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Updated: June 26, 2025
The fashion of embroidering armorial bearings on ladies' dresses must have given needle-women a vast deal of work. It died out in the fifteenth century.
Near the window, not far from the table which was surrounded by the sewing-women, stood a smaller table where Ruth was engaged, coloring designs for costumes. The gossip of the Washington beau monde, very naturally furnished a theme for the lively tongues of the needle-women.
Suddenly the ruin came. Down went the whole nation members of Parliament, tradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal ladies, and poor needle-women in one stupendous calamity. The whole earth, and all the ages, heard that bubble burst. But I am not through. Our young men shall hear more startling things.
Our Saturday sewing class was a capital institution, which made most of us expert needle-women, developed in some the peculiarly lady-like accomplishment of working exquisitely, and gave to all the useful knowledge of how to make and mend our own clothes. When I left school I could make my own dresses, and was a proficient in marking and darning.
It was the jarring clash of her brazen declaration of it upon his low rich flute-notes that shocked him. He glanced at the gold cathedral-clock on the mantel-piece, and proposed a stroll on the lawn before dinner. Laetitia gathered up her embroidery work. "As a rule," he said, "authoresses are not needle-women." "I shall resign the needle or the pen if it stamps me an exception," she replied.
She closed with a cheerful budget of statistics, giving the exact number of needle-women who had starved, gone mad, or committed suicide during the past year; the enormous profits wrung by capitalists from the blood and muscles of their employes; and the alarming increase in the cost of living, which was about to plunge the nation into debt and famine, if not destruction generally.
I do not know; but this I know, that the middle-man who has to give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work among the needle-women, receives 1.5d. per piece. From this he deducts his own pay, at least .5d., so that 1d. at most reaches the pocket of the girl. The girls who sew neckties must bind themselves to work sixteen hours a day, and receive 4.5s. a week.
She became their friend, adviser, and comforter, and thus experienced the delicious consolation of creating happiness for others after her own happiness had received its death-blow. The room in which the busy needle-women were sitting, was the farthest of a suite of apartments opening into each other, on the second story.
Wait one moment, and I shall have the body and sleeves of this dress ready for the needle-women. There, ring the bell, and order them up; for I have directions to give, and you must interpret for me." While Brigida went to the bell, the energetic Frenchwoman began planning out the skirt of the new dress. She laughed as she measured off yard after yard of the silk.
Many happy mornings that winter did the sisters spend together over their dainty stitches and "white seam." Elsie and Johnnie were good needle-women now, and could help in many ways. Mrs. Ashe often joined them; even Amy could contribute aid in the plainer sewing, and thread everybody's needles.
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