fast as they could; but foreman and manufacturer were
continually calling for greater speed. The exigencies of the
trade--capricious changes of style, a keen competition among the
manufacturers--created a period of swift production to be followed by a
period of unemployment. Now, in midwinter, work was speeded up; and,
bending over each whirring machine, was a taut, tired girl whose one
thought, if she thought at all, was of the signal that should come at
last to tell her that this day's work was done.

Hertha never became accustomed to the daily speeding. Not only did her
body rebel against it, but her spirit refused to accept its sacrilege.
She had always enjoyed making clothes, seeing a garment grow under her
fingers. No matter how simple the article might be at which she was at
work, she had felt the satisfaction of the creator when the final stitch
was taken and the parts had become a useful whole. But now nothing grew;
everything was made artificially by a series of explosions as they made
puffed rice. At her machine she ran row after row of small tucks,
fashioning the shoulders to give fullness to the bust. It was a graceful
pattern, but if she stopped a moment to think of it she lost money for
her employer and for herself. Her mind must be concentrated on her
machine and on the goods that she fed it with the constant suggestion of
hurrying, and again hurrying, and under the accusing eye of the foreman
hurrying yet again.

Among the few American girls who worked at the shop was one Annie Black,
who lived in a suburb. Annie seemed always to be running to and from
trains. Her life on the road bore a striking similarity to her life at
her machine. She rushed in the morning to get the 6:59, which, if it
were on time, got her in and at work by eight. By shortening her noon
hour she could just catch the 5:51 train for home. But if the 6:59 was
late, then it was futile to attempt to make up lost time and she must
work until nearly six and take the 6:41 back to a late dinner. And as
her trains moved so moved her machine with its girl engine driver
impatient for each run to be over and done.

We all love to make things, and the tragedy of the modern factory is
that it denies this joy to the worker. Within the great buildings that
we see from the street car window or that we flash by on the railroad
train, men and women are not fashioning shirtwaists or shoes or
automobiles; they are not seeing one out of the million thi