one of her
companions asked, rather sheepishly, what it meant to join the union she
was on safe ground.

"It means twenty cents a week of good pay out of your envelope," she
declared with emphasis, "that's what it means, and you can bet your life
you'll never get a penny of it back!"

For the next few days the girls marshaled their forces at noon and
debated the union shop; at least, the Jewish girls debated while Annie
and her friends gave that answer, so exasperating to the serious
thinker, the retort irrelevant. Nothing so hurt the earnest supporters
of organized industry as the way the Americans made a joke of it. "Of
course Sophie wants us to join," Annie remarked once, not ill-humoredly,
"it's up to her to bring in members. Didn't I see her going away last
night with the organizer, an _all-rightniker_, sure enough?"

Sophie was enraged at the personal motive ascribed to her, but still
more at having a devoted and unselfish union man called by a name used
to describe self-seeking climbers. "He's not like that," she said
indignantly, "he would to help us. I only talk with him to learn what to
do."

"Well, find me a good looking man who can speak English," Annie went on,
"and who'll take me to the theayter, and I'll go out on your strike,"
and she turned to receive reassuring smiles at her repartee and to start
on a new piece of chewing gum, for there was little time when Annie was
not in some fashion exercising her jaws.

Watching the two girls, one wondered whether in another generation
Sophie would resemble Annie; there seemed little reason to believe that
Annie would ever resemble Sophie. Annie was a loosely put together girl,
with nondescript features and an air of good-humored carelessness. An
unkind critic would have described her as common. She meant to have a
good time when she was young and perhaps to marry later when the good
time was over; that is, if marriage would assure her an easier life than
the one she now led--otherwise she would have nothing of it. She had
seen her mother burdened with many children and she did not mean to
follow her mother's example. Long hours were disagreeable, but it would
be more serious if the moving picture show across the way from where she
lived were to close its doors; that indeed would have aroused her
righteous wrath. Under her father's tutelage she had grown to believe
that an organization of girls was unfeminine, and she enjoyed ridiculing
Sophie's serious arg