ute. So fast they flew that a break in needle or thread ruined a
shirtwaist; hence, never did she allow her eyes to wander, never during
a day of ten to fourteen hours, while, continuously, the needles danced
up and down like flashes of steel or lightning. At times it seemed as if
the machine were running away from her and she had to strain her body to
keep it back. And so, when she reeled home late at night, her smarting
eyes saw sharp showers of needles in the air every time she winked, and
her back ached intolerably.

"I never dreamt," said Myra, "that people had to work like that!"

"Oh, that's not all!" said Rhona, and went on. Her wages were rarely
over five dollars a week, and for months, during slack season, she was
out of work--came daily to the factory, and had to sit on a bench and
wait, often fruitlessly. And then the sub-contracting system, whereunder
the boss divided the work among lesser bosses who each ran a gang of
toilers, speeding them up mercilessly, "sweating" them! And so the young
girls, sixteen to twenty-five years old, were sapped of health and joy
and womanhood, and, "as Mr. Joe wrote, the future is robbed of wives and
mothers!"

Myra was amazed. She had a new glimpse of the woman problem. She saw now
how millions of women were being fed into the machine of industry, and
that thus the home was passing, youth was filched of its glory, and the
race was endangered. This uprising of the women, then, meant more than
she dreamed--meant the attempt to save the race by freeing the women
from this bondage. Had they not a right then to go out in the open, to
strike, to lead marches, to sway meetings, to take their places with
men?

Such thoughts, confused and swift, came to her, and she asked Rhona what
had happened. How had the strike started? First, said Rhona, there was
the strike at Marrin's--a spark that set off the other places. Then at
Zandler's conditions had become so bad that one morning Jake Hedig, her
boss, a young, pale-faced, black-haired man, suddenly arose and shouted
in a loud voice throughout the shop:

"I am sick of slave-driving. I resign my job."

The boss, and some of the little bosses, set upon him, struck him, and
dragged him out, but as he went he shouted lustily:

"Brothers and sisters, are you going to sit by your machines and see a
fellow-worker used this way?"

The machines stopped: the hundreds of girls and the handful of men
marched out simultaneously. Then, swiftl