New York City Tours

o the bar. A girl who is passably pretty can almost always get a situation here. The big-armed prize-fighter-looking brute behind the bar reads our wanderer's history at once. 'Fresh' girls are rare in that quarter. She is assisted to improve her dress a little-- in some cases these girls are provided with a fancy costume, _a la Turque_, which they don at coming, and doff at leaving each night--and she commences her work. A crowd of half-drunk rowdies enter, and call on her to serve them, attracted by her sweet face. The grossest insults are put upon her, her character being taken for granted; infamous liberties are taken with her person, and her confusion laughed at. She would fly from the place at once, if she dared; but she does not dare-- she is afraid of the man behind the bar. Her experience with men has taught her to expect nothing but brutality from them, if she offend them in any way. When the weary hours have dragged along to the end, and the place is closed, she goes out into the street again, with a bevy of other girls. The street is still and lonely; the long lines of lamps twinkle in silence; the shop windows are all shrouded in darkness; there are no rumbling wheels, save when an occasional hack passes with slow-trotting horses. Now she must decide upon her course. This is the critical moment. Will she adhere to her new-found employment? If she do, one of her companions will volunteer to take her to a boarding-place--and from that hour she is lost. But perhaps she breaks away: a policeman saunters by, and she appeals to him, begging to be taken to a station- house to sleep--a common resource with the homeless poor girl--and on the morrow resumes her deathly struggle for existence. How long it will last--how long she will fight her almost inevitable fate--no one can tell. "But the poor girls who work in shops provided by their employers, fare better, you think. At least, they find shelter and warmth in the cold winter, while at work? At least, they are permitted to breathe and live." THE WORKSHOPS OF THE POOR GIRLS. There are hoop-skirt manufactories where, in the incessant din of machinery, girls stand upon weary feet all day long for fifty cents. There are photograph galleries--you pass them in Broadway admiringly-- where girls 'mount' photographs in dark rooms, which are hot in summer and cold in winter, for the same money. There are girls who make fans, who work in feathers, who pick over and assort rags for paper warehouses, who act as 'strippers' in tobacco shops, who make caps, and paper boxes, and toys, and almost all imaginable things. There are milliners' girls, and bindery girls, and printers' girls--press- feeders, bookfolders, hat-trimmers. It is not to be supposed that all these places are objectionable; it is not to be supposed that all the places where sewing-girls work are objectionable; but among each class there are very many--far _too_ many--where evils of the gravest character exist, where the poor girls are wronged, the innocents suffer. There are places where there are not sufficient fires kept, in cold weather, and where the poor girl, coming in wet and shivering from the storm, must go immediately to work, wet as she is, and so continue all day. There are places where the 'silent system' of prisons is rigidly enforced, where there are severe penalties for whispering to one's neighbor, and where the windows are closely curtained, so that no girl can look out upon the street; thus, in advance, inuring the girls to the hardships of prison discipline, in view of the possibility that they may some day become criminals! There are places where the employer treats his girls like slaves, in every sense of the word. Pause a moment, and reflect on _all_ that signifies. As in the South 'as it was,' some of these girls are given curses, and even blows, and even _kicks_; while others are special favorites either of 'the boss,' or of some of his male subordinates, and dress well, pay four dollars a week for board, and fare well generally--on a salary of three dollars a week. TEMPTATIONS. Until you have lived the life of the working girl, lady, reading this page, you cannot know what their temptation