Nor was this the only reason.  Sally felt that her supreme task was to organize the women in industry, to take this trampled class and make of it a powerful engine for self-betterment, and no women were more prepared, she felt, than the shirtwaist-makers.  She knew that at Marrin’s the conditions were fairly good, though, even there, women and young girls worked sometimes twelve hours and more a day, and earned, many of them, but four or five dollars a week.  What tempted Sally, however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin’s would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands.  It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood.  Industry, so Sally knew, was taking the young girls by the million, overworking them, sapping them of body and soul, and casting them out unfit to bear children, untrained to keep house, undisciplined to meet life and to be a comrade of a man.  And Sally knew, moreover, what could be done.  She knew what she had accomplished with the hat-trimmers.

Nevertheless, she hesitated, not quite sure that the moment had come.  Joe’s words detained her in a way no man’s words had ever done before.  But she thought:  “I do this for him.  I sharpen the edge of his editorial and drive it home.  Words could never hurt Marrin—­but I can.”  She got under the shelter of the doorway and with numb hand pulled a copy of The Nine-Tenths from her pocket, unfolded it, and reread the burning words of:  “Forty-five Treacherous Men.”  They roused all her fighting blood; they angered her; they incited her.

“Joe!  Joe!” she murmured.  “It’s you driving me on—­it’s you!  Here goes!”

It was in some ways a desperate undertaking.  Once, in Newark, a rough of an employer had almost thrown her down the stairs, man-handling her, and while Marrin or his men would not do this, yet what method could she use to brave the two hundred and fifty people in the loft?  She was quite alone, quite without any weapon save her tongue.  To fail would be ridiculous and ignominious.  Yet Sally was quite calm; her heart did not seem to miss a beat; her brain was not confused by a rush of blood.  She knew what she was doing.

She climbed that first flight of semi-circular stairs without hindrance, secretly hoping that by no mischance either Marrin or one of his sub-bosses might emerge.  There was a door at the first landing.  She passed it quickly and started up the second flight.  Then there was a turning of a knob, a rustling of skirts, and a voice came sharp: 

“Where are you going?”

Sally turned.  The forelady stood below her—­large, eagle-eyed woman, with square and wrinkled face, quite a mustache on her upper lip.  Sally spoke easily.