306 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
employees. Her philosophy of life was that women are too idle and too prone to sentiment. The first evil trait she seeks to eradicate from all who become a part of her industrial machine; while she harangues on the second whenever her mouth is free from pins and buttons. "Beware of men!" is the slogan that makes the needles glitter through the muslin and lace. She even gives free lectures after hours on this important subject, and yet she is unwilling to pay her women wages that would render them financially independent of men. I was not with her long enough to learn her justification of such inconsistency.
Hasty marriage is usually the working-girl's last protest against a wage-earning system that pushes her to the wall. It is not a hope of bettering her condition so much as a desire to escape immediate wretchedness that leads her to plunge into what often proves the infernal fire of matrimony. Thus the sup- posedly ideal state frequently turns into purgatory, from which the divorce court or death offers the only means of escape. Some such thoughts as these were evidently surging through the mind of my employer, who mingled muslin with matrimonial misery in her lamentations and warnings. She was a unique type of sweater.
Such garments as we made there sell at five dollars apiece, and my inexperienced hands finished one that day. I could buy the materials at retail for seventy-five cents in any good store, so there was a profit of nearly four dollars on one after paying for my work, and this on the false assumption that the goods were bought at retail. The fashionable modiste took orders from her stylish customers for hand-made underwear "almost at cost," for the sake of accommodating them, and then sent the work out to a sweater who lived in an unhealthful quarter of the city. It may be as well that we are not omniscient ! Still there was not the serious question of filth in that establishment that frequently faces one in a tenement-house workshop. But the equally serious one of long hours with insufficient wages was there demanding an answer from the conscientious buyer. And this, after all, is the vital issue.
Unwholesome physical conditions may cause loss of life, but
