d a range of employment, and there is none where so large
a number are found earning a wage far below the "life limit."

The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of
training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to
another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined.
That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one
thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is
the one most over-crowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of
payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon
figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing
in one of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of
intelligence; often the need of work for older women arises from the
death or evil habits of the natural head of the family, and fortunes
have sunk to so low an ebb that at times the only clothing left is on
the back of the worker in the last stages of demoralization. Employment
in a respectable place thus becomes impossible, and the sole method of
securing work is through the middlemen or sweaters, who ask no questions
and require no reference, but make as large a profit as can be wrung
from the helplessness and bitter need of those with whom they reckon.

The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support
is limited to the needle, whether in machine or handwork, are fourfold:
first, her own incompetency must very often head the list, and prevent
her from securing first-class work; second, middlemen or sweaters lower
the price to starvation point; third, contract work done in prisons or
reformatories brings about the same result; and fourth, she is underbid
from still another quarter,--that of the countrywoman living at home,
who takes the work at any price offered.

The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 contains a mass of
evidence so fearful in its character, and demonstrating conditions of
life so tragic for the worker, and so shameful on the part of the
employer, that general attention was for the time aroused. It is
impossible here to make more than this general statement referring all
readers to the report itself for full detail. Thousands herded together
in tenement houses and received a daily wage of from twenty-five to
sixty cents, the day's labor being often sixteen hours long. "The Bitter
Cry of Outcast London" found its parallel here, nor h