not only health, but beauty and cheerfulness, should be consulted in the arrangement of the whole establishment.
Meals and Health Regulations of the Workwomen.
The meals of these latter should be sent them from the co-operative kitchen, and laid upon a plain but well-appointed table. During working hours they should be required to dress in some modification of the gymnastic costume adopted by Dr. Dio Lewis for the pupils of his boarding-school,—a dress which can very easily be made as pretty and coquettish and modest as any, and which, not having the weight or pressure of corset and crinoline, leaves the circulation unimpeded, and therefore lessens very much the fatigue of working. Being loose, and short also, it would permit them, once or twice a day, to take a little exercise in the gymnasium. In my opinion, this latter should be insisted on as a condition of their employment; for constant sewing, as we all know, is the most killing of all feminine employments to youth, health, and spirits. As a class, sewing-women grow prematurely old, both in face and figure. Their chances of marrying favourably seem as few as those of the schoolmistresses in the ranks above them. Hand-sewing predisposes them to lung diseases, and machine-sewing to affections more pitiable still; and their pay for it all is miserable,—a shame to the whole race, since all its clothing and adorning come through their defrauded fingers. It is high time that the free and favoured of the sex—the women who have comfortable homes provided for them by their husbands or fathers—should feel a solicitude for these victims of the needle, and should take active measures for their relief. Benevolent associations cannot reach them, for they are too numerous. Nothing can reach them, save some device of profitable co-operative action, which shall bring the whole moneyed and employing class among women into direct and responsible relations with the whole employed or industrial class.
