quire us to sit up half the night
to get this work done, that you may supply customers who, by your own
statement, will pay you as good a profit on our next week's work as you
get on that which we have just delivered. You advance your own prices,
but cut down ours. By the money paid us you see that we have made only
four dollars in the week, and now you ask us to work for three. Can two
women live on three dollars a week? You might"----

I was so fully under way, that there is no knowing what more I might
have said, had not my mother stopped me short. But my indignation was
roused, and I was about to begin again, when the tailor interposed by
saying,--

"Do as you please, Miss,--that's my price,--and yours too, or not, just
as you choose."

Just then the man's wife came into the shop, and called off his
attention from us. I noticed that she was dressed in the extreme of the
fashion. There were silks, and laces, and jewelry in abundance, the
profits of the unrequited toil of many poor sewing-women. I told my
mother we would take no more vests from this shop, and would look for a
new employer, and started to go out. But she, being less excitable,
lingered, asked for a second bundle, and came out with it on her arm. I
carried it home, but it weighed heavily on my hands. We made up the
vests, but the otherwise pleasant labor of my needle was embittered by
the reflection of how great a wrong had been done to us. The sting of
this imposition continued to rankle in my heart so long as we were the
bondwomen of this particular man.

This persistent tendency to a reduction of wages acquired new strength
from the introduction of sewing-machines. As they came gradually into
general use, we found the cry raised in all the shops that machine-work
was so much better than hand-work, that nothing but the former was
wanted,--customers would have no other. I am satisfied that this also
was to some extent a mere pretext to accomplish a fresh reduction of
prices. The work may really have been better done, yet, notwithstanding
that fact, we were told the shops would continue to employ us at
hand-work, if we would do it at the same rate with the machine-work. It
was thus evident that it was not a question as to the quality of the
sewing, but simply one of price. Machinery had been made to compete with
muscle, and we were fairly in a dilemma which occasioned us an amount of
uneasiness that was truly distressing.

I did not attempt to fly