| Small felt hat | $ .25 |
| Woolen gloves | .25 |
| Flannel shirt-waist | 1.95 |
| Gray serge coat | 3.00 |
| Black skirt | 2.00 |
| Underwear | 1.00 |
| Tippet | 1.00 |
| —— | |
| $ 9.45 |
When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.
One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet
thick covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter scene the sun shone brilliantly.
No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.
Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course, and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church stamping the place New England.
Lynn is made up of factories—great masses of ugliness, red brick, many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is 70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.
The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a directory and found the address of