Contrasts Of Sewing Women

ïou may see in any one of ,y, hundred shops in this cUy colo? f PS " eyed, dkigily ciad wamÏÏÏÏÏÏE' Sa1 sewing machines amid Zal"? Ver roundings, withno outlook save ÍCk roundings, vvith glimpses of a E landscape through every window g The New York women, released f their tril, basten home to gCy n? ment odgings and unwholesoij fare" The v.llage girls troop from the factory to modest but clean and pleasant hoZ where food is fresh and abundant The New York sewing machine woman i8 an ïnsigmficant unit in a great com S; Sels daily theVirof her fellows that are ready to take her place and her earnings. She heara from embittered men aud womeu talk of the nghts of labor and the greed of wealth She kuows that her earnings would not keep some of her rich sisters in cut flow ers. Whenever she stirs out of her own dingy qaarter, it is to see at every sten evidence of the luxury in which soine hve and of the contrast between her Jot and theirs. The village factory girl has hardly heard that there is a labor problem. Her $200 or $250 a year, earned at the sewing machine, clothes her well, prucures for her small luxuries andhelps to keep the family above want. She makes little pleasnre trips hither and yon whea work is slack and looks forward with coufidenee to marriage and a home of her own, clean, sweet and comf ortable. She never eees among her fellow townsfolk one who bas any essential comfort that ehe lacks, and nine women out of ten in the village have less to spend on dress than she has. She never sees a hungry or ragged person, unless it be an occasiona] tramp, and she hardly grasps the meauiug of what she uow and then hears about the lives of the poor in great cities. The New York slave to the sewing machine lives half an hour from the heart of the western world and ïnay, if she will, on any night see Broadway and its throngs by electric light. The viilage factory girl believes that she would be happy to give up all her comforts for the olher's privilege of seeing at will the splendors of the great city. The New York sewing womau would not, if she could, change places with