y hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding,
horrible wasting-away. Gather them before you and look into their
faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers,
needle-pricked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the
shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough! At a large meeting
of these women held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were
delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her faded
shawl, and with her shriveled arm hurled a very thunder-bolt of
eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her own experience.

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at six or seven o'clock in
the morning as the women go to work. Many of them had no breakfast
except the crumbs that were left over from the night before, or the
crumbs they chew on their way through the street. Here they come! The
working-girls of New York and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work,
these in flower-making, in millinery, in paper-box making; but, most
overworked of all and least compensated, the sewing-women. Why do they
not take the city cars on their way up? They can not afford the five
cents. If, concluding to deny herself something else, she gets into
the car, give her a seat. You want to see how Latimer and Ridley
appeared in the fire. Look at that woman and behold a more horrible
martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing death. Ask that woman how
much she gets for her work, and she will tell you six cents for making
coarse shirts and find her own thread.

Years ago, one Sabbath night in the vestibule of this church, after
service, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed
medicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive, in
her delirium she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight
cents! I wish I could get it done, I am so tired. I wish I could get
some sleep, but I must get it done. Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight
cents!" We found afterward that she was making garments for eight
cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day. Hear
it! Three times eight are twenty-four. Hear it, men and women who have
comfortable homes! Some of the worst villains of our cities are the
employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny and
try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two
before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is
sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the
wa