liberal wages, following the laudable example of the Impartial Humane Society of Baltimore, and the Female Hospitable Society of Philadelphia.
5. Let the ladies have some of the poor women, who are half starved, making coarse shirts at 6, 8, and 10 cents each, taught fine needle-work, mantua-making, millinery, clear starching, quilting, &c. There is always a great want of women in these branches.
6. Let schools be opened for instructing poor women in cooking. Good cooks are always scarce.
7. Schools for young ladies, and infant schools, ought, with few exceptions, to be taught by females, who should be regularly educated for those important branches, which are peculiarly calculated for their sex, and which, would afford excellent occupation for the daughters of reduced families.
8. Ladies who can afford it, ought to give out their sewing and washing, and pay fair prices. Let them display their economy in any other department than in one which has a tendency to distress and pauperize deserving persons of their own sex.
9. In the towns in the interior of the state, and in those in the western states, there is generally a want of females as domestics, seamstresses, &c. &c.; and in factories, as spoolers, spinners, and weavers. It would be a most meritorious appropriation of a part of the superfluous wealth of the rich, to provide for sending some of the superabundant poor females of our cities to those places.
10. To crown the whole, let ladies who lead the fashion, take up the cause of these poor women, con amore. It is a holy cause. They may, with moderate exertions, render it fashionable to endeavour to rescue from unmerited and cruel sufferings, oppressed, forlorn, and neglected classes, as precious, I emphatically repeat, in the eye of Heaven, as the most exalted and high-minded among themselves.
Other palliatives might be devised, were public attention directed to the subject in any degree proportioned to its importance.
I conclude these essays, by stating, in brief, the points which I undertook to prove, and which, I flatter myself, I have fully proved:
1. That the wages of seamstresses, employed on common work, of spoolers, &c., &c., are inadequate for their support, even if fully employed, and unincumbered with children.
2. That of course, when not fully employed, or when burdened with children, they must necessarily be in a state of constant pauperism.
3. That such a state of things in a prosperous country—"a land flowing with milk and honey"—is a national disgrace, and calls loudly for a remedy, at least for some mitigation of the evil.
4. That the wages of labourers on canals and turnpikes, of hod-men, &c., &c., are barely sufficient, if they have families (as the greater number of them have), to support them, when fully employed; and that, therefore, in case of sickness, or want of employment, they must depend in a greater or less degree on public or private aid.
5. That the operation of the poor-laws in England from 1601, when the system was enacted, till 1795, when the flood-gates of abuse and corruption were thrown wide open, was benignant and salutary.
6. That the exorbitant increase of the poor rates in England is chiefly owing to the enormous abuses in the administration of the poor-laws, but partly to the oppressive reduction of the price of labour, resulting from the great improvements in machinery.
