eir testimony
as to the shifting character of wages and of employments. One had
watched the course of neckties for seventeen years,--a keen-eyed little
widow who had fought hard to educate her two children and preserve some
portion of the respectability she loved.

"You'd never dream how many kinds there have been, or, for that matter,
how many kinds there are. We even make stocks for a few old-fashioned
gentlemen that will have them. It's a business that a lady turns to
first thing almost if she wants to earn, and we give out hundreds on
hundreds to such, besides sending loads into the country. I often think
our house turns out enough for the whole United States, but we're only
a beginning. We pay well,--well as any, and better. Twenty-five cents a
dozen is good pay now, and we see that our cutter leaves margin enough
to keep the women from being cheated. That's a great trick with some.
Sometimes the cutter is paid by the number he can get out of a piece of
goods; sometimes he screws just because he's made so. But they cut by
measure, and they allow so little to turn in that the thing frays in
your hand, and no mortal could help it, and if one is frayed the foreman
just throws out the dozen. Then lots of them advertise for girls to
learn, and say they must give the first week or fortnight free; and when
that is over they say work is slack or some other excuse, and take in a
lot more that have been waiting. We've taken many a girl that came
crying and told how she'd been kept on and cheated. There's one man on
Third Avenue that runs his place on this plan, and has got rich. But I
say to every girl: 'You'd better have something more than the last shape
in neckties between you and starvation. You'll never get beyond five or
six dollars a week at most, and generally not that.' It don't make any
difference. There are dozens waiting for the chance to starve genteelly.
It's a genteel trade and a pretty steady one, but if a dull time comes
the girls go into cigar-making and manage along somehow. I've coaxed a
good many into service, but it isn't one in a hundred will try that."

The third woman represented a hat-pressing factory in which she had been
eleven years, and in which the wages had fallen year by year, till at
present women, even when most expert, can earn not over six dollars per
week as against from eight to twelve in previous years. The trade is
regarded as a steady one, for spring and summer straws give place to