500,000 business-women,
94,000 shoemakers' wives,
27,000 victuallers' wives,
26,000 butcheresses,
14,000 milk-women,
10,000 beershop-keepers,
9,000 innkeepers, and
8,000 hack proprietors.
The difference between the employers and the employed is shown in the
following numbers. There are--
29,000 shopkeepers, and only
1,742 shopwomen;
since the lower class of English women are seldom taught writing or
accounts.
Telegraphic Reporters, Phonographers, and Railway-clerks, are on the
increase. In reporting the Bright Festival at Manchester last year, the
speed and accuracy of the young women were thought very remarkable. Six
whole columns were transmitted at the rate of twenty-nine words a
minute, almost without mistake, although the subject of the speeches was
political, and so supposed to be beyond their comprehension!
Several railways employ women as clerks and ticket-sellers, and the
results are more than satisfactory. Thus far the census; which has not
been without its interest, since, in English parlance, shoemaker-wife
means not merely the wife of a shoemaker, but a wife who shares her
husband's labor, or has succeeded to it on his death. Butcher-wife also
means a woman who can buy and sell stock, pickle meat, and perhaps drive
a cart through the town.
Now for the results of some private letters. When I spoke of forty
thousand Metal-workers, your minds did not revert, I trust, to those
dens at Wiltenhall, where women have been struck with hammers, files,
and even bars of iron glowing at a white heat.
Now, at least, let us visit a pleasanter scene. A man has forged and
rolled out the sheet which is soon to pass for a hundred gross of
Gillott's pens; but a woman cuts and bends and stamps, grinds, splits,
polishes, and packs it, so that her sisters may have pleasure in the
using.
It was at Birmingham that your gold chain was made. A man's strength
drew out the precious wire; but hundreds of young girls cut it to the
required length, shaped it on a metal die to the required pattern,
soldered it invisibly over a jet of gas-light, ground the facets till
they gleamed and polished the whole length to tempt the gazer's eye.
Quiet, diligent, skilful, tidy, they sit; with polished slippers bobbing
along the floor; not quite so healthy as those who labor on the pens,
for the gas and solder do an unwholesome work. Others burnish the silver
plate, sort needles, paint iron and papier-maché trays; and hundreds
more are busy cutting and polishing screws,--a work mainly in their
hands, because men cannot be trusted with the delicate manipulation.
There is a covered button, my brother, on your coat. Women cut the
metal, the cloth cover, the paper stuffing, the silk lining; a child
piles these in proper order; and, by one stroke of a magic press, a
woman throws them out a finished button.
One young girl in London began life by designing for such buttons, till
she found that she had a soul above them, and cheerfully entered an
artistic career.
Nail-cutting and hook-and-eye making employ others; and, if we take a
book into our hand, women follow us through all the stages of its
manufacture. A woman cut and cleaned the rags, counted the sheets of
paper, and set off the reams; a woman may have set the types; perhaps
some worn-out seamstress wrote the verses, or a female physician
composed the thesis: a woman _may_ print, a woman certainly _will_ fold
it down and stitch it for the binder. A woman will engrave on wood its
illustrations, or color in her own home its fine photographs or
drawings: at the very last, her white hand will touch with gleams of
gold its tinted edges or many-hued envelope.
It is women who pack cards and throw off damaged paper. I have not
obtained any reliable account of English female card-makers; but there
must be many. In an old Nuremberg rate-book are the names of "Elizabeth
and Margaret," _Karten-mächerin_, reported in 1436 and 1438. Cards were
invented in 1361. In about seventy years, therefore, the manufacture had
passed into woman's hand. In my notes from the census, I find no mention
of wood-engravers: but, in 1839, Charlotte Nesbit, Marianne Williams,
Mary Byfield, Mary and Elizabeth Clint, held honorable positions among
English wood-engravers; while, at the close of the last century,
Elizabeth Blackwell executed botanical plates, and Angelica Kauffman
engraved on steel, to the satisfaction of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In
London, recently, one accomplished female engraver has turned her steel
plates into a pleasant country-house, which she means to furnish with
the proceeds of her delicate painting on glass.
A whole volume might be written concerning English female printers.
Turning over some old books the other day in the Antiquarian Rooms at
Worcester, I came upon Elizabeth Bathurst's "Truth Vindicated," printed
and sold by Mary Hinde, at No. 2 in George's Yard, Lombard Street, 1774.
A little farther along, I found Sophia Hume's "Letters to South
Carolina," printed and sold by Luke Hinde, at the Bible in George's
Yard, Lombard Street, 1752. Good Quaker books, both of them; and the
titlepages told a pleasant story. Here, at the sign of the Bible, Luke
Hinde carried on his work in 1752. When he died, his widow kept the
establishment open, and taught her girls to stand at the forms; so,
twenty-two years after (in 1774), the place goes on in her name. No
change; only some dissenting wind has blown down the Old Bible, and a
gilded number two shines in its stead. It is the history of half the
business-women in England, and a very creditable history for Mary Hinde.
On those dishes of Liverpool ware are pretty pictures in gray ink. Women
took them wet from the copperplate, and, laying them along the biscuit,
carried it to the furnace; there the paper burns away: while others
paint and gild, or, with hideous clatter of blood-stones, polish off the
finer ware.
In the next street, hundreds of women make paperbags and pill-boxes,
without wasting a square inch of material.
Not long ago, two young girls, whose father's clerkship was ill paid,
took to making artificial teeth, and succeeded so well as to obtain
constant orders and a competence. More cheering still: a young servant,
with strong elbows, took to French polishing, and gave desk and work-box
and inlaid cabinet a gloss that no varnish of man could match. For two
or three years she made contracts with upholsterers, and kept herself in
profitable work: then Cupid pinched the strong elbows, and she slipped
out of permanent reputation as a cabinetmaker's wife.
In brushmaking, women sort the hair, and set it in the holes. The
delicate, cone-like arrangement of the badger's hair, in the modern
shaving-brush, can be made only by a woman's hand; and she who has skill
to do it well may ask her own wages.
Then there are glove-cleaners; women who strain silk, in fluting, across
the old-fashioned work-bag or the parlor-organ front; women who shell
pease and beans at so much a quart, and who make the thousands of
baskets for the fruiterer's stall. Passing the white-lead factory at
meal-times, you will see fifty women file away, whose duty it is to pile
the lead for oxidation; and thousands, very different from these, sit
making artificial flowers, many of them cheap enough, but others, from
their exquisite grace and naturalness, bringing the artist's own price.
I have purposely dwelt on all these avocations. As you have followed
me, has it seemed to you that we wanted more avenues for manual labor?
As many as you please. We are bound to inherit the whole earth. But it
seems to me that what is most needed is, first, respect for woman as a
laborer, and then respect for labor itself.
When men respect women as human beings, consequently as laborers, they
will pay them as good wages as men; and then uncommon skill or power to
work will be set free from the old forcing-pump and siphon, and we shall
see what women can do. When men respect labor,--respect it so far, that
they hold a woman honored when she seeks it,--then women of a higher
rank will seek to invest their capital in mercantile experiments; will
establish factories or workshops; will organize groups of struggling
sisters; and the class that most needs to be helped, the idle rich, will
find happiness and honor, will find help, in offering opportunities to
the lowest.
What the lowest class of women need is active brains to plan and think
for them. There are plenty of these active brains at the West End,
tingling with neuralgia, hot with idleness, dizzy with waltzing. Offer a
government testimonial to the first girl of rank who will carry her
brains to a market, and you will see what a throng of aspirants we shall
have; letting it be understood, mind you, that the public feeling
sustains the government testimonial.
Let us ask, then, a few questions about the state of female labor in the
United States. Our census is by no means so complete as that of Great
Britain; and our statements will, therefore, be less accurate.
At the close of the Revolution, there were in New England, and perhaps
farther south, many women conducting large business establishments, and
few females employed as clerks, partly because we were still English,
and had not lost English habits. Men went to the war or the General
Court, and their wives soon learned to carry on the business upon which
not only the family bread, but the fate of the nation, depended; while
our common schools had not yet begun to fit women for book-keepers and
clerks.
The Island of Nantucket was, at the close of the war, a good example of
the whole country. Great destitution existed on the establishment of
peace. The men began the whale fishery with redoubled energy: some
fitted out and others manned the ships; while the women laid aside
distaff and loom to attend to trade. A very interesting letter from Mrs.
Eliza Barney to Mr. Higginson gives me many particulars. "Fifty years
ago," she says, "all the dry-goods and groceries were kept by women, who
went to Boston semi-annually to renew their stock. The heroine of
'Miriam Coffin' was one of the most influential of our commercial women.
She not only traded in dry-goods and provisions, but fitted vessels for
the merchant service. Since that time, I can recall near seventy women
who have successfully engaged in commerce, brought up and educated large
families, and retired with a competence. It was the influence of
capitalists from the Continent that drove the Nantucket women out of the
trade; and they only resumed it a few years since, when the California
emigration made it necessary. Five dry-goods and a few large groceries
are now carried on by women, as also one druggist's shop." Mrs. Gaskell,
in her "Life of Charlotte Bronté," mentions a woman living as a
druggist, I think, at Haworth; and I have always been surprised that
this business was not left to women. Our Nantucket druggist is doing
well. In Pennsylvania, the Quaker view of the duties and rights of women
contributed to throw many into trade at the same period. One lady in
Philadelphia transferred a large wholesale business to two nephews, and
died wealthy. I saw a letter the other day, which gave an interesting
account of two girls who got permission there to sell a little stock in
their father's shop. One began with sixty-two cents, which she invested
in a dozen tapes. The other had three dollars. In a few years, they
bought their father out. The little tape-seller married, and carried her
husband eight thousand dollars; while the single sister kept on till she
accumulated twenty thousand dollars, and took a poor boy into
partnership.
I have spoken of English female printers. The first paper ever issued in
Rhode Island was printed by a brother of Dr. Franklin, at Newport. He
died early, and his widow continued the work. She was aided by her two
daughters, swift and correct compositors. She was made printer to the
Colony, and, in 1745, printed an edition of the laws, in 346 folio
pages. That she found time to do something else, you may judge from this
advertisement:--
"The printer hereof prints linens, calicoes, silk, &c., in figures,
in lively and durable colors, without the offensive smell which
commonly attends linen printed here."
Margaret Draper printed the "Boston News Letter," and was so good a Tory
that the English Government pensioned her when the war drove her away.
Clementina Bird edited and printed the "Virginia Gazette," and Thomas
Jefferson wrote for her paper. Penelope Russell also printed the
"Censor," in Boston, in 1771.
When we record these things, and think how women are pressing into
printing-offices in our time, it is pleasant to find a generous action
to sustain them. At a recent Printers' Convention held in Springfield,
Ill., the following resolution was adopted:--
"_Whereas_, The employment of females in printing-offices as
compositors has, wherever adopted, been found a decided benefit as
regards moral influence and steady work, and also as offering
better wages to a deserving class; therefore, be it--
"_Resolved_, That this Association recommends to its members the
employment of females whenever practicable."
Mrs. Barney tells us that failures were very uncommon in Nantucket while
women managed the business; and some of the largest and safest fortunes
in Boston were founded by women, one of whom, I remember, rode in her
own chariot, and kept fifty thousand dollars in gold in the chimney
corner, lest the banks should not be as cautious in their dealings as
herself. While writing these pages, I have visited such a woman, still
living in Prince Street, at the age of ninety-five. Her name is Hillman.
She lived for sixty-four years in the same house, and made her property
by a large grocery business, and speculations on a strip of real estate.
Her father, Mr. William Haggo, was a nautical-instrument maker; and she
has a very remarkable head, and as conservative a horror of modern
changes--steam-bakeries, for instance--as any of you could wish.[23]
Some of you will remember the two sisters Johnson, who, for more than
half a century, kept a crockery-shop on Hanover Street, and separated
about two years ago,--one sister to retire on her earnings; the other to
rest in a quiet grave, at the age of fourscore. The spirit of modern
improvement has since seized hold of the old shop.
It was one of the most distinguished of our female merchants--Martha
Buckminster Curtis--who planted, in Framingham, the first potatoes ever
set in New England; and you will start to hear that our dear and honored
friend Ann Bent entered on her business career so long ago as 1784, at
the age of sixteen.
She first entered a crockery-ware and dry-goods firm; but, at the age
of twenty-one, established herself in Washington, north of Summer
Street, where we remember her. She soon became the centre of a happy
home, where sisters, cousins, nieces, and young friends received her
affectionate care. The intimacy which linked her name to that of Mary
Ware is fresh in all our minds. What admirable health she contrived to
keep we may judge from the fact, that she dined at one brother's table
on Thanksgiving Day for over fifty years. She was the valued friend of
Channing and Gannett; and her character magnified her office, ennobled
her condition, gave dignity to labor, and won the love and respect of
all the worthy. Less than two years ago, at the age of ninety, she left
us; but I wished to mention both her and Miss Kinsley in this
connection, because they were the first women in our society to confer a
merchantable value upon taste.
Instead of importing largely themselves, they bought of the New-York
importers the privilege of selection, and always took the prettiest and
nicest pieces out of every case. As they paid for this privilege
themselves, so they charged their customers for it, by asking a little
more on each yard of goods than the common dealer.
I know nothing for which it is pleasanter to pay than for taste. When
time is precious (and to all serious people it soon becomes so), it is a
comfort to go to one counter, sure that in ten minutes you can purchase
what it would take a whole morning to winnow from the countless shelves
of the town.
Scientific pursuits cannot be said to be fairly opened to women here.
The two ladies at work on the Coast Survey were employed by special
favor, and probably on account of near relationship to the gentleman who
had charge of the department of latitudes and longitudes. Their work is
done at home. Some years ago, Congress made an appropriation for an
American nautical almanac; and Lieut. Davis was appointed to take charge
of it. Three ladies were at one time employed upon the lunar tables.
Lieut. Davis told one of them that he preferred the women's work,
because it was quite as accurate, and much more neat, than the men's. In
1854, Maria Mitchell was employed in computing for this almanac, with
the same salary that would be given to a man. I may say, in this
connection, that a great number of female clerks have been employed in
Washington for many years. The work has generally been obtained by women
who had lost a husband or a father in the service of his country; and, I
am proud to say, such women have usually been paid the same wages as
men. During Mr. Fillmore's administration, two women wrote for the
Treasury, on salaries of twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a
year; but the succeeding administration reformed this abuse, and very
few are now at work.
In 1845, there were employed in the Textile manufactures of the United
States, 55,828 men and 75,710 women. This proportion, or a still
greater preponderance of female labor,--that is, from one-third to
one-half,--appears in all the factory returns. As an _employed_ class,
women seem to be more in number than men: as _employers_, they are very
few. The same census reports them as--
Makers of gloves,
Makers of glue,
Workers in gold and silver leaf,
Hair weavers,
Hat and cap makers,
Hose-weavers,
Workers in India-rubber,
Lamp-makers,
Laundresses,
Leechers,
Milliners,
Morocco-workers,
Nurses,
Paper-hangers,
Physicians,
Picklers and preservers,
Saddle and harness makers,
Shoemakers,
Soda-room keepers,
Snuff and cigar makers,
Stock and suspender makers,
Truss-makers,
Typers and stereotypers,
Umbrella-makers,
Upholsterers,
Card-makers, and
Grinders of watch crystals.
7,000 women in all.
There is no mention of female wood-engravers, though we have had such
for twenty-five years; and pupils from the Schools of Design have
already achieved a certain success in this direction. To the enumeration
of the census, I may add, from my own observation,--
Photographists and daguerrotypists,
Phonographers,
House and sign painters,
Button-makers,
Fruit-hawkers,
Tobacco-packers,
Paper-box makers,
Embroiderers,
Fur-sewers; and, at the West,
Reapers and hay-makers.
In a New-Haven clock factory, seven women are employed among seventy
men, on half-wages; and the manufacturer takes great credit to himself
for his liberality. At Waltham, also, a watch factory has been lately
started, in which many women are employed.[24] In the census of the city
of Boston for 1845, the various employments of women are thus given:--
Artificial-flower makers,
Boardinghouse-keepers,
Bookbinders,
Printers,
Blank-book makers,
Bonnet-dealers,
Bonnet-makers,
Workers in straw,
Shoe and boot makers,
Band and fancy box makers,
Brush-makers,
Cap-makers,
Clothiers,
Collar-makers,
Comb-makers,
Confectioners,
Corset-dealers,
Corset-makers,
Card-makers,
Professed cooks,
Cork-cutters,
Domestics,
Dress-makers,
Match-makers,
Fringe and tassel makers,
Fur-sewers,
Hair-cloth weavers, and
Map-colorers.
I think you cannot fail to see, from this list, how very imperfect the
enumeration is: not a single washerwoman nor charwoman, for one thing,
upon it. Yet here you have the occupations of 4,970 women. Of these,
4,046 are servants,--a number which has, at least, doubled since then;
and which leaves only 924 women for all other avocations.
In New York, Mr. Jobson, formerly surgeon-dentist to Victoria, offers to
instruct women in the duties of a dentist. I do not know that he has a
single practising pupil; but he asserts that some of the most
distinguished dentists in Europe are women. A few years since, the town
of Ashfield elected two women and three men to the duties of a School
Committee,--duties for which women are greatly to be preferred. A letter
from the senior lady shows that one of them at least never attempted to
do the actual work to which she was called, considering it _out_ of her
sphere! Does any one in this audience suppose that those women felt
incapable of the duty? We know better; but they were not of the stuff of
which martyrs are made, and, deferring to popular views, set aside a
sacred opportunity. They might have so done that work as to have secured
the election of women for ever after.