making a shirt was reduced
one half. Fine bosoms, crowded with plaits and full of seams, were made
for a few cents per dozen. Even the mean slop-shop work was so poorly
paid, that no woman, working full time, could earn much more than a
dollar a week. If ill, or with a family of children to look after, her
case was apparently hopeless. How all the sewing-women thus suddenly
reduced to idleness were to gain a livelihood I could not comprehend. A
cry of distress rose up from the toiling inmates of many a humble home
around us. The privilege to toil had been suddenly withdrawn from them.

Even my mother, as I have said, began to wake up from the delusion under
which she had hitherto labored, that the needle was a woman's best and
surest dependence; for here was a revolution that had not entered into
her imagination. Though not at any time impoverished or even straitened
by it, yet she saw how others were; and it led her to think that women
might be not only usefully employed at many new things, but that they
ought to be qualified by education for even a variety of occupations, so
that, when one staff gave way, another would remain to lean upon. I
suggested that the reason why so many were at that time idle was, that
all of them had been brought up to do the same thing,--to sew,--and that
they did not seek employment in other pursuits because their industrial
education had not been sufficiently diversified; they were not
qualified, and consequently would not be employed.

A woman can become expert at the needle only by proper training through
a regular apprenticeship. If necessary in that instance, it is equally
so in all others. Every great city abounds in employments for which
women are especially fitted, both mentally and physically; and they are
shut out from them only for want of proper training, and the deplorable
absence of available facilities for acquiring it. The boy is
apprenticed, serves out his time, and secures remunerative wages. Why
not give a similar training to his sister? If girls were properly
instructed, they would be profitably employed. It has been so with the
seamstress: why should it be otherwise in a different sphere?

At no time had we been in the habit of telling my father the particulars
of our experience with the tailors. He heard only incidentally how
little we earned, while our greatest grievances were rarely spoken of
before him. The truth is, that he had a very poor opinion of the craft.