Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/214
corresponding sumptuary laws of their own devising. These little magnates stayed at home and sent their agents begging; all food obtained was delivered into their keeping, and then portioned out, as the Educational Bureau would say, not according to the "illiteracy of each section, but according to its geographical area." Shapeless pieces of bread and cold flapjacks were for the tenants of cellars and attics; muffins and tidbits of croquettes were for those who occupied the ground-floor and middle stories of the tenements.
Among the working-women is a feeling of exclusiveness most noticeable, while with working-men it is no more prominent than with professional men. "It is this spirit of caste," says a working-woman of fifty years, "which keeps us all down. If we could nag one another it would be some gain; but we avoid one another instead. There is no union among us, never was, except for a little while through the French International