This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless streets run literal blood—­the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars.  But these are your problems and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength or the fear not to die rich.  The babe’s mother, who had never known else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.

Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store, did not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the air she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp.  Sometimes a pain, sharp as a hat-pin, entered between her shoulder-blades.  But what of that?  When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh upward with the musical glee of a bird.

There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and semiannual clearing-sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store.  On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing long-sleeve, high-necked nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit underwear was supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her little pink-knitted jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and shivered—­shivered, but smiled.  “Br-r-r!  October never used to get under my skin like this.”

Hattie Krakow, room-mate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird—­downward, rather, until it died in a croak in her throat.  But then Hattie Krakow was ten years older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.

“Gee! you’re as funny as your own funeral, you are!  You keep up the express pace you’re going and there won’t be another October left on your calendar.”

“That’s right; cheer me up a bit, dearie.  What’s the latest style in undertaking?”

“You’ll know sooner ’n me if—­”

“Aw, Hat, cut it!  Wasn’t I home in bed last night by eleven?”

“I ain’t much on higher mathematics.”

“Sure I was.  I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that’s how hard you was sleeping.”

“A girl can’t gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not pay up for it.  I’ve seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken.  I—­”

“Amen!”

Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points of light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips trembled to laugh.

“There ain’t nothing funny, Sara.”

“Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!”

“If I was a girl and had a cough like I’ve seen enough in this basement get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big, and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning—­I wouldn’t just laugh and laugh.  I’d cry a little—­I would.”