f those who persist in believing that they are in some degree
their brothers' keepers,--a doctrine questioned ever since the story of
time began. Obstacles of every nature are placed in the way of legalized
inspection, and evasion and subterfuge, masterly enough to furnish a
congress of diplomatists with ideas, are in daily practice. Years of
experience make the inspector no less astute, and so the war goes on.

It will be seen then, what difficulties hedge about the private
inquirer, who must go armed with every obtainable guarantee, and even
then leave the field quite conscious that the informants are chuckling
over a series of misleading statements, and that not much will be made
of that case. So little organization exists among the workers
themselves, and there is such deadly fear of losing a place that women
and girls listen silently to statements, which they denounce afterwards
as absolutely false. Natural as this is,--and it is one of the
inevitable results of the system,--it is one of the worst obstacles in
the way, not only of inquiry but any statements of results.

"Of course he lied or she lied," they say, "but don't for anything in
the world let them know that we said so or that you know anything about
it."

This injunction, which for the individual worker's sake must be
scrupulously attended to, hampers not only inquiry but reform, and
delays still further the attempts at organization made here and there.
The system applied to dressmaking, our present topic, differs from
anything known in America save in one of its phases, and merits some
description, representing as it does some lingering remnant of the old
apprentice system.

For the West End there is generally but one method. And here it may be
said that the West End ignores absolutely any knowledge of what the East
End methods may be. Between them there is a great gulf fixed, and the
poorest apprentice of a West End house regards herself as infinitely
superior to the mistress of an East End business. For this charmed
region of the West, whether large or small, has spent years in building
up a reputation, and this is a portion of the guarantee that goes with
the worker, who has learned her trade under their auspices. It is a slow
process,--so slow, that the system is not likely to be adopted by hasty
Americans. In a first-class house in the West End, Oxford and Regent
Streets having almost a monopoly of this title, the premium demanded for
an apprent