children, nor carried out by organized labor for the benefit of a large unorganized group.  Of the economy of the system there is no question, seeing that a well-organized committee can always purchase supplies in quantities at wholesale price, sometimes at cost price, and frequently can, as was done in this instance, draw upon the good feeling of merchants and dealers, and receive large contributions of bread, flour, coal and other commodities.  Commissary stations were established in different localities.  Here is a sample ration as furnished at one of the stores, although, thanks to the kindness of friends, the allowance actually supplied was of a much more varied character: 

Bread     18 loaves
Coffee     1 lb. 
Sugar      5 lbs. 
Beans      5 lbs. 
Oatmeal    2 pkgs. (large)
Ham       10 lbs.

For Italians, oatmeal was replaced by spaghetti, and Kosher food for those of the orthodox Jewish faith was arranged for through orders upon local grocery stores and kosher butchers in the Jewish quarter.  The tickets entitling to supplies were issued through the shop chairman at the local halls to those strikers known to be in greatest need.

The commissary plan, however, still left untouched such matters as rent, fuel, gas, and likewise the necessities of the single young men and girls.  Also the little babies and the nursing mothers, who needed fresh milk, had to be thought of and provided for.  There were certain strictly brought up, self-respecting little foreign girls who explained with tears that they could not take an order on a restaurant where there were strange people about, because “it would not be decent,” a terrible criticism on so many of our public eating places.  So a small separate fund was collected which gave two dollars a week per head, to tide over the time of trouble for some of these sorely pressed ones.  There was a committee on milk for babies, and another on rent, and the League handled the question of coal.

With these necessities provided for, the strikers settled down to a test of slow endurance.  Picketing went on as before, and although arrests were numerous, and fines followed in the train of arrests, the police and the court situation was at no time so acute as it had been in either New York or Philadelphia.

The heroism shown by many of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate.  Small inconveniences were made light of.  Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated room, and so have a shelter over their heads “till the strike was over.”  A League member found her way one bitter afternoon in December to one home where lay an Italian woman in bed with a new-born baby and three other children, aged three, four and five years respectively, surrounding her.  There was neither food nor fuel in the house.  On the bed were three letters from the husband’s