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poor man. I never did until ! was poor myself." "Didyou want to tell me something about the department stores," asked, anxious to change the sub-. ject "No, I just wanted to talk about myself. I am in a terrible hole and I don't know how to get out of it. I am so worried" I can not sleep and somehow I thought you might help me, or that I would feel better by talking to you. "Yousee," she continued, as I did not answer her, "when my father died a little less than a year ago, and just eight month's after" mother's death, he left me an insurance of a thousand dollars, and nothing else, Our home and what other assets he had went to the creditors. "And out of thatvthousand dollars . I had to pay his doctor bill and fu neral expenses. I had eight hundred dollars left" , "Somehow when Jthe people at home knew I wasn't an heiress they were unfriendly, so I left immediately and came to Chicago. "I realized that I couldn't live long on that money and I did try to perfect myself in some special way. "I took a course iri shorthand and typewriting and I tried hard enough to learn. They kept me in the school six months, but I heard so many tales of the big salary I would get when working that I didn't economize, though I was living in a. very different manner than when at home: "At the. end of the six months, when I should have graduated, the teacher told me I hadn't tried to learn, that I would never be a com petent stenographer, and they didn't feel they should take my money any longer. "I knew I had tried, but the sys tem was so complicated-.and I could not read what I had written. "I was almost crazy that day. I bought some' laudanum, pretending I wanted it for-a toothache, andlocked j myself in my rojbm. But it takes too much courage to kill oneself I just couldn't do it "The next day I went down to the different State street stores, and, be cause I have good style and am fairly pretty, I got a position as saleslady in the millinery department at. 's. They pay me $7 a week. "Do you knowwhat it costs me just to exist?" she asked with a vehemence that showed the strain she was under. I haven't anything worth while; I eat ten-cent break fasts; I get a fifteen-cent lunch and a 'thirty-cent table d'hote dinner. "This room costs me three dollars a week and my landlady forever re minds me how cheap it is. I couldn't live in anything smaller, and I couldn't share a room with some girl with whom I had nothing in com mon, so altogether it costs me be tween $il.50 and $12 a week just to keep my heart beating. "And that doesn't include the forty-dollar gown I bought for opening week, and have not used since. - "Figure itup," she -said harshly.. "I have forty dollars left of my father's money and I am earning $4.50 less than I spend. That gives me about nine weeks of existence and then what?" I vainly tried to answer her. Even if I could help, her with stenography, beginners only get $7. The cheaper way of Existing by living in so-called philanthropic homes was a method I would not adopt myself, so could not recommend to another. She is a girl afraid to "kill herself, afraid t6 starve to death and, I be lieve, tod proud to take the third al ternativethe "easiest way." I am afraid that only the vice com mission can answer this girl's ques-' , tion, and they must answer" it by a $12 minimum wage, not the $8 that the greedy employers are endeavor- ing to convince them a girl may live on. y . t In the meantime well?