The Vermont transcript. [volume] (St. Albans, Vt.) 1864-1870, 1867-07-05


My heart aches; and so does my
head. They always do ache whenever
| undertake to look into the lives of
the poor working girls of this great,
bad, wonderful town. ] have done
tins at various times within the past
dozen years, and now have been do
ing it again. If the reader asks for
what purpose--my answer is before
nm IN this article.
There are thirty thousand girls in
New York who earn their living
try to earn it-with their needles.
But there are many thousands more
who work with their hands at various
employments other than needle-work. +
There are girls who work in book (
blnderles, III printing Offices, in press /
rooms, in hoop-skirt factories; girls I
who make paper-boxes, who cut and
pack candies. who mount photographs,
who make brushes, fans, and wings,
and a thousand things that we never
associate with the sadness and desola-
ton of their fisournful lives. il is a
mighty army of souls; and of all the
fields in which philanthrophy does its
work, there is absolutely none that APP
peols with such moving eloquence to
the heart of man who looks into it
thoroughly.
An article of the brevity required by
n publication like the Waterman and
Reflector can only deal with a subject
of such magnitude as this by present
ing one or two specimen cases. Come
with me, then, to the home of one
working girl, and see what the life is
that she leads
1t is a miserable room in n rickety
tenement house in Baxter Street. with
n newspaper for a window curtain,
with a soap box for chair the only
one with Il window-sill for its sole
table; no furniture in the room but a
little stove and a rude bed Here
dwells one poor girl that know, sup
porting herself and a little brother by
the work she does with her needle
The parents are dead; the girl is with
out other relations than this little boy,
in the whole world, 50 far as she
knows. No wonder she clings to him
with such strong devotion. He is yet
too small to run the streets and never
leaves his sister The case has one
advantage; they are a protection, in
some measure, to each other, amid the
temptations Of their sad life
All days are alike to this sad girl
Sundays excepted She rises with the
first CLEAN Of daylight that penetrates
i her solitary window Swallowed by
5 surrounding walls in this close quar-
ter, rs it IS, though located on the
fourth floor Of the dreary building If
it Is winter she makes her fire, with
hands that carefully count the pieces
Z of coal, bought in small quantities at
time, from grocery store on the
corner near, where the Goals are re-
tailed for fifteen cents scuttle full
but her scuttle is wooden box, picked
= up in the street. She eats misera-
bic breakfast of bread and perhaps,
potatoes Meat which ought to be
hers every day, in order to help her
bear the heavy burden Of her exhaust
ing toll as much of a rarity to her
as mushrooms inmid-winter may be to
my readers.
And then commences her needle
/ work. She seats herself on the box
, by the window, and makes shirts for a
large house on Broadway And now,
what DO you think she gets for max
ing such a shirt as that which she
: holds in her hand-the blue cotton af-
fair called hickory p Six cents,
and she furnishes her own thread. Do
not think this an extraordinary price;
it is not it is common one. She
gets no better pay for any work she
does. She makes linen coats for from
fifteen to twenty cents each. She
makes mems heavy overalls for sixty
two cents a dozen: flannel shirts for
= one dollar dozen; and other articles
|. for like sums. The rent she pays for
! this bare apartment is three and a hall
dollars per month"; sum lower than
the average. To merely pay her rent,
then, she must make two whole shirts
{. day Food, fuel and clothing must
be paid for with whatever she can earn
beyond this sum. These facts speak
! with such appalling force that it would
be waste of my space to comment on
them.
At evening she eats her supper-the
d principal meal of the day with her, fol
then she partakes of cup of tea
= which reyiyes her somewhat after hel
y long hours of toll, and helps prepare
her for those that are TO come, Yes
l. there are more to come; she has nc
e time to rest yet Perhaps now she has
:, quantity of work to take to the shop
l. aud if she has, this is the hour chosen
= to take it, She cannot spare precious
: daylight in which to go home with hel
= work, and it is as easy to go to worl
~ after dark as by day She takes the
o bundle of shirts and goes off. If Tho
e weather is fair, little Johnny goes witt
,o her, toddling along by her side; if it is
y not, he sits patiently in the dark room
u and waits for her return.
Of The walk is long one; but her pay
J. is sure. The respectable houses whicl
1 l. T,..s MI