n'
over an' over that that thing happens. There's plenty that go to the bad
of their own free will, but I know plenty more with the same chance that
doesn't, an' there's many a mother that's been in service herself that
says, 'Whatever the mistress may know about it she can't tell, but the
devil's let loose when the master or a son maybe is around, an' they'll
not have their girls standing what they had to stand and then turned off
without a character because they were found with the master talkin' to
'em.' It's women that keeps women down an' is hard on 'em. I'll take my
chances with any Jew you'll bring along before I'll put myself in the
power of women that calls themselves ladies an' hasn't as much heart as
a broomstick; an' I'll warn every girl to keep to herself an' learn a
trade, an' not run the risk she'll run if she goes out to service,
letting alone the way you're looked down on."

There was no time for discussion. The machines must go on; but, as
usual, much more than the fact of which I was in search had come to me,
and, strangely enough, in this house and in others of its kind inspected
one after another, much the same story was told. In the "improved
tenements" close at hand, where comparative comfort reigned, more than
one woman gave willingly the detail of the weekly expenditure for food,
and added, as if the underlying question had made itself felt, "It's
betther to be a little short even an' your own misthress," with other
words that have their place elsewhere. On the upper floor of one of
these houses a pantaloon-maker sat in a fireless room, finishing the
last of a dozen which when taken back would give her money for coal and
food. She had been ill for three days, and on the bed,--an old mattress
on a dry-goods box in the corner. "Even that's more than I had for a
good while," she said. "I'd pawned everything before my husband died,
except the machine. I couldn't make but twenty-two cents a pair on the
pants, an' as long as he could hold up he did the pressing. With him to
help a little I made three a day. That seems little, but there was so
many pieces to each pair,--side and watch and pistol pockets, buckle
strap, waistband, and bottom facings and lap; six buttonholes and nine
buttons. We lived--I don't just know how we lived. He was going in
consumption an' very set about it. 'I'll have no medicine an' no doctor
to make me hang an' drag along,' he says. 'I've got to go, an' I know it,
an' I'll do