One of the women of the underworld, a thin woman with hollow red
cheeks, sat at a table talking with the other women of the raising of
white leghorn chickens. She and her husband, a fat old roan, a waiter
in a loop restaurant, had bought a ten-acre farm in the country and
she was helping to pay for it with the money made in the streets in
the evening. A small black-eyed woman who sat beside the chicken
raiser reached up to a raincoat hanging on the wall and taking a piece
of white cloth from the pocket began to work out a design in pale blue
flowers for the front of a shirtwaist. A youth with unhealthy looking
skin sat on a stool by the counter talking to a waiter.
"The reformers have raised hell with business," the youth boasted as
he looked about to be sure of listeners. "I used to have four women
working for me here in State Street in World's Fair year and now I
have only one and she crying and sick half the time."
McGregor stopped reading the book. "In every city there is a vice
spot, a place from which diseases go out to poison the people. The
best legislative brains in the world have made no progress against
this evil," it said.
He closed the book, threw it away from him and looked at his big fist
lying on the counter and at the youth talking boastfully to the
waiter.
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