A very few words will suffice on this table, as the remarks which would arise from it have been already made in reference to other questions. In most instances the occupation is abandoned as soon as the first false step is taken, unless in those cases of destitution where a previous want of employment renders prostitution necessary as the only means of living. Of course, as before observed, a life of prostitution must be incompatible with any description of honest employment, and, in those cases where a woman has followed any trade or occupation after she had yielded to promiscuous intercourse, it will generally be found that her motive was to deceive the world as to her own pursuits, or else to satisfy her conscience that she was not entirely depraved.

Question. What were your average weekly earnings at your trade?

Average Earnings.Numbers.
1dollar 34
2dollars 336
3" 230
4" 127
5" 68
6" 27
7" 8
8" 5
20" 1
50" 1
Unascertained 663
Total 2000

This question is of equal importance with that referring to the number of employments available for females, and the replies quoted above will give as many reasons for prostitution as in the former case. From the work of a French author on this subject the following is condensed as indicative of the hardships and insufficient remuneration of women employed in factories in France:

“Women are employed principally in the manufacture of cotton, silk, and wool. The preparation of cotton presents two dangerous features, in the ‘beating’ and ‘dressing,’ which are performed solely by women. In the manufacture of silk there are also two processes dangerous to life, and these are performed by women. The woolen manufacture has no real danger but in the ‘carding,’ and all the carders are women. Of these mortal occupations there is not one that will afford the workwoman a sufficient maintenance, the average wages being from sixteen to twenty-five sous per day, subject to the fluctuations of trade.”[391]

Commenting upon these facts, the Westminster Review says,

“We took some pains to ascertain the relative wages of men and women employed in the same trades (in England), and almost in every instance it appeared that for the same work, performed in the same time, they received one third less, sometimes one half less than men, without any inferiority of skill being alleged. One master gravely said that he “paid women less because they ate less.”[392]

In a subsequent chapter of this volume will be found some particulars of the wages paid in manufacturing districts of the United States, and the same disparity between male and female operatives will be noticed.

M. Parent-Duchatelet assigns insufficient wages as one of the principal causes of prostitution in Paris. He says,

“What are the earnings of our laundresses, our seamstresses, our milliners? Compare the wages of the most skillful with those of the more ordinary and moderately able, and we shall see if it be possible for these latter to procure even the strict necessaries of life; and if we farther compare the price of their work with that of their dishonor, we shall cease to be surprised that so great a number should fall into improprieties thus made almost inevitable.”[393]