Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/198

 hind counters for five and six dollars a week. Said one employer whose factory occupies a great loft far above the heat and roar of the city streets, and whose girls, mostly foreigners, earn from ten to fourteen dollars a week:

"Five years ago the names on our payroll were largely Irish, German or English. To-day they are almost exclusively Slav. And in that department store on the next corner you will find girls standing on their feet from 8:15 to 6 every day for seven dollars a week. The—air in that store is foul, the heat in summer maddening. The rest-rooms for the girls are a mockery, located in a dingy basement with electric light and foul air. Up here our girls earn a minimum of ten dollars a week, they sit at machines run by electricity. The air is pure, our lunchroom is a model one, and we are thinking of putting our factory on a profit-sharing basis.

"The root of the trouble is that oft-quoted phrase, the poor factory girl, and the subsequent feeling of caste which is fatal to the earning capacity of the American girl who must be wholly or partly self-supporting. She would rather be a cheap clerk or stenographer than lose what she considers social standing by working in a factory. With this false standard of pride she ekes out a miserable existence. She cannot save because she has nothing to lay