bliged to keep, and in
the first year she was obliged to pay out of her wage, which had then
been only $5 a week, for all the many hundred yards of thread she
stitched into the white-goods company's output.

In order to complete 784 yards of belting a day--over 1600 yards of
stitching, for she fastened both edges of the belt--she was forced, of
course, to work as fast as she could feed and guide belts under the
needle. She had strong eyes. But her back ached from the stooping to
guide the material, and she suffered cruelly from pain in her shoulders.

There had been seventeen weeks of this work. Then there had been ten
weeks of two or three days' work a week, when it seemed impossible to
earn enough to live on. Then, ten weeks when the factory closed. Then she
had an illness lasting over two months, which began a few weeks after the
factory closed.

She said the doctor had told her that her illness was consumption and
that he had cured it. It must have been, of course, not consumption or
not arrested in that space of time. But, during it, she had paid him
$28.50 and given $22.50 for her board and lodging, with an uncle in the
Bronx, and for milk and eggs.

Almost as soon as she was declared able to return to stitching seven
hundred belts a day, she hurried back to work. But within a few days the
girls struck against the company's practice of making them buy thread,
and were out for five weeks. At the end of this time they won their
point.

Altogether her income for the year had been about $150; and the severity
and amount of labor she had given in earning it had left her cruelly
spent.

She could not possibly live on this amount, as board and lodging alone
had cost her $3 a week--$126 for the year. She had been obliged to borrow
$50 for her treatment in her illness; and she had not yet paid back this
sum. Besides, her landlady had trusted her for some board bills she had
not yet paid. For clothing she had spent $26.59,--one dress for $7; one
hat for $2; one jacket for $6; two pairs of shoes at $2; a pair for $4;
36 pairs of stockings at 10 cents a pair for $3.60; three waists at 98
cents each for $2.94; and three suits of winter underwear for $1.05. But
she said winter underwear of this quality failed to keep her really warm.

In the evening she was too tired to leave the tenement for night school
or for anything else. She did her own washing. In the course of a year
her only pleasure had been a trip to the thea