are dead; for I could not feed them."
_3d Case._--"I was an honest woman till my husband died. I can put my
hand on my heart, and swear it. But I was penniless, and a baby to keep.
The world has drove me about so. When I want clothes, I _must_ go to the
streets."
_4th Case._--"I am the daughter of a minister of the gospel; and I
pledge my word solemnly and sacredly, that it was the low price paid for
my labor that drove me to sin. I could only make thirty-four cents a
week at shirts, and should have starved but for the street. At last, I
swore to myself that I would keep from it for my boy's sake. I had
pawned my clothes, and slept in a shawl and petticoat under a butcher's
shed. I was trying to get to the workhouse. I had had no food for two
days. My baby's legs froze to my side, and I sank upon a doorstep. A
lady found us, and would have fed us; but I could not eat. She rubbed
the baby's legs with brandy. That night I got to the workhouse: but they
would not take me in without an order; so I went back to sin for one
month. It was the last. In my heart I hated it; my whole nature rebelled
at it; and nobody but God knows how I struggled to give it up. I pawned
my only gown more than once."
Look at the frightful calmness of this story: "They would not admit me
to the workhouse without an order; _so I went back to sin for one
month_." When this girl told her story to Mr. Mayhew, she had been eight
years at service, honored by her employers. Her personal beauty was so
great, and the whole story so romantic, that Mr. Mayhew could hardly
believe that she had come to him of her own accord to save other women
from the same fate; and he took a day's journey into the country to
confirm the facts. Her employers spoke in high terms of her honesty,
sobriety, industry, and modesty. For her child's sake, she begged him to
conceal her name; and she told her story with her face hidden in her
hands, sobbing so as scarcely to be understood, and the tears dropping
through.
If you do not realize the commonness of these tragedies, may God help
you! Some of you will assert that all this is necessary; that, in this
age, a certain proportion of women must meet this fate; and wall me up
with statistics.
I tell you to bring the battering-ram of a Divine Love to bear on that
wall. You will find, then, that, just as much as it was decreed that
such women should be, it was decreed that an infinite saving power
should exist, and that you should help to make it available. You may
make these statistics what you will, not in an hour or a day, but in
_time_.
Some of you will assert that women capable of falling thus can hardly be
worth saving. I know there is some wilful vice; I do not desire to blink
the truth: but, among those whom ill-paid labor forces into sin, there
are women nobler and more disinterested than many who remain pure. Look
at the stories I have told you,--women working for their kindred; a
young girl of seventeen ruined to find bread for a crippled sister. In
New York, the thirty-seven women supporting infirm parents; twenty-nine
providing for nephews and nieces; twenty-three, widows with the care of
young children.
Those of you who have had personal experience of these women will not
need me to tell you that _they_ never pay low wages. The washerwomen and
starchers whom they employ are always well paid and well treated. They
give much in charity to save others, as they often say, from their fate,
and doubtless in the secret hope that God will permit them thus to atone
for their sin. A few years ago, three young girls lived together in
Glasgow. One of them, the youngest and frailest, a girl whose story was
like that of Mrs. Gaskell's "Ruth," had left a rural home for a
dressmaker's workroom. She fell into a decline, and, in her frequent
delirium, raved about the bleat of her father's sheep, the evening
cow-bell, and the crowing of the cock. In her lucid moments, the thought
that she must die in shame convulsed her with agony. The two remaining
girls took counsel. "There is no hope for us," they said; "but perhaps
God will forgive us if we save her. Let us send her into the country,
and work for her till she dies." And so they did, adding to the reckless
wear of their horrid life the toil of the needlewoman; but, believe me,
they never forgot the dying smile of her they had saved. Did you or I
ever make a sacrifice which would compare with that? It is painful for
me to stand here, and present this subject; it is, perhaps, painful for
you to listen: but, with such women among the ruined, only cowards, it
seems to me, would refuse to risk all things to save them.[15]
In France, where all women of this class are registered, Duchâtelet
found 1,680 who had erased their names from the list, on the plea that
they had found honest occupation. He traced them: 108 had become
housekeepers; 864, seamstresses; 247, shopkeepers; and 461, domestics.
The Society for the Rescue of Young Women, in London, admitted two
hundred members last year. It asks no questions of those who enter; and
the wisdom of this is shown in the fact, that its subscription-list
contains the names of sixty former inmates, whose subscriptions range
from twenty-five cents to twenty dollars per annum.
A terrible account has lately been published of the straw-bonnet
warehouses in London, by one who has worked in them. One single story
will show you, how that _touch of truth_, which, far more than the touch
of genius, makes the "whole world kin," revealed a noble human nature in
the midst of what seemed utter depravity.
One day, the worn-out women tried to compel a young, fresh worker to do
less than she was able, or to secrete a portion of her braid, instead of
making it up. They could not prevail. "Are you a Metherdis, miss?" asked
one woman. "I'm not a thief," she replied gently. A big, bad woman stole
her extra plait; but no one dared insult her. Once she fainted, and some
one offered her gin; but the big, bad woman started forward: "Would you
make her a devil like the rest of us?" she cried; "I'd sooner see her
stabbed!" and she got her a cup of tea from her own "screw."[16] When
they were kept late, this woman walked home with her, cautioning her
against gin, against young men, especially the gentry, and bidding her
not forget her prayers: "for," said she, "_you_ know how; _I_ was never
teached." As she parted from her one night, she said, "I don't expect
it's any use; but it would do no harm if you prayed _once_ for me." Who
will say that this woman was irreclaimable? And, in estimating the
chances of saving a depraved woman, you should always remember, that, in
nine cases out of twelve, she sold herself, not to vice, but to what
seemed, at least, to her longing heart, like _love_. Put yourself in her
place. Do not start: it will do you no harm. Think what it would be to
slave soul and body, day after day, for a crust and a cup of cold water.
Not so much would your failing body crave one nourishing meal, as the
aching, human heart within you one tender look, one loving word. If, in
your misery, you had kept some beauty; if you had known no gentler touch
than a drunken father's blow or a mother's curse,--how strong would be
the temptation when one above you pleaded for affection! See how like an
angel of light this demon would descend! O my sisters! you have never
read this story right. Such a woman is no monster, only a gentle-hearted
creature, unsupported by God's law, unrestrained by self-control. Your
scorn, the world's rejection, _may_ make her what you think. Meanwhile,
are you above temptation? Does not conscience enforce my plea?
"Some positions," says Legouvé, "attract by their ease; but it is work
that purifies and fills existence. God permits hard trials; but he has
appointed labor, and we forget them all." A serious comforter, it gives
always more than it promises, and dries the bitterest tears. A pleasure
unequalled in itself, it is the salt of all other pleasures.[17]
You have seen that a necessity to live demands of you new fields for
woman to work in; and the question arises, Is she fit for these new
duties?[18]