Stowe is aware
what sort of a place her dress is being made in; and there is a letter
from a dressmaker's apprentice stating that it is being made up
piecemeal, in the most shockingly distressed dens of London, by poor,
miserable white slaves, worse treated than the plantation slaves of
America!
Now Mrs. Stowe did not know anything of this, but simply gave the silk
into the hands of a friend, and was in due time waited on in her own
apartment by a very respectable-appearing woman, who offered to make
the dress, and lo, this is the result! Since the publication of this
piece, I have received earnest missives, from various parts of the
country, begging me to interfere, hoping that I was not going to
patronize the white slavery of England, and that I would employ my
talents equally against oppression in every form. Could these people
only know in what sweet simplicity I had been living in the State of
Maine, where the only dressmaker of our circle was an intelligent,
refined, well-educated woman who was considered as the equal of us
all, and whose spring and fall ministrations to our wardrobe were
regarded a double pleasure,--a friendly visit as well as a domestic
assistance,--I say, could they know all this, they would see how
guiltless I was in the matter. I verily never thought but that the
nice, pleasant person who came to measure me for my silk dress was
going to take it home and make it herself; it never occurred to me
that she was the head of an establishment.
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