e were fine
ladies of superficial minds, who came from mere curiosity, so as to be
able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with
the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion
propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable
boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their
lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had
families dependent on their needles, and of young girls like myself,
obliged also to depend upon the labor of their fingers. All such were
deeply interested in the new art, and their inquiries were practical and
to the point. They expressed the same astonishment, on seeing the
rapidity with which the machine performed its work, that I had felt when
first beholding it.

With so great a throng continually around us, asking questions, stopping
the machines to examine the sewing, and begging for scraps with a row of
stitches made in them, which they might take away to inspect at leisure,
as well as to exhibit to others, there were days when the pupils were
able to produce only a very small amount of work. But we soon discovered
that this deficiency made but little difference to our teacher. The
school was in reality a mere show-shop, a place of exhibition
established by the machine-makers, in which to display and advertise
their wares more thoroughly to the public. We pupils were the
unconscious mouthpieces of the manufacturers. We paid the teacher for
the privilege of learning to work the machines, and the manufacturers
paid her a commission for all that she disposed of. Between the two sets
of contributors to her purse she must have done a profitable business.
She was at no expense except for rent, as the manufacturers loaned her
the machines, while we did all the work. She had more orders for the
latter than we could get through with, as the demand from the tailors
was so urgent as to show very plainly that the great proportion of all
the future sewing was to be done by the machine instead of by hand.

When I first went into this schoolroom I noticed a number of unemployed
machines arranged in one part of it. After a week's apprenticeship, I
observed some of them leaving the room every day, while new ones came in
to occupy the vacant places. The first had been sold, the last were also
to be disposed of, and this active sale continued as long as I remained.
The fact was very apparent, that this