“I got to talking it over with Minnie last night,” Morris replied, “and she thinks maybe if we give our work out by contractors we wouldn’t need it to stay down so late, and then I wouldn’t keep the dinner waiting an hour or so every other night.  We lose it two good girls already by it in six months.”

“Who is running this business, Mawruss?” Abe roared.  “Minnie or us?”

Sam Slotkin listened with a slightly bored air.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, “what’s the use of it you make all this disturbance?  The loft is light on all four sides, with two elevators.  Also, it is already big enough for——­”

“What are you butting in for?” Abe shouted.  “What business is it of yours, anyhow?”

“I am the broker,” Sam Slotkin replied with simple dignity.  “And also you’re going to take that loft.  Otherwise I lose it three hundred dollars’ commission, and besides——­”

“My partner is right,” Morris interrupted.  “You ain’t got no business to say what we will or will not do.  If we want to take it we will take it, otherwise not.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam Slotkin cried, “you will take it all right and I’ll be back this afternoon for an answer.”

He put on his hat and left without another word, while Abe and Morris looked at each other in blank amazement.

“That’s a real-estater for you,” Abe said.  “Henochstein’s got it pretty good nerve, Mawruss, but this feller acts so independent like a doctor or a lawyer.”

Morris nodded and started to hang up his hat and coat, but even as his hand was poised half-way to the hook it became paralyzed.  Simultaneously Abe looked up from the column of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record and Miss Cohen, the bookkeeper, stopped writing; for the hum of sewing machines, which was as much a part of their weekday lives as the beating of their own hearts, had suddenly ceased.

Abe and Morris took the stairs leading to the upper floor three at a jump, and arrived breathlessly in the workroom just as fifty-odd employees were putting on their coats preparatory to leaving.

“What’s the matter?” Abe gasped.

“Strike,” Goldman, the foreman, replied.

“A strike!” Morris cried.  “What for a strike?”

Goldman shrugged his shoulders.

“Comes a walking delegate by the opposite side of the street and makes with his hands motions,” he explained.  “So they goes out on strike.”

Few of the striking operators could speak English, but those that did nodded their corroboration.

“For what you strike?” Morris asked them.

“Moost strike,” one of them replied.  “Ven varking delegate say moost strike, ve moost strike.”

Sadly Abe and Morris watched their employees leave the building, and then they repaired to the show-room.

“There goes two thousand dollars, Mawruss,” Abe said.  “For so sure as you live, Mawruss, if we don’t make that delivery to the Fashion Store inside of a week we get a cancelation by the next day’s mail; ain’t it?”