But this poor wanderer has memories of a home, and a mother, under whose protection she had been taught to shudder at sin. She cannot plunge into this ghastly river with wide-open eyes—at least, not yet. She walks on.
Her ear is caught by sounds of music and laughter, songs and bursts of applause, that come up out of these basement-haunting concert saloons. She has heard of the 'pretty waiter girls'—the fine clothes they wear, the gay lives they lead, their only labor to wait upon the patrons of the saloon, and chat with them as they sit about the tables listening to the music. 'It is a life of Paradise,' she murmurs, 'to this life I lead!' At least, she thinks, there is no actual sin in being a waiter girl. She perceives a wide distance between the descent of these basement stairs to solicit employment, and that other dreadful resource.
The poor girls who work in these underground hells do not get good pay, and their work is not light. They are confined in these noisome places, thick with tobacco smoke and foul with poisonous odors, till two o'clock in the morning; in some places till five o'clock. Their pay is four dollars to six dollars a week; higher figures, certainly, than thousands of working-girls get, but, for two reasons, lower, in effect. The first of these two reasons is, that the waiter girl must dress with some degree of attractiveness. The second, and the most weighty, is, that she must pay a high price for board. Going home long after midnight, she must live somewhere in the vicinity of the saloon. Then the woman who, having taken a girl to board, finds that she comes home after two o'clock every night, draws her own conclusions at once. That girl must pay well for her board, if, indeed, she be not turned out of the house without a word. It will scarcely help the matter, if the girl explains that she is employed at a concert saloon. The woman knows very well what 'pretty waiter girls' are. 'Those creatures' must pay for what they have, and pay roundly. The result is, that the waiter girl's occupation will not support her. The next result is, that there are no virtuous girls in the concert saloons of Broadway—unless they be such girls as this we are following tonight, as she wanders the streets, pausing to look down into this fancied half-Paradise, only to enter it at last, in search of 'good pay.'
Let us go down with her. She pushes open the green-baize door, and walks timidly to the bar. A girl who is passably pretty can almost always get a situation here. The big-armed prize-fighter-looking brute behind the bar reads our wanderer's history at once. 'Fresh' girls are rare in that quarter. She is assisted to improve her dress a little— in some cases these girls are provided with a fancy costume, à la Turque, which they don at coming, and doff at leaving each night—and she commences her work. A crowd of half-drunk rowdies enter, and call on her to serve them, attracted by her sweet face. The grossest insults are put upon her, her character being taken for granted; infamous liberties are taken with her person, and her confusion laughed at. She would fly from the place at once, if she dared; but she does not dare— she is afraid of the man behind the bar. Her experience with men has taught her to expect nothing but brutality from them, if she offend them in any way. When the weary hours have dragged along to the end, and the place is closed, she goes out into the street again, with a bevy of other girls. The street is still and lonely; the long lines of lamps twinkle in silence; the shop windows are all shrouded in darkness; there are no rumbling wheels, save when an occasional hack passes with slow-trotting horses.
Now she must decide upon her course. This is the critical moment. Will she adhere to her new-found employment? If she do, one of her companions will volunteer to take her to a boarding-place—and from that hour she is lost. But perhaps she breaks away: a policeman saunters by, and she appeals to him, begging to be taken to a station- house to sleep—a common resource with the homeless poor girl—and on the morrow resumes her deathly struggle for existence. How long it will last—how long she will fight her almost inevitable fate—no one can tell.
"But the poor girls who work in shops provided by their employers, fare better, you think. At least, they find shelter and warmth in the cold winter, while at work? At least, they are permitted to breathe and live."
THE WORKSHOPS OF THE POOR GIRLS.
There are hoop-skirt manufactories where, in the incessant din of machinery, girls stand upon weary feet all day long for fifty cents. There are photograph galleries—you pass them in Broadway admiringly— where girls 'mount' photographs in dark rooms, which are hot in summer and cold in winter, for the same money. There are girls who make fans, who work in feathers, who pick over and assort rags for paper warehouses, who act as 'strippers' in tobacco shops, who make caps, and paper boxes, and toys, and almost all imaginable things. There are milliners' girls, and bindery girls, and printers' girls—press- feeders, bookfolders, hat-trimmers. It is not to be supposed that all these places are objectionable; it is not to be supposed that all the places where sewing-girls work are objectionable; but among each class there are very many—far too many—where evils of the gravest character exist, where the poor girls are wronged, the innocents suffer. There are places where there are not sufficient fires kept, in cold weather, and where the poor girl, coming in wet and shivering from the storm, must go immediately to work, wet as she is, and so continue all day. There are places where the 'silent system' of prisons is rigidly enforced, where there are severe penalties for whispering to one's neighbor, and where the windows are closely curtained, so that no girl can look out upon the street; thus, in advance, inuring the girls to the hardships of prison discipline, in view of the possibility that they may some day become criminals! There are places where the employer treats his girls like slaves, in every sense of the word. Pause a moment, and reflect on all that signifies. As in the South 'as it was,' some of these girls are given curses, and even blows, and even kicks; while others are special favorites either of 'the boss,' or of some of his male subordinates, and dress well, pay four dollars a week for board, and fare well generally—on a salary of three dollars a week.
TEMPTATIONS.
Until you have lived the life of the working girl, lady, reading this page, you cannot know what their temptation is—how hard it is to keep away sin and shame. By all the doors at which temptation can enter to you, it enters to them; and by many other doors of which you know nothing by experience. It comes in the guise of friendship to them, who are utterly friendless in the world. It comes in the guise of love—and do you think the poor girl never yearns for the caressing touch of love's palm on her aching brow? never longs to be folded in the comforting embrace of love's strong arms? Ah, she knows the worth of love! It comes, too, through womanly vanity, as it does to her happier sisters, who sit higher in the social scale. But in addition to these, temptation comes to the poor girl through the tortures of a hunger which gnaws upon the vitals—of a cold which chills the young blood with its ice—of a weariness under which the limbs tremble, the head reels, the whole frame sinks prostrate.