twelve-needle machines, because they are more cheaply and clumsily
constructed and the material is held less firmly by the metal guide under
the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, that were tired by
the stitching, but her shoulders and her back, from the jar of the
machines. Every month she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed
every cent she made, she never remained at home, when the factory was
open.

One of the most trying aspects of machine-speeding, in the sewing trades,
is the perpetual goading and insistence of the foremen and forewomen,
frequently mentioned by other workers besides Yeddie. Two years ago, in a
waist and dress factory where 400 operatives--more than 300 girls and
about 20 men--were employed for the company by a well-known
subcontractor, Jake Klein, a foreman asked Mr. Klein to beset some of the
girls for a degree of speed he said he was unwilling to demand. The
manager discharged him. He asked to speak to the girls before he went
away. The manager refused his request. As Mr. Klein turned to the girls,
his superior summoned the elevator man, who seized Klein's collar,
overpowered him, and started to drag him over the floor toward the
stairs. "Brothers and sisters," Klein called to the operatives, "will you
sit by and see a fellow-workman used like this?" In one impulse of clear
justice, every worker arose, walked out of the shop with Jake Klein, and
stayed out till the company made overtures of peace. This adventure,
widely related on the East Side, serves to show the latent fire, kindled
by the accumulation of small overbearing oppressions, which smolders in
many sewing shops.

The uncertainty of employment characterizing the sewing trades fell
heavily on Sarah Silberman, a delicate little Austrian Jewish girl of
seventeen, who finished and felled women's cloaks.