Some work in the potteries at the laborious task of preparing the clay,
and others in the brick-yards, in open weather, and on the wet clay with
naked feet. At other times the same women are forced, by the nature of
their employment, to walk over hot pipes, obliging them to wear heavy
wooden shoes to protect their feet from being burned. Every stranger who
sees these women at their work is shocked at the impropriety and
dangerous nature of their occupation.

So far exceeding masculine strength and endurance are the tasks imposed
on thousands of English dairy-women, that they constitute a special
class of patients with the medical faculty,--pining and perishing under
maladies arising entirely from over-fatigue and insufficient rest.

There are multitudes of women in Liverpool who work daily on the farms
around that city. They walk four or five miles to the scene of their
toil, where they are required to be by six in the summer months and
seven in the winter. They work all day at the severest agricultural
labor, wielding a heavy, clumsy hoe, digging potatoes, grubbing up
stones from the soil, stooping on the ground in weeding, and compelled
even to the unfeminine and offensive employment of spreading manure. For
a day's work at what men alone should be required to do, they receive
but a shilling! Then, worn out with fatigue, having eaten little more
than the crust they brought with them,--for what more can be afforded by
one who earns only a shilling a day?--they drag themselves back at
nightfall over the increasingly weary miles which they traversed in the
morning. What comforts can fall to the lot of such? What a domestic life
must such unhappy creatures lead!

There are yet others, in that land which boasts of its high
civilization, who live by carrying to the city immense loads of sand for
sixpence a day,--harder work than carrying a hod. Other women may be
daily seen collecting fresh manure along the streets and docks of
Liverpool.

In certain rooms of the great English cotton-mills, the high temperature
maintained there compels the women to work in a half-naked condition.
This constant exposure of one half the body speedily destroys all
feminine modesty. Added to this is an extreme, but unavoidable,
filthiness of person. These poor creatures part with their health almost
as quickly as with their modesty. They become hollow-cheeked and pale,
while their coarse laugh and gestures indicate a deep demoralization.