the same work would receive about twice as much.

[Picture: THE SEWING-GIRL'S HOME.]

The sewing women who work at home are worse off. They live in the poorer
class of tenement houses, and are surrounded with discomfort of every
kind. They work as hard as, if not harder than their sisters in the
factories, and are even worse paid. They have not the advantage of being
compelled to undertake the exercise of walking to and from the factories
which the latter enjoy. They sit in their wretched rooms all day, and
often late into the night, sewing for a miserable pittance, and for some
scoundrel who will perhaps swindle them out of their hard earnings. For
making blue cotton shirts, or "hickories" as they are called, a woman
receives six cents apiece, and must furnish her own thread; for making
linen coats she receives from fifteen to twenty cents apiece; for men's
heavy overalls she gets sixty-two cents a dozen; for flannel shirts one
dollar a dozen. These prices are not paid by the Jews alone, but by
reputable Broadway dealers, men who style themselves "leading merchants."
No wonder they pile up such large fortunes.

Now, in order to pay the rent of her bare and cheerless room, the sewing
woman must make two whole shirts a day. Then she must do work enough to
provide for her other expenses. She has to buy fuel in the winter, and
kindling wood costs her three cents a bundle and coal fifteen cents a
pail. Perhaps she has children, or a sick and helpless, or, worse still,
a drunken husband to provide for. All out of her beggarly wages. Her
food consists almost entirely of bread and potatoes, and sometimes she
treats herself to the luxury of a cup of tea without milk or sugar. If
she owns a sewing machine, and very few do, she can earn more than one
who sews by hand, but constant work at the machine means a speedy
breaking down of her health and a lingering death, or a transfer to the
charity hospital.

Small as are her wages, the working woman is not always sure of receiving
them. Some rascally employers--and one of the institutions to be
mentioned further on, could give a long list of them--will, upon
receiving the work, find fault with the sewing, and either deduct a part
of the poor creature's wages for the alleged fault, or refuse point blank
to pay her a cent. Others again will demand a deposit equal to the value
of the materials taken home by the sewing women. Upon the return of the
c