New Tabernacle SermonsTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
New Tabernacle Sermons
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Presbyterian Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred
and twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets
sixteen hundred and fifty dollars? I hear from all this land the wail
of womanhood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail but flatteries.
He says she is an angel. She is not. She knows she is not. She is a
human being who gets hungry when she has no food, and cold when she
has no fire. Give her no more flatteries; give her justice! There are
sixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across the
sunlight comes their death groan. It is not such a cry as comes from
those who are suddenly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding,
horrible wasting-away. Gather them before you and look into their
faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers,
needle-pricked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the
shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough! At a large meeting
of these women held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were
delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her faded
shawl, and with her shriveled arm hurled a very thunder-bolt of
eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her own experience.
Stand at the corner of a street in New York at six or seven o'clock in
the morning as the women go to work. Many of them had no breakfast
except the crumbs that were left over from the night before, or the
crumbs they chew on their way through the street. Here they come! The
working-girls of New York and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work,
these in flower-making, in millinery, in paper-box making; but, most
overworked of all and least compensated, the sewing-women. Why do they
not take the city cars on their way up? They can not afford the five
cents. If, concluding to deny herself something else, she gets into
the car, give her a seat. You want to see how Latimer and Ridley
appeared in the fire. Look at that woman and behold a more horrible
martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing death. Ask that woman how
much she gets for her work, and she will tell you six cents for making
coarse shirts and find her own thread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account