|  PER WEEK   | FORMERLY
----------------------------------------+-------------+-----

----
Folding and ticketing on light material | $5 to 6     | $4.84
Folding and ticketing on light material |  5 to 6     |  4.84
Wrapping light material                 |  6 to 7     |  4.56
Wrapping light material                 |  7 to 8     |  4.84
Wrapping light and heavy material       |  6 to 6.50  |  4.56
Wrapping light and heavy material       |             |
combined with napkin tying             |  6 to 7     | 4.84
Folding and ticketing both light and    |             |
heavy material                         |  5 to 6     | 4.84
Folding and ticketing both light and    |             |
heavy material (unaccustomed to the    |  4.59       | 4.56
work)                                  | (once 6.69) |
Folding and ticketing both light and    |             |
heavy material (unaccustomed to the    |             |
work)                                  |  5          | 4.56
Folding and ticketing both light and    |             |
heavy material (unaccustomed to the    |             |
work)                                  |  3 to 5     | 7
|(in another department)
----------------------------------------+-------------+-----

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Even considering slackness, these increases per week for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases the work was light, cannot but seem small.  All the girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places.  All but one were with their families.  The city has an open market.  People of all grades of income go to market properly with market-baskets, choose food of excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through the winter.  The ladies of the house, the girls’ mothers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn apple-butter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row of glass jars.  But the girls’ wages could not pay for such living conditions.  The girl who was boarding, and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing left for other expenses.[61]

In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lifting of heavier pieces of cloth.  Two of the girls had suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, by straining themselves in this way.  One of them was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well again.  The other girl was away for two months, and though she is now at work, had not fully regained her health.  The company had at once obtained employment less straining for the first of these girls, and the second said that the firm had always been fair with her in arranging the work.  It was said that it had been Mr. Gantt’s intention to have the heavier lifting done by men and boys, instead of combining it with the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the new system.  But the department had never fully carried out its intention, and unfortunately since Mr. Gantt’s departure rather more of the heavy material had been ordered from the house than before.