: give her _justice!_

There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn.
Across the darkness of this night I hear 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-picked 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 shrivelled arm, hurled a
very thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out of the horrors of her own
experience.

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at half-past five or six
o'clock in the morning, as the women go to their work. Many of them
had no breakfast except the crumbs that were left over from the night
before, or a crust they chew on their way through the street. Here
they come! the working girls of New York and Brooklyn! These engaged
in bead-work, these in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar
making, book-binding, labelling, feather-picking, print-coloring,
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 cannot afford the five cents! If, concluding to deny herself
something else, she get 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 finds her own thread!

Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my 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!" We found afterwards 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 the