eir
hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social
duties and joys, and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes--by
women who can find in slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their
melancholy fate--by women to the majority of whom there is no honest way
of escape from the lingering death that besets them, but the grave.

We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish sentimentalism;
_that_ it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who are all they
should be; there are milliners' and dressmakers' assistants who find
their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse.
Nor is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful,
nor the daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some
of these unfortunate girls are the daughters of "clergymen, medical men,
and officers;" but it is because they partake of our common
humanity--because they have human blood and human hearts--because life
was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed--because, in
their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are
injured and wronged--that we claim for them from society sympathy and
redress. We say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis
like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a
bait, it shows that those who yet continue at their work deserve respect
and aid. If some of them have fallen--if some of them, driven by
despair, have walked our streets to gain their bread, let us blame the
system which has made so infamous and wretched a mode of life seem a
change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work now done be
distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at
least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the
fashionable establishments increased cost of production can be of but
little moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our
high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness
of theirs that compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame
and a heavy heart. As a nation, we have worked out one problem in
civilization; we have shown that the utmost wealth can exist side by side
with the deepest poverty--the grossest ignorance with the most cultivated
knowledge--the most elevating piety with the most debasing fetichism--the
fairest virtue with the most revolting vice. Be it