and looked reflectively at his well-kept
finger-nails.

"My dear madam, that's a question I have no time to consider. I dare say
they earn a living somehow. Indeed, I'm told they go into cigar
factories. There's always plenty of work."

"Plenty of work,"--a form of words so familiar that I looked for it now
from both employer and employed. But for the last was an addition
finding no place on the lips of the first: "Plenty of work? Oh, yes! I
can always get plenty of work. The trouble is to get the wages for it."

A block or so below, and further west, one great window of a cheaper
establishment held jackets and wraps large and small, marked down for
the holidays, their advertisement in a morning paper having read,
"Jackets from $4 up." Still further over, another window displayed
numbers as great, and a placard at one side announced: "These elegant
jackets from $2.87 up." The cloth might be shoddy, but here was a
garment, fashionably cut, well finished to all appearance, and
unexceptionable in pattern and color. All along the crowded avenue the
story was the same, and as east took the place of west, and Grand Street
and the Bowery and Third Avenue gave in their returns, "These elegant
jackets from $2.35 up" gave the final depth to which cheapness could
descend.

If this was retail, what could be the wholesale price, and what was
likely to be the story of the worker from whose hands they had come? It
is worth while to follow these jackets as they emerge from the
cutting-room, and in packages holding such number of dozens as has been
agreed upon, pass to the express wagon which distributes them among the
workers, the firm in mind at present, like many others, preferring this
arrangement to any which involves dealing directly with the women.

First on the list stands the name of a woman a little over fifty years
old, whose husband is a painter and who left Germany eight years ago,
urged to come over by a daughter more adventurous than the rest, who had
married and emigrated at once. Work was plentiful when they arrived, and
the husband found immediate employment at his trade, with wages so high
that the wife had no occasion for any employment outside her own rooms.
The youngest child, a girl of nine, went to school. They lived in
comfortable rooms on a decent street, put money in a savings bank, and
felt that America held more good even than the name had always seemed to
promise. Then came the financial troubles of 18