employers settled with the operatives. They continued to settle during
December and January until the middle of February. All but thirteen of
the shops in New York had then made satisfactory terms with the Union
workers. It was officially declared that the strike was over.

Natalya's shop had settled with the operatives on the 23d of January, and
she went back to work on the next day.

She had an increase of $2 a week in wages--$8 a week instead of $6. Her
hours were now fifty-two a week instead of sixty--that is to say, nine
and one-half hours a day, with a Saturday half-holiday. But she has
since then been obliged to enter another factory on account of slack
work.

Among the more skilled workers than Natalya in New York to-day, Irena
Kovalova, who supports her mother and her younger brother and sister, has
$11 a week instead of $9. She is not obliged to work on Sunday, and her
factory closes at five o'clock instead of six on Saturday. "I have four
hours less a week," she said with satisfaction. The family have felt able
to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material for a suit,
costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this for Irena as a present.

Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, Anna Klotin, who sent
$120 home to her family last year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8
a week, and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her former $12 a
week. Hers was one of the thirteen factories that did not settle. Of
their one hundred and fifty girls, they wished about twenty of their more
skilled operators to return to them under Union conditions, leaving the
rest under the old long hours of overtime and indeterminate, unregulated
wages. Anna was one of the workers the firm wished to retain on Union