"The whole expense of first purchase, alterations, and furniture,
will be about $140,000. Messrs. Peter Cooper, James Lenox, James
Brown, Stewart Brown, William H. Aspinwall, E.J. Woolsey, and Mrs.
C.L. Spencer, have, unsolicited, each contributed one thousand
dollars. Twenty thousand dollars has been appropriated on condition
that we obtained a like amount in donations. We expect to have
accommodations for nearly five hundred, and the charge for board
and washing will be from three dollars and a quarter to three and a
half per week.
"There will be parlors, reading room and free library, and ample
bathing rooms. None of good reputation will be refused admission;
no others can become members of the family."
It is hoped to open the institution by the first of June.
A Young Women's Christian Association was organized in Boston in May,
1866, under the auspices of Mrs. Henry F. Durant. Furnished rooms have
been provided at 27, Chauncy Street, where young women can obtain
information in regard to employment, boarding-houses, and so on. The
applications average one hundred a month; and the association seeks to
establish a home, where there will be a restaurant for furnishing meals,
at cost, to _young women only_, a free reading and library room,
evening schools, rooms for social purposes, and temporary lodging-rooms.
This is a most desirable thing to do; but it will not be of permanent
benefit, if it puts into a false position any girls capable of
self-support. The funds of wise and kind people must start all such
movements; but, to be useful, they must be, not only in appearance, but
in reality, self-supporting.
During the summer of 1866, Octavia Hill, of London, a grand-daughter of
the celebrated Dr. Southwood Smith, reports that, after conferring with
John Ruskin, she had hired houses for poor tenants. She put them into
good order, and kept them in it. She would allow, in her tenants,
neither overcrowding nor arrears of rent. She had no middle-men. The
experiment was wholly successful, and paid at once five per cent.
Mr. Ruskin's lodging-houses, as they are called, are the best that have
ever been established in London. They furnish the cheapest and cleanest
lodgings for the poor, yet pay a good dividend. They are entirely in the
hands of Miss Hill, as Mr. Ruskin himself is more skilful to remedy any
social excrescence than patient to bear with it. He forgets, I think,
what he once wrote concerning the soul that denies itself an encounter
with pain.
I have mentioned, in the body of this book, the great number of women
who have entered printing-offices since 1860. I have thought that it
might help women in some other departments of labor, to understand how
some of these changes were effected, and in what manner advantages have
been secured, which might easily have been lost. In a town that I know
of, a weekly religious paper was printed by eight women. The most
experienced acted as foreman; and when, in the second year of the war,
strikes began in the printing-offices, a friend directed her attention
to the fact, and showed her how to meet a strike should it come, as it
did, into her own town. As soon as she heard of it, she consulted with
the rest of the hands. Seeing a possible though by no means a certain
advantage, they agreed to be bound by her action in such an event. At
last, the hands employed on the daily evening paper of the town struck,
and the publisher knew not what to do. The girl went to him, told him
she would bring seven able hands with her, and was accepted at once. He
was mean enough to offer half-pay, which she peremptorily refused. The
eight women entered the office on full pay. They had not been there a
week, before every body rejoiced in the change. There was no swearing
and no drinking, but a quiet workroom. At the end of a month, the
disappointed men offered to return: their services were declined, but
the publisher was mean enough to go to his foreman. "My men are ready to
come back," said he: "I have no fault to find with _you_, but I can no
longer give you full wages."--"Do as you please," replied the girl: "you
cannot have us for any less;" and, as the whole seven said amen, the
publisher had nothing to do but to keep them. The advantage that flowed
from union and good sense in this case are evident, and could easily be
imitated in many directions. During the past winter, Miss Stebbens, of
Chickasaw County, Iowa, has been appointed notary public; such
appointments being still so rare as to make the fact worth recording.