20, presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas
gift.

The management also allowed a week's vacation with pay in the summer-time
and presented a gift of $10.

After five years in this position she had a disagreement with the
floor-walker and was summarily dismissed.

She then spent over a month in futile searching for employment, and
finally obtained a position as a stock girl in a Sixth Avenue suit store
at $4 a week, a sum less than the wage for which she had begun work five
years before. Within a few weeks, dullness of trade had caused her
dismissal. She was again facing indefinite unemployment.

Her income for the year had been $281. She lived in a large, pleasant
home for girls, where she paid only $2.50 a week for board and a room
shared with her sister. Without the philanthropy of the home, she could
not have made both ends meet. It was fifteen minutes' walk from the
store, and by taking this walk twice a day she saved carfare and the
price of luncheon. She did her own washing, and as she could not spend
any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This
she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the
year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly
as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17;
2 pairs of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, $4.98;
underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, $194.50. This leaves a
balance of $86.50. This money had paid for necessaries not
itemized,--stockings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare,
vacation expenses, every little gift she had made, and all recreation.

She belonged to no benefit societies, and she had not been able to save
money in any way, even with the assistance given by the home. So much for
her financial income and outlay.

After giving practically all her time and force to her work, she had not
received a return sufficient to conserve her health in the future, or
even to support her in the present without the help of philanthropy. She
was ill, anaemic, nervous, and broken in health.

Before adding the next budget, two points in Lucy Cleaver's outlay
should, perhaps, be emphasized in the interest of common sense. The first
is the remarkable folly of purchasing 24 waists at 98 cents each. In an
estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the working girls' clubs
of St. George's last year,[3] the girls agreed that comfort an