tute for home is the common lodging-house. The inmates of these Homes are the girls engaged in factories and work-rooms, in the various trades and manufactures of book-binding, envelope-making, bonnets, artificial flowers, fringes, and mantle making and various forms of sewing. The Committee undertake to provide full board, breakfast, dinner and tea (Sundays included) to each resident at 4s. 6d. a week, but if separate meals are desired, breakfast can be had for 24d., dinner for od., tea for 24d.,. and supper for 1d. No stimulants are allowed on the premises. The rent of bedroom accommodation, including the use of dining and reading rooms supplied with magazines and newspapers is 2s. 6d. and 4s. a week. Moderate as these charges are, they are in many cases beyond the means of the girls, and although they work from early morning to a late hour in the evening they can earn barely enough for their food to say nothing of their lodging. A writer in the Women's Union Journal gives the following items of the miserably low wages which are paid to women in a large proportion of the trades in which they are employed. The connection of insufficient wages with crime or prostitution among the uneducated and improvident classes is painfully evident : Making Paper Bags.-44d. to 5 d. a thousand, earn from 5s. to 9s. a week. Making Match-boxes.-21d. to 24d. a gross, can do 10 gross a day; makes 2/1 a day (another deponent). Making Knapsacks.—34d. each, average 10s. a week. Buttonholes.-(Various deponents) d. for 7, 6d. for 24, 3 d. a dozen, 34d. for three dozen in shirts, makes 8s. a week,-15s. with help of children. American Cloth Buttons.-3/4 a gross. Shirts.-2d. each and find own cotton: can get 6 a day done from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Button Maker.-(Girl of 16) 2s. for 100 gross, lathework with chest. Bookfolding.-24d. per gross sheets. Sack Sewing. 6d. for 25; 8d. 1/6 a 100; 6d. a dozen, (smaller size) makes 1/- to 1/6 a day, 7s. a week. Carpet Bag Making.-8s. a week. Pill Box Making.-1s. for 36 gross, can make 1/3 a day. Cartridge Making.-7d. a hundred, can do 6 or 7 hundred a day. Hat Making. 9s. a week. Collar Button-Hole Making. 1d. a dozen, can do 3 or 4 dozen collars a day, begins at 5 a.m. ends at dark; others make 1/6 to 2/- a gross. Whipmaking. 1s. a dozen, can do a dozen a day. Trouser Finishing.-(After machine) 3d. to 5d. each, can do 4 a day. Trouser Basting.-(Before machine) 15d. dozen. Tobacco Spinner.-7s. a week. Shirt Finishing.—3d. and 4d. a dozen. Button Covering.-2d. a gross, can do 9 gross a day. Gingerbeer Bottling.-2d. a gross, has made 9/6 to 11s. a day, while trade busy. POST OFFICE CLERKS IN DUBLIN. The Freemasons' Journal, May 26th, says: Yesterday in the Exhibition Palace the preliminary examination of candidates for the situations of female clerk in the General Post Office went on from eleven in the morning to six in the evening, with an hour of intermission. The girls numbered about ninety, and were all between the ages of eighteen and twenty. The competitive and "final" will take place in June, and then the subjects for examination are to embrace Arithmetic, Composition, Geography, and English History. The prizes to be awarded are thirty clerkships starting at £65 a year each, open to candidates from England, Ireland, and Scotland, with promotions, depending on merit, to vacancies in the higher classes. The number of those who are bound to fail must be an alarming majority, since Dublin, one of fifteen centres for the "preliminary," produced nearly a hundred aspirants. On an average not more than two of them may arrive at the winning post; but all the remainder, meanwhile, will not be in suspension, for candidates for the "competitive" must have passed the "preliminary," and it is not probable that many more than three-fourths of those who entered yesterday will pass, although only a certain proficiency in hand-writing, spelling, and arithmetic is required. The times are advancing with us when we see four score and ten young women trying for posts under Government; and old theories regarding the impossible girl-graduate were quite shaken last week in this city when four maidens presented themselves among ten times as many young men for a University Scholarship examination. Results have since shewn that, as yet, there is too little chance for them to be successful, but as the novelty of the Royal Matriculation Examination wears off, we anticipate a well-founded fear in the masculine heart lest the £50 a year for three years should find its way into the folds of a skirt, and not into the depths of a trousers pocket. Day by day woman is training herself more effectually to take an active part in the economy of the world. MORAL REFORM UNION. ON May 24th, a lecture to ladies was given at the house of Mrs. S. W. Browne, by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, on "Wrong and Right Methods of dealing with Social Evil." Dr. Blackwell characterised the let alone system adopted in England, and the controlling systems of the Continent as equally productive of vice, and cited instead the excellent example of the Glasgow municipalists which had done much towards checking it. She thought that women had, by means of the municipal vote, considerable influence which they might exert on behalf of public morality. The Annual Report of the Moral Reform Union which was distributed after the meeting, shows a considerable amount of work done. Several drawing-room meetings have been held for the purpose of considering such questions as the Moral Education of the young, and other kindred subjects. Many points have also been brought before the attention of the Union, which have a more or less direct relation to its main object; such as the better housing of the poor; the non-recognition of the English Marriage Law in France; the need of women doctors in India; the very low moral condition of public schools; and the need for better accommodation for women on emigrant vessels. These and other subjects entail a large amount of correspondence, as letters of inquiry, or applications for assistance and advice in most painful cases are of very frequent occurence. Miss F. E. Albert is the Secretary, and the Society's office is at 1, Leinster Place, Bayswater. The report contains also a list of the books and pamphlets which may be obtained from the Society, and some of the members desire to commence a small lending library where works of these kinds, all of unquestionable moral tendency, can be obtained. This scheme if carried out is likely to prove of great service to poor women who cannot afford to buy many books, but wish anxiously to know how to keep their boys and girls upright and steady. PROTECTION OF YOUNG GIRLS.-The following noble lords form the Select Committee for inquiring into the law relating to the protection of young girls :-The Marquis of Salisbury, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe, Earl Belmore, Earl Cairns, the Bishop of London, Lord Bray, Lord Leigh, the Earl of Dalhousie, Lord Tollemache, Lord Norton, and Lord Mount-Temple. LADIES' NEGRO'S FRIEND SOCIETY FOR BIRMINGHAM AND LEICESTER. THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA. THE annual meeting of this old-established Society was held lately, at Mrs. Sturge's, Wheeley's Road, Birmingham, under the presidency of Mr. EDWARD GEM. There was a crowded assembly, and amongst those present were the Revs. A. Mursell, and J. K. Wilson; Messrs. R. W. Felkin, C. H. Allen (the secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society), W. Morgan, and Turner; Mrs. J. Cadbury, Miss M. A. Cash, Mrs. and Miss Evers (Stourbridge), Mrs. C. B. Cadbury, Miss E. Cadbury, Mrs. Hutchinson (London), Miss Atkins (Leamington), Mrs. W. H. Dixon, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. E. Sargent, Mrs. A. Richardson, Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. and Miss Jordan, Mrs. J. H. Chance, Mrs. and Miss Middlemore, Mrs. Tyndall, Mrs. Talbot, Mrs. Mursell, &c. Mrs. E. STURGE, President of the Society, read the annual report, which dealt comprehensively with the operations of the Society and kindred bodies in Jamaica and West Africa. The statement of accounts was presented by Mrs M. J. CADBURY, and showed the income during the past year to have been £171 16s. Od. After grants had been made to schools in Jamaica, the Gold Coast, and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, a balance of £6 had been left to meet future expenses. The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the report, said there was still great need for the exertions of the Society, and for placing in its hands the necessary funds which it needed for such an extensive field of usefulness. Mr. C. H. ALLEN, in seconding the motion, pointed out the hopelessness of placing credence in the repeated assurances of the Egyptian officials respecting the abolition of slavery, and advocating that every possible influence should be brought to bear upon the English Government to urge them to carry on the crusade against slavery. The report having been adopted, the meeting was addressed by Mr. R. W. Felkin, F.R.G.S., who was introduced as the only Englishman who has made the journey up the Nile as far as Lake Victoria Nyanza and back again, who resided some time at the Court of King Mtesa, and is author of the latest work on slavery and the slave trade, dealing with Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan. He ridiculed the appointment of the Council in Egypt to put down the slave trade, and said that thousands of slaves were being sent down to Khartoum, and this was known to the Foreign Office. He gave some description of the horrors of the traffic which still continued, and hoped the English people would exert themselves. A memorial for presentation to Lord Grenville was adopted by the meeting. The members and friends of the Ladies' Negro Friendly Society for Birmingham and Leicester assembled on this their fifty-seventh anniversary, having again had brought to their notice the sufferings and misery of the people of Africa through the active and extended operations of the slave trade, venture to address your lordship with a view to call the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the continued existence of this terrible scourge. The accounts of the ravages of the slave hunters were so fully brought before your lordship by the gentlemen forming the deputation of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in August last, that it is not necessary at the present time to make any further suggestions for the suppression of the evil. The Ladies' Society have marked with satisfaction your lordship's favourable reception of the deputation, and they are glad to learn that an English consul has at length been appointed for the Soudan. They are unwilling to trouble your lordship with any lengthened appeal, but the laws of God and the claims of humanity impel them to plead for their fellow-creatures, especially on account of the women and children whose hardships are of the most aggravated kind. They would therefore express their earnest hope that this momentous subject may receive the early attention that its magnitude_requires; and that no opportunity may be lost by Her Majesty's Government to effect by all lawful and peaceable means the carrying out of the great object of total abolition of |
