t lowest forms of evil, they must rally to a sharper one against
the army of the Philistines. Strong soul and high endeavor: never since
time began has man more needed them; never was there harder work to do.

The story of the working-woman in one great city is, with slight
variations in conditions, the story of the working-woman in all; and
when we have once settled conclusively what monopoly or competition has
done and is doing for New York, we know sufficiently well what Boston
and Philadelphia and Chicago and all the host of lesser cities could
easily tell us in detail. With the mass of poor who work chiefly to
obtain money for drink, and who, with their progeny, are filling the
institutions in which we delight, we have absolutely nothing to do. It
is seldom from their ranks that workers are recruited. A small
proportion, rescued by societies or mission schools, may be numbered
among them, but the greater part are a grade above, and while perhaps
wellnigh as ignorant, have an inheritance of better instincts, and could
under any reasonable conditions of living find their fate by no means
intolerable.

I have chosen to-day, instead of passing on to another form of the
clothing trade, to return to that of underwear, and this because it is
the record most crowded with cases in which the subjects could not enter
household service and have not been reduced to poverty by intemperance.
Nor is the selection made with a view to working up as startling a case
as possible. On the contrary, it has been made almost at random from the
many recorded, any separate mention of which would be impossible in the
space at command. First on the long list comes Catherine E----, an
"expert" in underwear, and living on the top floor of a large,
old-fashioned house in Clinton Place; the lower part stores and offices,
the upper a tenement. She earned three years ago $1.50 a day; at times,
$1.75. The same work now brings her eighty-five cents, and now and then
but seventy-five. The husband was a "boss painter," and they were
comfortable, even prosperous, till the fate of his calling came upon
him, and first the "drop hand," and later blood-poisoning and
heart-disease followed. He is just enough alive to care a little for
the children and to oversee the pitiful household affairs; the oldest
girl, a child of seven, doing the marketing, boiling the kettle, etc.,
and this season going to school. They are fair-faced, gentle children,
and this is the