s to attempt to attain the history of the ant. Among the
factory workers, the waist makers' admirable efforts for juster wages
were, as far as yearly income was concerned, largely ineffectual, on
account of this obstacle of slack and dull seasons, whose occurrence
employers are as powerless as employees to forestall.

These chronicles, showing the effect of seasonal work on the fortunes of
some self-supporting operatives and hand workers in New York factories
and workshops, concern only one corner of American industry, in which, as
every observer must realize, there are many other enormous fields of
seasonal work. These histories are nevertheless clear and authentic
instances of a strange and widespread social waste. Neither trade
organization nor State legislation for shorter hours is primarily
directed toward a more general regular and foresighted distribution of
work among all seasonal trades and all seasonal workers. Until some
focussed, specific attempt is made to secure such a distribution, it
seems impossible but that extreme seasonal want, from seasonal idleness,
will be combined with exhausting seasonal work from overtime or
exhausting seasonal work in speeding, in a manner apparently arranged by
fortune to devastate human energy in the least intelligent manner
possible.

Further effects of speeding and of monotony in this labor were described
by other self-supporting factory workers whose chronicles, being also
concerned with industry in mechanical establishments, will be placed
next.

[Illustration: Photograph by Lewis Hine

"Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound;--
But where is what I started for so long ago,
And why is it still unfound?"

--WALT WHITMAN.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: See Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in
the United States. Volume II, Men's Ready-made Clothing, pages 141-157;
160-165; 384-395.]

[Footnote 20: The income and outlay of other cloak makers will be
separately presented.]

[Footnote 21: In the first report of the New York Probation Association
the statement is made that out of 300 girls committed by the courts
during the year to the charge of Waverley House, 72 had been engaged in
factory work. Of these many had been at one time or other employed as
operatives. On questioning the probation worker, Miss Stella Miner, who
had lived with them and knew their stories most fully, it was learned,
however, that almost every