Connecticut western news., 1893-06-08

| stand Ill the poor SnOpSlrIS ShOeS, even in sin and shame, than wear the fine clothes of those who have made these | conditions possible in human society. Third-Such are the conditions of work l that the body is driven to the point of | exhaustion of all it's energies, and in it's l weakness it is the prey to every whisper | of evil. In the reaction from such grind ! ing toll the effort at amusement neces- | sarily becomes dissipation. How can we expect men who work with such unceas- | ing and despairing energy to avoid saloons | and concert halls and dens, where they | find the only brightness in human life? | And this is the brightness of the glare of
 hell, into which they are soon to fall. men and women work in this great city and in other cities, and work at tasks deadening to every sense-monotonousto to the verge of despair.
 Fourth-Such poverty IS the gateway to hell, because the children born into it are doomed before their birth, and the generation that rises has less of hope than the generation that dies. Our statisti- clans tell us that 20, 900 children work in the great city of New York, but those who know the facts tell us that in the great ctty of New York alone there are 100000 little pinched forms that work for daily bread and are glad to get work work at the period when children must grow or die. Their little faces are pinched and shriveled and wrinkled un- til they are an army of little old men
 and women, to look into whose pinched P, ;o fr ho fao fTny | the heart of stone. What wonderful little creatures many of them arel They never complimentary take it as mat ter of course.
 A little fellow discovered in Boston recently by charitable institution gave the matron an account of how he got along for 8 week after his mother had died and his drunken father had kicked him out. .'Where did you sleep?" she asked. We lived out in Roxbury," said he, "and knowed place out that way where man kept three pigs in real warm and snug pen, and slept there three nights" "You slept with the pigs2' asked the matron. ''Oh, yes, mum; it was real nice and warm there. But the next night found the man had moved away and taken the pigs and pen and all. I lost 'em." 'And what did you do then?' ''I kind of snooped round and got into an empty old house. I found lot of papers on the floor and got into the papers and folded them up. They were nice and warm. I slept there two nights. Next night got in a junk shop on some rags" "What did you do for something to eat" "Why, staid round the markets and got oranges and apples and things the fruit stands throw away, and knowed where there was restraints and boarding houses where they put things into the swill barrels that's plenty good to eat"
 There are from 90. .000 to 60, ,000 of these little waifs drifting on the black, turbid waters of this great city's life, and every city has its proportion. Is it any won- der that we have tramps and idlers, and that the gang of toughs is soon devel- oped, and that they graduate into the
 hardened criminal, desperado, highway man and assassin?
 PANTS SEVEN GENTS PAIR.
 Fifth-It is the gate of hell because | of the hard life of the women. Woman is the mother of civilization as well as | the mother of man. Womanhood is the | index to life. If it be degraded, life is degraded. If it is steeped in sullen de- | spair life will show its fruits. If it be hard, life will be hard. If the life of woman leads to hell, hell is nigh to hu-
 mahity. Two 'hundred and fifty thou sand women work at hard tasks outside of domestic service in this great city. Three hundred and forty-three trades | are open to women, the census taker tells us. They are, as matter of fact, | simply subdivisions of old trades-sub- 1 divisions caused by the divisions of 1a- l bor. Added to this is the additional ! horror of unpaid labor. There is not a single one of these trades in which wom- en work in which they are actually paid | just return for their labor. Because they are women they are made to do the work which men could not do better | for from one-half to one-third the remu- | neration men would receive.
 Needlewomen make pants for 2 cents
 a pair and use their own machines, find
 their own thread. They make shirts for
 thread and machines. They make ging-
 ham waists for boys at 24 cents each, and
 it is impossible to make more than a
 dozen in IA hours at sewing machine. And IA hours at a sewing machine, with | woman's hands and woman's nerves,
 means that life is being ground out at a
 pace that makes the thing little short of
 actual murder. Cloakmakers can earn
 but 60 to 70 cents day. We find ts
 hours of toll unreheved by single glean
 of light or hope or cheer, and the net re-
 suits of this concentrated despair and
 misery is S3. 50 week. And half of this
 is taken to pay for the miserable den in
 which the work is done. Two families
 live in single rooms. Twelve people are
 found sometimes in room IS feet square.
 Many of the women who work in this
 underworld of horror are dying to hope,
 and when woman with her ceaseless
 passion of life, her undying love, with
 her quenohless heroism, ceases to hope
 it is time for your social economist, it is
 time for your preacher, your politician,
 your philosopher, to hasten to find tho
 cause. One of this army of quarter of
 million women recently said to Mrs.
 Campbell
 ''I don't see how anybody can much
 
 longer keep soul and body together"
 "We don't" said one of the other wo.
 men, turning suddenly. "I got rid of
 my soul long ago, such as it was. Who's
 got time to think about souls, grinding
 away here IA hours day to turn out
 contract goods? 'Taint souls that count.
 It's bodies that can be driven and half
 starved and driven still till they drop
 in their tracks. fwould try the river il
 was not driving to pay doctors bill
 for my three that went with the fever.
 Before that was driving to put food in.
 to their mouths. Inever owed cent to nc
 man. have been honest and paid as
 went and done good turn when
 could. Had I chosen the other thing
 while had pretty face of my own
 would have had ease and comfort and a
 quick death The river's the best place