ke of the
rats.

_The men laugh together._

THERESE. Yes, you're laughing about it still! About shutting up live
rats in our desks before we came to work.

GIRARD. He! He! We didn't mean any harm.

THERESE. You didn't mean any harm! The little apprentice was ill for a
week, and Madame Dumont had a bad fall. You thought of dozens of things
of that kind, like the typists who mixed up all the letters on the
women's desks. When we went away to get our lunch, you came and spoilt
our work and made the women lose a great part of their day's pay or work
hours of overtime. We don't want any more of that. You agreed we should
have a separate workshop. We'll keep it.

GIRARD. If Monsieur Feliat sticks to you, we'll have to come out on
strike.

THERESE. We don't want Monsieur Feliat to get into trouble because of
us.

GIRARD. Well, what are you going to do about it?

THERESE. We'll take your places.

CHARPIN [_bringing his fist down with a bang upon the table_] Well, I'm
damned!

DESCHAUME [_threateningly_] If you do, we'll have to put you through it!

CONSTANCE. We'll do it!

GIRARD [_to Therese_] D'you understand now, Mademoiselle, why we
socialists don't want women in the factory or in the workshop? The
woman's the devil because of the low salary she has to take. She's a
victim, and she likes to be a victim, and so she's the best card the
employer has to play against a strike. The women are too weak, and if I
might say so, too slavish--

DESCHAUME. Yes, that's the word, mate, slavish.

BERTHE [_very angry_] Look at that man there, my husband, and hear what
he's saying before me, his wife, that he makes obey him like a dog. He
beats me, he does. You don't trouble about my being what you call
slavish when it's you that profits by it! I'd like to know who taught
women to be slavish but husbands like you.

THERESE. You've so impressed it upon women that they're inferior to men,
that they've ended by believing it.

GIRARD. Well, maybe there's exceptions, but it's true in the main.

DESCHAUME. Let 'em stay at home, I says, and cook the bloomin' dinner.

BERTHE. And what'll they cook the days when you spend all your wages in
booze.

GIRARD. It's the people that started you working that you ought to
curse.

BERTHE. I like that! It was my husband himself that brought me to the
workshop.

THERESE. She's not the only one, eh, Vincent?

VINCENT. But I ain't sayin' nothin', I ain't. What are you turnin' on