We find here a suite of three little rooms, the



32 WHITE SLAVES

largest of which is not more than 10 X 10 ; the
others are much smaller. In these three little
pigeon boxes eight people live, at least sleep —
five men and boys, and a mother and two girls.
The men are off most of the day, and work at
such jobs as they find; the mother and little
girls make pants for another leading Boston
clothing house. The two little girls, the
younger only three years, are both overcasting
seams. The three make on an average sixteen
pairs of pants a week, for which they get thir-
teen cents a pair; the young pigeon fancier,
already spoken of, carrying the goods to and
fro. The rent of these crowded quarters is two
dollars and a quarter per week. In the same
building, down-stairs, we went into a room which
could not have been more than 10 X 12, where
an American woman, with seven young women
helping her, was at work dressmaking. We
could not discover whether they were working
for the stores or not, but the air was poisonous,
and the workers had that deadly pallor which
comes from habitually breathing bad air and
from lack of sufficient food.
