The Night Side of London by James Ewing Ritchie

A stranger, ignorant of our inner life, and unacquainted with our social system, knowing only that we call ourselves a Christian people, and that we boast that Christianity places woman in a peculiarly favoured position, might dwell among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is flattered and followed, might imagine that our condition was perfect, and that here, at least, woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the strong. In the dazzling ball-room -- on the glittering promenade -- he might meet the lovely and the fair, and deem that they were no brilliant exception, but as they were sheltered and loved, so were sheltered and loved all of their common sex. Grieved would he be to find out his mistake; yet more grieved would he be to know that the graceful drapery that added to the beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye was wrought by tender and delicate women, who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from morn till eve, and from eve till again the dim grey of morn gleamed in the east -- by women withered before their prime -- by women who, for no crime, but from their simple desire to live by the honest and honourable labour of their hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social duties and joys, and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes -- by women who can find in slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their melancholy fate -- by women to the majority of whom there is no honest way of escape from the lingering death that besets them, but the grave.

We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish sentimentalism; _that_ it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who are all they should be; there are milliners' and dressmakers' assistants who find their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse. Nor is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful, nor the daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some of these unfortunate girls are the daughters of "clergymen, medical men, and officers; " but it is because they partake of our common humanity -- because they have human blood and human hearts -- because life was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed -- because, in their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are injured and wronged -- that we claim for them from society sympathy and redress. We say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a bait, it shows that those who yet continue at their work deserve respect and aid. If some of them have fallen -- if some of them, driven by despair, have walked our streets to gain their bread, let us blame the system which has made so infamous and wretched a mode of life seem a change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work now done be distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the fashionable establishments increased cost of production can be of but little moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness of theirs that compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame and a heavy heart.