Part 10

Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets sixteen hundred and fifty?

I hear from all this land the wail of woman-hood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail but flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is not. She knows she is not. She is a human being, who gets hungry when she has no food, and cold when she has no fire. Give her no more flatteries: give her justice!

There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across the darkness of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not such a cry as comes from those who are suddenly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting away. Gather them before you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers, needle-picked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough!

At a large meeting of these women, held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and, with her shrivelled arm, hurled a very thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out of the horrors of her own experience.

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at half-past five or six o'clock in the morning, as the women go to their work. Many of them had no breakfast except the crumbs that were left over from the night before, or a crust they chew on their way through the street. Here they come! the working girls of New York and Brooklyn! These engaged in bead-work, these in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar making, book-binding, labelling, feather-picking, print-coloring, paper-box making, but, most overworked of all, and least compensated, the sewing-women. Why do they not take the city-cars on their way up? They cannot afford the five cents! If, concluding to deny herself something else, she get into the car, give her a seat! You want to see how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire: look at that woman and behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing death! Ask that woman how much she gets for her work, and she will tell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and finds her own thread!

Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my church, after service, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed medicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive in her delirium, she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I could get it done! I am so tired! I wish I could get some sleep, but I must get it done! Eight cents! Eight cents!" We found afterwards that she was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day! Hear it! Three times eight are twenty-four! Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!

Some of the worst villains of the city are the employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages refused, and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The Women's Protective Union reports a case where one of these poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change employers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says: "I hear you are going to leave me?"--"Yes," she said, "and I have come to get what you owe me." He made no answer. She said: "Are you not going to pay me?"--"Yes," he said, "I will pay you;" and he kicked her down the stairs.

How are these evils to be eradicated? What have you to answer, you who sell coats, and have shoes made, and contract for the Southern and Western markets? What help is there, what panacea, what redemption? Some say: "Give women the ballot." What effect such ballot might have on other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the effect of female suffrage upon woman's wages? I do not believe that woman will ever get justice by woman's ballot.

Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them? Are not women as sharp as men on washerwomen, and milliners, and mantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her female employer ask her if she will not take ninety cents? You say "only ten cents difference;" but that is sometimes the difference between heaven and hell. Women often have less commiseration for women than men. If a woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man may forgive,--woman never! Woman will never get justice done her from woman's ballot.

Neither will she get it from man's ballot. How, then? God will rise up for her. God has more resources than we know of. The flaming sword that hung at Eden's gate when woman was driven out will cleave with its terrible edge her oppressors.

But there is something for our women to do. Let our young people prepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able, after a while, to get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman can, in a store, sell more goods in a year than a man, she will soon be able not only to ask but to demand more wages, and to demand them successfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given; skilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard. Admitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things, I contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great, and the supply very small.

Start with the idea that work is honorable, and that you can do some one thing better than any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you will take care of yourself. If you are, after a while, called into another relation, you will all the better be qualified for it by your spirit of self-reliance; or if you are called to stay as you are, you can be happy and self-supporting.

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, and woman the vine that climbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of something stronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans on God and does her best. The needle may break; the factory-band may slip; the wages may fail; but, over every good woman's head there are spread the two great, gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty.

Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to choose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn your back upon the useless, giggling, painted nonentity which society ignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian.

What will become of this godless disciple of fashion? What an insult to her sex! Her manners are an outrage upon decency. She is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she will look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her sins; more interested in her bonnet-strings than in her redemption. Her apparel is the poorest part of a Christian woman, however magnificently dressed, and no one has so much right to dress well as a Christian. Not so with the godless disciple of fashion. Take her robes, and you take everything. Death will come down on her some day, and rub the bistre off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, and with two rough, bony hands, scatter spangles and glass beads and rings and ribbons and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes and frisettes and golden clasps.

The dying actress whose life had been vicious said: "The scene closes. Draw the curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first, and the farce afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life, and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.

Compare the life and death of such an one with that of some Christian aunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know that she was ever offered the hand in marriage. She lived single, that untrammelled she might be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick were to be visited, or the poor to be provided with bread, she went with a blessing. She could pray, or sing "Rock of Ages," for any sick pauper who asked her. As she got older, there were days when she was a little sharp, but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam--just the one for Christmas-eve. She knew better than any one else how to fix things. Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever had was to make you happy. She dressed well--Auntie always dressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died, you all gathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest, the Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin with japonicas; and the poor people stood at the end of the alley, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing bitterly; and the man of the world said, with Solomon, "Her price was above rubies;" and Jesus, as unto the maiden in Judea, commanded: "I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE!"

PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY.

At my entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore the indiscriminate terms of condemnation employed by many well-meaning persons in regard to stock operations. The business of the stock-broker is just as legitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy a Christian at the Board of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the sight of God, as much entitled to his commissions as any hard-working mechanic is entitled to his day's wages. Any man has as much right to make money by the going up of stocks as by the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The inevitable board-book that the operator carries in his hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant's ledger. It is the work of the brokers to facilitate business; to make transfer of investment; to watch and report the tides of business; to assist the merchant in lawful enterprises.

Because there are men in this department of business, sharp, deceitful, and totally iniquitous, you have no right to denounce the entire class. Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not want to be held responsible for the moral deficits of their comrades in business. Neither have you a right to excoriate those who are conscientiously operating through the channels spoken of. If they take a risk, so do all business men. The merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard takes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars; it may fall to four dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations in stocks, meets with disaster and fails, he deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold spices or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck down bankrupt.

We have no right to impose restrictions upon this class of men that we impose upon no other. What right have you to denounce the operation "buyer--ten days" or "buyer--twenty days," when you take a house, "buyer--three hundred and sixty-five days?" Perhaps the entire payment is to be made at the end of a year, when you do not know but that, by that time, you will be penniless. Give all men their due, if you would hold beneficent influence over them. Do not be too rough in pulling out the weeds, lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. In the Board of Brokers there are some of the most conscientious, upright Christian men of our cities--men who would scorn a lie, or a subterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these boards who might, in some respects, teach a lesson of morality to other commercial circles.

I will not deny that there are special temptations connected with this business even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to the engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash into the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the engine or the Stock Exchange.

A clever young man, of twenty-five years of age, bought ten shares in the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The stock went up five dollars per share, and he made fifty dollars by the operation. His mother, knowing his temperament, said to him, "I wish you had lost it." But, encouraged, he entered another operation, and took ten shares in another railroad and made two hundred dollars. By this time he was ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in three years, forty thousand dollars, ruined his health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool brain, and well-balanced temperament.

But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the broker and operator, there are transactions every day undertaken in our cities that can only be characterized as superb outrage and villany; and there are members of Christian churches who have been guilty of speculations that, in the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thunder them down to everlasting companionship with the lowest gamblers that ever pitched pennies for a drink.

It is not necessary that I should draw the difficult line between honorable and dishonorable speculation. God has drawn it through every man's conscience. The broker guilty of "cornering" as well knows that he is sinning against God and man, as though the flame of Mount Sinai singed his eyebrows. He hears that a brother broker has sold "short," and immediately goes about with a wise look, saying: "Erie is going down--Erie is going down; prepare for it." Immediately the people begin to sell; he buys up the stock; monopolizes the whole affair; drags down the man who sold short; makes largely, pockets the gain, and thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. You call it "cornering." I call it gambling, theft, highway robbery, villany accursed.

It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful in the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member of one of the churches of the city went into a broker's office and said: "Get me one hundred shares of Reading, and carry it; I will leave a margin of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up, according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every few days the operator called to ask the broker what success. The stock still declined. The operator was so terribly excited that the broker asked him what was the matter. He replied: "To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation of what I was sure I was going to get by the operation, I made a very large subscription to the Missionary Society."

The nation has become so accustomed to frauds that no astonishment is excited thereby. The public conscience has for many years been utterly debauched by what were called fancy stocks, morus multicaulis, Western city enterprises, and New England developments.

If a man find on his farm something as large as the head of a pin, that, in a strong sunlight, sparkles a little, a gold company is formed; books are opened; working capital declared; a select number go in on the "ground floor;" and the estates of widows and orphans are swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into the same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming out--showing the total depravity of a woman's heart--she again went into the same business, and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and down in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.