as to the
quality of the work, and evidently more independent of us. In very busy
seasons, when they really needed all the clothing we could make up, they
were courteous enough, because they were then unable to do without us.
But the introduction of sewing-machines seemed to revolutionize their
behavior. As every movement of the machine was exactly like every other,
so there was an astonishing uniformity in the work it performed; and if
it made the first stitch neatly, all the succeeding ones must be equally
neat. Hence the beautiful regularity of the work it turned out. It
looked nicer than any we could do by hand, though in reality not more
substantial. Its amazing rapidity of execution was another element of
superiority, against which, it was believed, no sewing-woman could
successfully contend.

Heretofore, I had noticed that our employers had, on numerous occasions,
set up the most frivolous pretexts for reducing our wages. In all my
experience they never once advanced them, even when crowding us so hard
as to compel us to sew half the night. The standing cry was that we must
work for less, but there was never a lisp of giving us more. At one time
the reason was--for reasons were plenty enough--that the merchant had
advanced the prices of his cloths; at another, that a new tariff had
enhanced the cost of goods; at another, that the men in their employ had
struck for higher wages. Generally, the reason alleged for the new
imposition on us was foolish and unsatisfactory, and to most women, who
knew so little of merchandise and tariffs, quite incomprehensible. The
whole drift was, that, as others laid it on the tailors, the latter must
lay it on the sewing-women. But all the reasons thus set before us I
turned over in my mind, and thought a great deal about. I never had the
uncomplaining timidity of my mother, when dealing with these men,--and
so, on more than one occasion, was bold enough to speak out for our
rights. It struck me, from the various pretexts set up for cutting down
our scanty wages, that they were untrue, and had been trumped up for the
sole purpose of cheapening our work. Some of them were so transparently
false that I wondered how any one could have the impudence to present
them. Those who did so must have considered a sewing-woman as either too
dull to detect the fallacy, or too timid to expose and resent it.

We had on one occasion just begun sewing for a tailor who was considered
to be of the bet