ten months, and was at first a finisher in a cloak factory. Afterward,
obtaining work as operator in a waist factory, she could get $4 in
fifty-six hours on a time basis. She had been in this factory six weeks.

Rea was paying $4 a month for lodging in two rooms of a tenement-house
with a man and his wife and baby and little boy. She saved carfare by a
walk of three-quarters of an hour, adding daily one and a half hours to
the nine and a half already spent in operating. Her food cost $2.25 a
week so that, with 93 cents a week for lodging, her regular weekly cost
of living was $3.18, leaving her 82 cents for every other expense. In
spite of this, and although she had been forced to spend $3 for
examination of her eyes and for eyeglasses, Rea contrived to send an
occasional $2 back to her family in Europe.

Ida Bergeson, a little girl of fifteen, was visited at half past eight
o'clock one evening, in a tenement on the lower East Side. The gas was
burning brightly in the room; several people were talking; and this
frail-looking little Ida lay on a couch in their midst, sleeping, in all
the noise and light, in complete exhaustion. Her sister said that every
night the child returned from the factory utterly worn out, she was
obliged to work so 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.