Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1876 — The Work-women of New York City. [ARTICLE]

The Work-women of New York City.

It is estimated by those philanthropists who direct the Workingwomen’s Protective Union that there are ’ n ’his dity fully 130,000 females who earn a meager but honest living in the industrial pursuits, aside from the countless multitude who are engaged in domestic duties. The ages of nearly one-fourth of this number, previous to the passage of a Senate law for compulsory education, ranged within the period of childhood. Every day in the year, on crisp, bleak mornings, and

on die sultry summer dog-days, these little girls, still in short clothes, may be seen crowding the ferries and the strent-cars, hurrying to the performance of from eight to twelve hours' laborious toil' in more than four hundred various occupations, in which women's tiny fingers coin wealth for their employers. The.occupations are indeed varied. Thousands and tens of thousands are employed in textile manufactures and the manipulation of precious and other metals. The staining and enameling of glass, the burnishing of china, the cutting of ivory, pearl and tor-toise-shell, the preparation of gutta-percha, hair and gum-elastic for the market, shoving rattan and attending the strips as they pass through small machines, the manufacture of fine willow-ware, cane chairs, and carving of furniture, upholstery, cur-tain-trimming, carpet-weaving, running the looms for the carriage drapery manufacturers, sewing mattresses and cushions, making paper, paper bags and boxes, marble paper for books, the laying of gold leaf, the preparation of wall paper, the preparation of confectionery, drugs and patent medicines for the market, and employments pertaining to grain, fruits, flowers, and vegetables are very common occupations. Many more are press-feeders, type-setters, clock ornamenters, backgammon-board painters, map mounters and finishers; and, indeed, in some instances workers one fine watches and jewelry. There is scarcely a single branch of industry that requires careful aud delicate touch that woman is not employed in. The vast number, however, are employed on articles of ladies’ and gentlemen’s apparel, in the manufacture of books, playing and other cards, the preparation of tobacco, aud coloring and finishing photographs. .. . . While in many branches of industry they excel men, their wages are from one-third to one-half less, and even then hundreds of the patient toilers in the stores and shops are swindled most egregiously by their employers. It was to prosecute these swindlers of workingwomen that prominent gentlemen and ladies organized tne Working-Woman’s Protective Union, which is doing so much good. The earnings of these 130,000 female toilers In the metropolis is a difficult problem to solve, but the best authorities estimate that they will average, for thirty weeks in the year, five dollars each, which fives us a total of $050,000 per week, or 19,500,000 per year in this city alone. With such an exhibit of female industry in the chief city of the union, who will say that American women are indolent and unfitted to battle with the misfortunes of adversity ? God bless our women, I say., and shame upon the craven creatures who belle them in their criticisms of our habits of life.— N. Y. Cor. Chicano Timet.