ar Company, which had advertised that morning for twenty
operators.

"Ever run a power Singer?" queried the foreman.

"No, but we can learn. We're all quick," answered Bessie, who had
volunteered to act as spokesman.

"Yes, I guess you can learn all right, but you won't make very much at
first. All come together?... So! Well, then, I guess you'll want to work
in the same room," and with that he ushered us into a very inferno of
sound, a great, yawning chaos of terrific noise. The girls, who sat in
long rows up and down the length of the great room, did not raise their
eyes to the new-comers, as is the rule in less strenuous workrooms.
Every pair of eyes seemed to be held in fascination upon the flying and
endless strip of white that raced through a pair of hands to feed itself
into the insatiable maw of the electric sewing-machine. Every face,
tense and stony, bespoke a superb effort to concentrate mind and body,
and soul itself, literally upon the point of a needle. Every form was
crouched in the effort to guide the seam through the presser-foot. And
piled between the opposing phalanxes of set faces were billows upon
billows of foamy white muslin and lace--the finished garments wrought by
the so-many dozen per hour, for the so-many cents per day,--and wrought,
too, in this terrific, nerve-racking noise.

The foreman led us into the middle of the room, which was lighted by
gas-jets that hung directly over the girls' heads, although the ends of
the shop had bright sunshine from the windows. He seemed a good-natured,
respectable sort of man, of about forty, and was a Jew. Bessie and me he
placed at machines side by side, and Eunice a little farther down the
line. Then my first lesson began. He showed me how to thread bobbin and
needle, how to operate ruffler and tucker, and also how to turn off and
on the electric current which operated the machinery. My first attempt
to do the latter was productive of a shock to the nerves that could not
have been greater if, instead of pressing the harmless little lever
under the machine with my knee, I had accidently exploded a bomb. The
foreman laughed good-naturedly at my fright.

"You'll get used to it by and by," he shouted above the noise; "but like
as not for a while you won't sleep very good nights--kind of nervous;
but you'll get over that in a week or so," and he ducked his head under
the machine to adjust the belt. Suddenly, above all the frenzied
crashing of the machine