ngs of man's
creation grow beneath their touch; they are performing a series of
motions for which they receive remuneration. The swifter and more
accurate the performance of these motions the better the pay; but of the
finished product they have neither knowledge nor thought. At ten years
of age, with needle or wheel, they are better, more intelligent creators
than at thirty, when, with fagged brain, they mechanically add their
part to the multitude of parts that make up the factory product. At ten
they take joy in the thing they have made and may sell it for a nickel
or a kiss; at thirty they have but one desire, to dispose of their part
of the product as dearly as they can. For, as they have no part in the
creation of the whole, so they have no share in the intricate ways of
business that make possible the factory's life. They are only tools like
the machines they operate, to be used by the few, the creators, who,
like the gods themselves, conceive and command.

At the Imperial shop most of the girls were Jewish. Annie Black and half
a dozen other young Americans sat by themselves at a north window and
when luncheon time came rehearsed the very lively happenings of the
night before over their indigestible food; but the other girls were
Russian Jews and spoke in Yiddish. Hertha was glad to have been seated
with the latter group, for from the first she liked them better than her
compatriots. Her shyness, coupled with her dislike of the vulgar, kept
her from making any acquaintances among the American girls, but she
sometimes regretted that the barrier of language separated her from the
Jewish. Some of them were, to be sure, foolish and vain, but the
majority were serious, and a few appealed to her sense both of decorum
and beauty. These girls had broad foreheads and wore their dark hair
parted and drawn down over the upper part of their ears. Their deep
brown eyes had long curling lashes. They carried serious looking books
to and from their work. She often wondered what they were talking about
when they got together at luncheon, and she always smiled when she
passed them to go out at noon.

One night, early in January, she got into conversation with one of them
as they left the factory. It was Sophie Switsky, a small, thin young
woman of eighteen whose dark hair and eyes made almost too striking a
contrast to her white face. "I go with you?" she had asked, looking up
at Hertha as they went out into the rain, "I go unde