Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/941

Rh mittee of the Massachusetts Legislature, on the eight-hour movement, the following towns report concerning the wages and labor of women:

Boston—Glass Co., wages from $4 to $8 a week. Domestics, from $1.50 to $3 per week; seamstresses, $1 a day; Makers of fancy goods, 40 to 50 cents a day. Brookline— Washerwomen, $1 a day. Charlestown and New Bedford are ashamed to name the wages, but humbly confess that they are very low. Chicopee—Pays women 90 per cent the wages of men. Concord—Pays from 8 to 10 cents en hour. Fairhaven—Gives to female photographers one-third the wages of men. Hadley—Pays three--fourths. To domestics, one-third; seamstresses, one-quarter to one-third. Holyoke—In its paper mills, offers one-third to one-half. Lancaster—Pays for pocket-book making from 50 to 75 cents a day. Lee—Pays in the paper mills one-half the wages of men. Lowell—The Manufacturing Co. averages 90 cents a day. The Baldwin Mills pay 60 to 75 cents a day. Newton—Pays its washerwomen 75 cents a day, or 10 cents an hour. North Becket— Pays to women one-third the wages of men. Northampton—Pays $5 a week. Salisbury —For sewing hats, $1 a day. South Reading—On rattan and shoe work, $5 to $10 a week. South Yarmouth—Half the wages of men, or less. Taunton—One-third to two-thirds the wages of men. Walpole—Pays two-thirds the wages of men. Wareham— Pays to its domestics from 18 to 30 cents a day; to seamstresses, 50 cents to $1. Wilmington—Pays two-thirds the wages of men. Winchester—-Pays dressmakers $1 a day; washerwomen, 12 cents an hour. Woburn—Keeps its women at work from 11 to 18 hours, and pays them two-thirds the wages of men.

On the better side of the question, Fall River testifies that women, in competition, earn nearly as much as men.

Lawrence—From the Pacific Mills, that-the women are liberally paid. We should like to see the figures. The Washington Mills pays from $1 to $2a day. Stoneham—Gives them $1.50 per week. Waltham—Reports the wages of the watch factory as very remunerative. In 1860 I reported this factory as paying from $2.50 to $4a week. Here, also, we should prefer figures to a general statement. Boston—Has now many manufactories of paper collars. Each girl is expected to turn out 1,800 daily. The wages are $7 a week. In the paper-box factory, more than 200 girls are employed, but I can not ascertain their wages, and therefore suppose them to be low. I know individuals who earn here $6 a week, but that must be above the average.

The best looking body of factory operatives that I have ever seen are those employed in the silk and ribbon mills on Boston Neck, lately under the charge of Mr. J. H. Stephenson, and those at the Florence Silk Mills in Northampton, owned by Mr. S. L. Hill The classes, libraries, and privileges appertaining to these mills, make them the best examples I know, and this is shown in the faces and bearing of the women. We ure always referred to political economy, when we speak of the low wages of women, but a little investigation will show that other causes co-operate with those, which can be but gradually reached, to determine their rates.

1. The willfulness of women themselves, which when I see them in positions I have helped to open to them, fils me with shame and indignation.

2. The unfair competition proceeding from the voluntary labor, in mechanical ways, of women well to do.

For the first, we can not greatly blame the women whom employers chiefly go for their good looks, for expecting to earn their wages through them, rather than by the proper discharge of their duties. Their conduct is not the less shameful on that account, But I seem to set that only time and death and ruin will educate them.

For the second, we must strive to develop a public sentiment which, while it continues to hold labor honorable, will stamp with ignominy any women who, in comfortable country homes, compete with the workwomen of great cities. There are thousands of wealthy farmers' wives to-day, who just as much drive other women to sin and death, as if they led them with their own hands to the houses in which they are ultimately compelled to take refuge. Still further it has come to be known to me that in Boston, and I om told in New York also, wealthy women who do not even do their own sewing, have the control of the finer kinds of fancy-work, dealing with the stores which sell such work under various disguises. I can not prove these words, but they will strike conviction to