did. The former, in addition to the floor-walker in her section

of the store, recorded her every going and coming, the latter reported every movement not prescribed by the regulations of the establishment; and the result upon Katie and her fellow-workers was much the result observable upon condemned assassins under the unwinking surveillance of the Death Watch.

If Katie was late, she was fined ten cents for each offense. She was reprimanded if her portion of the counter was disordered after a mauling by careless customers. She was fined for all mistakes she made in the matter of prices and the additions on her salesbook; and she was fined if, having asked the floor-walker for three or five minutes to leave the floor in order to tidy her hair and hands, in constant need of attention through the rapidity of her work and the handling of her dyed wares, she exceeded her time limit by so much as a few seconds.

There were no seats behind the counters, and Katie, whatever her physical condition, remained on her feet all day long, unless she could arrange for relief by a fellow-worker during that worker's luncheon time. There was no place for rest save a damp, ill-lighted "Recreation Room" in the basement, furnished with a piano that nobody had time to play, magazines that nobody had time to read, and wicker chairs in which nobody had time to sit. All that one might do was to serve the whims and accept the scoldings of women customers who knew too ill, or too well, what they wanted to buy; keep a tight rein upon one's indignation at strolling men who did not intend to buy anything that the shop advertised; be servilely smiling under the innuendoes of the high-collared floor-walkers, in order to escape their wrath; maintain a sharp outlook for the "spotters," or paid spies of the establishment; thwart, if possible, those pretending customers who were scouts sent from other stores, and watch for shop-lifters on the one hand and the firm's detectives on the other.

"It ain't a cinch, by no means"--thus ran the departing Cora Costigan's advice to her successor--"but it ain't nothin' now to what it will be in the holidays. I'd rather be dead than work in the toy-department in December--I wonder if the kids guess how we that sells 'em hates the sight of their playthings?--and I'd rather be dead _an'_ damned than work in the accounting department. A girl friend of mine worked there last year,--only it was over to Malcare's store--an' didn't get through her Christmas Eve work till two on Christmas morning, an' she lived over on Staten Island. She overslept on the twenty-sixth, an' they docked her a half-week's pay.

"An' don't never," concluded Cora, "don't never let 'em transfer you to the exchange department. The people that exchange things all belong in the psychopathic ward at Bellevue--them that don't belong in Sing Sing. Half the goods they bring back have been used for days, an' when the store ties a tag on a sent-on-approval opera cloak, the women wriggle the tag inside, an' wear it to the theatre with a scarf draped over the string. Thank God, I'm goin' to be married!"

A Cry from the Ghetto

(_From the Yiddish of Morris Rosenfeld_)

(The poet of the East Side Jews of New York City, born 1861. His poems appeared in Yiddish newspapers and leaflets, and are the genuine voice of the sweat-shop workers. The following translation is by Charles Weber Linn)

The roaring of the wheels has filled my ears, The clashing and the clamor shut me in; Myself, my soul, in chaos disappears, I cannot think or feel amid the din. Toiling and toiling and toiling--endless toil. For whom? For what? Why should the work be done? I do not ask, or know. I only toil. I work until the day and night are one.

The clock above me ticks away the day, Its hands are spinning, spinning, like the wheels. It cannot sleep or for a moment stay, It is a thing like me, and does not feel. It throbs as tho' my heart were beating there-- A heart? My heart? I know not what it means. The clock ticks, and below I strive and stare. And so we lose the hour. We are machines.

Noon calls a truce, an ending to the sound, As if a battle had one moment stayed-- A bloody field! The dead lie all around; Their wounds cry out until I grow afraid. It comes--the signal! See, the dead men rise, They fight again, amid the roar they fight. Blindly, and knowing not for whom, or why, They fight, they fall, they sink into the night.

Trousers[A]

[A] By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

(_From "A Motley"_)

BY JOHN GALSWORTHY

(English novelist and dramatist, born 1867)

She held in one hand a threaded needle, in the other a pair of trousers, to which she had been adding the accessories demanded by our civilization. One had never seen her without a pair of trousers in her hand, because she could only manage to supply them with decency at the rate of seven or eight pairs a day, working twelve hours. For each pair she received seven farthings, and used nearly one farthing's worth of cotton; and this gave her an income, in good times, of six to seven shillings a week. But some weeks there were no trousers to be had and then it was necessary to live on the memory of those which had been, together with a little sum put by from weeks when trousers were more plentiful. Deducting two shillings and threepence for rent of the little back room, there was therefore, on an average, about two shillings and ninepence left for the sustenance of herself and husband, who was fortunately a cripple, and somewhat indifferent whether he ate or not. And looking at her face, so furrowed, and at her figure, of which there was not much, one could well understand that she, too, had long established within her such internal economy as was suitable to one who had been "in trousers" twenty-seven years, and, since her husband's accident fifteen years before, in trousers only, finding her own cotton.... He was a man with a round, white face, a little grey mustache curving down like a parrot's beak, and round whitish eyes. In his aged and unbuttoned suit of grey, with his head held rather to one side, he looked like a parrot--a bird clinging to its perch, with one grey leg shortened and crumpled against the other. He talked, too, in a toneless, equable voice, looking sideways at the fire, above the rims of dim spectacles, and now and then smiling with a peculiar disenchanted patience.

No--he said--it was no use to complain; did no good! Things had been like this for years, and so, he had no doubt, they always would be. There had never been much in trousers; not this common sort that anybody'd wear, as you might say. Though he'd never seen anybody wearing such things; and where they went to he didn't know--out of England, he should think. Yes, he had been a carman; ran over by a dray. Oh! yes, they had given him something--four bob a week; but the old man had died and the four bob had died too. Still, there he was, sixty years old--not so very bad for his age....

They were talking, he had heard said, about doing something for trousers. But what could you do for things like these, at half a crown a pair? People must have 'em, so you'd got to make 'em. There you were, and there you would be! _She_ went and heard them talk. They talked very well, she said. It was intellectual for her to go. He couldn't go himself owing to his leg. He'd like to hear them talk. Oh, yes! and he was silent, staring sideways at the fire as though in the thin crackle of the flames attacking the fresh piece of wood, he were hearing the echo of that talk from which he was cut off. "Lor' bless you!" he said suddenly. "They'll do nothing! Can't!" And, stretching out his dirty hand he took from his wife's lap a pair of trousers, and held it up. "Look at 'em! Why you can see right throu' 'em, linings and all. Who's goin' to pay more than 'alf a crown for that? Where they go to I can't think. Who wears 'em? Some institution I should say. They talk, but dear me, they'll never do anything so long as there's thousands like us, glad to work for what we can get. Best not to think about it, I says."

And laying the trousers back on his wife's lap he resumed his sidelong stare into the fire.

The Song of the Shirt

BY THOMAS HOOD

(Popular English poet and humorist; 1799-1845)

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread,-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work--work--work Till the stars shine through the roof! It's O! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work!

"Work--work--work Till the brain begins to swim! Work--work--work Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam,-- Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream!

"O Men, with sisters dear! O Men, with mothers and wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch--stitch--stitch In poverty, hunger, and dirt,-- Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a Shirt!

"But why do I talk of Death-- That phantom of grisly bone? I hardly fear his terrible shape, It seems so like my own-- It seems so like my own Because of the fasts I keep; O God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work--work--work! My labor never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread--and rags. That shattered roof--and this naked floor-- A table--a broken chair-- And a wall so blank my shadow I thank For something falling there!

"Work--work--work! From weary chime to chime! Work--work--work As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick and the brain benumbed, As well as the weary hand.

"Work--work--work In the dull December light! And work--work--work When the weather is warm and bright! While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me with the Spring.

"O! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet-- With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk that costs a meal!

"O! but for one short hour-- A respite however brief! No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, But only time for Grief! A little weeping would ease my heart; But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the rich!-- She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

A London Sweating Den[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(California novelist and Socialist; born 1876. The story of his life will be found on p. 732. For the work here quoted London lived among the people whose misery he describes)

A spawn of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her, sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood. In the black and narrow hall behind her we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even narrower and fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing two feet by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house. In six of the rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked, ate, slept, and worked. In size the rooms averaged eight feet by eight, or possibly nine. The seventh room we entered. It was the den in which five men sweated. It was seven feet wide by eight long, and the table at which the work was performed took up the major portion of the space. On this table were five lasts, and there was barely room for the men to stand to their work, for the rest of the space was heaped with cardboard, leather, bundles of shoe uppers, and a miscellaneous assortment of materials used in attaching the uppers of shoes to their soles.

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In another vile hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying of consumption. The woman hawked sweetmeats on the street, I was told, and more often failed than not to supply her son with the three quarts of milk he daily required. Further, this son, weak and dying, did not taste meat oftener than once a week; and the kind and quality of this meat cannot possibly be imagined by people who have never watched human swine eat.

"The w'y 'e coughs is somethin' terrible," volunteered my sweated friend, referring to the dying boy. "We 'ear 'im 'ere, w'ile we're workin', an' it's terrible, I say, terrible!"

And, what of the coughing and the sweetmeats, I found another menace added to the hostile environment of the children of the slums.

My sweated friend, when work was to be had, toiled with four other men in his eight-by-seven room. In the winter a lamp burned nearly all the day and added its fumes to the over-loaded air, which was breathed, and breathed, and breathed again.

In good times, when there was a rush of work, this man told me that he could earn as high as "thirty bob a week."--"Thirty shillings! Seven dollars and a half!

"But it's only the best of us can do it," he qualified. "An' then we work twelve, thirteen, and fourteen hours a day, just as fast as we can. An' you should see us sweat! Just runnin' from us! If you could see us, it'd dazzle your eyes--tacks flyin' out of mouth like from a machine. Look at my mouth."

I looked. The teeth were worn down by the constant friction of the metallic brads, while they were coal-black and rotten.

"I clean my teeth," he added, "else they'd be worse."

After he had told me that the workers had to furnish their own tools, brads, "grindery," cardboard, rent, light, and what not, it was plain that his thirty bob was a diminishing quantity.

"But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive this high wage of thirty bob?" I asked.

"Four months," was the answer; and for the rest of the year, he informed me, they average from "half a quid" to a "quid," a week, which is equivalent to from two dollars and a half to five dollars. The present week was half gone, and he had earned four bob, or one dollar. And yet I was given to understand that this was one of the better grades of sweating.

_The Hop-pickers_

So far has the divorcement of the worker from the soil proceeded, that the farming districts, the civilized world over, are dependent upon the cities for the gathering of the harvests. Then it is, when the land is spilling its ripe wealth to waste, that the street folk, who have been driven away from the soil, are called back to it again. But in England they return, not as prodigals, but as outcasts still, as vagrants and pariahs, to be doubted and flouted by their country brethren, to sleep in jails or casual wards, or under the hedges, and to live the Lord knows how.

It is estimated that Kent alone requires eighty thousand of the street people to pick her hops. And out they come, obedient to the call, which is the call of their bellies and of the lingering dregs of adventure-lust still in them. Slums, stews, and ghetto pour them forth, and the festering contents of slums, stews, and ghetto are undiminished. Yet they overrun the country like an army of ghouls, and the country does not want them. They are out of place. As they drag their squat, misshapen bodies along the highways and byways, they resemble some vile spawn from underground. Their very presence, the fact of their existence, is an outrage to the fresh, bright sun and the green and growing things. The clean, upstanding trees cry shame upon them and their withered crookedness, and their rottenness is a slimy desecration of the sweetness and purity of nature.

Is the picture overdrawn? It all depends. For one who sees and thinks life in terms of shares and coupons, it is certainly overdrawn. But for one who sees and thinks life in terms of manhood and womanhood, it cannot be overdrawn. Such hordes of beastly wretchedness and inarticulate misery are no compensation for a millionaire brewer who lives in a West End palace, sates himself with the sensuous delights of London's golden theatres, hobnobs with lordlings and princelings, and is knighted by the king. Wins his spurs--God forbid! In old time the great blonde beasts rode in the battle's van and won their spurs by cleaving men from pate to chin. And, after all, it is finer to kill a strong man with a clean-slicing blow of singing steel than to make a beast of him, and of his seed through the generations, by the artful and spidery manipulation of industry and politics.

Environment

(_From "Merrie England"_)

BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD

(This book is probably the most widely-circulated of Socialist books in English. Over two million copies have been sold in Great Britain, and probably a million in America. The author is the editor of the London _Clarion_; born 1851)

Some years ago a certain writer, much esteemed for his graceful style of saying silly things, informed us that the poor remain poor because they show no efficient desire to be anything else. Is that true? Are only the idle poor? Come with me and I will show you where men and women work from morning till night, from week to week, from year to year, at the full stretch of their powers, in dim and fetid dens, and yet are poor--aye, destitute--have for their wages a crust of bread and rags. I will show you where men work in dirt and heat, using the strength of brutes, for a dozen hours a day, and sleep at night in styes, until brain and muscle are exhausted, and fresh slaves are yoked to the golden car of commerce, and the broken drudges filter through the poor-house or the prison to a felon's or a pauper's grave! I will show you how men and women thus work and suffer and faint and die, generation after generation; and I will show you how the longer and the harder these wretches toil the worse their lot becomes; and I will show you the graves, and find witnesses to the histories of brave and noble and industrious poor men whose lives were lives of toil, _and_ poverty, and whose deaths were tragedies.

And all these things are due to sin--but it is to the sin of the smug hypocrites who grow rich upon the robbery and the ruin of their fellow-creatures.

Work and Pray

BY GEORG HERWEGH

(German poet, 1817-1875; took part in the attempt at revolution in Baden in 1848)

Pray and work! proclaims the world; Briefly pray, for Time is gold. On the door there knocketh dread-- Briefly pray, for Time is bread.

And ye plow and plant to grow. And ye rivet and ye sow. And ye hammer and ye spin-- Say, my people, what ye win.

Weave at loom both day and night, Mine the coal to mountain height; Fill right full the harvest horn-- Full to brim with wine and corn.

Yet where is thy meal prepared? Yet where is thy rest-hour shared? Yet where is thy warm hearth-fire? Where is thy sharp sword of ire?

Conventional Lies of Our Civilization

BY MAX NORDAU

(A Hungarian Jewish physician, born 1849, whose work, "Degeneration," won an international audience)

The modern day laborer is more wretched than the slave of former times, for he is fed by no master nor any one else, and if his position is one of more liberty than the slave, it is principally the liberty of dying of hunger. He is by no means so well off as the outlaw of the Middle Ages, for he has none of the gay independence of the free-lance. He seldom rebels against society, and has neither means nor opportunity to take by violence or treachery what is denied him by the existing conditions of life. The rich is thus richer, the poor poorer than ever before since the beginnings of history.

The Failure of Civilization

BY FREDERIC HARRISON

(English essayist and philosopher, born 1831; President of the Positivist Society)

I cannot myself understand how any one who knows what the present manner is can think that it is satisfactory. To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of industry were to be that which we behold; that ninety per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a month of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism. In cities, the increasing organization of factory work makes life more and more crowded, and work more and more a monotonous routine; in the country, the increasing pressure makes rural life continually less free, healthful and cheerful; whilst the prizes and hopes of betterment are now reduced to a minimum. This is the normal state of the average workman in town or country, to which we must add the record of preventable disease, accident, suffering and social oppression with its immense yearly roll of death and misery. But below this normal state of the average workman there is found the great band of the destitute outcasts--the camp-followers of the army of industry, at least one-tenth of the whole proletarian population, whose normal condition is one of sickening wretchedness. If this is to be the permanent arrangement of modern society, civilization must be held to bring a curse on the great majority of mankind.