have a generous half-hour at noon.  Most of the girls are Germans and Poles, and they have all received training as tailoresses in their native countries.  To the sharp onslaught of Frances’ tongue they make no response except in dogged silent obedience, whereas the dressy Americans with their proper spirit of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command.  Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears.  Frances is ubiquitous.  She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse, she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F., and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little Polish girl, in tears.  This latter comes to me, her face wrought with emotion.  She was receiving nine dollars a week; it is her first place in America.  This sudden dismissal, its injustice, requires an explanation.  She cannot speak a word of English and asks me to put my poor German at her service as interpreter.

Mr. F. is clearly a man who advocates everything for peace, and as there is for him no peace when Frances is not satisfied, we gain little by our appeal to him except a promise that he will attend later to the troubles of the Polish girl.  But later, as earlier, Frances triumphs, and I soon bid good-by to my seatmate and watch her tear-stained face disappear down the dingy hallway.  She was a skilled tailoress, but she could not cut out men’s garments, so Frances dismissed her.  I wonder when my turn will come, for I am a green hand and yet determined to keep the American spirit.  For the sake of justice I will not be downed by Frances.

It is hard to make friends with the girls; we dare not converse lest a fresh insult be hurled at us.  For every mistake I receive a loud, severe correction.  When night comes I am exhausted.  The work is easy, yet the moral atmosphere is more wearing than the noise of many machines.  My job is often changed during the week.  I do everything as a greenhorn, but I work hard and pay attention, so that there is no excuse to dismiss me.

“I am only staying here between jobs,” the girl next me volunteers at lunch.  “My regular place burnt out.  You couldn’t get me to work under her.  I wouldn’t stand it even if they do pay well.”  She is an American.

“You’re lucky to be so independent,” says a German woman whose dull silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature.  “I’m glad enough to get the money.  I was up this morning at five, working.  There’s myself and my mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make.  My husband is sick.  He’s in Arizona.”

“What were you doing at five?” I asked.

“I have a trade,” she answers.  “I work on hair goods.  It don’t bring me much, but I get in a few hours night and morning and it helps some.  There’s so much to pay.”

She was young, but youth is no lover of discomfort.  Hardships had chased every vestige of jeunesse from her high, wrinkled brow and tired brown eyes.  Like a mirror held against despair her face reflected no ray of hope.  She was not rebellious, but all she knew of life was written there in lines whose sadness a smile now and again intensified.