gh they behaved themselves and attracted
customers, the customers lost sight of matters of merchandise
in the all-absorbing matter of sex. In offices a good-looking
girl upset discipline, caused the place to degenerate into a
deer-haunt in the mating season. No place did she find
offering more than four dollars a week, except where the dress
requirements made the nominally higher wages even less.
Everywhere women's wages were based upon the assumption that
women either lived at home or made the principal part of their
incomes by prostitution, disguised or frank. In fact, all
wages even the wages of men except in a few trades--were too
small for an independent support. There had to be a family--and
the whole family had to work--and even then the joint income
was not enough for decency. She had no family or friends to
help her--at least, no friends except those as poor as herself,
and she could not commit the crime of adding to their miseries.

She had less than ten dollars left. She must get to work at
once--and what she earned must supply her with all. A note
came from Jeffries--a curt request that she call--curt to
disguise the eagerness to have her back. She tore it up. She
did not even debate the matter. It was one of her significant
qualities that she never had the inclination, apparently lacked
the power, to turn back once she had turned away. Mary Hinkle
came, urged her. Susan listened in silence, merely shook her
head for answer, changed the subject.

In the entrance to the lofts of a tall Broadway building she
saw a placard: "Experienced hands at fancy ready-to-wear hat
trimming wanted." She climbed three steep flights and was in
a large, low-ceilinged room where perhaps seventy-five girls
were at work. She paused in the doorway long enough to observe
the kind of work--a purely mechanical process of stitching a
few trimmings in exactly the same way upon a cheap hat frame.
Then she went to an open window in a glass partition and asked
employment of a young Jew with an incredibly long nose
thrusting from the midst of a pimply face which seemed merely
its too small base.

"Experienced?" asked the young man.

"I can do what those girls are doing."

With intelligent eyes he glanced at her face, then let his
glance rove contemptuously over the room full of workers. "I
should hope so," said he. "Forty cents a dozen. Want to try it?"

"When may I go to work?"

"Right away. Write your name