Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress

Name: Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress
Author: T. S. Arthur

by T. S. Arthur

Pages: about 200
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 3.7 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

NEEDLE-WORK, at best, yields but a small return. Yet how many thousands have no other resource in life, no other barrier thrown up between them and starvation! The manly stay upon which a woman has leaned suddenly fails, and she finds self-support an imperative necessity; yet she has no skill, no strength, no developed resources. In all probability she is a mother. In this case she must not only stand alone, but sustain her helpless children. Since her earliest recollection, others have ministered to her wants and pleasures. From a father's hand, childhood and youth received their countless natural blessings; and brother or husband, in later years, has stood between her and the rough winds of a stormy world. All at once, like a bird reared, from a fledgling, in its cage, and then turned loose in dreary winter time, she finds herself in the world, unskilled in its ways, yet required to earn her bread or perish.
What can she do? In what art or profession has she been educated? The world demands service, and proffers its money for labor. But what has she learned? What work can she perform? She can sew. And is that all? Every woman we meet can ply the needle. Ah! as a seamstress, how poor the promise for her future. The labor-market is crowded with serving women; and, as a consequence, the price of needle-work--more particularly that called plain needle-work--is depressed to mere starvation rates. In the more skilled branches, better returns are met; but even here few can endure prolonged application--few can bend ten, twelve, or fifteen hours daily over their tasks, without fearful inroads upon health.
In the present time, a strong interest has been awakened on this subject. The cry of the poor seamstress has been heard; and the questions "How shall we help her?" "How shall we widen the circle of remunerative employments for women?" passes anxiously from lip to lip. To answer this question is not our present purpose.

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Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress

From the opening

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