It is half-past five o'clock in the morning, and I stand at your bedside and bid you get up. It is bitter cold, and the wind is blowing razors, which cut keenly. It is a winter morning that I choose on which to show you the poor girls; for the summer is more kind to them -- more gentle, that is, though not less deathly. The winter is to them a terrible thing; and you must see their woes at their worst, if you look with my eyes. That is not the charity which labors with great, throbbing heart, that will not look at misery's direst, or which says, "I know a score of poor girls who do not suffer greatly." It were enough that I replied, I know a score who do. But I reply, that I know thousands who do. They suffer most in winter; therefore let it be on a winter morning that I call you from your comfortable bed to look at them.

Where the Bowery runs into Chatham street, we pause, and from within our close-buttoned overcoats look out over our mufflers at the passing throng. There are many novel features in it, but let them pass. Note these thinly-clad creatures who hurry shivering past, while the keen wind searches with icy fingers through their scanty garments, and whirls the blinding snow in their pitiful, wearied faces. We count them by tens, by scores, by hundreds, as we stand patiently here --all bearing the same general aspect of countenance, all hurrying anxiously forward, as if this morning's journey were the most momentous one of their whole lives. But they take the same journey every morning, year in and year out, whether the sun shines, or the rain falls, or the bleak winds whistle and the snow sweeps in their faces with a pain like the cutting of knives. The same faces go past in this dreary procession month after month. Occasionally one will be missing; she is dead. Another; she is worse than dead -- her face had beauty in it. Thus one by one I have seen them drop away, caught by disease born of their work and their want, bringing speedy end to the weary, empty life -- caught by temptation, and drawn into the giddy maelstrom of sin, to come out no more forever.

To-morrow morning, take your stand at Fulton or Catherine ferry, and you shall see much such another procession go shivering by. The next day, station yourself somewhere on the West side -- say in Canal-street, a few blocks from Broadway; here it is again. If, Asmodeus-like, you could hover in the air above the roofs of the town, and look down upon its myriad streets at this hour, you would see such processions in every quarter of the metropolis. The spectacle would help you to form some idea of the vastness of the theme now on our hands.

Let us define the poor girls as those who are forced to earn whatever food their eat, whatever clothing they wear, by hard toil -- girls who do not receive one cent, one crumb, from the dead, helpless, or recreant parents who brought them into the world. It is, of course, impossible to give their number accurately; but there is a result obtainable by persistent observation, day by day and week by week, at all hours and in all sorts of places, which is quite as reliable and satisfactory as any that is obtainable through blundering census-takers; and I know this army of poor girls to be one of great magnitude. The sewing-girls alone I have heard estimated at thirty thousand, by one whose life is in every-day contact with them, and has been for years. This is but a single class among the poor girls, reflect. The estimate may be deemed an exaggerated one. Then we will disarm criticism by taking it at half its word. If, accordingly, we say thirty thousand for the whole -- for all classes -- it is still a vague figure, not to be trusted as an indication of the true bulk of this great army. Yet even with this limit for our thought, contemplating the spectacle of thirty thousand poor girls, struggling with the most dreadful poverty on the one hand and the most dreadful temptations on the other, the magnitude of the theme becomes oppressive. Nine readers out of ten will even fail to comprehend the magnitude of the mere number, thirty thousand, in any practical way. Few persons ever saw thirty thousand people gathered together. But we all comprehend distances. If this army of poor girls were to form in a procession together, it would be more than ten miles long.

Is it no matter what perils beset the paths of these poor creatures? If you think it is, it must be that you need to know the subject better. [click to see footnote]

The sewing-girls of New York are of two classes-those who work at home, and those who work in rooms provided by their employers. The former class is smaller than the latter. Where girls sew at home, it is generally a special necessity that keeps them there. They are cripples, unable to go out; or they have a bed-ridden father, mother, sister, or brother to look after. Are you surprised? Many a poor girl, to whom life is a deathly struggle with starvation and cold, keeps a heart warm with such love as might win the plaudits of angels.

I have known more than one case, in which was exhibited the most wonderful abnegation of self; amounting to a devotion of the girl's very life on the altar of filial affection. One such case will tell you the story of the whole.

The case of a gentle Mary, who ekes out a miserable existence in Mulberry-street. This is one of the vilest of the Five-Points streets; but Mary's home is not in the Five Points part of it, being above Canal-street. It is a dismal abode for human beings; nevertheless, this forgotten rookery where Mary dwells. Let us look into this girl's daily life a little. With her needle alone she earns the money that pays for all they (herself and her father, who is dying with consumption) have -- and very little that is. Put a few questions to Mary; you have earned the right, she feels, by the trifles you have brought her-trifles to us, but ah, what value they possess to her! They represent two good weeks of toil to the poor girl -- of such toil, pray God, as your daughter and mine may never know!

"What rent do you pay for this room, Mary?"

"Four dollars a-month, sir."

That is a little more than thirteen cents a-day, you will observe.

"What do you get for making such a shirt as that?"

"Six cents, sir."

"What! You make a whole shirt for six cents?"

"Yes, sir, and furnish the thread."

Does not this almost stagger credulity? But there is truth in the girl's face; it is impossible to disbelieve her. If however, the reader is incredulous, I can assure him that Mary does not tell a falsehood; I know that this price is paid by some of the most "respectable" firms in New York.

"Can't you get work to do at higher prices?"

"Sometimes, sir. But these folks are better than many others, and pay regularly. Some who offer better prices will cheat, or they won't pay when the work is carried home. These folks give me plenty of work, and I never have to wait; so I don't look around for better. I can't afford to take the risk, sir; so many will cheat us."

Respectability is a good thing, you see. Let me whisper a few other prices to you, which respectability pays its poor girls. Fifteen or twenty cents for making a linen coat, complete; sixty-two cents per dozen for making men's heavy overalls; one dollar a-dozen for making flannel shirts. Figures are usually very humdrum affairs, but what a story they tell here! These last prices I did not get from Mary. I got them, in the first place, from a benevolent lady who works with heart and hand, day after day, all her time, in endeavoring to better the condition of the poor girls of New York. But I got them, in the second place, from the employers themselves. By going to them, pencil in hand, and desiring the cheerful little particulars for publication? Hardly! I sent my office-boy out in search of work for an imaginary "sister," and to inquire what would be paid her. Having inquired, and got his answer, it is needless to say that James concluded his sister could live without taking in sewing.

So you see that, in order merely to pay her rent, Mary must make two shirts a day. That being done, she must make more to meet her other expenses. She has fuel to buy -- and a pail of coal costs her fifteen cents. She has food to buy -- but she eats very little, her father still less. She has not tasted meat of any kind for over a year, she tells us. What, then, does she eat? Bread, and potatoes, principally; she drinks a cup of cheap tea, without milk or sugar, at night-provided she has any, which she frequently has not. She has also to buy (I am not painting fancy pictures; I am stating facts, which are not regulated by any rules known to our experience) "trifle of whiskey." Mary's father was not reared a teetotaller; and though I was, and have no taste for liquor, I am not unable to see how a little whiskey may be the last physical solace possible to this miserable man, whose feet press the edge of a consumptive's grave.

" It's more than victuals to him, sir," says poor Mary, her eyes filling with tears; "and how can I refuse him, and he so nigh his end?"

It is nine o'clock when we say "good-by" to this poor girl. By the dim light of the tallow candle that stands upon the window-sill, she will sit patiently stitching, hours after we are gone. We shall be in our beds, asleep, and still Mary will be sitting there at work-the weary, dreary work in which

"the weary thread
Along the garments' even hem
And winding seam is led."

Her father asleep beside her; dead stillness all about her; the tallow candle flickering feebly with its long wick, which she hardly dares to snuff, because that will make it burn the faster; midnight passed, and the morning hours creeping on-still she sits and sews, with heavy eyes, making shirts at six cents a-piece.

That is one poor girl's life. It has a hundred parallels in the city. Whoso looks, will find them without difficulty….

---

(The following footnote appeared in the original, at the foot of page 433):

It most be a needless assurance to my readers, and one which I make only to avoid a carping criticism, that in painting the sufferings and temptations of the poor girl, I do not mean to represent that all the poor girls of this metropolis suffer so, and are tempted so, habitually. In painting the pains of the battle-field, it is the wounded who are our special objects of sympathy; yet we look on every soldier who marches to war as one who confronts extraordinary peril, and about whom it is a duty to throw every possible safeguard. There are thousands of poor girls in New York who work for kind and conscientious employers, who are paid enough to live on, and who only suffer and are tempted as are the rest of mankind. It is not of these this article treats, of course. Enough remain, however. Nothing but ignorance or inhumanity can allow any man or woman to look upon the theme with indifference. To become acquainted with it is to awaken the most loving sympathies of the humane heart.

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The Fourth Ward: Life and Death in New York, 1860-1870 Primary Source Collection 4: Descriptions of Work 4.1a:   Sailors -- Boarding Houses 4.1b: Sailors -- Protest Meeting 4.2: Seamstresses   4.3:   Printers 4.4:   Servants 4.5:  Brewers  4.6:   Police

 

 

 

 

:Glossary:

Asmodeus-like	Asmodeus is the name of a demon in the Book of Tobias. The demon is said to have slain seven successive husbands of the virgin Sara before the consummation of their marriage. The mention of Asmodeus here may be a reference to an 1848 expose of vice in New York: Harrison Gray Buchanan, Asmodeus. Or, the Iniquities of New York; A Complete Expose of the Mysteries, Doings, and Vices, both in High and Low Life, Including the Life of a Model Artist (New York: Howland & Co., [1848]).
Consumptive's	A consumptive is someone who is suffering from a lung disease, usually tuberculosis.
Five-Points	A notoriously impoverished and crime-ridden section of New York's Sixth Ward, located a short distance north of City Hall and adjacent to the Fourth Ward. Click here for a website on the Five Points.
Fulton or Catherine ferry:	Ferries across the East River, from the foot of Fulton and Catherine streets to Brooklyn.
Maelstrom	A whirlpool
Plaudits	Praise
Recreant	Disloyal
Rookery	A squalid and crowded apartment building, also known as a tenement house.
Teetotaller	Someone who abstains from all consumption of alcohol
Where the Bowery runs into Chatham street.	The intersection of the Bowery with Chatham street was a seedy commercial hub known as Chatham Square. (Click here to see a map). The Bowery was one of the most important commercial thoroughfares in lower Manhattan. In the 1860s, it was extended south into the Fourth Ward, but today its southernmost point is at Chatham Square.
Worse than dead	The writer is indicating that the woman has become a prostitute.