Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

THE Summer-moon shone bright upon the deck,
And steadily the vessel o'er the deep
Pursued her way.

I heard a voice that said.
Death was among us. To the hardy throng
Of Erin's sons, who in our little realm
Maintain'd a separate commonwealth, we turn'd,
For there the stern Destroyer wrought his will.
-Stretch'd on his cradle-crib, a boy we found
Of some two summers, nobly form'd and fair,
Who slept, to wake no more.

The mother lay Upon her face beside him, and replied Nought, to our soothing words. But at the hush Of solemn midnight, when the watch was set, Then burst her cry, with startling shrillness forth, To her dead child.

die,

"Oh! wherefore did ye My beautiful? Had ye not food enough? Sweet bread, and purest milk, and tenderest care? Did ye not long your father's home to see, That emerald isle, the jewel of the world? And now, when every moment brings us near To proud Dungannon's cliffs, and green Kinsale, Why are ye there, so pale, with close-shut eyes? The poor old grandmother, upon her crutch, Will from the shieling haste to welcome yeAnd I what shall I say? With empty arms I'll stand before her, weeping. Oh! my boy! Why did ye die and leave me ?"

Thus she mourn'd, While but the mocking billows answer'd her. Yet on the morrow, when the morn was high, Up from the steerage came a slow-pac'd train,

And on a plank that thro' the port-hole pass'd Laid the dead child. Then, with a sudden plunge He went, uncoffin'd, to his wat'ry grave, Without one hallow'd breath of prayer, or hymn, To bless the obsequies.

As day roll'd on, I saw the mother, with red, swollen eyes, Intent, as usual, on her humble tasks, Seething the pottage for her husband's meal, Or with her cronies chatting. And I felt That Hand was merciful, which still'd so soon The storm of wild emotion, and drew back The bitter waters from the human heart, Lest it should drop its burdens ere the time, And sink, in sad despair.

But yet, how sad Is death upon the sea! One, at your side, Faints in his narrow cabin, and is gone. To-day, you greet the fellow-voyager With kindly words:-to-morrow stretch your

hand,

[blocks in formation]

Death smiles on land In broader space. We turn us from his wreck, To field, or forest, or embroider'd vale, 'Scaping his shafts awhile, and finding still A footing firm. But in the tossing ship He presseth to your side. You feel the wind Chill on your bosom, from his sable wings. He seems to do his work without a veil, Well-pleas'd that but a single inch of plank Divides the living, and the laughing ones, From his throng'd empire in the unfathom'd deep.

THE WRONGS OF WOMAN.

BY E. W. CHESTER.

[blocks in formation]

Or productive soil, physical power, and mechanical skill, there is enough on this earth to feed and clothe, and furnish with all the needful comforts of life, a population double its present number. For sixty years invention has been prolific in rendering the elements the slave of man. Air, earth, fire and water, have been made to do his bidding. In the teeth of wind and tide the steamer ploughs the ocean. From the raw material the finished fabric is brought forth with scarcely more of human labor and care than was formerly demanded in the superintendence of the actual operatives. And every year adds to the effectiveness of machinery, and lessens the demand for human labor. Skill, in the culture of the soil, is doubling its productive power. Wherever the eye turns-whatever article of necessity or luxury it seeks, there is a superabundance of money, of the fruits of the earth, of the products of the factory and of the workshop of everything needful for sustenance, clothing, and the gratification of taste, the markets of the world are over-stocked. Why, then, do poverty and hunger and nakedness exist in the world?

But

In a scarcity of the necessaries of life, we naturally expect that more than a needful portion will fall to the share of the rich, and consequently the poor must be reduced to distressing want. But in the present situation of the world the poor may be fully fed, and comfortably clothed and lodged, and yet enough be left to meet all the demands of the luxurious. if hunger and nakedness still exist among those of whom incessant toil is exacted, what to them is all this large abundance? What are they benefited by the increased productions of the earth, and by all the improvements in laborsaving machinery? The steam engine-the spinning jenny-the power-loom, saving the labor of thousands and millions of hands, lighten not their toil, and afford no melioration of their condition

Yet from the best evidence it does not seem that the laboring classes have been entirely deprived of all benefit from the invention and in

troduction of labor-saving machinery. We have that great work-shop, England, now in our eye. In many of the establishments wages have risen within the last half century, and the cost of living, particularly in relation to clothing, has diminished. The wages of the operatives is such, as to afford not only the comforts of life, but means of accumulation. Where the proprietors have interested themselves in the moral improvement and social condition of their workmen, the most salutary results have been produced. Experience has proved to them that benevolence thus exercised, so far from being expensive, has been gainful. The measures adopted to secure comfortable and healthy habitations, cleanliness of person, and neatness in the dwellings-to guard against the temptations of the public houses, by ceasing to pay their workmen at such houses-the enforcing a strict adherance to temperance, taking pains to secure to the families of workmen the benefit of their earnings the encouragement of Sunday and day schools for children, and of a regular attendance on church ;-all these have been tried, and have produced a rich return in a total change of character in whole villages. Without a dollar of actual loss, the capitalist has secured to his mills more regular, healthy, attentive and efficient operatives. Experiments of this kind have been attended with remarkable success, and have brought to liberal and rightminded proprietors a double reward—the gratification ever attending the consciousness of having benefited others, and an increased profit from their business.

But in many branches of manufactures, everything which could elevate or humanize the employed, has been utterly disregarded. Avarice has been too blind to the comforts of others to see its own true interests. Men seem to harden themselves against their fellows, as if they would coin their own hearts, and put them into their coffers. They spare no pains to perfect and keep in order their machinery, but have no care for those who keep it in motion, except to pay them the smallest wages for their actual earnings.

So far as men are concerned, the prevailing fault in English manufactories seems not generally to be inadequate wages, but an utter want

of that attention and influence which they could so advantageously exert for the welfare of their operatives. But with women and children another evil is added to this-the extremely stinted allowance for their labor. It is the condition of these which our authoress portrays in vivid colors, and with heart-sickening effect.

That the laborious occupations by which subsistence is procured properly devolve on men, is indicated, not only by the physical structure of the sexes, but by the sentence pronounced on our first parents. Against each of the three offending parties was a peculiar punishment denounced. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground," was the decree against the man, while the woman was subjected to a different punishment. Yet it would seem, from the account given by our authoress, that in some of the manufacturing establishments, requiring labor to which men are better fitted-employments of a nature and under circumstances utterly unfit for females, yet women are alone employed as operatives, while their husbands, without any appropriate or productive, business, are left to take care of the household, and to all that idleness and viciousness of life to which the want of steady and suitable labor subjects them. The hard earnings of the wife are consumed by the husband in the public house-the children are neglected-cleanliness and order are unknown in the dwelling-all those duties which demand the constant care of a wife and mother are disregarded. Who is to blame for the squalidness, vicious habits, moral degradation and physical distress which this state of things produces? The wife? the husband? the children? Who will say this? The employer, the capitalist, who breaks up the family, and reverses the order of nature and Providence? It is not for him to object to evils of which he is the efficient and guilty cause.

The book before us is by an authoress who has obtained something of celebrity by her writings, mostly adapted to children and youth. It consists of separate tales, in which, by the introduction of fictitious characters, it is her aim to give us vivid descriptions of the evils to which women and children are subjected in certain employments in England. We can scarcely resist the conviction that some of these are more highly colored than facts will warrant, and yet she presents us well authenticated reports, made by duly constituted committees and others, which, though but unadorned narratives of fact, fall little short of the pictures she has drawn.

The first tale is of two young women, or rather girls, going from the country to London to learn the millinery trade. They enter the city with all the freshness of country health, and the buoyancy of youthful spirits. One knowing already something of the business is apprenticed in a fashionable establishment for three years, and a fee of thirty pounds paid by the father to the mistress of the establishment, in consideration of which and of her services, she is to be taught the who'e art and mystery of the business. The younger sister, with a larger fee, is apprenticed in another place for five years. In the second year Ann returns to the country far gone with consumption, and is soon borne to the grave. Her younger sister, driven by the con act of her mistress into the haunts of vice, soon ends her unhappy career in a prison. And if treatment like that depicted by our authoress is the lot of young females in these workshops of fashion, these results are the natural-the almost unavoidable consequences.

The apprentices are represented as working, during the seasons of fashion-changing, from six o'c ock in the morning, in a close 100m, till two o'clock the next morning, with no intervals, except ten or fifteen minutes for breakfast, fifteen minutes for dinner, and ten for tea. At wo o'clock in the morning the order is issued to clear away, which together with supper occupies some three quarters of an hour, leaving the poor girls not more than three hours for s.eep. This press continues for weeks. Can such a representation be true to the life? It seems to us impossible that the human constitution should endure this violence for half a month. Avar.ce cannot but disappo nt its own ends in thus overtasking either human or brute beings. The power of effective exertion is destroyed by such a continued demand. There is a limit beyond which phys ca strength, cannot be carried, either in active effort or patient endurance. Twelve hours of labor will accomplish more, with the frame fresh and vigorous, than twenty hours, with all its active energies prostrated by want of rest and such unremitted toil. We confess that we read this description with incre.ulity. Yet strange, unnatural and inhuman as this treatment of young females by these of their own sex is, we find it corroborately reports of a commis ion issued to inquire into these abuses. Our authoress, in quoting from these reports, says:

[ocr errors]

It has been shown in evidence that during the two seasons' in town (April to August,

THE WRONGS OF WOMAN.

11

and October to Christmas), it is not uncommon to begin at six, and even at five, A. M., and to go on till two or three in the morning: sometimes from four A. M. to twelve at night. Some witnesses who were in a position freely to state the facts, mention that they have for three months successively worked twenty hours out of the twenty-four.' . . . It is the common practice, on particular occasions, such as drawing rooms, wedding or mourning orders, for the work to be continued all night. One witness worked continually, without going to bed, from four o'clock on Thursday morning to half past ten on Sun lay morning.'

[ocr errors]

That, during the season, no fixed time is allowed for meals; the general statement of the witnesses is, that about ten minutes are allowed for breakfast, fifteen or twenty minutes for dinner, fifteen minutes or less for tea, and the same for supper, if that meal is not deferred, which is more usual, till the work is over: even if that be eleven or twelve o'clock. Cold mutton, salt beef, and hard puddings are frequently the only food provided for dinner.””

The utter want of all feeling, the engrossing regard for gain deadening every sentiment of humanity, making woman the scourge of all within her power, is depicted in the tale in colors which we would fain believe exist only in an overwrought fancy; but if woman can impose tasks, and at the same time deprive of food and rest, to the extent which the proofs adduced indicate, we are prepared to believe her capable of any savageness of temper and violence of language that can be imputed to her.

The next tale is of a tenant on a patch of land, who, from the desire of a wealthy proprietor to get rid of all his small tenants, is driven with his wife and children to seek employment in a manufacturing village. They go to a screw manufactory. Here the principle is to employ only women, though the work is better suited to men, because women can be employed at less wages, and, to get bread for their children, will bear oppression, and labor with a perseverance which the more rebellious spirit of men will not en lure. Poor Smith tries in vain to find some employment, which will enable him to provide for his family, and leave his wife to her appropriate duties of taking care of the house and the children. He is willing to labor at the same wages which his wife would command, but no-women and only women can have a place as workers in the establishment. Every effort to earn a loaf of bread by the husband is al ortive, and want final y compels the wife to place

herself amidst the machinery, and what is worse, amidst coarseness and ribaldry, to which she had, even in her deepest poverty, till now, been a stranger, The Lust and is left to take care of the children and of the domestic concerns. He chafes at the wrong done to himself and to his wife-feels himself degraded by her being subjected to a masculine and himself to a feminine employment--with the idle husbands around him he becomes a frequenter of the public house-his heart grows callouscomfort and the decencies of life are banished from his cottage-the children dirty, ragged and uncared for, beyond the attention which the mother can give them when returning late and worn down with the toil of the day, are left to gather into their hearts all the vicious principles which degraded companionship can generate. A few years, and Mrs. Smith goes down to the grave, the victim of selfish and heartless avarice. This is murder, outright murder, and the guilt of the culprit capitalist might well put the blooly highwayman to the blush, and yet it is committed under the protection of the law; and the wealth thus acquired is a passport to respectable society, instead of dooming the offender to merited obloquy.

Gladly would we believe that no such wrongs are committed on woman in our "father land" as are thus depicted in the tale well entitled "THE FORSAKEN HOME." But here again, the writer, to cut off the hope that incredulity would offer, has appended proofs which deepen the reader's sadness of heart, or nerve it with a stronger indignation.

These tales, with the corroborating proofs, make up the first volume. The second contains the "THE LITTLE PIN HEADERS," and "THE LACE RUNNERS." We would willingly give the reader a sketch of these, but our heart has sickened while reading, and we have not the nerve to make out an analysis. More than once have we cast down the book, tortured with the details of wrongs to which human beings,— women in their feebleness, and children in their infancy, are subjected, to increase the wealth of the avaricious and to minister to the pride of the fashionable. But close our eyes and steel our hearts as we may, the proofs stand in dreadful corroboration of the tale of fiction.

We cannot criticise this work; we know nothing about its style. Our only anxiety as we read is, to escape the conviction of verities so painful.

There is, however, hope in the circumstance, that within a few years past parliament has un

་་་་་

dertaken to deal with the sordid cupidity of employers: commissions have been established, and have investigated, to some extent, these evils, and have made the facts public: there has been legislation too, forbidding the employment of children under a certain age in manufacturing establishments, and restricting the hours of labor. To what extent this has gone, and what has been the effect, we are not accurately informed. By the ingenuity of one of our own countrymen, the business of pin-making has undergone a change, and we presume the employment of the little pin-headers" has ceased.

But England must go further, and effectuaily root out these evils. If, in this great workshop of nations, the eagerness of gain shall rush on, regardless alike of physical distress and the moral culture of the masses, the period is not distant when a terrific volcano will burst forth, engulfing in its burning lava the institutions and wealth of the kingdom. The strength of her government, her army and police,-will be but stubble before a vicious and maddened populace awakened to fury by a sense of wrong and of deprivation amidst abounding plenty. It is worse than idle to expect that the laboring classes in any countryll toil on, generation after generation, in creating wealth for others, while not allowed the comforts of life out of the superabundance about them. An end must come to such things. The safety of the nation depends on preserving the family in its proper state-on the moral culture of those who are coming forward to active life-on well ordered communities, and on a comfortable subsistence as the reward of reasonable but not overtasked industry.

Before leaving this subject, we must be permitted to make a remark in relation to our own country. It is true that our large manufacturing establishments afford to their operatives a

liberal reward, and the moral virtues are cultivated with praiseworthy care: but in some of our large cities evils and want exist sickening to the heart of the philanthropist. It is not seldom that a mother finds herself cast on the resources of her own industry to support herself and helpless children. An avarice as heartless lives unshamed in New York as in any foreign land. It is but a day or two since, that one of the visitors of the benevolent society for the relief of the poor, found a woman, evidently well raised, struggling to support herself and three or four small children. She had pawned, to procure bread, every article from her wardrobe that decency could part with. She was compelled to pay for her room one dollar per week. Her only resource was her needle, and she was employed in making boys' shirts for some dealer" down town." By great efforts she could make two shirts a day. When carried to her employer, every seam was critically examined, to see that no slight was in any part of her work, and the benevolent man seemed anxious to discover something with which to find fault. And what think you, kind reader, was the compensation awarded to this struggling mother? Six and one fourth cents per shirt! Twelve and a half cents for a hard day's work of a woman finding her own room, fire, lights and food! This is but a common instance in this city of the niggardly compensation afforded to woman for her severe labor. And yet in this republican city-this Christian city-some foreign dancer, for exhibiting her limbs and for her shameless antics on the stage, is rewarded with thousands on thousands.

Is it strange that multitudes crowd the courts of infamy, when virtuous industry is thus starved, and wealth and laurels are heaped on the panders to a vicious taste?

CHARLES JAMES FO X.

THE celebrated Charles James Fox, or Charles Fox, as he was familiarly called, was born January 24th, 1749. He was the second son of Henry Fox, who was early in Parliament, and one of the best speakers of the day; who, in 1754, was made secretary of war, and afterward paymaster-general of the forces, in which office

རྐ

he accumulated immense wealth, though at the expense of the opprobrious appellation of " Public defaulter of uncounted millions;" finally, he was elevated to the peerage, with the title of Baron Holland, of Foxley. Charles, who was his favorite son, received from the maternal side the blood of two royal lines-his mother being

་་་

« PredošláPokračovať »