Part 37 (1/2)

”Isn't there some way I can help?”

A strange expression came to his face, of surprise, of wonder.

”_You_ help?”

”Yes--I--”

”Mr. Blaine! Mr. Blaine!” Some one across the room was calling. ”There's an employer here to see you!”

Joe leaped up, took Myra's hand, and spoke hastily.

”Wait and meet my mother. And come again--sometime. Sometime when I'm not so rushed!”

And he was gone--gone out of the room.

Myra arose, still warm with the touch of his hand--for his hand was almost fever-warm. All that she knew was that he had suffered and was suffering, and that she must help. She was burning now with an eagerness to learn about the strike, to understand what it was that so depressed and enslaved him, what it was that was slowly killing him. Her old theories met the warm clasp of life and vanished. She forgot her viewpoint and her delicacy. Life was too big for her shallow philosophy.

It seized upon her now and absorbed her.

She strode back to the young girl, who she learned later was named Rhona Hemlitz, and who was but seventeen years old.

She said: ”Tell me about the strike! Can't we sit down together and talk? Have you time?”

”I have a little time,” said Rhona, eagerly. ”We can sit here!”

So they sat side by side and Rhona told her. Rhona's whole family was engaged in sweat-work. They lived in a miserable tenement over in Hester Street, where her mother had been toiling from dawn until midnight with the needle, with her tiny brother helping to sew on b.u.t.tons, ”finis.h.i.+ng”

daily a dozen pairs of pants, and making--_thirty cents_.

Myra was amazed.

”Thirty cents--dawn till midnight! Impossible!”

And then her father--who worked all day in a sweatshop.

”And you--what did you do?” asked Myra.

Rhona told her. She had worked in Zandler's s.h.i.+rtwaist factory--bending over a power-machine, whose ten needles made forty-four hundred st.i.tches a minute. So fast they flew that a break in needle or thread ruined a s.h.i.+rtwaist; hence, never did she allow her eyes to wander, never during a day of ten to fourteen hours, while, continuously, the needles danced up and down like flashes of steel or lightning. At times it seemed as if the machine were running away from her and she had to strain her body to keep it back. And so, when she reeled home late at night, her smarting eyes saw sharp showers of needles in the air every time she winked, and her back ached intolerably.

”I never dreamt,” said Myra, ”that people had to work like that!”

”Oh, that's not all!” said Rhona, and went on. Her wages were rarely over five dollars a week, and for months, during slack season, she was out of work--came daily to the factory, and had to sit on a bench and wait, often fruitlessly. And then the sub-contracting system, whereunder the boss divided the work among lesser bosses who each ran a gang of toilers, speeding them up mercilessly, ”sweating” them! And so the young girls, sixteen to twenty-five years old, were sapped of health and joy and womanhood, and, ”as Mr. Joe wrote, the future is robbed of wives and mothers!”

Myra was amazed. She had a new glimpse of the woman problem. She saw now how millions of women were being fed into the machine of industry, and that thus the home was pa.s.sing, youth was filched of its glory, and the race was endangered. This uprising of the women, then, meant more than she dreamed--meant the attempt to save the race by freeing the women from this bondage. Had they not a right then to go out in the open, to strike, to lead marches, to sway meetings, to take their places with men?

Such thoughts, confused and swift, came to her, and she asked Rhona what had happened. How had the strike started? First, said Rhona, there was the strike at Marrin's--a spark that set off the other places. Then at Zandler's conditions had become so bad that one morning Jake Hedig, her boss, a young, pale-faced, black-haired man, suddenly arose and shouted in a loud voice throughout the shop:

”I am sick of slave-driving. I resign my job.”

The boss, and some of the little bosses, set upon him, struck him, and dragged him out, but as he went he shouted l.u.s.tily: