She perceives a wide distance between the descent of these
basement stairs to solicit employment, and that other dreadful
resource.
The poor girls who work in these underground hells do not get good pay,
and their work is not light. They are confined in these noisome places,
thick with tobacco smoke and foul with poisonous odors, till two
o'clock in the morning; in some places till five o'clock. Their pay is
four dollars to six dollars a week; higher figures, certainly, than
thousands of working-girls get, but, for two reasons, lower, in effect.
The first of these two reasons is, that the waiter girl must dress with
some degree of attractiveness. The second, and the most weighty, is,
that she must pay a high price for board. Going home long after
midnight, she must live somewhere in the vicinity of the saloon. Then
the woman who, having taken a girl to board, finds that she comes home
after two o'clock every night, draws her own conclusions at once. That
girl must pay _well_ for her board, if, indeed, she be not turned out
of the house without a word. It will scarcely help the matter, if the
girl explains that she is employed at a concert saloon. The woman knows
very well what 'pretty waiter girls' are. 'Those creatures' must pay
for what they have, and pay roundly. The result is, that the waiter
girl's occupation will not support her. The next result is, that there
are no virtuous girls in the concert saloons of Broadway--unless they
be such girls as this we are following tonight, as she wanders the
streets, pausing to look down into this fancied half-Paradise, only to
enter it at last, in search of 'good pay.
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