I have spoken of Public Laundry Rooms, and a Ready-made Clothing Room. There is a class of women greatly to be benefited by the establishment of a Knitting Factory. It is well known to every person in this room, especially to physicians, that no knitting done by machinery can compete with that done by the human hand, in durability, warmth, or stimulative power. Invalids are now obliged to import the Shetland jackets, which are always badly shaped; or to hire, at our fancy stores, the making of delicate and very expensive fabrics. Men's socks and children's gloves may be purchased; but the first cost from seventy-five cents to a dollar a pair, and the last are of very inferior manufacture. We cannot give out knitting to advantage, because of the dirt and grease it is liable to accumulate where water is not plenty nor ventilation to be had; and very good knitters of socks have not skill and intelligence to manage the different sizes, or to shape the larger articles, such as drawers and under-jackets for the two sexes. Coarse crocheting would answer better than knitting for many articles.
Let a large, airy room be hired, well supplied with Cochituate. Let all sorts of material be kept on hand, and some coarse, warm kinds of Shetland yarn imported that are not now to be had. Let at least two superintendents be appointed from among the women, who work best for our fancy stores; let knitting-women be invited to use this room for twelve hours a day, or less, as they choose,—receiving daily pay for their daily needs; and in less than one year you would have an establishment, for which not merely Boston, but all New England, would be grateful. I should hope that neither this nor the Clothing Room would ever offer very expensive or highly ornamental articles for sale. There is no danger that the interests of the wealthy will suffer. What I desire is to provide for the needs of the lowest women and the comfort of the middle-class customer.
The young girls in Beacon Street have now some thing to do. I offer them the establishment of a Training School for Servants, of a public but self-supporting Laundry, of a Ready-made Clothes Room, and a Knitting Factory; all simple matters, entirely within their control, if they would but believe it.
A certain human faithlessness often interferes with the execution of such plans. If my young friends doubt, let them go and talk to Harriet Ryan about it. She will show them, how, having taken the first step toward duty, God always leads the way to the second. To cheer them still further, I will tell them—for I may never have a fitter opportunity—of the splendid success of the industrial schools in Ireland, established in 1850 by Ellen Woodlock,—a name destined to stand honorably by the side of Florence Nightingale; nay, worthy to precede it, in so far as preventive measures are always a greater good than remedial. Mrs. Ellen Woodlock has powers of statement, according to the "London Times," equal to her extraordinary powers of execution; and it is from her own account of the work that I select what I have to offer you.
In 1850, Mrs. Woodlock had placed her only child at school, and began to look for something to do. A lady, who had started an industrial school on a gift of $250 from a clergyman, asked for her help. She proposed to teach young girls to do plain sewing. Very soon, there were more seamstresses than customers; but God did not fail to open a way. One poor, half-blind creature—very poor and very earnest—failed in the plain sewing, and was put to make cabbage nets. She did it so well, that Mrs. Woodlock taught her to make silk nets for the hair. The nets took: other girls were taught; and Mrs. Woodlock went to all the shops in Cork, and coaxed the merchants to buy of her. She very soon began to make nets for exportation. Mrs. Woodlock's fashionable niece arrived from Dublin, with a new style of crocheted net. Her aunt had a dozen made directly; and, by showing these, got orders from all the merchants for the new style. One day, a merchant came into the school, and saw a little girl at work on a mohair net. He asked the price, and found that she would make him twelve for the same money that he had paid for one in London. So you may guess where his next orders went.
Mrs. Woodlock then made interest with the "buyers," or young men who go to London twice a year to purchase goods. They took over her patterns, and returned with orders so large that their principals at once entered into the business. Yellow nets were made for Germany. Many were sent to England and America; and orders came so thick that they had to share them with the convent schools. They paid out a hundred dollars weekly; and alacrity and intelligence beamed where there had been, at first, only hopeless suffering and imbecility. Of course, this point was not reached without much self-sacrifice. At first, the children made awkward work that would not sell. Then the lady patronesses got tired, and dropped off. Worn and worried, Mrs. Woodlock fell ill. If you ever undertake any of the schemes I have mentioned, you must be prepared for all these things: they will certainly happen. No one ever fought a revolutionary war, and established an independence, without one or two defeats like that at Bunker Hill.[30] When they become historic, we call them victories. When Mrs. Woodlock found that she was human and liable to fall ill, she sent for some of the Sisters of Charity, and trained several, so that they could, on an emergency, fill her place well.
But Mrs. Woodlock did not stop here. She used to teach the Catechism in the parish church; and, one day, she gave notice that a new school would be opened in that neighborhood. The next morning, one hundred and fifty girls, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, presented themselves. Mrs. Woodlock asked every girl, who had ever earned any money before, to hold up her hand. Four girls did so. They had sold apples in the streets. One hundred and forty-six suffering creatures, who had no way to earn a cent! Think what a class it was! Do you remember what I told you, the other day, of eighteen hundred and eighty women in New York who had never been taught to support themselves? Ten of the best workers from the first school were taken to teach these girls; and, for a salary, the teacher received the first perfect dozen of nets made by each of her pupils. This plan was not costly, and worked well. There was no lack of faithfulness. Travellers came to see the schools. There was no time wasted in looking for orders: they had more than they could fill. Of course, they must keep these hands employed: so other manufactures must be tried. Mrs. Woodlock thought she would try fine shirt-fronts for the city dealers. What do you think the people said? That it could not be done in all Ireland; that there was nobody to wash and iron them properly; that they would have to be sent all the way to Glasgow to be boxed in card boxes! Well, the nuns undertook the first washing and ironing,—making apprentices, let us hope, of some of the older pupils; and Mrs. Woodlock found a starving band-box maker, whom she herself taught to make flat boxes. And look now at the blessing which always follows wise work. This flat-box maker has had to take apprentices, has opened another branch of her business in Limerick, and has put money into the Savings' Bank.
Mrs. Woodlock's account of her work would be a great help to any young persons engaged in philanthropic effort. She lays the very greatest stress upon her machinery,—her methods. Every industrial work ought to support itself: if it does not, it is a failure. All her schools earn their own bread, in every sense; and all reforming agencies must always stand second to any institution which does that. See how she carried this thought into her daily life. Mrs. Woodlock had a brother who was one of the Board of Poor-Law Guardians. Seeing the success of her work, he persuaded the other members to employ an embroidery mistress in the Union School for a few months.
When these children knew enough, Mrs. Woodlock took out six, and put them into her industrial school, till she was sure they could support themselves. Then she let them look up lodgings, and continued to give them work from the school. In a few weeks, they got on so well that they began to take their relations and friends out of that terrible poorhouse. Three young girls took out their mother and cousin, and supported them. Eighty girls were brought off the parish by the first working of her schools. A house has also been opened for orphans, where they are trained to support themselves.