ed to
be confined to the lowest grade of work and the lowest type of employer,
both being referred to regions like Baxter or Division Streets. But they
are to be found east or west indifferently, the illustration at present
in mind being on Canal Street, within sound of Broadway. It is a
prosperous firm, one whose trade-mark can be trusted; and here are a few
of the methods by which this prosperity has been attained, and goes on
in always-increasing ratio.

In the early years of their existence as a firm they manufactured on the
premises, but, like many other firms, found that it was a very
unnecessary expense. A roof over the heads of a hundred or more women,
with space for their machines, meant not less than twenty-five hundred
dollars a year to be deducted from the profits. Even floors in some
cheaper quarter were still an expense to be avoided if possible. The
easy way out of the difficulty was to make the women themselves pay the
rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the less certainly
in fact. Nothing could be simpler. Manufacturing on the premises had
only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the women that
they were allowed to work at home. The rule established itself at once,
and the firm, smiling serenely at the stoppage of this most damaging and
most unnecessary leak, proceeded to make fresh discoveries of equally
satisfactory possibilities. To each woman who applied for work it was
stated:--

"We send all packages from the cutting-room by express, the charges to
be paid by you. It's a small charge, only fifteen cents, to be paid when
the bundle comes in."

"We can come for ours. We live close by. We don't want to lose the
fifteen cents," a few objected, but the answer was invariable:--

"It suits us best to make up the packages in the cutting-room, and if
you don't like the arrangement there are plenty waiting that it will
suit well enough."

Plenty waiting! How well they knew it, and always more and more as the
ships came in, and the great tide of "producing power" flowed through
Castle Garden, and stood, always at high-water mark, in the wards where
cheap labor may be found. Plenty waiting; and these women who could not
wait went home and turned over their small store of pennies for the
fifteen cents, the payment of which meant either a little less bread or
an hour or two longer at the sewing-machine, defined as the emancipator
of women.

In the mean time the enterprisin