The story of one is practically the story of all. Popularly
supposed to be a method of trickery confined chiefly to Jews,
investigation shows that Americans must share the odium in almost as
great degree, and that the long list includes every nationality known to
trade.

We have dealt thus far with fraud as the first and chief procurer for
bargain counters. Another method results from a fact that thus far must
sum up as mainly Jewish. Till within very little more than a year, a
large dry-goods firm on the west side employed many women in its
underwear department. The work was piece-work, and done by the class of
women who own their own machines and work at home. Prices were never
high, but the work was steady and the pay prompt. The firm for a time
made a specialty of "Mother Hubbard" night-gowns, for which they paid
one dollar a dozen for "making," this word covering the making and
putting in of yoke and sleeves, the "seamer" having in some cases made
the bodies at thirty cents a dozen. Many of the women, however, made the
entire garment at $1.30 per dozen, ten being the utmost number
practicable in a day of fourteen hours. Suddenly the women were informed
that their services would not be required longer. An east-side firm
bearing a Jewish name had contracted to do the same work at eighty cents
a dozen, and all other underwear in the same proportions. Steam had
taken the place of foot-power, and the women must find employment with
firms who were willing to keep to slower methods. Necessarily these are
an always lessening minority. Competition in this race for wealth
crushes out every possibility of thought for the worker save as so much
producing power, and what hand and foot cannot do steam must. In several
cases in this special manufacture the factories have been transferred to
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where rent is a mere song, and where girls
flock in from the adjacent country, eager for the work that represents
something higher than either ordinary mill work or the household service
they despise.

"What can we do?" said one manufacturer lately, when asked how he
thought the thing would end. "If there were any power quicker than
steam, or any way of managing so that women could feed five or six
machines, that would have to come next, else every one of us would go to
the wall together, the pressure is so tremendous. Of course there's no
chance for the women, but then you must remember there's precious little
c