White Slaves | Page 5

a dollar and a quarter per
week.

Not far away, up two flights, we find a Portuguese widow, with four
little girls, the eldest fifteen, the next thirteen, and the younger ones
three and six, respectively; they are all dwarfed by hardship and
insufficient food, so that the one who is fifteen is not larger than an
average girl of twelve. The mother is sick, and the girls are trying to
keep the wolf from the door by carrying on the sewing. They are all
hard at work; they carry the pants back and forth themselves, and so for
the most of their work receive twelve cents, though for some they get
only ten cents a pair. They have only two little rooms with the most
meagre furniture; the rent is one dollar and a half per week, and the sick
mother and four girls huddle together in the one bed at night. They are
pretty, bright-faced, intelligent girls, and with a fair chance would grow
into strong, noble women; but one shudders when he takes into
consideration the fearful odds against which they will have to struggle
in this poverty-stricken, crime-cursed alley.
[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND CHILDREN.]
[Illustration: LITTLE CHILDREN FINISHING PANTS.]
Here is another case of a similar description only a few blocks away.
We go up three narrow flights, steep and dark, for space is as important
in a low-class Boston tenement house as in a sardine box. The stairway
is slippery from filth on the last flight, for on a small bench at the top,
in a dry-goods box, a little boy is raising squabs for the market, and the
pigeon business, however much it may help to pay the rent, is not
conducive to cleanliness. We find here a suite of three little rooms, the
largest of which is not more than 10x10; the others are much smaller.
In these three little pigeon boxes eight people live, at least sleep--five
men and boys, and a mother and two girls. The men are off most of the
day, and work at such jobs as they find; the mother and little girls make
pants for another leading Boston clothing house. The two little girls,
the younger only three years, are both overcasting seams. The three
make on an average sixteen pairs of pants a week, for which they get
thirteen cents a pair; the young pigeon fancier, already spoken of,
carrying the goods to and fro. The rent of these crowded quarters is two
dollars and a quarter per week. In the same building, down-stairs, we
went into a room which could not have been more than 10x12, where
an American woman, with seven young women helping her, was at
work dressmaking. We could not discover whether they were working

for the stores or not, but the air was poisonous, and the workers had
that deadly pallor which comes from habitually breathing bad air and
from lack of sufficient food.
[Illustration: INVALID IN CHAIR.]
Sickness, to be dreaded anywhere, is especially pitiful among these
sweaters' slaves in the city. In the country the fresh air, fragrant with
the breath of new-mown hay, or sweetened from ten thousand clover
blossoms, is free to the poorest, but to be sick in a tenement house is
something terrible. Yet crowded quarters, poisonous air, and filthy
clothing make sickness a common guest in such places. I climbed one
day up two flights into a dirty little room, the smell of which was
sickening to me in three minutes, and yet there I found a man on a little
cot (that had been given by the charitable missionary who guided me)
who has been lying there for more than three years. For two years and
more he had not even a cot, but lay on the floor in his dirt and pain.
There are two children, too young to be of much assistance; the wife
and mother sews, finishing pants for a rich Washington Street firm. She
gets twelve, and sometimes, on fine, custom-made pants, thirteen cents
a pair. She has worked so hard and continuously on poor food and with
insufficient clothing, that rheumatism has settled in the joints of her
fingers and stiffened them, till she is only able to turn off nine or ten
pairs a week. Last week she could only make a dollar and fifteen cents;
the rent was a dollar and a quarter. They have absolutely none of the
ordinary comforts of life; the sick man has no sheets for his cot, and the
rheumatic mother sleeps with her children on the floor.
Down-stairs, we look in on a mother and two grown daughters who are
finishing pants for another fashionable firm, one which does a large
business with clergymen. They are paid thirteen cents a pair, ordinarily,