roved
to have such deftness, nicety of touch, and speed that she could do in an
hour twice as much as most of the other girls and women in the factory.

She sewed from eight to six, with half an hour for lunch. She always took
work home and sometimes she sewed for half of Sunday, for living expenses
consumed all of her $4 a week. Her stomach had failed her in the
intensity of her occupation and from the insufficient food she was able
to purchase, and she needed all the extra money she could earn for
doctor's bills and medicine.

She was thin, spent, worn, and pale, when Gerda came over from Russia,
four years after Elena had arrived. Gerda was a strong, attractive girl,
with good health, dark curling hair, and a lovely color.

Entering the same factory with Elena, she soon became almost as able as
her sister in fine sewing, and almost as ill. She earned $3 a week.

The factory was owned by a young German widow, Mrs. Mendell, an extremely
attractive, pretty, and skilful person, appearing in her office an
agreeable and well-educated young woman, and able to produce the most
engaging little dresses, caps, and undermuslins for children, at a high
profit, by paying extremely small wages to skilled immigrant
seamstresses. In her workroom, Mrs. Mendell alternately terrorized and
flattered the girls. She speeded them constantly. Unless they had done as
much work as she wished to accomplish through the day, she refused to
speak to them. She made the younger girls put on her boots, and dress her
when she changed her office frock for the clothes in which she motored
home at night. And in the morning she punished girls who had not
finished as much work as she wished over night by giving them the worst
paid and hardest sewing in the factory.

One night she sent Elena and Gerda home with two great bundles of
infants' bands--shoulder-straps and waistbands--to be made ready to be
fastened to long skirts the next morning. They were all to be
feather-stitched around the shoulder-bands and upper edges of the
waist-bands, three buttons sewed on, and three buttonholes made in each.
This was to be done for 2-1/2 cents a piece--a quarter a dozen.

In the morning after she had completed this work, Elena felt so nervous
and ill when she went to the factory, that as she handed Mrs. Mendell
back the bundle and received the quarter, she burst into tears. She told
Mrs. Mendell she was sick. She could not live and work as she was
working. Gerd