The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners of Poverty, by Helen Campbell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Prisoners of Poverty Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their Lives Author: Helen Campbell Release Date: October 12, 2010 [EBook #34060] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS OF POVERTY *** Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) PRISONERS OF POVERTY WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS, THEIR TRADES AND THEIR LIVES. By HELEN CAMPBELL AUTHOR OF “MRS. HERNDON’S INCOME,” “MISS MELINDA’S OPPORTUNITY,” ETC. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900 Copyright, 1887, By Helen Campbell University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge T PRISONERS OF POVERTY. “Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once. We ask To put forth just our strength, our human strength. All starting fairly, all equipped alike, Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted,— See if we cannot beat Thy angels yet.” “Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind; There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder, Nor are the links not malleable that wind Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder; The hands are mighty were the head not blind. Priest is the staff of king, And chains and clouds one thing, And fettered flesh with devastated mind. Open thy soul to see, Slave, and thy feet are free. Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind, And of thy fears thine irons wrought, Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought.” PREFACE. HE chapters making up the present volume were prepared originally as a series of papers for the Sunday edition of “The New York Tribune,” and were based upon minutest personal research into the conditions described. Sketchy as the record may seem at points, it is a photograph from life; and the various characters, whether employers or employed, were all registered in case corroboration were needed. While research was limited to New York, the facts given are much the same for any large city, and thus have a value beyond their immediate application. No attempt at an understanding of the labor question as it faces us to-day can be successful till knowledge of its underlying conditions is assured. It is such knowledge that the writer has aimed to present; and it takes more permanent form, not only for the many readers whose steady interest has been an added demand for faithful work, but, it is hoped, for a circle yet unreached, who, whether agreeing or disagreeing with the conclusions, still know that to learn the struggle and sorrow of the workers is the first step toward any genuine help. Orange, New Jersey, March, 1887. CONTENTS. Page [Pg i] [Pg ii] [Pg iii] CHAPTER FIRST. Worker and Trade 7 CHAPTER SECOND. The Case of Rose Haggerty 18 CHAPTER THIRD. Some Methods of a Prosperous Firm 30 CHAPTER FOURTH. The Bargain Counter 43 CHAPTER FIFTH. A Fashionable Dressmaker 55 CHAPTER SIXTH. More Methods of Prosperous Firms 66 CHAPTER SEVENTH. Negative or Positive Gospel 76 CHAPTER EIGHTH. The True Story of Lotte Bauer 88 CHAPTER NINTH. The Evolution of a Jacket 100 CHAPTER TENTH. Between the Rivers 113 CHAPTER ELEVENTH. Under the Bridge and Beyond 126 CHAPTER TWELFTH. One of the Fur-Sewers 139 CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. Some Difficulties of an Employer Who Experimented 150 CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. The Widow Maloney’s Boarders 160 CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. Among the Shop-Girls 173 CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. Two Hospital Beds 186 CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. Child-Workers in New York 199 [Pg iv] [Pg v] I CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. Steady Trades and their Outlook 210 CHAPTER NINETEENTH. Domestic Service and its Problems 221 CHAPTER TWENTIETH. More Problems of Domestic Service 233 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. End and Beginning 244 PRISONERS OF POVERTY. CHAPTER FIRST. WORKER AND TRADE. N that antiquity which we who only are the real ancients look back upon as the elder world, counting those days as old which were but the beginning of the time we reckon, there were certain methods with workers that centuries ago ceased to have visible form. The Roman matron, whose susceptibilities from long wear and tear in the observation of fighting gladiators and the other mild amusements of the period, were a trifle blunted, felt no compunction in ordering a disobedient or otherwise objectionable slave into chains, and thereafter claiming the same portion of work as had been given untrammelled. The routine of the day demanded certain offices; but how these offices should be most easily fulfilled was no concern of master or mistress, who required simply fulfilment, and wasted no time on consideration of methods. In the homes of Pompeii, once more open to the sun, are the underground rooms where wretched men and women bowed under the weight of fetters, whose corrosion was not only in weary flesh, but in the no less weary soul; and Rome itself can still show the same remnants of long- forgotten wrong and oppression. That day is over, and well over, we say. Only for a few barbarians still unreached by the march of civilization is any hint of such conditions possible, and even for them the days of darkness are numbered. And so the century moves on; and the few who question if indeed the bonds are quite broken, if civilization has civilized, and if men and women may claim in full their birthright of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” are set down as hopeless carpers,—unpleasant, pragmatic, generally disagreeable objectors to things as they are. Or if it is admitted that there are defects here and there, and that much remains to be remedied, we are pointed with pride to the magnificent institutions of modern charity, where every possible want of all sorts and conditions of men is met and fulfilled. “What more would you have?” cries the believer in things as they are. “What is higher or finer than the beautiful spirit that has taken permanent form in brick and mortar? Never since time began has charity been on so magnificent a scale; never has it been so intelligent, so far-seeing. No saints of the past were ever more vowed to good works than these uncanonized saints of to-day who give their lives to the poor and count them well lost. Shame on man or woman who questions the beautiful work or dares hint that under this fair surface rottenness and all foulness still seethe and simmer!” It is not easy in the face of such feeling to affirm that, perfect as the modern system may be, beautiful as is much of the work accomplished, it still is wanting in one element, the lack of which has power to vitiate the whole. No good-will, no charity, however splendid, fills or can fill the place owned by that need which is forever first and most vital between man and man,—justice. No love, no labor, no self-sacrifice even, can balance that scale in which justice has no place. No knowledge nor wisdom nor any understanding that can come to man counts as force in the universe of God till that one word heads the list of all that must be known and loved and lived before ever the kingdom of heaven can begin upon earth. [Pg vi] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] It is because this is felt and believed by a few as a compelling power, by many as a dimly comprehended need, so far in the shadow that its form is still unknown, that I begin to-day the search for the real presence. What I write will be no fanciful picture of the hedged-in lives the conditions of which I began, many years ago, to study. If names are withheld, and localities not always indicated, it is not because they are not recorded in full, ready for reference or any required corroboration. Where the facts make against the worker, they are given with as minute detail as where they make against the employer. The one aim in the investigation has been and is to tell the truth simply, directly, and in full, leaving it for the reader to determine what share is his or hers in the evil or in the good that the methods of to-day may hold. That our system of charities and corrections is unsurpassable does not touch the case of the worker who wants no charity and needs no correction. It is something beyond either that must be understood. Till the methods of the day are analyzed, till one has defined justice, asked what claim it makes upon the personal life of man and woman, and mastered every detail that render definition more possible, the questions that perplex even the most conservative can have no solution for this generation or for any generation to come. To help toward such solution is the one purpose of all that will follow. In the admirable report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1885, made under the direction of Mr. Charles Peck, whose name is already the synonyme for careful and intelligent work, the number of working-women in New York is given as very nearly two hundred thousand. Investigations of the same nature have been made at other points, notably Boston, in the work of Mr. Carroll D. Wright, one of the most widely known of our statisticians. But neither Boston nor any other city of the United States offers the same facilities or gives as varied a range of employment as is to be found in New York, where grinding poverty and fabulous wealth walk side by side, and where the “life limit” in wages was established long before modern political economy had made the phrase current. This number does not include domestic servants, but is limited to actual handicrafts. Ninety-two trades are given as standing open to women to-day, and several have been added since the report was made. A lifetime would hardly be sufficient for a detailed examination of every industry in the great city, but it is quite possible to form a just judgment of the quality and character of all those which give employment to women. The city which affords the largest percentage of habitual drunkards, as well as the largest number of liquor saloons to the mile, is naturally that in which most women are forced to seek such means of subsistence may be had. The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined. That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is the one most overcrowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in some of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence; and the woman with drunken or otherwise vicious husband, more helpless often than the widow who turns in the same direction, seeks the same sources of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some reference, employment is often found by her in factory or some large establishments where regular workers have place. But if, as is often the case, the need for work arises from the death or the evil habits of the natural head of the family, fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that often the only clothing left is on the back of the worker, in the last stages of demoralization; and the sole method of securing work is through the middle-men or “sweaters,” who ask no questions and require no reference, but make as large a profit for themselves as can be wrung from the helplessness and the bitter need of those with whom they reckon. The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support is limited to the needle, whether in machine or hand work, fourfold. (1) Her own incompetency must very often head the list and prevent her from securing first-class work; (2) middle-men or sweaters lower the price to starvation point; (3) contract work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and (4) she is underbid from still another quarter, that of the country woman who takes the work at any price offered. These conditions govern the character and quality of the work obtained, even the best firms being somewhat affected by the last two clauses. And in every trade there may always be found three distinct classes of employers: the west-side firms, which in many cases care for their workmen, in degree at least, and where the work is done under conditions that must be called favorable; the east-side firms, representing generally cheaper material and lower rates; and last, the slop-work, which may be either east or west, most often the former, and includes every form of outrage and oppression that workers can know. Clothing in all its multiplied forms takes the first place in the ninety-two trades, and the workers on what is known as “white wear” form the large majority of the always increasing army. For many reasons, the shirt-makers naturally head the list,—the shirt-makers about whom has hung a certain sentimental interest since the day when poor Tom Hood’s impassioned plea in their behalf first saw the light. Yet to-day, in spite of popular belief that they are the class most grossly wronged, the shirt-maker fares far better than the majority of the workers on any other form of clothing. This always, however, if she is fortunate enough to have direct relation with some large factory, or with an establishment which gives out the work directly into the hands of the women themselves. Given these conditions, it is possible for a first-class operator to make from seven to twelve dollars per week, the latter sum being certain only in the factories where steam is the motive power and where experience has given the utmost facility in handling the work. In one factory on the west side, employing some one hundred and fifty girls, and where everything had been brought to almost mathematical accuracy, the price paid per dozen for shirts was [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] “T $2.40. But one of the operatives was able to make a dozen a day, her usual average being about nine, or five dozen per week of sixty hours. Here every condition was exceptionally favorable. The building occupied the centre of a small square, and thus had light on all sides; ventilation was good; and the forewoman, on whose intelligence and good disposition much of the comfort of the operatives depends, was far beyond the average woman in this position. The working day was ten hours, with half an hour for dinner, and the sanitary conditions more favorable than in any other establishment of the same size. Many of the operatives had been there for years, and the dull season, common to all phases of the clothing trade, was never marked enough here to produce discharges or materially lessen production. The wages averaged seven dollars per week, though the laundry women and finishers seldom exceeded five. No middle-men were employed, and none of the customary exactions in the way of fines and other impositions were practised. Piece-work was regarded as the only secure method for both employer and employed, as in such case it rested with the girl herself to make the highest or the lowest rate at pleasure. There were no holidays beyond the legal ones, but all the freedom possible to constant labor was given, the place representing the best conditions of this special industry. Another firm quite as well known and employing equal number of workers had found it more expedient to give up the factory system, and simply retained rooms for cutting and general handling of the completed work, giving it out in packages to workers at home. One woman employed by them for seven years had never made anything but the button-holes in the small piece attached to the bosom, and such fine lettering as was ordered for custom shirts, her wages in the busy season being often twelve dollars a week, the year’s average, however, bringing them to seven. She worked exclusively at home, and represented the best paid and most comfortable phase of the industry. Descending a step, and turning to establishments on the east side, one found every phase of sanitary condition, including under this head bad ventilation, offensive odors, facilities for washing, quality of drinking water, position of water-closets, length of time allowed for lunch, length of working day, etc. Here the quality of the work was lower, material, thread, and sewing being all of an order to be expected from the price of the completed garment, ranging from forty to sixty cents. The wages, however, did not fall so far below the average as might be expected, the operator earning from five to eight dollars a week during the busy season. But the greater number of manufacturers on both east and west sides of the city turn over the work to middle-men, or send it to the country, many factories being run in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where rents are merely nominal. This proved to be the case with several firms whose names represent a large business, but who find less trouble and more profit in the contract system. Still another method has gone far toward reducing the rates of payment to the city worker, and this is the giving out the work in packages to the wives and daughters of farmers in the outlying country. These women, having homes, and thus no rent or general expenses to meet, take the work at rates which for the city operators mean simply starvation, and thus prices are kept down, and one more stumbling-block put in the way of the unprotected worker. Careful examination of this phase shows that the applicants, many of whom give assumed names, work simply for the sake of pin-money, which is expended in dress. Now and then it is a case of want, and often that of a woman who, failing to make her husband see that she has any right to an actual cash share in what the work of her own hands has helped to earn, turns to this as the only method of securing some slight personal income. But for the most part, it is only for pin-money; and no argument could convince these earners that their work is in any degree illegitimate or fraught with saddest consequences to those who, because of it, receive just so much the less. Nor would it be possible to bring such argument to bear. To earn seems the inalienable right of any who are willing to work, and the result of methods will never be questioned by employer or employed, unless they are forced to it by more powerful considerations than any at present brought forward. I have chosen to give these details minutely because they are, practically, the summing up, not only for shirt- making, but for every trade which can be said to come under the head of clothing, whether for men, women, or children,—this including every form of trimming or other adornment used in dress from artificial flowers to gimps, fringes, and buttons. And now, having given this general outline, we may pass to the stories of the units that make up this army,—stories chosen from quarters where doubt is impossible, and confirmed often by the unwilling testimony of those from whom the work has come, giving with them also the necessary details of the trades they may represent, and seeking first, last, and always, only the actual facts that make up the life of the worker. CHAPTER SECOND. THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY. HE case of Rose Haggerty.” So it stands on the little record-book in which long ago certain facts began to have place, each one a count in the indictment of the civilization of to-day, and each one the story not only [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] of Rose but of many another in like case. For the student of conditions among working-women soon discovers that workers divide themselves naturally into four classes: (1) those who have made deliberate choice of a trade, fitted themselves carefully for it, and in time become experts, certain of employment and often of becoming themselves employers; (2) those who by death of relatives or other accident of fortune have been thrown upon their own resources and accept blindly the first means of support that offers, sometimes developing unexpected power and meeting with the same success as the first class; (3) those who have known no other life but that of work, and who accept that to which they most incline with neither energy nor ability enough to rise beyond a certain level; and (4) those who would not work at all save for the pressure of poverty, and who make no effort to gain more knowledge or to improve conditions. But the ebb and flow in this great sea of toiling humanity wipes out all dividing lines, and each class so shades into the next that formal division becomes impossible, but is rather a series of interchanges with no confinement to fixed limits. Often in passing from one trade to another, chance brings about much the same result for each class, and no energy or patience of effort is sufficient to check the inevitable descent into the valley of the shadow, where despair walks forever hand in hand with endeavor. This time had by no means come for Rose, with just enough of her happy-go-lucky father’s nature to make her essentially optimistic. Born in a Cherry Street tenement-house, she had refused to be killed by semi-starvation or foul smells, or dirt of any nature whatsoever. Dennis Haggerty, longshoreman professionally, and doer of all odd jobs in the intervals of his discharges and re-engagements, explained the situation to his own satisfaction, if not to that of Rose and the five other small Haggertys remaining from the brood of twelve. “If a man wants his dhrink that bad that no matter what he’s said overnight he’d sell his soul by the time mornin’ comes for even a thimbleful, he’s got jist to go to destruction, an’ there’s no sthoppin’ him. An’ I’ve small call to be blamin’ Norah whin she comforts herself a bit in the same manner of way, nor will I so long’s me name’s Dennis Haggerty. But you, Rose, you look out an’ get any money you’ll find in me pockets, an’ keep the children straight, an’ all the saints’ll see you through the job.” Rose listened, the laugh in her blue eyes shadowed by the sense of responsibility that by seven was fully developed. She did not wonder that her mother drank. Why not, when there was no fire in the stove, and nothing to cook if there had been, and the children counted it a day when they had a scraping of butter on the bread? But, as often happens in these cases, the disgust at smell and taste of liquor grew with every month of her life, and two at least of the children shared it. They were never beaten; for Haggerty at his worst remained good-natured, and when sober wept maudlin tears over his flock and swore that no drop should ever pass his lips again; and Norah echoed every word, and for days perhaps washed and scrubbed and scoured, earning fair wages, and gradually redeeming the clothes or furniture pledged round the corner. Rose went to school when she had anything to wear, and learned in time, when she saw the first symptoms of another debauch, to bundle every wearable thing together and take them and all small properties to the old shoemaker on the first floor, where they remained in hiding till it was safe to produce them again. She had learned this and many another method before the fever which suddenly appeared in early spring took not only her father and mother, but the small Dennis whose career as newsboy had been her pride and delight, and who had been relied upon as half at least of their future dependence. There remained, then, Norah, hopelessly incurable of spinal disease and helpless to move save as Rose lifted her, and the three little ones, as to whose special gifts there was as yet no definite knowledge. In the mean time they were simply three very clamorous mouths to be stopped with such food as might be; and Rose entered a bag-factory a block away, leaving bread and knife and molasses-pitcher by Norah’s bed, and trusting the saints to avert disaster from the three experimenting babies. She earned the first month ten dollars, or two and a half a week, but being exceptionally quick, was promoted in the second to four dollars weekly. The rent was six dollars a month; and during the first one the old shoemaker came to the rescue, had an occasional eye to the children, and himself paid the rent, telling Rose to return it when she could. When the ten hours’ labor ended, the child, barely fourteen, rushed home to cook something warm for supper, and when the children were comforted and tucked away in the wretched old bed, that still was clean and decent, washed and mended their rags of clothes, and brought such order as she could into the forlorn room. It was the old shoemaker, a patient, sad-eyed old Scotchman, who also had his story, who settled for her at last that a machine must be had in order that she might work at home. The woman in the room back of his took in shirts from a manufacturer on Division Street, and made often seven and eight dollars a week. She was ready to teach, and in two or three evenings Rose had practically mastered details, and settled that, as she was so young, she would not apply for work in person, but take it through Mrs. Moloney, who would be supposed to have gone into business on her own account as a “sweater.” Whatever temptations Mrs. Moloney may have had to make a little profit as “middle-man,” she resisted and herself saw that the machine selected was a good one; that no advantage was taken of Rose’s inexperience; and that the agent had no opportunity to follow out what had now and then been his method, and hint to the girl that her pretty face entitled her to concessions that would be best made in a private interview. Shame in every possible form and phase had been part of the girl’s knowledge since babyhood, but it had slipped away from her, as a foul garment might fall from the fair statue over which it had chanced to be thrown. It was not the innocence of ignorance,—a poor possession at best. It was an ingrained repulsion, born Heaven knows how, and growing as mysteriously with her growth, an invisible yet most potent armor, recognized by every dweller in the swarming tenement. She had her father’s quick tongue and laughing eyes, but they could flash as well, and the few who tried a coarse jest shrunk back from both look and scorching word. [Pg 19] [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] Thus far all went well with the poor little fortunes. She worked always ten and twelve, sometimes fourteen, hours a day, yet her strength did not fail, and there was no dearth of work. It was in 1880, and prices were nearly double the present rates. To-day work from the same establishment means not over $4.50 per week, and has even fallen as low as $3.50. In 1880 the shirts were given out by the dozen as at present, going back to the factory to pass through the hands of the finisher and buttonhole maker. The machine operator could make nine of the best class of shirts in a day of ten hours, being paid for them at the rate of $1.75 per dozen. Four spools of cotton, two hundred yards each, were required for a dozen, the price of which must be deducted from the receipts; but the firm preferred to supply twenty-four-hundred-yard spools, at fifty cents for six-cord cotton used for the upper thread, and thirty cents for the three-cord cotton used as under thread, the present prices for same quality and size being respectively forty-five and twenty-five cents. Making nine a day, the week’s wages would be for the four dozen and a half $7.87, or $7.50 deducting thread; but Rose averaged five dozen weekly, and for nearly two years counted herself as certain of not less than thirty dollars per month and often thirty-five. The machine had been paid for. The room took on as comfortable a look as its dingy walls and narrow windows would allow; and Bridget, age five, had developed distinct genius for housekeeping, and washed dishes and faces with equal energy and enthusiasm. She did all errands also, and could not be cheated in the matter of change. She knew where the largest loaves were to be had, and sniffed suspiciously at the packets of tea. “By the time she’s seven, she’ll do all but the washing,” Rose said with pride, and Bridget reverted to childhood for an instant, and spun round on one foot as she made answer:— “Shure, I could now, if you’d only be lettin’ me.” “There’s women on the west side that’ll earn $2.50 a dozen, for work no better than you’re doing now,” some one who had come from that quarter said to her one day, but Rose shook her head. There is a curious conservatism among these workers, who cling to familiar haunts and regard unknown regions with suspicion and even terror. “I’ve no time for change,” Rose said. “It might not be as certain when I’d got it. I’ll run no risks;” and she tugged her great bundle of work up the stairs, rejoicing that living so near saved just so much on expressage, a charge paid by the workers themselves. There were signs well known to the old hands of a probable reduction of prices, weeks before the first cut came. More fault was found. A slipped stitch or a break in the thread was pounced upon with even more promptness than had been their usual portion. Some hands were discharged, and at last came the general cut, resented by some, wailed over by all, but accepted as inevitable. Another, and another, and another followed. Too much production; too many Jew firms competing and under-bidding; more and more foreigners coming in ready to take the work at half price. These reasons and a dozen others of the same order were given glibly, and at first with a certain show of kindliness and attempt to soften harsh facts as much as possible. But the patience of diplomacy soon failed, and questioners of all orders were told that if they did not like it they had nothing to do but to leave and allow a crowd of waiting substitutes to take their places at half rates. The shirt that had sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar had gone down to forty-five and sixty cents respectively, and as cottons and linens had fallen in the same proportion, there was still profit for all but the worker. Here and there were places on Grand or Division Streets where they might even be bought for thirty and forty cents, the price per dozen to the worker being at last from fifty to sixty cents. In the factories it was still possible to earn some approximation to the old rate, but employers had found that it was far cheaper to give out the work; some choosing to give the entire shirt at so much per dozen; others preferring to send out what is known as “team work,” flaps being done by one, bosoms by another, and so on. For a time Rose hemmed shirt-flaps at four cents a dozen, then took first one form and then another of underclothing, the rates on which had fallen in the same proportion, to find each as sure a means of starvation as the last. She had no knowledge of ordinary family sewing, and no means of obtaining such work, had any training fitted her for it; domestic service was equally impossible for the same reason, and the added one that the children must not be left, and she struggled on, growing a little more haggard and worn with every week, but the pretty eyes still holding a gleam of the old merriment. Even that went at last. It was a hard winter. The steadiest work could not give them food enough or warmth enough. The children cried with hunger and shivered with cold. There was no refuge save in Norah’s bed, under the ragged quilts; and they cowered there till late in the day, watching Rose as she sat silent at the sewing-machine. There was small help for them in the house. The workers were all in like case, and for the most part drowned their troubles in stale beer from the bucket-shop below. “Put the children in an asylum, and then you can marry Mike Rooney and be comfortable enough,” they said to her, but Rose shook her head. “I’ve mothered ’em so far, and I’ll see ’em through,” she said, “but the saints only knows how. If I can’t do it by honest work, there’s one way left that’s sure, an’ I’ll try that.” There came a Saturday night when she took her bundle of work, shirts again, and now eighty-five cents a dozen. There were five dozen, and when the $1.50 was laid aside for rent it was easy to see what remained for food, coal, and light. Clothing had ceased to be part of the question. The children were barefoot. They had a bit of meat on Sundays, but for the rest, bread, potatoes, and tea were the diet, with a cabbage and bit of pork now and then [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] “T for luxuries. Norah had been failing, and to-night Rose planned to buy her “something with a taste to it,” and looked at the sausages hanging in long links with a sudden reckless determination to get enough for all. She was faint with hunger, and staggered as she passed a basement restaurant, from which came savory smells, snuffed longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was long in coming, and as she laid her bundle on the counter she saw suddenly that her needle had “jumped,” and that half an inch or so of a band required resewing. As she looked the foreman’s knife slipped under the place, and in a moment half the band had been ripped. “That’s no good,” he said. “You’re getting botchier all the time.” “Give it to me,” Rose pleaded. “I’ll do it over.” “Take it if you like,” he said indifferently, “but there’s no pay for that kind o’ work.” He had counted her money as he spoke, and Rose cried out as she saw the sum. “Do you mean you’ll cheat me of the whole dozen because half an inch on one is gone wrong?” “Call it what you like,” he said. “R. & Co. ain’t going to send out anything but first-class work. Stand out of the way and let the next have a chance. There’s your three dollars and forty cents.” Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost her work altogether, but as she left the dark stairs and felt again the cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals. She turned toward it as the thought came, but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly and tried to wrench away. “Easy now,” a voice said. “You’re breakin’ your heart for trouble, an’ here I am in the nick o’ time. Come with me an’ you’ll have no more of it, for my pocket’s full to-night, an’ that’s more ’n it’ll be in the mornin’ if you don’t take me in tow.” It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked with him toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty years, and it had been a vain struggle. She took his money when morning came, and went home with the look that is on her face to-day. “I’ll marry you out of hand,” the sailor said to her; but Rose answered, “No man alive’ll ever marry me after this night,” and she has kept her word. She has her trade, and it is a prosperous one, in which wages never fail. The children are warm and have no need to cry for hunger any more. “It’s not a long life we live,” Rose says quietly. “My kind die early, but the children will be well along, an’ all the better when the time comes that they’ve full sense for not having to know what way the living comes. But let God Almighty judge who’s to blame most—I that was driven, or them that drove me to the pass I’m in.” CHAPTER THIRD. SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM. HE emancipation of women is certainly well under way, when all underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more difficult for a woman to clothe herself without thought or worry, than it has long been for a man.” This was the word heard at a woman’s club not long ago, and reinforced within the week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of women at large. The editorial page of one held a fervid appeal for greater simplicity of dress and living in general, followed by half a column of entreaty to women to buy ready-made clothing, and thus save time for higher pursuits and the attainment of broader views. With feebler pipe, but in the same key, sounded the second advocate of simplification, adding:— “Never was there a time when women could dress with as much real elegance on as small an expenditure of money. Bargains abound, and there is small excuse for dowdiness. The American woman is fast taking her place as the best-dressed woman in the civilized world.” Believing very ardently that the right of every woman born includes not only “life, liberty, and the pursuit of [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] happiness,” but beauty also, it being one chief end of woman to include in her own personality all beauty attainable by reasonable means, I am in heartiest agreement with one side of the views quoted. But in this quest we have undertaken, and from which, once begun, there is no retreat, strange questions arise; and in this new dawn of larger liberty and wider outlook is seen the little cloud which, if no larger than a man’s hand, holds the seed of as wild a storm as has ever swept over humanity. For emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of ordinary home sewing, marvelling a little that a few dollars can give such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life-blood is on these garments. Through burning, scorching days of summer; through marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags, with white-faced children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil on, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done. The slice of baker’s bread and the bowl of rank black tea, boiled to extract every possibility of strength, are taken, still at the machine. It is easier to sit there than in rising and movement to find what weariness is in every limb. There is always a child old enough to boil the kettle and run for a loaf of bread; and all share the tea, which gives a fictitious strength, laying thus the foundation for the fragile, anæmic faces and figures to be found among the workers in the bag-factories, paper-box manufactories, etc. “Why don’t they go into the country?” is often asked. “Why do they starve in the city when good homes and ample pay are waiting for them?” It is not with the class to whom this question is applicable that we deal to-day. Of the army of two hundred thousand who battle for bread, nearly a third have no resource but the needle, and of this third many thousands are widows with children, to whom they cling with a devotion as strong as wiser mothers feel, and who labor night and day to prevent the scattering into asylums, and consequent destruction of the family as a family. They are widows through many causes that can hardly be said to come under the head of “natural.” Drunkenness leads, and the thousand accidents that are born of drunkenness, but there are other methods arising from the same greed that underlies most modern civilization. The enormous proportion of accidents, which, if not killing instantly, imply long disability and often death as the final result, come nine tenths of the time from criminal disregard of any ordinary means of protecting machinery. One great corporation, owning thousands of miles of railroad, saw eight hundred men disabled in greater or less degree in one year, and still refused to adopt a method of coupling cars which would have saved the lives of the sixty-eight brakemen who were sacrificed to the instinct of economy dominating the superintendent. The same man refused to roof over a spot where a number of freight-handlers were employed during a stormy season, rheumatism and asthma being the consequences for many, and his reason had at least the merit of frankness,—a merit often lacking in explanations that, even when most plausible, cover as essential a brutality of nature. “Men are cheaper than shingles,” he said. “There’s a dozen waiting to fill the place of one that drops out.” In another case, in a great saw-mill, the owner had been urged to protect a lath-saw, swearing at the persistent request, even after the day when one of his best men was led out to the ambulance, his right hand hanging by a bit of skin, his death from lockjaw presently leaving one more widow to swell the number. It is of such men that a sturdy thinker wrote last year, “Man is a self-damnable animal,” and it is on such men that the curse of the worker lies heaviest. That they exist at all is hardly credited by the multitude who believe that, for this country at least, oppression and outrage are only names. That they exist in numbers will be instantly denied; yet to one who has heard the testimony given by weeping women, and confirmed by the reluctant admissions of employers themselves, there comes belief that no words can fully tell what wrong is still possible from man to man in this America, the hope of nations. Is this a digression hardly to be pardoned in a paper on the trades and lives of women,—a deliberate turning toward an issue which has neither place nor right in such limits? On the contrary, it is all part of the same wretched story. The chain that binds humanity in one has not one set of links for men and another for women; and the blow aimed at one is felt also not only by those nearest, but by successive ranks to whom the shock, though only by indirect transmission, is none the less deadly in effect. And thus the wrong done on the huge scale appropriate to a great corporation finds its counterpart in a lesser but quite as well organized a wrong, born also of the spirit of greed, and working its will as pitilessly. “If you employed on a large scale you would soon find that you ceased to look at your men as men,” said an impatient iron-worker not long ago. “They are simply so much producing power. I don’t propose to abuse them, but I’ve no time even to remember their faces, much less their names.” Precisely on this principle reasons the employer of women, who are even less to be regarded as personalities than men. For the latter, once a year at least the employer becomes conscious of the fact that these masses of “so much producing power” are resolvable into votes, and on election day, if on no other, worthy of analysis. There is no such necessity in the case of women. The swarming crowd of applicants are absolutely at the mercy of the manager or foreman, who, unless there is a sudden pressure of work, makes the selections according to fancy, youth and any gleam of prettiness being unfailing recommendations. There are many firms of which this could not [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] be said with any justice. There are many more in which it is the law, tacitly laid down, but none the less a fact. With such methods of selection go other methods supposed to be confined to the lowest grade of work and the lowest type of employer, both being referred to regions like Baxter or Division Streets. But they are to be found east or west indifferently, the illustration at present in mind being on Canal Street, within sound of Broadway. It is a prosperous firm, one whose trade-mark can be trusted; and here are a few of the methods by which this prosperity has been attained, and goes on in always-increasing ratio. In the early years of their existence as a firm they manufactured on the premises, but, like many other firms, found that it was a very unnecessary expense. A roof over the heads of a hundred or more women, with space for their machines, meant not less than twenty-five hundred dollars a year to be deducted from the profits. Even floors in some cheaper quarter were still an expense to be avoided if possible. The easy way out of the difficulty was to make the women themselves pay the rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the less certainly in fact. Nothing could be simpler. Manufacturing on the premises had only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the women that they were allowed to work at home. The rule established itself at once, and the firm, smiling serenely at the stoppage of this most damaging and most unnecessary leak, proceeded to make fresh discoveries of equally satisfactory possibilities. To each woman who applied for work it was stated:— “We send all packages from the cutting-room by express, the charges to be paid by you. It’s a small charge, only fifteen cents, to be paid when the bundle comes in.” “We can come for ours. We live close by. We don’t want to lose the fifteen cents,” a few objected, but the answer was invariable:— “It suits us best to make up the packages in the cutting-room, and if you don’t like the arrangement there are plenty waiting that it will suit well enough.” Plenty waiting! How well they knew it, and always more and more as the ships came in, and the great tide of “producing power” flowed through Castle Garden, and stood, always at high-water mark, in the wards where cheap labor may be found. Plenty waiting; and these women who could not wait went home and turned over their small store of pennies for the fifteen cents, the payment of which meant either a little less bread or an hour or two longer at the sewing-machine, defined as the emancipator of women. In the mean time the enterprising firm had made arrangements with a small express company to deliver the packages at twelve cents each, and could thus add to the weekly receipts a clear gain of three cents per head. It is unnecessary to add that they played into each other’s hands, and that the wagon-drivers had no knowledge of anything beyond the fact that they were to collect the fifteen cents and turn it over to their superiors. But in some manner it leaked out; and a driver whose feelings had been stirred by the sad face of a little widow on Sixth Street told her that the fifteen cents was “a gouge,” and they had all better put their heads together and refuse to pay more than twelve cents. “If we had any heads, it might do to talk about putting them together,” the little widow said bitterly. “For my part, I begin to believe women are born fools, but I’ll see what I can do.” This “seeing” involved earning a dollar or two less for the week, but the cheat seemed so despicable a one that indignation made her reckless, and she went to the woman who had first directed her to the firm and had been in its employ almost from the beginning. “It’s like ’em; oh, yes, it’s like ’em!” she said, “but we’ve no time to spend in stirring up things, and you know well enough what would be the end of it if we did,—discharged, and somebody else getting our wages. You’d better not talk too much if you want to keep your place.” “That isn’t any worse than the thread dodge,” another woman said. “I know from a clerk in the house where they buy their thread, that they charge us five cents a dozen more than it costs them, though they make a great point of giving it to us at cost and cheaper than we could buy it ourselves.” “Why don’t you club together and buy, then?” the little widow asked, to hear again the formula, “And get your walking-ticket next day? We know a little better than that.” A few weeks later a new system of payment forced each worker to sacrifice from half an hour to an hour of precious time, her only capital. Hitherto payments had been made at the desk when work was brought in, but now checks were given on a Bowery bank, and the women must walk over in heat and storm alike, and wait their turn in the long line on the benches. If paid by the week this would make little difference, as any loss of time would be the employers’, but this form of payment is practically abolished, piece-work done at home meaning the utmost amount of profit to the employer, every loss in time being paid by the workers themselves. When questioned as to why the check system of payment had been adopted by this and various other firms, the reply was simply:— “It saves trouble. The bank has more time to count out money than we have.” “But the women? Does it seem quite fair that they should be the losers?” [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38] [Pg 39] “Fair? Anything’s fair in business. You’d find that out if you undertook to do it.” As the case then at present stands, for this firm, and for many which have adopted the same methods, the working-woman not only pays the rent that would be required for a factory, but gives them a profit on expressage, thread, time lost in going to bank, and often the price on a dozen of garments, payment for the dozen being deducted by many foremen if there is a flaw in one. This foreman becomes the scapegoat if unpleasant questions are asked by any whose investigation might bring discredit on the firm. In some cases th...