In a factory town, at the lunch hour, have you ever consciously watched the girls and women thronging down the steps and filling the streets surrounding the workshop? Have you listened to their noisy laughter and scraps of conversation and tried to understand their meaning? In 1910, when the last Census of Manufactures was taken, there were over 1,500,000 of these girls and women—factory workers in the United States. In a large city at nightfall, when the lamps are lighted, have you ever observed the streams of girls flowing into the streets from the offices and great department stores? Again at night, have you seen the girls, waiting at the entrances of tenement houses or on the street corners for their “gentleman friends” who are to emancipate them for a few hours from their cramped and dingy environment? And have you asked yourself where and how do these girls live? During the last few years we have heard so much about the discontent of the labor classes, the “restlessness of the present age,” that the phrases fall upon unheeding ears. But it takes no Socialist to understand that, if a family man’s expenses are $900 a year, and that working to the best of his ability he can earn only $700 to $800, and that if it costs a girl $8 a week to live, and she cannot earn that much, there must be discontent. It is time for the community to regulate such conditions. The question of wages is so closely allied to the question of housing that a study of the latter involves some knowledge of the former. Cost of living and standard of living must be approached from a fact basis. Studies by Robert Chapin, Scott Nearing and the commission appointed by Congress, indicate that a man, his wife and three children under fourteen, cannot live and maintain efficiency under $900 a year on the Island of Manhattan. This is not excessive for Boston, Buffalo and Chicago. It is low for Pittsburgh, a little high for Philadelphia and Baltimore but a fair average for the great cities east of the Mississippi and north of Virginia. Investigations prove that there is no great wage variation in different sections of the country. In the West wages run slightly higher than in the East, and in the larger cities than in the smaller towns. From a study of 1,391 New York girls working in department stores, the average earnings were reported as $4.69 a week during the first year and $5.28 the second. They increased in ten years, to $9.81, during which period many fall out of the ranks. Buyers and expert saleswomen remain. Their average earnings mount up to $13.33. In factories the average earnings of 3,421 girls showed $4.62 a week for the first year and $5.34 for the second year. After ten years’ experience $8.48 was reached.