at rush of work and it must be done. They can't
do without us, and yet they are grinding us down so that I get half
distracted sometimes, wondering where it will end and if things will
ever be better."

"Would not private sewing be better? There is always a demand for good
seamstresses."

"I don't know anything about private sewing. You have to cut and plan,
and I never learned that. I like to work on things that are cut by a
cutter and just so, and I can make up my dozen after dozen with not an
eighth of an inch difference in my measurements. I'm an expert, you
know."

"But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly you could earn a
dollar and a quarter a day and board and have your evening quite free."

The girl shook her head. "I've had that said to me before, but you know
it's more independent as I am. Maybe things will be better by and by."

There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deep-seated prejudice, and
this exists to a bewildering degree among these workers, who, for some
inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that private employ
of any nature whatever is inevitably a despotism filled with unknown
horrors. There appears to be also a certain _esprit du corps_ that holds
sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of herself as one of such and
such a firm's hands, and to regard this distinction as compensation for
over-hours and under-pay and all known wretchedness encompassing her
trade. The speaker I have quoted was an American girl of twenty-six, had
had three years in public schools, and regarded the city as the only
place in which life could be considered endurable.

"I shouldn't know what to do in the country if I were there," she said.
"I don't seem to like it somehow. It isn't the company, for mother and
me keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know how to get along
in the city, and the country scares me. I like my work if only I could
get more pay for it."

"Do you ever think that if all who work in your line joined together and
made common cause you might even things a little; that it might be
easier for all of you?"

"We wouldn't dare," she answered, aghast. "Why, do you know, there'd be
ten for each one of us that was turned off. Women come there by the
hundred. That's what they say to me in our firm: 'What's the use of
fussing when here are dozens waiting to take your place?' There isn't
any use. They say now that it is the dull season, and they've put our
room on