e end of two weeks, if I wasn't
earning more than fourteen dollars--it was a piecework system, with
fourteen dollars as a minimum--I'd have to go, and make room for some
one who could earn more than fourteen dollars.

I wonder if the Welfare Worker would have made the same speech. That
manager was a fraud. On our floor, at least, no one had ever been
known to earn more than her weekly minimum. He was a smart fraud. Only
I asked too many questions upstairs, he would have had me working like
a slave to hold my job.

By the time clock, where I was told to wait, stood the woman just
ahead of me in the line. She was the first really bitter soul I had
run across in factory work. Her husband had been let out of his job,
along with all workers in his plant, without notice. After January 1st
they might reopen, but at 1914 wages. There was one child in the
family. The father had hunted everywhere for work. For one week the
mother had searched. She had tried a shoe polish factory; they put her
on gluing labels. The smell of the glue made her terribly sick to her
stomach--for three days she was forced to stay in bed. Three times she
had tried this laundry. Each day, after keeping her waiting in line an
hour or so, they had told her to come back the next day. At last she
had gotten as far as the time clock. I saw her several times in the
evening line after that; she was doing "pretty well"--"shaking" on the
third floor. Her arms nearly dropped off by evening, but she sure was
glad of the thirteen dollars a week. Her husband had found nothing.

The third to join our time-clock ranks was a Porto-Rican. She could
speak no English at all. They put her at scrubbing floors for twelve
dollars a week. About 4 that afternoon she appeared on our floor, all
agitated. She needed a Spanish girl there to tell the boss she was
leaving. She was one exercised piece of temper when it finally
penetrated just what her job was.

"Family" occupied two-thirds of the sixth and top floor--the other
third was the "lunch room." Five flights to walk up every morning. But
at least there was the lunch room without a step up at noon. And it
was worth climbing five flights to have Miss Cross for a forelady.
Sooner or later I must run into a disagreeable forelady, for the
experience. To hear folks talk, plenty of that kind exist. Miss Cross
was glad I was to be on her floor. She told the manager and me she'd
noticed me that morning in line and just thought I'd