Meanwhile committees were appointed from each shop to settle upon a price list.  As the quality of work differed in different shops, a uniform wage was impossible and had to be settled by each shop individually.  When the hundreds of price lists were at last complete, meetings were arranged for each shop committee and their employers.  Again the price list was discussed, and a compromise usually effected.  In almost every shop, however, an increase of from 15 to 20 per cent. was granted.

Apart from wages, the contract insured significant improvements.  Besides calling for recognition of the union it demanded full pay for legal holidays, limited night work during the rush season to eight P.M., abolished all Sunday work, did away with the inside contracting system, under which one girl took out work for several, and provided for a fair allotment of work in slack seasons.

After one hundred and ninety firms had signed up, and the majority of the strikers had returned to their shops, an attempt was made to settle with the still obdurate employers through arbitration, at the suggestion of the National Civic Federation.

Meanwhile picketing was going on; the pickets were being punished, not only with heavy fines, thus depleting the union’s treasury, but with terms in the workhouse.  Some of these criminals for principle were little girls in short skirts, and no attempt was made to separate them when in confinement from disorderly characters.  But what was the result?  The leaders saw to it that a photograph was taken of such a group, with “Workhouse Prisoners” pinned across the breast of each, and worn as a badge of honor, a diploma of achievement, and the newspapers were but too glad to print the picture.  When that spirit of irrepressible energy and revolt once possesses men or women, punishment is converted into reward, disgrace transmuted into honor.

This it was, more even than the story of the wrongs endured, which had its effect on the public.  In the rebound of feeling the illegality of the police behavior was admitted.  The difficulties put in the way of the courageous little pickets led to the forming of parades, and the holding of meetings even in a class of society where no one had counted on receiving sympathy.  The ladies of the rich and exclusive Colony Club learned from the girls themselves of the many disadvantages connected with waist-making.  For instance that in the off season there was little regular work at all; and that all the time there were the fines and breakages.  One girl told how she had been docked for a tucking foot, which, as she said, just wore out on her, “It wasn’t really my fault,” she concluded, “and I think the boss should look out for his own foots.”

Said another:  “When a girl comes five minutes late at my shop, she is compelled to go home.  She may live outside of the city, it does not matter, she must go home and lose a day.