y morning (thank goodness it was
not raining, since we stood in shivering groups on the sidewalk) I
answered the Sunday-morning "ad":

GIRLS AND WOMEN

between 16 and 36; learners and experienced assemblers and
foot-press operators on small brass parts; steady; half day
Saturday all year around; good pay and bonus. Apply
Superintendent's office.

The first prospects were rather formidable--some fifty men and boys,
no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance
and we shivered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is
wont under the circumstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose
and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went
into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night
before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess admitted
she had never danced.

"What?" almost yelled the bride, "Never _danced_? Good Gawd! girl, you
might as well be _dead_!"

"You said it!" I chimed in. "Might as well dig a hole in the ground
and crawl in it."

"You said it!" and the husky bride and erstwhile (up to the week
before) elevator operator at twenty-three dollars a week (she said)
gave me a smart thump of understanding. "Girl, you never _danced_?
It's--it's the grandest thing in _life_!"

The plump Jewess looked a little out of things. "I know," she sighed,
"they tell me it 'u'd make me thin, too, but my folks don't let me go
out no place."

Whereat we changed to polishing off profiteers and the high cost of
living. The Jewish girl's brother knew we were headin' straight for
civil war. "They'll be comin' right in folks' homes and killen 'em
before a year's out. See if they don't." I asked her if she'd ever
worked in a union shop. "Na, none of that stuff for me! Wouldn't go
near a union." Both girls railed over the way people were losing their
jobs. Anyhow, the bride was goin' to a dance that night, you jus' bet.

At last some one with a heart came out and told the girls we could
step inside. By that time there were some ten of us, all ages and
descriptions. What would a "typical" factory girl be like, I wonder.
Statistics prove she is young and unmarried more than otherwise, but
each factory does seem to collect the motleyest crew of a little of
everything--old, young, married, single, homely, stupid, bright,
pretty, sickly, husky, fat, thin, and so on down the line. Certain it
is that they