With the coming of February, speeding did not stop at the "Imperial," while overtime crept in. Owing to rush orders the girls found themselves working half an hour or even an hour over the usual time to close. The 5:51 train became a thing of the past with Annie Black and she bemoaned it bitterly; but Hertha noticed that while there was complaint among the American girls and much grumbling over unfairness and meanness, it seemed to end there, while with the Jewish girls some plan was afoot. Seated, together at the luncheon hour, their eyes shining, a slight touch of color in their cheeks, a number of the more serious, with Sophie Switsky at their head, talked of something beside their feeling of fatigue, the forlornness of a cold dinner, or the loss of an evening with a gentleman friend. One day, coming in earlier than usual from luncheon, Hertha found herself drawn into the circle while Sophie explained the meaning of the conference.

The shop must be unionized. Only by this means was there any hope for justice. Without the union to back them, the employers could treat them as they pleased, could confer or withdraw favors at their pleasure. But with the union behind their demands this overtime work would cease and they would secure a better wage. Did Hertha not think the conditions abominable?

Hertha felt embarrassed. To these girls the trade which they worked was their one means of livelihood; they were intense in their attitude toward it, while to her it was only a step to something more, she did not yet know what. She regretted the long hours, but they would not last for many weeks, and as long as she could endure them and make good pay she had not thought of change. Richard Brown, whom she was seeing a good deal of now, urged her to drop the whole thing; but since he knew nothing of her affairs she took his advice lightly. Her little legacy kept her for the time in safety, but Sophie Switsky in her old dress with her wet shoes, sending money to her brother and striving to save for the summer, was not safe. Any day she might face starvation.

"I don't know about these things," Hertha stammered in answer to the question put to her.

"What's doing?" Annie Black asked good naturedly, coming over to them; but before she could receive a reply the signal came to turn to work again.

"I see there's a strike in the 'Parisian,'" Kathleen said the next morning as she scanned the paper. "Perhaps you'll be going out before long; you aren't organized."

"Kathleen," Hertha questioned, "do you believe in the union?"

"Do I believe in the union? Do I believe in God? There, don't be shocked, but there's something tangible about what the union done for me; while, when my sister Maggie broke her arm, just as Johnnie came down with the measles and her husband lost his job, I had to live by faith—and that's a poor thing to fill an empty stomach."

"Please talk sensibly," Hertha said.

"Am I not? I'm only saying that the ways of the Almighty are mysterious while the ways of the union, if you believe in the man who keeps the cash box, are clear and plain. The union is the only thing that stands between the working girl and starvation and sickness and sin. Don't forget that."

There was no laughter now in Kathleen's voice and her eyes glowed with emotion as she looked across the table at her questioner.

"We aren't unionized, Kathleen, but the 'Imperial' is one of the best shops in the city; all the girls say so."

"Then you're living on the work others have done and not doing your part. In sweat and suffering some union made the standard for your shop."

At work much the same talk was in the air. When luncheon came Annie received the answer to her question and learned of what was on foot. For some weeks Sophie and her colleagues had been working upon the other Jewish girls striving to win them to unionism. Now they were ready to turn to the Americans.

"We must join the union," Sophie called out in her clear if broken English. "See how we work long hours, and when the rush is over, no work. And if we say anything we lose our job."

"Shut up, then," said Annie crossly.

She looked about nervously, but as the foreman was absent, proceeded to enter the debate.

"It ain't so bad here," she announced. "There's lots worse shops in New York, Sophie, if you don't know it."

"That's right, Annie," one of her companions chimed in, "I got a lady friend works in a bum shop. You can smell the place before you come up the stairs."

"Sure," echoed another, "this ain't a bad shop; the boss is good to us."

"Good?" Sophie cried indignantly, "I do not call it good. We work and the boss pays us as small as he can."

"Listen!" Annie put down the pickle she was eating and proceeded to instruct the foreigner. "You don't know as much about America as I do, Sophie; you come from Russia where people are slaves. Yes, I read about it in the Sunday paper. But here in the United States every one is free. We don't need unions. If I don't like this shop I can up and go to another. There's nothing to stop me, and if you don't like it you can go, too."

"And if the boss don't like it he can fire us all!"

"Ain't he the right? He pays us. But sure he won't fire us if we stand by him. My father's worked for thirty years with the same house. You bet he don't get fired, and he don't belong to no union either."

Annie was very much in earnest. In her heart she felt intense disdain for these foreigners who came to her country and tried to lead her and other girls into a betrayal of their employer's trust.

Sophie had no idea of being worsted, but her position was difficult. She must try to convert the ignorant mind that felt itself superior to her, and she must do it with an imperfect knowledge of the tongue in which she spoke.

She made a brave attempt. In a torrent of broken English she explained the class struggle and the necessity for organization. She put before the girls the helplessness of the individual worker and her inability to bargain. The whim of a foreman or forelady, a day's sickness, a slackening in the trade, and she might be thrown out on the street. She made them all remember the uncertainty of obtaining work, the days of going from shop to shop, the long hours waiting on the chance of being taken on, only at last to return home disconsolate! She pictured the boss living in luxury while the girls who created his wealth were without proper clothes or food; and yet when they demanded a further share in his prosperity, that but for them could never have existed, he sneered as though they came for charity. Then came her picture of organization: the individual impotent, the mass of individuals, each helping one another, a mighty power that could grapple with the employer and force from him a generous wage. She told them of their trade as it had been in the past, of the battles that the workers had fought to secure for them their present measure of freedom. She decried Annie's free America. If America were free it was because there had been brave men who had overthrown England's tyranny and other brave men who had fought to free the slaves. And with her queer little accent she quoted, "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow."

Unquestionably she overawed her audience. Annie and her companions found her knowledge embarrassing and a little humiliating. They had all been to grammar school, Annie herself had recited a poem once before her class, but she had never looked upon knowledge with much zest and she found it difficult to follow Sophie's arguments. But when one of her companions asked, rather sheepishly, what it meant to join the union she was on safe ground.

"It means twenty cents a week of good pay out of your envelope," she declared with emphasis, "that's what it means, and you can bet your life you'll never get a penny of it back!"

For the next few days the girls marshaled their forces at noon and debated the union shop; at least, the Jewish girls debated while Annie and her friends gave that answer, so exasperating to the serious thinker, the retort irrelevant. Nothing so hurt the earnest supporters of organized industry as the way the Americans made a joke of it. "Of course Sophie wants us to join," Annie remarked once, not ill-humoredly, "it's up to her to bring in members. Didn't I see her going away last night with the organizer, an all-rightniker, sure enough?"

Sophie was enraged at the personal motive ascribed to her, but still more at having a devoted and unselfish union man called by a name used to describe self-seeking climbers. "He's not like that," she said indignantly, "he would to help us. I only talk with him to learn what to do."

"Well, find me a good looking man who can speak English," Annie went on, "and who'll take me to the theayter, and I'll go out on your strike," and she turned to receive reassuring smiles at her repartee and to start on a new piece of chewing gum, for there was little time when Annie was not in some fashion exercising her jaws.

Watching the two girls, one wondered whether in another generation Sophie would resemble Annie; there seemed little reason to believe that Annie would ever resemble Sophie. Annie was a loosely put together girl, with nondescript features and an air of good-humored carelessness. An unkind critic would have described her as common. She meant to have a good time when she was young and perhaps to marry later when the good time was over; that is, if marriage would assure her an easier life than the one she now led—otherwise she would have nothing of it. She had seen her mother burdened with many children and she did not mean to follow her mother's example. Long hours were disagreeable, but it would be more serious if the moving picture show across the way from where she lived were to close its doors; that indeed would have aroused her righteous wrath. Under her father's tutelage she had grown to believe that an organization of girls was unfeminine, and she enjoyed ridiculing Sophie's serious arguments and her picture of the coming day when the worker should own the product of his toil. If the Jewish girl, however, had made a personal appeal, if she had begged her to join the union not for a principle but as a favor to herself, Annie would have walked to headquarters and have put down her twenty cents; for she was a spendthrift by nature and cared less for twenty cents than Sophie did for one.

When the crash came it was a dramatic one. The "Parisian" girls had been out for two weeks, the strikers demanding better pay, while the employers tried to carry on their business with unskilled hands. Sophie reported the situation each day at noon, and urged upon the "Imperial" girls to stand by their striking sisters. Save with her own small group, this argument missed fire. Nevertheless, the most of them were interested in the struggle at the "Parisian" shop and watched hopefully for the triumph of the strikers. On a Thursday morning in February, as the girls began their work, the keener ones noted that there was a difference in the stock. To Hertha it meant nothing, but to Sophie it was portentous; and at noon, contrary to her custom, she rushed out into the street. A few minutes before the noon hour was over she was back again.

"Girls," she cried, hurrying into the room, "see, they give us scabs' work!"

Standing by her machine, she waved her unfinished shirtwaist as though it were an enemy banner. "It's 'Parisian,'" she cried, "there were not enough scabs to do it in their own shop and so they sent it here! We are breaking their strike, their strike for better pay!"

She spoke in Yiddish and the Jewish girls followed her excitedly, expressing indignation at her news.

"We will strike, Sophie," her friend, Rachel, said. "We cannot do work like this; it would be wicked."

Sophie again waved her enemy banner. "Will you be scabs?" she called out, this time in English. "Do you not see? This is not our waist; it is the 'Parisian.' I see the girls; they are downstairs, and they ask us to stop, to stand by them as sisters."

"What's all this noise?" cried the foreman sternly as he entered the room. And then without waiting for a response, though it was a few minutes too soon, he threw on the power.

Sophie, Rachel, and a dozen other Jewish girls stood excitedly in the aisle, failing to go to their seats.

"Get to work!" the foreman called above the din. Then thinking it advisable to consult with a higher authority, he left the room.

In a moment Sophie had thrown off the power.

"Sisters," she cried, "down below are the 'Parisian' girls, waiting for us. Will you be scabs? Will you take their work?"

"We'll pull down the shop," came from her adherents.

"No, you don't," came from Annie Black. "Those 'Parisian' sheenies can stay out if they want for all me. I stop here."

"Oh!" Sophie cried. "Shame!"

She was a little figure, thin, underfed, but with the soul of the fanatic gleaming from her deep eyes. Having known oppression in the land of her birth, she recognized it in the land of her adoption. Poverty was not something to accept as the beggar accepted his dole, nor was it something to struggle against alone. It was a grievous disease that the body politic might cure if only those who suffered courageously battled for health. Before her was the vision of a world set free, and for the moment at least there was to her no sacrifice in accepting hunger and cold if such privation might bring a step nearer the freedom that she worshiped. Only a few of the girls understood her call, but none doubted her sincerity.

"See!" she said, drawing an imaginary line with her foot upon the floor. "All who will not be scabs, all who will not take bread from the mouths of others, come to me, cross the line!"

A number of the Jewish girls rose and walked to Sophie's side. Some went with heads erect, eyes shining, exultant, as though drawing the fine breath of freedom. Others moved slowly, hesitatingly, sometimes casting angry looks at Sophie as though they wished to disobey her call and yet dared not stand out against her. "You go?" asked the girl at Hertha's right.

The call had been so sudden that Hertha, accustomed to taking her time before making any decision, had not moved. The voice at her side aroused her to do her part. Sophie was looking entreatingly in her direction; and with the realization that her choice one way or the other was of little personal moment, she rose from her chair and, saying quietly to her seatmate, "I think we ought to go," crossed the line.

Her stand, little as she appreciated it, had its influence. She had represented the aristocracy of the workroom. Had she been arrogant she would have been hated, but her uniform gentleness coupled with her refined face and graceful carriage, had made her a romantic character about whom one might weave tales of former greatness or unrequited love. That she should join the labor movement, linking herself with the despised foreigner, made a dozen of the doubtful follow in her lead.

"You come, too?" called Sophie to the few remaining Jews and the group of Americans.

"No!" cried Annie, "we ain't no dirty sheenies. We stand by the boss!"

"Scabs! Scabs!" Sophie hissed the word between her teeth. "Dirty scabs!" and with a swift movement she flung the power on again. "Keep on, you dirty scabs," she yelled, and, gathering her followers about her, rushed from the room.

Below stood the "Parisian" girls, and as the strikers appeared, hastily wrapped in their outer clothing, some with hats awry, others with coats flung over their arms, they gave cheer after cheer.

"We knew you'd pull down the shop, Sophie," a big, handsome Jewess cried, grasping the fragile strike-breaker by the arm. "We knew you'd never let the boss keep you working at our leavings."

"Girls," called out another of the leaders, "this is the fourth shop to go out this week. We'll win. Hurrah for the 'Imperial!' We'll win."

"Move on!" a policeman said sharply, pushing his way into the crowd. "What are you doing blocking the street this way? You girls should be at work!"

"We're on a strike," Sophie replied, "we go to Union Hall."

The officer watched them as they moved from the factory building, muttering to himself that they were sure to make trouble striking at the height of the season.

Hertha, though she tried to slip away, found herself caught up by the crowd. She was embarrassed and conscious that they were all the source of amused comment on the part of the spectators. Talking excitedly in Yiddish, the "Imperials" swung into line with their "Parisian" sisters and all started a triumphant progress down the avenue.

"Sure, you was fine," Sophie said to Hertha.

The little Jewish girl had grabbed her new recruit by the arm and with glowing face was leading her along the road to organization and industrial battle. There would be days and months ahead dedicated to the struggle to secure a better wage. The time was momentous, the opening of a great conflict. But to Hertha the time was auspicious for slipping away from these noisy working girls. She had given up her job at their call but she had no thought of following them in their struggle to get their jobs back again. Yet here she was on the avenue in a crowd that was attracting attention from the many passers-by. Supposing Richard Brown should see her or one of the nice people who bowed to her at church! She tried to make her escape, but it was as impossible to get from Sophie's grasp as from the clutch of a small and very friendly bear who had tucked your arm in his. So down the avenue and across into a side street she was swept with the eager, excited band of strike-breakers to Union Hall.

It was a small hall and crowded before they entered it. Confusion was piled upon confusion. Hertha, dropped for a moment by Sophie, who turned to speak to her organizer about whom the girls had joked, started at once to leave the building, but, half lifted off her feet, was forcibly pushed into a seat between two workers. Here she was compelled to remain while a man with a long, dirty beard addressed the meeting in an unknown tongue. So many people were moving about and talking in the rear of the hall that, it seemed to her, even if she had understood Yiddish, she would not have known what was being said. But occasionally the woman at her left would interpret. "He tell you to get a card. Give name. See?"

There was nothing to attract her in the crowd, now that she saw it assembled in this ill-smelling place. She thought the men rude and she wished heartily to get away. But she was wedged in her seat and must remain until time brought release. For a few minutes, however, when Sophie Switsky was on the platform, Hertha listened with attention. Not that she understood the words—Sophie used Yiddish—but emotion may transcend and illumine any speech. Here stood a working girl, young, almost childlike in appearance, whose face and tragic tones told of a willingness to die if need be for a cause. Watching her, for the first time since she had joined the crowd of strikers, Hertha forgot herself. For a little she felt her heart beat in sympathy. But with a sudden shock self-consciousness returned. Sophie had beckoned her, asking her to come to the platform. "Tell what you did!" she called out, smiling. "Some understand the English." The southern girl shook her head and when the woman at her side tried to help her to the aisle, gripped her seat with both hands. The horror of being made conspicuous swept over her again, and she sat with burning cheeks until Sophie mercifully went back to her Yiddish and left her alone.

The speeches were at length over and by dodging and doubling, running from one "Imperial" girl only to have to run from another, Hertha escaped from Union Hall leaving no trace behind. Home at last, she looked with dismay at herself in the glass. The red quill was gone from her hat, her curly hair was tumbling about her face, her coat was a mass of wrinkles and she had caught her sleeve upon a nail and made a bad rent. In a minute, however, she laughed. Freedom had come to her. She would no longer spend her days in a noisy room bending over a machine. She could mend the rent and press the coat and there were other quills to be had in the shops. Life was before her again to do with as she pleased. She recalled Sophie's dramatic cry. "Those who will not be scabs, cross the line!"

"That's the second time I've done it," she said to herself.