2. The unfair competition proceeding from the voluntary labor, in mechanical ways, of women well to do.
For the first, we can not greatly blame the women whom employers chiefly 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 can not 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 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 bias 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.
LAW.
The number of laws passed the last six years affecting the condition of women has been very small. The New York Assembly in February, 1865, passed a law putting the legal evidence of a married woman on the same basis as if she were a "femme sole." The Massachusetts Legislature have legalized marriage ceremonies performed by an ordained woman, and in January, 1866, Mr. Peckham, of Worcester, moved for a joint Special Committee "to consider in what way a more just and equal compensation shall be awarded to female labor." On the 4th of April just passed Samuel E. Sewall and others petitioned for leave to appoint women on School Committees. It is difficult to conceive on what ground such petitioners had leave to withdraw. These things are only valuable as indicating that public attention is still alive. Some remarkable illustrations of the absurdity of old laws might be recorded. One of these is to be found in the family history of Mad. de Bedout, recently dead at Paris.
A very important convention came together at Leipsic, in September, 1865. One hundred and fifty women assembled, pledged to assert the right to labor, and to bridge the gulf between the compensations of the two sexes. Madame Louise Otto Peters opened the conference in an able speech. She stated that there were five millions of women in Germany who could each earn, if allowed, three thalers a week. A thousand women might find employment as chemists, on salaries of one hundred and fifty thalers a year, exclusive of board and lodging. Another thousand might be employed as boot-closers. The foundation of industrial and commercial schools was urged. The weak point of the speech as reported, appeared to be, that it took no cognizance of the fact that an influx of five millions of laborers must necessarily lower the current rate of wages she proposed. I mention this convention in a legal connection, believing that it was intended to remove some local legal barriers.
SUFFRAGE.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Sarah E. Wall, and a few other women, have continued their annual protests without intermission. In somewhat the same way have petitions recently been sent to Congress in behalf of Universal Suffrage. We had no expectation that any favorable reception would await such petitions, but it was a duty to put them on record. What fate they met in Congress, you have so recently heard that I have no occasion to record it. Minnesota, New York, and other States, have petitioned their Legislatures to the same effect.