White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor Part 8

Let me tell you of a vision I had the other day as I sat meditating and dreaming in my study chair. I dreamed I was walking down the streets of an American city when I saw a large brick building which I might have thought was a factory except that there were white curtains at every window in the house. As I neared the door, I asked a pa.s.ser-by what it was, and he astonished me by saying, "This is the great Christian factory." Being a little anxious to see what life in a really Christian factory would be like, I went in on a tour of investigation. There were several hundred employees in the factory, most of whom were young women. To my astonishment, I found bath-tubs in this factory, with an abundance of hot and cold water, linen towels, and toilet soap. Did one ever hear of such luxuries in a factory of any sort? In the girls'

bath-room there were rugs under foot, the finis.h.i.+ng was done in oak, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs were nickel-plated, the sanitary arrangements were perfect, and everything was as bright and clean as it was possible to make it. Each employee was allowed thirty minutes for a bath, and if one was so fastidious as to need three-quarters of an hour, no comments were made. The structure was commodious and convenient, substantially built, and heated, lighted, and ventilated throughout according to the most improved system. Even the cellar was attractive in its completeness, from the steam-engine that operated the machinery of the building, to the culinary department where those who desired could purchase a noon-day lunch at actual cost of material. The cook in charge of the kitchen devoted her entire time to the work. Every day, tea, with milk and sugar, was supplied by the firm free of charge; oaten meal was furnished three days in the week at the same rate.

Delicious soup was served at three cents a bowl. The entire floor was carefully cemented; it was light, warm, and clean, and there were tables and benches for those who lunched in the building. An hour was allowed at noon, and while all were expected to be on hand promptly at one o'clock, the girls living at a distance from the factory were thoughtfully permitted to leave a few minutes before twelve o'clock.

On the main floor goods were stored in the centre of the room, the remaining s.p.a.ce being reserved for the pleasure and convenience of the employees. At one end of this s.p.a.cious floor there was an improvised music-room, with a piano and window garden, where the girls could sing and sun themselves every noon. Opposite was an enclosed sanctum, divided into a reading and reception-room. Bright, soft rugs were scattered about. The reading-table was as well stocked with current literature as a club man's library table. The papers and periodicals were reserved for the exclusive use of the girls. An open fireplace was one of the attractive features of the reception-room, and there was a mantel-mirror, too--that means of grace so dear to the gentler s.e.x.

The two upper floors contained the work-tables and machines. On entering these work-rooms one was struck by the neatness of the place.

Everything seemed to have a white lining. The atmosphere was not only clean, but fresh and sweet. There were no rags, no dust, no fluff, no smell of dripping grease from over-hanging machinery. A special staff of men was constantly employed to look after the premises, and their vigilance was such as to antic.i.p.ate the wear and tear. The abundance of light and suns.h.i.+ne would astonish and delight not only business people, but school commissioners as well. Each work-shop was the size of an entire floor, so that light was admitted from four sides of the building, the windows almost adjoining one another. The white curtains, which softened the light, gave the place a homelike appearance which was very pleasing. Another charm was the love of flowers. There were potted plants on every floor, and they were as green and lovely as if nourished by a practical florist. On making some inquiries, I found that Friday was pay-day, and that indirectly much good resulted from this thoughtful system. Not only did it give the hundreds of families the benefit of the early Sat.u.r.day markets, but in a great measure did away with the credit-books, and, best of all, was instrumental in keeping the girls off the street Sat.u.r.day night. No charges were imposed upon the operators. They did not have to buy thread, pay machine-rent, or replace broken needles. If an attachment was displaced, it was restored by the firm, and even the girls' scissors were kept sharpened at the expense of the employer. Hot and cold water, mirrors, towels, and soap were among the conveniences. Posted over the stationary wash basins was this request: "Please help with your forethought to keep things clean and nice. Any attention will oblige."

This was signed by the firm. The work was so systematized, and the training so thorough, that the tyrannical forewoman and domineering foreman had no place in the establishment. The manager was the only person to whom the hands were accountable. Adjoining the factory was a pretty garden containing a pear-orchard, with arbors and seats, where the girls lunched in fine weather. Women as a cla.s.s show the effects of good keeping, and these workers were not an exception. There were a great many pretty faces among them, and not one that betrayed "boss-fright" or time-terror. As a cla.s.s they looked more like normal college students than factory hands. Compared with overworked, nerve-strained, anxious-faced girls in the sweat-shops, and indeed in most shops and factories, these trim, tidy-looking, cheerful and contented women seemed to me the very _n.o.blesse_ of the industrial world.

Ah! you may say, that is only an idle and visionary dream; and no doubt my critic of a few weeks ago, who thought I belonged to the most dangerous cla.s.s in the community when I was describing the misery of the "white slaves of the Boston sweaters," would be ready to say that I am engaged in a scarcely less dangerous task in putting such ideal and impossible dreams into the heads of working-girls. But, dear sceptical friend, what I have been telling you is not a dream at all, but a heavenly reality that is going on in this modern work-a-day world, in the city of Newark, N. J., and I have merely been summarizing for you the report of Nell Nelson in the New York _World_, giving an account of the Christian experiment of Ferris Brothers' factory for the making of corset waists. I was at this point in my discourse on Thursday at half-past one o'clock, when I said to myself, "Isn't it a little hazardous to take all this for fact, even on the authority of a newspaper reporter? Will not a great many of your audience say it is only a pleasing fancy of a reporter's imagination?" So at three o'clock I was on the train for New York, and at eleven that evening I was in bed in a hotel in Newark.

Friday morning, at half-past seven, I was going through Ferris Brothers' factory, It is with great pleasure that I tell you that, on returning, I did not have to strike out a single word I had written. On every side were evidences of thoughtfulness; for instance, a large portion of the girls employed live in a section of the city to the rear of the factory. In order to save the extra walk of a block or two, three hundred additional keys have been made to the orchard gate, so that they can come and go that way. A large number of umbrellas are kept in the office. If a girl is caught at the factory in an unexpected shower, she finds an umbrella waiting to be loaned in just such an emergency.

With the manager I went through the culinary department. They make ice-cream now every day, and sell large plates to the girls for three cents. A careful account is kept of the cost, and the manager said he thought he should be able to reduce the cream to two cents a plate. I looked through the reading-room and over the carefully selected lists of papers. The manager said that among the girls were some excellent musicians, and others with good literary abilities, and told me, I thought with a pardonable degree of pride, that a few months since, when some desirable positions in the Newark Public Library were open to compet.i.tion, the two young ladies from the Ferris Brothers' factory who were successful, scored ninety-five points out of a possible hundred in their literary examination. No employee works more than nine and one-quarter hours a day, and Sat.u.r.day afternoon is free. The average wages, including beginners and help girls, is seven dollars a week, and a good worker makes twelve dollars.

You may say that many of these things that I have mentioned are insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely satisfactory from a commercial stand-point, the firm agreeing that not only have their employees done more, but better, work than ever before. One of the firm a.s.sured me that, while there were, of course, many discouraging things and occasionally an employee who showed little appreciation, on the whole there had been a steady improvement during their three years'

experience in this factory, and under no circ.u.mstances would they be willing to go back to the old factory _regime_.

To contrast a factory like this with some of the sweat-shops I have visited, is like contrasting heaven with h.e.l.l. There may be, and I doubt not are, many other factories where the same Christian thoughtfulness is exercised in the treatment of employees, as here.

Upon all such may the benediction of Heaven rest! May their numbers be multiplied!

The Church, too--I mean the great Catholic Church, formed of all the branches of our Christianity "who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity"--must open its arms with a heartier tone of welcome and brotherhood to the tried and disheartened working-people. Nothing in recent art has stirred me so deeply as a dim copy of Hacker's "Christ and the Magdalene," reproduced by Mr. Stead in the _Review of Reviews_.

The Christ is standing with coa.r.s.e clothing and toil-worn hands by the work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. The shavings are heaped in piles around, him on the otherwise bare floor, while kneeling at his feet in penitence and trust is the Magdalene. Brothers, it is this carpenter Christ, as Frances Willard aptly puts it, "the Monday Christ," for whom the toil-worn world hungers, and will welcome when it sees Him manifested in us, in the shop, the factory, and the counting-room, as well as in the church.

Zoe Dana Underhill sings, in _Harper's Magazine_, a song the modern Church needs to learn, until its great heart shall throb with its spirit.

"The Master called to His reapers, 'Make scythe and sickle keen, And bring me the grain from the uplands, And the gra.s.s from the meadows green, And from off the mist-clad marshes, Where the salt waves fret and foam, Ye shall gather the rustling sedges, To furnish the harvest-home.

Then the laborers cried, 'O Master, We will bring Thee the yellow grain That waves on the windy hillside, And the tender gra.s.s from the plain; But that which springs on the marshes Is dry and harsh and thin, Unlike the sweet field-gra.s.ses, So we will not gather it in.'

But the Master said, 'O foolis.h.!.+

For many a weary day, Through storm and drought, ye have labored For the grain and the fragrant hay.

The generous earth is fruitful, And breezes of summer blow Where these, in the sun and the dews of heaven, Have ripened soft and slow.

'But out on the wide, bleak marshland Hath never a plough been set, And with rapine and rage of hungry waves The s.h.i.+vering soil is wet.

There flower the pale green sedges, And the tides that ebb and flow, And the biting breath of the sea-wind Are the only care they know.

'They have drunken of bitter waters, Their food hath been sharp sea-sand; And yet they have yielded a harvest Unto the Master's hand.

So shall ye all, O reapers, Honor them now the more, And garner in gladness, with songs of praise, The gra.s.s from the desolate sh.o.r.e.'"

X.

OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE BOSTON PAUPERS.

"And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee, An image of Him who died on the tree; * * * * *

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through Him, I give to thee!'"

--James Russell Lowell: _Sir Launfal_.

"Now there was a certain rich man and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day: and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate full of sores."

"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me."

These two views of poverty ever stand over against each other. They are the same to-day as when so graphically described by Jesus of Nazareth.

The one looks on poverty with contempt; it is the view of selfishness.

The other looks upon it with sympathetic brotherhood; the view of humanity at its highest attainment, or from the standpoint of Jesus Christ. Both these scriptures, however, agree in teaching us the solemnity of our relation to our neighbors who are in trouble or poverty. Mrs. Catherwood, in her story of "The Lady of Fort St. John,"

in the August _Atlantic Monthly_--a tale of the early French settlements in this country, ill.u.s.trates one of the old superst.i.tions by a weird tale of an old Hollander who had married a very young wife who, when he came to die, was still only a girl; and the cunning old Dutchman endeavored to maintain his supremacy over her after his death by grimly providing in his will that his right hand should be severed from his body, and, preserved by some rare chemical process, should always remain in the possession of his widow as her most sacred treasure; for if she lost or destroyed it, or failed to look on it once a month, nameless and weird calamities, foreseen by the dying man, must light not only on her, but on those who loved her best. And so, long after he was in his grave, that horrible memento of the past held this poor woman in the clasp of its skeleton fingers, and guided her course across the oceans, and into distant lands. This was the grip of a superst.i.tion only; but there is a real grip of the "dead hand," of which this ghostly story is only a faint intimation--the grip of yesterday on to-day--of to-day on to-morrow--the grip of my duty toward my neighbor that cannot be shaken off, which even death itself does not loosen.

There is, perhaps, no keener test of the standing of a person or a city in the scale of civilization, than their treatment of the sick or helpless poor dependent upon them. Dives, the barbarian, whether in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, or in Boston to-day, lets the poor lie at his gate in indifference, at the mercy of every scavenger that may prey upon them. The "Good Samaritan," whether on the road to Jericho, or at Rainsford Island, stops with sympathetic eye, a helpful hand, and open purse to share his best with the victim of misfortune or wrong.

We come this morning to examine into the att.i.tude of Boston toward her paupers who are cared for in the two inst.i.tutions at Long Island and Rainsford Island. I have made repeated visits to these islands, and approach this discussion only after many weeks of reflection, and a careful sifting of the information received. I have hesitated about treating the subject at all, because a criticism of a public inst.i.tution is supposed by so many people to mean a personal accusation or attack upon the parties in charge of it. I wish to say, in the beginning, that so far as I have been able to see, the officers immediately in charge of these inst.i.tutions are kind-hearted and humane, and are endeavoring to do the best they can, with the means at their disposal. After saying that, I propose, without any regard as to whom it may please or displease, to point out candidly what seems to me inexcusable thoughtlessness and grievous errors in the treatment of the paupers in these inst.i.tutions.

The largest and best building is on Long Island. Here the men are kept.

There are about three hundred on the average, but this is increased to between four and five hundred in the winter. And right here is a wrong that ought to be righted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAMPS.]

The excuse for careless and indifferent treatment of the really deserving pauper men who are on Long Island is that every winter the place is crowded with "b.u.mmers" who come to Long Island in the winter for free quarters, and as soon as the weather is fine for out-door tramping in the summer, they go away to escape work in the inst.i.tution, coming back again in cold weather, It would certainly be very easy to devise a law to make this impossible. No able-bodied person who is able to work, ought under any circ.u.mstances to be sent to the almshouse.

People who are able to work and support themselves, and do not do so under their own direction, ought to be sent to the work-house, and compelled to do so under the direction of a proper officer. This would take away from Long Island a lot of drunken tramps who congregate there in the winter. The same remark applies to women. The intemperate and vicious woman ought not to be sent to the almshouse; it should be sacredly kept as "a refuge and a home where the respectable poor, the sick, and the old--those who have outlived their children, or have broken down in the race of life--may find shelter and care." But the honest cases ought not, and need not, suffer in order to punish these frauds. At Long Island, on one of my visits, there were ninety-two men on the sick-roll, and only one nurse, and he not a trained nurse. I am also satisfied that the food is insufficient either for sick or well. A reporter of the Boston _Post_ managed to interrogate an old man who was able to sit up by the side of his little cot. In answer to a question, this sick old man said they did not get any milk; and yet there is a large farm attached to the inst.i.tution, and there is no excuse for not having plenty of milk provided at very little expense for these infirm old people. The old man said they had meat three times a week--remember that means three meals out of twenty-one; and when asked by the reporter, "What kind of meat?" he answered pathetically, "It wouldn't do any good for me to tell you, sir, but it's mighty poor stuff."

Permit me to quote in full a little article in the Boston _Herald_ of a few weeks since, under the t.i.tle, "Some Harbor Policemen Overpowered by Long Island Hospitality:"--

"There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality.' A few days ago the police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party of surveyors, who were to lay out grounds for the proposed new hospital.

"The work of the boat's pa.s.sengers occupied an unexpectedly long time, and as no provision had been made for dinner, the party invoked the hospitality of the almshouse on the island. The surveyors and officers of the boat were a.s.signed to one part of the inst.i.tution, while the crew were invited into the large dining-hall, usually occupied by the inmates. It is this last-named party which is bearing the brunt of the joke. The feast of which they were invited to partake consisted of a lot of potatoes with their jackets on, without the formality of a platter, a plate of what the boys termed 'soup-meat,' a soup-dish minus the soup, knives and forks, and empty mugs. Grace was omitted; the men spent the time in gazing first at the 'feast,' and then at each other.

A common thought seemed to occupy the minds of all, for without a word they simultaneously arose from the table and left the room.

"They waited at the boat until the surveyors' work had been completed, and then came back to Boston. It was then time to make the regular afternoon trip, and with empty stomachs they started out again and finished the day. It was the intention of the victims to keep the matter 'shady;' but the joke leaked out, as such things will, and it is worse than shaking a red rag at a bull to say 'Long Island hospitality'

to certain blue-coats who labor on the water." And yet they were there at one of the three lucky meals out of twenty-one, when there was "soup-meat."

Among the men in this inst.i.tution was pointed out to me a marble-cutter, who was a thoroughly respectable, self-supporting workman. He was hurt while at work by the falling of a stone, and so disabled by an injury of the spine that he was unable to continue employment. As soon as sickness had used up what money he had, having no relatives who could help him, there was nothing left for him but to come here. One of the officers spoke of him in the highest terms, and told me how, without direction from any one else, he sought by many daily circuits of the building to strengthen his spine. I was a.s.sured by the same officer that many others who were inmates were there purely through misfortune which was from no fault of their own, but from such accidents as are likely to happen to any honest laboring-man. Now I maintain that such men ought to be treated with a decent regard for their self-respect, and given a comfortable home. It is an outrage that this marble-cutter, and others like him, are fed more shabbily than if they had been convicted of a crime.

In addition to the men on Long Island, there is one ward in the hospital used for women. There were fifty-two sick women crowded into this ward at the time of my visit. There was only one nurse, an excellent woman, but with no special education for her duties. The night helper is a woman who is hired for fifty cents a day. For this ward of fifty-two sick women there was no bath-room at all. The nurse's own room was situated at the other end of the building from her ward, and she had to go across the men's ward to get to her patients at night, if she went. There was no place for insane or refractory patients, or for the dying, except in the general ward. Sometimes their cries and groans are very distressing to the other patients. In a recent case of death from mania, the whole ward was disturbed for several nights.

Most of the women are kept at Rainsford Island, and there are many more reasons for criticism there than on Long Island. The only hospital there is an old smallpox hospital, more than three-score years old.

This is crowded beyond all thought of the requirements of sanitary science. Think of a room for confinement cases only seven feet wide and less than twelve feet long. In the annual report of Public Inst.i.tutions for 1889 we find the following statement by the then resident physician: "It is remarkable that a building which was a small-pox hospital fifty-seven years ago, and which since then has undergone no material improvement, should up to the present time be the only hospital connected with our pauper inst.i.tutions." The doctor might have added that this building was abandoned a quarter of a century ago by the State, as unfit for sick persons. It is certainly no extravagance to say that these arrangements for the care of the sick on Rainsford Island are more than half a century behind the times. The only thing modern I saw was the keen-eyed physician.

There is about the entire inst.i.tution a lack of careful thoughtfulness for the comfort of the inmates, that is exceedingly painful to a thoughtful observer. For example, the island is very beautifully situated, and there are many fine trees in the shade of which, with comfortable arrangements, it would be a most healthful and delightful experience for hundreds of these infirm and aged women to sit on summer days; but, although I searched carefully throughout the grounds, I found only two benches under the trees anywhere, and a half-dozen more, perhaps, around on the sea-front, and not one of them with a back to it. Think of arranging for the comfort of your own grandmother, eighty years old, in that way!

The food here, too, is insufficient. For instance, the matron told me that only those who worked were allowed b.u.t.ter on their bread. These old women are set down to bread and tea for one meal, and bread and soup for another; they, too, have a little meat of some kind three times a week, and potatoes at dinner. Again I repeat that, with the large farm attached to Long Island, there is no reason why these old women, as well as the old men, should not have an abundant quant.i.ty and an appetizing variety of vegetables, as well as plenty of nouris.h.i.+ng milk. And I maintain that it is a shame and disgrace that the Boston which less than five years ago could spend more than twenty thousand dollars in feasting and wining a Hawaiian woman who came to visit us, expending four thousand dollars for flowers alone, cannot afford to furnish a little b.u.t.ter to spread on the bread of the helpless old women on Rainsford Island, even if they are unable to work. Think of the stolid indifference, or thoughtlessness--to hunt for charitable words--of an inst.i.tution having several hundreds of people to care for, and yet making no difference in its hospital diet. No matter what the disease, it is to eat up to the cast-iron programme, or starve. Who that has been ill or has watched anxiously with their own dear ones, but has noticed the capriciousness of a sick person's appet.i.te, the longing for little delicacies, for just a taste of some rare and unusual dish or drink? Such things are not expensive; they only mean that somebody shall invest a little genuine sympathy and thoughtfulness in the matter. Throughout this entire inst.i.tution, hospital and all, having over four hundred women, there is not a single trained nurse! In this day of enlightenment it ought to be a crime for any hospital to be carried on without trained nurses. There is no night watchman on the whole island, and, after eight o'clock in the evening, n.o.body who is responsible at all. In the main inst.i.tution on Rainsford Island the attic is crowded with beds to such an extent as to make a healthful atmosphere impossible.

You must remember that many people here are paupers through no fault of their own. Many of them are victims of incurable disease; and, as against such cases the Boston hospitals are closed, the almshouse is for them the only open door. Public sentiment must be aroused to demand, with Florence Nightingale, that "work-house sick shall not be work-house inmates, but they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who are to be cured if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country if they cannot be cured." We people who are followers of Him who confessed, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head," cannot afford to treat people who are, through misfortune, in the same condition to-day as though they were some species of criminal, rather than as the hostages of our Christ. Perhaps you say these people are not appreciative, are not refined, do not have fine feelings--how do you know that? That is doubtless true about some of them, but about many of them nothing could be more false. People do not lose their powers of appreciation when they lose their money, and I doubt not that these people would average, in the essential characteristics of manly and womanly character, with the same number of people of the same age you could gather from the homes along your street. Last Christmas some kind-hearted women went down to Rainsford with some gifts for the sick poor. One of them, writing about their reception, says: "It was very touching to see the happiness our little gifts conferred. The first was a poor old woman, more than eighty, nearly blind from cataracts over her eyes. She is called 'Welsh Ann' because she is from Wales. My friend told her I had been in Wales. She seemed so glad to shake hands with one who had been in her own country, and her voice choked with tears as she thanked me and took my gift. But she brushed the tears away from her poor sightless eyes while my friend repeated to her the Twenty-third Psalm, and then at her request knelt and prayed. The ap.r.o.n which I gave her has quite a history. A girl who earns her own living, hearing I was making these ap.r.o.ns, sent me this one which she bought. It was worked across the bottom, and I thought, as poor Ann rubbed her hands over the work she could not see, but only touch, how cheered the young lady would be when she heard of the joy her gift gave. I was asked to give one pretty ap.r.o.n to another Ann--one they called 'Greenland Ann,'

because she is so very fond of hearing them sing 'From Greenland's icy mountains.'" And surely that spirit of the Christ, which is warm enough to impel men to dare the frost of "Greenland's icy mountains" in order to comfort with His blessed Gospel their Esquimau brother, ought to prompt us to deal thoughtfully and tenderly with the dear old soul that likes to hear Him sung about on Rainsford Island.

I shall never forget the impression made upon me by Mark Guy Pea.r.s.e, one of the greatest of the English preachers, in his story of how he was ordained a preacher. He said: "It was no bishop or presbytery that consecrated me, but a saintly Cornish woman, whom we children called old Rosie, and who was, indeed, my right reverend mother in G.o.d.