Respectable and conservative citizens began to
wonder if there might not be two sides to the story. They learned,
for instance, of the unjust "bundle" system, under which the employer
gives out a bundle of work to a girl, and when she returns the
completed work, gives her a ticket which she can convert into cash on
pay day. If the ticket, a tiny scrap of paper, should be lost, the
girl had no claim on the firm for the work she had actually done.
Again, some employers had insisted that they paid good wages, showing
books revealing the astonishing fact that girls were receiving thirty
dollars, thirty-five dollars, and even forty dollars per week. Small
reason to strike here, said the credulous reader, as he or she perused
the morning paper. But the protest of the libelled manufacturer lost
much of its force, when it was explained that these large sums were
not the wage of one individual girl, but were group earnings, paid to
one girl, and receipted for by her, but having to be shared with two,
three or four others, who had worked with and under the girl whose
name appeared on the payroll.
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