White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor

by Louis Albert Banks

These set He in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment-hem,
For fear of defilement, 'Lo here,' said He,
'The IMAGES ye have made of Me!'"

VI.

THE WAGES AND TEMPTATIONS OF WORKING-PEOPLE.

"Face to face with shame and insult
Since she drew her baby breath,
Were it strange to find her knocking
At the cruel door of death?
Were it strange if she should parley
With the great arch fiend of sin?"

—ALICE CARY: The Edge of Doom.

I have been asked to give a reason for the faith that is in me in regard to certain painful charges made by me in a recent sermon on Wages and Morals—to the effect that the persons high in authority in some respectable Boston stores regard favorably immoral relations on the part of the employees, in order to make it possible for them to live on the slender wages paid them.

Without repeating here any of the cases mentioned in my sermon, which has had considerable publicity through the daily press, permit me to quote Mr. Henry Chase, agent of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. He says that in conversation with a leading Boston merchant, the merchant said plainly that he had every reason to believe that some of the men working in his store paid the room-rent and a trifling sum besides to working-girls, and lived with them regularly. Another Boston merchant said to Mr. Chase that he regarded that kind of life on the part of his clerks favorably; that the wages these young men received made it impossible for them to marry and support a wife.

I am informed of another case, upon perfectly credible authority, of two young women, strangers in the city, who applied to a leading store for a situation and were offered work, but when informed of the wages they were to receive, exclaimed, "How could we live on such wages as that?" The employment agent of the house replied, "It is presumed you will have a gentleman friend to assist you." The girls looked at him dumfounded for a moment; and when his meaning dawned upon the one who had acted as spokesman, she burst into tears and they hurried from the store. Only the dread of bringing unpleasant notoriety to these thoroughly respectable young women saved this scoundrel from a horsewhipping at the hands of their indignant male relatives.

A leading Boston lady of wealth and social standing, writing to thank me for calling public attention to the subject, says that she herself knew of a girl who was told to "'look to her gentleman friends' for the means to eke out a bare livelihood supplied by her wages in a prominent store;" and adds: "Such things are outrageous, and it is well you are making them known." I have within the past week received another letter from the president of the W. C. T. U. in one of the Boston wards, a lady who has had more than twenty-five years' experience in practical reform work in this city. She says: "I have just read in my Congregationalist the reference to your sermon of last Sunday on the officials in two of our large Boston stores suggesting immoral means of eking out their scanty wages to their employees. I want to thank you for presenting this terrible wickedness existing among us, and if the extent could only be known, every white-ribbon woman in Boston would boycott those stores. I could call names of splendid young women, thrown on their own resources, applying for situations, who were cursed, as we might say, with a good face and a fine figure, fairly insulted with offers made. More young girls have been ruined in that way than in any other. In sheer desperation, not even earning enough to pay the rent of a mean attic and keep hunger away, to say nothing of clothing and other things, they have, after spending the last cent, and not having anything to take them home, resorted to the last means."

This is a terrible letter—terribly true. I could go on, column after column, with these details. "But," the critic says, "why don't you name these firms, and put them in the pillory of public contempt?" I can tell you why in a few words. You cannot name the firms without giving the name of the young woman thus wickedly approached; and to name any young woman in such a connection, no matter how innocent or pure she is, is to put a mark upon her as long as she lives.