about sixty girls to understand about organization and to consider it
favorably.

On the evening of the 22d of November, Natalya, and how many others from
the factory she could not tell, attended a mass meeting at Cooper Union,
of which they had been informed by hand-bills. It was called for the
purpose of discussing a general strike of shirt-waist workers in New York
City. The hall was packed. Overflow meetings were held at Beethoven Hall,
Manhattan Lyceum, and Astoria Hall. In the Cooper Union addresses were
delivered by Samuel Gompers, by Miss Dreier, and by many others.
Finally, a girl of eighteen asked the chairman for the privilege of the
floor. She said: "I have listened to all the speeches. I am one who
thinks and feels from the things they describe. I, too, have worked and
suffered. I am tired of the talking. I move that we go on a general
strike."

The meeting broke into wild applause. The motion was unanimously
indorsed. The chairman, Mr. Feigenbaum, a Union officer, rapped on the
table. "Do you mean faith?" he called to the workers. "Will you take the
old Jewish oath?" Thousands of right hands were held up and the whole
audience repeated in Yiddish:[14] "If I turn traitor to the cause I now
pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."

This was the beginning of the general shirt-waist strike. A committee of
fifteen girls and one boy was appointed at the Cooper Union meeting, and
went from one to the other of the overflow meetings, where the same
motion was offered and unanimously indorsed.


II