Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/463

420 King Miss King, the head of a New York tea-dealing firm composed of women, who control a capital of $1,000,000, has recently gone to China to make purchases. Her previous business experience, as narrated by a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, explains her fitness for her mission, while it incidentally throws some light on the secrets of the tea-company business:

Previous to the outbreak of our civil war Miss King was extensively engaged in utilizing the leaves of the great blackberry and raspberry crops running to waste in the rich lowlands of Georgia and Alabama, and kept in that fertile region a large levy of Northern women—smart, like herself—to superintend the gathering of the leaves and their preparation for shipment to headquarters in New York. These leaves were prepared for the market at their manipulating halls in one of the narrow streets on the Hudson side of New York city. Over this stage of the tea preparations Miss King had special supervision, and, by a generous use of the genuine imported teas, worked up our American productions into all the accredited varieties of the black and green teas of commerce. Here the female supervision apparently ended. In their extensive tea ware-rooms in Walker street the business was conducted by the shrewdest representatives of Gothamite trade, with all the appliances of the great Chinese tea-importing houses. Here were huge piles of tea-chests, assorted and unassorted, and the high-salaried tea-taster with his row of tiny cups of hot-drawn tea, delicately sampling and classifying the varieties and grades for market. The breaking out of the war stopped the Southern supplies and sent Miss King's female agents to their Northern homes. But the business was made to conform to the new order of things. Large cargoes of imported black teas were bought as they arrived and were skillfully manipulated into those high-cost varieties of green teas so extensively purchased by the government for its commissary and medical departments." * of New York, a self-made woman who had accumulated a large fortune and owned much real estate. Her memorial, signed by a few others, represented $9,000,000. The committee bearing these waited on many members of the legislature to secure their influence when such a bill should be presented, which was done March 11, by Col. Alfred Wagstaff, with warm recommendations. He was followed by Senator McCarthy of Onondaga, who also introduced a bill for an amendment to the constitution to secure to women the right of suffrage. Both these bills called out the determined opposition of Thomas C. Ecclesine, senator from the eleventh district, and the ridicule of others. The delegation of ladies, sitting there as representatives of half the people of the State, felt insulted to have their demands thus sneered at; it was for them a moment of bitter humiliation. In the evening, however, their time for retaliation came, as they had a hearing in the Senate chamber, before the Judiciary Committee, where an immense crowd assembled at an early hour. The chairman of the committee Hon. William H. Robertson, presided. Each of the ladies, in the course of her speech, referred to the insulting remarks of Mr. Hughes of Washington county. That gentleman, being present, looked as if he regretted his unfortunate jokes, and winced under the sarcasm of the ladies. Soon after this, great excitement was created by the close of Stewart's Home for Working Women. This fine building, on the corner of Thirty-second street and Fourth avenue, had been erected by the merchant prince for the use of working women, who could there find a home at a moderate expense. The millionaire dead, his large fortune passed into other hands. The