ickets, trying to keep the scabs from taking their jobs."

But Hertha would not picket. She said little in response to Kathleen's
explanations, her pleading or her upbraidings. It had never been her way
to talk. Probably what Kathleen said was true but she was not going to
picket. She loathed it from every point of view held up to her. She
could not go to a girl whom she had never seen before and ask her not to
take her job. It would be impertinent and rude and lastly ridiculous,
for she was very glad that she had left the "Imperial" shop. Nor could
she walk hour after hour up and down the street always keeping in motion
lest the policeman call out at her that she was blocking the way. She
shrank at the thought of the hundreds of eyes that she believed would be
cast upon her. No, she would not picket.

Moreover she was beginning to think for herself. As Sophie Switsky had
explained the ways of trade the whole thing was silly. She could not
accept the ethics, or lack of ethics, in the relation of the worker to
his task. That against which she rebelled the girls accepted as
inevitable. She was glad to be out of the "Imperial," not primarily
because of its hours or its wage but because she hated to be worked like
a machine. The months of tortured speeding had made her detest the sight
of a cotton shirtwaist. But the girls were picketing, not for a sane and
attractive task but only for more money. When they got more they would
work faster than ever with tired backs and straining eyes. She was sick
at the thought of it. In her room at home doing her neglected mending,
drawing the needle in a leisurely way through the cloth, she wondered
whether all the girls in the city worked as they had worked at the
'Imperial' and if so whether any of them lived to become old? Well, the
subject was beyond her fathoming. She had touched the labor world and
now was well out of it. Had she gone on longer her back would have
become tired, her eyes have smarted, her body have weakened under the
unnatural strain of production demanded by the changing fashions. Life
was before her again, and of one thing she was sure, she had closed the
factory door.

Despite all her reasoning, however, there was a faint possibility that
Kathleen might have put her on the picket-line, at least for a day, had
Hertha as in the beginning of their acquaintance been quite alone, but
Richard Brown was calling assiduously and his influence was not one that
encouraged