from 1 to 7! One girl in
the room belonged to some union or other. She called out, "Will they
pay time and a half for overtime?" At which everyone broke into
laughter. "Gee! Ida, here's a girl wants time and a half!" Tessie,
Mrs. Lewis, Sadie, and I refused to work till 7. Ida used threats and
argument. "I gotta put down your numbers!" We stood firm--6 o'clock
was long enough. "Gee! You don't notice that last hour--goes like a
second," argued Ida. We filed out when the 6-o'clock bell rang.

The girls all fuss over the hour off at noon. It takes at best twenty
minutes to eat lunch. For the rest of the hour there is no place to
go, nothing to do, but sit in the hard chairs at the marble-topped
tables in the whitewashed room for half an hour till the bell rings at
12.50, and you can sit on the edge of a truck upstairs for ten minutes
longer. They all say they wish to goodness we could have half an hour
at noon and get off half an hour earlier at night.

* * * * *

A tragedy the first pay day. I was so excited when that Saturday came
round, to see what it would all be like--to get my first pay envelope.
About 11.30 two men came in, one carrying a wooden box filled with
little envelopes. Girls appear suddenly from every place and crowd
around the two men. One calls out a number, the girl takes her
envelope and goes off. I keep working away, thinking you are not
supposed to step up till your number is called. But, lo! everyone
seems paid off and the men departing, whereat I leave my work with
beating heart and announce: "You didn't call 1075." But it seems I was
supposed to step up and give 1075. I get handed my little envelope.
Connie Parker in one corner, 1075 in the other, the date, and $6.81.
Six dollars and eighty-one cents, and I had expected fourteen dollars.
(I had told Ida at last that I thought I ought to get fourteen
dollars, and she thought so, too, and said she'd "speak to the man"
about it.) I clutched Ida--"only six dollars and eighty one cents!"
"Well, what more do ya want."

"But you said fourteen dollars."

It seems the week goes Thursday to Thursday, instead of Monday to
Saturday, so my first pay covered only three days and a deduction for
my locker key.

At that moment a little cry just behind me from Louisa. Louisa had
been packing with Irene--dark little, frail little Yiddish Louisa; big
brawny bleached-blond Irene.

"I've lost my pay envelope!"

Wan little Louis