meanest quarter of New York, on stinted food, in scanty clothes, drained with faint health and overwork, could yet walk through her life, giving away half of her wage by day to some one else, enjoying the theatre at night, and, in the poorest circumstances, pouring her slight strength out richly like a song for pleasure and devotion.  Wonderful it is to know that when Natalya Urusova was in darkness, hunger, fright, and cold on Blackwell’s Island, she still could be responsibly concerned for the fortunes of a stranger and had something she could offer to her nobly.  Wonderful to know that, after her very bones had been broken by the violence of a thug of an employer, one of these girls could still speak for perfect fairness for him with an instinct for justice truly large and thrilling.  Such women as that ennoble life and give to the world a richer and altered conception of justice—­a justice of imagination and the heart, concerned not at all with vengeance, but simply with the beauty of the perfect truth for the fortunes of all mortal creatures.

Besides the value to the workers of the spirit of the shirt-waist strike, they gained another advantage.  This was of graver moment even than an advance in wages and of deeper consequences for their future.  They gained shorter hours.

What, then, are the trade fortunes of some of those thousands of other women, other machine operatives whose hours and wages are now as the shirt-waist makers’ were before the shirt-waist strike?  What do some of these other women factory workers, unorganized and entirely dependent upon legislation for conserving their strength by shorter working hours, give in their industry?  What do they get from it?  For an answer to these questions, we turn to some of the white goods sewers, belt makers, and stitchers on children’s dresses, for the annals of their income and outlay in their work away from home in New York.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 12:  Union Label Bulletin, Vol. 2, No.  I, p. 1.]

[Footnote 13:  This expense would at this date probably be heavier, as the working girls at one of the St. George’s Working Girls’ Clubs estimated early this summer that shoes of a quality purchasable two years ago at $2 would now cost $2.50.]

[Footnote 14:  Constance Leupp, in the Survey.]

[Footnote 15:  The circular of advice issued a little later by the Union reads as follows:—­

      RULES FOR PICKETS

    Don’t walk in groups of more than two or three. 
    Don’t stand in front of the shop; walk up and down the block. 
    Don’t stop the person you wish to talk to; walk along side of him. 
    Don’t get excited and shout when you are talking. 
    Don’t put your hand on the person you are speaking to.  Don’t touch
       his sleeve or button.  This may be construed as a “technical
       assault.”