the dressmakers and milliners. Already there is seen, where it is in actual and adequate use, a diminution of the crowding, and therefore of heat and suffocation. It affords a comparatively grateful exercise to the muscles, and saves a vast tension on the nerves. It is not exactly true, as a romantic advocate has said, that the work is done by a graceful laying of the hands on the plate; for the foot must work the treadle: and there is something for the eye to do also; but the stooping is saved, and the not less pernicious repetition of the act of drawing the needle. In short, the whole mechanical part of the process is done for, instead of by, the worker—with the exception of the treadle action, which is in no way hurtful.
I do not suppose that much can be done by express recommendation of the machine by customers to the great dressmakers, any more than has been done yet by such efforts as Lady Ellesmere describes as unavailing. The comfort lies in the hope that the employers must soon find it to be their interest to set up machines which will not wear out, or subject their mistresses to the annoyance of coroners’ inquests, and reprobation through the newspapers.
What may be done, without vexatious and questionable interference, is easily told. Every lady who causes a young dressmaker to be duly instructed in the use of the machine at once gives her testimony in aid of that remedy, and qualifies a workwoman to command some sort of terms, if not instantly, as soon as the use of the implement becomes indispensable. In the first rate establishments of our largest provincial towns, young women take higher ground than in London, because they are not so many as to leave all the power in the employer’s hands. They can guard against the long hours which are so fearful an evil; and, in fact, will not go to work before nine, nor stay after eight,—except on occasions of mourning, or something unusual; and they require from one to two hours for dinner when, as they often prefer, they go home for dinner, as well as to sleep. A well-qualified dressmaker by machinery,—turning out four times as much work per hour as she could as a mere needlewoman,—might, doubtless, make her own bargain in much the same way in London. I am sure I hope some will be enabled to try. Further, Lady Ellesmere’s difficulty about the crowding of the work at last may be obviated by the customer not only giving the commission for her dress, but ordering it home also in ample time. It seems too like trifling on a serious subject even to say this much.
There should be others than customers to look into the ease of the workers. Are there no relatives or friends who will ascertain whether the air is fit to be breathed, and who will forbid overlong hours? Hitherto such a question would have been a dismal mockery. Let us hope that the time is at hand when it will not be;—when there will be some sort of appeal open against abuses, and when the injured party may have spirit and ability to regard that appeal as a practical matter. It would be an excellent thing if the great fund of time saved by the sewing-machine were to be drawn upon first for enabling the workwomen to live with their families, or in some other home than the establishment itself,—thereby securing a certain amount of exercise and change of air and objects every day,—besides redeeming the Sundays from the dreariness, peril, and desecration described by inmates who are turned out after breakfast, and allowed nothing to eat in the establishment till next morning.
Once more I must say that the employer must be considered also, and not expected to make sacrifices for the health and comfort of her dependents, while she herself is in such cruel dependence on her customers as really leaves her no choice but to get what she can out of her workwomen at the smallest cost. Great people must not lock up her capital first, and then lecture her as if she had the use of it. It is a dreadful system, from end to end: and Mary Ann Walkley has brought the fact home to us, thereby leaving us a legacy which we cannot decline without gross hypocrisy;—namely, the work of retrieving the condition of the London dressmaker, not by further trial of sentimental appeals, but by guiding and furthering, as good sense and good feeling may usually do, those reforms which economical causes alone would sooner or later effect.
THE HOMEWARD BOUND AND THE OUTWARD BOUND.
The awful lull before the outburst of the thunder-storm is nothing compared to the terrible silence prevailing in Shepherd’s hotel at Cairo this first Friday in October, 18—. The lull is not merely the result of the great heat. No! it is the unnatural calm preceding the arrival of the Overland Mail from India.
This huge stone barracks, once a military college, now an hotel, no longer the home of the “shepherd kings” of Egypt, but the domain of one Zech, an Hungarian, is the celebrated halfway house, as all old Indians know, and it is here those going out to, and those returning from the said country, meet and exchange news and pleasant greetings. This very night, forty or fifty of our rosy cadets fresh from England, will meet forty or fifty old yellow veterans from Calcutta, Delhi, Benares, and the hills. We, the outward bound, are longing for the hour that will bring the homeward bound to Egypt, and the hour is now all but come.
We are already tired of Cairo, and want to push on to our torrid destination. We feel quite at home by this time at Shepherd’s. We call the waiters George and Tom, and Ali and Hassan. We know all the ways of the place, and all the odd English and knavish tricks of the dragomans. The fleas in the floor-mats and the mosquitoes inside the bed-curtains have long ago whispered to each other, “Come along, let us tap this new Englishman; I have tasted him, and can highly recommend him.”
Every morning before breakfast, the flock of donkey-boys have yelled at our approach, and fought for us. We have seen the moon rise four times above the trees of the Usbeekeyeh garden, as we sat smoking our gurgling water-pipes on the stone platform outside the hotel-door. To-