Here in New York she lived in a tenement, sharing a room with two other girls, and, besides working in the shirt-waist factory, did her own washing, made her own waists, and went to night school.

Her income was seriously depleted by the seasonal character of her work.  Out of the twelve months of the year, for one month she was idle, for four months she had only three or four days’ work a week, for three months she had five days’ work a week, and for four months only did she have work for all six days.  Unhappily, during these months she developed a severe cough, which lost her seven weeks of work, and gave her during these weeks the expense of medicine, a doctor, and another boarding place, as she could not in her illness sleep with her two friends.

Her income for the year had been $348.25.  Her expenses had been as follows:  rent for one-third of room at $3.50 a month, $42; suppers with landlady at 20 cents each, $63; other meals, approximately, $90; board while ill, seven weeks at $7, $49; doctor and medicine (about) $15; clothing, $51.85; club, 5 cents a week, $2.60; total, $313.45, thus leaving a balance of $34.80.

Shoes alone consumed over one-half of the money used for clothing.  They wore out with such amazing rapidity that she had needed a new pair once a month.  At $2 each, except a best pair, costing $2.60, their price in a year amounted to $24.60.[13]

In regard to Rachael’s expenditure and conservation in strength, she had drawn heavily upon her health and energy.  Her cough continued to exhaust her.  She was worn and frail, and at eighteen her health was breaking.

Anna Klotin, another older skilled worker, an able and clever Russian girl of twenty-one, an operative and trimmer, earned $12 a week.  She had been idle twelve weeks on account of slack work.  For four weeks she had night work for three nights a week, and payment for this extra time had brought her income up to $480 for the year.  Of this sum she paid $312 ($6 a week) for board and lodging alone in a large, pleasant room with a friendly family on the East Side.  To her family in Russia she had sent $120, and she had somehow contrived, by doing her own washing, making her own waists and skirts, and repairing garments left from the previous year, to buy shoes and to pay carfare and all her other expenses from the remaining $48.  She had bought five pairs of shoes at $2 each, and a suit for $15.

Fanny Wardoff, a shirt-waist worker of twenty, who had been in the United States only a year, helped her family by supporting her younger brother.

For some time after her arrival in this country the ill effects of her steerage voyage had left her too miserable to work.  She then obtained employment as a finisher in a skirt factory, where her best wage was $7.  But her earnings in this place had been so fluctuating that she was uncertain what her total income had been before the last thirteen weeks.  At the beginning of this time she had left the skirt factory and become a finisher in a waist factory, where she earned from $10 to $12 a week, working nine and a half hours a day.