Those who work at
home, and those who go out to work at places provided by their
employers. Those who work at home are comparatively few. They stay
there not from choice, but from necessity. Bodily deformity, or
infirmity, or sickness, or invalid parents, or relatives, whom they are
unable to leave, keeps them there.
The writer in _Putnam_, to whose deeply interesting statement we refer
the reader for further information on this point, found a poor girl of
this class, who was kept at home by the sickness of her consumptive
father, living and working in a miserable tenement house in the upper
part of Mulberry street. After a brief conversation with her, he asked:
'What rent do you pay for this room, Mary?'
'Four dollars a month, sir.'
"That," he continues, "is little more than thirteen cents a day, you
will observe."
'What do you get for making such a shirt as that?'
'Six cents, sir.'
'What! You make a shirt for six cents?'
'Yes, sir, and furnish the thread.'
If my reader is incredulous, I can assure him that Mary does not tell a
falsehood; for I know that this price is paid by some of the most
'respectable' firms in New York. 'Can't you get work to do at higher
prices?'
'Sometimes, sir. But these folks are better than many others; they pay
regularly. Some who offer better prices will cheat, or they won't pay
when the work is carried home These folks give me plenty of work, and I
never have to wait; so I don't look around for better.
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