e store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at
home till twelve at night.

It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous helpless shifts of the
younger salesgirls, that, living, as most of them do, in a
semidependence, on either relatives or charitable homes, it is almost
impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of money
for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most practical
spender encountered among the saleswomen was a widow, Mrs. Green, whose
accounts will be given below, who was for years the manager of her own
household and resources, and not a wage-earner until fairly late in life.

This helplessness of a semidependent and uneducated girl may be further
illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, who
had been working in the department stores for three years and a half.

She was at first employed as a check girl in a Fourteenth Street store,
at a wage of $2.62-1/2 a week; that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a
month. Her working day was nine and a half hours long through most of the
year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened to from
twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment in any
form. She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but her wages still
remained $2.62-1/2 a week. She lived with her grandmother of eighty,
working occasionally as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave all her
earnings for three years.

It was then considered better that she should go to live with an aunt, to
whom she paid the nominal board of $1.15 a week. As her home was in West
Hoboken, she spent two and a half hours every day on the journey in the
cars and on the ferry. During the weeks of overtime Alice could not reach
home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be obliged to
rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and a half
of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By walking
from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, fares cost
her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week carfare (which was still not enough
to convey her the whole distance from her aunt's to the store) and the
$1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay the aunt for her
niece's food and lodging) consumed all her earnings except 20 cents a
week.

Alice was eager to become more genuinely self-dependent. She left the
establishment of her first employment and entered anoth