up to every dodge but a coat seam,
and she wants more money and couldn't be persuaded, no, not if Moses
himself came to try it, that she isn't worth the same as the men. That's
what I 'ear as I go, and I've been hup and down among 'em three years
and over. Their dodges is beyond belief, not the women's,--poor souls!
they're too ground down to 'ave mind enough left for dodges,--but the
sweaters; Parliament's after 'em. There's enough, but ther's no man
halive that I've seen that knows how to 'old a sweater to 'em. How's one
or two inspectors to get through every sweating place in Whitechapel
alone, let alone hall the East End? It's hup an' down an' hin and hout,
and where you find 'em fair and square in a reg'lar shop, or in rooms
plain to see, you'll find 'em in basements and backyards, and
washhouses, and underground,--anywheres like so many rats, though, I'm
blessed if I don't think the rats has the hadvantage. Now, the law says
no working over hours, and I go along in the evening, about knocking-off
time, and find everything all clear only a look in the sweater's heye
that I know well enough. It means most likely that 'e's got 'is women
locked up in a bedroom where the Parliament won't let me go, and that
when my back's turned 'e'll 'ave 'em out, and grin in his sleeve at me
and Parliament too. Or else 'e's agreed with 'em to come at six in the
morning instead of eight. It's a twelve-hour day 'e's a right to, from
eight to eight, but that way he make it fourteen and more, if I or some
other inspector don't appear along.

"Now, suppose I drop down unexpected,--an' that's the way,--before I've
made three calls, and likely nailed every one in the house for
violation, it's down the street like lightening that the hinspector's
after 'em. Then the women are 'ustled out anywhere, into the yard, or in
a dust bin. Lift up 'most anything and you'd find a woman under it. I've
caught 'em with their thimbles on, hot with sewing, and now they drop
'em into their pockets or anywhere. They'd lose a job if they peeped,
and so there's never much to be done for 'em. But why a woman can't
make a coat is what I study over. Did you ever think it out, ma'am? Is
it their 'ands or their heyes that isn't hup to it?"

This position of the little inspector's problem must wait, though in it
is involved that fatal want of training for either eye or hand which
makes the lowest place the only one that the average needlewoman can
fill. Their endura