Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York IllustratedRobinson, Solon
General
Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated
Robinson, Solon
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
It is human nature to scorn many things which would content us--which do
content us after we once taste them.
One of the reasons why the vicious scorn those who would make them
better; why they scorn to change their present wretched life, or
miserable habitations, is because they know not what would best content
them.
When that missionary first located his mission to the poorest of New
York city poor, the drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes of the Five
Points, he was scorned by those he came to save. He and his mission were
hated with all the bitter hate which the evil mind oft feels for the
good, made still more bitter by the sectarian venom of ignorant
Catholics towards the hated heretic Protestants. Every annoyance that
low cunning could invent was thrown in his way.
Feeling the inefficiency of the system so long and so uselessly
practiced, of giving Bibles or tracts to such people, to be sold or
pawned for a tenth part of their value, he began a new system. This was
to give employment to the idle, to teach all, who would learn, how to
work, how to earn their own living, and that industry would bring more
content than drunkenness and its concomitant vices. Though stolen fruit
may be sweet, the bread of toil is sweeter, and he would teach them how
to gain it.
One of the first efforts made was work for the needle; because that was
the most easily started, can be carried on with less capital, and, on
the other hand, produces the least capital--or rather poorest pay to
those who labor. Yet it is better than idleness, and he soon found
willing hands to work, after he opened his shop, and invited all who
would conform to the rules, and were willing to earn their bread, rather
than beg or steal it, to come and get work--such as coarse shirts and
pants--work that they could do, many of them with skill and great
rapidity, but such as they could not get trusted with at any common
establishment--the very name of the place where they lived being
sufficient to discredit them--so that security, which they could not
give, for the return of the garments, closed the door against their very
will to work.
Another discouraging thing against the very poor who did occasionally
get "slop shop work," arose from some gross, cruel, wicked, downright
robbery, perpetrated upon "sewing women" by some incarnate fiend in the
clothing trade. The difficulty to get work, the miserably poor pay
offered to those who
"Stitch, stitch, stitch,
Band and gusset and seam,
Seam and gusset and band,
With eyes and lamp both burning dim,
With none to lend a helping hand,"
is enough to sink stouter hearts than those which beat in misery's
bosom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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