In the struggle itself, the New York experiences were repeated.  The fight went on slowly and stubbornly.  Arrests occurred daily and still more arrests.  Money was the pressing need, not only for food and rent, but to pay fines and to arrange for the constantly needed bonds to bail out arrested pickets.  At length a group of prominent Philadelphia women headed by Mrs. George Biddle, enlisted the help of some leading lawyers, and an advisory council was formed for the protection of legal rights, and even for directing a backfire on lawbreaking employers by filing suits for damages.  With such interest and such help money, too, was obtained.  The residents of the College Settlement, especially Miss Anna Davies, the head resident, and Miss Anne Young, the members of the Consumers’ League, the suffragists and the clubwomen all gave their help.

These women were moved to action by stories such as those of the little girl, whom her late employer had been begging to return to his deserted factory.  “The boss, he say to me, ’You can’t live if you not work.’  And I say to the boss, ’I live not much on forty-nine cents a day.’”

As in New York, the police here overreached themselves in their zeal, and arrested a well-known society girl, whom they caught walking arm-in-arm with a striking waist-maker.  Result, the utter discomfiture of the Director of Public Safety, and triumph for the fortunate reporters who got the good story.

An investigation into the price of food, made just then by one of the evening newspapers came in quite opportunely, forcing the public to wonder whether, after all, the girls were asking for any really higher wage, or whether they were not merely struggling to hold on to such a wage as would keep pace with the increasing prices of all sorts of food, fuel, lighting, the commonest clothing and the humblest shelter.

The strike had gone on for some weeks, when an effort was made to obtain an injunction forbidding the picketing of the Haber factory.  This was finally to crush the strike and down the strikers.  But in pressing for an injunction the manufacturers came up against a difficulty of their own making.  The plea that had all along been urged upon the union had been the futility of trying to continue a strike that was not injuring the employers.  “For,” they had many times said, “we have plenty of workers, our factories are going full blast.”  Whereas the Haber witnesses in the injunction suit were bringing proof of how seriously the business was being injured through the success of the girl pickets in maintaining the strike, and, the money loss, they assured the court was to be reckoned up in thousands of dollars.  This inconsistency impressed the judge, and the strikers had the chance of telling their story in open court.  “Strikers’ Day” was a public hearing of the whole story of the strike.