money in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult
in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week;
the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare
opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the
housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.

The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be
smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the
minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers
for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for
less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last
being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five
dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance
of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it
easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,
in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with
four dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward
six dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen
at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar
housekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically,
for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees
in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she
works in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is
at home. The two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the
family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night
she can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother
wash and sew.

The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in
regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if