Here we come upon the unequal distribution. I know a rural neighbourhood where the great lady, a countess, had such a passion for plain needlework, that she employed nearly all her time in making shirts and shifts; while the cottagers’ wives for miles round used their needles like skewers, or let their husbands and sons go in rags. The countess gave away fine linen shirts by dozens among her friends, while her husband’s labourers rarely got a cotton shirt to fit. One consequence of this incapacity in poor women is, that the professional class of slop-workers has grown to what we have seen it. Besides the army and navy, there is almost the whole range of our labouring classes to be supplied with cheap garments, ready made; and thus, while the wives and daughters, who ought to be making the shirts, are unable to do it, there are thousands of needlewomen slaving at it day and night, for a hire which does not give them bread.
Even so, there is more good needlework done in cottages than in the homes of factory workers. That is a sad story, the inability of factory “hands” to sew, or cook, or clean a floor; but my topic now is the health of needlewomen; and factory women are in no way concerned in that.
I have spoken of the poor sempstresses as a class that was; and of their troubles as of something past. I trust we may consider their position as already ameliorated by the introduction of the sewing-machine, loud as would be the outcry from some of them, if they were to hear this said. The truth is, they were reduced to be themselves sewing machines of an imperfect sort, whose work was sure to be superseded by a machine which cannot suffer, and pine, and grow blind, and drop stitches, and spoil fastenings. It must be a mercy to stop the working of human machines, driven by the force of hunger, and disordered by misery. If the work can be done by an inanimate machine, it ought to be so done; and if the poor women ask what is to become of them, the answer is, that their lot really could not be made worse; while, for a large proportion of them, the new machine is an actual redemption. Their work had become too bad to be endured; while their lot was too hard to be endured. Now, there is good work again, more perfect work than was ever before seen; and the machine-workers get, as women’s wages go, good pay. The transition stage, during which women’s labour must be turned towards other occupations, is a very hard one. Last spring, an association was formed in London for the purpose of bringing the needlewomen and their proper employers, the outfitters, face to face, and ousting the middle-men, the contractors; who, giving security for the materials in a way impossible to the workers, are charged with the whole business of providing the garments, and secure their profits by enforcing the extremity of cheapness in the article of pay.
This society, known as that which abides at 26, Lamb’s Conduit Street, must have done good, and may yet have time to do more, while the operation of the sewing-machine is getting settled; but it is the machine which must put an end to the straining of eyes over the single candle, and the fearful irritation which attends the exhaustion of certain muscles, while the rest of the frame is left unexercised. There are thousands of the lowest order of needlewomen who would be better in the workhouse than in their actual condition; and there is some comfort—though a melancholy one enough—in perceiving that in a little while that lowest class will have disappeared. In another generation there will be no call for such a class. They have, poor souls! caused such a decline of good needlework in the country, that some radical remedy was sure to be found. While we were hearing of the woes of their class from overcrowding, it was the universal complaint of housewives that they could get no needlework well done. It was whipstitch, and fastenings that gave way, and buttonholes that burst, and hemming that you might pull out from end to end by a tug at the thread. A young friend of mine, of German extraction, about to be married, had made, with family assistance, most of her new clothes: but some having to be put out, a sewing-school of considerable credit was selected, and patterns were sent. The answer to the application was that the commission would be executed, but that the lady must not expect work like her own; that such work was, in fact, not known in our country. I wished the authorities of the school could have seen how fast the work went off under fingers and eyes trained as they are trained in Germany. We shall now have the option of good work, on the one hand; and, on the other, a clearance made of the murderous competition which has reduced the physique and the morale of our poor needlewomen to the lowest condition. What the change will be we may judge, not only by what we see in walking through the streets of London, but by attending to the results of the sewing-machine in the United States, where it was invented.
The annual money value of the sewing required by the American nation that can be done by the machine is estimated at fifty-eight millions of pounds sterling; and a large proportion of the saving is already made. In the city of New York alone, the annual saving is a million and a half on the clothing of men and boys. The same amount is saved in Massachusetts on shoes and boots alone. The machine has revolutionised about forty distinct branches of manufacture, besides creating new ones. Here lies the solace of the poor needlewomen. A multitude of them will sooner or later be employed in these fresh areas of industry; and not a few are already tasting a degree of comfort they never knew before. As slaves of the contractors for the outfitters they may have earned three or four shillings a week, at the expense of eyesight and health. Those among them who can adapt themselves to the new circumstances will earn more than twice as much, with little fatigue. We may then decline going further into the consideration of the health of this class of needlewomen, in the hope that the causes of their miseries are about to be removed.
There is nothing in the introduction of the sewing-machine which need affect the object of training girls to be good sempstresses. Some of my readers may have seen the Report (1855) of the Rev. J. P. Norris, one of the Inspectors of