er store on
Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second
store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning and from a
quarter to one till a quarter past six in the afternoon on all days
except Saturday, when the closing hour was half past nine.

After she had $4 a week instead of $2.62-1/2, Alice abandoned her daily
trip to West Hoboken and came to live in New York.

Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a charitably supported
home for girls. She ate no breakfast. Her luncheon consisted of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own
laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to have it done. Her regular weekly
expenditure was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; board, $1.40; washing, 21
cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97; total, $4.

Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond her strength. She was
pale, ill, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future
health. Her experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promotion in
some of the department stores.

III

It is significant in this point to compare the annals of this growing
girl with those of a saleswoman of thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been
at work for twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting mill she
had remained for five years, and had been promoted rapidly to a weekly
wage of $12. The hours, however, were very long, from ten to thirteen
hours a day. The lint in the air she breathed so filled her lungs that
she was unable, in her short daily leisure, to counteract its effect. At
the end of five years, as she was coughing and raising particles of lint,
she was obliged to rest for a year.

Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, she obtained a
position in the shoe department in one of the large stores, where she was
not "speeded up," and her daily working time of nine hours was less
severe than that of the knitting mill. In summer she had a Saturday
half-holiday. There was a system of fines for lateness; but on the rare
occasions of her own tardiness it had not been enforced. The company was
also generous in grafting five-o'clock passes, which permitted a girl to
leave at five in the afternoon, with no deduction from her wage for the
free hour. She had been with this establishment for six years, earning $6
a week; and she had given up hope of advancing.

Miss Carr