Yet even the sweat-shops, in which woman carries on her old business of making clothing, had to be redeemed, so far as they have been redeemed, by the votes of men who passed an anti-sweat-shop law; by the city fathers, who, after much pleading, were induced to order an inspection of sweat-shops that they might be made to comply with sanitary regulations. Women directly controlled the surroundings of their work as long as their arrangements were domestic, but they cannot do this now unless they have the franchise, as yet the only mechanism devised by which a city selects its representative and by which a number of persons are able to embody their collective will in legislation. For a hundred years England has been legislating upon the subject of insanitary workshops, long and exhausting hours of work, night work for women, occupations in which pregnant women may be employed, and hundreds of other restrictions which we are only beginning to consider objects of legislation here. So far as women have been able, in Chicago at least, to help the poorest workers in the sweat-shops, it has been accomplished by women organized into trades unions. The organization of Special Order Tailors found that it was comparatively simple for an employer to give the skilled operatives in a clothing factory more money by taking it away from the wages of the seam-sewer and button-holer. The fact that it resulted in one set of workers being helped at the expense of another set did not appeal to him, so long as he was satisfying the demand of the union without increasing the total cost of production. But the Special Order Tailors, at the sacrifice of their own wages and growth, made a determined effort to include even the sweat-shop workers in the benefits they had slowly secured for themselves. By means of the use of the label they were finally able to insist that no goods should be given out for home-finishing save to women presenting union cards, and they raised the wages from nine and eleven cents a dozen for finishing garments, to the minimum wage of fifteen cents. They also made a protest against the excessive subdivision of the labor upon garments, a practice which enables the manufacturer to use children and the least skilled adults. Thirty-two persons are commonly employed upon a single coat, and it is the purpose of the Special Order Tailors to have all the machine work performed by one worker, thus reducing the number working on one coat to twelve or fourteen. As this change will at the same time demand more skill on the part of the operator, and will increase the variety and interest in his work, these garment-makers are sacrificing both time and money for the defence of Ruskinian principles--one of the few actual attempts to recover the “joy of work.” Although the attempt was, of course, mixed with a desire to preserve a trade from the invasion of the unskilled, and a consequent lowering of wages, it also represented a genuine effort to preserve to