yer, every loss in time being paid
by the workers themselves. When questioned as to why the check system of
payment had been adopted by this and various other firms, the reply was
simply:--

"It saves trouble. The bank has more time to count out money than we
have."

"But the women? Does it seem quite fair that they should be the losers?"

"Fair? Anything's fair in business. You'd find that out if you undertook
to do it."

As the case then at present stands, for this firm, and for many which
have adopted the same methods, the working-woman not only pays the rent
that would be required for a factory, but gives them a profit on
expressage, thread, time lost in going to bank, and often the price on a
dozen of garments, payment for the dozen being deducted by many foremen
if there is a flaw in one. This foreman becomes the scapegoat if
unpleasant questions are asked by any whose investigation might bring
discredit on the firm. In some cases they refuse positively to give any
information, but in most, questions are answered with suspicious
glibness, and if reference is made to any difficulties encountered by
the women in their employ, they take instant refuge in the statement:--

"Oh, that was before the last foreman left. We discharged him as soon as
we found out how he had served the women."

"Do you see those goods?" another asked, pointing to a counter filled
with piles of chemises. "How do you suppose we make a cent when you can
buy a chemise like that for fifty cents? We don't. The competition is
ruining us, and we're talking of giving up the business."

"That's so. It's really more in charity to the women than anything else
that we go on," his partner remarked, with a look toward him which
seemed to hold a million condensed winks. "That price is just ruin;
that's what it is."

Undoubtedly, but not for the firm, as the following figures will
show,--figures given by a competent forewoman in a large establishment
where she had had eleven years' experience: twenty-seven yards and
three-quarters are required for one dozen chemises, the price paid for
such cotton as is used in one selling at fifty cents being five cents
per yard, or $1.40 for the whole amount; thirty yards of edging at 4-1/2
cents a yard furnishes trimming for the dozen, at $1.35; and four
two-hundred-yard spools of cotton are required, at twenty-five cents per
dozen, or eight cents per dozen garments. The seamer who sews up and
hems the bodies of