o worried. He is afraid you will harm
yourself for us."

Joe laughed softly.

"Tell him not to worry any longer. It's you who are suffering--not I. I?
I am only having fun."

She was not satisfied.

"We oughtn't to get others mixed up in our troubles."

"It's hard for you, isn't it?" Joe murmured.

"Yes." She smiled sadly. "I suppose it isn't right when you are in the
struggle to get married. Not right to the children."

Joe spoke courageously.

"Never you mind, Mrs. Izon--but just wait. Wait three--four days. We'll
see!"

They did wait, and they did see.

VI

A FIGHT IN GOOD EARNEST

Sally hesitated before going into Marrin's that Monday morning. A
blinding snow-storm was being released over the city, and the fierce
gusts eddied about the corner of Fifth Avenue, blew into drifts, lodged
on sill and cornice and lintel, and blotted out the sky and the world.
Through the wild whiteness a few desolate people ploughed their way,
buffeted, blown, hanging on to their hats, and quite unable to see
ahead. Sally shoved her red little hands into her coat pockets, and
stood, a careless soul, in the white welter.

From her shoulder, some hundred feet to the south, ran the plate-glass
of Marrin's, spotted and clotted and stringy with snow and ice, and
right before her was the entrance for deliveries and employees. A last
consideration held her back. She had been lying awake nights arguing
with her conscience. Joe had told her not to do it--that it would only
stir up trouble--but Joe was too kindly. In the battles of the working
people a time must come for cruelty, blows, and swift victory. Marrin
was an out-and-out enemy to be met and overthrown; he had made traitors
of the men; he had annihilated Izon; she would fight him with the women.

Nor was this the only reason. Sally felt that her supreme task was to
organize the women in industry, to take this trampled class and make of
it a powerful engine for self-betterment, and no women were more
prepared, she felt, than the shirtwaist-makers. She knew that at
Marrin's the conditions were fairly good, though, even there, women and
young girls worked sometimes twelve hours and more a day, and earned,
many of them, but four or five dollars a week. What tempted Sally,
however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark
to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would
be the uprising of the women; the first upward step fro