We are always referred to political economy, when we speak of the low wages of women; but a little investigation will show that other causes co-operate with those, which can be but gradually reached, to determine their rates.
1. The wilfulness of women themselves, which, when I see them in positions I have helped to open to them, fills me with shame and indignation.
2. The unfair competition, proceeding from the voluntary labor, in mechanical ways, of women well to do.
For the first, we cannot greatly blame the women whom employers choose for their good looks, for expecting to earn their wages through them, rather than by the proper discharge of their duties. Their conduct is not the less shameful on that account; but I seem to see that only time and death and ruin will educate them.
For the second, we must strive to develop a public sentiment, which, while it continues to hold labor honorable, will stamp with ignominy any women who, in comfortable country homes, compete with the workwomen of great cities. There are thousands of wealthy farmers' wives to-day, who just as much drive other women to sin and death as if they led them with their own hands to the houses in which they are ultimately compelled to take refuge. Still further, it has come to be known to me, that in Boston, and I am told in New York also, wealthy women, who do not even do their own sewing, have the control of the finer kinds of fancy work, dealing with the stores which sell such work, under various disguises. I cannot prove these words, but they will strike conviction to the hearts of the women themselves, and I wish them to have some significance for men; for, if these women had the pocket-money which their taste and position require, they would never dream of such competition. One thing these men should know, that such women are generally known to their employers, and their domestic relations are judged accordingly.
The recent investigations into factory labor in England concern rather the condition than the wages of the women. At flower-making, 11,000 girls are employed from fourteen to eighteen hours daily. In hardware shops and factories, they work, from six years of age, fourteen hours daily. In glass factories, 5,000 women are employed, from nine years of age and upwards, eighteen hours daily. In tobacco factories, 7,000 women are employed, under conditions of great physical suffering. As knitters, from six years old, they work fourteen hours daily for 1s. 3d. a week!
This terrible state of things is partly owing to competition with the labor of French machinery. A great deal of ignorant prejudice against machines is one of its results. In Sheffield, files are still made by hand; while here, in America, we make watches by machinery! The disposition of the whole community, both here and in Great Britain, towards this labor question, is kindly. It has become a momentous social problem. During the fifteen years that my attention has been riveted to this subject, I have seen a great change in public feeling.
I have received the Sixth Annual Report of the Society for the Employment of Women, of which the Earl of Shaftesbury is President, and Mr. Gladstone a Vice-President. This society has trained some hair-dressers, clerks, glass-engravers, book-keepers, and telegraph operators; but its greatest service consists in the constant issue of tracts, to influence developing public opinion. Such an association should be started in New York.
I should have been glad to inaugurate in Boston, during the last six years, several important industrial movements. The war checked the enthusiasm I had succeeded in rousing; and I have not been able to pause in my special work of collecting and observing facts to stimulate it afresh, or to solicit personally the necessary means. How easy it would be for a few wealthy women to test these experiments!
I would first establish a mending-school; and, having taught women how to darn and patch in a proper manner, I would scatter them through the country, to open shops of their own. As it is, I do not know a city, in which a place exists to which a housekeeper could send a week's wash, sure that it would be returned with every button-hole, button, hem, gusset, and stay in proper condition. These mending-shops should take on apprentices, who should be sent to the house to do every sort of repairing with a needle.
I would open another school to train women to every kind of trivial service, now clumsily or inadequately performed by men. If, for instance, you now send to an upholsterer to have an old window-blind or blind-fixture repaired, his apprentice will replace the entire thing at a proportionate cost, leaving the old screw-holes to gape at the gazer. I would train women to wash, repair, and replace in part, and to carry in their pockets little vials of white or red lead to fill the gaping holes. Full employment could be found for such apprentices.