VICTIMS OF THE NEEDLE.

A ROMANTIC SKETCH FOR YOUNG LADIES, BACHELORS AND OTHERS,

BY SELDOM.

A POOR girl sat by her window busily plying her needle. She was doing some common sewing on coarse garments for a large and prosperous clothing establishment. From where she sat, she could look into one of those mammoth iron-works of which there are many in our State. As the heavy strokes rang out, at each whirl of the huge sledge in the hands of the brawny-armed workman, she wished it possible to change places with him. That she could not was a reflection which almost made her repine, however much her faithful heart urged her to stitch away.

What a foolish girl, some will say, to wish to wield that great sledge! To raise its ponderous bulk, requires, in those unaccustomed to the exercise, almost superhuman might. The needed strength, however, grows with daily toil, and new force with more ease comes to the hardy laborers. When the ten hours work is done his cheerful home, with comfort bought by the generous wages which his hands have earned, stands open to receive him, and in his family circle his weary limbs amid refreshing pleasures soon forget the toils of the day. All that is very well; but let us see why she would change places with him.

Sledges are not the heaviest things to work with. The common needle is heavier by far than the sledge, and harder in its demands on human strength! A "number-eight-betweens" will sooner wear out the energies of life, will sooner paralyze the arm, exhaust the vital functions of the system, deform the members of the human frame and bring on premature decay and death, by the continued expenditure of effort required in the ceaseless toil it imposes, than will, under corresponding circumstances, a sixteen-pound sledge. Thousands of pale, haggard, care-worn, dying seamstresses give unequivocal testimony to the fact just now stated, whether believed or not by the multitude.

The needle is killing more of the human family than the sword. Nay, we had almost said its victims are more numerous than those of the sword, cannon, gun, pistol, powder and ball, siege, sack and war-camp together. Though it be a little instrument it does its work of death as effectually as the bayonet, carbine or lance. What'multitudes has it not already slain-is it not yet slaying? Victims sacrificed to Juggernaut are indeed many, and these we pity; but the sacrifices offered on the point of the needle are, to say the least, as vain, and perhaps more to be commisserated, because more selfish-and if anything more sinful too.

These sac

rifice to Mammon, and certainly he is a no more benignant god than other cruel idols.

Sewing, stitching, toiling, there sit the victims while their very life is passing out in its extreme tenuity at the point of the needle. It never stops. Not like other labor that sometimes finds rest; day and night, almost in constant devotion, the dying victims offer up the sacrifice of their lives. In the name of our common humanity, what right have they to make such sacrifice-or rather what right have Mammon's priests to demand it? To kill a poor dependent widow in the slow, torturing inch by inch death, is of all murders the most inhuman. To cause a tender, helpless and defenceless girl to commit a lingering suicide with a needle, is a cruelty unknown to barbarism. Poor toiling millions nevertheless are continually immolated under the plea of self-preservation.

Low murmuring sounds of plaintive discontent rise from the aching hearts and through the hungry mouths and pale lips of the helpless victims of the needle; and while the stifled notes of misery remain unheeded by their cruel oppressors, the recording angel registers their cries. These, in eternity will roll back in echoing tones of seven thunders, resounding to the lowest hell, upon the ears of Mammom worshippers who heard not the entreating moan while here in life.

The invention of this useful instrument, the needle, is undoubtedly a blessing which demands the gratitude of the human race; but the abuse of it in turning it into an instrument of torture and death deserves the reprobation of a curse. To many of God's poor it has been and yet continues to be, the only means of keeping death at the door, where he has long been standing in the image of starvation knocking for admittance. Instead of gaining for them, by rigid economy and uninterrupted diligence, a substantial competency, as in other departments of labor, they can only manage, by dint of incessant exertion, stealing time from required rest and sleep, at the sacrifice of every comfort and health, for a time to keep body and soul together-for all that a man hath will he give for his life.

Having, by their "killing wages," been required to live from hand to mouth, when once thrown out of employment, with not even a pittance left of their hard earnings, death is their only hope. Seven thousand seamstresses in one city alone, out of employment, is a sad picture. Add to this the many who in the same city still barely have enough to live, and then increase this sad roll by the multitudes in other cities equally destitute—and the heart of philanthropy sickens. Small towns and the country generally may not afford such sights as these-at least they did not a few years ago; but they are year by year becoming afflicted by the same evil. How many hearts might not sing the "Song of the Shirt," with the deepest pathos of experience!

What is the cause of this state of wretchedness and misery? There must be some assignable reason; for the Scripture law that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is as true now as ever before. Trade seeks its level and labor its value. This is a plain law in political economy. If a disarangement ensues, and the natural order be destroyed, it must therefore be owing to some cause which should be sought out and removed. Hard labor produces its equivalent, and this must be found somewhere. If not in the hands of the laborer, then the profit has accrued to some less deserving one. The products of the needle ought to pay as well as equal toil and expenditure of effort in other employments. It is plain, therefore, where this has not been the case, there is a wrong done the sewer. Looking for this cause, it is evident, in the first place, that, from convenience of resort in case of emergency, the symplicity of the employment, the immediate yield in exigencies, the small capital stock in trade needed to begin with, and many other reasons, there are too many persons engaged in this branch of industry. The same energies expended in other employments, and far less severely taxed and strained would yield a better reward.

Then, the fault for which many of the needle's victims are themselves to be blamed is, that they congregate too much in large towns and cities. More equally distributed throughout the small towns and country would afford them better wages from first hands, and thereby they would destroy those wholesale monopolies that now grind down the poor and amass large fortunes for themselves. The city is no place for poor people. The poor get poorer and the rich, by that fact, grow richer. Take an example: A poor woman who sews for a livelihood, pays, in the city, four dollars and a half a month, or upwards of $50 a year, for the rent of two small rooms in a back building, besides the highest market price for all she and her family live on. Now in the country, the same conveniences and living would cost her one-half, or over one-fourth as much, while her wages at the same time would, if any thing, be better and work plentier-the air purer and health much improved.

One's loss is, however, another's gain. Taking advantage therefore of the misfortunes growing out of the fault just named, the Shylocks make their money. Wholesale and retail clothing stores spring up and abound. We all know how cheap clothing may be bought there. Splendid establishments some of them are, fitted up too in fine style and kept so at great expense. Whole squares almost, in some cities, where rents range the highest, are taken up by this lucrative business. Something much like princely fortunes are acquired in a comparatively short period of time. These are the priests of Mammon, sacrificing human life, and their own souls too, we fear, on the altar of this pitiless, heartless, cruel god.

If the question be asked, how is all this expense met, when they sell so cheap (especially when they cannot get big profits,) we

need not look far for the answer. Who pays the fiddler? Who pays for the whistle? Of whom do they make the profits? It comes out of the hard earnings of the poor oppressed seamstresses, whose just dues the rewards of honest industry and self-sacrificing labor, are reduced in price as the times grow harder, till, at "killing wages," they are ground down to the starving or stealing point. The gnawings of unsatisfied hunger there cramp their vitals and the overtasked heart moans hopelessly for relief that it should not, aye, would not need, if it had been rewarded according to its deserts. The hungry orphan's fruitless tears ought not to have been wept, and the pure fresh fountain from which they started, gushed out and trickled down, should not have been disturbed from its sunny placidity. The widow, toiling at midnight as well as through the day, pours her plaintive moans for help into her Father's ear, as she hears the night winds howling around her dreary home, and breaking through the ill-stopped crevices in mournful cadences. No adequate reward is given for her work, and hence to feed those other mouths, the needle still moves on, till nature yields, no longer able to sustain the load.

Another class who make the needle's victim suffer, are the proud daughters of fashion. If they find their expenses growing enormously heavy, the first place they begin economy is to rob their milliners and seamstresses, by forcing them to work for less than a fair compensation. Here again the suffering party must bear the increase of the burden. The profit and the saving are forced out of stern necessity and helpless distress. The suffering soul fears to seek redress lest thereby it be made to feel a double injury and treasure up a deeper wo.

Oh, there is a God of the helpless, who is a God of justice! He is, according to his promise, a friend and husband to the widow, a father and protector to the orphan, and will avenge their wrongs. The blood of these dying victims has cried up to heaven, and the priests of Mammon shall be overthrown-though it be too late to save many of those who are now devoted to the sacrifice.

Kind reader! when you see any of these victims suffer, extend a helping hand of relief, and "the blessing of them that are ready to perish," as Job says, will be yours. Add not to the weight of the needle, already so heavy to many hearts. Soothe the pang of anguish, hear the plaintive suppliant cries, give color to the pallid cheek, send pleasure to the desolate home and cold hearth and bare table and scanty bed; and the sobs and suppressed groans of the needle's victims will be known no more, the rayless hope will be lit up with joy, and the beams of peace will take the place of distress and sorrow. They that labor with the heart-piercing needle are as worthy of their hire as they who wield the sledge. They should not be defrauded of their hard-earned and just dues. Hear, then, the plea of the Victims of the Needle.

"I OWE NO MAN A DOLLAR."

BY CHARLES P. SHIRAS.

Он, do not envy, my own dear wife,

The wealth of our next-door neighbor,

But bid me still to be stout of heart

And cheerfully follow my labor;
You must know, the last of those little debts
That have been our lingering sorrow,
Is paid this night! so we'll both go forth
And shake hands with the world to-morrow!
Oh, the debtor is but a shame-faced dog

With the creditor's name on his collar;
While I am a king, and you are a queen,
For we owe no man dollar!

Our neighbor you saw in his coach to-day,
With his wife and his flaunting daughter,
While we sat down to our cheerless board
To a crust and a cup of water.

I saw that a tear-drop stood in your eye,
Though you tried your best to conceal it;
I know that the contrast reached your heart,
And you could not help but feel it ;
But knowing now that our scanty fare
Has freed my neck from the collar,

You'll join my laugh and help me shout
That we owe no man a dollar!

This neighbor, whose show has dazzled your eyes,
In fact is a wretched debtor;

I pity him oft, from my very heart,
And I wish that his lot was better.

Why he is the veriest slave alive;

For his dashing wife and daughter

Will live in style though ruin should come-
So he goes like a lamb to the slaughter;
But he feels it the tighter every day,

That terrible debtor's collar!

Oh, what would he give could he say with us
That he owed no man a dollar!

You seem amazed, but I'll tell you more,
Within two hours I met him,

Sneaking along with a frightened air,
As if a fiend had beset him.

Yet he fled from a very worthy man,

Whom I met with the greatest peasure;
Whom I called by name and forced to stop,
Though he said he was not at leisure.
HE HELD MY LAST NOTE! So I held him fast
Till he freed my neck from the collar;

Then I shook his hand as I proudly said, "Now I owe no man a dollar!"

Ah! now you smile, for you feel the force
Of the truths I've been repeating;

I knew that a downright honest heart
In that gentle breast was beating!
To-morrow I'll rise with a giant's strength
To follow my daily labor;