ho loses; and if it
is a question of but a third of a cent profit, be sure that that profit
is on his side, never on the side of the worker.

CHAPTER FOURTH.

THE BARGAIN COUNTER.

The problem of the last chapter is, if not plain, at least far plainer
than when it left the pen, and it has become possible to understand how
the garment sold at twelve and a half cents may still afford its margin
of profit. It has also been made plain that that profit is, as there
stated, "never on the side of the worker," but that it is wrung from her
by the sharpest and most pitiless of all the methods known to
unscrupulous men and the women who have chosen to emulate them. For it
has been my evil fortune in this quest to find women not only as filled
with greed and as tricky and uncertain in their methods as the worst
class of male employers, but even more ingenious in specific modes of
imposition. Without exception, so far as I can discover, they have been
workers themselves, released for a time it may be by marriage, but
taking up the trade again, either from choice or necessity. They have
learned every possibility of cheating. They know also far better than
men every possibility of nagging, and as they usually own a few machines
they employ women on their own premises and keep a watchful eye lest
the smallest advantage be gained. The majority prefer to act as
"sweaters," this releasing them from the uncertainties attending the
wholesale manufacturer, and as the work is given to them at prices at or
even below the "life limit," it is not surprising that those to whom
they in turn pass it on find their percentage to mean something much
nearer death than life.

"Only blind eyes could have failed to see all this before," some reader
is certain to say. "How is it possible that any one dealing directly
with the question could doubt for a moment the existence of this and a
thousand-fold worse fraud?"

Only possible from the same fact that makes these papers a necessity.
They hold only new phases of the old story. The grain has had not one
threshing alone, but many, and yet for the most patient and persistent
of searchers after truth is ever fresh surprise at its nature and
extent. Given one or a dozen exposures of a fraud, and we settle
instinctively into the conviction that its power has ended. It is barely
conceivable to the honest mind that cheating has wonderful staying
power, and that not one nor a thousand exposures will