Nevertheless, her long dull season was a harassing burden and
disappointment both for herself and her sister's struggling family.

Betty Lukin, a shirt-waist maker of twenty, had been making sleeves for
two years. For nine months of the year she earned from $6 to $10 a week;
for the remaining three months only $2 a week. Her average weekly wage
for the year would be about $6. Of this she spent $3 a week for suppers
and a place in a tenement to sleep, and about 50 cents a week for
breakfast and luncheon--a roll and a bit of fruit or candy from a push
cart. Her father was in New York, doing little to support himself, so
that many weeks she deprived herself to give him $3 or $4.

She spent 50 cents a week to go to the theatre and 10 cents for club
dues. She had, of course, very little left for dress. She looked ill
clad, and she was, naturally, improperly nourished and very delicate.

Two points in Betty's little account are suggestive: one is that she
could always help her father. In listening to the account of an organizer
of the Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a man who had known some 40,000 garment
workers, I exclaimed on the hardships of the trade for the number of
married men it contained, and was about to make a note of this item when
he eagerly stopped me. "Wait, wait, please," he cried generously. "When
you put it down, then put this down, too. It is just the same for the
girls. The most of them are married to a family. They, too, take care of
others."

To this truth, Betty's expense of $3 to $4 for her father from her
average wage of $6, and little Molly's item of nine weeks' board and
lodging for her sister, bear eloquent testimony. On the girls' part they