It has been one of the plumes in the cap of New England factory-girls, that they kept themselves genteel on factory-wages, educated their brothers, supported their parents, and yet had something over when they came to be married. I never could understand how such financial marvels could be accomplished on the wages of a mill-girl. But I have seen great things in the same line done among the untidy girls of foreign parentage who work in the cotton and woollen factories of our city. These, however, have toiled on silently and in obscurity, with no poet to celebrate their doings, no newspaper to sound their praises, no magazine to trumpet forth their devotion, their virtue, or even their beauty.
I cannot give, with either fulness or accuracy, the industrial statistics of a city like this; nor would I volunteer thus to increase the dulness of my narrative, if it were in my power to do so. But it will be seen, that, wherever a door stands open into which woman may enter and obtain the privilege to toil, she is sure to ask for admission. Wages are always a consideration, but employment of some kind, whether remunerative or not, is a greater one. Of the thousands thus toiling at all kinds of labor, some descriptions of which are necessarily unhealthy, there are many whose once robust frames have become attenuated and weary unto wearing out, whose midnight couch, instead of being one of repose, is racked with cough and restlessness and pain. The once brilliant eyes have lost their lustre, the once rosy cheeks their fresh and glowing bloom. The young girl fades under unnatural labor protracted far into the night. If she should fail to toil thus, some infirm parent would go without food. The sick widow, older in years, and farther travelled round the long circuit of human sorrow, dares not indulge in the rest that is necessary even to life, lest hungry children, as well as herself, should be even more severely pinched by famine. No wonder that they knock at every door where a little money may be had for a great amount of labor.
But it must be granted, that, if the employments to which American women are compelled to resort are often severe, and less remunerative than they ought to be, they are by no means so unsuited to the sex as some which women are forced into in other countries. Only a few years ago many thousands of females were working under-ground in the English coal-mines. When laws were enacted to abolish this unsuitable employment, they still continued to work at the mouth of the mine, and are thus employed at this moment. They labor in the coke-works and coal-pits; they receive the ores at the pit's mouth, and dress and sort them. The hard nature of the employment may not be actually injurious to health, yet it quite unsexes them. Their whole demeanor becomes as coarse and rude as their degrading occupation. As they labor at men's work, so they wear men's clothing. A stranger would feel sure that they were men, and it would be by their conversation alone that he could identify them as women. He would think it strange to hear persons dressed like men conversing together about their husbands, unless he had been informed who they were.
A celebrated English author speaks thus particularly of these unhappy women:—"Some few months since, happening to be in Wigan, my attention was directed to the, to me, unwonted spectacle of one of those female colliers returning homewards from her daily labor. It was difficult to believe that the unwomanly-looking being who passed before me was actually a female; yet such was the case. Clad in coarse, greasy, and patched fustian unmentionables and jacket, thick canvas shirt, great heavy hob-nailed boots, her features completely begrimed with coal-dust, her hard and horny hands carrying the spade, pick, drinking-tin, sieve, and other paraphernalia of her occupation, her not irregular features wearing a bold, defiant expression, and nothing womanly about her except two or three latent evidences of feminine weakness, in the shape of a coral necklace, a pair of glittering ear-rings, and a bonnet, which, as regards shape, size, and color, strongly resembled the fan-tail hat of a London coal-heaver,—she proceeded unabashed through the crowded streets, no one appearing to regard the degrading spectacle as being anything unusual."
Some work in the potteries at the laborious task of preparing the clay, and others in the brick-yards, in open weather, and on the wet clay with naked feet. At other times the same women are forced, by the nature of their employment, to walk over hot pipes, obliging them to wear heavy wooden shoes to protect their feet from being burned. Every stranger who sees these women at their work is shocked at the impropriety and dangerous nature of their occupation.
So far exceeding masculine strength and endurance are the tasks imposed on thousands of English dairy-women, that they constitute a special class of patients with the medical faculty,—pining and perishing under maladies arising entirely from over-fatigue and insufficient rest.
There are multitudes of women in Liverpool who work daily on the farms around that city. They walk four or five miles to the scene of their toil, where they are required to be by six in the summer months and seven in the winter. They work all day at the severest agricultural labor, wielding a heavy, clumsy hoe, digging potatoes, grubbing up stones from the soil, stooping on the ground in weeding, and compelled even to the unfeminine and offensive employment of spreading manure. For a day's work at what men alone should be required to do, they receive but a shilling! Then, worn out with fatigue, having eaten little more than the crust they brought with them,—for what more can be afforded by one who earns only a shilling a day?—they drag themselves back at nightfall over the increasingly weary miles which they traversed in the morning. What comforts can fall to the lot of such? What a domestic life must such unhappy creatures lead!
There are yet others, in that land which boasts of its high civilization, who live by carrying to the city immense loads of sand for sixpence a day,—harder work than carrying a hod. Other women may be daily seen collecting fresh manure along the streets and docks of Liverpool.
In certain rooms of the great English cotton-mills, the high temperature maintained there compels the women to work in a half-naked condition. This constant exposure of one half the body speedily destroys all feminine modesty. Added to this is an extreme, but unavoidable, filthiness of person. These poor creatures part with their health almost as quickly as with their modesty. They become hollow-cheeked and pale, while their coarse laugh and gestures indicate a deep demoralization.
There are many English women engaged in the occupation of nail-making. They work in glass-houses, glue-works, nursery-gardens, at ordinary farm-work. On some of the canals they manage the boats, open the locks, drive the horses, and sometimes even draw the boats with the line across their shoulders. In short, wherever the lowest and dirtiest drudgery is to be done, there they are almost invariably to be found. For wages, they sometimes get tenpence a day, sometimes only sixpence. If they perform overwork, they get a penny an hour,—a penny for the hauling of a canal-boat for an hour! Here is poverty in its most abject condition, and hard work in its most killing form. Their victims are necessarily toilworn, degraded, and hopelessly immoral.