VERIFY YOUR CREDENTIALS.

IF low wages, by actually starving women and those dependent upon them, force many into vicious courses, so does the want of employment lower the whole moral tone, and destroy even the domestic efficiency of those whose minds seek variety and freedom. More than once have I been to insane asylums with young girls whom active and acceptable employment would have saved from mania; and scores of times have young women of fortune asked me, "What can you give me to do?"

And to this question there is, in the present state of the public mind, no possible answer. No woman of rank can find work, if she do not happen to be philanthropic, literary, or artistic in her taste, without braving the influence of home, or, what is next dearest, the social circle, and earning for herself a position so conspicuous as to be painful to the most energetic. The woman who is prepared for all this will not ask anybody what she is to do: she will take her work into her own hands, and do it.

That was a pleasant time in the history of the world, when every woman found, in spinning, weaving, and sewing, in the active labor of a small or the skilful management of a large household, full employment for time and thought, under the cheering shelter of a husband's or father's smile. That was a pleasant time also, when, in the middle English classes, women worked freely by a husband's side, with more regard to his interest than heed of the world's talk. But with the wide intellectual culture that America has been the first country in the world to offer to women, individual tastes and wishes must develop in single women; and all men who value the moral health of society must aid this development.

There is no greater enemy to body and soul than idleness, unless it be the absurd public sentiment which compels to idleness. Thousands and tens of thousands have fallen victims to it. The woman who will not labor, rich or honored though she be, bends her head to the inevitable curse of Heaven.

This curse works in failing health, fading beauty, broken temper, and weary days. Let her never fancy, that, being neither wife nor mother, she is exempt from the law: she cannot balance that decree of God by the foolish customs of society or the weak objections of her kindred. Never let her say she does not need to labor. Disease, depression, moral idiocy, or inertia, follow on an idle life. He who never rests has made woman in His image; and health, beauty, force, and influence follow on the steps of labor alone.

I shall not pursue this subject; for it is far easier for you to think it out, than to gather the facts I wish to bring before you. Read "Shirley," and let the saddest hours of Caroline Helstone's life bear witness for thousands who never find a vocation. Read the "Professor," and let its sweet stimulus kindle in you some appreciation of the joy which mutual labor can bring to a happy husband and wife.

Sad, indeed, then, is it when man himself represses a woman's longing for work, whether from false tenderness, from a dread of public opinion, a shrinking from her ultimate independence, or a small personal jealousy. That he does, in the aggregate and as an individual, so repress it, is unfortunately matter of history: it is no invention of an outraged inferior. I could offer you many private examples of this; but those that carry proofs of their reality with them will, I fear, seem very familiar. The first consists in the opposition shown to the attempt of Mr. Bennett to establish young women as watchmakers. Honorary Secretary to the Horological Department of the great Exhibition, he could not help observing the superiority of the Genevese watches, in cheapness and convenience of carriage. In England, watches are so dear that only the privileged classes can carry them. It would be for the interests of the manufacturers, of course, to be able to compete with the Swiss; but they were too short-sighted to see it. Finding that twenty thousand women and girls were employed in Switzerland in the manufacture of watches and watchmakers' tools, Mr. Bennett undertook to deliver a public lecture on the subject. It was interrupted by hisses, and broken up like a New-York convention. Three well-educated women then applied to him to be taught; but no Englishman could be found to take them. A Swiss, settled in London, did. They made more progress in six months than ordinary boys in six years; but they, as well as their teacher, were so cruelly persecuted, that it was found necessary to relinquish the attempt. My impression is, though I cannot find the account in print, that a further effort was made on a more extended scale, something like a school; and this was resisted by such combined effort on the part of the trade, that Mr. Bennett and his friends began to make a stir through the press. The "Edinburgh Review" mentions a watchmaker's wife who wished to work with her husband in his special department. Finding that it could not be done with the consent of the trade, she undertook, instead, the engraving of the brass work; but, though working in her own house, she was at last successful only under the plea that she had been regularly apprenticed by her father, also in the business. She persevered, and taught her two daughters; and so will many others.

Women in England must certainly make watches; and the time is not far distant when the men of Coventry will yield to this demand, as they have already yielded to others. A few years ago, winding silk, weaving ribbon, and pasting patterns of floss upon cards, excited the same opposition; but now thousands of women pursue these employments, and the men look on as quietly as the grazing cattle in the fields.

"The first steam factory in Coventry," says the "Edinburgh Review" for October, 1859,—"a very small factory,—was burned down during a quarrel about wages. Then there was an opposition to the employment of women at the looms. To this day, one of the lightest and easiest processes in the manufacture, which a child might manage, is engrossed by the men, under heavy penalties."

Fancy a strong man winding silk for a whole day, or sorting colors in floss! How has he ever degraded himself to such girls' work?

I need only remind you of the formal petition sent in at the time of the opening of the School of Design at Marlborough House, to entreat the Government not to instruct and aid women, lest the poor, helpless men should starve! A similar prejudice, much more active than any in America, prevents English women from qualifying themselves as physicians. Dr. Spencer, of Bristol, really educated his daughter as an accoucheuse; but the prejudice was so strong that she was not allowed to practise, and became a governess instead. The same prejudice kept the English Army suffering for months, while it delayed the departure of female nurses to the Crimea.

In Staffordshire, women are employed to paint crockery and china, which they can do with more taste and grace than men. It seems hardly credible, that the desire of the men to keep down their wages should deprive the females of the customary hand-rest; which would, of course, diminish the fatigue, and make the pencil-stroke more certain. I am happy to believe that not an employer in the United States would submit to this absurd demand; and the result of any such attempt on the part of workmen would probably be a general permission to leave. We are, in this country, much more free from the control of guilds and unions of various sorts than the people of England; yet the conduct of our printers furnishes a fair parallel to these foreign facts. Within a few years, there have been more than twenty strikes in printing-offices, consequent upon the employment of a few women; and the result has generally been an entire change of hands, masters in America not enduring dictation.

In August of 1854, the journeymen employed in the office of the "Philadelphia Daily Register" left the office, in high dudgeon, because the publisher had employed two women as type-setters in a separate office. They acted in conformity to a resolve of the Printers' Union, and were permitted to depart. But this was not all. Threats of personal violence followed all who sought the waiting work, and an attempt was made to cut the rope by which the forms are raised. The result would have been to break up the type, prevent the issue of the paper, and run the risk of endangering life. Complaints were lodged against the printers; and, after a hearing, they were each held to bail in six hundred dollars, to answer to the charge of conspiracy, at the Court of Quarter Sessions.

About the same time, a printer in the same establishment with the "Lily," but working on the "Home Visitor," refused to give some necessary instruction to a girl employed on the first paper. It was found that all the hands had signed an agreement never to work with or instruct a woman! The men, after proper remonstrance, were dismissed, and their places supplied by four women and three men, who worked harmoniously together. That was only five years ago, and now there are hundreds of female printers in Ohio; and one orphan girl has risen from type-setting to an editor's chair and a handsome competence.

Jealousy in America sometimes takes a more comical form. Coming home lately from a Female School of Design in another city, I expressed some disappointment at the character of the work and management. A young man in the room spoke of the impossibility of a woman's ever learning to design, in terms so contemptuous that I did not think it worth while to answer him. Making some inquiries, however, in private, I found that his master had often reproached him with falling behind the women at the school; so that personal pique had more to do with the whole thing than any real experience.[22]

But, having made these remarks, I must recur to my previous statement,—that, in the main, no jealousy of cliques, no legal restrictions, prevent women from taking their proper place. A want of respect for woman, and a want of respect for labor, latent and unacknowledged in the public mind, must be overcome before she can do it. The overworked and ill-paid woman has seized every chance to slight her work; and an idea has gone abroad, that no slop-work will be fit for sale unless a man inspects it. So New York and Paris have man-tailors and man-milliners; and the poor, tempted, stricken girls are brought into contact, in the pursuit of bread, with the very men most likely to take advantage of every failure. Very sad stories could be told of work rejected day after day, on account of pretended faults, till the starving victim drops at the feet of the treacherous overseer, only to be trampled, in the end, under those of the whole town. Educated, respectable women should have the giving-out and the inspection of woman's work; but educated and respectable women will never stand in such a position till public opinion teaches them that all labor is honorable, and that no lady will ever sit with folded hands. How we rate an idle boy! how we bear with a dawdling girl! That father grows impatient whose son does not rise early, or show some desire for employment; but the same man keeps his daughters in Berlin wool and yellow novels, and looks to marriage as their salvation, even when he blushes to be told of it.

To prove this, let me show you that many employments have been open to a degree not generally acknowledged; and a safe foundation for this assertion will be found in the census of the United Kingdom and that of the United States.

It is a singular fact, that there are a great many more women in England in business for themselves than employed as tenders or clerks; while, in America, the fact, at the present day, is directly the reverse.

It was not so in the time of the Revolution. Then, as in France, the men went to the war. Women of shrewdness and ability managed their husbands' affairs,—the shops and trades of the nation,—and grew so independent thereby, that even Mrs. John Adams had to rebuke her husband for the absurd inequalities of privilege which his new government sustained. In England, the deficient education of the lower classes makes it almost impossible for the women to make change quickly, or keep accounts; and we smile as we find the "Edinburgh Review" gravely contending that woman may master the rule of three; that, at least, they ought to have a chance to try: and we can afford to smile; for our public schools have taught us how much quicker most women can count than most men. While, therefore, the want of education has prevented a certain class of English women from becoming clerks or book-keepers, the national habits of thrift, and a certain respectable pride in a family shop or trade, have induced thousands of a superior class to assume, upon a father's or husband's death, the charge of his establishment, and so secure a competence for the heirs. This is what we could wish our women to do. We all know how frequently the whole social position of a family here changes with the death of its head. Let our women prevent this for the future, by cherishing a natural ambition to do for their children what the fathers of those children would have done.

The last census of the United Kingdom shows, that, while the female population has increased in such proportion that there are now eight women where there were seven, there are eight working women where there were only six; that is, there are more new workers than new women. There are 1,250,000 women earning their own bread as independently as any men. Of these, there are—

• 385,000 employed in Textile manufactures,
• 40,000 in Metal-works, and
• 128,418 in Agriculture.

I hope these statements will not seem useless and superficial to you.

This hour cannot be better employed than in opening to you some of the mysteries of woman's work in England.

Among the 128,418 women employed in Agriculture, there are 64,000 dairy-women; not women who tend a single cow for a single family, but women of muscle, who wield large tubs and heavy presses, who turn cheeses and slap butter by the hundred-weight. Then there are market-gardeners, who not only raise their stock, but drive it to the town for sale; bee-mistresses and florists, of whom there are many among the Quakers; flax-producers, who not only raise the pretty blue-eyed flowers, but beat the silicious fibres apart; and they are followed by hay-makers, reapers, and hop-pickers, gracefully garlanding the group.

Naturally connected with this first interest of the soil is the second, or Mining. It is no longer considered fit for women to work in shafts, though the need of bread forces many to evade the law. The census, however, cannot touch them: the seven thousand women it reports as engaged in Mining are employed in dressing and sorting ore, and as washers and strainers of clay for the potteries,—heavy and disagreeable if not unfit work.

The next largest interest is that of the Fisheries. The Pilchard fishery employs many thousands of women. Jersey oysters alone employ over one thousand. Then come the—

• Herring,
• Cod,
• Whale, and
• Lobster fisheries.

The work in connection with the whale fishery consists chiefly in what is done after the cargo is landed. Apart from the Christie Johnstones,—the aristocrats of the trade,—the sea nurtures an heroic class, like Grace Darling, who stand aghast, as she did, when society rewards a deed of humanity, and cry out in expostulation, "Why, every girl on the coast would have done as I did!"

In natural connection with these come the—

• Kelp-burners, the
• Netters, and the
• Bathers,

or women who manage the bathing machines used on the coast. Then come two hundred thousand female servants; of which, largest in number, shortest in life, and, of course, the worst paid, are the general housemaids, or unhappy servants-of-all-work. Then come—

• Brewers,
• Custom-house and Police searchers,
• Matrons of jails,
• Lighthouse-keepers, and
• Pew-openers.

I cannot mention the Matrons of jails, without a sigh, when I remember, that at our common jail and at Charlestown there is no proper matron; and sickness, death, and childbirth meet only with such care as women detained as witnesses, or inebriates, can offer. Surely a Christian community should furnish Christian, womanly ministrations to its prisoners; and I would that some noble soul in an able body might be found to take up this work! Pew-opening has never been a trade in this community; but, as there are signs that it may become so, I advise our women to keep an eye upon it!

There are in the United Kingdom—

• 500,000 business-women,
• 94,000 shoemakers' wives,
• 27,000 victuallers' wives,
• 26,000 butcheresses,
• 14,000 milk-women,
• 10,000 beershop-keepers,
• 9,000 innkeepers, and
• 8,000 hack proprietors.

The difference between the employers and the employed is shown in the following numbers. There are—

• 29,000 shopkeepers, and only
• 1,742 shopwomen;

since the lower class of English women are seldom taught writing or accounts.

Telegraphic Reporters, Phonographers, and Railway-clerks, are on the increase. In reporting the Bright Festival at Manchester last year, the speed and accuracy of the young women were thought very remarkable. Six whole columns were transmitted at the rate of twenty-nine words a minute, almost without mistake, although the subject of the speeches was political, and so supposed to be beyond their comprehension!

Several railways employ women as clerks and ticket-sellers, and the results are more than satisfactory. Thus far the census; which has not been without its interest, since, in English parlance, shoemaker-wife means not merely the wife of a shoemaker, but a wife who shares her husband's labor, or has succeeded to it on his death. Butcher-wife also means a woman who can buy and sell stock, pickle meat, and perhaps drive a cart through the town.

Now for the results of some private letters. When I spoke of forty thousand Metal-workers, your minds did not revert, I trust, to those dens at Wiltenhall, where women have been struck with hammers, files, and even bars of iron glowing at a white heat.

Now, at least, let us visit a pleasanter scene. A man has forged and rolled out the sheet which is soon to pass for a hundred gross of Gillott's pens; but a woman cuts and bends and stamps, grinds, splits, polishes, and packs it, so that her sisters may have pleasure in the using.

It was at Birmingham that your gold chain was made. A man's strength drew out the precious wire; but hundreds of young girls cut it to the required length, shaped it on a metal die to the required pattern, soldered it invisibly over a jet of gas-light, ground the facets till they gleamed and polished the whole length to tempt the gazer's eye. Quiet, diligent, skilful, tidy, they sit; with polished slippers bobbing along the floor; not quite so healthy as those who labor on the pens, for the gas and solder do an unwholesome work. Others burnish the silver plate, sort needles, paint iron and papier-machÉ trays; and hundreds more are busy cutting and polishing screws,—a work mainly in their hands, because men cannot be trusted with the delicate manipulation.

There is a covered button, my brother, on your coat. Women cut the metal, the cloth cover, the paper stuffing, the silk lining; a child piles these in proper order; and, by one stroke of a magic press, a woman throws them out a finished button.

One young girl in London began life by designing for such buttons, till she found that she had a soul above them, and cheerfully entered an artistic career.

Nail-cutting and hook-and-eye making employ others; and, if we take a book into our hand, women follow us through all the stages of its manufacture. A woman cut and cleaned the rags, counted the sheets of paper, and set off the reams; a woman may have set the types; perhaps some worn-out seamstress wrote the verses, or a female physician composed the thesis: a woman may print, a woman certainly will fold it down and stitch it for the binder. A woman will engrave on wood its illustrations, or color in her own home its fine photographs or drawings: at the very last, her white hand will touch with gleams of gold its tinted edges or many-hued envelope.

It is women who pack cards and throw off damaged paper. I have not obtained any reliable account of English female card-makers; but there must be many. In an old Nuremberg rate-book are the names of "Elizabeth and Margaret," Karten-mÄcherin, reported in 1436 and 1438. Cards were invented in 1361. In about seventy years, therefore, the manufacture had passed into woman's hand. In my notes from the census, I find no mention of wood-engravers: but, in 1839, Charlotte Nesbit, Marianne Williams, Mary Byfield, Mary and Elizabeth Clint, held honorable positions among English wood-engravers; while, at the close of the last century, Elizabeth Blackwell executed botanical plates, and Angelica Kauffman engraved on steel, to the satisfaction of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In London, recently, one accomplished female engraver has turned her steel plates into a pleasant country-house, which she means to furnish with the proceeds of her delicate painting on glass.

A whole volume might be written concerning English female printers. Turning over some old books the other day in the Antiquarian Rooms at Worcester, I came upon Elizabeth Bathurst's "Truth Vindicated," printed and sold by Mary Hinde, at No. 2 in George's Yard, Lombard Street, 1774. A little farther along, I found Sophia Hume's "Letters to South Carolina," printed and sold by Luke Hinde, at the Bible in George's Yard, Lombard Street, 1752. Good Quaker books, both of them; and the titlepages told a pleasant story. Here, at the sign of the Bible, Luke Hinde carried on his work in 1752. When he died, his widow kept the establishment open, and taught her girls to stand at the forms; so, twenty-two years after (in 1774), the place goes on in her name. No change; only some dissenting wind has blown down the Old Bible, and a gilded number two shines in its stead. It is the history of half the business-women in England, and a very creditable history for Mary Hinde.

On those dishes of Liverpool ware are pretty pictures in gray ink. Women took them wet from the copperplate, and, laying them along the biscuit, carried it to the furnace; there the paper burns away: while others paint and gild, or, with hideous clatter of blood-stones, polish off the finer ware.

In the next street, hundreds of women make paperbags and pill-boxes, without wasting a square inch of material.

Not long ago, two young girls, whose father's clerkship was ill paid, took to making artificial teeth, and succeeded so well as to obtain constant orders and a competence. More cheering still: a young servant, with strong elbows, took to French polishing, and gave desk and work-box and inlaid cabinet a gloss that no varnish of man could match. For two or three years she made contracts with upholsterers, and kept herself in profitable work: then Cupid pinched the strong elbows, and she slipped out of permanent reputation as a cabinetmaker's wife.

In brushmaking, women sort the hair, and set it in the holes. The delicate, cone-like arrangement of the badger's hair, in the modern shaving-brush, can be made only by a woman's hand; and she who has skill to do it well may ask her own wages.

Then there are glove-cleaners; women who strain silk, in fluting, across the old-fashioned work-bag or the parlor-organ front; women who shell pease and beans at so much a quart, and who make the thousands of baskets for the fruiterer's stall. Passing the white-lead factory at meal-times, you will see fifty women file away, whose duty it is to pile the lead for oxidation; and thousands, very different from these, sit making artificial flowers, many of them cheap enough, but others, from their exquisite grace and naturalness, bringing the artist's own price.

I have purposely dwelt on all these avocations. As you have followed me, has it seemed to you that we wanted more avenues for manual labor? As many as you please. We are bound to inherit the whole earth. But it seems to me that what is most needed is, first, respect for woman as a laborer, and then respect for labor itself.

When men respect women as human beings, consequently as laborers, they will pay them as good wages as men; and then uncommon skill or power to work will be set free from the old forcing-pump and siphon, and we shall see what women can do. When men respect labor,—respect it so far, that they hold a woman honored when she seeks it,—then women of a higher rank will seek to invest their capital in mercantile experiments; will establish factories or workshops; will organize groups of struggling sisters; and the class that most needs to be helped, the idle rich, will find happiness and honor, will find help, in offering opportunities to the lowest.

What the lowest class of women need is active brains to plan and think for them. There are plenty of these active brains at the West End, tingling with neuralgia, hot with idleness, dizzy with waltzing. Offer a government testimonial to the first girl of rank who will carry her brains to a market, and you will see what a throng of aspirants we shall have; letting it be understood, mind you, that the public feeling sustains the government testimonial.

Let us ask, then, a few questions about the state of female labor in the United States. Our census is by no means so complete as that of Great Britain; and our statements will, therefore, be less accurate.

At the close of the Revolution, there were in New England, and perhaps farther south, many women conducting large business establishments, and few females employed as clerks, partly because we were still English, and had not lost English habits. Men went to the war or the General Court, and their wives soon learned to carry on the business upon which not only the family bread, but the fate of the nation, depended; while our common schools had not yet begun to fit women for book-keepers and clerks.

The Island of Nantucket was, at the close of the war, a good example of the whole country. Great destitution existed on the establishment of peace. The men began the whale fishery with redoubled energy: some fitted out and others manned the ships; while the women laid aside distaff and loom to attend to trade. A very interesting letter from Mrs. Eliza Barney to Mr. Higginson gives me many particulars. "Fifty years ago," she says, "all the dry-goods and groceries were kept by women, who went to Boston semi-annually to renew their stock. The heroine of 'Miriam Coffin' was one of the most influential of our commercial women. She not only traded in dry-goods and provisions, but fitted vessels for the merchant service. Since that time, I can recall near seventy women who have successfully engaged in commerce, brought up and educated large families, and retired with a competence. It was the influence of capitalists from the Continent that drove the Nantucket women out of the trade; and they only resumed it a few years since, when the California emigration made it necessary. Five dry-goods and a few large groceries are now carried on by women, as also one druggist's shop." Mrs. Gaskell, in her "Life of Charlotte BrontÉ," mentions a woman living as a druggist, I think, at Haworth; and I have always been surprised that this business was not left to women. Our Nantucket druggist is doing well. In Pennsylvania, the Quaker view of the duties and rights of women contributed to throw many into trade at the same period. One lady in Philadelphia transferred a large wholesale business to two nephews, and died wealthy. I saw a letter the other day, which gave an interesting account of two girls who got permission there to sell a little stock in their father's shop. One began with sixty-two cents, which she invested in a dozen tapes. The other had three dollars. In a few years, they bought their father out. The little tape-seller married, and carried her husband eight thousand dollars; while the single sister kept on till she accumulated twenty thousand dollars, and took a poor boy into partnership.

I have spoken of English female printers. The first paper ever issued in Rhode Island was printed by a brother of Dr. Franklin, at Newport. He died early, and his widow continued the work. She was aided by her two daughters, swift and correct compositors. She was made printer to the Colony, and, in 1745, printed an edition of the laws, in 346 folio pages. That she found time to do something else, you may judge from this advertisement:—

"The printer hereof prints linens, calicoes, silk, &c., in figures, in lively and durable colors, without the offensive smell which commonly attends linen printed here."

Margaret Draper printed the "Boston News Letter," and was so good a Tory that the English Government pensioned her when the war drove her away. Clementina Bird edited and printed the "Virginia Gazette," and Thomas Jefferson wrote for her paper. Penelope Russell also printed the "Censor," in Boston, in 1771.

When we record these things, and think how women are pressing into printing-offices in our time, it is pleasant to find a generous action to sustain them. At a recent Printers' Convention held in Springfield, Ill., the following resolution was adopted:—

"Whereas, The employment of females in printing-offices as compositors has, wherever adopted, been found a decided benefit as regards moral influence and steady work, and also as offering better wages to a deserving class; therefore, be it—

"Resolved, That this Association recommends to its members the employment of females whenever practicable."

Mrs. Barney tells us that failures were very uncommon in Nantucket while women managed the business; and some of the largest and safest fortunes in Boston were founded by women, one of whom, I remember, rode in her own chariot, and kept fifty thousand dollars in gold in the chimney corner, lest the banks should not be as cautious in their dealings as herself. While writing these pages, I have visited such a woman, still living in Prince Street, at the age of ninety-five. Her name is Hillman. She lived for sixty-four years in the same house, and made her property by a large grocery business, and speculations on a strip of real estate. Her father, Mr. William Haggo, was a nautical-instrument maker; and she has a very remarkable head, and as conservative a horror of modern changes—steam-bakeries, for instance—as any of you could wish.[23] Some of you will remember the two sisters Johnson, who, for more than half a century, kept a crockery-shop on Hanover Street, and separated about two years ago,—one sister to retire on her earnings; the other to rest in a quiet grave, at the age of fourscore. The spirit of modern improvement has since seized hold of the old shop.

It was one of the most distinguished of our female merchants—Martha Buckminster Curtis—who planted, in Framingham, the first potatoes ever set in New England; and you will start to hear that our dear and honored friend Ann Bent entered on her business career so long ago as 1784, at the age of sixteen.

She first entered a crockery-ware and dry-goods firm; but, at the age of twenty-one, established herself in Washington, north of Summer Street, where we remember her. She soon became the centre of a happy home, where sisters, cousins, nieces, and young friends received her affectionate care. The intimacy which linked her name to that of Mary Ware is fresh in all our minds. What admirable health she contrived to keep we may judge from the fact, that she dined at one brother's table on Thanksgiving Day for over fifty years. She was the valued friend of Channing and Gannett; and her character magnified her office, ennobled her condition, gave dignity to labor, and won the love and respect of all the worthy. Less than two years ago, at the age of ninety, she left us; but I wished to mention both her and Miss Kinsley in this connection, because they were the first women in our society to confer a merchantable value upon taste.

Instead of importing largely themselves, they bought of the New-York importers the privilege of selection, and always took the prettiest and nicest pieces out of every case. As they paid for this privilege themselves, so they charged their customers for it, by asking a little more on each yard of goods than the common dealer.

I know nothing for which it is pleasanter to pay than for taste. When time is precious (and to all serious people it soon becomes so), it is a comfort to go to one counter, sure that in ten minutes you can purchase what it would take a whole morning to winnow from the countless shelves of the town.

Scientific pursuits cannot be said to be fairly opened to women here. The two ladies at work on the Coast Survey were employed by special favor, and probably on account of near relationship to the gentleman who had charge of the department of latitudes and longitudes. Their work is done at home. Some years ago, Congress made an appropriation for an American nautical almanac; and Lieut. Davis was appointed to take charge of it. Three ladies were at one time employed upon the lunar tables. Lieut. Davis told one of them that he preferred the women's work, because it was quite as accurate, and much more neat, than the men's. In 1854, Maria Mitchell was employed in computing for this almanac, with the same salary that would be given to a man. I may say, in this connection, that a great number of female clerks have been employed in Washington for many years. The work has generally been obtained by women who had lost a husband or a father in the service of his country; and, I am proud to say, such women have usually been paid the same wages as men. During Mr. Fillmore's administration, two women wrote for the Treasury, on salaries of twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a year; but the succeeding administration reformed this abuse, and very few are now at work.

In 1845, there were employed in the Textile manufactures of the United States, 55,828 men and 75,710 women. This proportion, or a still greater preponderance of female labor,—that is, from one-third to one-half,—appears in all the factory returns. As an employed class, women seem to be more in number than men: as employers, they are very few. The same census reports them as—

There is no mention of female wood-engravers, though we have had such for twenty-five years; and pupils from the Schools of Design have already achieved a certain success in this direction. To the enumeration of the census, I may add, from my own observation,—

In a New-Haven clock factory, seven women are employed among seventy men, on half-wages; and the manufacturer takes great credit to himself for his liberality. At Waltham, also, a watch factory has been lately started, in which many women are employed.[24] In the census of the city of Boston for 1845, the various employments of women are thus given:—

I think you cannot fail to see, from this list, how very imperfect the enumeration is: not a single washerwoman nor charwoman, for one thing, upon it. Yet here you have the occupations of 4,970 women. Of these, 4,046 are servants,—a number which has, at least, doubled since then; and which leaves only 924 women for all other avocations.

In New York, Mr. Jobson, formerly surgeon-dentist to Victoria, offers to instruct women in the duties of a dentist. I do not know that he has a single practising pupil; but he asserts that some of the most distinguished dentists in Europe are women. A few years since, the town of Ashfield elected two women and three men to the duties of a School Committee,—duties for which women are greatly to be preferred. A letter from the senior lady shows that one of them at least never attempted to do the actual work to which she was called, considering it out of her sphere! Does any one in this audience suppose that those women felt incapable of the duty? We know better; but they were not of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and, deferring to popular views, set aside a sacred opportunity. They might have so done that work as to have secured the election of women for ever after.

The occupations of which the census takes no account may be classed as—

• Professions,
• Public Offices,
• Semi-professions, and Arts.

Under the Professions come—

• Physicians,
• Lawyers,
• Ministers,

of which there are increasing numbers.

Under Public Offices we find—

• Postmistresses,
• Registers of Deeds,
• The few calculators at Washington, and
• School-committee women at the West.

It is probably known to you all how largely the rural post-office duties are performed by women; petty politicians obtaining the appointment, and leaving wives and daughters to do the work. There are several Registers of Deeds; but I know only one,—Olive Rose, of Thomaston, Me. She was elected in 1853, by 469 votes against 205; was officially notified, and required to give bonds. Her emolument depends upon fees, and ranges between three and four hundred dollars per annum. She continues to perform the duties of her office, and, if an exquisitely clear hand-writing is of service there, will probably never be displaced.

Under the head of Semi-professions come—

• Teachers,
• Librarians,
• Editors,
• Lecturers, and
• Matrons.

Under that of Artists,—

• Painters,
• Sculptors,
• Teachers of Drawing and the like,
• Designers,
• Engravers,
• Public Singers, and Actresses.

I am sorry to conclude these attempts at statistics with one reliable estimate, which holds, like a nutshell, the kernel of this question of female labor.

In 1850, there were engaged in shoemaking, in the town of Lynn, 3,729 males and 6,412 females,—nearly twice as many women as men; yet, in the monthly payment of wages, only half as much money was paid to women as to men. The three thousand men received seventy-five thousand dollars a month; and the six thousand women, thirty-seven thousand dollars: that is, the women's wages were, on the average, only one-quarter as much as those of the men.

If we inquire into details, we may find many exceptional causes at work, not perceptible at first sight: still this remarkable fact remains essentially unchanged.

In my first lecture, I showed you that women were starving, and that vice is a better paymaster than labor. I showed you the awful falsity of the cry, "Do not let women work: we will work for them. They are too tender, too delicate, to bide the rough usage of the world." I showed you that they were not only working hard, but had been working at hard and unwholesome work, not merely in this century, but in all centuries since the world began. I showed you how man himself has turned them back, when they have entered a well-paid career. Practically, the command of society to the uneducated class is, "Marry, stitch, die, or do worse."

Plenty of employments are open to them; but all are underpaid. They will never be better paid till women of rank begin to work for money, and so create a respect for woman's labor; and women of rank will never do this till American men feel what all American men profess,—a proper respect for Labor, as God's own demand upon every human soul,—and so teach American women to feel it. How often have I heard that every woman willing to work may find employment! The terrible reverses of 1837 taught many men in this country that they were "out of luck:" how absurd, then, this statement with regard to women! One reason why so many young women are attracted to the Catholic Church is, that the Catholic Church is a good economist, and does not tolerate an idle member. In Catholic countries,—nay, in Protestant,—the gray hood of the Sister of Charity is as sacred as a crown.

When I think how happy human life might be, if men and women worked freely together, I lose patience. Such marriages as I can dream of,—where, household duties thriftily managed and speedily discharged, the wife assumes some honorable trust, or finds a noble task for her delicate hands; while the husband follows his under separate auspices! Occupied with real service to men and each other, how happily would they meet at night to discuss the hours they had lived apart, to help each other's work by each other's wit, and to draw vital refreshment from the caresses of their children! It is your distrust, O men! that prevents your having such homes as poets fancy. You will not help women to form them. The sturdy pine pushes through the tightest soil, and will grow, though nothing more genial than a November sky bid it welcome; but tender anemones—wind-flowers, as we call them—must be coaxed through the loose loam sifted from thousands of autumn leaves, and tremble to the faintest air. Yet are anemones fairer than the pine, and their lovely blossoming a fit reward for Nature's pains. Follow Nature, and offer the encouragement which those you love best daily need. Do it for your own sakes; for proper employment will diffuse serenity over the anxious faces you are too apt to see. Do not fancy that the conventions of society can ever prevail over the will, it may be the freak, of Nature. That stepdame is absolute. She set Hercules spinning, and sent Joan of Arc to Orleans. She taught Mrs. John Stuart Mill political economy, and Monsieur Malignon netting and lace-work. She enables women to bear immense burdens, heat, cold, and frost; she sets them in the thick of the battle even; while in South Carolina, and in the heart of Africa, or among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, old men croon over forsaken babes till the milk flows in to their withered breasts.[25]

Women want work for all the reasons that men want it. When they see this, and begin to do it faithfully, you will respect their work, and pay them for it. We are all taught that we are the children of God; only Mohammedans deny their women that rank: yet we are left without duties, as if such a thing were possible,—left without work that offers any adequate end as a stimulus to diligence or ambition; and, until "Work" becomes man's cry of inspiration, woman will never train herself to do her work well.

It was Margaret Fuller, I think, who wrote of the Polish heroine, the Countess Emily Plater, "She is the figure I want for my frontispiece. Short was her career. Like the Maid of Orleans, she only lived long enough to verify her credentials, and then passed from a scene on which she was probably a premature apparition." Ah! that is what all women should do,—verify their credentials! "Say what you please," said a young girl to her lover, as they passed out of a Woman's Convention; "a woman that can speak like Lucretia Mott, ought to speak." And men themselves cannot escape from this conviction. The duty of women, therefore, is to inspire it by doing whatever they undertake worthily and well; patient in waiting for opportunities, prompt to seize, conscientious to profit by them.

The Sorbonne, which still excludes woman from its courses and colleges, has formed a separate course, and now institutes examinations, and distributes diplomas for women. The Committee consists of three of the Inspectors of the University, two Catholic priests, one Protestant clergyman, and three ladies.

A daughter of the greatest living French poet passed the examination lately for the mere honor of it. Another girl, the daughter of one of the highest public functionaries, passed the examinations; going through the winter twilight every morning at five, that she might not only be permitted to found a school on her estate, but secure the right to teach in it. Aware that her rank would befriend her, she concealed her name that she might owe nothing to favor. That is the right spirit. When a majority, or even a plurality, of women are capable of it, farewell to lecturers and lectures, to conventions, special pleadings, and the like! The whole harvest will be open, and the laborers will come, bringing their sheaves with them.

In receiving lately a letter from a distinguished French author,—Madame Sirault,—I was struck by the following sentence: "Every career from which woman is steadily repulsed by man is, by this fact alone, marked with the seal of death. The very repulse stigmatizes it. Man may not be conscious of what he does; but the career which is too vile for a woman to enter has outlived all chance of reform, and must perish with its abuses."

And, heroic as this statement may seem to you, it is a simple statement of fact. Can man demand of woman a higher purity, a more ideal Christian grace, than the letter of the Scripture, than the spirit of Christ, demands of man himself?—"Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is also perfect."

That was the clear command laid upon the simple fishermen, upon Luke the physician and Matthew the publican, as well as upon Mary and Martha. The world's eyes are slowly opening to the need of a pure life in men; and it helps to show men what they ought to be, when women knock at the doors of their workshops, and insist on entering.

"What!" says the soldier, "must my sister follow me to the field to take this blood-stained hand; to see me decked in the spoils of fallen men; or hunting unprotected women like a brute beast, till they fall senseless on the bodies of those they loved?"

"Shut her out!" cries the minister of state. "Shall my sister see these hands, dripping with blood-money, bribed by a slave power or a party interest, signing papers that condemn children yet unborn to the miseries of hopeless war?"

"Shut her out!" cries the advocate. "I am preparing to defend this man for luring helpless innocence to the brink of hell, for building up a fortune on dollars wrung from starving women, for putting a bullet through his brother because he did not live a life purer than his own."

"Turn her out!" cries the judge. "She will see that my scales are loaded. She heard that railroad company offer me a bribe. She caught a whisper just now from the husband of yonder outraged woman. She will hear the liquor dealer's counsel, and see the golden lure that South Carolina offers when the fugitive stands at the bar. Turn her out!"

"Turn her out!" says the physician. "Shall she hear me jeer at what she deems holy? Would you have her grow shameless also?"

"Shut her out," says the trader, "while I mark my goods! This spool of cotton is short fifty yards: mark it two hundred. This yard of muslin was made at Manchester: sew on the Paris tack. This shawl was woven in France: label it Cashmere. Color that cheese with annatto, weigh down that butter with salt, dilute that rose-water from the spring, grate up turnip to mix with that horseradish; but turn that woman out!"

"Turn her out!" cries the priest, last of all. "Polemics and theology have no charms for her. She will ask me why I do not do justly and love mercy. Turn her out!"

"Turn her out!" and, in the shudder which creeps over him while he speaks, man sees not only how tender and strong is his love for the sister that hung on the same maternal bosom; but he sees also what the gospel without and the gospel within demand of the son no less than the daughter of God.

Farewell to war, to statecraft, to legal tricks, to shifts of trade; farewell to bribery, to desecration, to idle controversy,—when woman enters in to man's labor!

You feel the doom falling, and strive to put it off. Not because God has made woman of a diviner nature; not because he has made her more precious, to be kept from the rough handling of the world,—does it shrink from her pure gaze. No; but because God himself, in balancing the world's forces, has blended her moral nature with her mental, purposely to check her brother's aggressiveness, and moderate his lust of gain. So has he given to man a cooler temper, a grander deliberateness, a strength equal to every strain, which shall repair the fault of her warm impulses, her "nimble" action, her unfitness, casual or universal, for long-sustained effort. But what can either of you do alone? Impulse, tenderness, and moral promptings, grow into tawdry sentimentalism, when shut out from their fit arena, when untrained to emulate a brother's active life. Coolness, forethought, and strength grow into cunning, rapacity, and tyranny, when uninfluenced by that gentler element of your nature which God has placed by your side. Helps-meet for each other you were ordained: why hinder and obstruct each other's pathway?

From this moment, put aside ignoble jealousy, inert sympathy, and stupid indifference to your own moral position. Only by heartily accepting the sweet juices and flavors of her life can you secure fragrant blossoms and precious fruit to your own. The words are just as true when I turn to counsel her. If ever this earth grows liker heaven, it will be when the broad and generous sympathies prophesied by this new movement take practical shape, and there are—

I have often spoken, not only in this lecture, but in almost every one I have ever given, of the great need of conscientious, painstaking woman's work. During the last year, Baron Toermer has been borne by torch-light to his last home, and the mediÆval artist has been mourned as a personal friend by many a crowned head. The torches of the priests who bore him to his grave very likely startled to the window our two young countrywomen, who are pursuing sculpture in the Eternal City. Little did they guess, that, in the city of Florence, there was living at that moment a woman as able, as renowned, though, for certain reasons, not so well known to them, as the great artist just departed. I will close this lecture with a brief sketch of FÉlicie de Fauveau, for whose woman's work no apology will ever need to be made.

Entering Florence by the Porta Romana, you find, in the Via della Fornace, a dark-green door, which opens in to a paved court, once the entrance to a convent. Beyond stretches a cool, quiet garden; and all manner of birdcages and dovecotes remind you of Rosa Bonheur's fondness for pets. Through that quiet garden, hedged with laurel and cypress, you might have walked, but a little time ago, with a shrewd, sagacious, life-loving French woman, an aristocrat and a Legitimist, whose eyes had looked upon the guillotine, and who was proud of having suffered for her faith and country. She would lead you to her small parlor, furnished with ancient hangings, carved chairs, and gold-grounded Pre-Raphaelite pictures of great value. Here she would introduce you to her daughter, FÉlicie de Fauveau.

A forehead low and broad; soft, brown eyes; an aquiline nose; a well-cut, well-closed mouth; a flexible, fine figure; a velvet skirt and jacket of the color of the "dead leaf;" a velvet cap of the same, drawn over blonde hair, cut square across the forehead, as in the picture of Faust,—this is what you see when you look at the artist; this is what Ary Scheffer painted and valued so, that no gold would buy the portrait while he lived. Fire, air, and water are in that organization: the movements of the arms are angular; but the hands are soft, white, fine, and royal.

Born in Tuscany, she was early carried to Paris; whence she removed, when very young, to Limoux, Bayonne, and BesanÇon. A great taste for music and painting she inherited from her mother. Her studies were profound, and among them she pursued archÆology and heraldry. At BesanÇon she painted in oils, but was not satisfied; and from the workmen who carved for the churches she got her first hint towards modelling. When her father died, she was ready to devote herself to the support of her family. When people told her it was unbecoming, she drew herself up: "Are you ignorant," she asked, "that an artist is a gentlewoman?"

Benvenuto Cellini was her prototype; and to her may be attributed that revival of a taste for mediÆval art which, proceeding from Paris, has had, of late years, so great an influence on England.

Her first work was a group called "The Abbot." Encouraged by unlimited praise, she made a basso-relievo,—containing six figures, and representing Christina of Sweden in the fatal galley with Monaldeschi. This was in the last "Exposition des Beaux Arts," and received the gold medal from Charles X. in person.

Up to 1830, the young girl remained in Paris. Her mother was so accomplished, FÉlicie herself so witty and profound a talker, that a distinguished circle gathered round them; among them, Scheffer, Delaroche, Giraud. All manner of fine artistic experiments in modelling and drawing were improvised about their study-table. There she executed for Count PourtalÈs a bronze lamp of singular beauty. A bivouac of archangels, armed as knights, were represented as resting round a watch-fire, where St. Michael stood sentinel; round the lamp, in golden letters, Vaillant, veillant,—"Brave, but cautious;" beneath, a stork's foot holds a pebble surrounded by beautiful aquatic plants. Many models were lost on the breaking-up of her Paris studio. She was incessantly occupied with commissions for private galleries; she was to have modelled two doors for the Louvre, and to have superintended the decoration of a baptistery,—when the Revolution broke up her calm and studious life. With the celebrated daughter of the Duras Family, she retired to La VendÉe, and, virtuous and honored, made herself as active, politically, as the reckless women of the Fronde. To this day, the peasantry know her as the Demoiselle. For those who remember her, there will never be another. Finally came pursuit and capture. After a long search, the two women were dragged from the mouth of an oven. FÉlicie assisted her companion to escape; was watched more closely in consequence, and remained seven months in prison at Angers. In prison she designed a group representing the duel of the Lord of Jarnac before Henry II., and a monument to Louis de Bonnechose. At the close of the seven months, she returned to her studio at Paris. But very soon the appearance of the Duchesse de Berri in La VendÉe restored hope to all Royalist hearts, and FÉlicie rushed to her side.

"My opinions are dearer to me than my art," she said, and proved it by heroic sacrifices. On the failure of this second attempt, she was exiled by the government. In the very teeth of the authorities, she returned to Paris, broke up her studio, and joined her mother in Florence, where they have ever since resided, clad, not without significance, in colors of the fallen leaf. No one but an artist can guess what loss is involved in the sudden and forcible breaking-up of an old studio. At the very moment when FÉlicie and her mother were all but starving in Florence, a man in Paris made an almost fabulous fortune by selling walking-sticks made from designs which she had sketched during the happy evenings of her girlhood. The Fauveaus would not accept a dollar from the party they had served; and Madame had as much pride as her daughter in establishing the new studio. FÉlicie wrote, "We have manna, but only on condition that we save none for the morrow."

In her studio you find no Pagan traces, only Christian art,—St. Dorothea lifting her lovely hands for the basket of fruit an angel brings; a Santa Reparata, perfect in terra-cotta; exquisite mirror-frames of wood, bronze, and silver. She has executed for Count Zichy an Hungarian costume, a collar, belt, sword, and spurs, of finest work. The Empress of Russia has ordered from her a silver bell. It is decorated by twenty figures, the servants of a mediÆval household; who assemble at the call of three stewards, whose figures form the handle. Round the bell is blazoned, in Gothic letters,—

Beside the crowded labors of twenty-five years, FÉlicie has studied the merely mechanical portions of her art, and tried to discover some old artistic secrets. To cast a statue whole, so as to require no after-touch of the chisel, has been her lifelong endeavor. She finally succeeded in her St. Michael, though not till it had been recast seven times. It is probable her experiments led the way for those by which Crawford succeeded in casting his Beethoven. I cannot tell how many of you have heard of FÉlicie de Fauveau. The fact that her works are chiefly in private galleries and her own studio, screens her from observation. The higher dignitaries of the church and the princes of art are almost her only companions. She works constantly. About a year since, the death of her devoted mother drew the veil still closer round her daily life; but I retrace her story with honorable pride.

FÉlicie de Fauveau is not merely an artist. She is the first artist in the world, in her peculiar walk. As a worker in jewels, bronze, gold, and silver, as a designer of monuments and mediÆval furniture, she stands without approach.

So let all women claim it.

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