"THE OPENING OF THE GATES."
"If such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never
come; heroic purity of heart and of eye, noble, pious valor to
amend _us and the age of bronze and lacquer_,--how can they ever
come?"--T. CARLYLE.
"To destroy daughters is to make war upon Heaven's harmony. The more
daughters you drown, the more daughters you will have; and never was it
known that the drowning of daughters led to the birth of sons."
This passage from the treatise of Kwei Chunk Fu upon Infanticide may be
translated so as to apply to every Christian nation. The Chinese are not
the only people who drown daughters. England, France, and America, the
three leading intelligences of the world, are busy at it this moment.
The cold, pure wave of the Pacific is a sweeter draught than that social
flood of corruption and depression which, like a hideous quicksand,
buries your sisters out of your sight. "The more daughters you drown,
the more daughters you will have." Most certainly; and if, instead of
the word "daughters," you insert the words "weak and useless members of
society,"--which is what the Chinese mean by it,--you will see that Kwei
Fu is right. Let women starve; let them sink into untold depths of
horror, without one effort to save them; and, for every woman so lost,
two shall be born to inherit her fate.
Nor need the careless and ignorant man of wealth fancy that his own
daughters shall escape while he continues heartlessly indifferent,
though he never actively wronged a human creature. When the spoiler is
abroad, he does not pause to choose his victims. The fairest and most
innocent may be the first struck down; for human passions find their
fitting type in the persecuted beast of the forest. It is not the hunter
alone who feels his teeth and talons, but the first human flesh his
lawless members seize.
If these things are so, surely it is our duty to consider well this
question of work, to suggest all possible modes of relief, and, while
waiting for the final application of absolute principles, to help
society forward by all partial measures of amelioration; for only
partial can they be, so long as the present modes of thought and feeling
continue. How little any one person can contribute toward the solution
of our difficulties, I am well aware; yet I venture to make a few
suggestions.
The "Edinburgh Review," whether prepared to recommend female preachers
and lecturers or not, _does_ propose women as teachers of Oratory; and
says distinctly, that, for this purpose, they are to be preferred to
men, as their voices are more penetrating, distinct, delicate, and
correct than those of men. I think it was a matter of surprise to
American audiences, when women first came forward as public speakers,
that, in so large a number of cases, the parlor _tone_ would reach to
the extremity of a large hall. Women, too, were heard at a disadvantage,
because popular curiosity compelled them to speak in the largest
buildings. There are a great many women, and there are also a great many
men, whose voices are wholly unfit for public exigencies; but, when you
consider that women have been wholly untrained so far, how great do
their natural advantages appear! Several female teachers of elocution in
our midst prove that this is gradually perceived. These remarks should
be extended so as to cover all instruction in the pronunciation of
languages. There may be men capable of distinguishing the delicate
shades of sound, so that a woman's voice can catch them; but such men
are rare exceptions to the common incompetency. The French nasals cannot
be distinguished accurately by a man's voice: the bass tone is too
broad, and the treble wavers in trying to find the middle rest. Pursue
the study of Italian for years with the best teacher that Boston can
furnish; and, when you first hear a cultivated Italian woman speak, you
will find that you have the whole thing to learn over again. So there
was never any teacher of the French language equal to Rachel, whose
nimble and fiery tongue never dropped an unmeaning accent nor tone; nor
of the English like Fanny Kemble, who, despite certain "stage tricks,"
in vogue since the days of Garrick, shows us what delicate shades of
meaning lie hidden in the vowel sounds, and what power a slight
variation of a flexible voice confers upon a dull passage. The teaching
of oratory and of language, then, should devolve upon woman.
"Why," asks Ernest Legouvé,--"why should not the immense variety of
bureaucrative and administrative employments be given up to women?"
Under this head would come the business inspection of hospitals,
barracks, prisons, factories, and the like; and the decision of many
sanitary questions. For all this, woman is far fitter than man. Her eye
is quick; her common sense ready: she sees the consequence in the cause,
and does not need to argue every disputed point. A shingle missing from
the roof is a trifle to a man; but, the moment a woman sees it, her
glance takes in the stained walls, the dripping curtains, wet carpets,
sympathetic ceilings, damp beds, and very possibly the colds and
illness, which this trifle involves. For this reason, she is a far
fitter inspector of all small abuses than man.
Consider, then, Legouvé's proposition. The proprietor of the London
Adelphi advertised, at the opening of the last season, that his
box-openers, check-takers, and so on, would all be women. Throughout the
whole range of public amusements, there is a wide field for the
employment of girls, which this single step has thrown open.
Women are so steadily pressing in to the medical profession, that I have
no need to direct your attention toward it; but I may say, that it is
much to be wished that women should devote themselves to the
specialities of that science. Until within a very few years, a Boston
physician has been expected to understand all the ills that flesh is
heir to; an eye-doctor or an ear-doctor or a lung-doctor must
necessarily be a quack. Women are entering, in medicine, a very wide
field. A few specially gifted may master every branch of practice; but
many will undoubtedly fail, from the want of _inherited_ habits of hard
study, of _transmitted_ power of investigation. I wish those who are in
danger of this would apply strenuously to one branch of practice; and a
great success in any one direction would do more for the general cause
than a thousand competences earned by an ordinary career.
I do not suppose there is a city in the United States,--and, if not in
the United States, then certainly not in the world,--where, if you asked
the name of the first physician, you would be answered by that of a
woman.[26] I do not complain of this: it is too soon to expect it.
Colleges, schools of anatomy, clinical courses, have not yet been thrown
open; and success, so far, has been mastered mainly by original
endowment. Genius has held the torch, and shown the way; but I want
women to remember, that, in this department, all the teachings of nature
and experience show that they are bound to excel men. Let them,
therefore, take the best way to accomplish it.
At the School of Design in New York, the other day, I pressed upon the
observation of the young wood-engravers the possibility of opening for
themselves a new career by wood-carving. It is quite common, in old
European museums, to see the stones of plums and peaches delicately
carved by woman's hand, and set in frames of gold and jewels. Sometimes
they are the work of departed saints or cloistered nuns; and a terrible
waste of time they seem to our modern eyes. Properzia dei Rossi,--whose
early history is so obscure, that no one knows the name of her parents;
while the cities of Bologna and Modena still dispute the honor of her
birth,--Properzia began her wonderful career by carving on peach-stones.
One she decorated with thirty sacred figures, holding the stone so near
the eye as to gain a microscopic power. On one still in the possession
of the Grassi Family, at Bologna, she chiselled the passion of our Lord;
where twelve figures, gracefully disposed, are said to glow with
characteristic expression. Properzia died a maiden, according to Vasari
and the best manuscript contemporaneous authority; and there seems to be
no ground for the vile stories that have clustered round her name, other
than the fact, that in her sculpture of Potiphar's wife, finished when
she knew that she was dying, she ventured to cut her own likeness. It
is not to the carving of cherry-stones, however, that I would direct the
attention of young women, but to the Swiss carving of paper-knives,
bread-plates, salad-spoons, ornamental figures, jewel-boxes, and so on.
On account of the care required in transportation, these articles bring
large prices; and I feel quite sure that many an idle girl might win a
pleasant fame through such trifles. No one will dispute the assertion,
who recalls the pranks of her young classmates at school. Do you
remember the exquisite drawings which once decorated the kerchiefs, the
linen collars and sleeves, of a certain schoolroom? The sun of the
artist set early; but I have often thought that a free maiden career in
the higher walks of art might have preserved her to us. The same fancy,
displayed in wood-carving, would have challenged the attention of the
world; and the cherry-stones also bore witness to her power. The only
practical difficulty would spring from the want of highly seasoned wood;
and that could be obviated by a little patience. Should any young girl
be tempted by my words into this career, I hope she will not give away
her carvings to indifferent friends, but carry them into the market at
once, and let them bring their price, that she may know her own value,
and that of the work.
Properzia also excelled in engraving: so did Elizabetta Sirani in 1660.
Her engravings from Guido are still considered master-pieces. We have
female engravers on wood and steel, and also female lithographers. I
want some woman to apply herself to this work, with such energy and
determination as will place her at the head of it. Let her do this, and
she could soon establish a workshop, and take men and women into her
employ; standing responsible herself for the finish of every piece of
work marked with her name. Let some idle woman of wealth offer the
capital for such an experiment, and share some of its administrative
duties. "Success" is the best argument. It would be possible to organize
in Boston, at this moment, a shop of the best kind, where all the
designing and engraving should be done by women. Why can it not be
tried? Carvers on wood, and engravers then.
I have known several English barbers,--not women of the decorative art,
like our sainted Harriet Ryan; but women actually capable of shaving a
man! Why, then, does the "Englishwoman's Journal" inform us, that, in
Normandy and Western Africa, there actually are female barbers?
I think there is room in Boston for an establishment of this kind; a
place from which a woman could come to a sick-room to shave the heated
head or cut the beard of the dying; a place where women's and children's
wants could be attended to without necessary contact with men; and with
the absolutely necessary cleanliness, of which there is not now a single
instance in this city.
When I mentioned wood-carving to women, I was thinking, in part, of the
immense annual demand for Christmas presents. In this connection, also,
I should like to direct the attention of our rural women to the art of
preserving and candying fruit. "But that is nothing new," you will say.
"Did not your Massachusetts census for 1845 enumerate certain picklers
and preservers?" Yes; but those women were merely in the employ of men
carrying on large establishments. What I would suggest is a domestic
manufacture to compete with French candies, and to occupy the minds of
our farmers' wives and daughters, to the exclusion of shirt-fronts and
shoe-binding.
Every one of us, probably, fills more than one little stocking, on
Christmas night, with candied fruit. If we belong to the "first
families," and wish to do the thing handsomely, this fruit has cost from
seventy-five cents to a dollar a pound; we knowing, all the while, that
better could be produced for half or two-thirds the money. Last year, I
purchased one pound of the candy, and examined it with practical
reference to this question. Plums, peaches, cherries, apples, and pears,
all tasted alike, and had evidently been boiled in the same sirup. Apple
and quince marmalades alone had any flavor. Now, our farmers' daughters
could cook these fruits so as to preserve their flavor, could candy them
and pack them into boxes, quite as well as the French _men_; and so a
new and important domestic industry might arise. The experiment would be
largely profitable as soon as all risk of mistake were over; and
perishable fruit at a distance from market could be used in this way. A
few years ago, we had a rare conserve from Constantinople and Smyrna,
called fig-paste. Now we have a mixture of gum Arabic and flour,
flavored with essences; made for the most part at Westboro', and called
by the same name. Yes, we actually have fig-paste, spicy with
wintergreen and black-birch! Now, what is to prevent our farmers'
daughters from making this?--from putting up fruits in air-tight cans,
and drying a great many kinds of vegetables that cannot be had now for
love or money? Who can get Lima beans or dried sweet-corn, that does not
dry them from his own garden?
Do not let our medical friends feel too indignant if I recommend to
these same women the manufacture of pickles. The use of pickles, like
the use of wine, may be a questionable thing; but, like liquors, they
are a large article of trade: and, if we must have them, why not have
them made of wholesome fruit, in good cider-vinegar, with a touch of the
grandmotherly seasoning that we all remember, rather than of stinted
gherkins, soured by vitriol and greened by copper? There are many sweet
sauces, too,--made of fruit, stewed with vinegar, spice, and
sugar,--which cannot be obtained in shops, and would meet a good market.
How easy the whole matter is, may be guessed from this fact, that,
sitting once at a Southern table,--the table of a genial grand-nephew of
George Washington, who bore his name,--I was offered twenty-five kinds
of candied fruit, all made by the delicate hands of his wife; and seven
varieties in form and flavor, from the common tomato.
I looked through Boston in vain, the other day, to find a common
dish-mop large enough to serve my purpose. There was no such thing to be
found. Taking up one of the slender tassels offered me, I inquired into
its history, and was informed that it was imported from France. The one
I had been trying to replace had been made by some skilful Yankee hand
for a Ladies' Fair. Now, what are our poor women doing, that they cannot
compete with this French trumpery, and give us at least dish-mops fit
for use?
As teachers of gymnastics, women are already somewhat employed. A wide
field would be opened, if a teacher were attached to each of our public
schools,--a step in physical education greatly needed.
No conservative is so prejudiced, I suppose, as to object to placing
woman in all positions of moral supervision. Female assistants in jails,
prisons, workhouses, insane asylums, and hospitals, are seen to be fit,
and to have a harmonizing influence in every respect. How many more such
assistants are needed, we may guess from the fact that our City Jail and
Charlestown are still unsupplied. Women of a superior order are needed
for such posts; and when will they be found? Not till labor is
thoroughly respected; not till the popular voice says, "It is all very
well to be a Miss Dix, and go from asylum to asylum, suggesting and
improving; but it is just _as_ well, quite _as_ honorable, to work in
_one_ asylum, carrying out the wise ideas which a Miss Dix suggests,
and securing the faithful trial of her experiments." Many men in Beacon
Street would feel honored to call the moving philanthropist sister or
friend; but few would like to acknowledge a daughter in the post of
matron or superintendent. Why not? There is something "rotten in the
State" where such inconsistencies exist. How thoroughly men accept such
women, as soon as they are permitted to try their experiment, we may
judge from the case of Florence Nightingale and her staff. The very men,
whose scepticism kept the army suffering for months, would be the first
to send them now; and the soldiers, who kissed her shadow where it fell,
would fill the whole Commissariat with women. When her gentle but
efficient hand broke in the doors of the storehouses at Scutari, a
general huzza followed from the very men who were too timid to break the
trammels of office. The woman's keen sympathy with the advancing spirit
of her time, taught her what it was fit to do; and, if the rippling
smiles of suffering men had not rewarded her when the bedding and stores
were distributed, the warm encomiums of her Queen, whose heart she had
so truly read, must have done it. Following out this train of
reflection, I have often thought it would some day fall to women, and to
women alone, to exercise the function of parish minister! I do not mean
"parish preacher." I hold pulpit graces cheap by the side of that
fatherly walk among his people, which has made the name of Charles
Lowell sacred to the West Church. Go back to the history of the first
church in every town: see how the minister knew the story of every heart
in his parish; how he kept his eye on every lonely boy or orphan girl;
how widowed mothers took his counsel about schools and rents; how
forlorn old maids trusted to him to make all "things come round right;"
how the lad, inclining to wild courses, found no better friend than he.
How is it now? The minister has his Sunday sermons, his annual addresses
before certain societies, his weekly association. In the old time, such
things were done, yet not the other left undone. Now the lonely boy or
orphan girl must seek out the minister,--and how likely this is to
happen everybody knows; the mother must tell over the story of her
widowhood, pained to see how "in course" it falls upon that wearied ear;
the spinster must tell again how the boat floated empty and bottom
upward to shore long years ago, and so no one was "spared to keep all
right;" and the wild lad--alas! how many such do the clergy save now?
As I see such things,--and I do see them often,--as I realize that
change in men and times, in manners and books, from which this change is
inseparable,--I confess I see a new[27] sphere opening for women. It
takes no remarkable gifts, in the common sense of those words; only a
kindly heart, a thoughtful head, a tender, reverent care-taking, wholly
apart from meddlesomeness. Not many are the ministers now who will
pause to explain to Martha that she is careful and troubled about many
things; and that really the visionary Mary, with her dreamy eyes, is
choosing the good part. Not many can see Nathanael standing under the
fig-tree, and remind him of it at the needful moment. But if, in every
religious household, there were a deaconess, called by nature and God to
her work,--one to whom the young felt a right to go with questions home
could not answer; one pledged to secret counsel, with whom the restless
and unhappy might confer,--it seems to me the wheels of life would move
more smoothly.[28] How the unlikeliest persons are sometimes raised up
to such a ministry, let the following story tell. In the dim and dreary
precincts of the Seven Dials in London, years ago, two orphan girls were
left lying on door-steps, fed by chance charity, to grow up as they
might. One died; and the other was finally adopted by an old man, an
atheist, who had been neighbor to her parents. She grew up an atheist
also, and married,--saved by God's mercy from what had seemed her
likeliest fate. Stepping into the passage of the Bloomsbury Mission Hall
to shelter herself from the rain, one night, a shaft, winged by the Holy
Spirit, struck to her empty heart.
The next week, a lending library was to be opened in the district.
Marian was first at the door. "Sir," said she, "will you lend me a
Bible?"--"A Bible!" exclaimed the man. "We did not mean to _lend_
Bibles; but I will get you one."
How long she read, how she was at first moved, none but God can know.
But, whether from mental distress or from the sad vicissitudes of her
needy career, she became very ill, and went to a public hospital. While
there, she saw the sufferings of those who applied for its charity, and
observed that the filthy state of their persons needed a friendly female
hand. When she came out, she wrote to the missionary, and told him she
wished to dedicate all her spare time to the lost and degraded of her
own sex. "God's mercy," she writes, "has spared me from their fate: for
me their misery will have no terrors. I will clean and wash them, and
mend their linen. If they can get into a hospital, I will take care of
their clothes." You may suppose the missionary did not lose sight of
Marian, and you may guess how gladly she undertook to distribute Bibles;
going, where none of the gentry could go, into dens of misery known only
to the police-officers and herself. Spending her mornings in
distributing Bibles, and giving the kind and pastoral counsel everywhere
needed, she discovered, in the autumn of 1857, a new want, and devoted
her afternoons to teaching the ignorant women about her to cut and make
their children's clothes. Why _she_ knew better than _they_, who shall
tell? Then came the November panic and its wide-spread distresses; and,
seeing how food was wasted from ignorance, she opened a soup-kitchen of
her own. She used what is called vegetable stock: her wretched customers
liked it, and she sold it all through the winter for a price which just
paid the cost of cooking. Her noble work goes on. The stone which the
builders of our modern society would have rejected, is now the head of
the corner; and Seven Dials knows her as "Marian, the Bible-woman."
Another mission has been begun at St. Pancras, where, in one of the
worst neighborhoods, the most profligate men have gathered together,
between church hours, to hear a young lady read the "Pilgrim's
Progress," and are thus softened and led to higher things. Would you
shut those sacred lips because they are a woman's? Would you quote St.
Paul to her, and blush for her career, if she were your own daughter? I
will not believe it.
At the parish of St. Alkmunds, in Shrewsbury, the wife of the clergyman,
Mrs. Whitman, began by modest reading from house to house; a work which
has since been greatly blessed. Gently she won profligate men and women
to give up their beer, and the temptations of the "tap;" signing herself
the pledge which they alone needed.
A very important work could be done in this city by the establishment of
a proper Training School for Servants. One reason why our house-work is
so miserably done is, that it is never regarded as a profession, in
which a certain degree of excellence must be attained, but rather as a
"make-shift," by the aid of which a certain number of years can be got
through. The only thorough servant I ever had was one who had been
educated at such a school in Germany. Here would be an admirable field
for some of the women who have money and time, but no object in life.
Such a school must be carried on in connection with a good-sized
boarding-house of a respectable kind; and beside the regular
superintendents, who will, of course, be hired for the different
departments, there must be committees of ladies who should see to the
practical working of the institution in turn. This is necessary to
secure that thorough working in every department which the best
housekeeping demands. Only by intelligent, refined oversight can
feathered "flirts" be hindered from taking the place of the tidy dusting
cloth; only so will a girl learn to sweep each apartment separately,
without dragging her accumulations from floor to floor; only so can
soap-suds be kept off your oil-cloths, soiled hands from your doors, and
dust from your shirt-fronts. I do not believe a better service could be
done to the community than the establishment of such a school,
especially in relation to cooking.[29] A good many such experiments have
been successfully tried in England, but none so thorough as that I would
propose in Boston.
With regard to the lowest class of employed women, such as are employed
at home, we have, it seems to me, several distinct duties to perform.
In the first place, we need a public but self-supporting Laundry. By
this I mean two large halls, with an adjacent area, built at the expense
of the city, and properly superintended, where, for so much an hour,
women of the lower class may wash, starch, dry, and iron the clothes
they take home. A bleaching-ground would be desirable; but, if it could
not be had, a steam drying-room would be the next best thing. Good
starch, soap, and indigo should be for sale upon the premises at
wholesale prices; it not being desirable that the city should make money
out of the necessities of its poor. If such an establishment could be
had, a great many women would be changed from paupers to decent
citizens. They are tired of seeking washing; for, in their one close
room, scented with boiling onions or rank meat, without a proper area
for drying, and compelled to pay high prices for poor soap and starch,
they cannot do decently the very work which philanthropy soon becomes
unwilling to intrust to them, and for which they are compelled to charge
higher than the best private laundry. The city could buy coal, wood,
soap, starch, and indigo at manufacturers' and importers' prices, and so
give them a fair chance for competition. I hope this project, long since
partially adopted in many cities of the Old World, may find favor with
my audience.
There is in Boston no place, strange as it may seem, where plain, neatly
finished clothing can be bought ready-made. I can go down town, and buy
embroidered merinos, Paris hats with ostrich feathers, and lace-trimmed,
welted linen: but if I want a plain, cotton skirt for a child, whereof
the calico was eight cents a yard; if I want a plain, cotton print made
into a neatly fitting dress; if I want a boy's coarse apron,--such
things are not to be had, or only so very badly made that no one will
buy them. I do not want lace or embroidery or silk, or fine linen; but I
do want my button-holes nicely turned and strong, my hems even, my
gathers stroked, and, however plain and coarse, the whole finish of the
garment such as a mistress of the needle only would approve, such as no
lady need be ashamed to wear. So do others. The reasons given to explain
the non-existence of such a magazine in Boston are, first, That our
women of the middle class are, for the most part, accustomed to cut and
make their own clothes; second, That there is a prevalent but mistaken
idea, that clothes made for sale cannot possibly fit. With regard to the
first point, it may be said, that, as more and more avenues of labor are
opened for women, this class perceives that it is not good economy for
them to do their own sewing. Hands compelled to coarser or heavier labor
cannot sew quick or well, and those training to more delicate
manipulation lose practice by returning to it; so there will be a
constantly increasing class of purchasers.
As to the impossibility of fitting, that is a vulgar mistake. The human
frame is quite as much the result of law as Mr. Buckle's statistics. Any
comely, healthy form is a good model for all other forms of the same
height and breadth. Who ever heard of a French bonnet or a bridal
trousseau that did not fit? yet these things are made by arbitrary
rules. Our superintendent could find every measure she would ever need
in one of the teeming houses on Sea Street. She must take her measures
from life, not books. Nor would I have the sewing done with machines,
unless those of the highest cost could be procured and ably
superintended. The best machine is as yet a poor substitute for the
supple, human hand; and many practical inconveniences must result from
its use. It requires more skill and intelligence to manage man's
simplest machine, than to control with a thought that complicated
network of nerve, bone, and fibre which we have been accustomed to use.
Capital to start such an establishment as I refer to is all that is
needed. How desirable the thing is, you can easily see. In the first
place, if good common clothing could be so purchased, mothers need not
keep a large stock on hand: an accident could be readily repaired. In
the second, it would greatly simplify and expedite many a charitable
task. The terrible suffering which followed the panic of November, 1857,
you all remember. Purses, always open hitherto, were necessarily closed;
no Sister of Charity was willing to tread on the heels of the sheriff:
yet the need was greater than ever. Many persons who had dismissed their
servants were found willing to give a rough, untrained girl her board;
but who was to provide her with decent clothes? They could not be
bought, and to make them was the work of time and strength. May I always
remember to honor, as God will always surely bless, one woman possessed
of wealth and beauty, who did clothe from head to foot with her own
needle, in that dreadful winter, _three_ "wild Irish girls," and took
them successively into her own family; training them to habits of
tolerable decency, until others, less self-sacrificing, were found ready
to do their part!
No people in our community suffer such inconvenience, loss, and
imposition, in having their clothes made, as our servant girls. If a
plentiful supply of calico sacks and skirts or loose dresses could be
anywhere found, few girls would ever employ a dressmaker.
I have spoken of Public Laundry Rooms, and a Ready-made Clothing Room.
There is a class of women greatly to be benefited by the establishment
of a Knitting Factory. It is well known to every person in this room,
especially to physicians, that no knitting done by machinery can compete
with that done by the human hand, in durability, warmth, or stimulative
power. Invalids are now obliged to import the Shetland jackets, which
are always badly shaped; or to hire, at our fancy stores, the making of
delicate and very expensive fabrics. Men's socks and children's gloves
may be purchased; but the first cost from seventy-five cents to a dollar
a pair, and the last are of very inferior manufacture. We cannot give
out knitting to advantage, because of the dirt and grease it is liable
to accumulate where water is not plenty nor ventilation to be had; and
very good knitters of socks have not skill and intelligence to manage
the different sizes, or to shape the larger articles, such as drawers
and under-jackets for the two sexes. Coarse crocheting would answer
better than knitting for many articles.
Let a large, airy room be hired, well supplied with Cochituate. Let all
sorts of material be kept on hand, and some coarse, warm kinds of
Shetland yarn imported that are not now to be had. Let at least two
superintendents be appointed from among the women, who work _best_ for
our fancy stores; let knitting-women be invited to use this room for
twelve hours a day, or less, as they choose,--receiving daily pay for
their daily needs; and in less than one year you would have an
establishment, for which not merely Boston, but all New England, would
be grateful. I should hope that neither this nor the Clothing Room would
ever offer very expensive or highly ornamental articles for sale. There
is no danger that the interests of the wealthy will suffer. What I
desire is to provide for the needs of the lowest women and the comfort
of the middle-class customer.
The young girls in Beacon Street have now some thing to do. I offer them
the establishment of a Training School for Servants, of a public but
self-supporting Laundry, of a Ready-made Clothes Room, and a Knitting
Factory; all simple matters, entirely within their control, if they
would but believe it.
A certain human faithlessness often interferes with the execution of
such plans. If my young friends doubt, let them go and talk to Harriet
Ryan about it. She will show them, how, having taken the first step
toward duty, God always leads the way to the second. To cheer them still
further, I will tell them--for I may never have a fitter opportunity--of
the splendid success of the industrial schools in Ireland, established
in 1850 by Ellen Woodlock,--a name destined to stand honorably by the
side of Florence Nightingale; nay, worthy to precede it, in so far as
preventive measures are always a greater good than remedial. Mrs. Ellen
Woodlock has powers of statement, according to the "London Times," equal
to her extraordinary powers of execution; and it is from her own account
of the work that I select what I have to offer you.
In 1850, Mrs. Woodlock had placed her only child at school, and began to
look for something to do. A lady, who had started an industrial school
on a gift of $250 from a clergyman, asked for her help. She proposed to
teach young girls to do plain sewing. Very soon, there were more
seamstresses than customers; but God did not fail to open a way. One
poor, half-blind creature--very poor and very earnest--failed in the
plain sewing, and was put to make cabbage nets. She did it so well, that
Mrs. Woodlock taught her to make silk nets for the hair. The nets took:
other girls were taught; and Mrs. Woodlock went to all the shops in
Cork, and coaxed the merchants to buy of her. She very soon began to
make nets for exportation. Mrs. Woodlock's fashionable niece arrived
from Dublin, with a new style of crocheted net. Her aunt had a dozen
made directly; and, by showing these, got orders from all the merchants
for the new style. One day, a merchant came into the school, and saw a
little girl at work on a mohair net. He asked the price, and found that
she would make him twelve for the same money that he had paid for one
in London. So you may guess where his next orders went.
Mrs. Woodlock then made interest with the "buyers," or young men who go
to London twice a year to purchase goods. They took over her patterns,
and returned with orders so large that their principals at once entered
into the business. Yellow nets were made for Germany. Many were sent to
England and America; and orders came so thick that they had to share
them with the convent schools. They paid out a hundred dollars weekly;
and alacrity and intelligence beamed where there had been, at first,
only hopeless suffering and imbecility. Of course, this point was not
reached without much self-sacrifice. At first, the children made awkward
work that would not sell. Then the lady patronesses got tired, and
dropped off. Worn and worried, Mrs. Woodlock fell ill. If you ever
undertake any of the schemes I have mentioned, you must be prepared for
all these things: they will certainly happen. No one ever fought a
revolutionary war, and established an independence, without one or two
defeats like that at Bunker Hill.[30] When they become historic, we call
them victories. When Mrs. Woodlock found that she was human and liable
to fall ill, she sent for some of the Sisters of Charity, and trained
several, so that they could, on an emergency, fill her place well.
But Mrs. Woodlock did not stop here. She used to teach the Catechism in
the parish church; and, one day, she gave notice that a new school would
be opened in that neighborhood. The next morning, one hundred and fifty
girls, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, presented
themselves. Mrs. Woodlock asked every girl, who had ever earned any
money before, to hold up her hand. Four girls did so. They had sold
apples in the streets. One hundred and forty-six suffering creatures,
who had no way to earn a cent! Think what a class it was! Do you
remember what I told you, the other day, of eighteen hundred and eighty
women in New York who had never been taught to support themselves? Ten
of the best workers from the first school were taken to teach these
girls; and, for a salary, the teacher received the first _perfect_ dozen
of nets made by each of her pupils. This plan was not costly, and worked
well. There was no lack of faithfulness. Travellers came to see the
schools. There was no time wasted in looking for orders: they had more
than they could fill. Of course, they must keep these hands employed: so
other manufactures must be tried. Mrs. Woodlock thought she would try
fine shirt-fronts for the city dealers. What do you think the people
said? That it could not be done in all Ireland; that there was nobody to
wash and iron them properly; that they would have to be sent all the
way to Glasgow to be boxed in card boxes! Well, the nuns undertook the
first washing and ironing,--making apprentices, let us hope, of some of
the older pupils; and Mrs. Woodlock found a starving band-box maker,
whom she herself taught to make flat boxes. And look now at the blessing
which always follows wise work. This flat-box maker has had to take
apprentices, has opened another branch of her business in Limerick, and
has put money into the Savings' Bank.
Mrs. Woodlock's account of her work would be a great help to any young
persons engaged in philanthropic effort. She lays the very greatest
stress upon her machinery,--her methods. Every industrial work ought to
support itself: if it does not, it is a failure. All her schools earn
their own bread, _in every sense_; and all reforming agencies must
always stand second to any institution which does that. See how she
carried this thought into her daily life. Mrs. Woodlock had a brother
who was one of the Board of Poor-Law Guardians. Seeing the success of
her work, he persuaded the other members to employ an embroidery
mistress in the Union School for a few months.
When these children knew enough, Mrs. Woodlock took out six, and put
them into her industrial school, till she was sure they could support
themselves. Then she let them look up lodgings, and continued to give
them work from the school. In a few weeks, they got on so well that they
began to take their relations and friends out of that terrible
poorhouse. Three young girls took out their mother and cousin, and
supported them. Eighty girls were brought off the parish by the first
working of her schools. A house has also been opened for orphans, where
they are trained to support themselves.
Now, my friends, the census, at the end of ten years, will report a
great change in the industrial condition of Ireland; and the beginning
of that change was Mrs. Woodlock's intelligent moral effort to benefit
her countrywomen,--in the first place, to teach one little sufferer to
make cabbage-nets. That element will enter into the statistics on which
Mr. Buckle bids you so confidently rely. Do not believe him when he says
that _moral_ effort can never help anybody but yourself, because it will
be balanced, in the long-run, by your neighbor's _immoral_ effort. Two
and two make four in all statistics, and always will while the world
stands; but two and two and one make five, and not four, as he asserts;
and the one which he forgets to enumerate is no other than the divine
Centre of life and action,--God himself. I value Mr. Buckle's book. I
see how clearly he thinks; how much he has read; and how much truer his
historical attitude than any ever before assumed. But when a man
separates goodness from knowledge; tells you that intelligence may reign
alone; does not see that the two are now and for ever one, equal
attributes of the divine nature,--then he makes a mistake which saps the
very foundation of his own work, and writes fallacy on every page.
What he says is perfectly true of _mistaken, ignorant_ moral effort.
That does help yourself, and does _not_ help anybody else. It helps you,
because it develops your right-mindedness,--your generosity. It does not
help anybody else. It _hinders_ others who are clearer intellectually:
they see and despise the mistakes, and are not inspired by the purpose.
Had it been intelligent, they would have seen it to be divine.
Mrs. Woodlock's work was both intelligent and moral. What inspired the
pupils was her moral force and disinterested love. They saw this, and
were kindled by it; while the community at large respected the
intelligence and common sense with which she laid her plans.
Intelligence made these plans self-supporting; intelligence gave them
solid pyramidal position in the world: but moral energy gave them their
prestige, and will win its way by the side of intelligence into the very
columns which Mr. Buckle's closing volume must quote.
Do not be disheartened, then, as to the ultimate profit to others of any
kindly work you feel inclined to do. Let kindliness inspire, let
intelligence direct, your efforts. God has made your success certain
from the very foundations of the world.
I cannot close such inadequate survey of this field as I have felt it my
duty to offer, without alluding to one other fact, and making one
parting suggestion. It cannot but be realized, by all the women to whom
I speak, how very casual is the communication between the laboring class
in this community and their employers. Suppose a housekeeper wants
additional service, how can she secure it? If she is not wealthy enough
to hire regularly, her "chance" is a very poor one; and she must take
the recommendation, in nine cases out of ten, of some one in the
charwoman's own rank of life.
Suppose a maid of all work leaves a mistress alone early some busy
Monday morning, where can her place be filled? How can any one be found
who will work by the hour or the day, in a cleanly, respectable manner,
till a new servant can be deliberately chosen? Nobody knows of a
washerwoman who is out of work on Monday. The intelligence offices hold
no women so distressed that they will go out for less than a week, and
that on trial. Yet, somewhere in the city, there must be women pining
and longing for that waiting work.
Suppose a sudden influx of visitors exhausts your household staff, and
makes a waiting-maid a necessity where none was kept before; suppose a
large group of relatives, passing quickly through the city, come for a
plain family dinner at a moment when your personal superintendence is
impossible,--where is the active, tidy girl who can be summoned, or the
decent woman of experience who can order matters in your kitchen as well
as you can yourself?
Somewhere they sit waiting--suffering, it may be--for the opportunity
which never comes. The intelligence office will get them places; but
places they are not at liberty to seek. They need what they call "a
chance lift."
I am well aware that wealthy and long-established families may not
suffer much from this cause. Old servants well married, or a variety of
well-paid servants with wide connections in the neighborhood, or
deserving objects of charity personally met and understood, often
prevent such persons from feeling any inconvenience; but for young
housekeepers, for new residents, for persons of small means and few
connections, there is no help.
I need not enlarge on the subject. There is no kind of female labor of
which it is easy to get a prompt and suitable supply. To obviate this
difficulty, I think there should be a sort of "Labor Exchange;" and this
is a project which all classes would be glad to have carried out. How
shall it be done? That, of course, must be settled by those who have the
task in charge; but, to explain what I mean, I will offer a few
suggestions. In the first place, What are the defects in the
intelligence-offices now in existence?[31] There are several. They take
cognizance of domestic servants alone. They are kept by ignorant or
inexperienced persons, who often lose sight of the interests of both the
employer and the employed in their own pecuniary loss or gain. These
persons have necessarily little insight into character, and do not see
how to bring the right persons together. They will send a slow, dawdling
girl to an impatient, lively mistress;--a smart upstart to some meek,
little wife, who has hardly learned the way to order her own house; and
the natural misunderstandings will occur. Then the books of the office
are irregularly kept, and closed to the applicant, so that you have no
chance to select for yourself. Go down to an office, and ask for a
servant; tell the keeper not to send a raw girl, not to send one without
a recommendation, not to send a foreigner who cannot speak English; and
go home. The odds are, that, while you are taking off your bonnet, there
will be three rings at the bell. The first girl will be a barefooted imp
of Erin, just from the steerage. Some one at the office has been
watching three days for just such a hand to be broken into a
farm-kitchen. The second wears a flower-garden on her head, more
flounces than you do, and has, of course, no recommendation. Some
soda-room wants her; but you do not. The third is high Dutch, and, when
you ask her for the coal-hod, brings you, in her despair, the
bread-tray. Neither of these three is what you ordered or wanted.
Do you ask me the reason of this bad management, and whether I think
it can be remedied? The reason of it is, that the superintendence of
these offices is not treated like a profession. People neither fit
themselves for it, nor are attracted to it by nature: they simply _do_
it; and how they do it we feel. They want comprehensive insight, have no
business ways, and these difficulties are only to be obviated by
bringing a higher intelligence to bear upon the arrangements.
Let us have a place where all kinds of female work can be sought and
found; an intelligent working committee first, who know what is wanted,
and how to get it, and who, most important of all, shall not be too wise
to accept diplomas from experience.
Let us have a committee of five; its quorum to be three. Let these
persons hire a large, clean, airy room, and appoint an intelligent
superintendent,--one who will be interested to have the experiment
thoroughly successful. Let them line the walls, and screen off the room
with frames, having glass covers, to lock and unlock. Let one frame be
devoted to cooks; another, to laundresses; another, to washerwomen,
window-washers, charwomen, seamstresses, dressmakers, copyists,
translators, or what you will; and under the glass the notices should be
posted. Each should contain the name, age, and residence of the
applicant; the situation last held, and for how long; the full address
of the reference; and the date of posting. The date should be printed
and movable, and changed semi-weekly, on the personal application of the
poster. Each woman should pay five cents for the privilege of posting;
should lose this privilege from misconduct, from neglect to report
herself, from proved falsehood. No date should be left unchanged more
than a week, and the superintendent should be responsible for the strict
observance of the regulations. No woman, not even a charwoman, should be
allowed to use the posting privilege, unless she has a reference.
"What!" you will say, "is that kind?" Yes, it is kind: the want of it is
doubly cruel. A woman who needs work can afford to offer a day's free
work to get a reference; and referees should be required to tell the
simple truth. A lady who once recommended a dishonest or incapable
servant without the proper qualification should be struck off the books,
not allowed to testify again in that court.
With regard to all transient labor, it should be the duty of the
superintendent to see that the references are reliable before posting,
so that those who apply in haste need not be delayed.
If a dressmaker or charwoman inform the superintendent that she has
worked for A, B, and C, let a printed circular, addressed to such
persons, inquiring if they can recommend her, and to what degree, be
placed in her hands. To this she should bring written answers before
being allowed to post.
If the institution became popular, books would have to be kept,
corresponding to these glass cases--one book for cooks, another for
housemaids, and so on; but the cases should never be given up. There
should always be as many as the room will hold. Ladies should pay a
certain sum for each servant they obtain; and the servant should pay for
every place she gets, at a rate proportioned to the wages received. In
most intelligence offices, the servants get two places for the same fee,
if they do not stay over a week in the place, and the lady gets two
girls or more on the same condition. This works like a premium on change
of place. The servant should prove to the Labor Exchange, that she did
not leave her place of her own will, and the lady should show that
incapacity or insubordination made it impossible to keep her.
It should be a cash business, and a fee should be paid for each
application. Wanting a cook, you go down to the room, and consult the
proper frame. Finding, perhaps, forty posters, you select one that reads
like this:--
Matilda Haynes.
Irish.
Twenty-five years of age.
In the country four years.
Thoroughly understands plain cooking.
Expects two dollars.
Is willing to go out of town.
Lived last at No. 4, Pemberton Square.
Kept the place six months.
May refer to it.
Can be found at 24, High Street.
You first go to Pemberton Square. It is quite possible that this girl
may not be what you want; but if she is, and your eye tells you that you
can trust the judgment of her referee, you have only to go to High
Street, and make your own terms. If you are already prejudiced in her
favor, you will go prepared to make some concessions, so that the chance
will be better for you both; and this process may be repeated without
loss of time, till you are supplied.
You will see that this is quite a feasible plan, and has two advantages.
One is, that you have access to the books, and can choose for yourself;
the other is, that there would be no waiting-room for servants, where
they should talk with, prejudice, and morally harm each other. You would
also be saved the pain of rejecting servants to their faces, on the
ground of "greenness," or bodily unfitness. Such an institution would
offer this advantage over the present offices, that it would direct you
to temporary laborers, and give you in a moment the addresses of some
dozens. Such an institution would be a very great saver of time, and so
a great blessing.
If, in the course of these lectures, any words that I have spoken have
touched your hearts, or carried conviction to your minds, do not put
aside, I beseech you, such impulse as they may have given. Remember
that, however feebly the subject has been treated, however presumptuous
may seem the attempt, the subject itself is the most important theme
that is presented to this generation. In my first lecture I showed you,
that while women, ever since the beginning of civilization, have been
sharing the hardest, and doing the most unwholesome work, they have also
done the _worst paid_ in the world. I showed you that this poor pay,
founded on a false estimate of woman's value as a human being, and
consequently as a laborer, was filling your streets with criminals, with
stricken souls and bodies, for whose blood society is responsible to
God. Having proved thus, that women need new avenues of labor, I tried
in my second lecture to show you, that, when she sought these, she had
been met too often by the selfish opposition of man. I showed also that
all such opposition proved, in the end, unavailing; that all the work
she asks will inevitably be given. I showed you, from the censuses of
Great Britain and America, how much labor is even now open to her; that
it is not half so necessary to open new avenues of labor as to make
work itself _respectable for women_; and I therefore entreated women to
learn to work thoroughly and well, that men might respect their labor in
the aggregate. "Woman's work" means nothing very honorable or
conscientious now. Alter its significance till it indicates the best
work in the world.
In my present lecture I have indicated some of the steps that might be
taken to benefit the women in the heart of this city. To encourage you
to take them, I have briefly pointed out Ellen Woodlock's remarkable
success. Have I kindled any interest in your minds? Can you enter into
such labors? Have you strength or time or enthusiasm to spare? In the
ballads of Northern Europe, a loving sister trod out, with her bare
feet, the nettles whose fibre, woven into clothing, might one day
restore her brothers to human form.
Your feet are shod, your nettles are gathered: will you tread them out
courageously, and so restore to your sisters the nature and the
privileges of a blessed humanity?
Opportunity is a rare and sacred thing. God seldom offers it twice. In
the English fields, the little Drosera, or sundew, lifts its tiny,
crimson head. The delicate buds are clustered in a raceme, to the summit
of which they climb one by one. The top-most bud waits only through the
twelve hours of a single day to open. If the sun do not shine, it
withers and drops, and gives way to the next aspirant.
So it is with the human heart and its purposes. One by one, they come to
the point of blossoming. If the sunshine of faith and the serene heaven
of resolution meet the ripe hour, all is well; but if you faint, repel,
delay, they wither at the core, and your crown is stolen from you,--your
privilege set aside. Esau has sold his birthright, and the pottage has
lost its savor.