The woman pointed to a telegram which had fallen to the floor. Hamilton picked it up. It read: "John Sobieski worse. Come at once," and was signed with the name of one of the large hospitals. "Did you go?" asked the boy. The woman shook her head. "Two hours lost, if I go. No good. Two hours' work means twenty-four cents. What's the use?" "What's the matter with him?" "Consumption. I die soon, next year, perhaps. All the children sick." The boy looked around at 'all the children.' There were five of them in that room, and all--even the youngest, a baby four years old--were knotting the feathers on the plume. The baby could hardly do it, but he was learning. "Many hands make light work," said Hamilton as cheerfully as he could. "With so many little workers you ought to get along finely." "Yes," the woman answered listlessly, "we get along. Some days we make as much as a dollar!" "Each of you?" "Do we look so rich? One dollar for everybody. But that is only sometimes, when I am not too sick. We can get a little more than five dollar the week, by working all the time." The boy hastily asked the remaining questions on the schedule, found everything correctly reported and relieving his conscience by giving a little help out of his own pocket, he left for the next place. On the floor below was a family working on fur, every one of them with hacking coughs caused by tiny particles of fur in the lungs. "We work or we starve," was again the unanswerable explanation. In the house next door, embroidering rich cloaks, Hamilton found a family of which several of the members had a bad infectious skin disease. Chancing to meet a health inspector soon afterwards he told him about this family and gave him their address. "I can stop it, as far as this family is concerned," the health officer said, "and I suppose I ought to. But you know what it means, I suppose?" "What?" asked the boy. "It means, if I take their work away, they will starve to death in a couple of weeks." "And if you don't?" "If I don't, they'll go on spreading disease. Oh, I'll have to put a stop to it, of course, but tell me what is going to happen to the family." "They ought to go to a hospital," Hamilton said. The health officer shook his head. "They are not hospital cases," he said. "None of them need more medical attention than they can get in a dispensary, and every hospital to which they applied would treat them in an Out-Patient department. They would have to take in more work, or die." "But where would they get the work?" "Any of these sweatshop jobbers will give it to them. It makes no difference to the middlemen where the work is done or out of what dens it comes, as long as it is done cheap." "And is all clothing open to the same risk?" asked the boy. The health inspector shook his head.