Making Both Ends Meet: The income and outlay of New York working girls

hours every day. If, in dull moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the seats lawful

ast six in the evening till half past eleven at night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long periods that some of the girls forego eating at

's vacation with pay in the summer

he had a disagreement with the floo

in a Sixth Avenue suit store at $4 a week, a sum less than the wage for which she had begun work five years befo

e price of luncheon. She did her own washing, and as she could not spend any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10;

able to save money in any way, even with the assistance giv

urn sufficient to conserve her health in the future, or even to support her in the pres

waists at 98 cents each. In an estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the working girls' clubs of St. George's last year,[3] the girls agreed that comfort and a presentable

uying which proves paradoxically so expensive in the end is no doubt often caused by the simple fact that the purchaser has not, at the time the purchase is made, any more money to offer. Whatever your wisdom, you cannot buy a waist for $1.20 if you possess at the moment only 98 cents. The St. George's girls made thei

e severe than may perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the powerful wrists and muscular waists of accustomed washerwomen, and are in most instances no better fitted to perform laundry work than washerwomen would be to make sales and invoice stock. But custom requires exactly the same freshness in a saleswom

One department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her position was in the shirt-waist department, told u

it is almost impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of money for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most practical spender encountered among th

illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, w

through most of the year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened to from twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment in any form. She was promoted to the posit

h home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be obliged to rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and a half of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By walking from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, fares cos

on Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning an

2?, Alice abandoned her daily trip to W

ts. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee and rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to h

, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future health. Her experie