ra, who had
worked so valiantly, was quietly expecting just as valiantly her turn in
the long waiting list of applicants for the Montefiore Home for
consumptives. She knew that the chance of her return to Molly was very
slight.

Her expenditure for food, shelter, and clothing for the year had been as
follows: room and board (exclusive of nine weeks' illness), $161.25;
clothing, $41.85; total, $203.10. As her income for the year had been
$297.50, this left a balance of $94.40 for all other expenses. Items for
clothing had been: suit, $12; jacket, $4.50; a hat, $2.50; shoes (two
pairs), $4.25; stockings (two pairs a week at 15 cents), $15.60;
underwear, $3; total, $41.85.

One point should be accentuated in this budget--the striking cost of
stockings, due to the daily walk to and from work and the ill little
worker's lack of strength and time for darning. The outlay for footwear
in all the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the fact that
much of their work is done sitting.

Here are the budgets of some of the shirt-waist makers who were earning
Natalya's wage of $6 a week, or less than this wage.

Rea Lupatkin, a shirt-waist maker of nineteen, had been in New York only
ten months, and was at first a finisher in a cloak factory. Afterward,
obtaining work as operator in a waist factory, she could get $4 in
fifty-six hours on a time basis. She had been in this factory six weeks.

Rea was paying $4 a month for lodging in two rooms of a tenement-house
with a man and his wife and baby and little boy. She saved carfare by a
walk of three-quarters of an hour, adding daily one and a half hours to
the nine and a half already spent in operating. Her food cost $2.25 a
week so that, with 93 cents a week for lodging, her regular weekly cost
of living was $3.18, leaving her 82 cents for every other expense. In
spite of this, and although she had been forced to spend $3 for
examination of her eyes and for eyeglasses, Rea contrived to send an
occasional $2 back to her family in Europe.

Ida Bergeson, a little girl of fifteen, was visited at half past eight
o'clock one evening, in a tenement on the lower East Side. The gas was
burning brightly in the room; several people were talking; and this
frail-looking little Ida lay on a couch in their midst, sleeping, in all
the noise and light, in complete exhaustion. Her sister said that every
night the child returned from the factory utterly worn out, she was
obliged to work so