n
heat what is in their pails.

"But they do such things! They pick out vegetable from soup and throw on
the floor. They pour away coffee. They make the place like a home of
animals, and when I say, 'Girls, I want much that all should be clean
and nice, and that you never waste,' they laugh again. I find that
difficult, for what answer can be made to laugh? I go on, but they break
bowls and insult the Swiss that make the soup, and tell her I buy
dog-meat and such, and she say she will no more of it. Then I call the
doctor again and say to them, 'Listen while he tells you what is good to
eat.' They were not all so fools, but the fool ones rule, and they
listen, but they laugh always. That is American,--to laugh and think
everything joke and not see what earnest must be for any good living. I
give the coffee-urn to the best girl and tell her to have care of it,
but do what we will they think somehow I am silly, and like best to eat
their pie and then talk. A small pie at the corner is three cents, and
they buy one, sometimes two, and it is sweet and fills and they are
content. It is only men that think that will change a habit. I find for
the worker always till thought begins they are conservative, and an
experiment, a change, is distress to them. So I say, 'Let them do they
will. Air is here and that they cannot stop, but for food I will do no
more.'

"These all were small things, and as I went on I said, as in the
beginning, that for those who did the same work must be the same wage.
My men had always ten dollars, and sometimes twelve or fifteen dollars a
week; but the best woman had ten dollars, and she had worked five years
and knew all. It is a law--unwritten, but still a law--that women shall
not have what men earn; and when I say one is good as another, the
brother of the woman I make equal with him said first this should never
be; and when I said 'It must,' he talk to all the men at noon, and
before the looms begin again they come and tell me that if I do so they
will work no more. I talk to them all: 'This is a country where men
boast always that woman has much honor, but I see not that she has more
justice than where there is less honor. Shame on men that will let women
work all the hours and as well as they,--yes, many times better,--and
then threaten strike if they are paid the same!' But it was all no good.
For that time I must yield, because I had much work that was promised;
but I said: 'For now I do as y