Feminism in Literature | Women in the 19th Century - Louisa Bastian, Mary Hamelton, And Anna Long (Petition Date July 1862)

LOUISA BASTIAN, MARY HAMELTON, AND ANNA LONG (PETITION DATE JULY 1862)

SOURCE: Bastian, Louisa, Mary Hamelton, and Anna Long. "The Adult Woman: Work." In Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the United States, edited by Erna Olafson Hellerstein, Leslie Parker Hume, and Karen M. Offen, p. 330. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981.

In the following petition, sent to lawmakers during the American Civil War, seamstresses ask the government to intervene against unfair labor practices.

We the undersigned formerly doing sewing for the United States Arsenal at Philadelphia most respectfully remonstrate against the action of Col. Crossman in taking the work from us and giving it to contractors who will not pay wages in which we can live—many of us have husbands, fathers, sons & brothers now in the army and from whom we derived our...

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