Making Both Ends Meet - The income and outlay of New York working girls by Edith Wyatt;Sue Ainslie Clark
page 91 of 237 (38%)
page 91 of 237 (38%)
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managed to send $90 home, for the others.
Her sister Bertha, next younger than herself, had then come to New York, and obtained work at sewing for a little less than $6 a week. Between them, in the following six months, the two girls managed to buy a passage ticket from Russia to New York for $42, and to send home $30. This, with the passage ticket and two other tickets, which they purchased on the instalment plan from a dealer, at a profit to him of $20, brought all the rest of the family into New York harbor--the girls' mother, their three younger sisters of fifteen, fourteen, and eight, and a little brother of seven. Five months afterward Molly and Bertha were still making payments for these extortionate tickets. In New York, the sister of fifteen found employment in running ribbons into corset covers, earning from $1 to $1.50 a week. The fourteen-year-old girl was learning operating on waists. The family of seven lived in two rooms, paying for them $13.50 a month; their food cost $9 or $10 a week; shoes came to at least $1 a week; the girls made most of their own clothing, and for this purpose they were paying $1 a month for a sewing-machine; and they gave $1 a month for the little brother's Hebrew schooling. Molly was seen in the course of a coat makers' strike. She wept because the family's rent was due and she had no means of paying it. She said she suffered from headache and from backache. Every month she lost a day's work through illness. She was only nineteen years old. By working every hour she could make a |
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