the working days in the week for another three months,
and employment with overtime three nights in a week and an occasional
half day on Sunday, for between two and three months. Legal holidays and
a few days of illness made up the year.

In full weeks her wage is $8. Her income for the year had been $366, and
she had been able to save nothing. She had paid $208 for her board and
lodging, at the rate of $4 a week; a little more than $100 for clothing;
$38 for carfare, necessitated by living in the Bronx; $3 for a doctor;
$2.60 to a benefit association, which assures her $3 a week in case of
illness; $5 for the theatre; and $6 for Union dues.

Her work was very exhausting. Evenly spaced machine ruffling on
petticoats is difficult, and she had a great deal of this work to do. She
sewed with a one-needle machine, which carried, however, five cottons and
was hard to thread. It may be said here that the number of needles does
not necessarily determine the difficulty of working on sewing-machines;
two-needle machines are sometimes harder to run than five or even
twelve-needle machines, because they are more cheaply and clumsily
constructed and the material is held less firmly by the metal guide under
the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, that were tired by
the stitching, but her shoulders and her back, from the jar of the
machines. Every month she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed
every cent she made, she never remained at home, when the factory was
open.

One of the most trying aspects of machine-speeding, in the sewing trades,
is the perpetual goading and insistence of the foremen and forewomen,
frequently mentioned by other workers besides Yeddie. Two years ago, in a
waist and dress factory where 400 operatives--more than 300 girls and
about 20 men--were employed for the company by a well-known
subcontractor, Jake Klein, a foreman asked Mr. Klein to beset some of the
girls for a degree of speed he said he was unwilling to demand. The
manager discharged him. He asked to speak to the girls before he went
away. The manager refused his request. As Mr. Klein turned to the girls,
his superior summoned the elevator man, who seized Klein's collar,
overpowered him, and started to drag him over the floor toward the
stairs. "Brothers and sisters," Klein called to the operatives, "will you
sit by and see a fellow-workman used like this?" In one impulse of clear
justice, every worker arose, walked out of the sho