immings for six
years in an applique factory.

Eight and a quarter hours of this work a day exhausted her. She received
$7 a week. Her eyes were fast failing her from the close watch she had
to keep on her scissors to guard against cutting too far.

She often went to bed at eight or half past eight o'clock, worn out by
one day's task and eager to be fresh for the next, for she was hard
pressed by the competition of young eyes and quick fingers.

Newer workers were given finer and more profitable work to do. In spite
of her faithfulness, and straining for speed, she was laid off two months
earlier in the last season than in any previous year, and newer helpers
were retained. She thought the forewoman was prejudiced against her, and
naturally could not understand the truth that from the standpoint of
modern industry she was aged at forty-five.

She had been paying $3 a week for board in a philanthropic home, and
there she was permitted to stay and to pay for her board and lodging when
she had no money by helping with the housework. Miss Ryan, however, had
exhausted herself less rapidly than Elena and Gerda Nakov, two young
Polish women of thirty-three and twenty-nine, skilled hand-workers on
children's dresses.

Elena had come from South Russia to seek her fortunes when she was
sixteen years old. Her mother and father were dead. She had been educated
by an uncle, with whom her younger sister, Gerda, remained.

According to the testimony of Elena's brother-in-law, the kind-hearted
husband of a married sister living in New York, and also according to the
testimony of Gerda, Elena at sixteen was a very beautiful girl. She was
small, but very strong and well knit, with a fresh, glowing color, deep
gray eyes, and heavy reddish gold hair, growing low upon her forehead in
a widow's peak.

Elena first found work as a cigarette roller, earning $4 a week. Here she
was subjected to constant insolence and scurrilous language from the
foreman and the men working with her. Her eyes turned black with contempt
when she spoke of this offence--"Oh" she exclaimed, "I thought, 'I am
poor, but I will never in my life be so poor as to stand things like
that.'"

She left the tobacco factory and found employment as a neckwear worker.
Here, too, she earned $4, but the season grew dull, and she entered a
small factory, where she worked on children's dresses, embroidering,
buttonholing, faggoting, and feather-stitching. In this craft she p