s. He may be, and often is, to those
nearest him, kind, unselfish, eager for right. But the hands are
"hands," and that is all; and the middle-man, of whom the very same
statement may be true, deals with the hands with an equal obliviousness
as to their connection with bodies and souls.

The original price per dozen of the garments made may be the highest in
the market, but before the woman who works is reached there are often
five, and sometimes more, transfers. Where workers are employed on the
premises, they fare better, being paid by the piece. The minutest
divisions of labor prevail, even more than with us--a shirt passing
through many hands, the weekly wage differing for each. The "fitter,"
for instance, must be a skilled workwoman, the flatness and proper set
of the shirt front depending upon correct fitting at the neck. For this
fitting in West End houses, the fitter receives a penny a shirt, and can
in a week fit twenty dozen--this meaning a pound a week. But slack
seasons reduce the amount, so that often she earns but nine or ten
shillings, her average for the year being about fourteen. For the grades
below her the sum is proportionately less. The most thoroughly skilled
hand in either shirt-making or under-linen has been known to make as
high as twenty-eight shillings a week ($7.00), but this is phenomenal;
nor, indeed, does any such possibility remain, prices having gone down
steadily for some years. A pound a week for a woman, as has been stated
elsewhere, is regarded even by just employers as all that can be
required by the most exacting; and with this standard in mind, a fall of
three or four shillings seems a matter of slight importance.

Taking the various industries in which women are employed, the needle,
as usual, leading, and the shirt-makers being a large per cent of the
number, there are in London nearly a million women, self-supporting and
self-respecting, and often the sole dependence of a family. This
excludes the numbers of thriftless and otherwise helpless poor whose
work is variable, and who, at the best, can earn only the lowest
possible wages as unskilled laborers. For the skilled ones, doing their
best in long days of work, never less than twelve hours, the average
earnings, after all chances of slack seasons and accidents have been
taken into account, is never over ten shillings a week. It is worth
while to consider what ten shillings can do.

The allowance per head for rations for the