with caps, bare-headed wigged women, beautiful young girls, half-dressed
babies swarming in the gutters, playing jacks. Push carts, lit at night
with flaring torches, line the pavements and make the whole thronged,
talking place an open market, stuck with signs and filled with
merchandise and barter. Everybody stays out of doors as much as possible.
In summer-time the children sleep on the steps, and on covered chicken
coops along the sidewalk; for, inside, the rooms are too often small and
stifling, some on inner courts close-hung with washing, some of them
practically closets, without any opening whatever to the outer air.

Many, many of Natalya's neighbors here are occupied in the garment
trade. According to the United States census of 1900, the men's clothing
made in factories in New York City amounted to nearly three times as much
as that manufactured in any other city in the United States. The women's
clothing made in factories in New York City amounted to more than ten
times that made in any other city; the manufacture of women's ready-made
clothing in this country is, indeed, almost completely in the hands of
New York's immense Jewish population.[12]

As soon after her arrival as her age permitted, Natalya entered the
employment of a shirt-waist factory as an unskilled worker, at a salary
of $6 a week. Mounting the stairs of the waist factory, one is aware of
heavy vibrations. The roar and whir of the machines increase as the door
opens, and one sees in a long loft, which is usually fairly light and
clean, though sometimes neither, rows and rows of girls with heads bent
and eyes intent upon the flashing needles. They are all intensely
absorbed; for if they be paid by the piece, they hurry from ambition, and
if they be paid by the week, they are "speeded up" by the foreman to a
pace set by the swiftest workers.