St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-06
STITCH! STITCH! STITCH!
A Visit by q Globe Reporter to One of
StPaul's Important Industries.
What Waa Soon and Said.

What Was Seen and Said.
When the melancholy humorist and sad
hearted suffering viii penned his beautiful
and touching sSong of the Shirt there were
no sewing machines save human ones,
''With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red;"
and without doubt the touching description
of the poor starveling clad in unwomanly
rags, surrounded with wretched poverty and
degrading dirt, with hollow eyes pafning
from the strain and effort against sleep, with
brain burning and throbbing, heart-aching
and longing and the frame worn to "a phan-
tom of grisly bone'' was an Ger true picture
of that which could have been found only in
too many instances in every large city both in
Europe and in this country. Where existed
sumptuous palaces and voluptuous halls there
were also found shattered roofs and naked
floors, beds of straw and rickety chairs and
crusts of bread and blank, cherries COM
fortress walls, and in the hurry burly of city
life with its hustle and strife and toiling and
writhing there were those that were clad in
purple and fine linen and those whose rags
only the louder proclaimed their nakedness.
The large hearted poet saw such scenes and
his sympathy yearned to ameliorate their
suffering and what picture does he give to
the daughters of luxury to gaze upon in the
poor woman who in her rickety storm-shat-
tered garnet longs
ss-but to breathe the breath
OF the cowslip and primrose sweet
With the sky above my head
And the grass beneath my feet;
For only one short hour
To feel as / used to feel,
Before knew the woes Of want,
And the walk that costs meal.
And the picture is complete when the poor
wretch is made to yearn for time to ease her
heart by weeping, but no! in their briny bed
her tears must stop for every drop hinders
needle and thread. These were the times OF
the needle but there came one who probably
did not feel so keenly nor could he express
in smooth flowing verse his pathos but his
practical mind raised such song as never
ceases for the hum and whirr Of the sewing
machine goes on s'for ever and for ever"
and if Tom Hoods great poem slew thou
sands of the troubles Of sewing girls, Howe's
has slain tens of thousands and the picture
now is as completely changed as if some
fairy godmother had touched the rickety old
stair and the lettering, wind-searched garnet
and turned it into a comparative palace. IT
the reader is not convinced let him accom-
pany the writer TO one of our handsomest
business blocks-a palatial structure, hand
somer and more convenient than many a
royal residence-step into the coy little
parlor-like recess and be conveyed to the top
of the building. How poor Hood, whose
weary feet were wont to carry him day after
day up the winding toilsome staircase in
Fleet street, would stare with establishment
could he see a passenger elevator. We
emerge into large room, one hundred and
thirty feet long, and one hundred feet wide
pitch of fifteen feet, lighted by forty win
dows, reaching almost from floor to ceiling,
with electric lamps pending from the ceiling.
The very moment you enter the room, and
even before, your ears are assailed by noise
that for moment is almost overwhelming
but in second or two you are used to it and
it is not at all unpleasant and does not in
terfere with ordinary conversation. The
sound reminds one strongly of the sobbing
and signing of ocean waves on pebbly
shore and it GIBBS and flows now loud now
soft, swelling and dying murmuring and
roaring, now giving out
Sullen moans