he's only a man, and he's sick past cure, and nobody but me for us all. God help us! I wouldn't mind if wages were steady, but they cut and cut, and always some excuse for making them lower, and here am I, that can do anything, private orders and all, down to eighty-five cents a day. I could earn more by family sewing, but I can't leave William or the children, for he's likely to go any minute, the doctors say, if he over-exerts himself; and suppose it came, and I not here, and the baby and Willie and all! I've turned all ways. I think and think as I sit here, and there's no help in God or man. It's all wrong somehow, but we don't know why nor how, and the only way I can see is just to die. There's no place for honesty or hard work. You must lie and cheat if you want standing room. God help us!--if there is a God; but I've my doubts. Why don't he help, if there is one?" Here the average earnings were twenty-five dollars a month, the rent of the room they occupied seven dollars, leaving eighteen dollars for food, fire, light, and clothing. Another disabled husband, recovering, but for many months unable to work, was found in a tenement-house in East Eleventh Street. In this case work and earnings were almost identical with the last, but there were but two children, and thus less demand for food, etc. For a year and a half the wife, though also an "expert," had never exceeded eighty-five cents a day and had sometimes fallen as low as seventy. She had sometimes gone to the factory instead of working at home, and the last firm employing her in this way had charged ten cents on the dollar for the steam used in running the machine which she operated. "It didn't pay," the little woman said, with a laugh that ended as a sob, checked instantly. "I could earn eight dollars a week, but there was the steam, ten cents on the dollar, and my car fares, for there was no time to walk,--sixty cents for them,--$1.40, you see, altogether. I might as well work at home and have the comfort of seeing that the children were all right. There's plenty of work, it seems. It's wages that's the trouble, and do you know how they cut them? If I could work any other way I would, but I like to sew, and I don't know any other trade. I'm not strong, but somehow I can run the machines, and there's nothing else. But we're clean discouraged. It isn't living, and we don't know what way to turn." In East Sixth Street, near the Bowery, Mrs. W., a widow still young and with a nervously energetic face and manner, gave her experience. She had been forewoman in a factory before her husband's death, having supported him through his last year of life, working all day and nursing him at night. In this way her own health broke down, and she was at last taken to the hospital, where she remained nearly six months, coming out to find her place filled, but a subordinate one open to her.