All that made Sarina Bashkitseff’s starved and drudging days endurable for her was her clear determination to escape from them by educating herself.  Her fate might be expressed in Whitman’s words, “Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.”

Whatever her circumstances, few persons in the world could ever be in a position to pity her.

Marta Neumann, another unskilled factory worker, an Austrian girl of nineteen, was also trying to escape from her present position by educating herself at night school, but was drained by cruel homesickness.

Marta had spent all her youth, since her childhood, at home,—­four years in New York,—­in factory work, without the slightest prospect of advancement.  Her work was of the least skilled kind—­cutting off the ends of threads from men’s suspenders, and folding and placing them in boxes.  She earned at first $3 a week, and had been advanced to $5 by a 50-cent rise at every one of the last four Christmases since she had left her mother and father.  But she knew she would not be advanced beyond this last price, and feared to undertake heavier work, as, though she had kept her health, she was not at all strong.

She worked from eight to six, with half an hour at noon.  On Saturday the factory closed at five in winter and at one in summer.  Her income for the year had been $237.50.  She had spent $28.50 for carfare; $13 for a suit; $2 for a hat; and $2 for a pair of shoes she had worn for ten months.  Her board and lodging with a married sister had cost her $2.50 a week, less in one way than with strangers.  But she slept with part of her sister’s family, did her own washing and her sister’s, scrubbed the floor, and rose every day at half past five to help with the work and prepare her luncheon before starting for the factory at seven.

Marta could earn so little that she had never been able to save enough to make her deeply desired journey back to Austria to see her mother and father.  Although both their children were in the new country, her mother and father would not be admitted under the immigration law, because her father was blind.

The lack of opportunity to rise, among older unskilled factory workers, may be illustrated by the experience of Mrs. Hallett, an American woman of forty, a slight, gentle-voiced little widow, who had been packing candies and tying and labelling boxes for sixteen years.  In this time she had advanced from a wage of $4 a week to a wage of $6, earned by a week of nine-hour days, with a Saturday half-holiday.

However, as with Marta, this had represented payment from the company for length of service, and not an advance to more skilled or responsible labor with more outlook.  In Mrs. Hallett’s case this was partly because the next step would have been to become a clerk in one of the company’s retail stores, and she was not strong enough to endure the all-day standing which this would require.  Mrs. Hallett liked this company.  The foreman was considerate, and a week’s vacation with pay was given to the employees.