Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their LivesCampbell, Helen
History
Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their Lives
Campbell, Helen
Women -- Employment; Women -- Employment -- United States
"Next day Madame brought her ten dollars of the two hundred and twenty
she owed her, and Jenny got shoes; but it was too late. I knew it well,
for I'd seen my sister go the same way. Quick consumption ain't to be
stopped with new shoes or anything but new lungs, and there's no patent
for them yet that ever I've heard of. She was going last night when I
went round, and sure as you live I'm going to put her death in the paper
myself. I've been saving my money off lunches to do it, and I'll write
it: 'Murdered by a fashionable dressmaker on ---- Street, in January,
1886, Jenny G----, age nineteen years and six months.' Maybe they won't
put it in, but here it is, ready for any paper that's got feeling enough
to care whether sewing-girls are cheated and starved and killed, or
whether they get what they've earned. I've got work at home now. It
don't matter so much to me; but I'm a committee to attend to this thing,
and I'll find out every fraud in New York that I can. I've got nine
names now,--three of 'em regular fashionables on the west side, and six
of 'em following their example hard as they can on the east; and a
friend of mine has printed, in large letters, 'Beware of' at the head of
a slip, and I add names as fast as I get them, and every girl that comes
in my way I warn against them. Do much good? No. They'll get all the
girls they want, and more; but it's some satisfaction to be able to say
they are cheats, making a living out of the flesh and blood of their
dupes, and I'll say it till I die."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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