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.

Years ago, one Sabbath night in the vestibule of this church, after service, a woman fell in convulsions.  The doctor said she needed medicine not so much as something to eat.  As she began to revive, in her delirium she said, gaspingly:  “Eight cents!  Eight cents!  Eight cents!  I wish I could get it done, I am so tired.  I wish I could get some sleep, but I must get it done.  Eight cents!  Eight cents!  Eight cents!” We found afterward that she was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day.  Hear it!  Three times eight are twenty-four.  Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!  Some of the worst villains of our cities are the employers of these women.  They beat them down to the last penny and try to cheat them out of that.  The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on.  When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages refused and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back.  The Women’s Protective Union reports a case where one of the poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change employers, and went to get her pay for work done.  The employer says:  “I hear you are going to leave me?” “Yes,” she said, “and I have come to get what you owe me.”  He made no answer.  She said:  “Are you not going to pay me?” “Yes,” he said, “I will pay you,” and he kicked her down-stairs.