square face, and a manner more mature and
responsible than that of many women of forty. Irena Kovalova had not been
out of work for one whole week in the year she described. She had never
done night work; but she had almost always worked half a day on
Sunday--except in slack weeks. She was not certain how many of these
there had been; but there had been enough slack time to reduce her income
for her family for the year to $450. They had paid $207 rent for four
rooms on the East Side, and had lived on the remaining $243, all of which
Irena had given to her mother.

Her mother helped her with her washing, and she had worn the clothes she
had the year before, with the exception of shoes. She had been forced to
buy four pairs of these at $2 a pair. They all realized that if Irena
could spend a little more for her shoes they would wear longer. "But for
shoes," she said, with a little laugh, "two dollars--it is the most I
ever could pay."

She was a girl of unusual health and strength, and though sometimes very
weary at night and troubled with eye strain from watching the needle, it
was a different drain of her vitality that she mentioned as alarming. She
was obliged to work at a time of the month when she normally needed rest,
and endured anguish at her machine at this season. She had thought, she
said gravely, that if she ever had any money ahead, she would try to use
it to have a little rest then.

Molly Zaplasky, a little Russian shirt-waist worker of fifteen, operated
a machine for fifty-six hours a week, did her own washing, and even went
to evening school. She had worked for five months, earning $9 a week for
five weeks of this time, and sometimes $6, sometimes $7, for the
remainder. She and her sister Dora, of seventeen, also a shirt-waist
maker, had a room with a cousin's family on the East Side.

Dora had worked a year and a half. She, too, earned $9 a week in full
weeks. But there had been only twenty-two such weeks in that period. For
seventeen weeks she had earned $6 a week. For four weeks she had been
idle because of slackness of work, and for nine weeks recently she had
been too ill to work, having developed tuberculosis. Dora, too, did her
own washing. She made her own waists, and went to evening school. She had
paid $2.75 a week for partial board and for lodging. The food, not
included in her board, cost about $1 a week. The little Molly had paid
for Dora's board and lodging in her nine weeks' illness. Do