CHAPTER II

THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE

I


Among the active members of the Ladies Waist Makers' Union in New York,
there is a young Russian Jewess of sixteen, who may be called Natalya
Urusova. She is little, looking hardly more than twelve years old, with a
pale, sensitive face, clear dark eyes, very soft, smooth black hair,
parted and twisted in braids at the nape of her neck, and the gentlest
voice in the world, a voice still thrilled with the light inflections of
a child.

She is the daughter of a Russian teacher of Hebrew, who lived about three
years ago in a beech-wooded village on the steppes of Central Russia.
Here a neighbor of Natalya's family, a Jewish farmer, misunderstanding
that manifesto of the Czar which proclaimed free speech, and
misunderstanding socialism, had printed and scattered through the
neighborhood an edition of hand-bills stating that the Czar had
proclaimed socialism, and that the populace must rise and divide among
themselves a rich farm two miles away.

Almost instantly on the appearance of these bills, this unhappy man and a
young Jewish friend who chanced to be with him at the time of his arrest
were seized and murdered by the government officers--the friend drowned,
the farmer struck dead with the blow of a cudgel. A Christian mob formed,
and the officers and the mob ravaged every Jewish house in the little
town. Thirty innocent Jews were clubbed to death, and then literally cut