=Health Conditions.= The health conditions among the workers in the garment industries show an interesting relationship to the wages paid and the method of payment. The United States Public Health Service, reporting on conditions among the garment-workers in New York City, states that the strain was more prevalent where wages were paid on the piece basis than by the week or other time basis. With the increased use of machinery another series of health hazards appears, according to this report. These are the result of fatigue and overstrain caused by the close application to the same process through long hours. The monotony of the work contributes to the bad industrial conditions. At its best the wage of the garment-worker is pitiably small. Among the girls, especially, there is keen competition. They cut one another down, and they underbid and undersell each other. The average wage paid barely affords a living. One little Italian girl in a recent shirt-waist strike in New York said, “Me no live verra much on forta-nine cent a day.” This wage of forty-nine cents it must be said is not usual, and is largely the result of the ignorance of the girl, but there are others like her who are forced to go to work unprepared and therefore are unable to earn a better wage. In many communities there still lingers the employment of the women and children in home trades, making garments under sweat-shop conditions. The contractor who formerly depended for his living upon letting out his work to the sweat-shops has largely disappeared; but there are still many homes in which work is done and no serious attempt has been made as yet to reach the evils incident to it. Here the workers are driven by the pressure of poverty to labor under conditions and for wages that destroy life, and to work their children in the same manner. Here disease breeds and is passed on to the consumer.