to even half exist, they must live up to the last
penny of it, so that a week s wages, $5.00, is all that
stands between this family and pauperism or star
vation. The thing happens, the father is struck
down, and what then ? A mother with three
children can do little or nothing. Either she must
hand her children over to society as juvenile paupers,
in order to be free to do something adequate for
herself, or she must go to the sweat-shops for work
which she can perform in the vile den possible to
her reduced income. But with the sweat-shops,
married women who eke out their husband s earr
ings, and single women who have but themselves
miserably to support, determine the scale of wages.
And this scale of wages, so determined, is so low
that the mother and her three children can live
only in positive beastliness and semi-starvation, till
decay and death end their suffering.

To show that this mother, with her three children
to support, cannot compete in the sweating indus
tries, I instance from the current newspapers the
two following cases. A father indignantly writes
that his daughter and a girl companion receive 17
cents per gross for making boxes. They made
each day four gross. Their expenses were 16 cents
for carfare, 4 cents for stamps, 5 cents for glue, and
2 cents for string, so that all they earned between
them was 42 cents, or a daily wage each of 2 1 cents.

[[254]]

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