public exhibition of the capacity
of the new machine was operating on the community as the most efficient
mode of advertising that could have been adopted. The machines went
everywhere, over city and country, even at the monstrous prices demanded
for them. Many fashionable ladies became purchasers, thinking, no doubt,
that clothing could be made up by merely cutting it out and placing it
before the machine.

Thus the most ingeniously potent agencies were invoked to bring the new
invention rapidly and extensively into use. Its real merit happened to
be such that it fulfilled all the promises with which it had been
presented to the public. Hence it became a fixture in every great
establishment where sewing-women were usually employed. As the latter
acquired a knowledge of the machine, each of these establishments became
a school in which new hands were converted into skilful operatives,
until the primary schools, like that where I had been instructed, were
abandoned from lack of pupils.

But I picked up a great many useful ideas at the school, besides
acquiring, as already remarked, a new and assured confidence in the
future prospects of the sewing-woman. It seemed clear to my mind, that,
under the new order of things, the needle was still to be plied by her;
whatever work it was to do would be superintended and directed by her.
It was in reality only a new turn given to an old employment. Moreover,
it struck me that more of it would be called for than ever, because I
had noticed that the speed of the machine in making stitches had already
led to putting treble and quadruple the usual number into some garments.
Having achieved the useful, it was quickly applied to the ornamental.
Clothing was not to be made up, in the future, as plainly as it had been
in the past. Hence the prospect of more work being required involved the
probability of a greater demand for female labor. But whether it was to
be more remunerative,--whether the sewing-girl who might turn out ten
times as much in a day as she formerly did would receive an increase of
wages in any degree proportioned to the increase of work performed, was
a problem which the future alone could solve. I did not believe that any
such measure of justice would be accorded to her. It would be to the
men, but not to the women. Yet I was willing to take the future on
trust, for it now looked infinitely brighter than ever.

Among the pupils of this school was a young lady of twen