Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land/Essay 12
ESSAY XII.
It is frequently asked—what remedy can be found for the enormous and cruel oppression experienced by females employed as seamstresses on coarse work, spoolers, &c.? While these classes are so much more numerous than the demand for their services requires, a complete remedy for the evil is, I am afraid, impracticable. I venture to suggest a few palliatives.
1. Public opinion, a powerful instrument, ought to be brought to bear on this subject. All honourable members of society, male and female, ought to unite in denouncing those who 'grind the faces of the poor,' by taking female labour widthout a compensation at least adequate for the support of human existence. The pulpit ought to unite in this crusade against a crying injustice, productive of such distressing consequences.
2. Let the employments of females be multiplied as much as possible. They are admirably calculated for various occupations from which they are at present in a great degree excluded, more especially shop-keeping in retail stores.
3. The poorer class ought to have exclusively the business of white-washing and other low employments, now in a great degree monopolized by men.
4. Let the Provident Societies, intended to furnish employment for women in winter, be munificently supported; and let those Societies give fair and liberal wages, following the laudable example of the Impartial Humane Society of Baltimore, and the Female Hospitable Society of Philadelphia.
5. Let the ladies have some of the poor women, who are half starved, making coarse shirts at 6, 8, and 10 cents each, taught fine needle-work, mantua-making, millinery, clear starching, quilting, &c. There is always a great want of women in these branches.
6. Let schools be opened for instructing poor women in cooking. Good cooks are always scarce.
7. Schools for young ladies, and infant schools, ought, with few exceptions, to be taught by females, who should be regularly educated for those important branches, which are peculiarly calculated for their sex, and which, would afford excellent occupation for the daughters of reduced families.
8. Ladies who can afford it, ought to give out their sewing and washing, and pay fair prices. Let them display their economy in any other department than in one which has a tendency to distress and pauperize deserving persons of their own sex.
9. In the towns in the interior of the state, and in those in the western states, there is generally a want of females as domestics, seamstresses, &c. &c.; and in factories, as spoolers, spinners, and weavers. It would be a most meritorious appropriation of a part of the superfluous wealth of the rich, to provide for sending some of the superabundant poor females of our cities to those places.
10. To crown the whole, let ladies who lead the fashion, take up the cause of these poor women, con amore. It is a holy cause. They may, with moderate exertions, render it fashionable to endeavour to rescue from unmerited and cruel sufferings, oppressed, forlorn, and neglected classes, as precious, I emphatically repeat, in the eye of Heaven, as the most exalted and high-minded among themselves.
Other palliatives might be devised, were public attention directed to the subject in any degree proportioned to its importance.
I conclude these essays, by stating, in brief, the points which I undertook to prove, and which, I flatter myself, I have fully proved:
1. That the wages of seamstresses, employed on common work, of spoolers, &c., &c., are inadequate for their support, even if fully employed, and unincumbered with children.
2. That of course, when not fully employed, or when burdened with children, they must necessarily be in a state of constant pauperism.
3. That such a state of things in a prosperous country—"a land flowing with milk and honey"—is a national disgrace, and calls loudly for a remedy, at least for some mitigation of the evil.
4. That the wages of labourers on canals and turnpikes, of hod-men, &c., &c., are barely sufficient, if they have families (as the greater number of them have), to support them, when fully employed; and that, therefore, in case of sickness, or want of employment, they must depend in a greater or less degree on public or private aid.
5. That the operation of the poor-laws in England from 1601, when the system was enacted, till 1795, when the flood-gates of abuse and corruption were thrown wide open, was benignant and salutary.
6. That the exorbitant increase of the poor rates in England is chiefly owing to the enormous abuses in the administration of the poor-laws, but partly to the oppressive reduction of the price of labour, resulting from the great improvements in machinery.
7. That the countries which have no poor-laws, are subject to oppressive burdens, probably not inferior to those of the English, but in another form, that is, by mendicity.
8. That mendicants generally levy contributions on the humane and charitable, to three or four times the amount that would support an equal number of paupers, either in alms-houses or at their own dwellings.
How far I have succeeded in the establishment of these positions, must rest with the public at large, from whose decision there is no appeal. But be that decision what it may, it cannot deprive me of the gratification of having, at the expense of no small portion of obloquy from those with whose personal interests some of my doctrines interfere, pleaded as holy a cause as any of those which for years past have been presented at the bar of the public.
Philadelphia, July 20, 1833.