“I got 50 cents a hundred for one-pound candy boxes, and 40 cents a hundred for half-pound boxes.”
“What work do you do on a box for that pay?”
“Everything. I get the pasteboard cut in squares the same as you did. I first ‘set up’ the lids, then I ‘mold in’ the bottoms. This forms a box. Next I do the ‘trimming,’ which is putting the gilt edge around the box lid. ‘Cover striping’ (covering the edge of the lid) is next, and then comes the ‘top label,’ which finishes the lid entire. Then I paper the box, do the ‘bottom labeling,’ and then put in two or four laces (lace paper) on the inside as ordered. Thus you see one box passes through my hands eight times before it is finished. I have to work very hard and without ceasing to be able to make two hundred boxes a day, which earns me $1. It is not enough pay. You see I handle two hundred boxes sixteen hundred times for $1. Cheap labor, isn’t it?”
One very bright girl, Maggie, who sat opposite me, told a story that made my heart ache.
“This is my second week here,” she said, “and, of course, I won’t receive any pay until next week, when I expect to receive $1.50 for six days’ work. My father was a driver before he got sick. I don’t know what is wrong; but the doctor says he will die. Before I left this morning he said my father will die soon. I could hardly work because of it. I am the oldest child, and I have a brother and two sisters younger. I am sixteen, and my brother is twelve. He gets $2 a week for being office-boy at a cigar-box factory.”
“Do you have much rent to pay?”
“We have two rooms in a house on Houston Street. They are small and have low ceilings, and there are a great many Chinamen in the same house. We pay for these rooms $14 per month. We do not have much to eat, but then father doesn’t mind it because he can’t
