One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry at the inconsistencies of the standards of those who go to Albany to secure the passage of bills for the betterment of the conditions of the working people. We have secured a law compelling separate closets for men and women in stores and factories, a righteous measure in the interest of morality. But the closets in the tenements must be used by men, women and children of several families. A neighborly courtesy is the loaning of the key, to save a neighbor a journey upstairs. Children run in from the street, several at a time, for it is the only place provided. This publicity and freedom is the crying evil of the tenements, the one from which tragedies come. The marvel is that so few follow; that in spite, seemingly in defiance, of it all, characters develop that are beautiful, harmonious, true. Can one condemn the girl facing the worst that can befall her who under pressure that her appeal justifies, yes, makes necessary, confides that her relations with the man who is the father of the coming child began when each were little things six or eight years old? A relation that grew out of lack of privacy, the intimacy forced by tenement-house conditions. Both families have gone far beyond their social position at the time these two were children, but the blasting of innocency has left its burning scar on the girl, and she must bear it alone. Perhaps it is this necessarily open living that gives the love-making in the tenement region a character peculiarly its own. When interest between the sexes is aroused, it is expressed so frankly and publicly. There are times when restraint would seem to improve manners; but among the working young men and women one is constantly reminded of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. How frankly and unconsciously they must have shown their interest in each other, and how unconsciously they must have revealed their interest in each other to all the other breathing creatures. Perhaps nothing about the love-making is more interesting than that numbers add to the enjoyment of both lovers. Nothing adds more to the happiness of a wage-earning girl than to have her "chum" deeply interested in and deeply interesting to a young man at the same time she is. It seems to be conceded that two couples can have so much more pleasure than one. The terms applied by these young people to each other will reveal their social level in the wage-earning world. If the term "steady" is used where the world of wealth and leisure would use _fiancé_, the under wage-earning world is reached. If "friend" is used, the social ladder covered by that word, used in that sense, has many rounds. Knowing many working girls who would use the term "friend" when referring to the man they had accepted as a future husband, or who would in time hold that relation, the writer was constantly impressed by the unconscious protection the girls threw about each other.