s to be done at home.
When inquiry was made of numerous self-supporting girls employed as cloak
finishers, most of them said that at the end of the working day they were
too exhausted to carry any sewing home. But work had been carried away
by various strong girls in the trade, and by old men, and by young men to
their families.

Among the women cloak finishers, Rose Halowitch, a delicate little
Russian girl of seventeen, a helper in a cloak factory, who gave her
account to the Consumers' League, about two years and a half ago received
a wage of from $3.50 to $6 a week. In busy weeks she would work from
eight in the morning till eight at night, with only one stop of an hour
for her insufficient noon lunch, for which she could afford to spend only
6 or 7 cents.

Among the home workers Rhetta Salmonsen, a Russian woman of forty, the
mother of four children, used to finish at night the cloaks brought to
her by her husband, who worked through the day as an operator in a cloak
factory. Between them they would earn $12 and $15 in busy weeks. In these
weeks there were some occasions when Mrs. Salmonsen would do the
housework till her husband came home late at night. After clearing away
his supper and putting the children to bed, she would start felling seams
at midnight; and in order to complete the cloaks he had brought before he
returned to the shop in the morning, she would sew until she saw the
white daylight coming in at the tenement window, and it was time for her
to prepare breakfast again. With all this industry, as her husband had
been ill and there had been three months of either slack work or
idleness, the family had fallen in debt. Rent, food, and shoes alone had
cost them $400. This left less than $100 a year for all the other
clothing and expenses of six people in New York. Against such a standard
of living as this, then, cloak finishers were obliged to compete as long
as they attempted to underbid the hours and prices of home work.

Among the stronger girls who had taken work home, Ermengard Freiburg, a
powerful young Galician woman of twenty-eight, who had been finishing
cloaks ever since she was eleven, had earned $1 in the first week and had
advanced rapidly to $3 a week. In the last years, however, she had not
carried any work home. She had sewed on piece-work from eight in the
morning to six at night with an hour for lunch and no night work or
overtime. She had earned from $20 to $25 a week in the busy we