Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern

A great book is yet unwritten about women. Michelet has aired his wax-doll theories regarding them. The defender of "woman's rights" has given us her views. Authors and authoresses of little, and big repute, have expressed themselves on this subject, and none of them as yet have begun to grasp it: men – because they lack spirituality, rightly and justly to interpret women; women – because they dare not, or will not, tell us that which most interests us to know. Who shall write this bold, frank, truthful book remains to be seen. Meanwhile woman's millennium is yet a great way off; and while it slowly progresses, conservatism and indifference gaze through their spectacles at the seething elements of to-day, and wonder "what ails all our women?"

Let me tell you what ails the working-girls. While yet your breakfast is progressing, and your toilet unmade, comes forth through Chatham Street and the Bowery, a long procession of them by twos and threes to their daily labor. Their breakfast, so called, has been hastily swallowed in a tenement house, where two of them share, in a small room, the same miserable bed. Of its quality you may better judge, when you know that each of these girls pays but three dollars a week for board, to the working man and his wife where they lodge.

The room they occupy is close and unventilated, with no accommodations for personal cleanliness, and so near to the little Flinegans that their Celtic night-cries are distinctly heard. They have risen unrefreshed, as a matter of course, and their ill-cooked breakfast does not mend the matter. They emerge from the doorway where their passage is obstructed by "nanny goats" and ragged children rooting together in the dirt, and pass out into the street. They shiver as the sharp wind of early morning strikes their temples. There is no look of youth on their faces; hard lines appear there. Their brows are knit; their eyes are sunken; their dress is flimsy, and foolish, and tawdry; always a hat, and feather or soiled artificial flower upon it; the hair dressed with an abortive attempt at style; a soiled petticoat; a greasy dress, a well-worn sacque or shawl, and a gilt breast-pin and earrings.

Now follow them to the large, black-looking building, where several hundred of them are manufacturing hoop-skirts. If you are a woman you have worn plenty; but you little thought what passed in the heads of these girls as their busy fingers glazed the wire, or prepared the spools for covering them, or secured the tapes which held them in their places. You could not stay five minutes in that room, where the noise of the machinery used is so deafening, that only by the motion of the lips could you comprehend a person speaking.

Five minutes! Why, these young creatures bear it, from seven in the morning till six in the evening; week after week, month after month, with only half an hour at midday to eat their dinner of a slice of bread and butter or an apple, which they usually eat in the building, some of them having come a long distance. As I said, the roar of machinery in that room is like the roar of Niagara. Observe them as you enter. Not one lifts her head. They might as well be machines, for any interest or curiosity they show, save always to know what o'clock it is. Pitiful! pitiful, you almost sob to yourself, as you look at these young girls. Young? Alas! it is only in years that they are young.

"Only three dollars a week do they earn," said I to a brawny woman in a tenement house near where some of them boarded. "Only three dollars a week, and all of that goes for their board. How, then, do they clothe themselves?" Hell has nothing more horrible than the cold, sneering indifference of her reply: "Ask the dry-goods men."

Perhaps you ask, why do not these girls go out to service? Surely it were better to live in a clean, nice house, in a healthy atmosphere, with respectable people, who might take other interest in them than to wring out the last particle of their available bodily strength. It were better surely to live in a house cheerful and bright, where merry voices were sometimes heard, and clean, wholesome food was given them. Why do they not? First, because, unhappily, they look down upon the position of a servant, even from their miserable stand-point. But chiefly, and mainly, because when six o'clock in the evening comes they are their own mistresses, without hinderance or questioning, till another day of labor begins. They do not sit in an under-ground kitchen, watching the bell-wire, and longing to see what is going on out of doors. More's the pity, that the street is their only refuge from the squalor and quarrelling and confusion of their tenement-house home. More's the pity, that as yet there are no sufficiently decent, cleanly boarding-houses, within their means, where their self-respect would not inevitably wither and die.

As it is, they stroll the streets; and who can blame them? There are gay lights, and fine shop-windows. It costs nothing to wish they could have all those fine things. They look longingly into the theatres, through whose doors happier girls of their own age pass, radiant and smiling, with their lovers. Glimpses of Paradise come through those doors as they gaze. Back comes the old torturing question: Must my young life always be toil? nothing but toil? They stroll on. Music and bright lights from the underground "Concert Saloons," where girls like themselves get fine dresses and good wages, and flattering words and smiles beside. Alas! the future is far away; the present only is tangible. Is it a wonder if they never go back to the dark, cheerless tenement-house, or to the "manufactory" which sets their poor, weary bodies aching, till they feel forsaken of God and man? Talk of virtue! Live this life of toil, and starvation, and friendlessness, and "unwomanly rags," and learn charity. Sometimes they rush for escape into ill-sorted marriages, with coarse rough fellows, and go back to the old tenement-house life again, with this difference, that their toil does not end at six o'clock, and that from this bargain there is no release but death.

But there are other establishments than those factories where working-girls are employed. There is "Madame – , Modiste." Surely the girls working there must fare better. Madame pays six thousand dollars rent for the elegant mansion in that fashionable street, in the basement or attic of which they work. Madame cuts and makes dresses, but she takes in none of the materials for that purpose. Not she. She coolly tells you that she will make you a very nice plain black silk dress, and find everything, for two hundred dollars. This is modest, at a clear profit to herself of one hundred dollars on every such dress, particularly as she buys all her material by the wholesale, and pays her girls, at the highest rate of compensation, not more than six dollars a week. At this rate of small wages and big profits, you can well understand how she can afford not only to keep up this splendid establishment, but another still more magnificent for her own private residence in quite as fashionable a neighborhood. Another "modiste" who did "take in material for dresses," and – ladies also! was in the habit of telling the latter that thirty-two yards of any material was required where sixteen would have answered. The remaining yards were then in all cases thrown into a rag-pen; from which, through contract with a man in her employ, she furnished herself with all the crockery, china, glass, tin and iron ware needed in her household. This same modiste employed twenty-five girls at the starvation price of three dollars and a half a week. The room in which they worked was about nine feet square, with only one window in it, and whoso came early enough to secure a seat by that window saved her eyesight by the process. Three sewing-machines whirred constantly by day in this little room, which at night was used as a sleeping apartment. As the twenty-five working-girls were ushered in to their day's labor in the morning before that room was ventilated, you would not wonder that by four in the afternoon dark circles appeared under their eyes, and they stopped occasionally to press their hands upon their aching temples. Not often, but sometimes, when the pain and exhaustion became intolerable.

One of the twenty-five was an orphan girl named Lizzy, only fifteen years of age. Not even this daily martyrdom had quenched her abounding spirits, in that room where never a smile was seen on another face – where never a jest was ventured on, not even when Madame's back was turned. Always Lizzie's hair was nicely smoothed, and though the clean little creature went without her breakfast – for a deduction of wages was the penalty of being late – yet had she always on a clean dark calico dress, smoothed by her own deft little fingers. In that dismal, smileless room she was the only sunbeam. But one day the twenty-five were startled; their needles dropped from their fingers. Lizzie was worn out at last! Her pretty face blanched, and with a low baby cry she threw her arms over her face and sobbed: "Oh, I cannot bear this life – I cannot bear it any longer. George must come and take me away from this." That night she was privately married to "George," who was an employee on the railroad. The next day while on the train attending to his duties, he broke his arm, and neither of the bridal pair having any money, George was taken to the hospital. The little bride, with starvation before her, went back that day to Madame, and concealing the fact of her marriage, begged humbly to be taken back, apologizing for her conduct on the day before, on the plea that she had such a violent pain in her temples that she knew not what she said. As she was a handy little workwoman, her request was granted, and she worked there for several weeks, during her honeymoon, at the old rate of pay. The day George was pronounced well, she threw down her work, clapped her little palms together, and announced to the astonished twenty-five that they had a married woman among them, and that she should not return the next morning. Being the middle of the week, and not the end, she had to go without her wages for that week. Romance was not part or parcel of Madame's establishment. Her law was as the Medes and Persians, which changed not. Little Lizzie's future was no more to her than her past had been – no more than that of another young thing in that work-room, who begged a friend, each day, to bring her ever so little ardent spirits, at the half hour allotted to their miserable dinner, lest she should fail in strength to finish the day's work, upon which so much depended.

Oh! if the ladies who wore the gay robes manufactured in that room knew the tragedy of those young lives, would they not be to them like the penance robes of which we read, piercing, burning, torturing?

There is still another class of girls, who tend in the large shops in New York. Are they not better remunerated and lodged? We shall see. The additional dollar or two added to their wages is offset by the necessity of their being always nicely apparelled, and the necessity of a better lodging-house, and consequently a higher price for board, so that unless they are fortunate enough to have a parent's roof over their heads, they will not, except in rare cases, where there is a special gift as an accountant, or an artist-touch in the fingers, to twist a ribbon or frill a lace, be able to save any more than the class of which I have been speaking. They are allowed, however, by their employers, to purchase any article in the store at first cost, which is something in their favor.

But, you say, is there no bright side to this dark picture? Are there no cases in which these girls battle bravely with penury? I have one in my mind now; a girl, I should say a lady; one of nature's ladies, with a face as refined and delicate as that of any lady who bends over these pages; who has been through this harrowing experience of the working-girl, and after years of patience, virtuous toil, has no more at this day than when she began, i. e., her wages day by day. Of the wretched places she has called "home," I will not pain you by speaking. Of the rough words she has borne, that she was powerless, through her poverty, to resent. Of the long walks she has taken to obtain wages due, and failed to secure them at last. Of the weary, wakeful nights, and heart-breaking days, borne with a heroism and trust in God, that was truly sublime. Of the little remittances from time to time forwarded to old age and penury, in "the old country," when she herself was in want of comfortable clothing; when she herself had no shelter in case of sickness, save the hospital or the almshouse. Surely, such virtue and integrity, will have more enduring record than in these pages.

Humanity has not slept on this subject, though it has as yet accomplished little. A boarding-house has been established in New York for working-girls, excellent in its way, but intended mainly for those who "have seen better days," and not for the most needy class of which I have spoken. A noble institution, however, called "The Working Woman's Protective Union," has sprung up, for the benefit of this latter class, their object being to find places in the country, for such of these girls as will leave the overcrowded city, not as servants, but as operatives on sewing-machines, and to other similar revenues of employment. Their places are secured before they are sent. The person who engages them pays their expenses on leaving, and the consent of parents, or guardians, or friends, is always obtained before they leave. A room is to be connected with this institution, containing several sewing-machines, where gratuitous instruction will be furnished to those who desire it. A lawyer of New York has generously volunteered his services also, to collect the too tardy wages of these girls, due from flinty-hearted employers. Many of the girls who have applied here are under fifteen. At first, they utterly refused to go into the country, which to them was only another name for dullness; even preferring to wander up and down the streets of the city, half-fed and half-clothed, in search of employment, than to leave its dear kaleidoscope delights. But after a little, when letters came from some who had gone, describing in glowing terms, their pleasant homes; the wages that one could live and save money on; their kind treatment; the good, wholesome food and fresh air; their hearty, jolly country fun; and more than all, when it was announced that one of their number had actually married an ex-governor, the matter took another aspect. And, though all may not marry governors, and some may not marry at all; it still remains, that inducing them to go to the country is striking a brave blow at the root of the evil; for we all know, that human strength and human virtue have their limits; and the dreadful pressure of temptations and present ease, upon the discouragement, poverty and friendlessness of the working-girls of New York, must be gratifying to the devil. I do not hesitate to say, that there is no institution of the present day, more worthy to be sustained, or that more imperatively challenges the good works and good wishes of the benevolent, than "The New York Working Woman's Protective Union." May God speed it!