How the Other Half Lives · Chapter
XX: The Working Girls of New York explained
This chapter exposes the dire economic exploitation and moral dilemmas faced by New York's working women in the late 19th century.
What happens
This chapter exposes the dire economic exploitation and moral dilemmas faced by New York's working women in the late 19th century. Through specific cases—including a refined woman driven to suicide, a widow making paper bags for pennies, and two elderly Irish sisters facing starvation—it details starvation wages, oppressive fines, and the lack of legal protections. The text argues that low wages force women toward prostitution, yet praises the resilience and virtue of most working girls, while noting the beginnings of reform through unions and clubs.
Themes in this chapter
Exploitation and Greed
Employers impose fines for sitting, charge for aprons, and discharge workers to avoid raises; wages are driven down by rural 'pin-money' competitors.
Poverty and Inequality
Women earn 25–30 cents a day for piecework, cannot afford basic necessities, and face starvation or the poorhouse in old age.
Child Suffering and Exploitation
Cash-girls receive $1.75 per week for up to 16-hour days, are fined for trivial mistakes, and must pay for their own aprons.
Charity and Social Reform
Working girls' clubs, unions, and societies are forming; unselfish women advocate for justice and better conditions.
Characters to notice
- A Gentle and Refined Woman
Threw herself from an attic window after being offered only 'the wages of sin' during a desperate job search.
- A Woman Doctor
Brought to the narrator's attention the case of a widow making paper bags in an East Side attic for 25–30 cents a day.
- Mary Ann
One of two elderly Irish lace embroiderers; stricken with paralysis on Christmas Eve, leaving her crippled sister and herself facing starvation or the poorhouse.
- Unknown
The narrator who investigates and reports on the conditions of working women, visiting tenements and gathering testimony.
Key passages
“Oh, God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!”
The narrator laments the cruel irony that basic necessities are costly while human life and labor are undervalued.
This poetic cry echoes the theme of exploitation and the devaluation of women's work.
“It is simply impossible for any woman to live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities.”
The Working Women's Society report states that a saleswoman's wages are too low to cover basic needs, forcing dependence or ruin.
Highlights the systemic failure of wages to meet subsistence levels.
“I would have done any honest work, even to scrubbing, ... The only living wages that were offered her were the wages of sin.”
A refined woman, after weeks of fruitless job hunting, was offered only prostitution as a means to survive.
Illustrates the moral trap faced by desperate women in the labor market.
“The very paths that have effaced the saving 'limit,' and to which it is declared to be 'inevitable that they must in many instances resort.'”
The low wages that remove any 'limit' on women's exploitation inevitably drive some to prostitution.
Connects economic pressure directly to moral compromise.
“New York's army of profligate women is not, as in some foreign cities, recruited from her ranks. She is as plucky as she is proud.”
Unlike in other cities, most New York working girls remain virtuous despite hardship, showing remarkable resilience.
Defends the character of working women against assumptions of moral failure.
