White Slaves | Page 7

from the confinement and strained position of sitting so
many hours a day over a sewing-machine. This poor girl told me that
both of these firms were now giving a great part of this class of work to
the public authorities in charge of the House of Correction, to be done
by the prisoners, and that a daily stint for a woman in prison is only
eight pairs. This sick, discouraged girl, in a most heart-breaking way,
said she thought she would better commit some crime in order to
procure a place in the House of Correction, for there she would have
much better quarters, a great deal nicer food, and would only have to
make eight pairs a day, while at home she must force herself to make at
least a dozen pairs a day, or starve.
Fellow-citizens, what do you think of this? Is there not something
wrong in a system of things that permits the authorities of the State or
city to enter into competition with the sewing-women of Boston at such
a cruel and heartless rate that no woman can work at it and keep out of
prison, unless she is assisted by charity? This same South Boston firm
gives out men's shirts to be made at sixty cents a dozen. The material
for one of these shirts costs twenty-three cents, the making five cents--a
total of twenty-eight cents. They retail these shirts at fifty cents apiece,

making a net profit of twenty-two cents on an investment of
twenty-eight cents for a few weeks' time.
During the last few weeks, as I have gone about among these women,
my ears have been haunted with that old song of Thomas Hood, as
appropriate now, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, in the city
of Boston, as it ever has been anywhere, at any time, in the history of
human greed.
With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman
sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch!
stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous
pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"
"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And
work--work--work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's, oh! to be a
slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to
save, If this is Christian work!
"Work--work--work Till the brain begins to swim! Work--work--work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
* * * * *
Stitch--stitch--stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt,-- Sewing at once,
with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt!
"But why do I talk of death, That phantom of grisly bone? I hardly fear
his terrible shape, It seems so like my own-- It seems so like my own
Because of the fast I keep: O God! that bread should be so dear, And
flesh and blood so cheap!
"Work--work--work! My labor never flags; And what are its wages? A
bed of straw, A crust of bread--and rags, That shattered roof--and this
naked floor-- A table--a broken chair-- And a wall so blank my shadow
I thank For sometimes falling there!
"Work--work--work From weary chime to chime! Work--work--work
As prisoners work for crime!"
If Thomas Hood had lived in our day, and could have gone around with
me in Boston, he would have had to make it stronger yet, for among us
the good, honest sewing-woman must work at least one-third harder
than the "prisoners work for crime." And on such wages the prayer with
which he continues must be forever unanswered:--
"Oh! 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 I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want,
And the walk that costs a meal!
"Oh! but for one short hour,-- A respite, however brief! No blessed
leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief! A little weeping would
ease my heart; But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"
With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman
sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch!
stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous
pitch,-- Would that its voice could reach the rich!-- She sang this "Song
of the Shirt."

II.
LETTER OF CRITICISM.
"Slavery ain't o' nary color, 'Tain't the hide that makes it wus, All it
keers fer in a feller 'S jest to make him fill its pus."
--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Biglow Papers.
BOSTON, June 29, 1891.
REV. Louis ALBERT BANKS, _St. John's M. E. Church, South