ors
were employed--thirteen girls and one lone young man. They said that
on former piece rates this man used to make from ninety dollars to one
hundred dollars a week. The operators were all well paid, especially
by candy, brass, and laundry standards, but they were a skilled lot. A
very fine-looking lot too--some of the nicest-looking girls I've seen
in New York. Everyone had a certain style and assurance. It was good
for the eyes to look on them after the laundry thirteen-dollar-a-week
type.

When the first operators had done their part the dresses were handed
over to the drapers. There were two drapers; they were getting around
fifty dollars a week before the hard times. One of the drapers was as
attractive a girl as I ever saw any place--bobbed hair, deep-set eyes,
a Russian Jewess with features which made her look more like an
Italian. She spoke English with hardly any accent. She dressed very
quietly and in excellent taste. All day long the two draped dresses on
forms--ever pinning and pinning. The drapers turned the dresses over
to certain operators, who finished all machine sewing. The next work
fell to the finishers.

In that same end of the factory sat the four finishers, getting "about
twenty dollars a week," but again no one seemed sure. Two were
Italians who could talk little English. One was Gertie, four weeks
married--"to a Socialist." Gertie was another of the well-dressed
ones. If you could know these dress factory girls you would realize
how, unless gifted with the approach of a newspaper reporter--and I
lack that approach--it was next to impossible to ask a girl herself
what she was earning. No more than you could ask a lawyer what his
fees amounted to. The girls themselves who had been working long
together in the same shop did not seem to know what one another's
wages were. It was a new state of affairs in my factory experience.

The finishers, after sewing on all hooks and eyes and fasteners and
doing all the remaining handwork on the dresses, turned them over to
the two pressers, sedate, assured Italians, who ironed all day long
and looked prosperous and were very polite.

They brought the dresses back to Jean and her helper--two girls who
put the last finishing touches on a garment before it went into the
showroom--snipping here and there, rough edges all smoothed off. It
was to Jean the boss called my second morning, very loud so all could
hear: "If you find anything wrong mit a dress, don'