"But when they become skilled," I again asked, "you do not pay them as high wages as you pay the men, though they do as much and as well?"
"Women don't need as much," he replied. "They can live on less, they pay less board, have fewer wants, and less occasion for money."
"But don't you think," I rejoined, "that, if you gave them the money, they would find the wants, and that the scarcity of the former is the true reason for the limitation of the latter? Do not working-women live on the little they get only because they are compelled to?"
"It may be so," he answered. "Our wants are born with us,—and as one set is supplied, another rises up to demand gratification. But they offer to work for these wages, and why should we give them more than they ask?"
"But how is it with the women with families, the widows?" I suggested. "Have they no more wants than young girls? If the fewer necessities of the girls be a reason for giving them low wages, why should not the more numerous ones of the widows be as potent a reason for giving them better wages?"
"Competition again, Miss," he responded. "The prices at which the girls work govern the market."
There was no getting over facts like these. Let me look at the subject in whatever aspect I might, it seemed impossible that female labor should be adequately paid by any class of employers. But on the present occasion this was an incidental question. The primary one, why so much more sewing was required for the people now than formerly, was answered measurably to my satisfaction. I thought a great deal on this subject, because now, since the loss of our main family-dependence, I was more interested in its solution. I think I settled down into accepting the foregoing facts and opinions as embodying a satisfactory explanation; and although not exactly set at ease, yet the conclusion then embraced has not been changed by any subsequent discovery.
The gentleman referred to may have been altogether wrong in some parts of his argument, but I was too little versed in matters of trade, and the laws of supply and demands to show wherein he was so. It seemed to me a strange argument, that the consumption of things was to be so largely attributed to wastefulness. But I suppose this must be what people call political economy, and how should I be expected to know anything of that? I knew that in our little family the utmost economy was practised. I have turned or fixed up the same bonnet as many as four times, putting on new trimmings at very little expense, and making it look so different every time that none suspected it of being the old bonnet altered, while many of my acquaintances admired it as a new one, some of them even inquiring what it cost, and who was the milliner that made it. We never thought of giving one away until it had gone through many such transformations, nor, in fact, until it was actually used up, at least for me. Even when mine had seen such long and severe service, my sister Jane fell heir to it, though without knowing it,—for she had more pride than myself, and was much more particular about her good looks. Hence, when the thing was at all feasible, my veteran bonnet was transformed, in private, into a very fair new one for her. She had been familiar with my head-gear for so many years that I often wondered how she failed to detect the disguises I put upon it; and I had as much as I could do to keep from laughing, when I brought to her what we invariably called her new bonnet. As she grew older, she became more exacting in her tastes, and at the same time foolishly suspicious of the mysterious origin of her new bonnets,—just as if they were any worse for my having worn them for years! I presume her mortification will be extreme, when she comes to read this. As to old clothes, they were nursed up quite as carefully, though Jane had her full inheritance of both mine and mother's. When entirely past service, they were cut up into carpet-rags, from which we obtained the warmest covering for our floors. Thus practising no wastefulness ourselves, it was difficult to understand how the national wastefulness could be great enough to insure the prosperity of a multitude of extensive manufacturing establishments. But our premises were very humble ones from which to start an argument of any description.
Yet, when the attention of an inquiring mind is directed toward any given subject, it is astonishing how, if only a little observation is practised, it will unfold and expand itself. In my walks to and from the factory there lay numerous open lots or commons, all of which afforded abundant evidence of the extent to which this public wastefulness was carried. Heretofore I had passed on without noticing much about them. But now I observed that they were heaped up with great piles of coal-ashes, from which cropped out large quantities of the unburnt mineral, as black and shining as when it came from the mines. There were thousands of loads of this residuum, in which many hundred tons of pure coal must have been thus wastefully thrown away. In other parts of the city the same evidence of carelessness existed, so that the waste of a single city in the one article of coal must be enormous. Then, over these commons were scattered, almost daily, the remains of clothing, old hats, bonnets, and the indestructible hoop-skirts, of which the collar-maker had complained as being in everybody's way, as much so when out of use as when in. Somebody had been guilty of wastefulness in thus casting these things away. But though losses to some, they were gains to others. By early daylight the rag-pickers came in platoons to gather up all these waifs. The hats, the bonnets, and the clothing were quickly appropriated by women and children who had come out of the narrow courts and hovels of the city in search of what they knew was an every-day harvest. These small gatherings of the rag-pickers amounted to hundreds of dollars daily. Then there was another class of searchers after abandoned treasure, in the persons of other women and children, who, with pronged or pointed sticks, worked their way into the piles of ashes, and picked out basketfuls of coal as heavy as they could carry, and in this laborious way provided themselves with summer and winter fuel.
There was living near us a man who made a business of gathering up the offal of several hundred kitchens in the city, as food for pigs. I know that he grew rich at this vocation. He lived in a much better house than ours, and his wife and daughters dressed as expensively as the wealthiest women. They had a piano, and music in abundance. He had several carts which were sent on their daily rounds through the city, collecting the kitchen-waste of boarding-houses, hotels, and private families. The quantity of good, wholesome food which these carts brought away to be fed to pigs was incredible. It was a common thing to see whole loaves of bread taken out of the family swill-tub, with joints of meat not half eaten, sound vegetables, and fragments of other food, as palatable and valuable as the portion that had been consumed on the table. It seemed as if there were hundreds of families who made it a point never to have food served up a second time. The waste by this thriftlessness was great. I doubt not that some men must have been kept poor by such want of proper oversight on the part of their wives, as I know that it enriched the individual who gathered up the fat crumbs which fell from their tables. I think it must be quite true that "fat kitchens make lean wills."