kicks to each
cone, around two dollars and a quarter a day. The fact of the matter
was that after kicking 8,500 times that morning I gave up the ghost as
far as that job went. I ached body and soul. By that time I had been
on that one job several days and was sick to death of it. Each cone I
picked up to punch those four holes in made something rub along my
backbone or in the pit of my stomach or in my head--or in all of them
at once. Yet the old woman next me had been at her same job for over a
week. The last place she'd worked she'd done the identical thing six
months--preferred it to changing around. Most of the girls took that
attitude. Up to date that is the most amazing thing I have learned
from my factory experiences--the difference between my attitude toward
a monotonous job, and the average worker's. In practically every case
the girl has actually preferred the monotonous job to one with any
variety. The muscles in my legs ached so I could almost have shed
tears. The day before I had finished at 5 tired out. That morning I
had wakened up tired--the only time in my life. I could hardly kick at
all the first half hour. There was a gnawing sort of pain between my
shoulders. Suppose I really had been on piecework and had to keep up
at that breaking rate, only to begin the next morning still more worn
out? My Gawd!

Most of the girls kick with the same leg all the time. I tried
changing off now and then. With the four-hole machine, using the left
leg meant sitting a little to the right side. Also I tried once using
my left hand to give the right a rest. Thus the boss observed me.

"Now see here, m'girl, why don't you do things the way you're taught?
That ain't the right way!"

He caught me at the wrong moment. I didn't care whether the earth
opened up and swallowed me.

"I know the right way of runnin' this machine good as you do," I
fairly glared at him. "I'm sick and tired of doin' it the right way,
and if I want to do it wrong awhile for a change I guess I can!"

"You ain't goin' to get ahead in this world if you don't do things
_right_, m'girl." And he left me to my fate.

At noon that day the girls got after me. "You're a fool to work the
way you do. You never took a drink all this mornin'--jus' sit there
kickin', kickin', kickin'. Where d'ya think ya goin' to land? In a
coffin, that's where. The boss won't thank ya for killin' yourself on
his old foot press, neither. You're jus' a fool, workin' like tha