ght before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 cents. Is
it surprising that they should adopt the New York shop-window-display
ideal of life manifested everywhere around them?

The saleswomen themselves are the worst victims of their unstandardized
employment; and the fact that they spend long years of youth in work
involving a serious outlay of their strength, without training them in
concentration or individual responsibility or resourcefulness, but
apparently dissipating these powers, seems one of the gravest aspects of
their occupation.

A proud and very pretty pink-cheeked little English shop-girl, with clear
hazel eyes, laid special stress upon unevenness of promotion, in telling
of her fortunes in this country.

She was sitting, as she spoke, in the parlor of a Christian "home,"
which, like that of many others where shop-girls live, was light and
clean, but had that unmistakably excellent and chilling air so subtly
imparted by the altruistic act of furnishing for others--the air that
characterizes spare rooms, hotel parlors, and great numbers of
settlement receiving rooms.

"I had always wanted to come to America," she said in her quick English
enunciation. "And I saved something and borrowed ten pounds of my
brother, and came. Oh, it was hard the first part of the time I was here.
I remember, when I first came in at the door of this house, and
registered, one of the other shop-girls here was standing at the desk. I
had on a heavy winter coat, just a plain, rough-looking coat, but it's
warm. That girl gave me such a look, a sort of sneering look--oh, it made
me hot! But that's the way American shop-girls are. I never have spoken
to that girl.

"I got down to 50 cents before I had a job. There was one store I didn't
want to go to. It was cheap, and had a mean name. One afternoon, when it
was cold and dark, I walked up to it at last; and it looked so horrid I
couldn't go in. There was another cheap store just beyond it, and
another. All the shoppers were hurrying along. Oh, it was a terrible time
that afternoon, terrible, standing there, looking at those big, cheap New
York stores all around me.

"But at last I went in, and they took me on. It wasn't so bad, after all.
In about two months I had a chance to go to a better store. I like it
pretty well. But I can't save anything. I had $8 a week. Now I have $9.
I pay $4.50 a week here for board and lodging, but I always live up to my
salary, spending