here rather a
privilege than a practice, and not to be generally taken advantage of,
because not generally understood. The present writer has not been able to
learn of other exceptions.]

[Footnote 6: Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 127.]

[Footnote 7: See page 16 (foot-note), "Scientific Management as applied
to Women's Work."]

[Footnote 8: This statement does not include the excellent New York Child
Labor Law for children under sixteen, which allows of no exception at
Christmas time.]

[Footnote 9: Italics ours.]

[Footnote 10: A New York State Commission, appointed for this purpose in
the year 1895, through the efforts of the Consumers' League of the city
of New York.]

[Footnote 11: For fear of a permanent loss of position the saleswomen
themselves have never been urged to appear in support of this
legislation, nor, except in a few instances where this difficulty has
been nullified, have they been present at these hearings.]

CHAPTER II

THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE

I

Among the active members of the Ladies Waist Makers' Union in New York,
there is a young Russian Jewess of sixteen, who may be called Natalya
Urusova. She is little, looking hardly more than twelve years old, with a
pale, sensitive face, clear dark eyes, very soft, smooth black hair,
parted and twisted in braids at the nape of her neck, and the gentlest
voice in the world, a voice still thrilled with the light inflections of
a child.

She is the daughter of a Russian teacher of Hebrew, who lived about three
years ago in a beech-wooded village on the steppes of Central Russia.
Here a neighbor of Natalya's family, a Jewish farmer, misunderstanding
that manifesto of the Czar which proclaimed free speech, and
misunderstanding socialism, had printed and scattered through the
neighborhood an edition of hand-bills stating that the Czar had
proclaimed socialism, and that the populace must rise and divide among
themselves a rich farm two miles away.

Almost instantly on the appearance of these bills, this unhappy man and a
young Jewish friend who chanced to be with him at the time of his arrest
were seized and murdered by the government officers--the friend drowned,
the farmer struck dead with the blow of a cudgel. A Christian mob formed,
and the officers and the mob ravaged every Jewish house in the little
town. Thirty innocent Jews were clubbed to death, and then literally cut
to pieces. Natalya and her fami