"Would not private sewing be better? There is always a demand for good seamstresses." "I don't know anything about private sewing. You have to cut and plan, and I never learned that. I like to work on things that are cut by a cutter and just so, and I can make up my dozen after dozen with not an eighth of an inch difference in my measurements. I'm an expert, you know." "But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly you could earn a dollar and a quarter a day and board and have your evening quite free." The girl shook her head. "I've had that said to me before, but you know it's more independent as I am. Maybe things will be better by and by." There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deep-seated prejudice, and this exists to a bewildering degree among these workers, who, for some inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that private employ of any nature whatever is inevitably a despotism filled with unknown horrors. There appears to be also a certain _esprit du corps_ that holds sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of herself as one of such and such a firm's hands, and to regard this distinction as compensation for over-hours and under-pay and all known wretchedness encompassing her trade. The speaker I have quoted was an American girl of twenty-six, had had three years in public schools, and regarded the city as the only place in which life could be considered endurable. "I shouldn't know what to do in the country if I were there," she said. "I don't seem to like it somehow. It isn't the company, for mother and me keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know how to get along in the city, and the country scares me. I like my work if only I could get more pay for it." "Do you ever think that if all who work in your line joined together and made common cause you might even things a little; that it might be easier for all of you?" "We wouldn't dare," she answered, aghast. "Why, do you know, there'd be ten for each one of us that was turned off. Women come there by the hundred. That's what they say to me in our firm: 'What's the use of fussing when here are dozens waiting to take your place?' There isn't any use. They say now that it is the dull season, and they've put our room on flannel skirts; two tucks and a hem, and a muslin yoke that has to be gone round four times with the stitching. One day I made ten, but nine is all one can do without nearly killing themselves, and they pay us one dollar a dozen for making them. It used to be a dollar and a half, and that was fair enough. It's the kind of work I like. I shouldn't be content to do any other; but it's bringing us all down to starvation point, and I think something ought to be done."