CHAPTER XI
Social relations largely limited to learning the lives of her employees and helping them by work, by sympathy and by friendliness, and sometimes by taking them into her house to tide over an emergency. (Twenty-four years of age: 1853.)
I must tell you here something of the social life that we led. We had brought a number of friendly letters with us from our acquaintances in Berlin to their friends and relatives in America; all of which upon our arrival we sent by post, with the exception of two—the one sent by a neighbor to his son, Albert C., the other to a young artist, both of whom called for their letters.
About four weeks after we were settled in New York, we received a call from some young men whose sisters had been schoolmates of my sisters in Berlin, who came to inquire of us where to find Mr. C. We could give them no information, as we had not seen him since he called for his letter; neither did we now see anything of the G.’s. But the acquaintance thus formed with these young men was continued, and our solitude was now and then enlivened by an hour’s call from them. Soon after I had commenced my new business, they came one day in company with Mr. C., whom they had met accidentally in the street, and, on his expressing a wish to see us, had taken the liberty to bring him to our house.
My business continued to prosper, and by constantly offering none but the best quality of goods for sale, in a very short time I had so much to do that my whole time in the day was occupied with out-door business, and I was forced to sit up at night with my sister to prepare work for the knitters.
At one time, we had thirty girls constantly in our employ, and in this way I became acquainted with many of those unfortunates who had been misled and ruined on their arrival by persons pretending friendship. Two of these in particular interested me greatly.
One, the granddaughter of a famous German and bearing his name, was the daughter of a physician. She had come to this country hoping to find a place as governess. Poor girl! She was a mere wreck when I found her, and all my efforts to raise her up were in vain. She was sick and in a terrible mental condition. We took her into our house, nursed her and cared for her. When she recovered, we supplied her with work for which we paid her so well that she always had three dollars a week, which paid for her board and washing. It was twice as much as she could earn, yet not enough to make her feel reconciled with life.
At one time, she did not come to us for a whole week. I went to see her, and her landlady told me that she was melancholy. I persuaded her to come and stay with us for a few days, but in spite of all my friendly encouragement, I could not succeed in restoring her to cheerfulness. She owned that she could not work merely to live; she did not feel the pangs of hunger, but she felt the want of comforts to which she had been accustomed and which in our days are regarded as necessities.
She attempted to find a situation as governess, but her proficiency in music, French and drawing counted as nothing. She had no city references, and though having been two years in New York, dared not name the place to which she had been conducted on her arrival. She left us at last in despair after having been a week with us. She never called again and I could not learn from her landlady where she had gone.
Three months afterwards, I heard from one of the girls in our employ that she had married a poor shoemaker in order to have a home, but I never learned whether this was true. About a year later, I met her in the Bowery, poorly but cleanly dressed. She hastily turned away her face on seeing me, and I only caught a glimpse of the crimson flush that overspread her countenance.
The other girl that I referred to was a Miss Mary ——, who came with her mother to this country, expecting to live with a brother. They found the brother married and unwilling to support his sister, while his wife was by no means friendly in her reception of his mother. The good girl determined to earn support for her mother, and a pretended friend offered to take care of their things until she could find work and rent lodgings. After four weeks’ search, she found a little room and bedroom in a rear building in Elizabeth Street at five dollars a month, and was preparing to move when her “friend” presented a bill of forty dollars for his services. She could only satisfy his rapacity by selling everything that she could possibly spare, after which she commenced to work, and as she embroidered a great deal besides working for me (for which I paid her six dollars a week), for a time she lived tolerably well.
After some time, her mother fell ill, and she had to nurse her and attend to the household as well as to labor for their support. It was a trying time for the poor girl. She sought her brother, but he had moved to the West. I did all that I could for her, but this was not half enough. And after I had quitted the manufacturing business and left the city, my sister heard that she had drowned herself in the Hudson, because her mother’s corpse was lying in the house while she had not a cent to give it burial or to buy a piece of bread unless she sold herself to vice.
Are not these two terrible romances of New York life? And many besides did I learn among these poor women, so many indeed that I forget the details of them all. Stories of this kind are said to be without foundation, but I say that there are more of them in our midst than it is possible to imagine.
Women of good education but without money are forced to earn their living. They determine to leave their home, either because false pride prevents their seeking work where they have been brought up as ladies, or because this work is so scarce that they cannot earn by it even a life of semi-starvation, while they are encouraged to believe that in this country they will readily find proper employment.
They are too well educated to become domestics, better educated indeed than half the teachers here, but modesty, and the habit of thinking that they must pass through the same legal ordeal as in Europe, prevent them from seeking places in this capacity. They all know how to embroider in the most beautiful manner, and knowing that this is well paid for in Europe, they seek to find employment of this kind in the stores.
Not being able to speak English, they believe the stories of the clerks and proprietors, are made to work at low wages, and are often swindled out of their money. They feel homesick, forlorn and forsaken in the world. Their health at length fails them, and they cannot earn bread enough to keep themselves from starvation. They are too proud to beg, and the consequence is that they walk the streets or throw themselves into the river.
I met scores of these friendless women. Some I took into my house; for others I found work and made myself a sort of guardian; while to others I gave friendship to keep them morally alive. It is a curious fact that these women are chiefly Germans. The Irish resort at once to beggary or are inveigled into brothels as soon as they arrive, while the French are always intriguing enough either to put on a white cap and find a place as bonne, or to secure a private lover.
I am often in despair about the helplessness of women, and the readiness of men to let them earn money in abundance by shame while they are ground down to the merest pittance for honorable work.
Shame on society, that women are forced to surrender themselves to an abandoned life and to death when so many are enjoying wealth and luxury in extravagance! I do not wish the rich to divide their estates with the poor—I am no friend to communism in any form. I only wish institutions that shall give to women an education from childhood that will enable them, like young men, to earn their livelihood. These weak women are the last to come forth to aid in their emancipation from inefficient education. We cannot calculate upon these; we must educate the children for better positions, and leave the adults to their destiny.
How many women marry only for a shelter or a home! How often have I been the confidante of girls who the day before, arrayed in satin, had given their hands to rich men before the altar, while their hearts were breaking with suppressed agony! And this, too, in America, this great free nation, which, notwithstanding, lets its women starve.
It is but lately that a young woman said to me, “I thank Heaven, my dear doctor, that you are a woman, for now I can tell you the truth about my health. It is not my body that is sick, but my heart. These flounces and velvets cover a body that is sold—sold legally to a man who could pay my father’s debts.”
Oh! I scorn men, sometimes, from the bottom of my heart. Still, this is wrong, for it is the fault of the woman—of the mother—in educating her daughter to be merely a beautiful machine fit to ornament a fine establishment; not gaining this, there is nothing left but wretchedness of mind and body.
Women, there is a connection between the Fifth Avenue and the Five Points! Both the rich and the wretched are types of womanhood, both are linked together forming one great body, and both have the same part in good and evil. I can hardly leave this subject, though it may seem to have little to do with my American experience, but a word spoken from a full heart not only gives relief but may carry a message to at least one listening ear with far-reaching results.