women, were doing a variety of things, complicated and
fussy, left to our lot because we had not physical force for the simpler
but greater effort. The boy at the corking-table had soon become an
expert; he was fourteen and he made from $1 to $1.20 a day. He worked
ten hours at one job, whereas Ella and I had a dozen little jobs almost
impossible to systematize: we hammered and cut and capped the corks and
washed and wiped the bottles, sealed them, counted them, distributed
them, kept the table washed up, the sink cleaned out, and once a day
scrubbed up our own precincts. When I asked the boy if he was tired he
laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more
with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by _nature_ a more
valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to
abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had
given us a handicap at the start.

For a few days there is no vacancy at the corking-tables. I am sent back
to the bottling department. The oppressive monotony is one day varied by
a summons to the men's dining-room. I go eagerly, glad of any change. In
the kitchen I find a girl with skin disease peeling potatoes, and a
coloured man making soup in a wash-boiler. The girl gives me a stool to
sit on, and a knife and a pan of potatoes. The dinner under preparation
is for the men of the factory. There are two hundred of them. They are
paid from $1.35 up to $3 a day. Their wages begin above the highest
limit given to women. The dinner costs each man ten cents. The $20 paid
in daily cover the expenses of the cook, two kitchen maids and the
dinner, which consists of meat, bread and butter, vegetables and coffee,
sometimes soup, sometimes dessert. If this can pay for two hundred
there is no reason why for five cents a hot meal of some kind could not
be given the women. They don't demand it, so they are left to make
themselves ill on pickles and preserves.

The coloured cook is full of song and verse. He quotes from the Bible
freely, and gives us snatches of popular melodies.

We have frequent calls from the elevator boy, who brings us ice and
various provisions. Both men, I notice, take their work easily. During
the morning a busy Irish woman comes hurrying into our precincts.

"Say," she yells in a shrill voice, "my cauliflowers ain't here, are
they? I ordered 'em early and they ain't came yet."

Without properly waiting for an answer she hu