Thus come clubs to draw men from
comfortless homes, and, next, clubs for the deserted women.
Meantime, domestic service--disgraced, on one side, by the stigma of
our late slavery, and, on the other, by the influx into our kitchens
of the uncleanly and ignorant--is shunned by the self-respecting and
well educated, many of whom prefer either a miserable pittance or the
career of vice to this fancied degradation. Thus comes the overcrowding
in all avenues for woman's work, and the consequent lowering of wages
to starvation prices for long protracted toils.
From this come diseases to the operatives, bequeathed often to their
offspring. Factory girls must stand ten hours or more, and consequently
in a few years debility and disease ensue, so that they never can rear
healthy children, while the foreigners who supplant them in kitchen
labor are almost the only strong and healthy women to rear large
families. The sewing-machine, hailed as a blessing, has proved a curse
to the poor; for it takes away profits from needlewomen, while employers
testify that women who use this machine for steady work, in two years
or less become hopelessly diseased and can rear no children.
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