As soon after her arrival as her age permitted, Natalya entered the employment of a shirt-waist factory as an unskilled worker, at a salary of $6 a week.  Mounting the stairs of the waist factory, one is aware of heavy vibrations.  The roar and whir of the machines increase as the door opens, and one sees in a long loft, which is usually fairly light and clean, though sometimes neither, rows and rows of girls with heads bent and eyes intent upon the flashing needles.  They are all intensely absorbed; for if they be paid by the piece, they hurry from ambition, and if they be paid by the week, they are “speeded up” by the foreman to a pace set by the swiftest workers.

In the Broadway establishment, which may be called the Bruch Shirt-waist Factory, where Natalya worked, there were four hundred girls—­six hundred in the busy season.  The hours were long—­from eight till half past twelve, a half hour for lunch, and then from one till half past six.

Sometimes the girls worked until half past eight, until nine.  There were only two elevators in the building, which contained other factories.  There were two thousand working people to be accommodated by these elevators, all of whom began work at eight o’clock in the morning; so that, even if Natalya reached the foot of the shaft at half past seven, it was sometimes half past eight before she reached the shirt-waist factory on the twelfth floor.  She was docked for this inevitable tardiness so often that frequently she had only five dollars a week instead of six.  This injustice, and the fact that sometimes the foreman kept them waiting needlessly for several hours before telling them that he had no work for them, was particularly wearing to the girls.

Natalya was a “trimmer” in the factory.  She cut the threads of the waists after they were finished—­a task requiring very little skill.  But the work of shirt-waist workers is of many grades.  The earnings of makers of “imported” lingerie waists sometimes rise as high as $25 a week.  Such a wage, however, is very exceptional, and, even so, is less high than might appear, on account of the seasonal character of the work.

The average skilled waist worker, when very busy, sometimes earns from $12 to $15 a week.  Here are the yearly budgets of some of the better paid workers, more skilled than Natalya—­operatives receiving from $10 to $15 a week.

Rachael, a shirt-waist operative of eighteen, had been at work three years.  She had begun at $5 a week and her skill had increased until in a very busy week she could earn from $14 to $15 by piece-work.  “But,” she said, “I was earning too much, so I was put back at week’s work, at $11 a week.  The foreman is a bad, driving man.  Ugh! he makes us work fast—­especially the young beginners.”

Rachael, too, had been driven out of Russia by Christian persecution.  Her little sister had been killed in a massacre.  Her parents had gone in one direction, and she and her two other sisters had fled in another to America.