The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1891-06-11
BILL ARp,s CHAT.
The Women and Children Employed In
Factories.
atlanta Consultation.

Vi every IehueI. Is IL pUsSlUle tual SuCu
inhumanity to helpless women and chill
dren is allowed in q Christian land /? We
do not knoN Fletcher Osgood, but he
seems to be we'll accredited by the pub
fishers of that great Boston paper, and
as the scene is laid in Boston We take it
for granted that he has not overdrawn the
painful picture. The head line says,
Starved and Hopeless Lives" Mr.. Os-
good has been investigating and tells US
of sixty contract shops in Boston that are
operated by Russian or Polish Jews in
the manufacture of ready made clothing.
Their workroonls are in the cheapest old
buildings that can be found in the worst
sections of the city. Some of the shops
are reached by six or more flights of
stairs, and are invariably foul with accu-
mulated litter and dirt. The rooms are
crowded with toiling women and girls,
with here and there boy. The atmos-
phero is fetid and fatal to health. The
workers have an air of suppression about
them such as characterizes a gang of
prisoners. The majority Of these workers
are Americans, their ages from seventeen
to thirty, but there we're some wor,en Of
ffty-fye and some girls not over twelve.
They were poorly dressed, many of the
faces drawn and haggard, and the expires.
sion hard and sad. The work hours are
from o'clock in the morning to G o'clock
in the evening, with forty,ive minutes for
lunch at noon. The most expert girls
earn as much as S. a week in the busiest
season, but their average wages are from
S2 10 81 week. The exacting oversight
of the bosses force these workers
to an unnatural tension, and then
there is the fetid air, the abounding dirt,
the forced associations of the girls with
men of unclean habits and filthy speech,
and the lowering of the moral tone of the
females. No girl is free to "look up from
her work." and q minute late loses her
half day. But the girls can't stop, not
for day, to look for better place. IF
they do they are boycotted, and can't get
work anywhere. Some of the bosses have
way Of slowing" the clock so as to get
extra time out of tho girls. The foreign
ers are all filthy and use bad language,
and the girls cannot escape it. Some of
the girls won't tell where they live. They
are ashamed to. They find rooms in old
dusky attics in bad localities They can't
keep up but a.few years at most, aud then
they die of oyerwork and desttution.
This is an abstract of Mr.. Osgood's
sketch-of these starved and hopeless
livea-these human machines, whose
daily work is killing the body and starry
ing the soul-these creatures of God from
whom ';hope has withering fled and mer-
cy sighed farewell" Sixty factories in
Boston-how many more in New York
and Brooklyn and Chicago and Cincin-
natl? Will history keep on repeating it.
self? 1t is less than fifty years since
Tom Hood wrote "The Song ofthe Shirt"
and now in cultured Boston it fits the
time and the place as we'll as when be
said:
Stitch, stitch, stitch;
In poverty hunger and dirt.
Sewing at once, with double thread,
A shroud as we'll as shirt.
Oh God that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap.
Women and children working, as pris-
oners work for crime, and no hope of q
better time coming. When farmers feel
that they are oppressed they cry aloud,
and their wall is heard from the Atlantic
to the Pacific ocean. But the poor and
friendless arc too weak to cry. They can't
be heard as far as the nearest Church.
Compared with the wretched women and
children the poorest farmer in Barlow
County is a prince, for he always has
enough to eat
And the sky is above his head,
And the grass beneath his feet
He is q freeman and cringes not be-
meath the tyranny of any man, much less
under the frown of Russian or Polish
Jew. Friends, Americans, countrymen,
can such things be and re bo silent? 1t
matters not where such suffering aud mis-
cry arc found whether in the workshops
of Boston or the factories of the north or
Of the south-let our philanthropic men
and women seek it out and cry aloud and
spare not. Georgia has her rtrusted agents
who are always guarding and protecting
her prisoners from inhumanity, but who
is to protect those who have committed
no crime? 1t takes a great hesrt to do it,
for it is an assault upon capital-an accu.
sation, an arrsignment of the rich at the
bar of public opinion. 1t is said that
Vanderbilt once exclaimed, "The public
be d." but the public won't be ID.
Public opinion is mighty river, and
sometimes overllows its banks AID sweeps
everything before it.
[lliteracy is not the question before ms
now. II is never the question with the
poor and the oppressed Slow. pitileSs,
wasting death that starea one in the face
every day is not concerned about reading
or writing. Bread is the first thing.
Good food, good clothing, good shelter,
some fresh, pure mir to breathe, some
medicine for the sick ant. decent burial
for The dead comes before books. If
many Of these poor girls need reform in
their morals, hegiu with their temporal
wants. Hunger and rags won't hear
preaching. a hospital is y good thing
for the forlorn and desperate cases the
sick and the dying. but the great work is