This stupefying and wearying effect of machine-work from concentration and intensity of application and attention was frequently mentioned by the factory workers in their accounts.

Tina Levin, a young girl eighteen years old, had worked two years in an underwear factory in New York; and before her arrival in America, six years in an underwear factory in Russia.  She had come from abroad to her fiance, Ivan Levin, whom she had recently married.  She still worked in the underwear factory, although she was not entirely self-supporting.  She and her young husband met the League’s Inquirer at a Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Club, where they gave between them the account of Tina’s self-supporting years.

Before her marriage, Tina had worked at a machine ten hours a day for an underwear manufacturer on Canal Street.  In the height of the season the shop often worked overtime until 8 o’clock, two or three nights a week.  Besides this, many of the girls took hand work home, where they sewed till eleven or twelve o’clock.  But Tina was so exhausted by her long day that she never did this.  Working as hard as possible, she earned $7, and sometimes $8 a week, during the six busy months.

For part of this time she lived a full hour-and-a-half’s car ride from the factory.  So that with dressing, and eating two meals at her lodging, when she was at the machine twelve hours a day, she had only about six hours sleep.

At least half the year was so dull that she could earn only $3 or $3.50 a week; and she was so worn out that every month she was utterly unable to work for three or four days.  This loss had reduced her income by $32.  She had been obliged to pay $9 for medicine.  Her income for the year had been about $262.  For board and lodging in a tenement she had paid $3.50 a week; for carfare 60 cents a week; and she had sent $5 home in the year; and given $9 for medicine; $36 for the dentist; and $1 a month to the Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Society.  She had less than $10 left for dress for the year.  But her lover had helped her with many presents; and had given her many good times and pleasures, besides those obtainable at the Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Society.

Tina had the advantage of a knowledge of English.  This lack of opportunity to learn the tongue of the country in which she lived was poignantly regretted by another machine operative, Fanny Leysher, a white-goods operative of twenty-one who had been in America four years.  She lived in one room of a tenement off the Bowery, where she boarded and lodged for $4 a week.  She worked in a factory within walking distance, earning $7 a week in the busy season.

Fanny was a pretty, fair girl, with a graceful presence, a wistful smile, and the charm peculiar to blond Russians with long gray eyes.  She looked, however, painfully frail and white.  In the factory she had worked for four years, first at time work, then at piece-work.  She could earn $7 a week by stitching up and down the fronts and stitching on the belts of 108 corset covers—­9 dozen a day.  This was the most she could possibly complete.  The unremitting speeding and close attention this amount of stitching required left her too exhausted at six o’clock to be able to attend night school, or to learn English.  She suffered greatly from headache and from backache.