flannel skirts; two tucks and a hem, and a muslin yoke that has
to be gone round four times with the stitching. One day I made ten, but
nine is all one can do without nearly killing themselves, and they pay
us one dollar a dozen for making them. It used to be a dollar and a
half, and that was fair enough. It's the kind of work I like. I
shouldn't be content to do any other; but it's bringing us all down to
starvation point, and I think something ought to be done."

In a case like this, and it is the type of many hundreds of skilled
workers, who regard their calling with a certain pride, and could by no
possibility be induced to seek other lines of work or other methods of
living, there seems little to be accomplished. They are, however, but a
small portion of the army who wait for some deliverance, and who, if
they had been born to a trifle more common sense, would turn in the one
sole direction from which relief is certain, this relief and the reasons
for and against it having no place at this stage of the investigation.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL.

From the fig-leaf down, it would seem as if a portion of the original
curse accompanying it had passed on to each variation or amplification
of first methods, its heaviest weight falling always on the weak
shoulders that, if endurance could make strong, should belong to-day to
a race of giants. Of the ninety and more trades now open to women,
thirty-eight involve some phase of this question of clothing, about
which centre some of the worst wrongs of modern civilization. It is work
that has legitimate place. It must be done by some one, since the
exigencies of this same civilization have abolished old methods and made
home manufactures seem a poor and most unsatisfactory substitute for the
dainty stitching and ornamentation of the cheaper shop-work. It is work
that many women love, and, if living wages could be had, would do
contentedly from year to year. Of their ignorance and blindness, and the
mysterious possession they call pride, and the many stupidities on which
their small lives are founded, there is much to be said, when these
papers have done their first and most essential work of showing
conditions as they are;--as they are, and not as the disciples of
_laissez faire_ would have us to believe they are.

"It is the business of these philanthropists to raise a hue and
cry; to exaggerate every evil and underrate every good. T