The industry and virtue of the labouring poor appear undeniable, from the fact, that there is no occupation, however deleterious or disgraceful, at which there is any difficulty in procuring labourers, even at the most inadequate wages. The labour on canals in marshy situations, in atmospheres replete with pestilential miasmata, is full proof on this point. Although the almost certain consequence of labouring in such situations is a prostration of health, and danger of life; and that no small portion of the labourers, as I have already stated, return to their families in the fall or winter with health and vigour destroyed, and labouring under protracted fevers and agues, which in many cases undermine their constitutions, and return in after-years, and too often hurry them prematurely into eternity: their places are readily supplied by other victims who offer themselves up on the altars of industry.
This is one of those decisive facts which ought to silence cavil for ever on this important subject.
Philadelphia, June 26, 1833.
ESSAY IV.
Let us now turn to the appalling case of seamstresses, employed on coarse work, and to that of spoolers: and here "I will a tale unfold, to harrow up the soul" of all those endowed with feelings of humanity.
Coarse shirts and duck pantaloons are frequently made for 8 and 10 cents. The highest rate in the United States, with two highly honourable exceptions, which I shall notice presently, is 1212 cents. Women free from the incumbrance of children, in perfect health, and with constant, uninterrupted employment, cannot, by the testimony of ladies of the first respectability, who have fully scrutinized the affair, make more than nine shirts per week, working from twelve to fifteen hours per day, and possessing considerable expertness.[1]
Extract of a letter from J. W. Wyman, New York Police Magistrate.
"New York, Jan. 25, 1830.
"It is most undoubtedly true, that the compensation which poor women with small children obtain for their labour, is so scanty that the least interruption in their accustomed employment occasions a corresponding diminution in their receipts, and they are at once (for they literally live from hand to mouth), compelled to raise the means in some other way, and none so ready or convenient, probably, as to send some article of wearing apparel as a pledge for the sum required. Every casualty in such a family will subject them to a similar inconvenience, until every article in their possession has disappeared, and they are left to starve, unless the hand of charity is extended for their relief.
"The evils arising from the inadequate compensation given for most kinds of female labour, are by no means confined to their poverty. It is frequently the case, and my own experience enables me to speak with confidence, that women of this description are obliged to keep their children in the streets, either to beg, or by some light employment to earn a penny through the day; this leads to bad associations, and frequently to crime. Of the children brought before me for pilfering, nine out of ten are those whose fathers are dead, and who live with their mothers, and are employed in this way. The petty plunder obtained in this way finds a ready market at some old junk shop, and the avails are in part carried home as the earnings of honest labour."
- ↑ Copy of a statement signed by thirty Philadelphia ladies of respectability, intelligence, and competence to decide on the subject.
"Philadelphia, June 5th, 1830.
"The undersigned, having seriously considered the case of those seamstresses who work in their own lodgings, and whose dependence is on their needles, are convinced that the
