PREFACE.
The subject of the following essays is deeply interesting to a large portion of the human race, much of whose happiness, morals, and manners depends on its being correctly understood, and rightly acted on. It therefore demands the most serious reflection of the wise, and the good, and the liberal.
Some of the most material of the opinions herein contained, are in direct hostility with those generally prevalent on the same subject, and even by some highly enlightened citizens. But few can be ignorant that the most enlightened and profound men, may be radically and fatuitously in error on particular points. Bacon believed in astrology; Johnson in the Cocklane ghost—and the great Judge Hale in witchcraft. He sentenced a miserable wretch to death, for that imaginary crime. Need I add a word to prove the folly of placing implicit credit, without due examination, on opinions sanctioned by great names, or regarded as venerable from their antiquity.
All I ask for such opinions as at the first view may appear heterodoxical, is a fair, and candid, and repeated examination. Let them not be cast aside with scorn, as mankind are too apt to do, because they coincide not with preconceived views. If they cannot pass this ordeal, let them perish. If otherwise, I hope they will meet with that attention, and produce those practical results, which the importance of the subject demands.
Should it appear, as it probably will, to some of my readers, that I have expressed myself with too much warmth, in discussing the sufferings of the seamstresses, &c. let it be borne in mind, that I have been pleading the cause of probably 12,000 women in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, (with souls as precious in the eye of heaven as the most exalted females that ever trod the earth—as a Maria Theresa, a Princess Victoria, a Mrs. Washington, a Mrs. Madison, or a Mrs. Monroe,) who are grievously oppressed and reduced to the utmost penury, in a land literally flowing with milk and honey, while many of those for whom they toil, make immense fortunes, by their labours.
We are assured, as I have stated,[1] by ladies fully competent to judge on the subject, that nine cotton shirts a week are as much as the great mass of seamstresses can make. Those shirts are frequently made for 6, 8, and 10 cents, leaving 54 a 72 a 90 cents a week for the incessant application of a human being, during thirteen or fourteen hours a day, for the payment of rent, the purchase of food, clothes, drink, soap, candles and fuel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Deplorable as is the condition of the poor in the crowded cities of Europe, there are few females there who earn much less than this—and therefore, it must follow, that there is frequently as intense a degree of distress suffered here, as in London or Paris. The principal difference is not in the intensity, but in the extent of the distress. Compared with London or Paris, there are few who suffer in this way here. But it is no alleviation of the misery of an unfortunate female in Philadelphia or Boston, who makes shirts for six or eight cents, or even ten, that is to say, who earns from nine to fifteen cents per day, that there are fewer similarly circumstanced here than in those cities.
It is often triumphantly asked, respecting the case of the women who are so very inadequately remunerated for their labours, What remedy can be applied to such an inveterate evil? Does not the proportion between supply and demand, in this, as in all other cases, regulate prices? And while there
- ↑ Page 13.
