Making Both Ends Meet: The income and outlay of New York working girls

ya, afterward. "When we came back the next morning to the factory, though, no one went to the dressing-room. We all sat at the machines with our hats and coats beside us,

little shrug, "'What difference does it make which one is first and which one is last?' Well, so we stayed whispering, and no one knowing what the other would do, not making up our minds, for two hours. Then I started to get up." Her lips trembled. "And at just the same minute all-we all got up together, in one second. No one after

to a big hall a few blocks away. After we were there, we wrote out on paper what terms we wanted: not any night work, except as it would be arranged for in some special nee

and told us about picketi

omobile. I was with an older girl from our shop, Anna Lunska. The next morning in front of the factory, Anna Lunska and I met a tall Italian man going into the factory with some girls. So I said to

right there and said, 'Why do you not arrest this man for striking my friend? Why do you let him do it? Look at her. She cannot speak; she is crying. She did nothing at all,' Then he arrested

Italian, to their bewilderment not only he, but they, too, were conducted downstairs to

hen I was frightened, and I said to the policeman there, 'Why do you do this? I

send for any one at al

re frightened. We did

t was Miss Violet Pike. A boy I knew had seen us go into the prison with the Italian, and not

and she bailed us out; and she came back

were produced against them, and stated that Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the Italian was escorting. At the close of the case against Natalya and Anna, Judge Cornell said:[17] "I find the girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile

en," said Natalya, "and said, 'Ca

it could not

away in a patr

l with all the other prisoners. It was coffee with molasses in it, and oatmeal and bread so bad that after one taste we could not swallow it down. Then, for supper, we had the same, but soup, too, with some meat bones in it. And even before you sat down at the table these bones smelled s

t came off the street. The beds were one over the other, like on the boats-iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket. But it was so cold you had to put both over you; and the ir

terrible darkness, where you could see nothing at all. Then I called through the little grating to a woman who was a sentin

e do you think you are? But if you pay

to us, 'Here, put your hand through the grate and give me a quarter and I'll tell you who your fellows ar

prison with a little grating. As we got on to it, there was another girl, not like the rest of the women prisoners. She cried and cried. And I saw she was a working girl. I m

were dirty. They had dresses in one piece of very heavy, coarse material, with stripes all around, and the skirts are gathered, and so heavy for the women. They almost drag you down t

shirt-waist striker that could not speak one word of English, and she was all alone and had the same we had in other ways. When we walked by the matron to go to our cells at night, at first she started to send Anna Lunska and me to di

id not dare. I thought, 'I will make that matron so mad that she will not even let Anna Lunska and me stay together,' So I got almost to our cell before I went out of the line and across the hall

ou want to band all the strikers together

ever saw her

anything else. So I went off, just as though she wasn't going to let that girl come

an and another woman, the door opened, and that R

, and we had to put both the quilt and the blanket over us and lie on the springs, and you must keep all of your clothes on to try

u do not know how to scrub a bit. You can go back to the sewing department.' On the way I went through a room filled with negresses, and they called out, 'Look, look at the litt

o each other, and I sat on the bench with them. There was one woman over us at sewing that argued with me so

e kind of food in those prisons and in these pri

ost repellent women of the street said to her, "I am staying in here and you're going out. Give me a kiss for good-by." Natalya said t

New York. There, at the ferry, stood a delegation of the members of

ndred arrests made during the shirt-waist

e just, and they admired and were even remarkably proud of the management, a firm of young and well-intentioned manufacturers. Early in the general strike, however, they went out without a word to the management, without even signifying to it in any way the point they considered unjust. The management did not send to inquire. After a few days it resumed work with strike breakers. The former employees began picketing. The management sent word to them that it would not employ against them, so long as they were peaceful and within the law, any of the means of intimidation that numbers of the other firms were using-special police and thugs. The

tal love of observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these qualities she could spend night after night locked up with the women of the street, in her funny, enormous prison clothes, and remain as uninfluenced by her companions as if she had been some blossoming geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cella