d soon afterward,
leaving the orphan dependent. Then came the disappointments, one after
another, and finally, the almost inevitable result in such cases, the
fall into the slums and the sweat-shops. By hard work six days in the
week, fourteen or more hours a day, this girl of tender age could make
$4 a week! She had to get up at half past five every morning and make
herself a cup of coffee, which with a bit of bread and sometimes fruit
made her breakfast. Listen to her story:

[Sidenote: Her Own Story]

"The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more
money you get. Sometimes in my haste the finger gets caught and the
needle goes right through it. We all have accidents like that. Sometimes
a finger has to come off.... For the last two winters I have been going
to night school. I have learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can
read quite well in English now, and I look at the newspapers every day.
I am going back to night school again this winter. Some of the women in
my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a
chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an
education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People
say now that I am clever and fine in conversation. There is a little
expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give
money to help."[74]

[Sidenote: Possibilities]

Surely this is good material. A changed and Christian environment would
make shining lights out of these poor immigrants, who are kept in the
subways of American life, instead of being given a fair chance out in
the open air and sunlight of decently paid service.

[Sidenote: A Foreign System]

Practically all of the work in tenements is carried on by foreign-born
men and women, and more than that, by the latest arrivals and the lowest
conditioned of the foreign-born. Tenement-house legislation has been
practically forced upon New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, whose
ports of entry receive the first impact of immigration, by two of the
races that have been crowding into the cities--the Italian and Hebrew.
The Italian woman, working in her close tenement, has by her cheap labor
almost driven out all other nationalities from that class of work still
done in the home, the hand sewing on coats and trousers. Of the 20,000
licenses granted by the New York factory inspector for "home finishing"
in New York City, ninety-five per c