of big men
would see to the matter.

Joe had a dull sense of some monstrous social cleavage; the world
divided into the rulers and the ruled, the drivers and the driven. He
felt uncomfortable, and so did the throng. There was a feeling as if the
crowd ought to have a throat to give vent to some strange, fierce fact
that festered in its heart.

And then toward the end the chairman announced that one of the
hat-trimmers, one of the girls who worked--in another hat factory, would
address the meeting--Miss Sally Heffer.

A girl arose, a young woman with thin, sparse, gold-glinting hair, with
face pallid and rounded, with broad forehead and gray eyes of remarkable
clarity. She was slim, dressed in a little brown coat and a short brown
skirt. She came forward, trembling, as if overcome by the audience. She
paused, raised her head and tried to speak. There was not a sound, and
suddenly the audience became strangely still, leaning forward, waiting.

Then again she tried to speak; it was hardly above a whisper; and yet so
clear was the hush that Joe heard every word. And he knew, and all knew,
that this young woman was overcome, not by the audience, but by the
passion of the tragedy, the passion of an oppressed class. She was the
voice of the toilers at last dimly audible; she was the voice of a
million years of sore labor and bitter poverty and thwarted life. And
the audience was thrilled, and the powerful were shaken with remorse.

Trembling, terrible came the words out of that little body on the far
stage:

"I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk
good-fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have
found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews
and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these
things are to-day: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews
the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and
the rack is here in the fire-trap structures that will destroy us the
minute they catch on fire.

"This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city.
Every week I learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers.
Every year thousands of us are maimed. _The life of men and women is so
cheap and property is so sacred!_ There are so many of us for one job,
it matters little if sixty of us are burned to death.

"We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you hav