are drawn into gaming and are fleeced out of their money.
Dozens of sharpers are on the watch for them, and woe to them if they
fall into the hands of these wretches.

Women are prominent amongst the enemies of the emigrants. The
proprietors of the dance-houses and brothels of the city send their
agents to the Battery, to watch their opportunity to entice the fresh,
healthy emigrant girls to their hells. They draw them away by promises
of profitable employment, and other shams, and carry them off to the
houses of their heartless masters and mistresses. There they are drugged
and ruined, or in other ways literally forced into lives of shame.

LXXXI. WORKING WOMEN.

It is said that there are more than forty thousand women and girls in New
York dependent upon their own exertions for their support. This estimate
includes the sewing women, factory girls, shop girls, female clerks,
teachers, and governesses. They all labor under two common
disadvantages. They are paid less for the same amount of work than men,
and being more helpless than men are more at the mercy of unscrupulous
employers. The female clerks and shop girls receive small wages, it is
true, but they are generally paid regularly and honestly. The sewing
women and factory hands are usually the most unfortunate, and these
constitute the great bulk of the working women of New York. Many of
these are married, or are widows with children dependent upon them for
support.

The life of the New York working woman is very hard. She rises about
daybreak, for she must have breakfast and be at her post by seven
o'clock, if employed in a factory or workshop. At noon she has a brief
intermission for dinner, and then resumes her work, which lasts until 6
o'clock in the evening. You may see them in the morning, thinly clad,
weary and anxious, going in crowds to their work. They have few holidays
except on Sunday, and but few pleasures at any time. Life with them is a
constant struggle, and one in which they are always at a disadvantage.
The sewing girls are in the majority, and there are two classes of
these--those who work in the rooms of their employers and those who work
at home. The former we have included in the general term of factory
hands. The factory girls earn from two to four dollars a week, as a
rule, a sum scarcely sufficient to keep body and soul together, but they
get their wages promptly and consider themselves fortunate. Men doing