hard and so fast.

Ida received the same wage as Natalya--$6 a week. She worked fifty-six
hours a week--eight more than the law allows for minors. She paid $4 a
week for board and a room shared with the anxious older sister, who told
about her experience. Ida needed all the rest of her $2 for her clothing.
She did her own washing. As the inquirer came away, leaving the worn
little girl sleeping in her utter fatigue, she wondered with what
strength Ida could enter upon her possible marriage and
motherhood--whether, indeed, she would struggle through to maturity.

Katia Halperian, a shirt-waist worker of fifteen, had been in New York
only six months. During twenty-one weeks of this time she was employed in
a Wooster Street factory, earning for a week of nine-and-a-half-hour days
only $3.50. Katia, like Natalya, was a "trimmer."

After paying $3 a week board to an aunt, she had a surplus of 50 cents
for all clothing, recreation, doctor's bills, and incidentals.

To save carfare she walked to her work--about forty minutes' distance.
Her aunt lived on the fourth floor of a tenement. After working nine and
a half hours and walking an hour and twenty minutes daily, Katia climbed
four flights of stairs and then helped with the housework.

Sonia Lavretsky, a girl of twenty, had been self-supporting for four
years. She lived in a most wretched, ill-kept tenement, with a family who
made artificial flowers. She had been totally unable to find work for the
last five months, but this family, though very poor, had kept her with
them without payment through all this time.

She had been three months an operative, putting cuffs on waists. Working
on a time basis, she earned $3 the first week and $4 the second. She was
then put on piece-work, and in fifty-four hours and a half could earn
only $3. Laid off, she found employment at felling cloaks, earning from
$3 to $6 a week. But after twelve weeks, trade in this place also had
grown dull.

During her idle time she became "run down" and was ill three weeks.
Fortunately, a brother was able to pay her doctor's bills, until he also
was laid off during part of her idle time.

When Sonia had any money she gave her landlady, for part of a room in the
poor tenement with the flower-makers, $3.50 a month, and about $2.50 a
week for food. Before her dull season and slack work began, she had paid
20 cents a week dues to a self-education society and social club.

Her brother had given her al