e consideration of this last common condition is placed
last because its consequences seem the most far-reaching.

Looking back at these common features in the lives of these average
American working girls, one has a sudden sense that the phenomenon of the
New York department stores represents a painful failure in democracy.
What will the aspect of the New York department stores be in the future?
For New York doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of the
most picturesque and most frequented harbors of the Seven Seas. Doubtless
many women still will work in its markets. What will their chances in
life be?

First, it may be trusted that the State law will not forever refuse to
protect these women and their future, which is also the future of the
community, from the danger of unlimited hours of labor. Then, the fact
that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the saleswomen has been
standardized and their wages raised, the fact that in a store in Boston
the employees have become responsible factors in the business, and the
fact that a school of salesmanship has been opened in New York seem to
indicate the possibility of a day when salesmanship will become
standardized and professional, as nursing has within the last century.
Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not forever acquiesce in
pursuing their trade in utterly machinal activity, without any common
expression of their common position.

Very arresting is the fact that, year after year, the Union women go to
Albany to struggle for better chances in life for the shop-women who
cannot at present wisely make this struggle for themselves. The fact
that the Union women fail is of less moment than that they continue to
go.

But what have the organized women workers, the factory girls who so
steadfastly make this stand for justice for the shop-girls, attained for
themselves in their fortunes by their Union? It was for an answer to this
question that we turned to the New York shirt-waist makers, whose income
and outlay will be next considered in this little chronicle of women's
wages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the last six months further accounts from working women
in the trades mentioned in New York have been received by Miss Edith
Wyatt, Vice-President of the Consumers' League of Illinois. Aside from
the facts ascertained through the schedules filled by the workers, and
through Mrs. Clark's and Miss Wyatt's visits to them, information