en six. On the east side the same
work must be done for from four to six dollars a week, the latter sum
being considered high pay. But the work is an advance upon factory work
and has a better sound, the dressmaker's assistant looking down upon the
factory hand or even the seamstress as of an inferior order.

In time I learned the full story of the little woman, ordinarily
reticent and shrinking, but brought by trouble and indignation to the
fiercest protest against oppression. Born in a New-England village she
had learned a milliner's trade, to which she presently added
dressmaking, and succeeded in making a fair living, till bitten by the
desire to see larger life and share all the good that the city seems to
offer the shut-in country life, she came to New York with her small
savings, expecting to find work easily, and did so, going at once into a
store where a friend was at work. Sanitary conditions were all bad. Her
hall bedroom on a fourth floor and the close confinement all did their
work, and a long illness wasted strength and savings. When recovery came
her place had been filled; and she wandered from store to store seeking
employment, doing such odd jobs as were found at intervals, and
powerless to recover the lost ground.

"It was like heaven to me," she said, "when my friend came back to the
city and got me that place as skirt-hand at Madame M----'s. I was so far
gone I had even thought of the river, and said to myself it might be the
easiest way out. You can't help but like Madame, for she's
smooth-tongued and easy, and praises your work, and she made me think
I'd soon be advanced and get the place I ought to have. She paid
regularly at first, and I began to pick up courage. It was over-hours
always. Madame would come in smiling and say: 'Ah, dear girls! What
trouble! It is an order that must be finished so soon. Who will be kind
and stay so leetle longer?' Then we all stayed, and she'd have tea made
and send it in, and sandwiches or something good, and they all said,
'She's an angel. You won't find anybody like Madame.' She was so
plausible, too, that even when there was longer and longer time between
the payments the girls didn't blame her, but borrowed of one another and
put off their landladies and managed all ways to save her feelings.
Jenny G---- had been here longer than any of them, and she worshipped
Madame and wouldn't hear a word even when one or another complained. But
Jenny's feet were on the g