PRISONERS OF POVERTY.

WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS,
THEIR TRADES

HELEN

AND

THEIR

LIVES.

CAMPBELL,

AUTHOR OF " M R S . HERNDON'S INCOME," " MISS MELINDA'S
OPPORTUNITY," ETC.

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1887,
BY H E L E N

CAMPBELL.

©toifarsttg ^regjs:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

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'j
The hands are mighty were the head not blind.
Pr'est 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.

H P H E 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,

ii

PREFACE.

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.

CHAPTER

FIRST.
PAGE

W O R K E R AND T R A D E

7

CHAPTER
THE

SECOND.

CASE OF ROSE H A G G E R T Y

CHAPTER

18

THIRD.

SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS F I R M

CHAPTER

.

.

.

.

FOURTH.

T H E BARGAIN COUNTER

43

CHAPTER
A

FIFTH.

FASHIONABLE DRESSMAKER

CHAPTER

.

.

.

.

.

CHAPTER

.

.

.

55

SIXTH.

M O R E M E T H O D S OF PROSPEROUS F I R M S

N E G A T I V E OR P O S I T I V E

30

.

.

.

.

66

SEVENTH.

GOSPEL

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

76

iv

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER EIGHTH.
PAGE

T H E TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER

88

CHAPTER NINTH.
T H E 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

PERIMENTED

EX150

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
T H E WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS

CHAPTER

FIFTEENTH.

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS

CHAPTER
Two

HOSPITAL BEDS

160

173

SIXTEENTH.
186

CONTENTS.

v

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.
PAGE

CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK

.

199

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

PKISONEKS OF POVEKTY.

CHAPTER FIEST.
WORKER AND TRADE.

TN that antiquity which we who only are the real
ancients look back upon as the elder worid,
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,

8

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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 Koine 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

WORKER

AND

TRADE.

9

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!"
I t 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.
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

10

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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 can 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 employ-

WORKER

AND

TRADE.

11

*nent 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. Ninetytwo trades are given as standing open to women today, 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 as 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 dullwitted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in some of its many forms as the one thing

12

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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, are 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.

WORKER AND TRADE.

13

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

14

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

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 $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

WORKER AND TRADE.

15

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 an 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,

16

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

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 middlemen, 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

WORKER

AND

TRADE.

17

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.
2

CHAPTER SECOND.
THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY.
" ' T ^ H E case of Eose Haggerty." So it stands on
-L 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 of Eose 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

THE

CASE

OF ROSE

HAGGERTY.

19

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 Eose, 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
Eose 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,

20

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

nor will I so long's me name's Dennis Haggerty.
But you, Eose, you look out an* get any money you '11
find in me pockets, an' keep the children straight, an'
all the saints 11 see you through the job."
Eose 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 gala 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 goodnatured, 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. Eose 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

THE

CASE

OF ROSE

HAGGERTY.

21

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 Eose 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 Eose 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 experiment'
ing 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 dur^
ing the first one the old shoemaker came to the rescue,
had an occasional eye to the children, and himself
paid the rent, telling Eose 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.
I t was the old shoemaker, a patient, sad-eyed old
Scotchman, who also had his story, who settled for

22

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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 Eose 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 Eose'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

THE

CASE

OF ROSE

HAGGERTY,

23

they could flash as well, and the few who tried a
coarse jest shrunk back from both look and scorching word.
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-hundredyard 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 Eose 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

24

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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/' Eose 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 '11 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 Eose 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," Eose said. " It might
not be as certain when I 'd got it. I '11 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

THE

CASE

OF ROSE

HAGGERTY.

25

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 underbidding ; 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

26

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

is known as " team work," flaps being done by one,
bosoms by another, and so on.
For a time Eose 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 Koran's bed, under the
ragged quilts ; and they cowered there till late in the
day, watching Eose as she sat silent at the sewingmachine. 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 Eooney and be comfortable enough," they
said to her, but Eose shook her head.
" I ' v e mothered 'em so far, and I'll see 'em
through/' she said, " but the saints only knows how.

THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY.

27

If I can't do it by honest work, there's one way left
that's sure, an' 111 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 for luxuries. Norah had been failing, and
to-night Kose 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.
" T h a t ' s no good," he said. "You're getting
botchier all the time."
" Give it to me," Eose pleaded. " I '11 do it over."
" Take it if you like," he said indifferently, " but
there's no pay for that kind o' work."

28

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

He had counted her money as he spoke, and Eose
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. " K. & 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."
Eose 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 11 have no more of it, for my
pocket's full to-night, an' that's more 'n it 11 be in
the mornm* if you don't take me in tow."
It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and
Eose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his
arm and walked with him toward Eoosevelt Street.
It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and
warmth for the children, and what did it matter?

THE

CASE

OF ROSE

HAGGERTY.

29

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 '11 marry you out of hand," the sailor said to
her; but Eose answered, " No man alive 11 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.
" I t ' s not a long life we live," Eose says quietly.
" M y 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 'in in."

CHAPTER THIED.
SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM.
"

r

I ^HE emancipation of women is certainly well under
X
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 bestdressed woman in the civilized world."

METHODS

OF A PROSPEROUS

FIRM.

31

Believing very ardently that the right of every
woman born includes not only " life, liberty, and the
pursuit of 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 lifeblood 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

32

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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,
anaemic 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

METHODS

OF A PROSPEROUS

FIRM.

33

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 freighthandlers 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
3

34

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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."

METHODS

OF A PROSPEROUS

FIRM.

35

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 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

36

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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. I t ' 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

METHODS

OF A PROSPEROUS

FIRM.

37

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 wagondrivers 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 ' l l see what I can do."
This" seeing" involved earning a dollar or two
less for the week, but the cheat seemed so despicable

38

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

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.
" I t ' 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

METHODS

OF A PROSPEROUS

FIRM.

39

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 : —
" I t 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 ? "
" 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 they refuse positively to
give any information, but in most, questions are
answered with suspicious glibness, and if reference
is made to any difficulties encountered by the women in their employ, they take instant refuge in the
statement: —-

40

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

" Oh, that was before the last foreman left. We
discharged him as soon as we found out how he had
served the women.,,
" Do you see those goods ?" another asked,
pointing to a counter filled with piles of chemises.
"How do you suppose we make a cent when you
can buy a chemise like that for fifty cents ? We
don't. The competition is ruining us, and we 're
talking of giving up the business."
"That's so. I t ' s really more in charity to the
women than anything else that we go on," his partner remarked, with a look toward him which seemed
to hold a million condensed winks. " That price is
just ruin ; that's what it is."
Undoubtedly, but not for the firm, as the following
figures will show,—figures given by a competent forewoman in a large establishment where she had had
eleven years' experience: twenty-seven yards and
three-quarters are required for one dozen chemises,
the price paid for such cotton as is used in one selling
at fifty cents being five cents per yard, or $1.40 for
the whole amount; thirty yards of edging at 4J cents
a yard furnishes trimming for the dozen, at $1.35;
and four two-hundred-yard spools of cotton are required, at twenty-five cents per dozen, or eight cents
per dozen garments. The seamer who sews up and
hems the bodies of the garments receives thirty cents
a dozen, and the " maker " — this being the technical
term for the more experienced worker who puts on

METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM.

41

band and sleeves — receives from ninety cents to
one dollar a dozen, though at present the rates run
from seventy-five to ninety cents. Our table, then,
stands as follows : —
Cloth for one dozen chemises
Edging
"
"
Thread
"
«
Seamer
"
"
Maker
"
"

SI.40
1.35
08
.30
90

Total cost of dozen
"Wholesale price per dozen
Profit per dozen

$4.03
5.25
1.22

The chemise which sells at seven dollars per dozen
has the additional value in quality of cloth and edging, the same price being paid the work-women, this
price varying only in very slight degree till the excessively elaborate work demanded by special orders.
One class of women in New York, whose trade has
been a prosperous one since ever time began, pay
often one hundred dollars a dozen for the garments,
which are simply a mass of lace and cobweb cambric,
tucked and puffed, and demanding the highest skill
of the machine operator, who even in such case
counts herself happy if she can make eight or nine
dollars a week. And if any youth and comeliness
remain to her, why need there be wonder if the
question frame itself: " W h y am I the maker of this
thing, earning barest living, when, if I choose, I, too,
can be buyer and wearer and live at ease ? "

42

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

Wonder rather that one remains honest when the
only thing that pays is vice.
For the garments of lowest grade to be found in
the cheapest quarters of the city the price range?
from twenty-five to thirty cents, the maker receiving
only thirty cents a dozen, and cloth, trimming, and
thread being of the lowest quality. The profit in
such case is wellnigh imperceptible; but for the
class of employer who secures it, content to grovel
in foul streets, and know no joy of living save the
one delight of seeing the sordid gains roll up into
hundreds of thousands, it is still profit, and he is
content. As I write, an evening paper containing
the advertisement of a leading dry-goods firm is
placed before me, and I read: " Chemises, from 12 £
cents up." Here imagination stops. No list of cost
prices within my reach tells me how this is practicable. But one thing is certain. Even here it is
not the employer who loses; and if it is a question
of but a third of a cent profit, be sure that that profit
is on his side, never on the side of the worker.

CHAPTER FOURTH.
THE BARGAIN COUNTER.

T

HE problem of the last chapter is, if not plain,
at least far plainer than when it left the pen,
and it has become possible to understand how the
garment sold at twelve and a half cents may still
afford its margin of profit. It has also been made
plain that that profit is, as there stated, "never on
the side of the worker," but that it is wrung from
her by the sharpest and most pitiless of all the
methods known to unscrupulous men and the women
who have chosen to emulate them. For it has been
my evil fortune in this quest to find women not only
as filled with greed and as tricky and uncertain in
their methods as the worst class of male employers,
but even more ingenious in specific modes of imposition. Without exception, so far as I can discover,
they have been workers themselves, released for a
time it may be by marriage, but taking up the trade
again, either from choice or necessity. They have
learned every possibility of cheating. They know
also far better than men every possibility of nagging,
and as they usually own a few machines they

44

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

employ women on their own premises and keep a
watchful eye lest the smallest advantage be gained.
The majority prefer to act as " sweaters," this releasing them from the uncertainties attending the wholesale manufacturer, and as the work is given to them
at prices at or even below the " life limit," it is not
surprising that those to whom they in turn pass it
on find their percentage to mean something much
nearer death than life.
" Only blind eyes could have failed to see all this
before," some reader is certain to say. " How is it
possible that any one dealing directly with the question could doubt for a moment the existence of this
and a thousand-fold worse fraud ?"
Only possible from the same fact that makes these
papers a necessity. They hold only new phases of
the old story. The grain has had not one threshing
alone, but many, and yet for the most patient and
persistent of searchers after truth is ever fresh surprise at its nature and extent. Given one or a dozen
exposures of a fraud, and we settle instinctively into
ttie conviction that its power has ended. It is barely
conceivable to the honest mind that cheating has
wonderful staying power, and that not one nor a
thousand exposures will turn into straight paths feet
used to crooked ones. And when a business man,
born to all good things and owning a name known
as the synonyme of the best the Eepublic offers
to-day, states calmly, "There is no such thing as

THE BARGAIN

COUNTER.

45

business without lying," what room remains for honor
or justice or. humanity among men whose theory
is the same, and who can gild it with no advantage
of birth or training ? It is a wonderful century, and
we are civilizing with a speed that takes away the
breath and dims the vision, but there are dark corners still, and in the shadow Greed and Corruption
and Shame hold high carnival, with nameless shapes,
before which even civilization cowers. Their trace
is found at every turn, but we deal, with only one
to-day, helpless, even when face to face, to say what
method will most surely mean destruction.
We settle so easily into the certainty that nothing
can be as bad as it seems, that moments of despair
come to all who would rouse men to action. Not
one generation nor many can answer the call sounding forever in the ears of every son of man;' but he
who has heeded has at least made heeding more
possible for those that follow; and the time comes
at last when the way must be plain for all. To
make it plainer many a popular conviction must be
laid aside, and among them the one that follows.
It is a deeply rooted belief that the poor understand and feel for the poor beyond any possibility in
those who have never known cold and hunger and
rags save as uncomfortable terms used too freely by
injudicious agitators. Like many another popular
belief the groundwork is in the believer's own mind,
and has its most tangible existence in story-books.

46

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

There are isolated cases always of self-sacrifice and
compassion and all gentle virtues, but long experience goes to show that if too great comfort is deadening, too little is brutalizing, and that pity dies in the
soul of man or woman to whom no pity has been
shown. It is easy to see, then, how the woman who
has found injustice and oppression the law of life,
deals in the same fashion when her own time comes,
and tyrannizes with the comfortable conviction that
she is by this means getting even with the world.
She knows every sore spot, and how best to make
the galled jade wince, and lightens her own task by
the methods practised in the past upon herself. This
is one species to be dealt with, and a far less dangerous
one than the craftier and less outspokenly brutal order,
just above her in grade. It is by these last that some
of the chief frauds on women are perpetrated, and
here we find one source of the supplies that furnish
the bargain counters.
We read periodically of firms detected in imposing
upon women, and are likely to feel that such exposure
has ended their career as firms once for all. In every
trade will be found one or more of these, whose
methods of obtaining hands are fraudulent, and who
advertise for " girls to learn the trade," with no intention of retaining them beyond the time in which they
remain content to work without pay. There are a
thousand methods of evasion, even when the law
faces them and the victim has made formal com-

THE BARGAIN

COUNTER.

47

plaint. As a rule she is too ignorant and too timid
for complaint or anything but abject submission, and
this fact is relied upon as certain foundation for success. But, if determined enough, the woman has
some redress in her power. Within a few years,
after long and often defeated attempts, the Woman's
Protective Union has brought about legislation against
such fraud, and any employer deliberately withholding wages is liable to fifteen days' imprisonment and
the costs of the suit brought against him, a fact of
which most of them seem to be still quite unaware.
This law, so far as imprisonment is concerned, has
no application to women, and they have learned how
to evade the points which might be made to bear
upon them, by hiring rooms, machines, etc., and
swearing that they have no personal property that
can be levied upon. Or, if they have any, they
transfer it to some friend or relative, as in the case
of Madame M
, a fashionable dressmaker notorious for escaping from payment seven times out of
ten. She has accumulated money enough to become
the owner of a large farm on Long Island, but so
ingeniously have all her arrangements been made
that it is impossible to make her responsible, and
her case is used at the Union as a standing illustration of the difficulty of circumventing a woman bent
upon cheating.
A firm, a large proportion of whose goods are manufactured in this manner, can well afford to stock the

48

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

bargain counters of popular stores. They can afford
also to lose slightly by work imperfectly done, though,
even with learners, this is in smaller proportion than
might be supposed. The girl who comes in answer
to their advertisement is anxious to learn the trade
at once, and gives her best intelligence to mastering
every detail. Her first week is likely to hold an
energy of effort that could hardly last, and she can
often be beguiled by small payments and large promises to continue weeks and even months, always expecting the always delayed payment. Firms dealing
in such fashion change their quarters often, unless in
league with police captains who have been given
sufficient reasons for obliviousness of their methods,
and who have also been known to silence timid complaints with the threat of a charge of theft. But
there is always a multitude ready to be duped, and
no exposure seems sufficient to prevent this, and
women who have once established a business on
this system seem absolutely reckless as to any
possible consequences.
There is at present on Third Avenue a Mrs. F
,
who for eleven years has conducted a successful business built upon continuous fraud. She is a manufacturer of underwear, and the singular fact is that
she has certain regular employees who have been
with her from the beginning, and who, while apparently unconscious of her methods, are practically
partners in the fraud. She is a woman of good

THE BARGAIN

COUNTER.

49

presence and address, and one to whom girls submit
unquestioningly, contending, even in court, that she
never meant to cheat them; and it is still an open
question with those who know her best how far she
herself recognizes the fraud in her system. The old
hands deny that it is her custom to cheat, and though
innumerable complaints stand against her, she has
usually paid on compulsion, and insisted that she
always meant to. Her machines never lack operators, and the grade of work turned out is of the best
quality. Her advertisement appears at irregular
intervals, is answered by swarms of applicants, and
there are always numbers waiting their turn. On a
side street a few blocks distant is a deep basement,
crowded with machines and presided over by a
woman with many of her personal characteristics.
It is the lowest order of slop work that is done here,
but it helps to fill the bargain counters of the poorer
stores, and the workers are an always shifting quantity. It is certain that both places are practically
the property of Mrs. F
, but no man has yet been
cunning enough to determine once for all her responsibility, and no law yet framed covers any ground
that she has chosen as her own. Her prototypes are
to be found in every trade open to women, and their
numbers grow with the growth of the great city and
strengthen in like proportion. The story of one is
practically the story of all. Popularly supposed to
be a method of trickery confined chiefly to Jews,
4

50

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

investigation shows that Americans must share the
odium in almost as great degree, and that the long
list includes every nationality known to trade.
We have dealt thus far with fraud as the first and
chief procurer for bargain counters. Another method
results from a fact that thus far must sum up as
mainly Jewish. Till within very little more than
a year, a large dry-goods firm on the west side employed many women in its underwear department.
The work was piece-work, and done by the class of
women who own their own machines and work at
home. Prices were never high, but the work was
steady and the pay prompt. The firm for a time made
a specialty of "Mother Hubbard" night-gowns, for
which they paid one dollar a dozen for "making," this
word covering the making and putting in of yoke and
sleeves, the " seamer " having in some cases made the
bodies at thirty cents a dozen. Many of the women,
however, made the entire garment at 11.30 per dozen,
ten being the utmost number practicable in a day of
fourteen hours. Suddenly the women were informed
that their services would not be required longer. An
east-side firm bearing a Jewish name had contracted
to do the same work at eighty cents a dozen, and all
other underwear in the same proportions. Steam had
taken the place of foot-power, and the women must
find employment with firms who were willing to keep
to slower methods. Necessarily these are an always
lessening minority. Competition, in this race for

THE BARGAIN

COUNTER.

51

wealth crushes out every possibility of thought for
the worker save as so much producing power, and
what hand and foot cannot do steam must. In
several cases in this special manufacture the factories have been transferred to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, whjere rent is a mere song, and where
girls flock in from the adjacent country, eager for
the work that represents something higher than
either ordinary mill work or the household service
they despise.
" What can we do ?" said one manufacturer lately,
when asked how he thought the thing would end.
" If there were any power quicker than steam, or any
way of managing so that women could feed five or
six machines, that would have to come next, else
every one of us would go to the wall together, the
pressure is so tremendous. Of course there's no
chance for the women, but then you must remember
there 's precious little chance for the employer either.
This competition is a sort of insanity. It gluts the
market with cheap goods, and gives a sense of prosperity, but it is the death of all legitimate, reasonable
business. It won't surprise me if this whole trade
of manufacturing underwear becomes a monopoly, and
one man — like 0 ' H
, for instance — swallows
up the whole thing. Lord help the women then, for
there 11 be no help in man!"
" Suppose co-operation were tried ? What would
be the effect?"

52

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

" No effect, because there is n't confidence enough
anywhere to make men dare a co-operative scheme.
Even the workers would distrust it, and a sharp business man laughs in your face if you mention the
word. It does n't suit American notions. It might
be a good thing if there were any old-fashioned business men left, — men content with slow profits and
honest dealing, — as my father was, for instance. But
he would n't have a ghost of a chance to-day. The
whole system of business is rotten, and there will
have to be a reconstruction clean from the bottom,
though it's the men that need it first. We're the
maddest nation for money on the face of the earth,
and the race is a more killing one every year. I 'm
half inclined to think sometimes that mankind will
soon be pretty much a superfluity, the machines are
getting so intelligent; and it may be these conditions
that seem to upset you so are simply means of killing
off those that are not wanted, and giving place to a
less sensitive order of beings. Lord help them, I say
again, for there's no help in man."
The speaker nodded, as if this rather unexpected
flight of imagination was an inspiration in which
might lie the real solution of all difficulties, and hurried away to his waiting niche in the great competitive system. And as he went, there came to me
words spoken by one of the workers, in whose life
hope was dead, and who also had her theory of any
future under to-day's conditions: —

THE BARGAIN

COUNTER.

53

" I Ve worked eleven years. I Ve tried five trades
with my needle and machine. My shortest day has
been fourteen hours, for I had the children and they
had to be fed. There's not one of these trades that I
don't know well. It is n't work that I Ve any trouble
in getting. I t ' s wages. Five years ago I could earn
$1.50 a day, and we were comfortable. Then it began
to go down, —$1.25, then $1.00. There it stopped
awhile, and I got used to that, and could even get
some remains of comfort out of it. I had to plan to
the last half cent. We went cold often, but we were
never hungry. But then it fell again, — to ninety
cents, to eighty-five. For a year the best that I can
do I have earned not over eighty cents a day, — sometimes only seventy-five. I ' m sixty-two years old.
I can't learn new ways. I am strong. I always was
strong. I run the machine fourteen hours a clay, with
just the stoppings that have to be to get the work
ready. I've never asked a man alive for a penny
beyond what my own hands can earn, and I don't
want it. I suppose the Lord knows what it all means^
I t ' s His world and His children in it, and I 've kept
myself from going crazy many a time by saying it
wras His world and that somehow it must all come
right in the end. But I don't believe it any more.
He's forgotten. There's nothing left but men that
live to grind the face of the poor; that chuckle when
they find a new way of making a cent or two more a
week out of starving women and children. I never

54

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

thought I should feel so; I don't know myself; but I
tell you I 'm ready for murder when I think of these
men. If there's no justice above, it is n't quite dead
below; and if men with money will not heed, the
men and the women without money will rise some
day. How ? I don't know. We 've no time to
plan, and we 're too tired to think, but it's coming
somehow, and I 'm not ashamed to say I '11 join in if
I live to see it come. I t ' s seas of tears that these
men sail on. I t ' s our life-blood they drink and our
flesh that they eat. God help them if the storm
comes, for there '11 be no help in man."
Employer and employed had ended in wellnigh
the same words; but the gulf between no words have
spanned, and it widens day by day.

CHAPTER FIFTH.
A FASHIONABLE DRESSMAKER.
" /""^OME now, be reasonable, won't you ? You 've
^ ^ got to move on, you know, and why don't you
doit?"
" I 'm that reasonable that a bench of judges
could n't be more so; and I '11 not move on for anything less than dynamite, and I ain't sure I would for
that. I t ' s only a choice between starvation and going into the next world in little bits, and I don't suppose it makes much difference which way it's done."
The small, pale, dogged-looking little woman who
announced this conviction did not even rise from the
steps where she sat looking up to the big policeman,
who faced her uneasily, half turning as if he would
escape the consequences of rash action if he knew
how. Nothing could be more mysterious. For it
was within sight of Broadway, on one of the bestknown side streets near Union Square, where business signs were few and of the most decorous order,
and where before one door, bearing the name of one
of the best-knowu fashionable dressmakers, a line of
carriages stood each day during the busy season. A

56

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

name hardly less known was on the door-plate of
the great house before which she sat, and which still
bore every mark of prosperous ownership, while from
one of the windows looked the elaborately dressed
head of Madame herself, the anxiety in her eyes contradicting the scornful smile on her thin lips. The
door just beyond No. — opened, and a stout gentleman descended one step and stood eying the policeman belligerently. That official looked up the street
as if wishing for cry of "murder" or "stop thief"
around the corner, but hearing neither, concentrated
again on the antagonist whose irregular methods defied precedent and gave him a painful sense of insecurity. If two could listen, why not three ? — and I
paused near the steps, eyed considerately by the stout
gentleman, who was evidently on the outlook for
allies. A look of intelligence passed between Madame and the policeman, and her head disappeared
from the window, a blind on the second story moving
slightly and announcing a moment later that she had
taken a less conspicuous post of observation.
" Move on now, I tell you !" began the policeman
again, but paused, for as he spoke a slender, brighteyed girl came swiftly toward them, and paused on the
first step with a glance of curiosity at the little group.
" Have you come to answer Madame M
's advertisement ?" the little woman said, as she rose from
the steps and laid her hand detainingly on the hurrying figure.

A FASHIONABLE

DRESSMAKER.

57

" Yes," the girl answered hesitatingly, pulling away
from the hand that held.
" Then, unless you Ve got anything else to do and
Like to give your time and strength for naught, keep
away. You '11 get no wages, no matter what's promised. I V e been there six months, kept on by fair
promises, and I know. 111 let no girl go in there
without warning."
" I t ' s a good-looking place," the girl said doubtfully.
" lb's a den of thieves all the same. If you don't
believe me, come down to the Woman's Protective
Union on Clinton Place, and you '11 see my case on
the book there, and judgment against this woman,
that's no more mercy than a Hottentot and lies that
smoothly that she 'd humbug an angel of light. Ah !
that's good !" she added, for the girl had shaken off
her hand and sped away as swiftly as she had come.
" That's seven since yesterday, and I wish it were
seven hundred. I t ' s time somebody turned watchdog."
" That ain't your business. That's a matter for the
law," said' the big policeman, who had glanced anxiously up to the second-story window and then looked
reassured and serene, as the stout gentleman made a
significant movement, which indicated that bribery
was as possible for one sex as for the other. " The
law 11 straighten out anything that you've a mind to
have it."

58

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

" The law ! Lord help them that think the law is
going to see them through," the small woman said,
with a fierceness that made the big policeman start
and lay his hand on his club. " W h a t ' s the law
worth when it can't give to you one dollar of two
hundred and eight that's owed; and she that earned
them gasping her life out with consumption ? If it
was my account alone do you suppose I 'd care ?
Mine's eighty-five, and I went to law for it, to find
she 'd as long a head as she has smooth tongue, and
had fixed things so that there was n't a stick of furniture nor a dollar of property that could be levied
on. If she 'd been a man the new law that gives a
cheating employer fifteen days' imprisonment might
have worked with her as it's worked with many a
rascal that never knew he could be brought up with
a round turn. But she's a woman and she slides
through, and a judgment against her is n't worth the
paper it's written on. So as I can't take it out in
money I take it out in being even with her. There
are the papers that show I don't lie, and here I sit
the time I Ve fixed to sit, and if she gets the three
new hands she \s after, it won't be because I have n't
done what came to me to do to hinder it."
The policeman had moved away before the words
ended, the stout gentleman having descended the
steps for a moment, and stood in a position which
rendered his little transaction feasible and almost
invisible. He beckoned to me as the small woman

A FASHIONABLE

DRESSMAKER.

59

sat down again on the steps, and I followed him into
the vestibule.
" You 're interested, my dear madam," he said.
" You 're interested, and you ought to be. I Ve stayed
home from business to make sure she wras n't interfered with, and I 'd do it again with the greatest
pleasure. I 'd like to post one like her before every
establishment in New York where cheating goes on,
and I 'm going to see this thing through!"
There was no time for questions. My appointment must be kept, and with one pause to take
the name and number of the small Nemesis I went
my way. Three days later she sat there still, and
on the following one, as the warm spring rain fell
steadily, she kept her post, sheathed in a rubber
cloak, and protected by an umbrella which, from
its size and quality, I felt must be the stout gentleman's. With Saturday night her self-imposed siege
ended, and she marched away, leaving the enemy
badly discomfited and much more disposed to consider the rights of the individual, if not of the
worker in general. As Madame's prices were never
less than fifty dollars for the making of a suit, ranging from this to a hundred or more, and as her three
children were still small and her husband an undiscoverable factor, it became an interesting question
to know where she placed the profits which, even
when lessened by non-paying customers, could never
be anything but great. Madame, however, had been

60

PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

too keen even for the sharp-witted lawyer of the
Protective Union, whose utmost efforts only disclosed the fact that she was the probable backer of a
manufacturer whose factory and farm were on Long
Island, and whose business capacity had till within
a few years never insured him more than a bare
living.
It is an old story, yet an always new one, and in
this case Madame had quieted her conscience by
providing a comfortable lunch for the workers and
allowing them more space than is generally the
portion in a busy establishment. Well housed and
well fed through the day and paid at intervals
enough to meet the demands of rent or board bill,
it was easy to satisfy her hands by the promise of
full and speedy settlement, and when this failed, to
tell a pitiful tale of unpaid bills and conscienceless
customers, who could not be forced. When these
resources were exhausted discharge solved any further difficulties, and a new set came in, to undergo
the same experience. In an establishment where
honesty has any place, the wages are rather beyond
the average, skirt-hands receiving from seven to nine
dollars a week and waist-hands from ten to fifteen.
In the case of stores this latter class make from eighteen to forty dollars per week, and often accumulate
enough capital to start in business for themselves.
But a skirt-hand like Mary M
seldom passes on
to anything higher, and counts herself well paid if

A FASHIONABLE

DRESSMAKER.

61

her week of sixty hours brings her nine dollars, not
daring to grumble seriously if it falls to seven or
even six. On the east side the same work must be
done for from four to six dollars a week, the latter
sum being considered high pay. But the work is an
advance upon factory work and has a better sound,
the dressmaker's assistant looking down upon the
factory hand or even the seamstress as of an inferior
order.
In time I learned the full story of the little
woman, ordinarily reticent and shrinking, but
brought by trouble and indignation to the fiercest
protest against oppression. Born in a New-England village she had learned a milliner's trade, to
which she presently added dressmaking, and succeeded in making a fair living, till bitten by the
desire to see larger life and share all the good that
the city seems to offer the shut-in country life, she
came to New York with her small savings, expecting to find work easily, and did so, going at once
into a store where a friend was at work. Sanitary
conditions were all bad. Her hall bedroom on a
fourth floor and the close confinement all did their
work, and a long illness wasted strength and savings. When recovery came her place had been
filled; and she wandered from store to store seeking
employment, doing such odd jobs as were found at
intervals, and powerless to recover the lost ground.
" It was like heaven to me," she said, " when my

62

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

friend came back to the city and got me that place
as skirt-hand at Madame M
*s. I was so far
gone I had even thought of the river, and said to
myself it might be the easiest way out. You can't
help but like Madame, for she 's smooth-tongued and
easy, and praises your work, and she made me think
I 'd soon be advanced and get the place I ought to
have. She paid regularly at first, and I began to
pick up courage. It was over-hours always. Madame would come in smiling and say : ' Ah, dear
girls ! What trouble ! It is an order that must be
finished so soon. Who will be kind and stay so
leetle longer ?' Then we all stayed, and she 'd have
tea made and send it in, and sandwiches or something good, and they all said, ' She 's an angel. You
won't find anybody like Madame.' She was so plausible, too, that even when there was longer and longer
time between the payments the girls did n't blame
her, but borrowed of one another and put off their
landladies and managed all ways to save her feelings.
Jenny Ghad been here longer than any of them,
and she worshipped Madame and wouldn't hear a
word even when one or another complained. But
Jenny's feet were on the ground and she had n't a
stitch of warm underclothes, and she took a cold in
December, and by January it had tight hold of her.
I went to Madame myself then, and begged her to
pay Jenny if it was n't but a little, and she cried
and said if she could only raise the money she would.

A FASHIONABLE

DRESSMAKER.

63

She did n't; and by and by I went again, and then she
turned ugly. I looked at her dumfounded when
she spoke her real mind and said if we didn't like it
we could leave; there were plenty of others. I
would n't believe my ears even, and said to myself
she was worn out with trouble and could n't mean a
word of it. I wanted money for myself, but I
would n't ask even for anybody but Jenny.
" Next day Madame brought her ten dollars of the
two hundred and twenty she owed her, and Jenny
got shoes; but it was too late. I knew it well, for
I 'd seen my sister go the same way. Quick consumption ain't to be stopped with new shoes or anything but new lungs, and there's no patent for them
yet that ever I 've heard of. She was going last
night when I went round, and sure as you live I 'm
going to put her death in the paper myself. I've
been saving my money off lunches to do it, and 111
write i t : ( Murdered by a fashionable dressmaker on
Street, in January, 1886, Jenny G
, age nineteen years and six months/ Maybe they won't put it
in, but here it is, ready for any paper that's got feeling
enough to care whether sewing-girls are cheated and
starved and killed, or whether they get what they 've
earned. I 've got work at home now. It don't matter
so much to me; but I 'm a committee to attend to this
thing, and I '11 find out every fraud in New York that
I can. I 've got nine names now, — three of 'em
regular fashionables on the west side, and six of 'em

64

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

following their example hard as they can on the east;
and a friend of mine has printed, in large letters,
'Beware of at the head of a slip, and I add names
as fast as I get them, and every girl that comes in
my way I warn against them. Do much good ? No.
They '11 get all the girls they want, and more; but it 's
some satisfaction to be able to say they are cheats,
making a living out of the flesh and blood of their
dupes, and I '11 say it till I die."
Here stands the experience of one woman with fearlessness enough to protest and energy enough to have
at last secured a tolerable living. The report, for such
it may be considered, might be made of many more
names than those upon her black list, or found on the
books of the Union. Happily for the worker, they
form but a small proportion of the long list of dressmakers who deal fairly. But the life of the ordinary
hand who has not ability enough to rise is, like that of
the great majority who depend on the needle, whether
machine or hand, filled with hardship, uncertainty,
overwork, under-pay. The large establishments have
next to no dull season, but we deal in the present
chapter only with private workers; and often, on the
east side especially, where prices and wages are always
at the lowest ebb, the girls who have used all their
strength in overwork during the busy season of spring
and fall must seek employment in cigar factories or
in anything that offers in the intermediate time, the
wages giving no margin for savings which might aid

A FASHIONABLE

DRESSMAKER.

65

in tiding over such periods. The dressmaker herself
is often a sufferer, conscienceless customers abounding, who pay for the work of one season only when
anxious for that of the next. Often it is mere carelessness, — t h e recklessness which seems to make up
the method of many women where money obligations
are concerned; but often also they pass deliberately
from one dressmaker to another, knowing that New
York holds enough to provide for the lifetime of the
most exacting customer. There is small redress for
these cases, and the dressmaker probably argues the
matter for herself and decides that she has every
right, being cheated, to balance the scale by a little
of the same order on her own account.
A final form of rascality referred to in a previous
chapter is found here, as in every phase of the clothing
trade, whether on small or large scale. Girls are advertised for " to learn the trade," and the usual army
of applicants appear, those who are selected being
told that the first week or two will be without wages,
and only the best workers will be kept. Each girl is
thus on her mettle, and works beyond her strength
and beyond any fair average, to find herself discharged
at the end of the time and replaced by an equally
eager and equally credulous substitute. There are
other methods of fraud that will find place in a consideration of phases of the same work in the great
establishments, some difficulties of the employer
being reserved for the same occasion.
6

CHAPTEE SIXTH.
MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS.
r

| X ) do justice to employer as well as employed is
**- the avowed object of our search, yet as it
goes on, and the methods made necessary by competition become more and more clear, it is evident
that back of every individual case of wrong and oppression lies a deeper wrong and a more systematized
oppression. Master and servant alike are in the same
bonds, and the employer is driven as mercilessly as
he drives. He may deny it. He may even be quite
unconscious of his own subjection, or, if he thinks at
all of its extent, may look enviously at the man or
the corporation that has had power to enslave him.
The monopolist governs not only the market but the
bodies and souls of all who provide wares for that
market; yet the fascination of such power is so tremendous that to stand side by side with him is the
dream of every young merchant, — the goal on which
his eyes are set from the beginning. Only in like
power is any satisfaction to be found. Any result
below this high-water mark can be counted little else
than failure.

MORE

METHODS

OF PROSPEROUS

FIRMS.

67

To this end, then, toils the employer of every grade,
bringing every faculty to bear on the lessening of
waste, whether in material or time; the conservation
of every force working in line with his purpose.
Naturally, the same effect is produced as that mentioned in a previous paper. The employees come to
represent " so much producing power," and are driven
at full speed or shut off suddenly like the machines
of which they are the necessary but still more or less
accidental associates. Certain formulas are used,
evolved apparently from experience, and carrying
with them an assurance of so much grieved but inevitable conviction that it is difficult to penetrate
below the surface and realize that, while in degree
true, they are in greater degree false. In various
establishments, large and small, beginning with one
the pay-roll of which carries 1,462 employees, and
ending with one having hardly a third this number,
the business manager made invariably the same statement : " We make our money from incidentals rather
than from any given department. You are asking
particularly about suits. I suppose you 11 think it
incredible, but in suits we work at a dead loss. It is
only an accommodation to our customers that makes
us keep that department open. The work should be
put out to mean any profit, but we can't do that
with the choicest materials, and so we make it up in
other directions. You would have to go into business yourself to understand just how we are driven."

68

PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

" Suppose you refused to be driven ? A firm of
your standing must have matters a good deal in its
own hands. Suppose — "
" Suppose!" The manager threw out his hands
in a gesture more full of disclaimer than any words.
" There is no room for supposes in business, madam.
We do what we must. How are we to compete with
a factory turning out suits by steam power ? JSTot
that we would compete. There is really no occasion,"
he added hastily. " But their methods certainly have
an unpleasant influence, and we are obliged to take
them into account slightly."
"Then your statement would be, that no matter
how expensive the suit made up, you can make no
profit on it ? "
" Absolutely none. I t is a concession to a customer's whims. We could buy the same thing and sell to
her at half the price, but she prefers to select materials and have them put together in our work-room,
and we must humor her. But rents are so enormous
that the space for every woman employed by us in
these departments may be said to represent simply
so many cubic feet in good coin, bringing us no
return. Our profits are dwindling with every year."
" Might not co-operation — "
Again the manager threw out his hands.
" Simply another form of robbery. We have investigated the history of co-operation, and it does not
appear to affiliate with our institutions. The lamen-

MORE METHODS

OF PROSPEROUS

FIRMS.

69

table failure of the Co-operative Dress Association
ought to be the answer to that suggestion. No,
madam. There is no profit in suits, or in any form
of made-up clothing for ladies' wear, if it is done on
the premises. You have to turn it over to the wholesale manufacturer if you want profit."
Having heard this statement in many forms, and
recognizing the fact that increase in rents as well as
in systematized competition might well have reduced profits, it still appeared incredible that the
rates charged held no surplus for the 'firm. Little
by little it has become possible to supplement each
statement by others of a different order. Nothing is
more difficult than to obtain trustworthy information regarding the methods of a firm whose standing
is such that to have served it is always a passport
to other employment; whose payments are regular,
and where every detail of work-room is beyond criticism. It is no question of bare-faced robbery as in
that of many cited, yet even here the old story tells
itself in different form, and with an element which,
in many a less pretentious establishment, has not
yet been found to exist.
The work done here is piece-work. French cutters
and fitters, receiving from thirty to fifty dollars a
week, give that guarantee of style and elegance
which is inherent in everything bearing the stamp of
the firm. Experts run the machines in the sewingmachine room, being paid by the day at the rate of

70

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

from six to eight dollars per week in the busy season.
The buttonholes are made by women who do nothing
else, and who are paid by the dozen, earning from
five to seven dollars weekly. All stitched seams are
done in the machine-room, and the dress passes from
there to the sewing-room, into the hands of the sewing-girls, who receive from three to four dollars and a
half for each garment. The latter price is seldom
reached; four dollars and a half or five dollars paying
for a dress loaded with trimming, puffs, flounces, etc.
At this rate there would seem to be a chance for
wages a good deal beyond the average, but it is one of
the unwritten laws that no sewing-girl shall exceed
five dollars per week; whether formulated by superintendent or by firm remains yet to be discovered.
The one unquestionable fact is that if the superintendent of the work-room finds that any girl is expert
enough to make over this amount the price per garment is docked, to bring her down to the level.
They are never driven. On the contrary, they must
wait often, two or three hours at times, for the arrival
of " Madame,'' who must inspect the work, drape a
skirt, or give some suggestion as to trimming. No
entreaty can induce the superintendent to give out
another piece of work which might fill this vacant
time, and the girls dare not state their case to the
employer. No member of the firm enters the workrooms. Eeports are made by the superintendent of
the department, and the firm remains content with

MORE

METHODS

OF PROSPEROUS

FIRMS.

71

knowing that it has provided every comfort for its
employees. Complaint would insure discharge, and
if a girl hints that she cannot live on five dollars
a week the answer has been for the years during
which the present superintendent has held the place,
always the same : —
"If you haven't a home so that you have no expense of board, it is your own fault, and I can't be
expected to do anything about it."
There appears to be no question as to the entire
" respectability " of the woman, who would undoubtedly deny the implication contained in her own
words. But there is rivalry between the superintendents as to which department shall make largest
returns in profits, and wages are kept down to secure
that end. There is also no question that a proportion of those employed are " supported," and merely
add this work as a means of securing a little more
pin-money. It is true of but a very few, but of
those few an undeniable fact. It is equally a fact
that, in spite of the managers' assertions, profit can
be made and is made from this department, and that
a large percentage of such* profit comes directly from
the pocket of the sewing-girl, who, even when she
adds buttonhole-making in the simpler dresses, can
never pass beyond a fixed wage.
In other large establishments on both sides of the
city methods are much the same, with merely slight
variations as to comfort of quarters, time for lunch,

72

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

sanitary conditions, etc. But in all alike, the indispensable, but always very helpless, sewing-girl appears to be one of the chief sources of profit, and to
have small capacity and no opportunity for improving her condition. Even where the work comes from
the manufactory, and steam has taken the place of
foot-power, no machine has yet been run so automatically that the human hand can be entirely dispensed
with. The "finisher" remains a necessity, and as
finisher sometimes passes slightly beyond the rate
obtained when merely sewing-girl. Only slightly,
however. It is a deeply rooted conviction among
these workers that a tacit or even, it may be, formal
understanding has been settled upon by employers
in general.
" I don't know how it is," said one of the most intelligent among the many I have talked with;" there's
never any trouble about getting work. I 've even had
them send after me when I had gone somewhere else
in hopes of doing better. I used to earn ten and
twelve dollars a week on suits, children's or ladies',
but now if I earn five or sometimes six I do well.
The work goes on with a rush. I t ' s a whole building except the first floor, — five stories, and suits of
every kind. The rooms are all crowded, and they
give out piece-work, but they 've managed it so that
we all earn about alike. When the rush of the fall
and spring season is over they do white work and
flannel skirts and such things, and a great many

MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS. 73
are discharged in the lull. But go where you will,
up-town or down, it does n't seem to matter how well
you can turn off the work or how long you have
been at it. They all say, if we ask for better pay,
' It can't be had as long as there is such competition.
We 're losing straight ahead.' I don't understand.
We don't any of us understand, because here is the
great rush of work and it must be done. They can't
do without us, and yet they are grinding us down so
that I get half distracted sometimes, wondering where
it will end and if things will ever be better."
" Would not private sewing be better ? There is
always a demand fo r good seamstresses."
" I don't know anything about private sewing.
You have to cut and plan, and I never learned that.
I like to work on things that are cut by a cutter
and just so, and I can make up my dozen after
dozen with not an eighth of an inch difference in
my measurements. I 'm an expert, you know."
" But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly
you could earn a dollar and a quarter a day and board
and have your evening quite free."
The girl shook her head. " I *ve had that said to
me before, but you know it's more independent as I
am. Maybe things will be better by and by."
There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deepseated prejudice, and this exists to a bewildering
degree among these workers, who, for some inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that

74

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

private employ of any nature whatever is inevitably
a despotism filled with unknown horrors. There
appears to be also a certain esprit da corps that
holds sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of
herself as one of such and such a firm's hands, and
to regard this distinction as compensation for overhours and under-pay and all known wretchedness
encompassing her trade. The speaker I have quoted
was an American girl of twenty-six, had had three
years in public schools, and regarded the city as
the only place in which life could be considered
endurable.
" I should n't know what to do in the country if I
weYe there," she said. " I don't seem to like it somehow. It is n't the company, for mother and me
keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know
how to get along in the city, and the country scares
me. I like my work if only I could get more pay
for it."
" Do you ever think that if all who work in your
line joined together and made common cause you
might even things a little; that it might be easier
for all of you ?"
" We would n't dare," she answered, aghast. " Why,
do you know, there 'd be ten for each one of us that
was turned off. Women come there by the hundred. That's what they say to me in our firm:
' What's the use of fussing when here are dozens
waiting to take your place ?' There is n't any use.

MORE METHODS

OF PROSPEROUS

FIRMS.

75

They say now that it is the dull season, and they 've
put our room on flannel skirts; two tucks and a
hem, and a muslin yoke that has to be gone round
four times with the stitching. One clay I made ten,
but nine is all one can do without nearly killing
themselves, and they pay us one dollar a dozen for
making them. It used to be a dollar and a half,
and that was fair enough. I t ' s the kind of work I
like. I shouldn't be content to do any other; but
it's bringing us all down to starvation point, and I
think something ought to be done."
In a case like this, and it is the type of many
hundreds of skilled workers, who regard their calling with a certain pride, and could by no possibility
be induced to seek other lines of work or other
methods of living, there seems little to be accomplished. They are, however, but a small portion of
the army who wait for some deliverance, and who,
if they had been born to a trifle more common sense,
would turn in the one sole direction from which
relief is certain, this relief and the reasons for and
against it having no place at this stage of the
investigation.

CHAPTEE SEVENTH.
NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL.

"Tj\ROM the fig-leaf down, it would seem as if a
portion of the original curse accompanying it
had passed on to each variation or amplification of
first methods, its heaviest weight falling always on
the weak shoulders that, if endurance could make
strong, should belong to-day to a race of giants.
Of the ninety and more trades now open to women,
thirty-eight involve some phase of this question of
clothing, about which centre some of the worst
wrongs of modern civilization. I t is work that has
legitimate place. It must be done by some one,
since the exigencies of this same civilization have
abolished old methods and made home manufactures seem a poor and most unsatisfactory substitute
for the dainty stitching and ornamentation of the
cheaper shop-work. It is work that many women
love, and, if living wages could be had, would do
contentedly from year to year. Of their ignorance
and blindness, and the mysterious possession they
call pride, and the many stupidities on which their
small lives are founded, there is much to be said,

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL.

77

when these papers have done their first and most
essential work of showing conditions as they are; —
as they are, and not as the disciples of laissez /aire
would have us to believe they are.
a

It is the business of these philanthropists to raise a
hue and cry ; to exaggerate every evil and underrate every
good. They are not to be trusted. Look at our institutions and see what we are doing for the poor. Study
statistics and see how comfortable they are !"
This is the word of a recent correspondent of a
Podsnapian turn of mind, who proceeded to present
facts and figures bearing out his theory. And on a
Sunday shortly after, he was confirmed in his faith
and greatly strengthened and comforted by words
from a popular preacher, long owner of a popular
pulpit, who, standing there as the representative of a
master whose message was to the poor, and who
turned to them from the beginning, as the hearers
who alone could know most truly what meaning the
message bore, spoke these words : —
" Moreover, all this hue and cry about so much destitution and misery and the unscrupulous greed of employers
is groundless. I am convinced that more than one half —
yes, fully three quarters — of the pauperism of which you
heard so much in the late campaign exists only in the
minds of the Georgeites. The picture drawn of New
York's misery is over-colored, and its inspiration is in the
distorted imaginations of the George fanatics. . . . The
rum-holes are the cause of all the misery. . . . I have

78

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY

been watching for thirty-five years, and in all my investigations among the poor I never yet found a family borne
down by poverty that did not owe its fall to rum."
This most extraordinary statement, from a man
who in one year alone could not have listened to even
half the appeals for help likely to have come to
him in his position, without discovering that death
and disaster in many forms played, if not the, chief
part, certainly that next in order to rum, can be accounted for only on the ground that a hobby ridden
too hard has been known to bear off at the same
time both the common-sense and power of judgment
of the rider. Prohibition appears to him, as to many
another, the only solution; the gospel of negation the
only gospel for rich or poor. Since the Church first
began to misinterpret the words of its Founder, since
men who built hospitals first made the poor to fill
them, the " thou shalt not" of the priest has stood in
the way of a human development that, if allowed free
play, had long ago made its own code, and found in
natural spiritual law the key to the overcoming of
that formulated by men to whom the divine in man
was forever unrecognized and unrecognizable.
This is no place for the discussion of what, to many
good men and women, seems the only safety for human kind ; but to one who studies the question somewhat at least with the eyes of the physician, it
becomes certain that no " thou shalt not" will ever
give birth to either conscience or love of goodness

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL.

79

and purity and decent living, or any other good that
man must know; and that till the Church learns this,
her hold on men and women will lessen, year by year.
Every fresh institution in the miles of asylums and
hospitals that cover the islands of the East Eiver,
and stretch on farther and farther with every^year, is
an added disgrace, an added count in the indictment
against modern civilization. There are moments
when the student of social conditions abhors Philanthropy ; when a disaster that would wipe out at one
stroke every institution the city treasures would seem
a gift straight from God, if only thereby the scales
might fall from men's eyes, and they might learn that
hiding foulness in an asylum is not extirpation; that
something deeper and stronger than Philanthropy
must work, before men can be saved.
It is as student, not as professional philanthropist,
that I write; and the years that have brought experience have brought also a conviction, sharpened by
every fresh series of facts, that no words, no matter
what fire of fervor may lie behind, can make plain the
sorrow of the poor. To ears that will hear, to souls
that seek forever some way that may help in truth
and not in name, even to them it loses power at
moments. To souls that sit at ease and leave to
" t h e power that works for righteousness" the evolution of humanity from its prison of poverty and
ignorance and pain, it is quite useless to speak. They
have their theory, and the present civilization contents

80

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

them. But for the men and women who are neither
Georgeites merely, nor philanthropists merely, nor
certain that any sect or creed or ism will help, but
who know that the foulest man is still brother, and
the wretchedest, weakest woman still sister, whose
shame and sorrow not only bear a poison that taints
all civilization, but are forever our shame and our
sorrow till the world is made clean, — for these men
and women I write, not what I fancy, but what I
see and know.
Most happily for humanity, they are stronger, more
numerous, with every year; but the hardest fact for
them remains ever that their battle is a double one,
and that, exhausted as they may be with long conflict
against lowest forms of evil, they must rally to a
sharper one against the army of the Philistines.
Strong soul and high endeavor: never since time
began has man more needed them ; never was there
harder work to do.
The story of the working-woman in one great city
is, with slight variations in conditions, the story of
the working-woman in all; and when we have once
settled conclusively what monopoly or competition
has done and is doing for New York, we know sufficiently well what Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago and all the host of lesser cities could easily tell
us in detail. With the mass of poor who work
chiefly to obtain money for drink, and who, with
their progeny, are filling the institutions in which we

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL.

81

delight, we have absolutely nothing to do. It is seldom from their ranks that workers are recruited. A
small proportion, rescued by societies or mission
schools, may be numbered among them, but the
greater part are a grade above, and while perhaps
wellnigh as ignorant, have an inheritance of better
instincts, and could under any reasonable conditions
of living find their fate by no means intolerable.
I have chosen to-day, instead of passing on to
another form of the clothing trade, to return to that
of underwear, and this because it is the record most
crowded with cases in which the subjects could not
enter household service and have not been reduced
to poverty by intemperance. Nor is the selection
made with a view to working up as startling a case
as possible. On the contrary, it has been made almost at random from the many recorded, any separate
mention of which would be impossible in the space
at command. First on the long list comes Catherine
E
, an " expert" in underwear, and living on the
top floor of a large, old-fashioned house in Clinton
Place; the lower part stores and offices, the upper
a tenement. She earned three years ago $1.50 a day;
at times, $1.75. The same work now brings her eightyfive cents, and now and then but seventy-five. The
husband was a " boss painter," and they were comfortable, even prosperous, till the fate of his calling
came upon him, and first the "drop hand," and later
blood-poisoning and heart-disease followed. He is
6

82

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

just enough alive to care a little for the children and
to oversee the pitifuL household affairs; the oldest
girl, a child of seven, doing the marketing, boiling
the kettle, etc., and this season going to school.
They are fair-faced, gentle children, and this is their
mother's story: —
" I can run the machine, and I did with every one
of them when they were two weeks old, for I've
always been strong. Nothing that happens is bad
enough to kill me, and it's lucky it's so, for it's two
years and over since William there could earn a
dollar. He helps me; but you see for yourself he 's
half dead and no getting well, because we 've nothing
to buy food with, or medicine, or anything that could
help him. We were both brought up here in the
city. We don't know anything about the country,
but sometimes I wish we did, and that I could take
the children and live somehow. But I don't know
how people live there. I 'm certain of work here,
and I 'd be afraid to go anywhere else. I 'm making
babies' slips now; three tucks and a hem and find
your own cotton, and it takes eighteen hours to make
a doz$n, and these are seventy-five cents a dozen. I
can buy cotton at eighteen cents a dozen, but we
have to take it from the manufacturer at twenty
cents — sometimes twenty-five cents. Last week I
was on corset-covers; I take whatever they send up,
for I 'm an old hand, and always sure of work. They
were plain corset-covers, and I got forty cents a dozen

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL,

83

without the buttonholes. If I did them it would be
five cents on every dozen, and sometimes I do. That
pile in the corner is extra-size chemises. I get $1.50
a dozen for making them, and if I cord the bands,
fifty cents a dozen for them. I can do seven or eight
a day; but there are no more just now, they say. I
work fourteen hours a day; yes, I ' v e often worked
sixteen, for you see there are six of us, and we must
be clothed and fed. William is handy, but, poor soul!
he's only a man, and he 's sick past cure, and nobody
but me for us all. God help us ! I would n't mind
if wages were steady, but they cut and cut, and always some excuse for making them lower, and here
am I, that can do anything, private orders and all,
down to eighty-five cents a day. I could earn more
by family sewing, but I can't leave William or the
children, for he's likely to go any minute, the doctors
say, if he over-exerts himself; and suppose it came,
and I not here, and the baby and Willie and all!
I Ve turned all ways. I think and think as I sit
here, and there's no help in God or man. I t ' s all
wrong somehow, but we don't know why nor how,
and the only way I can see is just to die. There 's
no place for honesty or,hard work. You must lie
and cheat if you want standing room. God help us!
—if there is a God; but I ?ve my doubts. Why don't
he help, if there is one ?"
Here the average earnings were twenty-five dollars
a month, the rent of the room they occupied seven

84

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

dollars, leaving eighteen dollars for food, fire, light,
and clothing.
Another disabled husband, recovering, but for many
months unable to work, was found in a tenementhouse in East Eleventh Street. In this case work and
earnings were almost identical with the last, but there
were but two children, and thus less demand for food,
etc. For a year and a half the wife, though also an
" expert," had never exceeded eighty-five cents a day
and had sometimes fallen as low as seventy. She had
sometimes gone to the factory instead of working at
home, and the last firm employing her in this way had
charged ten cents on the dollar for the steam used in
running the machine which she operated.
" It did n't pay," the little woman said, with a laugh
that ended as a sob, checked instantly. " I could
earn eight dollars a week, but there was the steam,
ten cents on the dollar, and my car fares, for there
was no time to walk, — sixty cents for them, — $1.40,
you see, altogether. I might as well work at home
and have the comfort of seeing that the children were
all right. There 's plenty of work, it seems. I t ' s
wages that 's the trouble, and do you know how they
cut them ? If I could work any other way I would,
but I like to sew, and I don't know any other trade.
I 'm not strong, but somehow I can run the machines, and there's nothing else. But we 're clean discouraged. It is n't living, and we don't know what
way to turn."

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL.

85

In East Sixth Street, near the Bowery, Mrs. W., a
widow still young and with a nervously energetic
face and manner, gave her experience. She had been
forewoman in a factory before her husband's death,
having supported him through his last year of life,
working all day and nursing him at night. In this
way her own health broke down, and she was at last
taken to the hospital, where she remained nearly six
months, coming out to find her place filled, but a
subordinate one open to her.
" I had to wait for that," she said, " and I had to
learn. I knew a sewing-machine place where often
you could get ruffling for skirts to do, and I went up
there one morning. It was the three tucks and a
hem ruffling, and I did one hundred and forty-two
yards from eight in the morning till half-past four,
and they paid me twenty-three cents. f We could
get it done for that by steam power,' they said,' so
we can't give more. I t ' s a favor anyway to give it
out at all.' That was my first day's work. The next
I went down to my place on Canal Street. They
think a good deal of me there, and they put me on
drawers right away; thirty-five cents a dozen for
making them. I can make two dozen a day sometimes, but fine ones not over a dozen, though they
pay fifty cents. You wonder how they make anything. I 've been forewoman, and I know the prices.
Why, even at forty cents a pair they make on them.
Twenty-one yards of cloth at Hve cents makes a

86

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

dozen; that's $1.05 ; and eighteen yards of edge at
four and a half cents, that's eighty-one cents; and the
making thirty-five cents; that's $2.21. Thread and
all, they won't cost over $2.25, and they sell at wholesale at three dollars a dozen and retail at $4.80.
There 's profit even when you think a cent could n't
be made. Take skirts, three yards of cloth in each
at six cents. They pay thirty cents a dozen for tucking, twenty-five cents a dozen for ruffling, and thirty
cents for seaming, — eighty-five cents a dozen for the
entire skirt; and the cloth makes it, at eighteen cents
apiece, $3.01 for the dozen. Those skirts retail at
sixty cents apiece, and wholesale at fifty cents.
There's profit on them all, no matter what they say,
for I 've figured every penny over and over, down to
the tape and thread. But they swear to you they
are ruined by competition, and so the wages go down
and down and down. Leave the city ? I don't know
how to live anywhere else. I 've never learned. It's
something to be sure of your work, even if it is starvation wages. But there's distress all around me.
I don't see what it means. There's a girl in the room
next to me, with an invalid mother. She does flannel
shirts, but before she got them she nearly starved on
underwear. Now she earns a dollar a day, but she
works fourteen hours for it, seven cents an hour.
That's nice pay in a Christian land. Christian!
Bah! I used to believe there was Christianity, but
I Ve given it up, like many another. There's just one

NEGATIVE

OR POSITIVE

GOSPEL.

87

religion left, and that is the worship of money. The
Golden Calf is God, and every man sells his soul for
a chance to bow to it. I don't know but what I
would myself. So far I've kept decent; I came of
decent folks; but it 's no fault of many a man that
I 've worked for that I can say so still. I 've had
to leave three places because they wouldn't let me
alone, and I stay where I am now because they 're
quiet, respectable people, and no outrageousness.
But if you know what it all means I wish you 'd tell
me, for I 'm dazed, and I can't make out the reason
of anything any more."
In the same house a widow with three children, —
the father killed by falling from a scaffolding, — earns
sixty cents a day by making buttonholes, and above
her is another well past sixty, whose trade and wages
are the same. How they live, what they can wear,
how they are fed, on this amount is yet to be told,
but every detail waits; and having gathered them
from these and other women in like case, I am not
yet prepared to believe that they live at ease, or that
the "hue and cry about so much destitution and
misery, and the unscrupulous greed of employers, is
groundless."

CHAPTEE EIGHTH.
THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER.

T T was the Prussian War that seemed to settle the
question. So far as Grossvater Bauer himself
was concerned, he would still have toiled on contentedly. To be alive at all on German soil was
more than honor or wealth or any good thing that
the emigrant might report as part of his possession
in that America to which all discontented eyes
looked longingly. The reports might all be true; yet
why should one for the sake of better food or more
money be banished from the Vaterland and have
only a President, a man of the people, in place of
the old Kaiser, whose very name thrilled the heart,
and for whose glory Grossvater Bauer would have
given many sons ? He had given them. Peace had
come, and France was paying tribute; and, one by one,
the few who had escaped French bullets came home
to the little Prussian village and told their tales of
the siege and of the three who had fallen at Sedan.
Grossvater Bauer sat silent. He had been as silent
when they brought the news to him in the beginning.
It was the fortune of war. He had served his own

THE

TRUE

STORY

OF LOTTE

BAUER.

89

time, and having served it, accepted as part of his
birthright the same necessity for his sons. They had
worked side by side with him on the great farm where
he had been for most of his life head laborer and
almost master; worked contentedly until Annchen, the
oldest daughter, had married a tailor, dissatisfied like
all tailors, and set sail for the strange country where
fortune had always open hands for all the world. He
had prospered, and in Annchen's letters, coming at
rare intervals, was always an appeal to them to come
over. The boys listened ; doubtfully at first, for the
father's faith was strong in them that no land could
ever hold the same good as this land through which
the Ehine flowed to the sea. But as the time came
when they must enter the army there was rebellion.
Here and there, in the air it seemed, for no one could
say from whence the new feeling had come, were
questions the sound of which was not to be tolerated
by any true Prussian. Why should this great army
live on the toil of the peasant? Why should the
maintenance of these conscripts swallow up every
possible saving in the wages and be the largest item
save one in the year's expenses ? Why should there
be a standing army at all ?
Hans, when his time came, had learned to ask, but
he had not learned to answer. The splendor of his
uniform appeared to be in some sort a reply, and its
tightness may also have had its effect in restricting
his mental operations. For three years the carefully

90

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

kept accounts of Grossvater Bauer held the item:
"Maintenance of son in army, $121.37." Then Hans
came home and married Lieschen, the little dairymaid, and in due time Lotte's blue eyes opened on
the world whose mysteries were still not quite explicable to the heavy father. Wilhelm and Franz
had taken their turn, and in spite of questions settled
passively at last into the farm life. Then came the
war,— the war that called for every man with strength
to carry a gun, — and when it was over Lotte was
fatherless, and there were no more sons to bear the
name, or to trouble, Grossvater Bauer's mind with
further questions.
Very glorious, but what use if there were no boys
left to whom the story could be told? If he had
yielded, if even one had crossed the sea, there would
be something still to live for. But Lieschen had
given them no boys. He thought of it day after day,
till the familiar fields grew hateful and he wished
only to escape from the land to which he had paid
a tax too heavy for mortal endurance. There was
no one but Lieschen and her little ones, Lotte first of
all and best beloved, and in another month they had
set sail and the old life was over.
" Work for all, homes for all, plenty for all," Annchen had written how many times. Yet now, when
the Grossvater appeared, and the round-eyed Lieschen and her tribe of five, Peter shook his head. He
had prospered, it is true. From journeyman tailor

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BAUER.

91

he had become master on a small scale, and packed
himself and his men into a shop so tiny that it was
miraculous how elbow-room remained to use the
goose. But work for the Grossvater was quite another thing. He had no trade, and while his capacity as farmer on scientific methods ought to give him
paying employment in the country, the city held
nothing for him. Work for Lieschen and Lotte was
easy. A week or two of apprenticeship would teach
them all that need be known to do the work on
cheap coats or pantaloons, but even for them it was
certain that the country would be better.
It was here that Grossvater Bauer developed unexpected obstinacy. He had a little money. He
was still strong and in good case. Here was this
great city which must have work of some nature, and
which, so far from weighing upon him as Lotte had
feared, seemed to have for him a curious fascination.
He haunted the wharves. The smell of the sea and
the tarred ropes of the ships bewitched him, and on
the wharves he soon found work, and loaded and
unloaded all day contentedly, with a feeling that this
was after all more like living than anything could
have been in the home fields where only the ghosts
of his own remained to have place at his side.
It is now only that the story of Lotte begins, —
Lotte, who pined for the great farm and the fields
across which the wind swept, and the cows she had
named and cared for. Her mother forgot, or did not

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care. She had never loved her work, and liked better
to chatter with the other women in the house, or
even to run the machine hour after hour, than to
milk, or feed the cattle, or churn. Lotte hated the
machine. Her back ached, her eyes burned, and her
head throbbed after only an hour or two of it. " Let
me take a place," she begged, but the Grossvater
shook his head angrily. This was a free country.
There was no need that she should serve. Let her
learn to be contented and thankful that she could
earn so much. For with their simple habits the
wages paid in 1881 seemed wealth. Forty-five cents
a pair, three of which she could make in a day,
brought the week's earnings to eight dollars, sometimes to nine dollars, and Peter prophesied that it
might even be ten or twelve dollars. Lieschen had
as much. Down on the wharves the Grossvater
earned sometimes eighteen dollars a week. It was
a fortune. At home, in the best of times, with sons
and daughters all at work, his books, which he kept
always with the accuracy of a merchant, showed
something under $1,000 a year as receipts, the expenses hardly varying from the $736.28 which represented the maintenance of the family during Hans's
first year as soldier. Their food ration at home had
been nine and a half cents daily. Wheat bread had
stood for festivals and high days. Black bread, cabbage soup, beer, cheese, and sausage, with meat on
Sundays, had been their only ambition as to food,

THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER.

93

and here Grossvater Bauer insisted upon the same
regimen, and frowned as one by one the fashions of
the new country crept in. Peter had been right
after all. One must work, it is true, but no harder
and no longer, and the return was double. The little
iron chest which had held the savings at home held
them here, and at rare intervals the Grossvater allowed Lotte to look, and said as he turned over the
shining coins, " Thou wilt have most, my Lottchen.
It is for thee that I put them away."
" There is enough for a little farm," Lotte said one
day. " We could go on this Long Island and have
land, and not be shut all day in these dark rooms."
" That is slower," the Grossvater said. " We will
go back with much money when it is earned, and I
shall be owner, and thou, Lotte, the mistress, and
Franz maybe will go also."
Lotte shook her head, though her cheeks were
pink.
" Franz cares only for America," she said. " Come
with us some day, Grossvater, and let us look at the
little house he knows. There is land, two acres, and
a barn and a cow, and all for so little. I could be
stronger then."
"That is folly," the old man said angrily.
"It
would be but shillings there, where here it is dollars.
Wait and you will see."
Lotte looked after him wonderingly as he turned
away. To save was becoming his passion. He

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grudged her even her shoes and the dress she must
have, though no one had so little. Peter revolted
openly and came less and less. Lieschen cried, but
still looked at the week's wages as compensation for
many evils, and Lotte worked on, the pink spot fixing itself on her cheeks, and her blue eyes growing
sadder with every week. Franz, the son of their old
neighbor at home, hated this crowded city as she did,
and urged her to take her chances and marry him,
even if, as yet, he was only laborer in the market
gardens out on the Island. There were minutes
when Lotte nearly yielded, but the Grossvater
seemed to hold her as with chains. She loved him,
and she had always submitted. Perhaps in time he
would yield and learn again to care for the old life of
the country.
At last a change came, but there was in it no release, only closer imprisonment. Peter and Annchen had followed a brother to Chicago and opened
a shop double the size of the old one, and they were
hardly settled when Lieschen sickened suddenly and
after long illness died. For many weeks there was
no earning. Even the angry Grossvater saw that it
was impossible, and doled out reluctantly the money
they had helped him to save. Lieschen had always
fretted him. Lotte was the best gift she had ever
made the Bauer name, and when the funeral was
over, he went home, secretly relieved that the long
watch was over; went home to find that the precious

THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER.

95

chest, hidden always under piles of bedding in the
closet where he locked his own possessions, had disappeared. There had been a moving from the story
above. Men had gone up and down for an hour, and
no one had noticed specially what was carried.
There was no clew, even after days of searching; and
Grossvater Bauer, who had rushed madly to the
police station, haunted it now, with imploring
questions, till told they could do nothing and that
he must keep away. He sank then into the sort of
apathy that had held him when the news came from
Sedan. He went to his work, but there was no
heart in it, and sat by the fire when night came,
with only an impatient shake of the head when
Lotte tried to comfort him. Till then no one had
realized his age, but now his hair whitened and his
broad shoulders bowed. He was an old man; and
Lotte said to herself that his earning days were
nearly over, and worked an hour or two later that
the week's gain might be a little larger and so
comfort him.
She came home one afternoon with her bundle of
work. Gretchen, who was nearly thirteen, had helped
her carry it, and had shrunk back frightened as the
foreman put a finger under her chin, and nodded
smilingly at the peach-like face and the great blue
eyes. Lotte struck down his hand passionately.
She knew better than Gretchen what the smile
meant. The child should never know if she could

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help it, and she did not mind the evil glance that
followed her toward the door. There were people
standing at their doors as she went slowly up the
stairs, her breath coming quickly, as now it always
did when she climbed them.
" Poor soul!" one of them said. " She little knows
what she 's coming to."
" Was ist los ?" Lotte cried as the door opened, and
then shrieked aloud, for the Grossvater lay there on
the bed, crushed and disfigured and almost speechless,
but lifting one hand feebly as she flew toward him.
" A sugar hogshead," somebody said. " I t rolled
over him when he thought it was firm, and brought
down some barrels with it. H e ' s past helping.
May the saints have a heart for the poor children!
He would be brought here, but what will you do
with h i m ? "
"There'll be naught to do by morning," said
another. " Can't you see he 's going ? " But by
morning no change had come, nor for many mornings. The wounds and bruises slowly healed, but
save for the one hand that moved toward her, there
were no signs of life. The strong body held by
paralysis might linger for years, and Lotte must earn
for him and for all. Even then a living might have
been possible, for Gretchen had a place as cash-girl
and earned two dollars a week, and Lisa was promised one after New Year's. But it was a hard winter. They ate only what they must, and Lotte's

THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER.

97

blue eyes looked out from hollow sockets, and she
shivered with cold. Wages had fallen, and they fell
faster and faster till by January her ten and twelve
hours' work brought her but six dollars instead of
the eight or nine she had always earned. The
foreman she hated made everything as difficult as
possible. Though the bundle came ready from the
cutting-room, he had managed more than once to slip
out some essential piece, and thus lessened her
week's wages, no price being paid where a garment
was returned unfinished. He had often done this
where girls had refused his advances, yet it was impossible to make complaint. The great house on
Canal Street left these matters entirely with him,
and regarded complaint as mere blackmailing. Lotte
tried others, but wages were even less. She was
sure of work here, and pay was prompt. With the
spring things must be better. But long before the
spring Lisa had sickened and died, and Lotte buried
her in the Potter's Field, and hurried home to make
up the lost time, and hush the crying little ones as
she could. It did not occur to her that she could
write to Annchen and ask for help, and Franz had
quarrelled with her because she did not put the
Grossvater in a hospital and send the children to
some asylum.
" I will even marry you with the children," he
said, " but never with the Grossvater who hindered
and spoiled everything/'
7

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" He has cared for me always, even when he was
hard," said Lotte. " I shall care for him now ;" and
Franz rushed away and had come no more.
For a year Lotte's struggle went on. She knew
only the one form of work; and she dared not take
time to learn another.
"If it were not for the Grossvater," she said,
" and the children, I should have a place and work
in the country and grow strong, but I cannot. If I
die before them what can they do ?"
There was other trouble. Gretchen's light little
head could never guard her pretty face. She was
fourteen now, and tall and fair, fretting against the
narrow life and refusing to stay indoors when evening came. One day she did not come home; and
when Lotte sought her she saw only the evil smile
and triumphant eyes of the foreman who had followed her a year ago and who laughed in her face as
he shut the door.
" You 'd better come in yourself," he called.
" You 'd fare better if you did."
Lotte went home dumb, and sat down at her machine. There was no money in the house, nor
would be till she had taken home this work; but
as she bent over it the blood poured in a stream
from her mouth. She tried to rise, but fell back;
and when the screaming children had brought in
neighbors, Lotted struggle was quite over. When
they had buried her in the Potter's Field by Lisa,

THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER.

99

they took the bundle of work stained with her lifeblood and carried it back to its owners.
" She '11 need no more/' said the old neighbor
from the floor above as she laid it on the counter.
" You Ve cut her down and cut her down, till there
was n't life left to stand it longer. There's not one
of you to blame, you say, but I that know, know
you Ve fastened her coffin-lid with nails o' your own
making an' that sooner or later you '11 come face to
face, an' find that red-hot is cowld to the hate that's
makin' ready for you. An' as for him that stands
there smilin', if it were n't for the laws that spare
the guilty and send the innocent to their deaths,
God knows it would be the best thing these hands
ever did to tear him to bits. But there's no one to
blame. Ye 're sure o' that. Wait a while. The
day 's comin' when you 11 maybe think different; an'
may God speed i t ! "

CHAPTEE NINTH.
THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET.
" T F underwear, whether for men or women, has proven
•*• itself a most excellent medium for starvation; if suits
and dresses in general rank but a grade above ; if shirts,
whether of cotton or woollen, are a despair ; and in each and
all competition has cheapened material and manufacture
and brought labor to the ' life limit' and below, at least it
cannot be so bad with cloaks and jackets. Here are single
garments, often of the most expensive material and put
together in the most finished and perfect manner. Skilled
labor is demanded, careful handling, spotless neatness.
Here is one industry which must give not only a living
wage, but a surplus. These women must be on the way
to at least semi-prosperity."
This was the thought in the days in which one
phase after another of the underwear problem presented itself, each one more bewildering, more heartsickening, than the last.

Here and there had been

the encounter with one who had always been sure
of work and who had never failed to receive a fair

return. But the summary had been inevitably as it

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101

stands recorded, — overwork, under-pay; a fruitless
struggle against overwhelming odds.
With this thought the quest began anew. The
manufacturers of cloaks and jackets reported "piecework" as the rule. The great dry-goods establishments had the same word. Here and there was one
where work was done on the premises, and where
skilled hands held the same places year after year,
the wages ranging from six to ten dollars, hardly
varying. But for most of them the same causes
stated in the third chapter, " The Methods of a Prosperous Firm," have operated, and it has been found
expedient to settle upon " piece-work " and let rent
be paid and space be furnished by the workers
themselves.
" They like it better," said the business manager
of the great firm against whom there have never been
charges of dishonesty or unkindness in their treatment of employees. " It would be impossible to do
all our work on the premises. We should want the
entire block if we even half did it. But we know
some of the women, and we pay as high as anybody;
perhaps higher. It saves them car fares and going
out in all weathers, and a great many other inconveniences, when they work at home, and I don't see
why there should be any objections made. The
amount of it is, there are too many women. The
best thing to be done is to ship them West. They
say they 're wanted there, and there is certainly not

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room enough for them here. Machinery will soon
take their place, anyway. I have one in mind now
that ought to do the work of ten women perfectly,
and require simply a tender and finisher. We shall
get the thing down to a fine point very soon. Hard
on the women ? Why, no. We always hold on to
first-class workers, and there 's nothing much to be
done with second and third class except to use them
through the busy season, and let them go in the
dull."
"Go where?"
The manager paused and looked reflectively at his
well-kept finger-nails.
" My dear madam, that's a question I have no time
to consider. I dare say they earn a living somehow.
Indeed, I 'm told they go into cigar factories. There's
always plenty of work."
" Plenty of work," — a form of words so familiar
that I looked for it now from both employer and
employed. But for the last was an addition finding
no place on the lips of the first: " Plenty of work ?
Oh, yes ! I can always get plenty of work. The
trouble is to get the wages for it."
A block or so below, and further west, one great
window of a cheaper establishment held jackets and
wraps large and small, marked down for the holidays,
their advertisement in a morning paper having read,
"Jackets from $4 up." Still further over, another
window displayed numbers as great, and a placard

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103

at one side announced: " These elegant jackets from
$2.87 up." The cloth might be shoddy, but here was
a garment, fashionably cut, well finished to all appearance, and unexceptionable in pattern and color. All
along the crowded avenue the story was the same,
and as east took the place of west, and Grand Street
and the Bowery and Third Avenue gave in their
returns, " These elegant jackets from $2.35 up " gave
the final depth to which cheapness could descend.
If this was retail, what could be the wholesale
price, and what was likely to be the story of the
worker from whose hands they had come ? It is
worth while to follow these jackets as they emerge
from the cutting-room, and in packages holding such
number of dozens as has been agreed upon, pass to
the express wagon which distributes them among the
workers, the firm in mind at present, like many others,
preferring this arrangement to any which involves
dealing directly with the women.
First on the list stands the name of a woman a
little over fifty years old, whose husband is a painter
and who left Germany eight years ago, urged to come
over by a daughter more adventurous than the rest,
who had married and emigrated at once. Work was
plentiful when they arrived, and the husband found
immediate employment at his trade, with wages so
high that the wife had no occasion for any employment outside her own rooms. The youngest child, a
girl of nine, went to school. They lived in comfort-

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

able rooms on a decent street, put money in a savings
bank, and felt that America held more good even
than the name had always seemed to promise. Then
came the financial troubles of 1879 and 1881, the
gradual fall of wages, the long seasons when there
was no work, and last, the fate that overtakes the
worker in lead, whether painter or in any other
branch, — first painter's colic, and the long train of
symptoms preceding the paralysis which came at
last, the stroke a light one, but leaving the patient
with the "drop hand" and all the other complications, testifying that the working days were over.
Strength enough returned for an odd job now and
then, and the little man accepted his fate cheerily,
and congratulated himself that the bank held a little
fund and that thus the lowering wages could be
pieced out. The bank settled this question by
almost immediate failure; a long and expensive illness for the wife followed; and when it ended furniture and small valuables of every sort had been
pawned, and they left the empty rooms for narrower
quarters and sought for work in which all could
share. To add to the complication, the daughter,
who had had good sense enough to take a place as
child's nurse, broke her leg, and became, even when
able to walk again, too disabled to return to this
work. She could run the machine, and her mother
was an expert buttonhole-maker and had already
learned various forms of work on cloth, both in

THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET.

105

cheap coats and pantaloons, and in jackets and
cloaks. The jackets seemed to promise most, for in
1884 each one brought to the maker sixty cents, buttonholes being $1.50 per hundred, the presser receiving ten cents each and the finisher six cents, these
amounts being deducted from the price paid on each.
To save this amount the husband learned how to
press, and though his crippled hands can barely
grasp the iron, and often his wife must help him
place the cramped ringers in position, he stands
there smiling and well content to add this mite to
the fund. For a year their home has been in a deep
basement, where, save at noonday, it is impossible
to run the machines without artificial light. A
dark room opens from the one in which they work,
itself dark, unventilated save from the hall, and
chosen as abiding place because it represents but
four dollars a month in rent. Two machines run
by mother and daughter stand as near the window
as possible, and close by is the press-board and the
pale but optimistic little man, who looks proudly at
each seam as he lays it open. Jackets are everywhere, — piled on chairs and scattered over the floor,
—waiting the various operations necessary before they
can at last be bundled on the ex-painter's back, who
smiles to himself as he toils down to the firm's headquarters, reflecting that he has saved the expressage
another week. What are the returns ? Lisa will
give them, — the wife whose English is still uncer-

106

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

tain, and whose gentle, anxious eyes grow eager and
bright as she talks, the husband nodding confirmation, or shaking his head as he sees the tears come
suddenly, with a " Not so, not so, Lisa."
" I know not if we shall live at all," she says. " For
see. We two, my Gretchen and I, we make but ten
for a day. Tree dollar? Yes, but you must take
from it de buttonhole an' finish and much else, and
it is so short — so short that we can work on them.
The season, that is it — six weeks — two months,
maybe, and then pantaloon till spring jacket come.
See. It is early that we begin, — seven, maybe, —
and all day we shall sew and sew. We eat no warm
essen. On table dere is bread and beer in pitcher
and cheese to-day. We sit not down, for time goes
away so. N"o, we stand and eat as we must, and sew
more and more. Ten jackets to one day — so Gretchen and me can make; ten jackets to one day, but
we sit always — we go not out. It is fourteen hours
efery day — yes, many time sixteen — we work and
work. Then we fall on bed and sleep, and when we
wake again it is work always. And I must stop a
leetle; not much, but a leetle, for my back have
such pain that I fall on the bed to say, ' Ach Gott!
is it living to work so in this rich, free America ?' But
he is sick always, my man, even if he will laugh. He
say he must laugh alway for two because I cannot.
For when this work is past it is only pantaloons, and
sew so hard as we may it is five, six pair maybe, for

THE EVOLUTION

OF A JACKET.

107

Gretchen and me all day, and that not always. Many
day we do nothing because they say work is dull, and
then goes away all we save before. But we need not
to ask help. So much is good that we work and
earn, but I think I die soon of my pain, and who
then helps his fingers so stiff to press or thinks how
he will ache even when he will laugh ? It is because
America is best that we come, but how is it best to
die because it is always work and no joy, no hope,
never one so small stop ?"
"Never one so small stop." The attic had the
same story, and the white-faced, hollow-eyed woman
who tried to smile as she spoke turned also from the
waiting pile of jackets and drew one or two back to
the sheet spread for them on the floor to which they
had slipped. A table and two chairs, a small stove
in which burned a bare handful of coals, the two machines, at one of which a girl of twenty still sewed on,
and in the corner a bed, on which lay another girl of
the same age, but with the crimson spot on her cheeks
and the shining eyes of advanced consumption. It
had been one of the faces so often seen behind the
counters of the great stores, delicate in features and
coloring, with soft dark eyes and fair masses of hair
loose on the pillow.
" I try to keep her tidy," the mother said, " but she
can't bear her hair up a minute, it's so heavy on her
head, an' I 've no time to 'tend to it but the minute I
take in the morning. I t ' s jackets now that I 'm on.

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

I thought maybe there 'd be less risk in them than
cloaks. Cloaks seem to give 'em so much chance to
cheat. I would n't work at all at home, I 'd be out
doing by the day, for I had a good run of work, but
there's Maggie, and I can't leave her, though God
knows she gets little good of me but the knowing
I ' m here. I'll tell you what they did to me on
cloaks. I work for S
& Co., far down on Broadway, and they give out the most expensive kind of
cloaks, and nine dollars a dozen for the making;
other kinds, too, but I 'd been on them a good while
and knew just how. The pay was regular, but before
I 'd had work from them a month I saw they were
bound to make complaints and dock pay whether
there was any fault in the work or not. One and
another took their turn, and no help for i t ; for if they
complained the foreman just said: ' You need n't take
any work unless you like. There are plenty waiting
to fill your place.' Poor souls! What could they
do but go on ?
" At last came my turn. He tossed them all over.
* I t ' s poor work,' he said. ' They 're not finished
properly. You can't be paid for botching. There 's
three dollars, and that's too much.' ' The work is
the same i t ' s always been. There's no botching,'
I said; but he held out the three dollars. ( No,' I
said,' If you won't pay fair I '11 go to the Woman's
Protective Union and see what they'll do.' His
face was black as thunder. ' Take your money,' he

THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET.

109

says, holding out the rest,' but you may sing for more
work from this establishment/ and he flung the
money on the floor. That did n't trouble me, because
I knew I could get work just below, and I did that
same day; twenty cloaks, ten to be made at sixty
cents apiece, and ten at fifty-five cents. I had Angie
here to help, and when they were done I carried
them down. This man was a Jew, but there's small
difference. If the Jew knew best how to cheat in the
beginning, the Christian caught up with him long ago.
' The buttons are all on wrong/ he said. ' I told you to
set them an inch further back. We 11 have to alter
them every one and charge you for the time/ ' I can
take oath they are on as I was told to put them on/
I said, ' but if they must be changed I '11 change
them myself and save the money/
" It took long talking to make him agree, but at
last he said I could come next morning but one, and
he 'd let me alter them as a great favor. I did come
down, but he said they could n't wait and had made
the change, and he charged me six dollars for what
he said was my mistake. It was no use to complain.
He could swear I had done the job wrong, and so I
went home with $5.50 instead of eleven dollars for
nearly a fortnight's work. I changed the place, and
so far nobody has docked me; but doing my best, and
Angie working as steady as I do, we can't make more
than twenty cents on a jacket, and it 's a short season.
When it's over I do coats, but it's less pay than

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PRISONERS

OF POVBRT?.

jackets, and there's living and Maggie's medicine and
the doctor, though he won't take anything. I 'd feel
better if he did, but he won't. Angie used to be in a
factory, but there's the baby now, and she does n't
know what way to turn but this. See, he's here by
Maggie." The sick girl lifted a corner of the quilt,
and something stirred, — a baby of seven or eight
months whose great eyes looked out from a face
weazened and sharpened, deep experience seeming
graven in every line.
" He's a wise one," the sick girl said. " H e ' s
found it's no use to cry, and he likes to be by me
because it's warm. But he frightens me sometimes,
for he just lies and looks at me as if he knew a million things and could tell them every one. H e ' s
always hungry, and maybe that makes him wiser.
I 'm sure I could tell some things that people
don't know."
The words came with gasps between. It was plain
that what she had to tell must find speedy listener if
it were to be heard at all, but for that day at least
the story must wait. Here, as in other places, the
cloakmaker was earning from sixty to seventy cents
a day, but even this was comfort and profusion compared with the facts that waited in a Fourth Ward
street, and in a rookery not yet reached by any sanitary laws the city may count as in operation. Here
and there still remains one of the old wooden houses
with dormer windows, a remnant of the city's early

THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET.

Ill

days and given over" to the lowest uses, — a saloon below and tenements above. In one of these, in a room
ten feet square, low-ceiled, and lighted by but one
window whose panes were crusted with the dirt of
a generation, seven women sat at work. Three machines were the principal furniture. A small stove
burned fiercely, the close smell of red-hot iron hardly
dominating the fouler one of sinks and reeking sewergas. Piles of cloaks were on the floor, and the women, white and wan, with cavernous eyes and hands
more akin to a skeleton's than to flesh and blood,
bent over the garments that would pass from this
loathsome place saturated with the invisible filth furnished as air. They were handsome cloaks, lined
with quilted silk or satin, trimmed with fur or sealskin, and retailing at prices from thirty to seventyfive dollars. A teapot stood at the back of the stove;
some cups and a loaf of bread, with a lump of streaky
butter, were on a small table absorbing their portion
also of filth. An inner room, a mere closet, dark and
even fouler than the outer one, held the bed ; a mattress, black with age, lying on the floor. Here such
rest as might be had was taken when the sixteen
hours of work ended, — sixteen hours of toil unrelieved by one gleam of hope or cheer; the net result
of this accumulated and ever-accumulating misery
being $3.50 a week. Two women, using their utmost
diligence, could finish one cloak per day, receiving
from the " sweater," through whose hands all must

112

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

come, fifty cents each for a toil unequalled by any
form of labor under the sun, unless it be that of the
haggard wretches dressed in men's clothes, but counted
as female laborers, in Belgian mines. They cannot
stop, they dare not stop, to think of other methods of
earning. They have no clothing in which they could
obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They
have no knowledge that could make them servants of
even the meanest order. They are what is left of
untrained, hopelessly ignorant lives, clinging to these
lives with a tenacity hardly higher in intelligence
than that of the limpet on the rock, but turning to
one with lustreless eyes and blank faces, holding only
the one question,—" Lord, how long ?" They are one
product of nineteenth-century civilization, and these
seven are but types, hundreds of their kind confronting the searcher, who looks on aghast and who, as the
list lengthens and case after case gives in its unutterably miserable details, turns away in a despair only
matched by that of the worker. Yet they are here,
this army of incompetents, marching through torture to their graves; and till we have found some
method by which torture may lessen, these lives as
they vanish pass on to the army of avengers, and will
face us by and by when excuses fall away and
Justice comes face to face with the weak souls that
failed in the flesh to know its nature or its demand.

CHAPTEE TENTH.
BETWEEN THE KIYERS.
" H P H E nearer the river the nearer to hell/'
**" It was a strong word, and the big chest from
which it issued held more of the same sort, — a tall
worker, carpenter apparently, hurrying on with his
box of tools and talking, as he went, with a companion
half his size, but with quite his power of expression,
interjecting strange German oaths as he listened to
the story poured out to him. With that story we
have at present nothing to do. But the first words
lingered, and they linger still as the summary of such
life as is lived by many workers on east and west
sides alike.
Were the laws governing a volume of this nature
rigidly observed, the present phase of this investigation could hardly be the point at which to stop for
any detail of how these workers live from day to day.
But as the search has gone on through these hours
when Christmas joy is in the air, when the smallest
shop hangs out its Christmas token, and the great
stores are thronged with buyers far into the evening,
I think of the lives in which Christmas has no place,
8

114

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

of the women for whom all days are alike, each one
the synonyme of relentless, unending toil; of the
children who have never known a childhood and for
whom Christmas is but a name. For even when
mission and refuge have done their utmost, there is
still the army unreached by any effort and in great
part unreachable, no method recorded in any system
of the day having power to drag them to the light
and thus make known to us what manner of creature
it is that cowers in shadowy places and has no foothold in the path we call progress. That their own
ignorance holds them in these shadows, bound as
with chains; that even a little more knowledge would
break the bonds, in part at least, has no present bearing on the fact that thousands are alive among us to
whom existence has brought only pain, and that
fresh thousands join this dumb throng of martyrs
with every added year. If they had learned in any
degree how to use to the best advantage the pittance
earned, there would be less need of these chapters; yet
as I read the assurances of our political economists,
that a wage of four dollars per week is sufficient, if
intelligently used, to supply all the actual necessities
of the worker, the question pushes itself between
the lines: " Why should they be forced to know only
necessities; and is this statement made of any save
those too ignorant to define their wants and needs,
too helpless to dare any protestation, even if more
knowledge had come ?"

BETWEEN

THE RIVERS,

115

The professional political economist of the old
school, the school to which all but a handful belong,
takes refuge in the census returns as the one reply to
any arraignment of the present. Blind as a bat to
any figures save his own, he answers all complaint
with the formula: " I n 1860 the property of this
country, equally divided, would have given every man,
woman, and child $514 each. In 1870 the share
would have been $624; in 1880, $814. In 1886
returns are not in, but $900 and more would be the
division per capita. What madness to talk of suffering when this flood of wealth pours through the land.
Admitting that the lowest class suffer, it is chiefly
crime, drunkenrfess, etc., that bring suffering. The
majority are perfectly comfortable."
Having read this statement in many letters and
heard it in interviews as well, it seems plain that
the conviction embodied in both has fastened
itself upon that portion of the public whose thinking is done for them, and who range themselves
by choice with that order who would not be convinced " even though one rose from the dead." " The
majority are perfectly comfortable." Let us see how
comfortable.
I turn first to the pair, a mother and daughter, a
portion of whose experience found place in the chapter
on " More Methods of Prosperous Firms." Here, as
in so many cases, there had been better days, and when
these suddenly ended a period of bewildered helpless-

116

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

ness, in which the widow felt that respectability like
hers must know no compromise, and that any step that
would involve her " being talked about" was a step
toward destruction. She must live on a decent street,
in a house where she need not be ashamed to have
the relations come, and she did till brought face to
face with the fact that there were no more dollars to
spend upon respectability, and that her quarters must
hereafter conform to her earnings. She had been
a dweller in that curious triangle, the remnant of
" Greenwich village," the stronghold still of old New
York, and she went at once to a region as unfamiliar
to her conservative feet as Baxter or Hester, or any
other street given over to evil. Far over toward
the North Eiver, in the first floor of a great tenement-house inhabited by the better class of Irish
chiefly, she took two rooms, one a mere closet where
the bed could stand; bestowed in them such furniture as remained, and at fifty, with no clew left
that any friend could trace, began the fight for
bread.
" It might have been better to go to the country/'
she said. "But you see I was n't used to the country,
and then any work I could get to do was right here.
I 'd always liked to sew, and so had Emeline, and we
found we could get regular work on children's suits,
with skirts and such things in the dull seasons. It
was good pay, and we were comfortable till prices
began to fall. We made fifteen dollars a week some-

BETWEEN

THE RIVERS.

117

times, and could have got ahead if it had n't been for
a little debt of my husband's that I wanted to pay, for
we 'd never owed anybody a penny and I could n't let
even that debt stand against his name. But when it
was paid, somehow I came down with rheumatic fever,
and I Ve never got back my full strength yet. And
the prices kept going down. Emmy is an expert. I
never knew her make a mistake, but working twelve
and fourteen hours a day, — and it's 'most often fourteen,— the most she has made for more than a year and
a half is eighty-five cents a day, and on that we 've
managed. I suppose we could n't if I ever went out,
but I Ve had no shoes in two years. I patch the
ones I got then with one of my husband's old coats,
and keep along, but we never get ahead enough for
me to have shoes, and Emmy too, and she's the one
that has to go out. How we live ? I t ' s all in this
little book. I t ' s foolish to put it down, and yet I
always somehow liked to see how the money went,
even when I had plenty, and it's second nature to
put down every cent. Take last month. It had
twenty-seven working days: $22.95. Out of that
we took first the ten dollars for rent. I Ve been
here eleven years, and they 've raised a dollar on me
twice. That leaves $12.95 for provisions and coal
and light and clothes. 'T is n't much for two people,
is it ? You would n't think it could be done, would
you ? Well, it is, and here 's the expense for one
week for what we eat: —

118

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

Sugar, 23 ; Tomatoes, 7 ; Potatoes, 5 . . . $0.35
Tea, 15 ; Butter, 30; Bread, 12
0.57
Coal, 12 ; Milk, 15 ; Clams, 10
0.37
Oil, 15 ; Paper, 1; Clams, 10; Potatoes, 5 . 0.31
Cabbage, 5; Bread, 7; Flour, 15; Rolls, 3 . 0.30
Total

$1.90

"This week was an expensive one, for I got a
pound of butter at once, but it will last into next
week. And we had to have the scissors sharpened;
that was five cents. There would have been five
cents for wood, but you see they 're building down
the street, and one of the boys upstairs brought me
a basketful of bits. You see there 's no meat. We
like it, but we only get a bit for Sundays sometimes.
Emmy never wants much. Eunning a machine all
day seems to take your appetite. But she likes
clams; you see we had them twice, and I happened
to read in the paper a good while ago that you could
make soup of the water the cabbage was boiled in;
a quart of the water and a cup of milk and a bit of
butter and some flour to thicken. You wouldn't
think it could be good, but it is, and it goes a good
way. The coal ought not to be in with the food,
ought it, unless it stays because I have to use it cooking ? We ought n't to spend so much on food, but I
can't seem to make it less. Really, when you take
out the coal and oil and the paper, —and we do want
to see a paper sometimes, — i t ' s only $1.62 for us
both; eighty-one cents apiece; almost twelve cents

BETWEEN

THE RIVERS.

119

a day, but I can't well seem ^to make it less. I
call it twelve cents a day apiece. For the month
that makes $7.44, and so you see there's $5.51
left. Then there are Emmy's car-fares when she
goes out, for sometimes she works down-town and
only evenings at home. Last month it was sixty
cents a week, $2.70 for the month, and so there was
just $2.81 left, and $1.50 of that went for shoes for
Emmy. The month before, my hands weren't so
stiff and I helped her a good deal, so we earned
$26.70, and she got two remnants for $1.80 at Ehrich's
and I made her a dress that looks very well. But
she's nothing but patchwork underneath, and I ' m
the same, only worse. The coal is the trouble. By
the scuttle it costs so much, and I try to get ahead
and have a quarter of a ton at once, for there are
places here to keep coal, but I never can. If it
were n't for Emmy's missing me, it would be better
for me to die, for I 'm no use, you see, and times get
no better, but worse. But I can't, and we must get
along somehow. Lord help us all!"
" How could twelve cents' worth of coal do a week's
cooking ?"
" It could n't. It did n't. I Ve a little oil stove
that just boils the kettle, and tea and bread and butter are what we have mostly. A gallon of oil goes
a long way, and I can cook small things over it, too.
The washing takes coal, and you see I must have
soap and all that. I don't see how we could spend

120

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

less. I Ve learned to manage even with what we get
now, but there 's a woman next door that I know
better than anybody in this house, — for here it always
seemed to me best to keep quite to myself for many
reasons, but the chief that I 'm always hoping for a
change and a chance for Emmy. But this woman
is a nice German woman that fell on the ice and
sprained her ankle last winter, and we saw to her
well as we could till she got better. She won't mind
telling how she manages, but she's in the top of the
house. She's a widow, and everybody dead belonging
to her."
This house was a grade below the last in cleanliness, and children swarmed on stairs and in hall.
Up to the fourth floor back; a ten-feet-square room,
with one window, where, in spite of a defective sink
in the hall, the odor from which seemed to penetrate
and saturate everything, spotless cleanliness was the
expression of every inch of space.
" Vy not ? " the old woman said, when she understood my desire. " I tells you mine an* more, too,
for down de stairs I buy every day for the girl that
is sick and goes out no more. I f I quick were as
girl I could save much, but I have sixty-five year.
How shall I be quick ? I earn forty-five, fifty cents
sometime, but forty-five for day's work when I go
as I can. An' so for week dat is $2.70; I can ten
dollars a month, sometimes twelve dollars, and I
pays three dollars for this room. To eat I will buy

BETWEEN

THE RIVERS.

121

tea and our bread, — rye, for dat is stronger as your
fine wheat. Tea is American, but I will not beer
any more, since I see how women drinks it and de
kinder, and it not like our beer but more tipsy. So
I makes tea, and de cheese and de wurst is all not
so much. It is de coal that is most. Vat I vill eat,
he cost not so more as fifty cent; sometimes sixty,
but I eat not ever all I could, for T must be warm
a little, and dere is light, and to wash, and some
shoe. It is bad to be big as I, for shoe not last.
But a loaf of bread, five cents, do all day and some
in next; and cheese a pound is ten, if I have him;
and wurst is fifteen, for sometime he is best, and a
pound stay a week if I not greedy. Tea will be
thirty cents, but he is good a month, and sugar a
pound, two pound sometime, but butter no, and
milk a cent for Sunday. So I live, and I beg not.
Can I more ? I thank the good God only that there
is no more Hans or Lisa or any to be hungry with
me. It is good they go."
" And you buy for some one else ?"
" Oh ja, but she will die soon and care not. It is
de kinder that care. Two, and one six and one eight
and cannot earn. She sew all day on machine. It
is babies' cloaks, so vite and nice. In two days
she will make dree, for see, dere is two linings and
cape and cuff is all scallop, and she must stitch first
and then bind and hem. All is hem, all over inside, so nice, and she make dem so nice. But eight

122

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

dollars a dozen is all, and it is a week for nine, and so
she get not more as five dollars because she is sick
and must stop. And there is the grandvater that is
old, and de kinder and she and all must live. Eent
is $5.50, dat I know, and I pay for her dis week
$1.60 for bread and tea and potatoes and some milk,
and molasses for de kinder on bread, and butter a
little, and milk, but not meat. It is de grandvater
eat too much, but how shall one help it ? De rest
is clothes for all, but dere is no shoe for de kinder,
and I see not if dere vill be shoe. How shall it
be?"
One after another the cases on the west side gave
in their testimony. Save in the first one there were
no formal accounts. But a little thinking brought
out the items, — for many baker's bread, tea, sugar, a
little milk, and butter and a bit of meat once or
twice a week, the average cost of food per head for
the majority of cases being ninety cents per week.
All coal was bought by the scuttle, a scuttle of
medium size counting as twelve cents' Avorth, thus
much more than doubling the cost per ton. In the
same way, wood by the bundle and oil by the quart
gave the utmost margin of profit to the seller, and
the same fact applied to all provisions sold. In no
case save the one first mentioned, where the mother
had learned that cabbage-water can form the basis
for a nourishing and very palatable soup, was there
the faintest gleam of understanding that the same

BETWEEN

THE Ml VERS.

123

amount of money could furnish a more varied, more
savory, and more nourishing regimen.
" Beans !" said one indignant soul. " What time
have I to think of beans, or what money to buy coal
to cook 'em ? What you 'd want if you sat over a
machine fourteen hours a day would be tea like lye
to put a back-bone in you. That's why we have tea
always in the pot, and it don't make much odds
what's with it. A slice of bread is about all. Once
in a while you get ragin', tearin' hungry. Seems as
if you 'd swallow teapot or anything handy to fill up
like, but that ain't often — lucky for us !"
"If you all clubbed together, couldn't one cook
for you, — make good soup and oatmeal and things
that are nourishing ? You would be stronger then."
" Stronger for what ? More hours at the machine ?
More grinding your own flesh and bones into flour
for them that's over us ? Ma'am, it's easy to see you
mean well, an' I won't say but what you know more
than some that comes around what you're talkin'
about. Club we might. I 'm not denying it could
be done, if there was time; but who of us has the
time even if she 'd the will ? I was never much hand
for cookin'. We 'd our tea an' bread an' a good bit
of fried beef or pork, maybe, when my husband was
alive an' at work. He cared naught for fancy things
like beans an' such. I t ' s the tea that keeps you up,
an' as long as I can get that I '11 not bother about
beans."

124

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

In the same house an old Swiss woman, who had
fallen from her first estate as lady's maid through
one grade and another of service, was ending her
days on a wage of two dollars per week, earned in a
suspender factory, where she sewed on buckles. In
her case marriage with a drinking husband had eaten
up both her savings and her earnings, and age now
prevented her taking up household service, which
she ranked as most comfortable and most profitable.
But she had been taught while almost a child to
cook, and though her expenditure for food was a
little below a dollar per week, the savory smell from
a saucepan on her tiny stove showed that she had
something more nearly like nourishment than her
neighbors.
" I try sometimes to teach," she said. " I give
some of my soup, and they eat it and say it is good,
but they cannot stop to do so much dat is fuss. All
this in the saucepan is seven cents, — three cents for
bones and some bits the kind butcher trow in, and
the rest vegetable and barley. But it makes me two
days. I have lentils, too, yes, and beans, and plenty
things to flavor, and I buy rye bread and coffee to
Sunday. Never tea, oh, no! Tea is so vicket. It
make hand shake and head fly all round. Good soup
is best, and more when one can. Vegetable is many
and salad, and when I make more dollar I buy some
egg. But not tea; not big loaf of white bread dot
swell and swell inside and ven it is gone leave one

BETWEEN

THE RIVERS.

125

all so empty. I would teach many but they like it
not. They want only de tea ; always de tea."
" De tea " and the sewing-machine are naturally
inseparable allies, and so long as the sewing-women
must work fourteen hours daily they will remain so;
the rank fluid retarding digestion and thus proving
as friendly an aid as the " bone " which the half-fed
Irish peasant demands in his potato. For the west
side the story was quite plain, but for such returns
as the east has to offer there is still room for further
detail.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH.
UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.
" D E T W E E N east and west side poverty and its
-*"^ surroundings exists always this difference, that
the west is newer and thus escapes the inherited
miseries that hedge about life in such regions as
the Fourth Ward. There, where old New York
once centred, and where Dutch gables and dormer
windows may still be seen, is not only the foulness
of the present, each nationality in the swarming
tenements representing a distinct type of dirt and a
distinct method of dealing with it and in it, but the
foulness also of the past, in decay and mould and
crumbling wall and all silent forces of destruction at
work here for a generation and more. Those of us
who have watched the evolution of the Fourth Ward
into some show of decency recognize many causes
as having worked toward the same end; yet even
when one notes to-day the changes wrought, first
by business, the march of which has wiped out
many former landmarks, setting in their place great
warehouses and factories, and then of philanthropy,
which, as in the case of Miss Collins's tenements,

UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.

127

has transformed dens into some semblance of homes,
there remains the conviction that dens are uppermost still. The business man hurrying down Fulton or Beekman Street, the myriads who pass up and
down in the various east-side car lines, with those
other myriads who cross the great Bridge, have small
conception what thousands are packed away in the
great tenements, and the rookeries even more crowded,
or what depth of vileness flaunts itself openly when
day is done and the creatures of shadow come out to
the light that for many quarters is the only sunshine.
This ward has had minute and faithful description
from one of the most energetic of workers for better
sanitary conditions among the poor, — Mr. Charles
Wingate, whose admirable papers on " Tenement
House Life," published by the " Tribune " in 18841885, must be regarded as authority for the sanitary
phases of the question. Little by little these have
bettered, till the death rate has come within normal
limits and the percentage of crime ceased to represent the largest portion of the inhabitants. Yet
here, on this familiar battle-ground, civilization and
something worse than mere barbarism still struggle.
For which is the victory ?
Under the great Bridge, whose piers have taken
the place of much that was foulest in the Fourth
Ward, stands a tenement-house so shadowed by the
structure that, save at midday, natural light barely
penetrates it. The inhabitants are of all grades and

128

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

all nationalities. The men are chiefly longshoremen,
working intermittently on the wharves, varying this
occupation by long seasons of drinking, during which
every pawnable article vanishes, to be gradually redeemed or altogether lost, according to the energy
with which work is resumed. The women scrub
offices, peddle fruit or small office necessities, take in
washing, share, many of them, in the drinking bouts,
and are, as a whole, content with brutishness, only
vaguely conscious of a wretchedness that, so long as
it is intermittent, is no spur to reform of methods.
The same roof covers many who yield to none of
these temptations, but are working patiently; some
of them widows with children that must be fed; a
few solitary, but banding with neighbors in cloak or
pantaloon making, or the many forms of slop-work
in the hands of sweaters. Sunshine has no place in
these rooms which no enforced laws have made
decent, and where occasional individual effort has
small power against the unspeakable filth ruling in
tangible and intangible forms, sink and sewer and
closet uniting in a common and all-pervading stench.
The chance visitor has sometimes to rush to the
outer air, deadly sick and faint at even a breath of
this noisomeness. The most determined one feels
inclined to burn every garment worn during such
quest, and wonders if Abana or Pharpar or even
Jordan itself could carry healing and cleansing in
their floods.

UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.

129

The dark halls have other uses than as receptacles
for refuse or filth. Hiding behind doors or in corners,
or, grown bolder, seeking no concealment, children
hardly more than babies teach one another such
new facts of foulness as may so far have chanced to
escape them, — baby voices reciting a ritual of oaths
and obscenity learned in this Inferno, which, could
it have place by Dante's, might be better known to
a cultured generation. Only a Zola could describe
deliberately what any eye may see, but any minute
detail of which would excite an outburst of popular
indignation. Yet I am by no means certain that
such detail has not far more right to space than
much that fills our morning papers, and that the
plain bald statement of facts, shorn of all flights of
fancy or play of facetiousness, might not rouse the
public to some sense of what lies below the surface
of this fair-seeming civilization of to-day. Not alone
in the shadow of the great pier, but wherever men
and women must herd like brutes, these things exist
and shape the little lives that missions do not, and
as yet cannot, reach, and that we prefer to deal with
later, when actual violation of laws has placed them
in the hands of the State. Work as she may, the
woman who must find home for herself and children
in such surroundings is powerless to protect them
from the all-pervading foulness. They may escape a
portion of the actual degradation. They can never escape a knowledge the possibility of which is unknown
9

130

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

to what we call barbarism, but part and parcel of the
daily life of civilization.
Granted instantly that only the lowest order of
worker must submit to such conditions, yet we have
seen that this lowest order is legion; that its numbers
increase with every day; and that no Board of Health
or of Sanitary Inspectors has yet been able to alter,
save here and there, the facts that are a portion of
the tenement-house system.
It is chiefly with the house under the Bridge that
we deal at present. Its upper rooms hold many
workers whose testimony has helped to make plain
how the east side lives. Little by little, as the
blocks of granite swung into place and the great
pier grew, the sunshine vanished, its warmth and
light replaced by the electric glow, cold and hard
and blinding. The day's work has ceased to be the
day's work, and the women who cannot afford the
gas or oil that must burn if they work in the daytime, sleep while day lasts, and when night comes
and the electric light penetrates every corner of
the shadowy rooms, turn to the toil by which their
bread is won. Never was deeper satire upon the
civilization of which we boast. Natural law, natural living, abolished once for all, and this light that
blinds but holds no cheer shining upon the mass of
weary humanity who have forgotten what sunshine
may mean and who know no joy that life was meant
to hold!

UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.

131

In one of these rooms, clean, if cleanliness were
possible wThere walls and ceiling and every plank
and beam reek with the foulness from sewer and
closet, three women were at work on overalls. Two
machines were placed directly under the windows to
obtain every ray of light. The room, ten by twelve
feet, with a small one half the size opening from it,
held a small stove, the inevitable teapot steaming at
the back; a table with cups and saucers and a loaf
of bread still uncut; and a small dresser in one corner,
in which a few dishes were ranged. A sickly geranium grew in an old tomato-can, but save for this
the room held no faintest attempt at adornment of
any sort. In many of them the cheapest colored
prints are pinned up, and in one, one side had been
decorated with all the trademarks peeled from the
goods on which the family worked. Here there was
no time for even such attempts at betterment. The
machines rushed on as we talked, with only a momentary pause as interest deepened, and one woman nodded
confirmation to the statement of another.
" We 've clubbed, so's to get ahead a little," said
the finisher, whose fingers flew as she made buttonholes in the waistband and flap of the overalls.
" We were each in a room by ourselves, but after
the fever, when the children died and I had n't but
two left, it seemed as if we 'd be more sensible to all
go in together and see if we could n't be more comfortable. We'd have left anyway, and tried for a

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better place, but for one thing, — we had n't time to
move; and for another, queer as it seems, you get
used to even the worst places and feel as if you
couldn't change. W e l l have to, if the landlord
doesn't do something about the closets. I t ' s no
good telling the agent, and I don't know as anybody
in the house knows just who the landlord is. Anyway, the smell's enough to kill you sometimes, and
it's a burning disgrace that human beings have to
live in such a pig-pen. I t ' s cheap rent. We pay
five dollars a month for this place. When I came
here it was from a neck-tie place over on Allen
Street, that's moved now, and my husband was
mate on a tug and earned well. But he took to
drink and sold off everything I 'd brought with me>
and at last he was hurt in a fight round the corner,
and died in hospital of gangrene. Mary's husband
there was a bricklayer and had big wages, but he
drank them fast as he made them, and he was ugly
when the drink was in, which mine was n't. But
there's hardly one in this house, man or woman,
that don't take a drop to keep off the fever; and
even I, that hate the sight or smell of it, I wake up
in the morning with an awful kind o' goneness that
seems as if a taste might help it. The tea stops
that, though. Tea's the best friend we 've got.
We 'd never stand it if it was n't for tea."
" Are overalls steady pay through the year ?"
" There's nothing that's steady, so far as I can

UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.

133

find out, but want and misery. Just now overalls
are u p ; the Lord only knows why, for you never can
tell what '11 be up and what down. They 're up, and
we're making a dollar a dozen on these. I have
done a dozen a day, but it's generally ten. There 's
the long seams, and the two pockets, and the buckle
strap and the waistband and three buttonholes, and
the stays and the finishing. They 're heavy machines
too, and take the backbone right out of you before
night comes. But you sleep like the dead, that's
one comfort. It would be more if you did n't have
to wake more than they do. When the overall rush
is over, it 11 be back to pants again. That's my
trade. I learned it regular after I was married,
when I saw Tim was n't going to be any dependence.
There were the children then, and I thought I 'd send
'em to school and keep things decent maybe. I know
all about pants, the best and the worst, but it's
mostly worse these days. First the German women
piled in ready to do your work for half your rates,
and when they 'd got well started, in comes the
Italians and cuts under, till it's a wonder anybody
keeps soul and body together."
" We don't," one of the women said, turning suddenly. " I got rid o' my soul long ago, such as 't was.
Who 's got time to think about souls, grinding away
here fourteen hours a day to turn out contract goods ?
'T ain't souls that count. I t ' s bodies that can be
driven, an' half starved an' driven still, till they drop

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in their tracks. I 'm driving now to pay a doctor's
bill for my three that went with the fever. Before
that I was driving to put food into their mouths. I
never owed a cent to no man. I 've been honest and
paid as I went and done a good turn when I could.
If I'd chosen the other thing while I ' d a pretty face
of my own I ' d a had ease and comfort and a quick
death. Such life as this is n't living."
The machine whirled on as she ended, to make up
the time lost in her outburst. The finisher shook her
head as she looked at her, then poured a cup of tea
and put it silently on the edge of the table where it
could be reached.
"She's right enough," she said, "but there's no
use thinking about it. I try to sometimes, just to
see if there's any way out, but there is n't. I 've
even said I 'd take a place; but I don't know anything about housework, and who 'd take one looking
as I do, and not a rag that's fit to be put on? I
cover up in an old waterproof when I go for work.
They would n't give it to me if they saw my dress in
rags below, and me with no time to mend it. But
we're doing better than some. We've had meat
twice this week, and we've kept warm. It's the coal
that eats up your money, — twelve cents a scuttle, and
no place to keep more if ever we got ahead enough to
get more at a time. I t ' s lucky that tea's so staying.
Give me plenty of tea, and the most I want generally besides is bread and a scrape of butter. I t ' s all

CINDER THE BRIDGE

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BEYOND.

135

figured out. I t ' s long since I 've spent more than
seventy-five cents a week for what I must eat. I 've
no time to cook even if I had anything, so it's lucky
I have n't. I suppose there 'd be plenty to eat if
you once made up your mind to take a place."
It was the second machine that stopped now, and
the haggard woman running it faced about suddenly.
" Do you know what come to my girl," she said, —
" my girl that I brought up decent and that was a
good girl ? I said to myself a trade was no good, for
it was more an' more starvation wages, and I 'd put
her with folks that would be good to her, even if the
other girls did look down on her for going into service. She was fifteen, and a still little thing with
soft eyes and a pretty, soft way, if she did come of
a drinking father. I put her with a lady that wanted
a waitress and said she 'd train her well. She 'd three
boarders in the house, and all gentlemen to look at,
and one that's in a bank to-day he did his best to
turn her head on the sly, and when he found he
couldn't, one Sunday when she was alone in the
house and none to hear or help, he had his will.
The mistress turned her off the hour she heard it, for
Nettie went to her when she come home. 'Such
things don't happen unless the girl is to blame/ she
said. ' Never show your shameless face here again/
Nettie came home to me kind of dazed, and she
stayed dazed till she went to a hospital and a baby
was born dead, and she dead herself a week after.

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PRISONERS

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An' it is n't one time alone or my girl alone. It *s
over an* over an' over that that thing happens.
There's plenty that go to the bad of their own free
will, but I know plenty more with the same chance
that does n't, an' there's many a mother that's been
in service herself that says, ' Whatever the mistress
may know about it she can't tell, but the devil 's let
loose when the master or a son maybe is around, an'
they 11 not have their girls standing what they had
to stand and then turned off without a character
because they were found with the master talkin' to
'em.' I t ' s women that keeps women down an' is
hard on 'em. I l l take my chances with any Jew
you 11 bring along before 111 put myself in the
power of wromen that calls themselves ladies an'
has n't as much heart as a broomstick; an' 111 warn
every girl to keep to herself an' learn a trade, an' not
run the risk s h e l l run if she goes out to service,
letting alone the way you 're looked down on."
There was no time for discussion. The machines
must go on; but, as usual, much more than the fact
of which I was in search had come to me, and,
strangely enough, in this house and in others of its
kind inspected one after another, much the same
story was told. In the " improved tenements " close
at hand, where comparative comfort reigned, more
than one woman gave willingly the detail of the
weekly expenditure for food, and added, as if the
underlying question had made itself felt, " I t ' s

UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND.

137

betther to be a little short even an' your own misthress," with other words that have their place elsewhere. On the upper floor of one of these houses a
pantaloon-maker sat in a tireless room, finishing the
last of a dozen which when taken back would give
her money for coal and food. She had been ill for
three days, and on the bed, — an old mattress on a
dry-goods box in the corner. " Even that 's more
than I had for a good while," she said. " I 'd pawned
everything before my husband died, except the machine. I could n't make but twenty-two cents a pair
on the pants, an' as long as he could hold up he did
the pressing. With him to help a little I made three
pair a day. That seems little, but there was so many
pieces to each pair,—side and watch and pistol pockets,
buckle strap, waistband, and bottom facings and lap;
six buttonholes and nine buttons. We lived — I
don't just know how we lived. He was going in
consumption an' very set about it. ' I ' l l have no
medicine an* no doctor to make me hang an' drag
along,' he says. ' I Ve got to go, an' I know it, an'
111 do it as fast as I can.' He was Scotch, an' took
his porridge to the last, but I came to loathe the
sight of it. He could live on six cents a day. I
could n't. ' I 'm the kind for your contractors/ he 'd
say. ' I t ' s a glorious country, and the rich 11 be
richer yet when there's more like me/ He did n't
mind what he said, an' when a Bible-reader put her
head in one day, 'Come in,' he says. ' M y wife's

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working for a Christian contractor at sixty-six cents
a day, an' I ' m what's left of another Christian's
dealings with me, keeping me as a packer in a damp
basement and no fire. Come in and let's see what
more Christianity has to say about it.' He scared
her, his eyes was so shiny an' he most gone then.
But there's many a one that does n't go over fifty
cents a week for what s h e l l eat. God help them
that's starving us all by bits, if there is a God, but
I 'm doubting it, else why don't things get better, an'
not always worse an' worse ?"
For east and west, however conditions might
differ, the final word was the same, and it stands as
the summary of the life that is lived from day to day
by these workers, — "never better, always worse
and worse."

CHAPTER

TWELFTH.

ONE OF THE FUB-SEWERS.
" T SUPPOSE if you 'd been born on the top of a hill in
•*• New Hampshire with the stones so thick ten miles
of stone wall could n't have used 'em up, an' the steeple
of the Methodist meetin'-house the only thing in sight,
maybe you 'd have wanted to get where you could see
folks too. It was just Elkins luck to have another hill
between us an' the village so 't I could n't see beyond the
woods between. If there was a contrary side to anything
it always fell to father, an' I 'm some like him, though
I 've got mother's way of never knowing when I'm knocked
flat, though I Ve had times enough to find out. But I
said straight through, 'If ever there 's a chance of getting
to New York I '11 take it. Boston won't do. I want the
biggest an' the stirringest thing there is in the United
States,' an' Leander felt just as I did.
" Leander lived down the valley a way, an' such cobblestones as had n't come to our share had come to his. He 'd
laid wall from the time he was ten years old, and he'd sat
on the hay an' cried for pure lonesonieness. His folks
were n't any hands to talk, an' he could n't even have
the satisfaction of nieetin' Sundays, because they was
Seventh Day Baptists, an' so set a minister could n't get

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near 'em. An' Leander was conscientious an' thought he
ought to stay by. I did n't. I told him from the time
we went to school together that I was bound to.get to
New York, an' that sort of fired him up, an' we 've talked
hours to time about what it was like, an' what we 'd do if
we ever got there. My folks were set against the notion,
an' so were his, but he went after a while, with some man
that was up in the summer an' that gave him a place in
a store. I could n't go on account of father's dying sudden
an' mother's holdin' on harder 'n ever to me, but she was
took within the year, an' there I was, free enough, an' not a
soul in the world but Leander's folks that seemed to think
much one way or another how I was likely to come out.
" There was a mortgage on the farm, an' Dr. Grayson
foreclosed an' had most of the money for his bill; an'
when things were all settled I had forty dollars in cash
an* the old furniture. Leander's folks was dreadful short
for things, for they 'd been burned out once, an' so I just
turned everything over to them but some small things I
could pack in my trunk, mother's teaspoons an' such, an'
walked down to the village an' took the stage for Portsmouth. I was n't scared. I did n't care nor think how I
looked. It was heaven to think I was on the way to
folks an* the things folks do. I ain't given to crying,
but that day I sat back in the stage an' cried just for joy
to think I was going to have something different.
"All this time I hadn't thought much what I ' d do.
Forty dollars seemed a big lot, enough for weeks ahead.
I 'd done most everything about a house, an' I could make
everything I wore. I had only to look at a pattern an' I
could go home an' cut out one like it. The dress I had

ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.

141

on was cheap stuff, but when I looked at other folks's I
saw it was n't so much out o' the way. So I said, most
likely some dressmaker would take me, an' I 'd try my
luck that way. This was before I got to Boston, an' I
went round there all the afternoon before it was time to
take the train, for the conductor told me just what to do,
an' I hadn't a mite of trouble. I never do going to a
strange place. I was half a mind to stay in Boston when
I saw the Common an' the crowds of folks. I sat still
there an' just looked at 'em, an' cried again for joy to
think I 'd got where there were so many. 6 But there '11
be more in New York/ I said, ' an' there '11 be sure to be
plenty ready to do a good turn.' I could have hugged
'em all. I did n't think then the time would ever come
that I 'd hate the sight of faces an' wish myself on top of
the hill in the cobble-stones, but it did, an' it does now
sometimes.
" I went on board the boat that night sort of crazy.
I 'd gone an' got some sandwiches an' things at a place the
conductor told me, an' I sat on the deck in the moonlight an' ate my supper. I 'd been too happy to eat before,
an' I was so happy then I could hardly keep still. There
was a girl not far off, a kind of nice-looking girl, an' she
watched me, an' at last she began to talk. In half an
hour I knew all about her an' she about me. She was a
Ehode Island girl an' had worked in a mill near Providence, an' gone to New York at last an' learned fursewing. She said it was a good trade, an' she made ten
an' twelve dollars a week while the season lasted an'
never less than five. This seemed a mint of money, an'
when she said one of their old hands had died, an' she

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could take me right in as her friend an' teach me herself,
I felt as if my fortune was made.
" Well, I went with her next day. She had a room in
Spring Street, near Hudson, — an old-fashioned house that
belonged to two maiden sisters; an' I went in with her
the first night, an' afterward for a while had the hall bedroom. It did n't take me long to learn. It was a Jew
place an' there were thirty girls, but he treated us well.
For my part I 've fared just as well with Jews as ever I
did with Christians, an' sometimes better. I 'd taken to
Hattie so that I could n't bear to think of leaving her, an'
so I let my dressmaking plan go. But I '11 tell you what
I found out in time. These skins are all dressed with
arsenic. The dealers say there's nothing poisonous about
them, but of course they lie. Every pelt has more or less
in it, an' the girls show it just as the artificial-flower girls
show it. Your eyelids get red an' the lids all puffy, an'
you 're white as chalk. The dealers say the red eyes come
from the flying hairs. Perhaps they do, but the lids don't,
an' every fur-sewer is poisoned a little with every prick of
her needle. What the flying hair does is just to get into
your throat an' nose and everywhere, an' tickle till you
cough all the time, an' a girl with weak lungs has n't a
chance. The air is full of fur, an' then the work-room is
kept tight shut for fear of moths getting in. The work is
easy enough. I t ' s just an everlasting patchwork, for
you 're always sewing together little bits, hundreds of
them, that you have to match. You sew over an' over
with linen thread, an' you 're always piecing out an' altering shapes. I t ' s nothing to sew up a thing when you 've
once got it pieced together. If i t ' s beaver, all the long

ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.

143

hairs must be picked out, an* it 's the same with sealskin.
We made up everything; sable an* Siberian squirrel,
bear, fox, marten, mink, otter, an* all the rest. There
were some girls very slow in learning that only got a dollar a week, an* in the end four, but most of them can
average about five. I was seventeen when I began, an'
in a year I had caught all the knack there is to it, an' was
an expert, certain of ten dollars in the season an' about
six in between. I t ' s generally piece-work, with five or
six months when you can earn ten or twelve dollars even,
an' the rest of the time five or six dollars. In the busiest
times there 'd be fifty girls perhaps, but this was only for
two or three months, an* then they discharged them.
'T is n't a trade I 'd ever let a girl take up if I could help
i t ; I suppose somebody 's got to do it, but there ought to
be higher wages for those that do.
" This went on five years. I won't take time telling
about Leander, but he 'd got to be a clerk at Ridley's an'
had eight hundred dollars a year, an' we 'd been engaged
for two years, an' just waiting to see if he would n't get
another rise. I knew we could manage on that. Leander
was more ambitious than me. He said we ought to live
in a showy boarding-house an' make our money tell that
way, but I told him I was used to the Spring Street house,
an' we could have a whole floor an' be snug as could be
an' Hattie board with us. He gave in, an' i t ' s well he
d i d ; for we had n't been married six months before he
had a hemorrhage an' just went into quick consumption.
I 'd kept right on with my trade, but I was pulled down
myself an' my eyelids so swollen sometimes I could hardly
see out of 'em. But I got a sewing-machine from money

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

I 'd saved, an' I took in work from a place on Canal Street,
— a good one, too, that always paid fair. The trouble was
my eyes. I 'd used 'em up, an' they got so I could n't see
the needle nor sew straight, an' had to give up the sewing,
an' then I did n't know which way to turn, for there was
Leander. The old folks were up there still, wrastling
with the stones, but poorer every year, an' I could n't get
him up there. Leander was patient as a saint, but he
fretted over me an' how I was to get along.
" * You 're not to worry,' says I. * There's more ways
than one of earning, an' if my eyes is bad, I 've got two
hands an' know how to use 'em. I '11 take a place an'
do housework if I can't do nothing else.'
" You 'd never believe how the thought o' that
weighed on him. He 'd wake me up in the night to
say, ' Now, Almiry, jest give up that thought an' promise
me you 11 try something else. I think I 'd turn in my
grave if I had to know you was slavin' in anybody's
kitchen.'
" ' What's the odds 1' I said. ' You have to be under
orders whatever you do. I think it won't be a bad
change from the shop.'
" He took on so, though, that to quiet him I promised
him I would n't do it unless I had to, an' 'twas n't long
after that that he died. Between the doctor's bill — an'
he was a kind man, I will say, an' did n't charge a tenth
of what he had ought to — an' the funeral an' all, I was
cleaned out of everything. I ' d had to pawn a month
before he died, an' was just stripped.
Sewing was no
good. My eyes went back on me like everything else,
an' in a fortnight I knew there was n't anything for it

ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.

145

but getting a place. I left such things as I had in charge
of the old ladies an' answered an advertisement for ' a
capable girl willing to work/
" Well, it was a handsome house an' elegant things in
the parlors an* bedrooms, but my heart sunk when she
took me into the kitchen. The last girl had gone off in
a rage an' left everything, an' there was grease and dirt
from floor to ceiling. It was a deep basement, with one
window an* a door opening right into the area with glass
set in it, an' iron bars to b o t h ; but dirty to that degree
you could n't see three feet beyond; cockroaches walking round at their ease an' water-bugs so thick you
did n't know where to lay anything.
" ' You '11 have things quite your own way,' the lady
said, ' for I never come into the kitchen. Bridget attends
to upstairs, but you attend to fires and the meals and
washing and ironing, and I expect punctuality and
everything well done.'
" ' At least it sounds independent,' I thought, and I
made up my mind to try it, for the wages were fifteen
dollars a month, an' that with board seemed doing well.
Bridget came down presently. She was seventeen an' a
pretty girl rather, but she looked fit to drop, an' fell down
in a chair.
" * It *s the bell,' she said. ' The comin' an' goin' here
niver ceases, an' whin 't is n't the front door i t ' s her own
bell, an' she '11 jingle it or holler up the tube in the middle o' the night if she takes a notion.'
" I would n't ask questions, for I thought I should find
out soon enough, so I said I 'd like to go up to my room
a minute.
10

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

" ' It 's our room you '11 mane/ she said. ' There 's but
the one, an' i t ' s hard enough for two to be slapin' on a
bed that's barely the width o' one/
" My heart sunk then, for I 'd always had a place that
was comfortable all my life, but it sunk deeper when I
went up there. A hall bedroom, with a single bed an'
a small table, with a washbowl an* small pitcher, one
chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things;
that was all except a torn shade at the window. I
looked at the bed. The two ragged comfortables were
foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at
Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an* all,
an' I began to cry.
" ' You don't look as if you was used to the likes of
i t / Bridget said. ' There's another room the same as
this but betther. Why not ax for i t ? '
" I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs.
Melrose, who smiled as if she thought I had been enjoying myself.
" ' I 'm perfectly willing to try an' do your work as
well as I know how/ I said, ' but I must have a place to
myself an* clean things in it/
" ' Highty-tighty!' says she. ' What impudence is this 1
You '11 take what I give you and be thankful to get it.
Plenty as good as you have slept in that room and never
complained.'
" ' T h e n it's time some one did/ I said. 'I don't ask
anything but decency, an' if you can't give it I must try
elsewhere.'
" ' Then you 'd better set about it at once/ she says,
an' with that I bid her good-afternoon an' walked out.

ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.

147

I had another number in my pocket, an' I went straight
there; an' this time I had sense enough to ask to see my
room. It was bare enough, but clean. There were only
three in the family, an' it was a little house on Perry
Street. There I stayed two years. They were strange
years. The folks were set in their ways an' they had
some money. But every day of that time the lady cut
off herself from the meat what she thought I ought to
have, an' ordered me to put away the rest. She allowed
no dessert except on Sunday, an' she kept cake and preserves locked in an upstairs closet. I would n't have
minded that. What I did mind was that from the time
I entered the house till I left it there was never a word
for me beyond an order, any more than if I had n't been
a human being. She couldn't find fault. I was born
clean, an' that house shone from top to bottom; but a
dog would have got far more kindness than they gave
me. At last I said I 'd try a place where there were children an' maybe they 'd like me. Mrs. Smith was dumb
with surprise when I told her I must leave. ' Leave!' she
says. 6 We 're perfectly satisfied. You 're a very good
girl, Almira.' ' I t ' s the first time you 've ever told me
so/ I says, ' an' I think a change is best all round.' She
urged, but I was set, an' I went from there when the
month was up.
" Well, my eyes stayed bad for sewing, an' I must
keep on at housework. I 've been in seven places in six
years. I could have stayed in every one, an' about
every one I could tell you things that make it plain
enough why a self-respecting girl would rather try something else. I don't talk or think nonsense about wanting

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POVERTY,

to be one of the family. I don't. I 'd much rather
keep to myself. But out of these seven places there was
just one in which the mistress seemed to think I was a
human being with something in me the same as in her.
I Ve been underfed an' worked half to death in two of
the houses. The mistress expected just so much, an' if
it failed she stormed an' went on an* said I was a shirk
an' good for nothing an' all that. There was only one
of them that had a decently comfortable room or that
thought to give me a chance at a book or paper now an*
then. As long as I had a trade I was certain of my
evenings an' my Sundays. Now I 'm never certain of
anything. I 'm not a shirk. I 'm quick an' smart, an'
I know I turn off work. In ten hours I earn more than
I ever get. But I begin my day at six an' in summer
at five, an' i t ' s never done before ten an' sometimes
later. This place I 'm in now seems to have some kind
of fairness about it, an' Mrs. Henshaw said yesterday,
* You can't tell the comfort it is to me, Almira, to have
some one in the house I can trust. I hope you will be
comfortable an' happy enough to stay with us.' ' I '11
stay till you tell me to go/ I says, an' I meant it. My
little room looks like home an* is warm and comfortable.
My kitchen is bright an' light, an' she's told me always
to use the dining-room in the evenings for myself an'
for friends. She tries to give me fair hours. If there
were more like her there 'd be more willing for such
work, but she *s the first one I 've heard of that tries
to be just. That 's something that women don't know
much about. When they do there 11 be better times all
round."

ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.

149

Here stands the record of a woman who has become invaluable to the family she serves, but whose
experiences before this harbor was reached include
every form of oppression and even privation. Many
more of the same nature are recorded and are arranging themselves under heads, the whole forming an
unexpected and formidable arraignment of household service in its present phases. This arraignment bides its time, but while it waits it might be
well for the enthusiastic prescribers of household
service as the easy and delightful solution of the
working-woman's problem to ask how far it would
be their own choice if reduced to want, and what
justice for both sides is included in their personal
theory of the matter.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.
SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO
EXPERIMENTED.
r

I ^HE business face in the great cities is assimilating
to such degree that all men are brothers in a sense
and to an extent unrealized by themselves. Competition has deepened lines, till one type of the employer in his first estate, while the struggle is still
active and success uncertain, loses not only youth
and freshness, but with them, too often, any token of
owning a soul capable of looking beyond the muckrake by which money is drawn in. If he acquires
calm and graciousness, it is the calmness of subtlety
and the graciousness of the determined schemer, who,
finding every man's hand practically against him, arranges his own life on the same basis, and wages war
against the small dealer or manufacturer below and
the monopolist above, his one passionate desire being
to escape from the ranks of the first and find his name
enrolled among the last. He retains a number of
negative virtues. He is, as a rule, " an excellent
provider " where his own family is concerned, and he
is kind beyond these limits if he has time for it. He

DIFFICULTIES

OF AN EMPLOYER.

151

would not deliberately harm man or woman who
serves him ; but to keep even with his competitors —
if possible, to get beyond them — demands and exhausts every energy, leaving none to spare for other
purposes. Such knowledge as comes from perpetual
contact with the grasping, scheming side of humanity
is his in full. As the fortune grows and ease becomes certain, a well-fed, well-groomed look replaces
the eager sharpness of the early days. He may at
this stage turn to horses as the most positive source
of happiness. He is likely also, with or without
this tendency, to acquire a taste for art, measuring
its value by what it costs, and to plan for himself a house representing the utmost that money
can buy. But the house and its treasures is, after
all, but a mausoleum, and the grave it covers holds
the man that might have been. Life in its larger
meanings has remained a sealed book, and the gold
counted as chief good becomes at last an impenetrable
barrier between him and any knowledge of what
might have been his portion. He is content, and
remains content till the end, and that new beginning
in which the starved soul comes to the first consciousness of its own most desperate and pitiful
poverty.
This for one type, and a type more and more common with every year of the system in which competition is king. But here and there one finds another, —
that of the man whose conscience remains sensitive,

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PRISONERS

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no matter what familiarity with legalized knavery
may come, and who ponders the question of what he
owes to those by whose aid his fortune is made. Nor
is he the employer who evades the real issue by a
series of what he calls benefactions, and who organizes colonies for his work-people, in which may be
found all the charm of the feudal system, and an
underlying despotism no less feudal. He would
gladly make his workers copartners with him were
intelligence enough developed among them to admit
such action, and he experiments faithfully and
patiently.
It is such an employer whose own words best give
the story he has to tell. It is not an American that
speaks, but a German Jew, — a title often the synonyme for depths of trickery, but more often than is
known meaning its opposite in all points. Keen sagacity rules, it is true, but there is also a large and tender
nature, sorrowing with the sorrow of humanity and
seeking anxiously some means by which that sorrow
may lessen. A small manufacturer, fighting his way
against monopoly, he is determinately honest in every
thread put into his goods, in every method of his
trade; his face shrewd yet gentle and wise, — a face
that child or woman would trust, and the business
man be certain he could impose upon until some
sudden turn brought out the shrewdness and the calm
assurance of absolute knowledge in his own lines.
For thirty years and more his work has held its own,

DIFFICULTIES

OF AN EMPLOYER.

153

and he has made for himself a place in the trade that
no crisis can affect. H i s own view of the situation
is distinctly serious, b u t even for him there was a
flickering smile as he recalled some passages of the
experience given here in part. H i s English limps
slightly at moments of excitement, but his mastery
of its shades of meaning never, and this is his version of the present relation between employer and
employed: —
" In me always are two peoples, — one that loves work
well, that must work ever to be happy, and one that will
think and think ever how hard is life even with work that
is good and with much to love. In village or in city, for
I begin with one and go on to the other, in both alike
it is work always that is too much; long hours when
strength is gone and there should be rest, but when
always man and woman, yes, and child, must go on for
the little more that more hours will earn. For myself,
I want not what is called pleasure when the day is done.
A book that is good contents me, and is friend and amusement in one. But as I love a book more and more, and
desire more time to be with them, I begin first to think,
why should so many hours be given to work that there
are none in which men have strength or time or desire
left for something that is better 1 These things I think
much of before I come to America. I have my trade
from my father and his father. We are silk-weavers from
the time silk is known, but for myself I have chosen ribbons, and it is ribbons I make all my life and that my son
will make after me.

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PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

" At first when I come here to this country that for
years I hope for and must not reach, because I am held
to my father who is old, — at first I have little money and
can only he with another who manufactures. But already
some dishonesties have come in. The colors are not firm ;
the silk has weight given it, so that more body than is
belongs to the ribbon ; there is an inch, maybe, cut short
in the lengths. There is every way to make the most and
give the least. And there is something that from the days
I begin to think at all, seems ever injustice and wrong.
Side by side it may be, men and women work together at
the looms; but for the women it is half, sometimes two
thirds, what the man can earn, yet the work the same.
This is something to alter when time is ripe, and at last
it is come. I have saved as I earned and added to what
I bring with me, and I buy for myself the plant of a man
who retires, and get me a place, this place where I am, and
that changes little. His workers come with me,' — a few,
for I begin with four looms only, but soon have seven,
and so go on. At first I think only of how I may shorten
hours and make time for them to rest and learn what
they will, but a good friend of mine from the beginning is
doctor, and as I go on he speaks to me much of things I
should do for health. And then I think of them and
study, and I see that there is much I have never learned
and that they must learn also with me.
" There is one thing that Americans will, more than all
peoples of the earth. They will have a place so hot that
breath is nowhere, and women more even than men. I
begin to think how I shall keep them warm yet give them
to breathe. The place is old, as you see, No builder

DIFFICULTIES

OF AN EMPLOYER.

155

thought ever of air in such time as this was built, and if
they think to-day, it is chiefly wrong, for in all places I
go one breathes the breath of all others, never true air of
heaven. At first I open windows from top and before
they come; but when they see it they cry out and say,
0 Mr. B
! You want to freeze u s ! ' ' Not so/ I say;
1
1 would make you healthy.' And they say, ' We 're
healthy enough. We don't want draughts.' It is true.
There were draughts; and I begin to think how this shall
be changed, and try many things, and all of them they
pull down or push out or stop up tight, whichever way
will most surely abolish air. At last I bring up my
doctor who is wise and can explain better than I, and I
say that work may stop and all listen and learn. They
listen, but they laugh, all but one, and say, ' How funny !
What is use of so much fuss ?'
" While I do these things which I keep on and will not
stop, finding best at last a shaft and a hole above, that
they cannot pull out or reach to fill, I think of other
things. They eat at noon what they bring, — pie that is
dear to Americans, and small cakes, many of t h e m ; but
good bread that has nourishment, or good drink like soup
or coffee, no. They stand many hours and are faint and
weak. So I s a y there must be good coffee for them, and
I tell them, i Girls, I will buy a big urn and there shall
be coffee and milk, and for two cents you can have a big
cup so sweet as you will, or if you like better it shall be
hot soup.' Above in a room was a Swiss that knew good
soup, and that would, if I pay her a little, buy all that is
wanted and make a big pot, so that each could have a
bowl. This also I would have them pay for, three cents

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

a bowl, and they like this best, and it is done for three
weeks. They go up there and have full bowls, and I
have a long table made before a bench where sometimes
they rest, with oil-cloth, and here they eat and are comfortable. Three days soup, three days hot coffee; and I
have place where the men can heat what is in their pails.
" But they do such things! They pick out vegetable
from soup and throw on the floor. They pour away
coffee. They make the place like a home of animals, and
when I say, ' Girls, I want much that all should be clean
and nice, and that you never waste,' they laugh again.
I find that difficult, for what answer can be made to
laugh? I go on, but they break bowls and insult the
Swiss that make the soup, and tell her I buy dog-meat
and such, and she say she will no more of it. Then I
call the doctor again and say to them, ' Listen while he
tells you what is good to eat.' They were not all so fools,
but the fool ones rule, and they listen, but they laugh
always. That is American, — to laugh and think everything joke and not see what earnest must be for any good
living. I give the coffee-urn to the best girl and tell her
to have care of it, but do what we will they think somehow I am silly, and like best to eat their pie and then
talk. A small pie at the corner is three cents, and they
buy one, sometimes two, and it is sweet and fills and they
are content. It is only men that think that will change
a habit. I find for the worker always till thought begins
they are conservative, and an experiment, a change, is distress to them. So I say, * Let them do as they will. Air
is here and that they cannot stop, but for food I will do
no more.'

DIFFICULTIES

OF AN

EMPLOYER.

157

" These all were small things, and as I went on I said,
as in the beginning, that for those who did the same work
must be the same wage. My men had always ten dollars,
and sometimes twelve or fifteen dollars a week; but the
best woman had ten dollars, and she had worked five years
and knew all. It is a law — unwritten, but still a law —
that women shall not have what men earn ; and when I say
one is good as another, the brother of the woman I make
equal with him said first this should never b e ; and when
I said, l It must/ he talk to all the men at noon, and
before the looms begin again they come and tell me that
if I do so they will work no more. I talk to them all:
' This is a country where men boast always that woman
has much honor, but I see not that she has more justice
than where there is less honor. Shame on men that will
let women work all the hours and as well as they, — yes,
many times better, — and then threaten strike if they are
paid the same !' But it was all no good. For that time
I must yield, because I had much work that was promised ;
but I said : ' For now I do as you will. With January,
that is but a month away, it shall be as I will." Well, I have tried. Many changes have been made,
much time lost, much money. I call them to my house
in the evening. I talk with them and try to teach them
justice, and some are willing, but most not. New men
spoil my work, and I lose much profit and take the old
ones again. But this, too, is a small thing. My own
mind goes on and I see that they should share with me.
I read of co-operation, and to me it is truer than profitsharing. I have seventy men and girls at work. I say
they must understand this business. I will try to teach

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

them. Two evenings a week I meet them all and talk
and listen to them. One or two feel it plain. For most
they say, ' Old B
wants to get a rise out of us somehow.' At last I see that they are too foolish to understand
co-operation, but it may be they will let profit-sharing be
a step. Over and over, many times over and over, I tell it
all, and in the end some agree, and for a year it does well.
But the next year was bad. Silk was high, and my ribbons honest ribbons and profit small; and when they saw
how small, they cried that they were cheated and that I
kept all for myself. I read them the books. I said,
1
Here, you may see with your eyes. This year I make
not enough to live if there were not other years in which
I saved. I am almost failed. The business might stop,
but I will go on for our names' sake.' ' All a dodge,' they
said. No words were plain enough to make them know.
They even called me cheat and liar, there in the place
where I had tried to work for them.
" And so I share profits no more. I give large wage.
I never cut down, do the market what it will. But some
things are plain. It is not alone oppression and greed
from above that do what you call grind the worker. ISTo,
I am not alone. There are men like me with a wish for
humanity and wiser than I, and alike they are not heard
when they speak; alike their wish is naught and their
effort vain. It is ignorance that rules. There is no
knowledge, no understanding. In my trade and in all
trades I know it is the same. A man will not believe a
fact, and he will believe that to cheat is all one over him
can wish. Even my workers that care for me, a few of
them, they laugh no more to my face, but they say : ' Oh,

DIFFICULTIES

OF AN EMPLOYER.

159

he has notions, that man! He will never get very rich,
he has so many notions.' They listen and they think a
little. One man said yesterday : * If this had been put in
my head when I was a growing lad it would have straightened many a thing. W h y ain't we taught ] ' And I said
to him: ' Jacob, teachers are not taught. There is only
one here, one there, that thinks what only it is well to
learn,—justice for all the world. I who would do justice
am made to wait, but the sin is with you, not with me.'
" So to-day I wait for such time as wisdom may come.
My son is one with me in this. He has a plan and soon
he will try, and where I failed his more knowledge may
do better. But for me, I think that this generation must
suffer much, and in pain and want learn, it may be, what
is life. To-day it knows not and cares not, save a few*
How shall the many be made to know?"

CHAPTEE FOUKTEENTH.
THE WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS.
'TPO the old New-Yorker taking his pensive way
•*• through streets where only imagination can
supply the old landmarks, long ago vanished, there
is a conviction that he knows the city foot by foot
as it has crept northward; and he repudiates the
thought that its growth has ended such possibility,
and that many a dark corner is as remote from his
or any knowledge save that of its occupants as if
in Caffre-land. The newest New-Yorker has small
interest in anything but the west side and the space
down-town occupied by his store or office.
And so it chances that in spite of occasional series
of descriptive articles, in spite of an elaborately
written local history and unnumbered novels whose
background is the city life and thought, there is little
real knowledge, and, save among charitable workers,
the police, and adventurous newspaper men, no thought
of what life may be lived not a stone's-throw from the
great artery of New York, Broadway.
On one point there can be no doubt. Not Africa
in its most pestilential and savage form holds surer

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MALONETS

BOARDERS.

161

disease or more determined barbarians than nest
together under many a roof within hearing of the
rush and roar of the busy streets where men come
and go, eager for no knowledge or wisdom under the
sun save the knowledge that will make them better
bargainers. There comes even a certain impatient
distrust of those who persist in unsavory researches
and more unsavory details of the results. If there
is not distrust; if the easy-going kindliness that is a
portion of the American temperament is stirred, it is
but for the moment; and when the hand that sought
the pocket or the check-book instinctively has presented its gift, interest is over. A fresh sensation
wipes out all trace of the transient feeling, and
though it may again be roused by judicious effort,
how rarely is it that more than the automatic movement toward the pocket results ! What might come
if for even one hour the impatient giver walked
through the dark passages, stood in the foul, dimly
lighted rooms and saw what manner of creature New
York nourishes in her slums, giving to every child in
freest measure that training in all foulness that eye
or ear or mind can take in that will fit it in time for
the habitation in prison or reformatory on which
money is never spared, — who shall say ? They are
filled by free choice, these nests of all evil. The men
and women who herd in them know nothing better;
indeed, may have known something even worse.
They are Polish Jews, Bohemians, the lowest order
11

162

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

of Italians, content with unending work, the smallest
wage, and an order of food that the American, no
matter how low he may be brought, can never
stomach. Yet they assimilate in one point, being
as bent upon getting on as the most determined
American, and accepting to this end conditions that
seem more those of an Inferno than anything the
upper world has known. It is among these people,
chiefly Polish Jews and Bohemians, with the inevitable commixture of Irish, that one finds the worst
forms of child-labor; children that in happy homes
are still counted babies here in these dens beginning at four or five to sew on buttons or pick out
threads.
It is not of child-labor and the outrages involved
in it that I speak to-day, save indirectly, as it forms
part of the mass of evil making up the present industrial system and to be encountered at every turn by
the most superficial investigation. It is rather of
certain specific conditions, found at many points in
tenement-house life, but never in such accumulated
degree of vileness at any point save one outside
the Fourth Ward. And if the reader, like various
recent correspondents, is disposed to believe that I
am merely " making up a case," using a little experience and a great deal of imagination, I refer him or
her to the forty-third annual report of the New York
Association for the Improvement of the Condition of

the foot

There, in detail to a degree impossible

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WIDOW

MALONETS

BOARDERS.

163

here, will be found the official report of the inspector appointed to examine the conditions of life in
the building known as " The Big Flat," in Mulberry
Street. There are smaller houses that are worse in
construction and condition, but there is none controlled by one management where so many are
gathered under one roof. The first floor has rooms
for fourteen families, the remaining five for sixteen
each; and the census of 1880 gave the number of
inhabitants as 478, a sufficient number to make up
the population of the average village. The formal
inspection and the report upon it were made in
September, 1886, and the report is now accessible
to all who desire information on these phases of city
life. It is Mrs. Maloney herself whose methods best
give us the heart of the matter, and who, having
several callings, is the owner of an experience which
appears to hold as much surprise for herself as for
the hearer.
" Shure I foind things that interestin' that I 'm in
no haste to be through wid 'em, an' on for me taste
o' purgatory, not hintin' that there might n't be
more 'n a taste," Mrs. Maloney said, on a day in
which she unfolded to me her views of life in
general, her small gray eyes twinkling, her arms
akimbo on her mighty hips, and her cap-border
flapping about a face weather-beaten and highcolored to a degree not warranted even by her present profession as apple-woman, Whether whiskey

164

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

or stale beer is more responsible is unknown. It is
only certain that, having submitted with the utmost
cheerfulness to the perennial beatings of a husband
only half her size, she found consolation in a glass
now and then with a sympathizing neighbor and at
last in a daily resort to the same friend. There had
been a gradual descent from prosperity. Dennis, if
small, was wiry and phenomenally strong, and earned
steady wages as porter during their first years in the
country. But the children, as they grew, went to the
bad entirely, living on the earnings of the mother,
who washed and scrubbed and slaved, with a heart
always full of excuses for the hulking brutes, who
came naturally at last to the ends that might have
been foretold. Their education had been in the
Fourth Ward; they were champion bullies and ruffians of whom the ward still boasts, Mrs. Maloney
herself acquiring a certain distinction as the mother
of the hardest cases yet sent up from Cherry Street.
But if she had no power to save her own, life became
easier for whomsoever she elected to guard. Wretched
children crept under her wing to escape the beating
awaiting them when they had failed to bring home
the amount demanded of them. Women, beaten and
turned out into the night, fled to her for comfort,
and the girl who had lost her place, or to whom
worse misfortune had come, told her story to the
big-hearted sinner, who nodded and cried and said,
" I t ' s the Widdy Maloney that'll see you're not

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165

put upon more. Hold on an* be aisy, honey, an*
all 11 come out the way you 'd be bavin* it, an* why
not ?"
I t was at this stage of experience that Mrs.
Maloney decided to remove to the Big Flat. The
last raid of Dennis, the youngest and only boy not
housed at the expense of the State, had reduced her
belongings to their lowest terms, and she took possession of her new quarters, accompanied only by a
rickety table, three chairs, a bed with two old straw
mattresses, and some quilts too ragged to give any
token of their original characteristics, a stove which
owned but one leg, — the rest being supplied by bricks,
— and such dishes and other small furniture as could
be carried in a basket. But there went with her a
girl kicked out by the last man who had temporarily
called her his mistress, — a mere child still, who at ten
had begun work in a bag-factory passing through
various grades of slightly higher employment, till
seduced by the floor-walker of the store that it had
been her highest ambition to reach. Almost as much
her fault as his undoubtedly, her silly head holding
but one desire, that for fine clothes and never to work
any more, but a woman's heart waking in her when
the baby came, and prompting her to harder work
and better life than she had ever known. There was
no chance of either with the baby, and when at last
she farmed out the encumbrance to an old couple
in a back building who made this their business, and

166

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

took a place again in the store, it was relief as well
as sorrow that came when the wretched little life
was over. But the descent had been a swift one.
When what she had called life was quite over, and
she sat dumb and despairing in the doorway to which
she had been thrust, thinking of the river as the last
refuge left, the widow had pushed her before her up
the stairs and said, —
" Poor sowl, if there 's none to look out for ye, then
who but me should do it ?"
This was the companion who lay by her side under
the ragged quilts, life still refusing to give place to
death, though every paroxysm of coughing shortened
the conflict.
" She's that patient that the saints themselves —
all glory to their blessed names ! — could n't be more
so ; but I'd not know how to manage if it was n't for
the foot-warmer I call her; that's Angela there, wid
eyes that go through you an' the life beaten out of
her by the man that called himself her father, an'
was n't at all, at all. It *s she that does the kaping
of the house, an' sleeps across the foot, an' it's mine
they think the two av 'em, else they 'd never a let
me in, the rules bein', f no lodgers.' I t ' s not lodgers
they are. I t ' s me boarders, full fledged, an' who's a
better right than me, though I 'd not be sayin' so to
the housekeeper that 'd need forty pair o' eyes to her
two to see what's goin' on under her nose."
The " foot-warmer's " office had ceased for one of

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167

them before the month ended, and when the Potter's
Field had received the pine coffin followed only by
the two watchers, the widow made haste to bring in
another candidate for the same position ; one upon
whom she had kept her eye for a month, certain that
worse trouble was on the way than loss of work.
" There was the look on her that manes but the
one thing," she said afterward. " There's thim that
sthand everything an' niver a word, an' there's thim
that turns disperate. She was a disperate wan."
Never had a " disperate wan" better reason. A
factory girl almost from babyhood, her apprenticeship
having begun at seven, she had left the mill at fourteen, a tall girl older than her years in look and
experience. New York was her Mecca, and to New
York she came, with a week's wages in her pocket
on which to live till work should be found, and
neither relative nor friend save a girl who had preceded her by a few months and was now at work in
a fringe and gimp factory, earning seven dollars a
week and promising the same to the child after a
few weeks' training. But seven years in a cottonmill, if they had given quickness in one direction,
had blunted all power in others. The fingers were
unskilful and clumsy and her mind too wandering
and inattentive to master details, and the place was
quickly lost. She entered her name as candidate for
the first vacancy in a Grand Street store, and in the

mean time went into a coffee and spice mill an4

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PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

became coffee-picker at three dollars a week. This
lasted a month or two, but even here there was dissatisfaction with lack of thoroughness, and she was
presently discharged. The vacancy had come, and
she went at once into the store, her delicate face and
pretty eyes commending her to the manager, who lost
no time in telling her what impression she could produce if she were better dressed. Weak, irresponsible,
hopelessly careless, and past any power to undo these
conditions, there was some instinct in the untaught
life that put her instantly on the defensive.
" I 'm not good for much," she said, " but I 'm too
good for that. There's nothing you could promise
would get you your will and there won't be."
Naturally, as the siege declared itself a hopeless
one, the manager found it necessary to fill her place
by some more competent hand. There was an interval of waiting in which she pawned almost the last
article of clothing remaining that could be dispensed
with, and then went into a bakery, where the hours
were from seven A.M. to ten P.M., sometimes later.
She was awkward at making change, but her gentle
manners attracted customers, and the baker himself
soon cast a favorable eye upon her, and speedily made
the same proposition that had driven her from her last
employment. The baker's wife knew the symptoms,
and on the same day discharged the girl.
" I don't say it's your fault," she said, "but he's
started about you, and it's for your own good I tell

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169

you to go. The best thing for you is to go back to
your mother, or else take a place with some nice
woman that 11 keep an eye to you. You 11 always
be run after. I know your kind, that no man looks
at without wanting to fool with 'em. You take my
advice and go into a place."
The chance came that night. The mistress of a
cheap boarding-house in East Broadway, her patrons
chiefly young clerks from Grand and Division Street
stores, offered her home and eight dollars a month,
and Lizzie, who by this time was frightened and discouraged, accepted on the instant. She was well
accustomed to long hours, and she had never minded
standing as many of the girls did, her apprenticeship
in the mill having made it comparatively easy.
But the drudgery undergone here was beyond anything her life had ever known. Her day began at
five and it never ended before eleven. She slept on
an old mattress on the kitchen floor, and as her
strength failed from the incessant labor, lost all
power of protest and accepted each new demand as
something against which there could be no revolt
There was abundance of coarse food and thus much
advantage, but she had no knowledge that taught her
how to make work easier, nor had her mistress any
thought of training her. She was a dish-washing
machine chiefly, and broke and chipped even the
rough ware that formed the table furniture, till the
exasperated mistress threatened to turn her off if

1T0

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

another piece were destroyed. It was a case of hopeless inaptitude; and when in early spring she sickened,
and the physician grudgingly called in declared it a
case of typhus brought on by the conditions in which
she had lived, she was sent at once to the hospital
and left to such fate as might come.
A clean bed, rest, and attendance seemed a heaven
to the girl when consciousness came back, and she
shrank from any thought of going out again to the
fight for existence.
" I don't know what the matter is," she said to the
doctor as she mended, "but somehow I ain't fit to
make a living. I shall have to go back to the mill,
but I said I never would do that."
"You shall go to some training-school and be
taught," said the doctor, who had stood looking at
her speculatively yet pitifully.
" Ah, but I could n't learn. Somehow things don't
stick to me. I 'm not fit to earn a living."
" You 're of the same stuff as a good many thousand
of your kind," the doctor said under his breath, and
turned away with a sigh.
Lizzie went out convalescent, but still weak and
uncertain, and took refuge with one of the bakery
girls who had half of a dark bedroom in a tenement
house near the Big Flat. She looked for work.
She answered advertisements, and at last began upon
the simplest form of necktie, and in her slow, bungling fashion began to earn again. But she had no

THE WIDOW MALONETS

BOARDERS. 171

strength. She sat at the window and looked over to
the Big Flat and watched the swarm that came and
went; five hundred people in it, they told her, and
half of them drunk at once. It was certain that
there were always men lying drunk in the hallways
in the midst of ashes and filth that accumulated
there almost unchecked. The saloon below was
always full; the stale beer dives all along the street
full also, above all, at night, when the flaunting
street-walkers came out, and fiddles squeaked, and
cheap pianos rattled, and songs and shouts were overtopped at moments by the shrieks of beaten women
or the oaths and cries of a sudden fight. Slowly it
was coming to the girl that this was all the life New
York had for her; that if she failed to meet the
demand employer after employer had made upon her,
she would die in this hole, where neither joy nor
hope had any place. Her clothes were in rags. She
went hungry and cold, and had grown too stupefied
with trouble to plan anything better. At last it was
plain to her that death must be best. She said to
herself that the river could never tell, and that there
would be rest and no more cold or hunger, and it
was to the river that she went at night as the Widow
Maloney rose before her and said, —
" Y o u ' l l come home wid me, me dear, an' no
wurruds about it."
Lizzie looked at her stupidly. " You 'd better not
stop me," she said. " I 'm no good. I can't earn my

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PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

living anywhere any more. I don't know how. I 'd
better be out of the way."
"Shure you 11 be enough out o' the way whin
you 're in the top o' the Big Flat," said Mrs. Maloney.
"An' once there w e l l see."
Lizzie followed her without a word, but when the
stairs were climbed and she sunk panting and ghastly
on one of the three chairs, it was quite plain to the
widow that more work had begun. That it will very
soon end is also quite plain to whoever dares the
terrors of the Big Flat, and climbs to the wretched
room, which in spite of dirt and foulness within and
without is a truer sanctuary than many a better place.
The army of incompetents will very shortly be the
less by one, but more recruits are in training and
New York guarantees an unending supply.
" Shure if there 's naught they know how to do,"
says the widow, "why should one be lookin' to have
thim do what they can't. I t ' s one thing I 've come
to, what with seein' the goings on all me life, but
chiefly in the Big Flat, that if childers be not made
to learn, whither they like it or not, somethin' that 11
keep hands an' head from mischief, there's shmall use
in laws an' less in muddlin' about 'em when they 're
most done with livin' at all, at all. But that's a
thing that's beyond me or the likes o' me, an' I 'm
only wonderin' a thrifle like an' puttin' the question
to meself a bit,' What would you be doin', Widdy
Maloney, if the doin' risted on you an' no other ? ' "

CHAPTER

FIFTEENTH.

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.
T T 7HY this army of women, many thousand
* * strong, is standing behind counters, overworked and underpaid, the average duration of life
among them as a class lessening every year, is a
question with which we can at present deal only
indirectly. It is sufficient to state that the retail
stores of wellnigh every order, though chiefly the
dry-goods retail trade, have found their quickness
and aptness to learn, the honesty and general faithfulness of women, and their cheapness essentials in their
work; and that this combination of qualities — cheapness dominating all — has given them permanent
place in the modern system of trade. A tour among
many of the larger establishments confirmed the
statement made by employers in smaller ones, the
summary being given in the words of a manager of
one of the largest retail houses to be found in the
United States.
" W e don't want men," he said. " W e wouldn't
have them even if they came at the same price. Of
course cheapness has something to do with it, and will
have, but for my part give me a woman to deal with

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PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

every time. Now there's an illustration over at that
hat-counter. We were short of hands to-day, and I had
to send for three girls that had applied for places, but
were green — did n't know the business. It did n't
take them ten minutes to get the hang of doing things,
and there they are, and you 'd never know which was
old and which was new hand. Of course they don't
know all about qualities and so on, but the head of
the department looks out for that. No, give me women every time. I 've been a manager thirteen years,
and we never had but four dishonest girls, and we 've
had to discharge over forty boys in the same time.
Boys smoke and lose at cards, and do a hundred
things that women don't, and they get worse instead
of better. I go in for women."
" How good is their chance of promotion ?"
" We never lose sight of a woman that shows any
business capacity, but of course that's only as a rule
in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets about
the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here
are public-school girls and live at home. You see
that makes things pretty easy, for the family pool
their earnings and they dress well and live well.
We don't take from the poorer class at all. These
girls earn from four and a half to eight dollars a
week. A few get ten dollars, and they 're not likely
to do better than that. Forty dollars a month is a
fortune to a woman. A man must have his little
fling, you know. Women manage better."

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

175

" If they are really worth so much to you, why
can't you give better pay ? What chance has a girl
to save anything, unless she lives at home ? "
" We give as high pay as anybody, and we don't give
more because for every girl here there are a dozen
waiting to take her place. As to saving, she does n't
want to save. There isn't a girl here that doesn't
expect to marry before long, and she puts what she
makes on her back, because a fellow naturally goes
for the best-looking and the best-dressed girl. That's
the woman question as I 've figured it out, and you '11
find it the same everywhere."
Practically he was right, for the report, though varying slightly, summed up as substantially the same.
Descending a grade, it was found that even in the
second and third rate stores the system of fines for
any damage soon taught the girls carefulness, and
that while a few were discharged for hopeless incompetency, the majority served faithfully and well.
" I dare say they 're put upon," said the manager
of one of the cheaper establishments. " They 're
sassy enough, a good many of them, and some of the
better ones suffer for their goings-on. But they ain't
a bad set — not half; and these women that come in
complaining that they ain't well-treated, nine times
* out of ten i t ' s their own airs that brought it on.
I t ' s a shop-girl's interest to behave herself and satisfy
customers, and she 's more apt to do it than not, according to my experience."

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" They 'd drive a man clean out of his mind," said
another. " The tricks of girls are beyond telling. If
it was n't for fines there would n't one in twenty be
here on time, and the same way with a dozen other
things. But they learn quick, and they turn in anywhere where they 're wanted. They make the best
kind of clerks, after all."
" Do you give them extra pay for over-hours during
the busy season ?"
" Not much! We keep them on, most of them,
right through the dull one. Why shouldn't they
balance things for us when the busy time comes ?
Turn about's fair play,"
A girl who had been sent into the office for some
purpose shook her head slightly as she heard the
words, and it was this girl who, a day or two later, gave
her view of the situation. The talk went on in the
pretty, home-like parlors of a small " Home " on the
west side, where rules are few and the atmosphere
of the place so cheery that while it is intended only
for those out of work, it is constantly besieged with
requests to enlarge its borders and make room for
more. Half a dozen other girls were near: three
from other stores, one from a shirt factory, one an
artificial-flower-maker who had been a shop-girl.
" When I began,'' said the first, " father was alive,
and I used what I earned just for dressing myself.
We were up at Morrisania, and I came down every
day. I was in the worsted and fancy department at

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

177

D
% and I had such a good eye for matching
and choosing that they seemed to think everything
of me. But then father fell sick. He was a painter,
and had painter's colic awfully and at last paralysis.
Then he died finally and left mother and me, and
she's in slow consumption and can't do much. I
earned seven dollars a week because I ' d learned
fancy work and did some things evenings for the
store, and we should have got along very well.
We 'd had to move out a little farther, to the place
mother was born in, because rent was cheaper and
she could never stand the city. But this is the way
it worked. I have to be at the store at eight o'clock.
The train that leaves home at seven gets me to the
store two minutes after eight, but though I 've explained this to the manager he says I 've got to be
at the store at eight, and so, summer and winter, I
have to take the train at half-past six and wait till
doors are open. It's the same way at night. The
store closes at six, and if I could leave then I could
catch an express train that w7ould get me home at
seven. The rules are that I must stop five minutes
to help the girls cover up the goods, and that just
hinders my getting the train till after seven, so that
I am not home till eight."
I looked at the girl more attentively. She was
colorless and emaciated, and, when not excited by
speaking, languid and heavy.
"Are you sure that you have explained the
12

178

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

thing clearly so that the manager understands ?" I
asked.
" More than once," the girl answered, " but he said
I should be fined if I were not there at eight. Then
I told him that the girls at my counter would be
glad to cover up my goods, and if he would only let
me go at six it would give me a little more time for
mother. I sit up late anyway to do things she can't,
for we live in two rooms and I sew and do a good
many things after I go home."
Inquiry a day or two later showed that her story
was true in every detail and also that she was a
valuable assistant, one of the best among a hundred
or so employed. The firm gives largely to charitable
objects, and pays promptly, and at rates which, if low,
are no lower than usual; but they continue to exact
this seven minutes' service from one whose faithfulness might seem to have earned exemption from a
purely arbitrary rule — in such a case mere tyranny.
The girl had offered to give up her lunch hour, but
the manager refused; and she dared not speak again
for fear of losing her place.
" After all, she *s better off than I am or lots of
others," said one who sat near her. " I 'm down in
the basement at M
's, and forty others like me,
and about forty little girls. There's gas and electric
light both, but there is n't a breath of air, and it's so
hot that after an hour or two your head feels baked
and your eyes as if they would fall out. The dull

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

179

season— that's from spring to fall — lasts six months,
and then we work nine and a half hours and Saturdays thirteen. The other six months we work eleven
hours, and holiday time till ten and eleven. I 'm
strong. I 'm an old hand and somehow stand things,
but I've a cousin at the ribbon counter, the very
best girl in the world, I do believe. She always
makes the best of things, but this year it did seem
as if the whole town was at that counter. They
stood four and five deep. She was penned in with
the other girls, a dozen or two, with drawers and
cases behind and counter in front, and there she
stood from eight in the morning till ten at night,
with half an hour off for dinner and for supper. She
could have got through even that, but you see there
has to be steady passing in that narrow space, and
she was knocked and pushed, first by one and then
by another, till she was sore all over; and at last
down she dropped right there, not fainting, but sort
of gone, and the doctor says she's most dead and
can't go back, he does n't know when. Down there
in the basement the girls have to put on blue glasses,
the glare is so dreadful, but they don't like to have
us. The only comfort is you 're with a lot and don't
feel lonesome. I can't bear to do anything alone, no
matter what it is."
A girl with clear dark eyes and a face that might
have been almost beautiful but for its haggard, wornout expression, turned from the table where she had

180

PRISONERS

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been writing and smiled as she looked at the last
speaker.
"That is because you happen to be made that
way," she said. " I am always happier when I can
be alone a good deal, but of course that's never possible, or almost never. I shall want the first thousand years of my heaven quite to myself, just for
pure rest and a chance to think."
" I don't know anything about heaven," the last
speaker said hastily, " but I 'm sure I hope there's
purgatory at least for some of the people I 've had to
submit to. I think a woman manager is worse than
a man. I V e never had trouble anywhere and always stay right on, but I 've wanted to knock some
of the managers down, and it ought to have been
done. Just take the new superintendent. We loved
the old one, but this one came in when she died, and
one of the first things she did was to discharge one
of the old girls because she didn't smile enough.
Good reason why. She 'd lost her mother the week
before and was n't likely to feel much like smiling.
And then she went inside the counters and pitched
out all the old shoes the girls had there to make it
easier to stand. It 'most kills you to stand all day
in new shoes, but Miss T
pitched them all out
and said she was n't going to have the store turned
into an old-clothes shop."
"Well, it's better than lots of them, no matter
what she does," said another. " I was at H
's

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

181

for six months, and there you have to ask a man
for leave every time it is necessary to go upstairs,
and half the time he would look and laugh with
the other clerks. I 'd rather be where there are all
women. They 're hard on you sometimes, but they
don't use foul language and insult you when you
can't help yourself."
This last complaint has proved for many stores
a perfectly well-founded one. Wash-rooms and
other conveniences have been for common use, and
many sensitive and shrinking girls have brought
on severe illnesses arising solely from dread of running this gantlet.
Here and there the conditions of this form of labor
are of the best, but as a whole the saleswoman suffers
not only from long-continued standing, but from bad
air, ventilation having no place in the construction
of the ordinary store. Separate dressing-rooms are a
necessity, yet are only occasionally found, the system
demanding that no outlay shall be made when it is
possible to avoid it. Overheating and overcrowding,
hastily eaten and improper food, are all causes of the
weakness and anaemic condition so perceptible among
shop and factory workers, these being divided into
many classes. For a large proportion it can be said
that they are tolerably educated, so far as our publicschool system can be said to educate, and are hardworking, self-sacrificing, patient girls who have the
American knack of dressing well on small outlay,

182

PRISONERS

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and who have tastes and aspirations far beyond any
means of gratifying them. For such girls the working-women's guilds and the Friendly societies — these
last of English origin — have proved of inestimable
service, giving them the opportunities long denied.
In such guilds many of them receive the first real
training of eye and hand and mind, learn what they
can best do, and often develop a practical ability for
larger and better work. Even in the lowest order
filling the cheaper stores there is always a proportion eager to learn. But here, as in all ordinary
methods of learning, the market is overstocked, and
even the best-trained girl may sometimes fail of
employment. Now and then one turns toward household service, but the mass prefer any cut in wages
and any form of privation to what they regard as
almost a final degradation. A multitude of their
views on this point are recorded and will in time
find place.
In the mean time a minute examination of the
causes that determine their choice and of the conditions surrounding it as a whole go to prove the
justice of the conviction that penetrates the student
of social problems. Again, the shop-girl as a class
demonstrates the fact that not with her but with the
class above her, through accident of birth or fortune,
lies the real responsibility for the follies over which
we make moan. The cheaper daily papers record in
fullest detail the doings of that fashionable world

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

183

toward which many a weak girl or woman looks with
unspeakable longing; and the weekly "story papers"
feed the flame with unending details of the rich marriage that lifted the poor girl into the luxury which
stands to her empty mind as the sole thing to be
desired in earth or heaven. She knows far better
what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich
ever know of the life of the poor. From her post
behind the counter the shop-girl examines every
detail of costume, every air and grace of these
women whom she despises, even when longing most
to be one of them. She imitates where she can, and
her cheap shoe has its French heel, her neck its tin
dog-collar. Gilt rings and bracelets and bangles,
frizzes and bangs and cheap trimmings of every
order, swallow up her earnings. The imitation is
often more effective than the real, and the girl knows
it. She aspires to a "manicure" set, to an operaglass, to anything that will simulate the life daily
more passionately desired; and it is small wonder
that when sudden temptation comes and the door
opens into that land where luxury is at least nearer,
she falls an easy victim. The class in which she
finally takes rank is seldom recruited from sources
that would seem most fruitful. The sewing-woman,
the average factory worker, is devitalized to such an
extent that even ambition dies and the brain barely
responds to even the allurements of the weekly story
paper. It is the class but a grade removed, to whom

184

PRISONERS

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POVERTY.

no training has come from which strength or simplicity or any virtue of honest living could grow,
that makes the army of women who have chosen
degradation.
A woman, herself a worker, but large-brained and
large-hearted beyond the common endowment, wrote
recently of the dangers put in the way of the average
shop or factory girl, imploring happy women living
at ease to adopt simpler forms, or at least to ask
what form of living went on below them. She
wrote: —
"It may be urged that ignorant and inexperienced as
these workers are, they see only the bubbles and the froth,
the superficial glitter and exuberant overflow of passing
styles and social pleasures, and miss much, if not all, of
the earnestness, the virtue, the charity, and the refinement
which may belong to those they imitate, but with whom
they seldom come in contact. This is the very point and
purpose of this paper, to remonstrate against the injustice
done to the women of wealth and leisure by their own
carelessness and indifference, and to urge them to come
down to those who cannot come up to them, to study them
with as keen an interest as they themselves are studied, —
to know how that other half lives."
" To know how that other half lives." That is
the demand made upon woman and man alike.
Once at least put yourselves in the worker's place,
if it be but for half an hour, and think her thought
and live her starved and dreary life. Then ask what

AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.

185

work must be done to alter conditions, to kill false
ideals, and vow that no day on earth shall pass
that has not held some effort, in word or deed, to
make true living more possible for every child of
man. No mission, no guild, no sermon, has or can
have power alone. Only in the determined effort of
the individual, in individual understanding and
renunciation forever of what has been selfish and
mean and base, can humanity know redemption
and walk at last side by side in that path where he
who journeys alone finds no entrance, nor can win
it till self has dropped away, and knowledge come
that forever we are our brothers' keepers.

CHAPTEE SIXTEENTH.
TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.
"VI 7HY and how the money-getting spirit has be* * come the ruler of American life and thought
no analyzer of social conditions has yet made plain.
That New York might be monopolist in this respect
could well be conceived, for the Dutch were traders
by birthright and New Amsterdam arose to this one
end. But why the Puritan colony, whose first act
before even the tree stumps were brown in their
corn-fields was the founding of a college, and whose
corner-stone rested on a book, — why these people
should have come to represent a spirit of bargaining
and an aptitude for getting on unmatched by the
keenest-witted Dutchman hath no man yet told us.
The sharpest business men of the present are chiefly
" Yankees;" and if " Jew " and " a hard bargain "
are counted synonymes, " New-Englander " has equal
claim to the place. The birthplace and home of all
reform, New England is the home also of a greed born
of hard conditions and developing a keenness unequalled by that of any other bargainer on earth. The
Italian, the Greek, the Turk, find a certain aesthetic

TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.

187

satisfaction in bargaining and do it methodically, but
always picturesquely and with a relish unaffected by
defeat; but with the Yankee it is a passionate,
absorbing desire, sharpening every line of the face
and felt even in the turn of the head or shoulders,
and in every line of the eager, restless figure. Success assured softens and modifies these tendencies.
Defeat aggravates them. One meets many a man
for whom it is plain that the beginning of life held
unlimited faith that the great city meant a fortune,
the sanguine conviction passing gradually into the
interrogative form. The fortune is still there. Thus
far the conviction holds good, but his share in it has
become more and more problematical. The flying
and elusive shadow still holds for him the only real
substance, but his hands have had no power to grasp or
detain, and the most dogged determination gives way
at last to the sense of hopeless failure. For this type
may be the ending as cheap clerk or bookkeeper,
with furtive attempts at speculation when a few
dollars have been saved, or a retreat toward that
remote West which has hidden effectually so many
baffled and defeated lives. There may also come
another ending, and the feverish, scheming soul lose
its hold on the body,, which has meant to it merely
a means of getting and increasing money.
It is this latter fate that came to a man who would
have no place in this record save for the fact that his
last querulous and still-questioning days were lived

188

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

side by side with a man who had also sought money,
and having found it had chosen for it certain experimental uses by means of which siphon he was
presently drained dry. For him also had been
many defeats. A hospital ward held them both,
and the two beds were side by side, the one representing a patience that never failed, yet something
more than patience. For the face of this man bore
no token of defeat. It was rather triumph that
looked at moments from the clear eyes that had
also an almost divine pity as they turned toward
the neighbor who poured out his story between
paroxysms of coughing, and having told it once,
proceeded to tell it again, his sole and final satisfaction in life being the arraignment of all living.
The visitor who came into the ward was pinned on
the instant, the fiery eyes demanding the hearing
which was the last gift time held for him. It was a
common story often told, this slow, inevitable descent
into poverty. Its force lay in the condensed fury of
the speaker, who looked on the men he had known
as sworn conspirators against him, and cursed them
in their going out and coming in with a relish that
no argument could affect. What his neighbor might
have to tell was a matter of the purest indifference.
It was impossible even to ask his story; and it remained impossible until a day when arraignment was
cut short and the disappointed, bitter soul passed on
to such conditions as it had made for itself.

TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.

189

" You 've got the best of me. They all do," he said
in dying, with a last turn of the sombre eyes toward
his neighbor. "You ought to have gone first by a
week, and there you are. But this time I guess it's
just as well. I don't seem to want to fight anylonger, and I ' m glad I ' m done. I t ' s your turn
next. Good — "
The words had come with gasps between and long
pauses. Here they stopped once for all. Good had
found him; the only good for the child of earth, who,
having failed to learn his lesson here, must try a
larger school with a different system of training.
The empty bed was not filled at once. A screen
shut it off. There was time now to hear other words
than the passionate railings that had monopolized all
time. The sick man mended a little, and in one of
the days in which speech was easier gave this record
of his forty years : —
" I t ' s a fact, I believe, that the sons of reformers
seldom walk in the same track. My father was one
of the old Abolitionists, and an honest one, ready to
give money when he could and any kind of work
when he could n't. I t was a great cause. I cried
over the negroes down South and went without sugar
a year or so, and learned to knit so that I could knit
some stockings for the small slaves my own size.
But by the time I was eight years old it was plain
enough to me that there were other kinds of slavery
quite as bad, and that my own mother wore as heavy

190

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

bonds as any of them. She was a farmer's wife, and
from year's end to year's end she toiled and worked.
She never had a cent of her own, for the butter money
was consecrated to the cause, and she gave it gladly.
My father had no particular intention to be unkind.
He was simply like a good two-thirds of the farmers
I have known, — much more careful of his animals
than of his wife. A woman was so much cooking
and cleaning and butter-making force, and childbearing an incident demanding as little notice as
possible. It is because of that theory that I am five
inches shorter than any of our tribe. My mother was
a tall, slender woman, with a springy step and eyes
as clear as a brook. I see them sometimes as I lie
here at night.
" I said to myself when I was ten that I 'd have
things easier for her before she died. I said it
straight ahead while I was working my way up in
the village store, for I would not farm, and when
she died I said it to her in the last hour I ever
heard her voice: ' What I could n't do for you,
mother, I '11 do for all women as long as I am on
the earth.'
" I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned
some woman was having a hard time, and some brute
was making it for her. I knew it was partly their
own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and decent, but custom and tradition, the law
and the prophets, were all against them. T watched

TWO HOSPITAL BEDS,

191

it all as I could, but I was deep in trying to get
ahead, and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams
and my fancies, there was a money-making streak in
me. I t ' s a lost vein. You may search as you will
and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good
returns. I left the village at twenty-one and went to
Philadelphia, and the small savings I took with me
from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the
chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change,
but the old Quaker who owned it knew my father
and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time
I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and
settled for life if I liked.
" Well, here it was again. This man was honest
and clean. He meant to do fairly by all mankind,
and he tried to. He had some secrets in his methods
that made his soap the best in the market. The chief
secret was honest ingredients, but it was famous. If
you Ve ever been in a soap-factory you know what it
is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in paper as
fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room
was filled with girls who. did the work. They were
not the best order of girls. The wages a week were
from three to five dollars, and they were at it from
seven A. M. to six p. M. There was a good woman in
the office, — a woman with a head as well as a heart,
— and she did the directing and disciplining. It was
no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and the
creatures began squabbling together, but she managed

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OF POVERTY.

it, and by night they were always meek enough.
You 're likely to be meek when you Ve carried soap
ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery
as glass or glare ice. They picked it up as it cooled,
wrapped it in paper, and had it in boxes, five pounds
to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The
caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color
and then it ate off their finger tips till they bled.
They could not wear gloves, for that would have
interfered with the packing.
" Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They
were big, hearty girls. They had to be to do that
work, but my heart ached for them as they filed out
at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but to get home and into bed. Very few stayed
on. The smart ones graduated into something better.
The stupid ones fell back and tried something easier.
But as I watched them and it came over me how
untrained and helpless they were, and how every
chance of learning was cut off by the long labor and
the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed
them something: shorter hours; better wages; some
sort of share in the money we were making. Friend
Peter shook his head when I began to hint these
things. 'They fare well enough/ he said. 'Thee
must not get socialistic notions in thy head/ ' I
know nothing about socialism/ I said. ' All I want
is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out

TWO HOSPITAL

BEDS.

193

for it for the black brother and sister; why not for
the white ?'
"' Thee is talking folly/ he said, and would make
no other answer.
" It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to me. We did make it in
a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at twentyfive, and better off every month; and I said to myself,
the money would have a curse on it if those who
helped to earn it had no share. I talked to the men
in the boiling department. It takes brains to be a
good soap-maker. We kept to the old ways, simply
because what they call improvement in soap-making,
like many another improvement, has been the cheapening the product by the addition of various articles
that lower the quality. Experience has to teach.
Theoretical knowledge is n't much use save as foundation. A man must use eyes and tongue, and
watch for the critical moment in the finishing like
a lynx.
" Well, I beat my head against that wall of obstinacy till head and heart were sore. It was enough
to the old Quaker that he paid promptly and did
honest work; and when I told him at last that his
gains were as fraudulent as if he cheated deliberately,
he said,' Then thee need share them no longer. Go
thy way for a hot-headed fool/
" I went. There was an opening in New York,
and I had every detail at my fingers' ends. I went
13

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PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

in with a man a little older, who seemed to think as
I did, and who did, till I made practical application
of my theories. I had studied everything to be had
on the subject. I had mastered a language or two
in my evenings, for I lived like a hermit; but now
I began to talk with every business man, and try
to understand why competition was inevitable. I
was in no haste. I admitted that men must be
trained to co-operate, but I said, ' We shall never
learn by waiting. We must learn by trying/ I
tried to bring in other soap-makers, and one or two
listened; but most of them were using the cheap
methods, — increasing the quantity and lowering the
quality. Some of the men had come on to me from
Philadelphia, and were bound to stay, but it was
hard on them. They had to go into tenement-houses,
for there were no homes for them such as building
associations in Philadelphia make possible for every
wrorkman. But I took a house and divided it up
and made it comfortable, and I lived on the lower
floor myself, so that kept them contented. I fitted
up a room for a reading-room, and twice a week had
talks; not lectures, but talks where every man had a
chance to speak five minutes if he would, and to
ask questions. I coaxed the women to come. I
wanted them to understand, and two or three took
hold. I made a decent place for them to eat their
dinners, and put these women in charge. I put in
an oil-stove and a table and seats, and gave them

TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.

195

coffee and tea at two cents a cup, and tried to have
them care for the place. That has been done over
and over by many an employer who pities his
workers; and nine times out of ten the same result
follows. The animal crops out. They were rough
girls at any time, yet, taken one by one, behaved
well enough. But I've seen boys and girls at a
donation party throw cheese and what not on the
carpet and rub it in deliberately, and I don't know
that one need wonder that lunch-rooms in store or
factory turn into pig-pens, and the few decent ones
can make no headway.
" I spoke out to them all, but it was no more than
the wind blowing, and at last even I gave it up.
There was no conscience in them to touch. They
wanted shorter hours and more money, when they
had got to the point of seeing that I was trying
to help, but they had no notion of helping back.
With my men it worked, and they talked down the
women sometimes. But when a bad year came, —
for soap has its ups and downs like everything else,
— most of them struck, and the wise ones could
make no headway. ' I t ' s a losing game,' my partner said; 'if you want to go on you must go on
alone/
" I did go on alone. He left and took his capital
with him. The best men stayed with me and swore
to take their chances. The soap was good, and I
made a hit in one or two fancy kinds, but I could

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PEISONERS

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not compete with men who used mean material and
turned out something that looked as well at half the
price. My money melted away, and a fire — set, they
told me, by a man I had discharged for long-continued
dishonesty — finished me. I had the name of stirring
up strife for the manufacturers, because I tried to
teach my workers the principle of co-operation, and
begged for it where I could. It hurt my business
standing. Men felt that I must be a fool. I had
worked for it with such absorption that I had had
little time for any joy of life. I had neither wife
nor child, though I longed for both. I would not
have ease and happiness alone. I wanted it for my
fellows. To-day it might be. Ten years ago it
was only the thought of a dreamer, and I made no
headway.
" The fire left me stranded. I went in as superintendent of some new works, but went out in a month,
for I could not consent to cheat, and fraud was in
every pound sent out. I tried one place and another
with the same result. Competition makes honesty
impossible. A man would admit it to me without
hesitation, but would end: 'There's no other way.
Don't be a fool. You can't stand out against a
system/
" ' I will stand out if it starves me,' I said. ' I
will not sell my soul for any man's hire. The time
is coming when this rottenness must end. Make one
more to fight it now/

TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.

197

"Men looked at me pitifully. ' I was throwing
away chances/ they said. ' Why would n't I hear
reason ? We were in the world, not in Utopia/
" ' We are in the hell we have made for all mankind/ I said. 'The only real world is the world
which is founded on truth and justice. Everything
else falls away.'
"Everything else has fallen away. I was never
strong, and a year ago I was knocked down in a
scrimmage. Some bullies from one of the factories
set on my men, — mine no longer, but still preaching
my doctrine. Somehow I was kicked in the chest
and a rib broken, and this saved me probably from
being sent up as a disturber of the peace. The right
lung was wounded, and consumption came naturally.
They nursed me — Tom's wife and sister, good souls
— till I refused to burden them any longer and came
here in spite of them. It has been a sharp fight. I
seem to have failed; yet the way is easier for the
next. Co-operation will come. It must come. It
is the law of life. It is the only path out of this
jungle in which we wander and struggle and die.
But there must be training. There must be better
understanding. I would give a thousand lives joyfully if only I could make men and women who sit
at ease know the sorrow of the poor. It is their
ignorance that is their curse. Teach them; study
them. Care as much for the outcast at home as
for the heathen abroad. And, oh, if you can make

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PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

anybody listen, beg them for Christ's sake, for their
own sake, to hearken and to help ! Beg them to
study; not to say with no knowledge that help is
impossible, but to study, to think, and then to work
with their might. I t is my last word, — a poor word
that can reach none, it may be, any more, and yet,
who knows what wind of the Lord may bear it on,
what ground may be waiting for the seed ? I shall
see it, but not now. I shall behold it, and it will be
nigh, in that place to which I go. Work for it; die
for it if need be; for man's hope, man's life, if ever
he knows true life, has no other foundation."

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.
CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK.
TDOLITICAL economists in general, with the additional number of those who for one purpose and
another turn over statistics of labor, nodded approvingly as they gazed upon the figures of the last general
census for the State of New York, which showed that
among the myriad of workers in factory and other
occupations, but twenty-four thousand children were
included.
" Fifty-six million and more inhabitants, and all faring
so well that only one fortieth part of one of these millions
is employed too early in this Empire State. Civilization
could hardly do more. See how America leads among all
civilized countries as the ^protector of the feeble, the guarantee of strength for the weakest. No other country
guards its children so well. There have been errors, of
course; such enlightenment is not reached at a bound;
but the last Legislature made further ones impossible, for
it fixed the minimum limit at which a child may be employed in factories at thirteen years of age. By thirteen
a child is n't likely to be stunted or hurt by overwork
We protect all classes and the weakest most,"

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PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

Thus the political economist who stops at figures
and considers any further dealing with the question
unnecessary. And if the law were of stringent application ; if parents told the truth as to age, and if the
two inspectors who are supposed to suffice for the
thousands of factories in the State of New York were
multiplied by fifty, there might be some chance of
carrying out the provisions of this law. As it is, it
is a mere form of words, evaded daily; a bit of legislation which, like much else bearing with it apparent
benefit, proves when analyzed to be not much more
than sham. The law applies to factories only. It
does not touch mercantile establishments or trades
that are carried on in tenement-houses, and it is
with these two latter forms of labor that we deal
to-day. In factory labor in the city of New York
nine thousand children under twelve years of age
are doing their part toward swelling the accumulation of wealth, each adding their tiny contribution
to the great stream of what we call the prosperity
of the nineteenth century. Thus far their share
in the trades we have considered has been ignored.
Let us see in what fashion they make part of the
system.
For a large proportion of the women visited, among
whom all forms of the clothing industry were the occupation, children under ten, and more often from four
to eight, were valuable assistants. In a small room
on Hester Street, a woman on work on overalls — for

CHILD-WORKERS

IN NEW

YORK.

201

the making of which she received one dollar a dozen—
said: —
" I could n't do as well if it was n't for Jinny and
Mame there. Mame has learned to sew on buttons
first-rate, and Jinny is doing almost as well. I ' m
alone to-day, but most days three of us sew together
here, and Jinny keeps right along. We 11 do better
yet when Mame gets a bit older."
As she spoke the door opened and a woman with
an enormous bundle of overalls entered and sat down
on the nearest chair with a gasp.
" Them stairs is killin'," she said. " I t ' s lucky I've
not to climb 'em often."
Something crept forward as the bundle slid to
the floor, and busied itself with the string that
bound it.
" Here you, Jinny," said the woman, " don't you be
foolin'. What do you want anyhow ?"
The something shook back a mat of thick hair and
rose to its feet, — a tiny child who in size seemed no
more than three, but whose countenance indicated
the experience of three hundred.
" I t ' s the string I want," the small voice said.
" Me an' Mame was goin' to play with it."
"There's small time for play," said the mother;
" there '11 be two pair more in a minute or two, an'
you 're to see how Mame does one an' do it good
too, or I ' l l find out why not."
Mame had come forward and stood holding to the

202

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

one thin garment which but partly covered Jinny's
little bones. She too looked out from a wild thatch
of black hair, and with the same expression of deep
experience, the pallid, hungry little faces lighting
suddenly as some cheap cakes were produced. Both
of them sat down on the floor and ate their portion
silently.
" Mame 's seven and Jinny 's going on six," said the
mother, " but Jinny 's the smartest. She could sew
on buttons when she was n't but much over four. I
had five then, but the Lord's took 'em all but these
two. I could n't get on if it was n't for Mame."
Mame looked up but said no word, and as I left
the room settled herself with her back against the
wall, Jinny at her side, laying the coveted string
near at hand for use if any minute for play arrived.
In the next room, half-lighted like the last, and if
possible even dirtier, a Jewish tailor sat at work on
a coat, and by him on the floor a child of five picking
threads from another.
" Netta is good help," he said after a word or two.
" So fast as I finish, she pick all the threads. She
care not to go away — she stay by me always to
help."
" Is she the only one ?"
"But one that sells papers. Last year is five,
but mother and dree are gone with fever. It is
many that die. What will you ? It is the will of
God."

CHILD-WORKERS

IN NEW YORK.

203

On the floor below two children of seven and eight
were found also sewing on buttons — in this case for
four womeQ who had their machines in one room and
were making the cheapest order of corset-cover, for
which they received fifty cents a dozen, each one
having five buttons. It could not be called oppressive work, yet the children were held there to be
ready for each one as completed, and sat as such
children most often do, silent and half asleep waiting for the next demand.
" It 's hard on 'em," one of the women said. "We
work till ten and sometimes later, but then they sleep
between and we can't; and they get the change of
running out for a loaf of bread or whatever's wanted,
and we don't stir from the machine from morning till
night. I Ve got two o' me own, but they 're out
peddling matches."
On the lower floor back of the small grocery in
which the people of the house bought their food
supply, — wilted or half-decayed vegetables, meat of
the cheapest order, broken eggs and stale fish, — a
tailor and two helpers were at work. A girl of
nine or ten sat among them and picked threads or
sewed on buttons as needed; a haggard, wretchedlooking child who did not look up as the door
opened. A woman who had come down the stairs
behind me stopped a moment, and as I passed out
said : —
" If there was a law for him I 'd have him up. I t ' s

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PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

his own sister's child, and he workin' her ten hours a
day an' many a day into the night, an* she with an
open sore on her neck, an* crying out many 's the
time when she draws out a long needleful an' so
gives it a jerk. She's sewed on millions of buttons,
that child has, an' she but a little past ten. May
there be a hot place wTaitin' for him !"
A block or two beyond, the house entered proved
to be given over chiefly to cigar-making. It is to
this trade that women and girls turn during the dull
season, and one finds in it representatives from every
trade in which women are engaged. The sewingwomen employed in suit and clothing manufactories
during the busy season have no resource save this,
and thus prices are kept down and the regular cigarmakers constantly reinforced by the irregular. In
the present case it was chiefly with regular makers
that the house was filled, one room a little less than
twelve by fourteen feet holding a family of seven
persons, three of them children under ten, all girls.
Tobacco lay in piles on the floor and under the long
table at one end where the cigars were rolled, its
rank smell dominating that from the sinks and from
the general filth, not only of this room but of the
house as a whole. Two of the children sat on the
floor stripping the leaves, and another on a small
stool. A girl of twenty sat near them, and all alike
had sores on lips and cheeks and on the hands.
Children from five or six years up can be taught to

CHILD-WORKERS FN NEW YORK.

205

strip and thus add to the week's income, which is far
less for the tenement-house manufacture than for
regular factory work, the latter averaging from eight
to twelve dollars a week. But the work if done at
home can be made to include the entire family, and
some four thousand women are engaged in it, an
almost equal but unregistered number of young
children sharing it with them. As in sewing, a
number of women often club together, using one
room, and in such case their babies crawl about in
the filth on the wet floors, playing with the damp
tobacco and breathing the poison with which the
room is saturated.
Here, as in tobacco factories, women and girls of
every age become speedily the victims of nervous and
hysterical complaints, the direct result of nicotine
poisoning; while succeeding these come consumption
and throat diseases resulting from the dust. Canker
is one of the most frequent difficulties, and sores of
many orders, the trade involving more dangers than
any that can be chosen. Yet because an entire family can find occupation in it, with no necessity for
leaving home, it is often preferred to easier employment. It is the children who suffer most, growth
being stunted, nervous disease developed and ending
often in St. Vitus's dance, and skin diseases of every
order being the rule, the causes being not only tobacco, but the filth in which they live.
It is doubtful if the most inveterate smoker would

206

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

feel much relish for the cigar manufactured under
such conditions; yet hundreds of thousands go out
yearly from these houses, bearing in every leaf the
poison of their preparation. In this one house nearly
thirty children of all ages and sizes, babies predominating, rolled in the tobacco which covered the floor
and was piled in every direction; and of these children under ten thirteen were strippers and did their
day's work of ten hours and more. Physical degeneration in its worst forms becomes inevitable. Even
the factory child-worker fares better, for in the factory there is exercise and the going to and from work,
while in the tenement-house cigar-making the wornout little creatures crawl to the bed, often only a pile
of rags in the corner, or lie down on a heap of the
tobacco itself, breathing this poison day and night
uninterruptedly. Vices of every order flourish in such
air, and morality in this trade is at lowest ebb. Nervous excitement is so intense that necessarily nothing
but immorality can result, and the child of eight or
ten is as gross and confirmed an offender as the fullgrown man or woman. Diligent search discovers
few exceptions to this rule, and the whole matter has
reached a stage where legislative interference is absolutely indispensable. Only in forbidding tenementhouse manufacture absolutely can there be any safety
for either consumer or producer.
Following in the same line of inquiry I take here
the facts furnished to Professor Adler by a lady

CHILD-WORKERS

IN NEW

YORK.

207

physician whose work has long lain among the poor.
During the eighteen months prior to February 1,
1886, she found among the people with whom she came
in contact five hundred and thirty-five children under
twelve years old, — most of them between ten and
twelve, — who either worked in shops or stores or
helped their mothers in some kind of work at home.
Of these five hundred and thirty-five children but
sixty were healthy. In one family a child at three
years old had infantile paralysis, easily curable. The
mother had no time to attend to it. At five years old
the child was taught to sew buttons on trousers. She
is now at thirteen a hopeless cripple; but she finishes
a dozen pair of trousers a day, and her family are thus
twenty cents the richer. In another family she found
twin girls four and a half years old sewing on buttons
from six in the morning till ten at night; and near
them wras a family of three, — a woman who did the
same work and whose old father of eighty and little
girl of six were her co-workers.
There is a compulsory education law, but it demands only fourteen weeks of the year, and the
poorer class work from early morning till eight A. M.
and after school hours from four till late in the night.
With such energy as is left they take their fourteen
weeks of education, but even in these many methods
of evasion are practised. It is easy to swear that the
child is over fourteen, but small of its age, and this is
constantly done. It is sometimes done deliberately

208

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

by thinking workmen, who deny that the common
school as it at present exists can give any training
that they desire for their children, or that it will ever
do so till manual training forms part of the course.
But for most it is not intelligent dissatisfaction, but
the absorbing press of getting a living that compels
the employment of child-labor, and thus brings physical and moral degeneration, not only for this generation but for many to come. It is not alone the nine
thousand in factories that we must deal with, but
many hundred thousands uncounted and unrecognized,
the same spirit dominating all.
In one of the better class of tenement-houses a
woman, a polisher in a jewelry manufactory, said the
other day: —
" I 'm willing to work hard, I don't care how hard;
but it's awful to me to see my little boy and the way
he goes on. He's a cash-boy at D
's, and they
don't pay by the week, they pay by checks, so every
cash-boy is on the keen jump after a call. They 're
so worried and anxious and afraid they won't get
enough; and Johnny cries and says, ' 0 mamma, I
do try, but there 's one boy that always gets ahead of
me.' I think it's an awful system, even if it does
make them smart."
An awful system, yet in its ranks march more and
more thousands every year. It would seem as if
every force in modern civilization bent toward this
one end of money-getting, and the child of days and

CHILD-WORKERS

IN NEW

YORK.

209

the old man of years alike shared the passion and ran
the same mad race. It is the passion itself that has
outgrown all bounds and that faces us to-day, — the
modern Medusa on which he who looks has no more
heart of flesh and blood but forever heart of stone,
insensible to any sorrow, unmoved by any cry of child
or woman. It is with this shape that the battle must
be, and no man has yet told us its issue. Nay, save
here and there one, who counts that battle is needed,
or sees the shadow of the terror walking not only in
darkness but before all men's eyes, who is there that
has not chosen blindness and will not hear the voice
that pleads : " Let my people go free " ?

34

CHAPTEK EIGHTEENTH.
STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK.

" T USED to think there were steady trades; but
somehow now everything gets mixed, and you
can't tell what's steady and what is n't."
" What makes the mix ? "
" The Lord only knows ! I Ve studied over it till
I 'm dazed, and sometimes I Ve wondered if my mind
was weakening."
The speaker, a middle-aged Scotchwoman, whose
tongue still held a little of the burr that thirty years
of American life had not been able to extract, put
her hand to her head as if the fault must concentrate
there.
" If it was my trade alone," she said, " I might think
I was to blame for not learning new ways, but it 's the
same in all. Now, take mattress-making. I learned
that because I could help my father best that way.
He was an upholsterer in Aberdeen, and came over to
better himself, and he did if he had n't signed notes
for a friend and ruined himself. He upholstered
in the big families for thirty years, and everybody

STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK, 211
knew his little place on Hudson Street. People
then bought furniture to last, and had it covered with
the best of stuff, and so with curtains and hangings.
Damask was damask, I can tell you, and velvet lambrequins meant money. No cotton-back stuff. They
got shaken and brushed and done up from moths.
People had some respect for good material. Nobody
respects anything now. I saw a rich woman the
other day let her boy six years old empty a box
of candy on a pale-blue satin couch, and then sit
down on it and rub his shoes up and down on the
edge. I say that when there's no respect left for
anything it's no wonder decent work comes to an
end. I make a mattress, and there is n't an inch of
it that is n't sewed to last and that is n't an honest
piece of work, but you can go into any housefurnishing department and buy one that looks just
as well for a third less money. Everything's so
cheap that people don't care whether anything lasts
or not, and so there's no decent work done; and
people pretend to have learned trades when really
they just botch things together. I just go round in
houses and make over, — places that I've had for
years; and I Ve been forewoman in a big factory,
but somehow a factory mattress never seems to me
as springy and good as the old kind. Upholsterers
make pretty good wages, but it can't be called steady
any more, though it used to be. I 've thought many
a time of going into business for myself, but compe-

212

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

tition's awful, and I ' m afraid to try. I won't cheat,
and there 's no getting ahead unless you do."
" What are the wages ?"
" A picker gets about three dollars a week. She
just picks over the hair, and most any kind of girl
seems to do now that everything is steamed or done
by machinery. The highest wages now are nine
dollars a week, though I used to earn fifteen and
eighteen sometimes, and the dull season makes the
average about six dollars. I earn nine or ten because I do a good deal of private work, but a woman
that can make forty dollars a month straight ahead
is lucky."
Several women of much the same order of intelligence, two of them forewomen for years in prosperous
establishments, added their testimony as to the shifting character of wages and of employments. One
had watched the course of neckties for seventeen
years, — a keen-eyed little widow who had fought
hard to educate her two children and preserve some
portion of the respectability she loved.
"You'd never dream how many kinds there have
been, or, for that matter, how many kinds there are.
We even make stocks for a few old-fashioned gentlemen that will have them. I t ' s a business that a
lady turns to first thing almost if she wants to earn,
and we give out hundreds on hundreds to such, besides sending loads into the country. I often think
our house turns out enough for the whole United

STEADY

TRADES

AND

THEIR

OUTLOOK.

213

States, but we 're only a beginning. We pay well, —
well as any, and better. Twenty-five cents a dozen
is good pay now, and we see that our cutter leaves
margin enough to keep the women from being cheated.
That's a great trick with some. Sometimes the cutter is paid by the number he can get out of a piece
of goods; sometimes he screws just because he's made
so. But they cut by measure, and they allow so little
to turn in that the thing frays in your hand, and no
mortal could help it, and if one is frayed the foreman just throws out the dozen. Then lots of them
advertise for girls to learn, and say they must give
the first week or fortnight free; and when that is
over they say work is slack or some other excuse,
and take in a lot more that have been waiting.
We Ve taken many a girl that came crying and told
how she 'd been kept on and cheated. There's one
man on Third Avenue that runs his place on this
plan, and has got rich. But I say to every girl :
'You'd better have something more than the last
shape in neckties between you and starvation.
You'll never get beyond five or six dollars a week
at most, and generally not that.' It don't make any
difference. There are dozens waiting for the chance
to starve genteelly. I t ' s a genteel trade and a pretty
steady one, but if a dull time comes the girls go
into cigar-making and manage along somehow. I 've
coaxed a good many into service, but it is n't one in
a hundred will try that."

214

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

The third woman represented a hat-pressing factory
in which she had been eleven years, and in which
the wages had fallen year by year, till at present
women, even when most expert, can earn not over
six dollars per week as against from eight to twelve
in previous years. The trade is regarded as a steady
one, for spring and summer straws give, place to felt,
and a certain number of hands are sure of employment. In direct association with this trade must be
considered that of artificial flowers and feathers, in
which there is perpetual see-saw. If feathers are
in vogue flowers are down, and vice versa. Five
thousand women are employed on feathers, and the
establishments, which in 1871 numbered but twelve,
now number over fifty; but those for flowers far
exceed them. Learners work for three dollars or less
per week, the highest wages attainable in either being fifteen dollars, the average being about nine.
The demand for one or the other is continuous, but
when fashion in 1886 called for scarfs and flowers,
four thousand feather-workers were thrown out and
lived as they could till another turn in the wheel
restored their occupation.
" One or the other of 'em is always steady," said a
woman who had learned both trades, and thus stood
prepared to circumvent fate. " The trouble is, you
never know a week ahead which will be up and
which down. Lots of us have learned both, and
when I see the firm putting their heads together I

STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK. 215
know what it means and just go across the way to
Pillsbury's, and the same with them. I t ' s good pay
and one or the other steady, but the Lord only
knows which."
"If you want steadiness you've got to take to
jute," said a girl who with her sister lived in one of
the upper rooms. " There ain't many jute-mills in
the country, and you go straight ahead. We two
began in a cotton-mill, but there's this queer thing
about it. Breathe cotton-fluff all day and you're just
dead sure to have consumption; but breathe a peck
of jute-fluff a day and it does n't seem to make any
difference. That is n't my notion. Our doctor said
he 'd noticed it, and he took home some of the fibre
to examine it. For my part we 're called a rough
lot, but I 'd rather take that discredit and keep on in
the mill. You can stir round and don't have to
double up over sewing or that kind of thing. I can
earn seven dollars a week, and I 'd rather earn it that
way than any other."
An hour or two in the mill, which included every
form of manufacture that jute has yet taken, from
seamless bags of all sizes and grades up to carpets,
convinced one that if nerves were hardened to the
incessant noise of machinery, there were distinct advantages associated with it. The few Scotch in the
mill, men and women who had been brought over
from Dundee, the headquarters of the jute industry
abroad, insisted that jute was healthy, and long life

216

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

for all who handled it a foregone conclusion. A
tour among the workers seemed to confirm this impression, though here and there one found the factory
face, with its dead paleness and dark-ringed eyes.
Children as small as can be held to be consistent
with the assumption of their thirteen years are preferred, their work as "doffers" or spool-changers
requiring small quick hands. So, too, in fixing the
pattern for carpets, where the threads must be manipulated with speed and light touch. It is preferred
that children should grow up in the mill, passing
from one room to another as they master processes,
and the employees thus stay on and regard themselves
as portions of the business. Some three or four
thousand women and girls find occupation here. The
waste from the carding-rooms is sent to the papermills and enters into manila paper and pasteboard,
and this brings one to the paper-box makers, of whom
there are several thousand at work.
This trade, while nominally one of the steadiest,
has its short periods of depression. Competition is
also as severe here as in every other present form of
industry, and thus prices are kept down, the highest
rate of wages earned being nine dollars, while seven
dollars is considered fair. There must be a certain
apprenticeship, not less than six months being required to master details and understand each stage of
the work. In one of the best of these establishments,
where space was plenty and ventilation and other

STEADY

TRADES

AND

THEIR

OUTLOOK.

217

conditions all good, one woman had been in the firm's
employ for eighteen years and was practically forewoman, though no such office is recognized. Beginners were placed in her hands and did not leave
her till a perfect box could be turned off. Cutting
is all done by special machines, and the paper for
covering is prepared in the same way, glue or paste
being used according to the degree of strength desired
in the box. The work is all piece-work, from fifty
to seventy cents a hundred being paid ; a fair worker
making two hundred a day and an expert nearly or
quite three hundred. But competition governs the
price and cuts are often made. A firm will underbid
and an order be transferred to it, unless the girls will
consent to do the work five or, it may be, ten cents
less on the hundred, and thus wages can seldom pass
beyond nine dollars a week, dull seasons and cuts reducing the average to seven and a half. Many even
good workers fall far below this, as they prefer to
come late and go early, piece-work admitting of this
arrangement. The woman who takes up this trade
may be confident of earning from twenty-five to
thirty-five dollars a month, but she never exceeds
this amount; nor is there promotion beyond a certain
point. In paper hangings wages do not rise above
twenty-five dollars at most, and in paper collars and
cuffs, as in everything connected with clothing, the
rate is much less. Bags are the foundation industry
in all these forms of paper manufacture, but the two

218

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

thousand women who work at sorting these seldom
pass beyond five dollars, and more often receive but
two and a half or three dollars per week.
Under much the same head must come the preparation of sample cards, playing cards, and various
forms of stationers* work. The latter has short dull
seasons when girls may, for two or three weeks, have
no work; but it is otherwise a steady trade, the
wages running from three and a half to seven dollars
per week. They stamp initials and crests with large
hand presses, and stamp also the cheaper order of
lithographs; they run envelope machines, color
mourning paper, apply mucilage to envelopes, and
pack small boxes of paper and envelopes. In all of
the last-mentioned trades hours are from eight A. M.
to half-past five P. M., with half an hour for lunch,
and a girl of fifteen can earn the same wages as the
woman of fifty, a light, quick touch and care being
the only essentials.
The trades mentioned here and in preceding papers
form but a portion of the ninety and more open to
women. Thirty-eight of these are directly connected
with clothing, and include every phase of ornament
or use in braid, gimp, button, clasp, lining, or other
article employed in its manufacture. In every one
of these competition keeps wages at the lowest possible figure. Outside of the army here employed
come the washers and ironers who laundry shirts and
underwear, whose work is of the most exhausting order,

STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK. 219
who " lean hard" on the iron, and in time become
the victims of diseases resulting from ten hours a
day of this " leaning hard," and who complain bitterly that prisons and reformatories underbid them
and keep wages down. I t is quite true. Convict
labor here as elsewhere is the foe of the honest
worker, and complicates a problem already sufficiently
complicated. These ironers can make from ten
to twelve dollars per week, but soon fail in health
and turn to lighter work, many of them taking
up cigar-making, which soon finishes the work of
demoralization.
Fringes, gimps, plush, and bonnet ornaments are
overcrowded with workers, for here, as in flowers and
feathers, fashion determines the season's work, and
the fringe-maker has for a year or so had small
call for her knowledge save in some forms of upholstery. One and all are so hedged in by competition
that to pass beyond a certain limit is impossible, and
all wages are kept at the lowest point, not only by
this fact, but by the fact that many women who had
learned the trade continue it after marriage as a
means of adding a trifle to the family income. An expert in any one of them is tolerably certain of steady
employment, but wages have reached the lowest point
and it does not appear that any rise is probable.
Sharp competition rules and will rule till the working class themselves recognize the necessity of an
education that will make them something more than

220

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

adjuncts to machinery, and of an organization in
which co-operation will take the place of competition.
That both must come is as certain as that evolution
is upward and not downward, but it is still a distant
day, and neither employer nor employed have yet
learned the possibilities of either.

CHAPTER

NINETEENTH.

DOMESTIC SEEVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS.
A T last we have come to the problem to which
there has necessarily been incidental reference
here and there, but which has otherwise bided its
time. That these pages or any pages written by
mortal hand in this generation can solve it, the writer
doubts, its solution being inextricably involved with
that of other social problems for which time is the
chief key. State the question as we may, there is
always a fresh presentation to be made, and replies
are as various as the minds of the staters. It is the
mistress with whom such presentation has thus far
rested, — a mistress thorned beyond endurance by
incompetence, dirt, waste, insubordination, — all the
evils known to ignorant and presumptuous service.
For such mistress, smarting from a sense of wrong, and
hopeless and faithless as to remedies, the outlook is
necessarily bounded by her own horizon. She listens
with indignant contempt to the story of the thousands
who choose their garrets and semi-starvation with
independence, to the shelter and abundance of the
homes in which they might be made welcome. She

222

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

may even aver that any statement of their suffering
is stupid sentimentality; the gush and maudlin melancholy of " humanitarian clergymen and newspaper
reformers."
For her, as for most of her order, in whom as yet
no faculty for seeing both sides of a question has
developed, there can be no reply save in words already
spoken. " These women, working for wages that keep
them always just above starvation point, have no
power left to think beyond the need of the hour.
They cannot stop, they dare not stop, to think of
othei methods of earning. They have no clothing in
which they could obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They have no knowledge that could
make them servants even of the meanest order.
They are what is left of untrained and hopelessly
ignorant lives," given over to suffering born in part
from their ignorance; and for a large proportion of
such cases there can be merely alleviation, and such
slight bettering of conditions as would come from a
system into which justice entered more fully.
With this army of incompetents we have at present
nothing to do. Our interest lies in discovering what
is at the bottom of the objection to domestic service ; how far these objections are rational and to be
treated with respect, and how they may be obviated.
The mistress's point of view we all know. We know,
too, her presentation of objections as she fancies she
has discovered them. What we do not know is the

DOMESTIC

SERVICE

AND ITS PROBLEMS.

223

ground taken by sensible, self-respecting girls, who
have chosen trades in preference, and from whom full
detail has been obtained as to the reasons for such
choice. In listening to the countless stories of experiment in earning a living, the passage from one industry to another, and the uncertainties and despairs
before the right thing had shown itself, the question
has always been asked, " How did it happen that you
did not try to get a place in some good family ?"
The answers were as various as the characters of
those who replied; some with indignation that they
should be supposed capable of this degradation, but
most of them thoughtfully and reasonably. In time
they arranged themselves under heads, the occupations represented by the various respondents being
over seventy. They were chiefly above the ordinary
domestic in intelligence and education, their employments being of every order, from paper-box making
to type-writing and stenography ; but the trades predominated,— American being the nationality most
largely represented, Irish born in this country ranking
next, and German and a sprinkling of other nationalities following. These replies are precisely of the
same nature as those given some time ago in Philadelphia during an investigation made by the head of
one of the first guilds for working-women established
in this country, objections being practically the same
at whatever point they may be given. They were arranged under different heads and numbered in order.

224

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

In the present case it seems well to take the individual testimony, each girl whose verdict is chosen
representing a class, and being really its mouthpiece.
First on the list stands Margaret M
, an American, twenty-three years old, and for five years in a
paper-box factory. Seven others nodded their assent,
or added a word here and there as she gave her view,
two of them Irish-Americans who had had some
years in the public schools.
" It's freedom that we want when the day's work
is done. I know some nice girls, Bridget's cousins,
that make more money and dress better and everything for being in service. They 're waitresses, and
have Thursday afternoon out and part of every other
Sunday. But they 're never sure of one minute that's
their own when they're in the house. Our day is
ten hours long, but when it's done it's done, and we
can do what we like with the evenings. That's what
I 've heard from every nice girl that ever tried service. You 're never sure that your soul's your own
except when you are out of the house, and I could n't
stand that a day. Women care just as much for
freedom as men do. Of course they don't get so
much, but I know I 'd fight for mine."
" Women are always harder on women than men
are," said a fur-sewer, an intelligent American about
thirty. " I got tired of always sitting, and took a
place as chambermaid. The work was all right and

DOMESTIC

SEE VICE AND ITS PROBLEMS.

225

the wages good, but I'll tell you what I couldn't
stand. The cook and the waitress were just common,
uneducated Irish, and I had to room with one and
stand the personal habits of both, and the way they
did at table took all my appetite. I could n't eat,
and began to run down; and at last I gave notice,
and told the truth when I was asked why. The lady
just looked at me astonished: ' If you take a servant's place, you can't expect to be one of the family,'
she said. ' I never asked it,' I said; ' all I ask is a
chance at common decency.' e It will be difficult to
find an easier place than this,' she said, and I knew
i t ; but ease one way was hardness another, and she
couldn't see that I had any right to complain.
That's one trouble in the way. It's the mixing up
of things, and mistresses don't think how they would
feel in the same place."
Third came an Irish-American whose mother had
been cook for years in one family, but who had, after
a few months of service, gone into a jute-mill, followed gradually by five sisters.
" I hate the very words ' service' and ' servant,'"
she said. " We came to this country to better ourselves, and it's not bettering to have anybody ordering you round."
" But you are ordered in the mill."
" That's different. A man knows what he wants,
and does n't go beyond i t ; but a woman never knows
what she wants, and sort of bosses you everlastingly.
15

226

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

If there was such a thing as fixed hours it might be
different, but I tell every girl I know,' Whatever you
do, don't go into service. You 11 always be prisoners and always looked down on.' You can do things
at home for them as belongs to you that somehow it
seems different to do for strangers. Anyway, I hate
it, and there 's plenty like me."
" What I minded," said a gentle, quiet girl, who
worked at a stationer's, and who had tried household
service for a year, — " what I minded was the awful
lonesomeness. I went for general housework, because I knew all about it, and there were only three
in the family. I never minded being alone evenings
in my own room, for I 'm always reading or something, and I don't go out hardly at all, but then I
always know I can, and that there is somebody to
talk to if I like. But there, except to give orders,
they had nothing to do with me. It got to feel sort
of crushing at last. I cried myself sick, and at last
I gave it up, though I don't mind the work at all. I
know there are good places, but the two I tried
happened to be about alike, and I sha'n't try
again. There are a good many would feel just the
same."
" Oh, nobody need to tell me about poor servants,"
said an energetic woman of forty, Irish-American, and
for years in a shirt factory. " Don't I know the way
the hussies '11 do, comin' out of a bog maybe, an' not
knowing the names even, let alone the use, of half

DOMESTIC SERVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS. 227
the things in the kitchen, and asking their twelve and
fourteen dollars a month ? Don't I know it well, an'
the shame it is to 'em ! but I know plenty o' decent,
hard-workin' girls too, that give good satisfaction, an'
this is what they say. They say the main trouble is,
the mistresses don't know, no more than babies, what
a day's work really is. A smart girl keeps on her
feet all the time to prove she isn't lazy, for if the
mistress finds her sitting down, she thinks there
can't be much to do and that she does n't earn her
wages. Then if a girl tries to save herself or is deliberate, they call her slow. They want girls on tap
from six in the morning till ten and eleven at night.
'T is n't fair. And then, if there's a let-up in the
work, maybe they give you the baby to see to. I
like a nice baby, but I don't like having one turned
over to me when I 'm fit to drop scrabbling to get
through and sit down a bit. I 've naught to say for
the girls that's breaking things and half doing the
work. They 're a shameful set, and ought to be put
down somehow; but it's a fact that the most I 've
known in service have been another sort that stayed
long in places and hated change. There's many a
good place too, but the bad ones outnumber 'em.
Women make hard mistresses, and I say again, I 'd
rather be under a man, that knows what he wants.
That's the way with most."
" I don't see why people are surprised that we
don't rush into places," said a shop-girl. " Our world

228

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

may be a very narrow world, and I know it is; but
for all that, it's the only one we 've got, and right or
wrong, we 're out of it if we go into service. A teacher
or cashier or anybody in a store, no matter if they
have got common-sense, doesn't wrant to associate
with servants. Somehow you get a sort of smooch.
Young men think and say, for I have heard lots of
them, ' Oh, she can't amount to much if she has n't
brains enough to make a living outside of a kitchen!'
You 're just down once for all if you go into one."
" I don't agree with you at all," said a young teacher
who had come with her. " The people that hire you
go into kitchens and are not disgraced. What I felt
was, for you see I tried it, that they ought n't to make
me go into livery. I was worn out with teaching,
and so I concluded to try being a nurse for a while.
I found two hard things: one, that I was never free
for an hour from the children, for I took meals and
all with them, and any mother knows what a rest it is
to go quite away from them, even for an hour; and the
other was that she wanted me to wear the nurse's cap
and apron. She was real good and kind; but when I
said, ' Would you like your sister, Miss Louise, to put
on cap and apron when she goes out with them ?'
she got very red, and straightened up. ' I t ' s a very different matter,' she said; ' you must not forget that
in accepting a servant's place you accept a servant's
limitations.' That finished me. I loved the children,
but I said,' If you have no other thought of what I

DOMESTIC

SERVICE

AND ITS PROBLEMS.

229

am to the children than that, I had better go/ I
went, and she put a common, uneducated Irish girl
in my place. I know a good many who would take
nurse's places, and who are sensible enough not to
want to push into the family life. But the trouble is
that almost every one wants to make a show, and it
is more stylish to have the nurse in a cap and apron,
and so she is ordered into them."
" I ' v e tried it," said one who had been a dressmaker and found her health going from long sitting.
" My trouble was, no conscience as to hours; and I
believe you '11 find that is, at the bottom, one of the
chief objections. My first employer was a smart,
energetic woman, who had done her ow7n work when
she was first married and knew what it meant, or
you'd think she might have known. But she had
no more thought for me than if I had been a machine.
She 'd sit in her sitting-room on the second floor and
ring for me twenty times a day to do little things,
and she wanted me up till eleven to answer the bell,
for she had a great deal of company. I had a good
room and everything nice, and she gave me a great
many things, but I 'd have spared them all if only I
could have had a little time to myself. I was all
worn out, and at last I had to go. There was another
reason. I had no place but the kitchen to see my
friends. I was thirty years old and as well born and
well educated as she, and it did n't seem right. The
mistresses think it's all the girls' fault, but I 've seen

230

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

enough to know that women have n't found out what
justice means, and that a girl knows it, many a time,
better than her employer. Anyway, you couldn't
make me try it again."
"My trouble was," said another, who had been in a
cotton-mill and gone into the home of one of the
mill-owners as chambermaid, " I hadn't any place
that I could be alone a minute. We were poor at
home, and four of us worked in the mill, but I had a
little room all my own, even if it did n't hold much.
In that splendid big house the servants' room was
over the kitchen, — hot and close in summer, and cold
in winter, and four beds in it. We five had to live
there together, with only two bureaus and a bit of
a closet, and one washstand for all. There was no
chance to keep clean or your things in nice order, or
anything by yourself, and I gave up. Then I went
into a little family and tried general housework, and
the mistress taught me a great deal, and was good
and kind, only there the kitchen was a dark little
place and my room like it, and I had n't an hour in
anything that was pleasant and warm. A mistress
might see, you 'd think, when a girl was quiet and
fond of her home, and treat her different from the
kind that destroy everything; but I suppose the
truth is, they 're worn out with that kind and don't
make any difference. I t ' s hard to give up your
whole life to somebody else's orders, and always feel
as if you was looked at over a wall like; but so it

DOMESTIC

SERVICE

AND ITS PROBLEMS.

231

is, and you won't get girls to try it, till somehow or
other things are different.''
Last on the record came a young woman born in
Pennsylvania in a fairly well-to-do farmer's house.
" I like house-work/' she said. " There's nothing
suits me so well. We girls never had any money,
nor mother either, and so I went into a water-cure
near the Gap and stayed awhile. Now the man that
run it believed in all being one family. He called
the girls helpers, and he fixed things so't each one
had some time to herself every day, and he tried to
teach 'em all sorts of things. The patients were
cranky to wait on, but you felt as if you was a
human being, anyhow, and had a chance. Well, I
watched things, and I said it was discouraging, sure
enough. I tried to do a square day's work, but twothirds of 'em there shirked whenever they could;
half did things and then lied to cover their tracks.
I was there nine months, and I learned better 'n ever
I knew before how folks ought to live on this earth.
And I said to myself the fault was n't so much in
the girls that hadn't ever been taught; it was in
them that did n't know enough to teach 'em. A girl
thought it was rather pretty and independent, and
showed she was somebody, to sling dishes on the
table, and never say ' ma'am' nor ' sir,' and dress up
afternoons and make believe they had n't a responsibility on earth. They hadn't sense enough to do
anything first-rate, for nobody had ever put any

232

PRISONERS

OF

POVERTY.

decent ambition into 'em. It is n't to do work well;
i t ' s to get somehow to a place where there won't be
any more work. So I say that it's the way of living
and thinking that 's all wrong; and that as soon as
you get it ciphered out and plain before you that any
•woman, high or low, is a mean sneak that doesn't
do everything in the best way she can possibly learn,
and that doesn't try to help everybody to feel just
so, why, things would stop being crooked and folks
would get along well enough. Don't you think so ?"
How far the energetic speaker had solved the problem must be left to the reader, for whom there are
still certain unconsidered phases, all making part of
the arraignment, scouted by those who are served,
but more and more distinct and formidable in the
mind of the server.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.
MOEE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE.
nr^HOUGH the testimony given in the preceding
chapter on this topic includes the chief objection to be made by the class of workers who would
seem to be most benefited by accepting household
service, there remain still one or two phases seldom
mentioned, but forming an essential portion of the
argument against it. They belong, not to the order
we have had under consideration, but to that below
it from which the mass of domestic servants is recruited, and with which the housekeeper must most
often deal.
The phases encountered here are born of the conditions of life in the cities and large towns; and
denied as they may be by quiet householders whose
knowledge of life is bounded by their own walls, or
walls enclosing neighbors of like mind, they exist
and face at once all who look below the surface.
The testimony of the class itself might be open to
doubt. The testimony of the physicians whose work
lies among them, or in the infirmaries to which they
come, cannot be impugned. Shirk or deny facts as

234

PRISONERS

OF POVERTY.

we may, it is certain that in the great cities, save for
the comparatively small proportion of quiet homes
where old methods still prevail, household service
has become synonymous with the worst degradation
that comes to woman. Women who have been in service, and remained in it contentedly until marriage,
unite in saying that things have so changed that only
here and there is a young girl safe, and that domestic
service is the cover for more licentiousness than can be
found in any other trade in which women are at work.
Incredible as this statement at first appears, the
statistics of hospitals and infirmaries confirm it, and
the causes are not far to seek. Household service
has passed from the hands of Americans into those
of the Irish first, and then a proportion of every
European nation. So long as the supply came to us
entirely from abroad we were comparatively safe.
If the experience of the new arrival had been solely
under thatched roof and on clay floors, at least sun
could visit them and great chimneys gave currents of
pure air, while simple food kept blood pure and gave
small chance for unruly impulses to govern. But
once with us demoralization began, and the tenementhouse guaranteed sure corruption for every tenant.
Even for the most decent there was small escape.
To the children born in these quarters every inmost
fact of human life was from the beginning a familiar
story. Overcrowding, the impossibility of slightest
privacy, the constant contact with the grossest side

MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE.

235

of life, soon deaden any susceptibility and destroy
every gleam of modesty or decency. In the lowest
order of all rules an absolute shamelessness which
conceals itself in the grade above, yet has no less firm
hold of those who have come up in such conditions.
There are many exceptions, many well-fought battles against their power, but our concern at present
is not with these but with facts as they stand recorded. Physician after physician has given in her
testimony; and one and all agree in the statement
that open prostitution is for many merely the final
step, — a mere setting the seal to the story of ruin and
licentiousness that has always existed. The women
who adopt this mode of life because of want of work
or low wages are the smallest of minorities. The
illegitimate children for whom the city must care are
not from this source. Often the mother is a mere
child who has been deceived and outraged, but far
more often she has entered a family prepared to meet
any advances, and often directly the tempter.
It is this state of things which makes many mothers
say: " My girl shall never run such risks. I '11 keep
her from them as long as I can;" and unsavory as the
details will seem, their knowledge is an essential
factor in the problem. The tenement-house stands
to-day not only as the breeder of disease and physical
degeneration for every inmate, but as equally potent
in social demoralization for the class who ignore its
existence. Out of these houses come hundreds upon

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hundreds of our domestic servants, whose influence is
upon our children at their most impressible age, and
who bring inherited and acquired foulness into our
homes and lives. And if such make but the smallest
proportion of those who serve, they are none the less
powerful and most formidable agents in that blunting
of moral perception which is a more and more apparent fact in the life of the day. The records from
which such knowledge is gleaned are not accessible
to the general public. They are formulated only by
the physician, whose business is silence, and who
gives only an occasional summary of what may be
found in the sewer underlying the social life of great
cities. Decorously hidden from view the foul stream
flows on, rising here and there to the surface, but instantly covered by popular opinion, which pronounces
such revelations disgusting and considers suppression
synonymous with extermination.
Naturally this phase of things is confined chiefly
to the great cities, but the virus is portable and its
taint may be discovered even in the remote country.
It is one of the many causes that have worked toward
the degradation of this form of service, but it is so
interwoven and integral a part of the present social
structure that temporary destruction would seem the
inevitable result of change. Yet change must come
before the only class who have legitimate place in
our homes will or can take such place. If different
ideals had ruled among us ; if ease and freedom from

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obligation and " a good time" had not come to be
the chief end of man to-day; if our schools gave any
training from which boy or girl could go out into life
with the best in them developed and ready for actual
practical use, — this mass of undisciplined, conscienceless, reckless force would have been reduced to its
lowest terms, and to dispose of the residuum would
be an easy problem. As it is, we are at the mercy
of the spirits we have raised, and no one word holds
power to lay them. No axioms or theories of the
past have any present application. It is because we
cling to the old theories while diligently practising
methods in absolute opposition to them, that the
question has so complicated itself. We cannot go
backward, but we can stop short and discover in what
direction our path is tending and whether we are not
wandering blindly in by-ways, when the public road
is clear to see.
It is certain that many among the most intelligent
working-women look longingly toward domestic service as something that might offer much more individual possibility of comfort and contentment than
the trades afford. But save for one here and there
who has chanced to find an employer who knows the
meaning of justice as well as of human sympathy,
the mass turn away hopeless of any change in methods. Yet reform among intelligent employers could
easily be brought about were the question treated
from the standpoint of justice, and the demand made

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an equally imperative and binding one for each side.
The mistresses who command the best service are
those who make rigorous demands, but keep their
own side of the bargain as rigorously. They are few,
for the American temperament is one of submission,
varied by sudden bursts of revolt, and despairing
return to a worse state than the first. A trainingschool for mistresses is as much an essential as
one for the servants. The conditions of modern life
become more complicated with every year; and as
simplification becomes for the many less and less
possible, it is all the more vitally necessary to study
the subject from the new standpoint, settle once for
all how and why we have failed, and begin again on
the new foundation.
Here then stands the arraignment of domestic
service under its present conditions, given point by
point as it has formulated itself to those who are
urged to turn to it. The mistresses' side defines itself as sharply; but when all is said the two are one,
the demand one and the same for both. Men who
work for wages work a specified number of hours,
and if they shirk or half fulfil their contract, find
work taken from them. Were the same arrangement
understood as equally binding in domestic service,
thousands of self-respecting women would not hesitate to enter it. Family life cannot always move in
fixed lines, and hours must often vary; but conscientious tally could be kept, and over-hours receive the

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pay they have earned. A conscience on both sides
would be the first necessity; and it is quite certain
that the master of the house would require education as decidedly as the mistress, woman's work within
home walls being regarded as something continuous,
indefinable, and not worth formal estimate.
In spite of the enormous increase of wealth, the
mass are happily what, for want of a better word,
must be called middle class. But one servant or
helper can usually be kept, and most often she is one
who has used our kitchens as kindergartens, adding
fragments of training as she passed from one to the
other, ending often as fairly serviceable and competent. Sure of her place she becomes tyrant, and
nothing can alter this relation but the appearance
upon the scene of organized trained labor, making a
demand for absolute fairness of treatment and giving
it in return. Once certain that the reign of incompetence was over, the present order of servers would
make haste to seek training-schools, or accept the low
wages which would include personal training from
the mistress, promotion being conditioned upon faithful obedience to the new order.
What are the stipulations which every self-respecting girl or woman has the right to make ? They are
short and simple. They are absolutely reasonable,
and their adoption would be an education to every
household which accepted them : —
1. A definition of what a day's work means, and

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payment for all over-time required, or certain hours
of absolute freedom guaranteed, especially where the
position is that of child's nurse.
2. A comfortably warmed and decently furnished
room, with separate beds if two occupy it, and both
decent place and appointments for meals.
3. The heaviest work, such as carrying coal, scrubbing pavements, washing, etc., to be arranged for if
this is asked, with a consequent deduction in the
wages.
4. No livery if there is feeling against it.
5. The privilege of seeing friends in a better part
of the house than the kitchen, and security from any
espionage during such time, whether the visitors are
male or female. This to be accompanied by reasonable restrictions as to hours, and with the condition
that work is not to be neglected.
6. Such a manner of speaking to and of the server
as shall show that there is no contempt for housework, and that it is actually as respectable as other
occupations.
Were such a schedule as this printed, framed, and
hung in every kitchen in .the land, and its provisions
honestly met, household revolution and anarchy would
cease, and the whole question settle itself quietly and
once for all. And this in spite of a thousand inherent
difficulties known to every housekeeper, but which
would prove self-adjusting so soon as it was learned
that service had found a rational basis. At present,

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with the majority of mistresses, it is simply unending
struggle to get the most out of the unwilling and
grudging server, hopelessly unreasonable and giving
warning on faintest provocation. Yet these very
women, turning to factory life, where fixed and inexorable law rules with no appeal, submit at once
and become often skilled and capable workers. It is
certain that domestic service must learn organization
as every other form of industry has learned it, and
that mistresses must submit to something of the
same training that is needed by the maid. Nor need
it be feared that putting such service on a strictly
business basis will destroy such kindliness as now
helps to make the relation less intolerable. On the
contrary, with justice the foundation and a rigorous
fulfilment of duty on both sides will come a far
closer tie than exists save in rarest instances, and
homes will regain a quality long ago vanished from
bur midst. Such training will be the first step
toward the co-operation which must be the ultimate
solution of many social problems.
It has failed in many earlier attempts because personal justice was lacking; but even one generation of
sustained effort to simplify conditions would insure
not only a different ideal for those who think at all,
but the birth of something better for every child of
the Eepublic.
For the individual standing alone, hampered by
many cares and distracted over the whole household
16

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problem, action may seem impossible. But if the
most rational members of a community would band
together, send prejudice and tradition to the winds,
and make a new declaration of independence for the
worker, it is certain that the tide would turn and a
new order begin. Till such united, concerted action
can be brought about there is small hope of reform,
and it can come only through women. Dismiss sentiment. Learn to look at the thing as a trade in
which each seeks her own advantage, and in which
each gains the more clearly these advantages are
defined. It is a hard relation. It demands every
power that woman can bring to bear upon it. It is
an education of the highest faculties she owns. It
means a double battle, for it is with ourselves that
the fight begins. Liberty can only come through
personal struggle. It is easy to die for it, but to live
for it, to deserve it, to defend it forever is another
and a harder ma;;ter. Still harder is it to know its
full meaning and what it is that makes the battle
worth fighting. "Union to such ends will be slow,
but it must come: —
" Freedom is growth and not creation :
One man suffers, one man is free.
One brair. forges a constitution,
But how shall the million souls be won ?
Freedom is more than a revolution —
He is not free who is free alone."

Is this the word of a dreamer whose imagination
holds the only work of reconstruction, and whose

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hands are powerless to make the dream reality ? On
the contrary, many years of experience in which few
of the usual troubles were encountered, added to that
of others who had thought out the problem for themselves, have demonstrated that reform is possible.
Precisely such conditions as are here specified have
been in practical operation for many years. The
liomes in which they have ruled have had the unfailing devotion of those who served, and the experiment
has ceased to come under that head, and demonstrated
that order and peace and quiet mastery of the day's
work may still be American possessions. Count this
imperfect presentation then as established fact for a
few, and ask why it is not possible to make it so for
the many.

CHAPTEE TWENTY-FIKST.
END AND BEGINNING.
r

I ^HE long quest is over. It ends; and I turn at
last from these women, whose eyes still follow
me, filled with mute question of what good may
come. Of all ages and nations and creeds, all degrees
of ignorance and prejudice and stupidity; hampered
by every condition of birth and training; powerless
to rise beyond them till obstacles are removed, — the
great city holds them all, and in pain and want and
sorrow they are one. The best things of life are
impossible to them. What is worse, they are unknown as well as unattainable. If the real good of
life must be measured by the final worth of the thing
we make or get by it, what worth is there for or
in them? The city holds them all, — "the great
foul city, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a
ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out
poison at every pore."
The prosperous have no such definition, nor do they
admit that it can be true. For the poor, it is the
only one that can have place. We pack them away
in tenements crowded and foul beyond anything

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known even to London, whose "Bitter Cry" had
less reason than ours; and we have taken excellent
care that no foot of ground shall remain that might
mean breathing-space, or free sport of child, or any
green growing thing. Grass pushes its way here and
there, but for this army it is only something that at
last they may lie under, never upon. There is no
pause in the march, where as one and another drops
out the gap fills instantly, every alley and by-way
holding unending substitutes. It is not labor that
profiteth, for body and soul are alike starved. It is
labor in its basest, most degrading form; labor that
is curse and never blessing, as true work may be and
is. It blinds the eyes. It steals away joy. It blunts
all power whether of hope or faith. It wrecks the
body and it starves the soul. It is waste and only
waste; nor can it, below ground or above, hold fructifying power for any human soul.
Here then we face them, — ignorant, blind, stupid,
incompetent in every fibre, — and yet no count of
such indictment alters our responsibility toward them.
Bather it multiplies it in always increasing ratio.
For it is our own system that has made these lives
worthless, and sooner or later we must answer how
it came, that living in a civilized land they had less
chance than the heathen to whom we send our missionaries, and upon whose occasional conversions we
plume ourselves as if thus the Kingdom of Heaven
were made wider. If it is true that for many only a

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little alleviation is possible, a little more justice, a
little better apportionment of such good as they can
comprehend, it is also true that something better is
within the reach of all.
How then shall we define it, and what possibility
of alteration for either lives or conditions lies before
us ? Nothing that can be of instant growth; and
here lies the chief discouragement, since as a people
we demand instantaneousness, and would have seed,
flower, and fruit at the same moment. Admit patience, capacity to wait, and to work while waiting,
as the first term of the equation, and the rest arrange
themselves.
For the greater part of social reformers, co-operation
has stood as the initial and most essential step, as
the fruit that could be plucked full-grown; and experience in England would seem to have demonstrated
the belief as true. It is the American inability to
wait that has proved it untrue for us, and until very
lately made failure our only record; but there is a
deeper reason than a merely temperamental one.
The abolition of the apprentice system, brought about
by the greed of master and men alike, has abolished
training and slow, steady preparation for any trade.
An American has been regarded as quick enough and
keen enough to take in the essential features of a
calling, as it were, at a glance, and apprenticeship has
been taken as practically an insult to national intelligence. Law has kept pace with such conviction, and

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thus the door has been shut in the face of all learners,
and foreigners have supplied our skilled workmen
and work-women. #The groundwork of any better
order lies, if not in a return to the apprentice system,
then in a training from the beginning, which will
give to eye and hand the utmost power of which
they are capable. Industrial education is the foundation, and until it has in its broadest and deepest
sense become the portion of every child born on
American soil, that child has missed its birthright.
With the many who accept it, it stands merely as
an added capacity to make money, and if taken in its
narrowest application this is all that it can do. Were
this all, it would be simply an added injustice toward
the degeneration that money-making for the mere
sake of money inevitably brings. But at its best,
perfected as it has been by patient effort on the part
of a few believers, it is far more than this. Added
power to earn comes with it, but there comes also a
love of the work itself, such as has had no place since
the days when the great guilds gave joyfully their
few hours daily to the cathedrals, whose stones were
laid and cemented in love and hope, and a knowledge
of the beauty to come, that long ago died out of any
work the present knows. The builders had small
book knowledge. They could be talked down by any
public-school child in its second or third year. But
they knew the meaning of beauty and order and law ;
and this trinity stands to-day, and will stand for

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many a generation to come, as an ideal to which we
must return till like causes work again to like ends.
The child who could barely read saw beauty on every
side, and took in the store of ballad and tradition that
gave life to labor. We have parted with all this wilfully. To the Puritan all beauty that hand of man
could create was of the devil, and thus we represent
a consecrated ugliness, any departure from which is
even now, by some conscientious souls, regarded with
suspicion.
The child, then, who can be made to understand
that beauty and order and law are one, has a new
sense born in him. Life takes on a new aspect, and
work a new meaning. But the fourteen weeks per
year of education, at present required by our law as
it stands in its application to children who must
work, has no power to bring such result. It begins
in the kindergarten, from which the poorest child
takes home, even to the tenement-house, something
strong enough, when growth has come, to abolish the
tenement-house forever. No man who works to these
ends has gauged possibilities more wisely than Felix
Adler, whose school shows us something not yet
attained by the many who, partially accepting his
methods, pronounce his theories dangerous and destructive to what must be held sacred. However
this may be, he and his band of co-workers have
proved, in seven years of unceasing struggle against
heavy odds, that a development is possible even for

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the tenement-house child, that reconstructs the entire
view of life and makes possible the end for which all
industrial training is but the preparation. It is in
such training that children, rich or poor, best learn
the demand bound up in living and working together,
and find in the end that co-operation is its natural
out-growth. There is no renunciation of the home
or destruction of the truest home life. There is
simply the abolition of competition as any necessary
factor in human progress, and the placing of the
worker beyond its power to harm.
Thus far we have left the bettering of social conditions chiefly to the individual, and any hint of State
interference carries with it the opprobrium of socialism. Yet more and more for those who are unterrified by names, the best in socialism offers itself as
the sole way of escape from monopolies and the stupidities and outrages of the present system. No one
panacea of any reformer fits the case or can alter existing conditions. Only what man's own soul sees as
good, and wills to possess, is of faintest value to him.
No attempt at co-operation can help till the worker
sees its power and use, and is willing to sacrifice
where sacrifice is necessary, to work and to wait in
patience. Such power is born in the industrial school
in its largest sense, — the school that trains heart and
mind as well as eye and hand, and makes the child
ready for the best work its measure of power can
know. This we can give by State or by individual

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aid, as the case may be, and every ward in the city
should own a sufficient number to include every child
within it. A check upon emigration would seem an
imperative demand, — not prevention, but some clause
which might act to lessen the garbage-heaps dumped
upon our shores. Pauperism and disease have no
rights as emigrants, and eliminating these would
make dealing with mere poverty a much more manageable matter.
The schools exist, and, while painfully inadequate
in number, demonstrate what may be done in the
future. Co-operation even for this hasty people is
almost equally demonstrated, as will be plain to those
who read two recent publications of the American
Economic Association: " Co-operation in a Western
City," by Albert Shaw, and "Co-operation in New
England," by Edward W. Bemis. Minneapolis is the
centre of the facts given in the first-mentioned
pamphlet, which is also the more valuable of the two,
not in execution but merely because it records a
movement which has ceased to be experimental; as
the little history includes every failure as well as the
final success, and thus stands as the best argument
yet made for the cause.
Industrial education for the child of to-day; cooperation as the end to be attained by the worker
into which the child will grow, — in these two factors
is bound up much of the problem. They will not
touch many whose miserable lives are recorded in

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these pages, but they will forever end any chance of
another generation in like case. There are workers
who think, who are being educated by sharp conflict with circumstances, and who look beyond their
own present need to the future. These men and
women, crowded to the wall by the present system,
are searching eagerly, not as mere anarchists and
destroyers, but as those who believe that something
better than destruction is possible.
It is these workers for whom the path must be
made plain, and to whom we are most heavily responsible. And this brings me to the final point bound
up indissolubly with the two already defined, — a
change in our own ideals. Such change must come
before any school can accomplish its best work, and
till it has at least begun neither school nor system
has lasting power. In these months of search in
which women of all ages and grades have given in
their testimony, — from the girl of fourteen earning
her two or three dollars a week in the bag-factory or as
cash-girl, to the woman stitching her remnant of life
into the garments that by and by her more fortunate
sisters will find on the bargain counter, — I discover
not alone their ignorance and stupidity and grossness
and wilful blindness, but behind it an ignorance and
stupidity no less dense upon which theirs is founded,
— our own. The visible wretchedness is so appalling,
the need for instant relief so pressing, that it is small
wonder that no power remains to look beyond the

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moment, or to disentangle one's self from the myriad
conflicting claims, and ask the real meaning of the
demand. Mile after mile of the fair islands once the
charm of the East Eiver and the great Sound beyond
are covered by lazar-houses, — the visible signs in this
great equation that fills the page of to-day; the problem of human crime and disease and wretchedness
complicating itself with every addition, and no nearer
solution than when the city was but a handful of
houses and poverty yet unknown.
We have made attempts here and there to limit
the breeding ground; to offer less fruitful soil to the
spawn increasing with such frightful rapidity, and
demanding with every year fresh reformatories, larger
asylums and hospitals, more and more machinery of
alleviation. Yet the conviction strengthens that even
when the tenement-house of to-day is swept aside,
and improved homes with decent sanitary conditions
have taken their place, that the root of the evil is
even then untouched, and that it lies not alone in
their lives, but in our own. And so, as final word,
I say to-day to all women who give their lives to
beneficence, and plan ceaselessly and untiringly for
better days, that no beneficence can alter, no work of
our hands or desire of our hearts bring the better day
we desire, till the foundations have been laid in
something less shifting than the sands on which we
build.
The mission of alleviation, of protection, of care for

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the foulest and lowest of lives, has had its day. It
is time that this mass of effort stirred against its perpetual reproduction, its existence, its ever more and
more shameless demands. An improved home goes
far toward making these tendencies less strong; it
may even diminish the number of actual transgressors ; but what home, no matter how well kept, has or
will have power to alter the fact that in them thousands of women must still slave for a pittance that
borders always on that life limit fixed by the political economists as the vanishing point in the picture
of modern life ? Sunlight and air may take the place
of the foulness now reigning in the dens that many of
them know as homes ; but will either sun or air
shorten hours or raise wages, or alter the fact that
not one in a thousand of these women but has
grounded her whole pitiful life on a delusion, — a
delusion for which we are responsible ?
Year by year in the story of the Eepublic, labor
has taken lower and lower place. The passion for
getting on, latent in every drop of American blood,
has made money the sole symbol of success, and
freedom from hand-labor the synonyme of happiness.
The mass of illiterate, unenlightened emigrants pouring in a steady stream through Castle Garden have
become our hands, and, as hands dependent on the
heads of others, have fallen into the same category as
the slaves, whose possession brought infinitely more
degradation to owners than to owned. It is the story

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of every civilized nation before its fall, — this exploitation of labor, this degradation of the worker; and
the story of hopeless decay and collapse must be ours
also, if different ideals do not rise to fill the place of
this Golden Calf to which all have bent the knee.
There is not a girl old enough to work at all who
does not dream of a possible future in which work
will cease and ease and luxury take its place. The
boy content with a trade, the man or woman accepting simple living and its limitations contentedly, is
counted fool. To get money, and always more and
more money, is the one ambition; and in this mad
rush toward the golden fountain, gentle virtues are
trampled under foot, and men count no armor of
honest thought worth wearing unless it be fringed
with bullion. The shop-girl must have her cotton
velvet and her glass substitutes for diamonds. The
lines of caste are drawn as sharply with her as in the
ascending grades through which she hopes to pass.
Labor is curse; never the blessing that it may bear
when accepted as man's chief good, and used as developing, not as destroying power.
Never till men see and believe that the fortune
made by mere sharpness and unscrupulousness, the
fruit not of honest labor but of pure speculation, is a
burning disgrace to its owner, a plague-spot in civilization, shall we be able to convince girl or woman
that labor is honorable, and better gains possible than
any involved in merely getting on. Never till this

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furious fight for success, this system of competition
which kills all regard for the individual, demanding
only a machine capable of so much net product, —
never till these and all methods of like nature have
ceased to have place, or right to existence, can we
count ourselves civilized or hope to better the conditions that now baffle us. No church, no mission,
no improved home, no guild or any other form of
mitigation means anything till the whole system of
thought is reconstructed, and we come to some sense
of what the eternal verities really are.
It is easy for a woman to be kind and long-suffering, but the women who can be just to themselves, as
well as to others, we can count on our fingers. Yet
justice is the one demand in this life of to-day, and
not one of us who shrinks and shudders at the
thought of what women-workers are enduring but
has it in her power to lessen the great sum of wretchedness ; to begin for some one the work of education
into just thinking and just living. Sweeping changes
may not be possible. But beginning is always possible; and not a woman capable of thinking but has
power by the simple force of example to lay the
corner-stone of the new temple, fairer than any yet
known to mortal eyes. If there is doubt for this
generation of working-women toiling in blindest ignorance, it rests with us to lessen the doubt for the
next, and to make it impossible in that better day
for which we labor. Not one of us but can ask,

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" What is the source of the income which gives me
ease ? Is it possible for me to reconstruct my own
life in such fashion that it shall mean more direct
and personal relation to the worker ? How can I
bring more simplicity, less conventionality, more
truth and right living into home and every relation
of life?"
I write these final words with all deference to the
noble women whose lives have been given to good
work, and many of whom long ago settled these questions practically for themselves. But for many of us
there has been simply passive acceptance of all present conditions, without a question as to how or why
they have come. It is because I believe that with
us is the power to remedy every one if we will, that
I appeal to women to-day. I write not as anarchist;
not as declaimer against the rights of property, but
as believer in the full right to ownership of all legitimately acquired property. I believe it the order of
life, of any life that would hold good work of whatever nature, that enough should be acquired to make
sharp want or eating care and perplexity impossible.
But it is certain that even for the most unselfish of
us there is an exaggerated estimate of the value of
money, — an involuntary and inevitable truckling to
the one who has most, — and that, no matter what our
teaching may be, the force of every act and tendency
makes against it. And there can be no retracing of
steps that have for generations turned in the wrong

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direction. The very breath we draw on this American
soil is poisoned by the foulness about us, and about
us by our own act and choice. We have degraded
labor till there is no lower depth, and not one but
many generations must pass before these masses over
whose condition we puzzle can find their feet in the
path that means any real progress.
Ask first, then, not what shall we do for these
women, but what shall we do for ourselves ? How
shall we learn to know what are the real things ?
How shall we come to love them and cleave to them,
and hold no life worth living that admits sham or
compromise, or believes the mad luxury of this
generation anything but blighting curse and surest
destruction ? Till we know this we have learned
nothing, and are forever not helpers, but hinderers, in
the great march that our blunders and stupidities
only check for the time. For the word is forever
onward, and even the blindest soul must one day see
that if he will not walk by free choice in the path of
God, he will be driven into it with whips of scorpions, made thus to know what part was given him
to fill, and what judgment waits him who has chosen
blindness.

University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge

MRS. CAMPBELLS BOOKS.
THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB. A Story for Girls. l6mo.
#1.50.
MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME. A Novel. l6mo.
11.50.
MIS5 riELINDA'5 OPPORTUNITY. A Story for
Girls. l6mo. 21.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)
PRISONERS OF POVERTY. Women Wage-workers,
their Trades and their Lives. 12mo. #1.00. (Paper,
50 cents.)
PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD.
l6mo.
#1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)
ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION. A Story.
12mo. 21.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)
WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. Their Past, their Present,
and their Future. l6mo. #1.00.
THE EASIEST WAY IN HOUSEKEEPING AND
COOKING. Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in
Classes. A new revised edition. l6mo. #1.00.
IN FOREIGN KITCHENS. With Choice Recipes from
England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North. 50
cents.
SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE OF DR.
MARTHA SCARBOROUGH. l6mo. #1.00.
These books will be mailed, post-paid,
price by the Publishers,

on receipt of the

LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY,
2 5 4 Washington Street, Boston, Mass.
Terms for quantities, or for class use,
will be sent on application.

MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME.
A NOVEL.
By H E L E N

CAMPBELL.

AUTHOR OF " THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB."

One volume. i6mo. Cloth. $1.50.
" Confirmed novel-readers who have regarded fiction as created for amusement
and luxury alone, lay down this book with a new and serious purpose in life. T h e
social scientist reads it, and finds the solution of many a tangled problem ; the
philanthropist finds in it direction and counsel. A novel written with a purpose,
of which never for an instant does the author lose sight, it is yet absorbing in its
interest. It reveals the narrow motives and the intrinsic selfishness of certain
grades of social life ; the corruption of business methods ; the ' false, fairy gold,'
of fashionable charities, and ' a d v a n c e d ' thought.
Margaret Wentworth is a
typical New England girl, reflective, absorbed, full of passionate a n d repressed
intensity under a quiet and apparently cold exterior.
T h e events that group
themselves about her life are the natural result of such a character brought into
contact with real life. T h e book cannot be too widely read." —Boston
Traveller.
" If the ' What-to-do C l u b ' was clever, this is decidedly more so. I t is a powerful story, and is evidently written in some degree, we cannot quite say how great
a degree, from fact. T h e personages of the story are very well drawn, — indeed,
* Amanda B r i g g s ' is as good as anything American fiction has produced. W e
fancy we could pencil on the margin the real names of at least half the characters.
I t is a book for the wealthy to read that they may know something that is required
of them, because it does not ignore the difficulties in their way, and especially
does not overlook the differences which social standing puts between class and
class. I t is a deeply interesting story considered as mere fiction, one of the best
which has lately appeared. W e hope the authoress will go on in a path where
ghe has shown herself so capable." — The
Churchman.
" I n Mrs. Campbell's novel we have a work that is not to b e judged by
ordinary standards. T h e story holds the reader's interest by its realistic pictures
of the local life around us, by its constant and progressive action, and by the
striking dramatic quality of scenes and incidents, described in a style clear, connected, and harmonious. T h e novel-reader who is not taken u p and made to
share t h e author's enthusiasm before getting half-way through the book must
possess a taste satiated and depraved by indulgence in exciting and sensational
fiction. T h e earnestness of the author's presentation of essentially great purposes
lends intensity to her narrative. Succeeding as she does in impressing us strongly
with her convictions, there is nothing of dogmatism in their preaching. But t h e
suggestiveness of every chapter is backed by pictures of real life."—New York

World.

,

Sold bv all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of
price, by the publishers.
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON.

MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY.
A

STORY.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL,
AUTHOR

OF " T H E WHAT-TO-DO

CLUB,"

"PRISONERS

OF

" M R S . HERNDON'S

INCOME,"

POVERTY."

i6mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper covers, 50 cents.
" Mrs. Helen Campbell has written ' Miss Melinda's Opportunity' with a
definite purpose in view, and this purpose will reveal itself to the eyes of all of its
philanthropic readers. T h e true aim of the story is to make life more real and
pleasant to the young girls who spend the greater part of the day toiling in the
busy stores of N e w York. Just as in the ' What-to-do Club ' the social level of
village life was lifted several grades higher, so are the little friendly circles of shopgirls made to enlarge and form clubs in ' M i s s Melinda's O p p o r t u n i t y . ' " —
Boston
Herald.
" ' Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author ; but it is none
the less interesting and none the less realistic. T h e plot is unpretentious, and
deals with the simplest and most conventional of t h e m e s ; but the characterdrawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and highly finished to
the slightest details. T h e r e is much quiet humor in the book, and it is handled
with skill and reserve. Those who have been attracted to Mrs. Campbell's other
works will welcome the latest of them with pleasure and satisfaction." — Saturday Gazette.
" T h e best book that Helen Campbell has yet produced is her latest story,
' Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' which is especially strong in character-drawing,
and its life sketches are realistic and full of vigor, with a rich vein of humor running through them. Miss Melinda is a dear lady of middle life, who has finally
found her opportunity to do a great amount of good with her ample pecuniary
means by helping those who have the disposition to help themselves. T h e story
of how some bright and energetic girls who had gone to New York to earn their
living put a portion of their earnings into a common treasury, and provided themselves with a comfortable home and good fare for a very small sum per week, is
not only of lively interest, but furnishes hints for other girls in similar circumstances that may prove of great value. An unpretentious but well-sustained plot
runs through the book, with a happy ending, in which Miss Melinda figures as
the angel that she i s . " — Home
Journal.
- - ---•- -

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of
priceA by the publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON.

THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB.
A STORY FOE GIRLa
BY HELEN CAMPBELL.

l6mo. Cloth. Price $1.50.
•
•* • The What-to-do Club * is an unpretending story. It introduces us to a
frozen or more village girls of varying ranks. One has had superior opportunities; another exceptional training; two or three have been * away to school5r
some are farmers' daughters; there is a teacher, two or three poor self-support"
trs, — in fact, about such an assemblage as any town between New York anct
Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a
delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them. . . . Town and
country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness
and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study prao»
tical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings cl
neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one
Step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like
a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in
our country." — The Ckautnuquan.
" * The What-to-do Club' is a delightful story for girls, especially for New
England girls, by Helen Campbell. The heroine of the story is Sybil Waite, the
beautiful, resolute, and devoted daughter of a broken-down but highly educated
Vermont lawyer. The story shows how much it is possible for a well-trained and
determined young woman to accomplish when she sets out to earn her own living,
or help others. Sybil begins with odd jobs of carpentering, and becomes an artist
in woodwork. She is first jeered at, then admired, respected, and finally loved
by a worthy man. The book closes pleasantly with John claiming Sybil as his
own. The labors of Sybil and her friends and of the New Jersey ' Busy4Bodies,'
which are said to be actual facts, ought to encourage many young women to more
•uccessful competition in the battles of life." — Golden Rule.
11
In the form of a story, this book suggests ways in which young women
may make money at home, with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a
moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The
narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawnj
and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural storyteller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles
and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made
poetic and invested with a certain ideal glamour, and we are thrilled and absorbed
by an array of figures of receipts and expenditures, equally with the changeful
incidents of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony. Fun and pathos, sense and
sentiment, are mingled throughout, and the combination has resulted in one of
the brightest stories of the season." — Woman* s Journal.
4

•

•

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by publishers^
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE
OF DR. MARTHA SCARBOROUGH.
BY H E L E N

CAMPBELL.

16tno. Cloth, Price,

$1.00.

Besides being equal to Mrs. Campbell's best work in the
past, it is strikingly original in presenting the ethics of
the body as imperiously claiming recognition in the radical
cure of inebriety. It forces attention to the physical and
spiritual value of foods, and weaves precedent and precept
into one of the most beguiling stories of recent date.
It is the gospel of good food, with the added influence of fresh air, sunlight,
cleanliness, and physical exercise that occupy profitably the attention of Helen
Campbell. Martha is a baby when the story begins, and a child not yet in her
teens when the narrative comes to an end, but she has a salutary power over
many lives. Her father is a wise country physician, who makes his chaise, in his
daily progress about the hills, serve as his little daughter's cradle and kindergarten. When she gets old enough to understand he expounds to her his views of
the sins committed against hygiene, and his lessons sink into an appreciative
mind. When he encounters particularly hard cases she applies his principles
with unfailing logic, and is able to suggest helpful means of cure. The old doctor
is delightfully sagacious in demonstrating how the confirmed pie-eater marries the
tea inebriate, with the result in doughnut-devouring, dyspeptic, and consumptive
offspring. "What did they die of?" asked little Martha, in the village graveyard; and her father answers solemnly, "Intemperance." So Martha declares
that she will be a " food doctor," and later on she helps her father in saving
several victims of strong drink. The book is one that should find hosts of
earnest readers, for its admonitions are sadly needed, not in the country alone, but
in the city, where, if better ideas of diet prevail, people have yet as a rule a long
way to go before they attain the path of wisdom. Meanwhile it remains true, as
Mrs. Campbell makes Dr Scarborough declare, that the cabbage soup and black
bread of the poorest French peasants are really better suited to the sustenance of
healthy life than the "messes" that pass for food in many parts of rural New
England. — The Beacon.

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt
of price, by the Publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON.

ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION.
% £torp.
BY H E L E N

CAMPBELL,

Author of "Prisoners
of Poverty"
"Mrs. Herndon's
Income?
" Miss Melinda's Opportunity"
" The What-to-do Club? etc.

16mo, cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
—*—
This story is On the scale of a cabinet picture. It presents interesting
figures, natural situations, and warm colors. Written in a quiet key, it is
yet moving, and the letter from Bolton describing the fortunate sale of
Roger's painting of " T h e Factory Bell" sends a tear of sympathetic joy
to the reader's eye. Roger Berkeley was a young American art student in
Paris, called home by the mortal sickness of his mother, and detained at
home by the spendthriftness of his father and the embarrassment that had
overtaken the family affairs through the latter cause. A concealed mortgage on the old homestead, the mysterious disappearance of a package of
bonds intended for Roger's student use, and the paralytic incapacity of the
father to give the information which his conscience prompted him to give,
have a share in the development of the story. Roger is obliged for the
time to abandon his art work, and takes a situation in a mill; and this trying diversion from his purpose is his "probation." How he profits by
this loss is shown in the result. The mill-life gives Mrs. Campbell opportunity to express herself characteristically in behalf of down-trodden
" labor." The whole story is simple, natural, sweet, and tender; and the
figures of Connie, poor little cripple, and Miss Medora Flint, angular and
snappish domestic, lend picturesqueness to its group of characters. — Literary World.

#
Sold by all Booksellers.
price^ by the Publishers,

Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON.

PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD
By HELEN CAMPBELL,
AUTHOR OF " T H E W H A T - T O - D O - C L U B , " " P R I S O N E R S OF POVERTY."
" ROGER B E R K E L E Y ' S P R O B A T I O N , " E T C .

16mo.

Cloth.

Price, $1.00;

paper, 60 cents.

Mrs. Helen Campbell, an occasional and valued contributor to tills
journal, and the author of "Prisoners of Poverty," and other studies or
social questions in this country, has offered in this book conclusions drawn
from investigations on the same themes made abroad, principally in England
or France. She has devoted personal attention and labor to the work, and,
although much of what she describes has been depicted before by others,
she tells her story with a freshness and an earnestness which give it exceptional interest and value. Her volume is one of testimony. She does not
often attempt to philosophize, but to state facts as they are, so that they
may plead their own cause. She puts before the reader a series of pictures, vividly drawn, but carefully guarded from exaggeration or distortion,
that he may form his own opinions. — Congregationalist.
Can life be worth living to the hordes of miserable women who have to
work from fifteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage of from twenty-five to
thirty-five or forty cents ? And what have all the study of political economy,
all the writing of treatises about labor, all the Parliamentary debates, all the
blue books, all the philanthropic organizations, all the appeals to a common
humanity, done, in half a century, for these victims of what is called modern
civilization? Mrs. Campbell is by no means a sentimentalist. We know
of no one who examines facts more coolly and practically, or who labors
more earnestly to find the real causes for the continued depression of the
labor market, as this horrible state of things is euphemistically termed.
The conclusions she reaches are therefore sober and trustworthy.—New
York Tribune.
No work of fiction, however imaginative, could present more startling
pictures than does this little book, which is sympathetic, but not sentimental, the result of personal investigation, and a most valuable contribution to
the literature of the labor question. — Philadelphia Record.
%
Mrs. Helen Campbell's " Prisoners of Poverty," a study of the condition of some of the lower strata of the laboring classes, particularly the
working-women in the great cities of the United States, is supplemented
with another volume, "Prisoners of Poverty Abroad," in which the life of
working-women of European cities, chiefly London and Paris, is depicted
with equally graphic and terrible truthfulness.
They are the result of fifteen months of travel and study, and are examples of Mrs. Campbell's well-known methods of examination and description. They paint a horrible picture, but a truthful one, and no person of
even ordinary sensibilities can read these books without experiencing a
strong desire to do something to abate the monstrous injustice which they
describe. — Good Housekeeping.
Sold by all Booksellers.
by the Publishers,

Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price,

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON.

In Foreign Kitchens.

W

ITH

CHOICE

RECIPES FROM ENGLAND, FRANCE,

GERMANY, ITALY, AND THE NORTH.

By HELEN CAMPBELL,
Author of " The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking,"
"Prisoners of Poverty," "The What-To-Do Club/' etc,

I6MO.

CLOTH.

PRICE, 50 CENTS.

While foreign cookbooks are accessible to all readers of foreign
languages, and American ones have borrowed from them for what we
know as " French cookery," it is difficult often to judge the real value
of a dish, or decide if experiment in new directions is worth while.
The recipes in the following chapters, prepared originally for The
Epicure, of Boston, were gathered slowly, as the author found them in
use, and are most of them taken from family recipe-books, as valued
abroad as at home. So many requests have come for them in some
more convenient form than that offered in the magazine, that theL
present shape has been determined upon; and it is hoped they may be
a welcome addition to the housekeeper's private store of rules for
varying the monotony of the ordinary menu.

Sold by all Booksellers.
price by the

Mailed,

postpaid,

on receipt of the

Publishers,

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,

BOSTON.

Women Wage= Earners.

Their Past.
their Present, and their Future. By HELEN CAMPBELL. l6mo. Cloth. Price, {Si.00.

The writer describes employments in the factory and home, compares the
condition of women workers here and abroad, dwells upon the evils and abuses
in factory life and in general trades, and points out remedies and gives suggestions. The book is an expansion of a prize monograph for the American
Economic Association, for which a reward was given in 1891, expanded to
nearly double its original size. An introduction to it is contributed by Prof.
Richard T . Ely. Nowhere else could one get so much information on this
subject in so small a space as in this book. — The School Journal.
It includes such topics as factory labor, rise and growth of trades, labor
bureaus, wage rates, and general conditions for women workers in England, on
the Continent, and in the United States.
The importance of this subject with which Mrs. Campbell deals is not
easily overestimated. The present age is the era of woman, since whatever
affects her receives a consideration never before given. For a long time the
agitation in favor of woman was to remove barriers and open the way for her.
The way has been opened and woman has entered scores of fields previously
closed to her. The questions which now arise are as to her remuneration for
her work in these fields, and the influence of women wage-earning on the
family, the home, and society. These are questions not yet settled. Mrs.
Campbell approaches their discussion in a spirit of fairness, and what she says
is suggestive and helpful, if not conclusive. Her volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of social science. — Boston Advertiser.
Such a work could never have been compiled for women except by a woman.
It is itself a demonstration of the fact that women can handle the woman
question as men alone cannot do, and that women can be raised and elevated
from their present depressed condition only by organizations and trades unions
of their own. Every woman should read this book carefully. She will gain
from its perusal a breadth and depth of knowledge which will be of lasting
value to her, and it will show her how great a work exists for women to do, in
order to "make the world better." — Woman''s Journal.
It is a sober statement of facts by a thoughtful woman who has made a lifestudy of economic questions, both through the medium of books, and by
personal investigation into the modern conditions of labor. The book covers
the history of the wage question as affecting women, its present status, and its
prospect for the future. — Worcester Spy.
Her style is robust, orderly, precise, every page carrying the evidence of
trained thought and of careful, conscientious research. — Public Opinion.

L I T T L E , B R O W N , & CO., P u b l i s h e r s ,
254 Washington Street, Boston.

JV© Woman

can give herself to a more noble occupation
making
of the ideal home. — The
Beacon,

than

the

The Easiest W a y in Housekeeping
a n d C o o k i n g . Adapted to Domestic Use or
Study in Classes. By HELEN CAMPBELL. A new
revised edition. l6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.
The work grew out of Mrs. Campbell's experiences as a teacher of cookery,
more especially at the South, but its principles are applicable anywhere, and as
a manual for inexperienced housewives or as a. class-room text-book it will b .
found of decided value. . . . No woman can give herself to a more nobb
occupation than the making of the ideal home, and Mrs. Campbell, by showing
women how to do this, accomplished a great and important task. The book
she has written tells about the requirements of a healthful home, explains how
the routine of daily housekeeping may be most economically and effectually
conducted, sets forth the chemistry of food and the relations of food to health,
and in the second part gives special instructions on the preparation of different
sorts of food, with many carefully tested recipes. — The Beacon.
It is not a cook-book pure and simple. It is more. It covers a large range,
such as the situation and arrangement of the house, drainage and water supply,
the day's work and how to plan it, fires, lights, and things to work with, washingday and cleaning in general, the body and its composition, food and its laws,
the relations of food to health, the chemistry of animal food, the chemistry of
vegetable food, condiments, and beverages. The book is interestingly written,
as is everything that comes from Mrs. Campbell's pen. It certainly will prove
a great benefit to housewives and would-be housewives who read it; besides,
the ample recipes it contains make it a book of reference of constant value. —
Cleveland World.
In the midst of always increasing cookery books, it has had a firm constituency of friends, especially in the South, where its necessity was first made plain.
There is something here for the tyro and the adept, and whether used at home
with growing girls, in cooking clubs, in schools, or in private classes, the system
outlined has proven itseilf admirable, and the theory and practice of Miss
Campbell's book are almost beyond criticism. — Oregonian.
It is not merely a cook-book, but is a text-book of about everything that is
of special interest to the housekeeper, and is adapted either for domestic use or
study in classes. It is in fact a housekeeper's most valuable encyclopaedia,
written by a lady who by education and thoroughly practical knowledge was
rendered singularly competent for the important work here undertaken and so
successfully carried out. . . . It is a book that intelligent young housekeepers
especially will come to regard as an indispensable companion. — Boston Home
Journal.
It really is one of the most admirable of manuals for the usual young
housekeeper. — Providence
Journal.

LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY,
254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass.