This low rate of wages is defended upon the plea of competition. A manufacturer practically says, “If one man or woman will do my work for five per cent. less than another, I must employ him or her unless I am prepared to carry on my business at a positive loss; for if I do not give them work, my neighbor will.” Valid as this reason may be in the old countries, where the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, it is invalid in America, where there is a constant demand for workers. Our cities are overcrowded; remove some of their inhabitants to the country. In our cities work can not be obtained; in the country both male and female laborers are urgently required. In cities an unemployed woman is exposed to innumerable temptations; in the country she need never be unemployed, and consequently would escape such dangers. The difference between the New and Old worlds is simply that in the former the cities are overcrowded, but the country is free; in the latter, both cities and country are full to repletion.
In the city of New York one fourth part of the domestic servants are constantly out of employment; remove them, and, while the wants of the community will be amply supplied, the market value of a faithful servant would increase to a living rate. Send away a number of needle-women, reducing the supply of labor to meet the actual demand; tailors, shirt-makers, and dress-makers must employ seamstresses, and in such cases they could not obtain them without paying remunerative wages. The prices of our wearing apparel would probably be advanced five per cent., with a saving of fifteen per cent. taxation in the reduced expenses of police, judiciary, prisons, hospitals, and charitable institutions.
The experience of the winter of 1857-8 has proved that but very slight difficulties attend this plan when efficiently carried out, and to the “Children’s Aid Society” and the other benevolent organizations, which have shown not only the possibility, but the success of the system, all praise is due. No man entering upon a farm in the West requires any argument to convince him that his property will increase in value as it is cultivated, and many will gladly advance the sum necessary to pay the expenses of a servant’s journey out. As fast as men are sent to fell the timber or break the prairie, the farmer’s necessities force him to engage women for the increasing work of his house and dairy, and to supply the places of those who obtain husbands in their new home. When the tide of emigration to the Australian colonies commenced, nearly the whole of those who left England were single men, and in a few months the cry was ringing from one end of the island to the other: “Send us female help, send us wives.” A benevolent woman, resident in the colony, repeated the demand, and subsequently lent the aid of her powerful talents to it. She made a voyage to England, and there influenced public opinion to such an extent that the British government yielded to the outside pressure, and many ship-loads of well-recommended, healthy, and virtuous women were sent out at the national expense to supply the want. The subsequent advancement of the colony has proved that the measure was a judicious one, nor can the abuses to which it became subject detract from its merits.
Similar plans with respect to destitute children have been practiced in New York for several years, and their subsequent extension to meet the wants of adult females has been limited only by the means of the projectors. If the necessity and prospective benefit of this emigration were known and appreciated, the required funds could be raised without any difficulty. The citizens of New York are never dilatory in responding to calls upon their benevolence in aid of any practicable and judicious scheme of philanthropy, and, under the management of an energetic business committee, arrangements could be made which would render the movement self-supporting within a few years.
The competition which keeps wages at starvation point is aggravated by a notion entertained by many native women, and by some foreigners who have been long in the country, that domestic service is ungenteel. This idea drives them to needlework to maintain their respectability, and thus, while service is abandoned, the ranks of seamstresses are augmented. By decreasing the number to be employed, and consequently advancing their wages and insuring better treatment from their employers, the servant’s life would be divested of many of its objections, and old-fashioned house-work would once more be deemed respectable. This consummation rests more with mistresses than servants. The former give tone to the manners of the latter. It can not be denied that many young women date their ruin from unkind or unwomanly treatment by their mistresses, who have given a free rein to their caprices, confident that if a girl left them they could soon supply her place. This confidence would be shaken if a housekeeper knew that servants were less plentiful, and her own interest would induce her to use well those who suited her. Such a conclusion would be an important step toward reducing prostitution, and elevating the character of the masses.[394]
It can not be expected that this vice will decrease in New York when five hundred and thirty-four, out of a total of two thousand, earn only one dollar weekly. No economist, however closely he may calculate, will pretend that fourteen cents a day will supply any woman with lodging, food, and clothes. She who should attempt to exist on such a sum would starve to death in less than a month, and yet it is a notorious fact that many are expected to support themselves upon it. How such expectations are realized, and the sad manner in which the deficiency is made up, are amply shown by the result of this and similar investigations, here and elsewhere.
Thus far manufacturers have been blamed for the depression of wages, but is not the consumer equally open to censure? He purchases an article of dress from A, because it is a trifle cheaper than in B’s store. The cost of the raw material is the same to each, and each uses the same quantity in every article; but if A can find customers for three times the amount of goods which B can sell, on account of the saving he effects through paying lower wages, it is scarcely in human nature, decidedly not in commercial nature, to be expected that he will refuse the opportunity. He flatters himself that competition forces him to make the reduction, and as the public do not denounce his action, but flock to his store so long as his price continues lower than his neighbor’s, he concludes that his customers should bear the blame. Nor are his conclusions false. The public sanction a system which enforces starvation or crime, and, for the sake of saving a few cents, add their influence to swell the ranks of prostitutes, and condemn many a poor woman to eternal ruin.[395]
Before leaving the question of employment, the effects of different branches of female occupation, as inducing or favoring immorality, must be noticed. Apart from the low rate of wages paid to women, thus causing destitution which forces them to vice, the associations of most of the few trades they are in the habit of pursuing are prejudicial to virtue. The trade of tailoress or seamstress may be cited as a case in point. One mode in which this business is conducted between employer and employed is as follows: The woman leaves either a cash deposit or the guarantee of some responsible person at the store, and receives a certain amount of materials to be made up by a specified time: when she returns the manufactured goods she is paid, and has more work given her to make up. This may seem a very simple course, and so it is, but one feature in it gives rather a sinister aspect. The person who delivers the materials, receives the work, and pronounces on its execution, is almost invariably a man, and upon his decision rests the question whether the operative shall be paid her full wages, or whether any portion of her miserable earnings shall be deducted because the work is not done to his satisfaction. In many cases he wields a power the determinations of which amount to this: “Shall I have any food to-day, or shall I starve?”
It is reasonable to conclude that hardly any thing short of positive want can force a girl to undertake this labor at its present price, and it is reasonable to imagine that her necessities will force her to use every means to accomplish her task in a satisfactory manner. If she finds that a smile bestowed upon her employer or his clerk will aid her in the struggle for bread, she will not present herself with a scowling face; or if a kind entreaty will be the means of procuring her a dinner as a favor, she will not expose herself to hunger by demanding it as a right. In this there is no moral or actual wrong, but there are instances where lubricity has exacted farther concessions, and the sacrifice of a woman’s virtue been required as an equivalent for the privilege of sewing at almost nominal prices. If this is conceded, the victim may be assured of the best work and the most favors until her seducer becomes satiated with possession, when means will easily be found to displace her for some new favorite. If the outrageous request is denied, she will get no more work from that shop, and may seek other employment with almost a certainty of meeting the same indignity elsewhere. That this is a frequent occurrence, unfortunately, can not be denied: that it exercises much influence on public prostitution can not be doubted.
The employment of females in various trades in this city, in the pursuit of which they are forced into constant communication with male operatives has a disastrous effect upon their characters. The daily routine goes very far toward weakening that modesty and reserve which are the best protectives against the seducer, and renders them liable to temptation in many shapes. A girl frequently forms an attachment to a man working in the same shop, believing it to be a mutual one, and only finds out her mistake when she has yielded to his persuasions and is deserted. Or women contract acquaintance for the sake of having an escort on their holiday recreations, or because some other woman has done so, or as the mere gratification of an idle fancy; but all tend in the same direction, and aid to undermine principles and jeopardize character.