rk at any price. Women, with half a dozen hungry mouths around
them, don't stand long to higgle about a few cents in a garment,
when there are so many willing to step in and take their places.
Besides, what are three or four cents to them on a vest, or pair of
pants, or jacket? The difference in a week is small and will not be
missed--or, at the worst, will only require them to economize with a
little steadier hand; while upon the thousands of garments we
dispose of here, and send away to other markets, it will make a most
important aggregate on the right side of profit and loss."

"There is no doubt of that," replied the partner, the idea of the
aggregate of three or four cents on each garment occupying his mind,
and obscuring completely, for a time, every other idea. "Well, I'm
with you," he said, after a little while, "in any scheme for
increasing profits. Getting along at the rate of only some two or
three thousand a year is rather slow work. Why, there's Tights,
Screw, & Co., see how they're cutting into the trade, and carrying
every thing before them. Tights told me that they cleared twenty
thousand dollars last year."

"No doubt of it. And I'll make our house do the same before three
years roll over, or I'm no prophet."

"If we are going to play this cutting-down game, we had better begin
at once."

"Oh, certainly. The sooner the better. But first, we must arrange a
reduced scale of prices, and then bring our whole tribe of workwomen
and others down to it at once. It will not do to hold any parley
with them. If we do, our ears will be dinned to death with
trumped-up tales of poverty and distress, and all that sort of
thing, with which we have no kind of concern in the world. These are
matters personal to these individuals themselves, and have nothing
to do with our business. No matter what prices we paid, we would
have nothing but grumbling and complaint, if we allowed an open door
on that subject."

"Yes, there is no doubt of that. But, to tell the truth, it is a
mystery to me how some of these women get along. Very few make over
two dollars a week, and some never go beyond a dollar. Many of them
are mothers, and most of them have some one or more dependent upon
them. Food, rent, clothes, and fuel, all have to come out of these
small earnings By what hocus-pocus it is done, I must confess,
puzzles me to determine."

"Oh, as to that," returned Grasp, "it is, no doubt, managed well
enough. Provisions, and