Here she worked nine and a half hours daily in a factory on Nineteenth Street, earning $5 to $6 a week.  Of this wage she paid her sister $4 a week for food and lodging in an inside tenement room in very poor East Side quarters, so far from her work that she was obliged to spend 60 cents a week for carfare.  In her busy weeks she had never more than $1.40 a week left, and often only 60 cents, for her clothing and every other expense.

Getta had been idle, moreover, for nearly six months.  During this time she had been supported by her sister’s family.

In spite of this defeat in her fortunes, her presence had a lovely brightness and initiative, and her inexpensive dress had a certain daintiness.  She was eager for knowledge, and through all her busy weeks had paid 10 cents dues to a self-education society.

Nevertheless, her long dull season was a harassing burden and disappointment both for herself and her sister’s struggling family.

Betty Lukin, a shirt-waist maker of twenty, had been making sleeves for two years.  For nine months of the year she earned from $6 to $10 a week; for the remaining three months only $2 a week.  Her average weekly wage for the year would be about $6.  Of this she spent $3 a week for suppers and a place in a tenement to sleep, and about 50 cents a week for breakfast and luncheon—­a roll and a bit of fruit or candy from a push cart.  Her father was in New York, doing little to support himself, so that many weeks she deprived herself to give him $3 or $4.

She spent 50 cents a week to go to the theatre and 10 cents for club dues.  She had, of course, very little left for dress.  She looked ill clad, and she was, naturally, improperly nourished and very delicate.

Two points in Betty’s little account are suggestive:  one is that she could always help her father.  In listening to the account of an organizer of the Shirt-waist Makers’ Union, a man who had known some 40,000 garment workers, I exclaimed on the hardships of the trade for the number of married men it contained, and was about to make a note of this item when he eagerly stopped me.  “Wait, wait, please,” he cried generously.  “When you put it down, then put this down, too.  It is just the same for the girls.  The most of them are married to a family.  They, too, take care of others.”

To this truth, Betty’s expense of $3 to $4 for her father from her average wage of $6, and little Molly’s item of nine weeks’ board and lodging for her sister, bear eloquent testimony.  On the girls’ part they were mentioned merely as “all in the day’s work,” and with the tacit simplicity of that common mortal responsibility which is heroic.

The other fact to be remarked in Betty’s account is that she spent 60 cents a week for club dues and the theatre, and only 50 cents for all her casual sidewalk breakfasts and luncheons from the push carts.  Such an eager hunger for complete change of scene and thought, such a desire for beauty and romance as these two comparative items show, appear in themselves a true romance.  Nearly all the Russian shirt-waist makers visit the theatre and attend clubs and night classes, whatever their wage or their hours of labor.  Most of them contribute to the support of a family.