The majority of girls at work live at home and, in many cases, have to a certain extent the protection of their family. But an ever-increasing number of girls are entering the towns and cities, quite alone and friendless, to earn their way. These girls either keep house, live in families, in boarding and lodging houses or in the organized boarding house. The girl who lives at home usually gives all her earnings to her parents—over 84 per cent working in shops, and 88 per cent in factories in New York city, and a similar number in Chicago and St. Louis. The parents rely upon their daughters for an exact amount of income, so that these girls are in no sense “pin money workers.” The girl at home in New York city usually lives in a three to five-room flat in a tenement house, for which her father pays from $10 to $35 a month; and into these cramped quarters, one, two or more boarders are frequently taken. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis and St. Paul, it has been estimated that about 65,000 girls, exclusive of stenographers, office girls, nurses and teachers, are without homes, and entirely dependent upon themselves for support. Girls with a low standard of living can live more cheaply by keeping house than in any other manner. This means that several girls may join together and rent a two or three room flat. After their daily work of eight to twelve hours in factory, shop or office, is over, they have the housework to do—cleaning, cooking, washing and sewing. A girl keeping house or living in lodgings may save on food. She may go without breakfast or lunch, or have bread and coffee for breakfast, bread for lunch, and bread and soup or meat for dinner. She may spend part of her evenings making clothes, the material for which has been bought with money saved from food. “Oh, my, where would we get our clothes, if we bought meat every day?” asked one girl. How long do these girls remain economically efficient? Fortunate is the girl who can find a home with some respectable tenement house family. Here she frequently underpays. Anna Friedman earns $7 a week as cashier; she lives with Mrs. McCoy in a $27 a month five-room flat. Anna pays $3 a week for her accommodation, but considers herself entirely self-supporting, as Mrs. McCoy’s husband is absent part of the time, and Anna’s companionship is of some value. She therefore has a margin of $4 for clothes, laundry, amusements, sickness and incidentals, and is well off. Girls living in this way usually associate with the family, using all rooms in common. The most dangerous way in which a girl can live is in a lodging, or as they are called “a furnished-room house.” Investigations of forty-three boarding and lodging houses in one city showed that five were known to be houses where fast women lived. “Not only were good and bad houses on the same block, but good and bad people were living in the same house.”