Page:Wages in US 1908-1910.djvu/18

Rh $2.25 per week? The father earns $9 as a laborer in a lead works. Of late years he has been ailing,—lead poisoning, they say, and with the doctor and medicine bills, the balance, after paying the present rent, is scarcely large enough to buy food. Then, too, work is not steady. During some weeks, the lead works is closed two or three days, and instead of making $9 the man earns $6 and sometimes $4.50. But the rent stays at $2.25.

If the man had always earned higher wages, he would never have been reduced to living in such a vile hovel. In fact, when he was first married, he lived in a respectable little cottage, for which he paid $15 a month. But the children came, and by the time there were four of them it seemed necessary to move in order to cut expenses. So the family came here. Even now a rise in wages would enable them to live better, but that rise does not come.

The children, too, feel the burden of low wages and bad quarters. The oldest boy (thirteen) sells papers. He has already learned to beg; and the other day, after making a raid on a freight car loaded with bananas, he found himself, with two of his companions, securely lodged in the station-house. He is no worse than the average boy, but