But it was in the class of work that has always been called “woman’s work” that the bureaus found the most beggarly wages paid. A manufacturer of pants, vests, shirts, and overalls testified that he gave from fifteen to thirty-five cents apiece for making vests; seventy-five cents to $1.50 per dozen for shirts, and from twelve and a half cents to twenty-five cents a pair for pants. Boy’s gingham waists, with trimming on neck and sleeves, were paid for at the rate of two and a half cents each. By working steadily at the machine from six o’clock in the morning until one at night, the seamstress could make twenty-five cents a day at this “shop work.” The inmates of several charitable institutions in the city were found by the commissioner crocheting ladies’ shawls for twenty-five cents apiece. An expert, he was told, could finish one in two days. This was all that the several Blanks & Co. would pay, because competition for this kind of work was so great they were able to get the work done for almost any price.[181] On woman’s wear, the wages had been so reduced that it was alleged that a full day’s work on a cloak brought from fifty to sixty cents. The visits of the commissioner to some of the attic tenement-house rookeries, where this work was carried on under the direction of “sweaters,” disclosed numbers of cloak-makers working sixteen hours a day for fifty cents. In those dens he saw stacks of cloaks piled on the floors ready to be sewn together by women scantily clad, with hair unkempt, and whose pale, abject countenances formed such pictures of physical suffering and want as he trusted “he might never again be compelled to look upon.” The style and quality of the cloaks upon which these women toiled were of the latest and best. They were lined with quilted silk or satin and trimmed with sealskin or other expensive material, and found ready sale in the largest retail stores in the city at from thirty-five to seventy-five dollars each.