Part 18 (1/2)

died in a tenement house in one of the most wretched quarters of the city. Her life had been a fearful struggle against want and temptation, and death was a relief to her. She died alone, in her miserable home, with no one to minister to her last wants. Her death became known to the inmates of the house, who notified the city authorities.

Preparations were made to lay the body in the ”Potter's field,” and until these were completed it was left in the silence and loneliness of the chamber which had witnessed its mortal sufferings. While it lay there, the door was noiselessly opened, and a man, roughly dressed, with his face partly concealed, entered, glancing around carefully to see if he was noticed. Then closing the door quickly, he approached the body, and produced a pair of large shears; lifting the lifeless form roughly with one hand, with the other he severed the long tresses quickly from the cold head, and gathering them up, departed as noiselessly as he had come, taking with him the only source of happiness the dead woman had ever possessed. The braid was sold for a mere trifle to a fas.h.i.+onable hair-dresser, who asked no questions concerning it, and when it was seen next, it was worn by some fine lady, who, in, her thoughtless vanity, never paused to consider its history.

CHAPTER XXVI.

POOR GIRLS.

We cannot hope to do justice to this branch of our subject. To treat it properly would require a volume, for it is full of the saddest, sternest, and most truthful romance. A writer in _Putnam's Magazine_ for April, 1868, presented an able and authentic paper on this subject, which is so full and interesting that we have decided to quote a few extracts from it here, in place of any statement of our own.

Where the Bowery runs into Chatham street, we pause, and from within our close-b.u.t.toned overcoats look out over our m.u.f.flers at the pa.s.sing throng. There are many novel features in it, but let them pa.s.s. Note these thinly-clad creatures who hurry s.h.i.+vering past, while the keen wind searches, with icy fingers, through their scanty garments, and whirls the blinding snow in their pitiful, wearied faces. We count them by tens, by scores, by hundreds, as we stand patiently here--all bearing the same general aspect of countenance, all hurrying anxiously forward, as if this morning's journey were the most momentous one of their whole lives. But they take the same journey every morning, year in and year out, whether the sun s.h.i.+nes or the rain falls, or the bleak winds whistle and the snow sweeps in their faces, with a pain like the cutting of knives. The same faces go past in this dreary procession month after month. Occasionally one will be missing--she is dead.

Another: she is worse than dead--_her_ face had beauty in it. Thus one by one I have seen them drop away--caught by disease, born of their work and their want, bringing speedy end to the weary, empty life; caught by temptation and drawn into the giddy maelstrom of sin, to come out no more forever.

To-morrow morning take your stand at Fulton or Catharine ferry, and you shall see much such another procession go s.h.i.+vering by. The next day station yourself somewhere on the west side, say in Ca.n.a.l street, a few blocks from Broadway; here it is again. If Asmodeus-like, you could hover in the air above the roofs of the town, and look down upon its myriad streets at this hour, you would see such processions in every quarter of the metropolis. The spectacle would help you to form some idea of the vastness of the theme now on our hands.

Let us define the poor girls as those who are forced to earn whatever food they eat, whatever clothing they wear, by hard toil; girls who do not receive one cent, one crumb, from the dead, helpless, or recreant parents who brought them into the world. It is, of course, impossible to give their number accurately; but there is a result attainable by persistent observation, day by day and week by week, at all hours, and in all sorts of places, which is quite as reliable and satisfactory as any that is obtainable through blundering census-takers; and I know this army of poor girls to be one of great magnitude. The sewing girls alone I have heard estimated at thirty thousand, by one whose life is in every day contact with them, and has been for years. This is but a single cla.s.s among the poor girls, reflect. The estimate may be deemed an exaggerated one. Then we will disarm criticism by taking it at half its word. If, accordingly, we say thirty thousand for _the whole_--for all cla.s.ses--it is still a vague figure.... Few persons ever saw thirty thousand people gathered together. But we all comprehend distances. _If this army of poor girls were to form in a procession together, it would be more than ten miles long_.

THE SEWING GIRLS.

There are two cla.s.ses of sewing girls in New York. Those who work at home, and those who go out to work at places provided by their employers. Those who work at home are comparatively few. They stay there not from choice, but from necessity. Bodily deformity, or infirmity, or sickness, or invalid parents, or relatives, whom they are unable to leave, keeps them there.

The writer in _Putnam_, to whose deeply interesting statement we refer the reader for further information on this point, found a poor girl of this cla.s.s, who was kept at home by the sickness of her consumptive father, living and working in a miserable tenement house in the upper part of Mulberry street. After a brief conversation with her, he asked:

'What rent do you pay for this room, Mary?'

'Four dollars a month, sir.'

”That,” he continues, ”is little more than thirteen cents a day, you will observe.”

'What do you get for making such a s.h.i.+rt as that?'

'Six cents, sir.'

'What! You make a s.h.i.+rt for six cents?'

'Yes, sir, and furnish the thread.'

If my reader is incredulous, I can a.s.sure him that Mary does not tell a falsehood; for I know that this price is paid by some of the most 'respectable' firms in New York. 'Can't you get work to do at higher prices?'

'Sometimes, sir. But these folks are better than many others; they pay regularly. Some who offer better prices will cheat, or they won't pay when the work is carried home These folks give me plenty of work, and I never have to wait; so I don't look around for better. I can't afford to take the risk, sir; so many will cheat us.'

Respectability is a good thing, you see. Let me whisper a few other prices to you, which respectability pays its poor girls. Fifteen or twenty cents for making a linen coat, complete; sixty-two cents _per dozen_ for making men's heavy overalls; one dollar a dozen for making flannel s.h.i.+rts. Figures are usually very humdrum affairs, but what a story they tell here! These last prices I did not get from Mary. I got them in the first place, from a benevolent lady who works with heart and hand, day after day, all her time, in endeavoring to better the condition of the poor girls of New York. But I got them, in the second place, from the employers themselves. By going to them, pencil in hand, and desiring the cheerful little particulars for publication? Hardly! I sent my office-boy out in search of work for an imaginary 'sister,' and to inquire what would be paid her. Having inquired, and got his answer, it is needless to say that James concluded his sister could live without taking in sewing.

So, you see, that in order merely to pay her rent, Mary must make two s.h.i.+rts a day. That being done, she must make more to meet her other expenses. She has fuel to buy--and a pail of coal costs her fifteen cents. She has food to buy--but she eats very little, her father still less. She has not tasted meat of any kind for over a year, she tells us. What then does she eat? Bread and potatoes, princ.i.p.ally; she drinks a cup of cheap tea, without milk or sugar, at night--provided she has any, which she frequently has not. She has also to buy (I am not painting fancy pictures, I am stating facts, which are not regulated by any rules known to our experience) 'a trifle of whiskey.' Mary's father was not reared a teetotaller, and though I was, and have no taste for liquor, I am able to see how a little whiskey may be the last physical solace possible to this miserable man, whose feet press the edge of a consumptive's grave.

”Perhaps you think it cannot be any of our first and wealthiest firms that pay poor girls starvation prices for their work. But you are mistaken. If my publishers did not deem it unwise to do so, I should give the names of some of our best Broadway houses as among the offenders against the poor girls.”