Article December 28, 1899 Issue

Miscellany

The sewing bureau of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor is a place of much interest to the woman visitor. Women applying for relief are given plain garments to make, and for their day's labor—which is very light—are paid eighty cents either in clothes or groceries. The garments, such as underwear, baby clothes, sheets, pillow-cases, aprons, etc., are cut by a professional cutter and given to needy women to make at the wages learned. The women take these garments—all of which are made of muslin, outing and Canton flannels, and ginghams—home and are allowed three orders a week or more if need be, according to the amount they need to tide them over the week. They are allowed to sell them, if they can do so, among their neighbors in the tenement district at a small percentage above cost, which they may keep. In the sewing-rooms plain and substantial garments are sold to all kinds of people, and they cost only the price of the material to the purchaser, the money for the material being contributed by charitably disposed people to the association for this particular work. From the sale of garments in the bureau last year $1,753.39 was realized and 1,074 women—almost all mothers—were given work. Constant effort is made to improve the work of the less skilled.

In connection with this work the association also conducts the industrial rooms at Hartley House, the annual report of which is just out. The rooms were opened November 1, 1898, and closed May 23, 1899. During this time 2,573½ days' work were given to 389 women, and for this they were paid $1,027.10 in groceries and $259.65 in clothing. in addition to their dinner every day they worked. The women sent to the workrooms are less skilled than those receiving work from the sewing bureau. The work of making bed "comfortables" seemed most attractive to them, and they were always pleased to take them in payment.

New York Evening Post.

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