he busiest season, and they
work hard, not only during the day, but at night, or, may be, they
have some one at their homes to whom a portion of the work is sent
from the shop, and in that way they are assisted to receive such large
pay. Nevertheless, if a woman thoroughly understands the trade, she
can always be sure of making good wages. Some exceptionally proficient
women will average $30 a week the year round. Take a hundred expert
workers, and each of them will average $15 to $20 a week during the
twelve months. The little girls never earn very much, because the work
they can do is limited to "stringing" the feathers, which is the
technical term for tying the feathers on a line.

When a girl enters the establishment, she generally works the first
two weeks for nothing, then the superintendent is able to see what she
can do, and she makes $2, $3, or $4 a week, as the case may be; in six
or eight months she ought to be quite expert at the business. To be
successful she must have good taste. She should be able to "lay" the
feather out nicely, so that it will have a graceful appearance when
it is finished. And then she must have good judgment in putting the
feathers together, for it may not be known, but it is the fact, that
the plume which appears on the hat to be a single feather is made
up of a number of small pieces; this good judgment, then, consists,
as one manufacturer frankly stated, in not being wasteful in
selecting,--in short, in being careful not to pick out too many good
pieces. Though there are a great number of girls in this business,
there are very few who possess all these qualifications. That class of
help is of course a great saving to the employer, and consequently is
always sure of employment. One man said that on account of high rent
alone he wanted to hire all such women. "We have to economize our
room," he remarked, "and one such woman would be worth to us half a
dozen poor workers, who would take up just six times as much space and
waste a lot of material in the bargain. Such expert workers will make
three or four times as much as other women, doing the same kind of
work."

The trade is a healthy one, or, to speak more accurately, there are no
special features about it to make it unhealthy. Probably the worst
feature about it is the crowding together of so many girls and women
in one large room. They sit on benches, or stools, without backs,
working at a long, low table that runs the length o