ted in her ordeal by a vital love of
observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present
writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these
qualities she could spend night after night locked up with the women of
the street, in her funny, enormous prison clothes, and remain as
uninfluenced by her companions as if she had been some blossoming
geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cellar as a convenience for a
few minutes, and then carried out again to her native fresh air. But such
qualities as hers cannot be demanded of all very young and unprotected
girls, and to place them wantonly with women of the streets has in
general an outrageous irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently
implied by the experience of a girl of Natalya's individual penetration
and self-reliance.

III

In the period since the strike began many factories had been settling
upon Union terms. But many factories were still on strike, and picketing
on the part of the Union was continuing, as well as unwarranted arrests,
like Natalya's, on the part of the employers and the police. The few
exceptions to the general rule of peaceful picketing have been stated.
Over two hundred arrests were made within three days early in December.
On the 3d of December a procession of ten thousand women marched to the
City Hall, accompanying delegates from the Union and the Woman's
Trade-Union League, and visited Mayor McClellan in his office and gave
him this letter:--

HONORABLE GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN,
Mayor of the City of New York.

We, the members of the Ladies' Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a
body of thirty thousand women, appeal to you to put an
immediate stop to the insults and intimidations and to the
abuses to which the police have subjected us while we have been
picketing. This is our lawful right.

We protest to you against the flagrant discrimination of the
Police Department in favor of the employers, who are using
every method to incite us to violence.

We appeal to you directly in this instance, instead of to your
Police Commissioner.

We do this because our requests during the past six months have
had no effect in decreasing the outrages perpetrated upon our
members, nor have our requests been granted a fair hearing.

Yours respectfully,
S. SHINDLER, Secretary.

The Mayor thanked the committee for bringing the matter to h