had to drag herself to her work. The forewoman was
especially severe with Ona, because she believed that she
was obstinate on account of having been refused a holiday
the day after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her
"forelady" did not like to have her girls marry -- perhaps
because she was old and ugly and unmarried herself.

There were many such dangers, in which the odds were
all against them. Their children were not as well as they
had been at home; but how could they know that there was
no sewer to their house, and that the drainage of fifteen
years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know
that the pale blue milk that they bought around the corner
was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde besides?
When the children were not well at home, Teta Elzbieta
would gather herbs and cure them; now she was obliged
to go to the drug-store and buy extracts -- and how was
she to know that they were all adulterated? How could
they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour,
had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored
with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?
And even if they had known it, what good would it have
done them, since there was no place within miles of them
where any other sort was to be had? The bitter winter
was coming, and they had to save money to get more cloth~
ing and bedding; but it would not matter in the least how
much they saved, they could not get anything to keep
them warm. All the clothing that was to be had in the
stores was made of cotton and shoddy, which is made by
tearing old clothes to pieces and weaving the fiber again.
If they paid higher prices, they might get frills and fanci~
ness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not
obtain for love nor money. A young friend of Szedvilas's,
recently come from abroad, had become a clerk in a store
on Ashland Avenue, and he narrated with glee a trick
that had been played upon an unsuspecting countryman
by his boss. The customer had desired to purchase an
alarm-clock, and the boss had shown him two exactly simi~
lar, telling him that the price of one was a dollar and of
the other a dollar seventy-five. Upon being asked what

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p088 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p089w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p090

v?