If you want variety, we will climb four flights of stairs, with half
the plastering knocked off the walls, and talk with an English woman.
She is working on fine cloth pants; she gets thirteen cents a pair; by
working till very late in the evening, she can complete four pairs a
day, and thinks it would be almost a paradise if she could make her
fifty-two cents every day; but it is one of the characteristics of a
sweater to systematically keep all his people hungry for work, and she
seldom is able to get more than twelve pairs a week. She lives alone in
a little sweat-box under the roof, for which she pays a dollar and a
quarter per week.

Not far away, up two flights, we find a Portuguese widow, with four
little girls, the eldest fifteen, the next thirteen, and the younger
ones three and six, respectively; they are all dwarfed by hardship and
insufficient food, so that the one who is fifteen is not larger than an
average girl of twelve. The mother is sick, and the girls are trying to
keep the wolf from the door by carrying on the sewing. They are all
hard at work; they carry the pants back and forth themselves, and so
for the most of their work receive twelve cents, though for some they
get only ten cents a pair. They have only two little rooms with the
most meagre furniture; the rent is one dollar and a half per week, and
the sick mother and four girls huddle together in the one bed at night.
They are pretty, bright-faced, intelligent girls, and with a fair
chance would grow into strong, noble women; but one shudders when he
takes into consideration the fearful odds against which they will have
to struggle in this poverty-stricken, crime-cursed alley.

[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND CHILDREN.]

[Illustration: LITTLE CHILDREN FINISHING PANTS.]