'What! You make a shirt for six cents?'
'Yes, sir, and furnish the thread.'
If my reader is incredulous, I can assure him that Mary does not tell a falsehood; for I know that this price is paid by some of the most 'respectable' firms in New York. 'Can't you get work to do at higher prices?'
'Sometimes, sir. But these folks are better than many others; they pay regularly. Some who offer better prices will cheat, or they won't pay when the work is carried home These folks give me plenty of work, and I never have to wait; so I don't look around for better. I can't afford to take the risk, sir; so many will cheat us.'
Respectability is a good thing, you see. Let me whisper a few other prices to you, which respectability pays its poor girls. Fifteen or twenty cents for making a linen coat, complete; sixty-two cents per dozen for making men's heavy overalls; one dollar a dozen for making flannel shirts. Figures are usually very humdrum affairs, but what a story they tell here! These last prices I did not get from Mary. I got them in the first place, from a benevolent lady who works with heart and hand, day after day, all her time, in endeavoring to better the condition of the poor girls of New York. But I got them, in the second place, from the employers themselves. By going to them, pencil in hand, and desiring the cheerful little particulars for publication? Hardly! I sent my office-boy out in search of work for an imaginary 'sister,' and to inquire what would be paid her. Having inquired, and got his answer, it is needless to say that James concluded his sister could live without taking in sewing.
So, you see, that in order merely to pay her rent, Mary must make two shirts a day. That being done, she must make more to meet her other expenses. She has fuel to buy—and a pail of coal costs her fifteen cents. She has food to buy—but she eats very little, her father still less. She has not tasted meat of any kind for over a year, she tells us. What then does she eat? Bread and potatoes, principally; she drinks a cup of cheap tea, without milk or sugar, at night—provided she has any, which she frequently has not. She has also to buy (I am not painting fancy pictures, I am stating facts, which are not regulated by any rules known to our experience) 'a trifle of whiskey.' Mary's father was not reared a teetotaller, and though I was, and have no taste for liquor, I am able to see how a little whiskey may be the last physical solace possible to this miserable man, whose feet press the edge of a consumptive's grave.
"Perhaps you think it cannot be any of our first and wealthiest firms that pay poor girls starvation prices for their work. But you are mistaken. If my publishers did not deem it unwise to do so, I should give the names of some of our best Broadway houses as among the offenders against the poor girls."
A LIFE-STRUGGLE.
"Let us follow one of these poor girls," says the writer we have quoted, "as she comes out of the den of this beast of prey, and moves off, wringing her hands in an agony of distress. Day and night, with wearying industry, she had been working upon the dozen shirts he had given her to make. She had been looking forward—with what eagerness you can hardly realize—to the hour when she could carry him her work and get her pay, and recover her deposit money or receive more shirts to do. Now she is turned into the street with nothing! She dares not return to her miserable boarding-place in Delancey street, for her Irish landlady is clamorous for the two weeks' board now due. Six dollars! The sum is enormous to her. She had expected that to-night she could hand the Irish woman the money she had earned, and that it, with a promise of more soon, might appease her. But now she has nothing for her—nothing. Despair settles down upon her. Hunger is its companion, for she has had no supper. Where shall she go?"
Night has come down since she left Delancey street, carrying the heavy bundle of new-made shirts. The streets are lighted up, and are alive with bustle. Heedless what course she takes, unnoticed, uncared-for by any in the great ocean of humanity whose waves surge about her, she wanders on, and by-and-by turns into Broadway. Broadway, ever brilliant—with shop windows where wealth gleams in a thousand rare and beautiful shapes; Broadway, with its crowding omnibuses and on-pouring current of life, its Niagara roar, its dazzle—is utter loneliness to her. The fiery letters over the theatre entrances are glowing in all the colors of the rainbow. Gayly-attired ladies, girls of her own age, blest with lovers or brothers, are streaming in at the portal, beyond which she imagines every delight—music, and beauty, and perfume of flowers, and warmth. She looks in longingly, hugging her shivering shoulders under her sleazy shawl, till a policeman bids her 'move on.' Out of the restaurants there float delicious odors of cooking meats, making her hungrier still. Her eyes rest, with a look half wild and desperate, on the painted women who pass, in rustling silks, and wearing the semblance of happiness. At least they are fed—they are clothed—they can sit in bright parlors, though they sit with sin. It is easy to yield to temptation. So many do! You little know how many. In Paris, she might perhaps go and throw herself into the Seine. In New York, such suicides are not common; but there is a moral suicide, which is common. Thousands on thousands of poor girls have thrown themselves into this stream, in the last agony of desperation; sinking down in the dark current of sin, to be heard of no more.