At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr. Norse.  There was irony in the fates allotted us.  She was eager to make money; I was indifferent.  Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in mine.  She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could make; I was offered the favourite work in the mill—­shirt finishing, at thirty cents a day and all I could make; and when I shook my head to see how far I could exploit my indifference and said, “Thirty cents is too little,” Mr. Norse’s answer was:  “Well, I suppose you, like the rest of us, are trying to earn a living.  I will guarantee you seventy-five cents a day for the first two weeks, and all you can make over it is yours.”  My apprenticeship began under the guidance of an “old girl” who had been five years in the mill.  A dozen at a time the woolen shirts were brought to us, complete all but the adding of the linen strips in front where the buttons and buttonholes are stitched.  The price of this operation is paid for the dozen shirts five, five and a half and six cents, according to the complexity of the finish.  My instructress had done as many as forty dozen in one day; she averaged $1.75 a day all the year around.  While she was teaching me the factory paid her at the rate of ten cents an hour.

A touch of the machine’s pedal set the needle to stitching like mad.  A second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt standstill.  For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was not an instant’s harmony between what I did and what I intended to do.  I sewed frantically into the middle of shirts.  I watched my needle, impotent as it flew up and down, and when by chance I made a straight seam I brought it to so sudden a stop that the thread raveled back before my weary eyes.  When my back and fingers ached so that I could no longer bend over the work, I watched my comrades with amazement.  The machine was not a wild animal in their hands, but an instrument that responded with niceness to their guidance.  Above the incessant roar and burring din they called gaily to each other, gossiping, chatting, telling stories.  What did they talk about?  Everything, except domestic cares.  The management of an interior, housekeeping, cooking were things I never once heard mentioned.  What were the favourite topics, those returned to most frequently and with surest interest?  Dress and men.  Two girls in the seaming-room had got into a quarrel that day over a packer, a fine looking, broad-shouldered fellow who had touched the hearts of both and awakened in each an emotion she claimed the right to defend.  The quarrel began lightly with an exchange of unpleasant comment; it soon took the proportions of a dispute which could not give itself the desired vent in words alone.  The boss was called in.  He made no attempt to control what lay beyond his power, but applying factory legislation to the case, he ordered the two Amazons to “register out” until the squabble was settled, as the factory did not propose to pay its hands for the time spent in fights.  So the two girls “rang out” past the timekeeper and took an hour in the open air, hand to hand, fist to fist, which, as it happens to man, had its calming effect.