She had always lived in poverty. She had worked in a stocking factory in
Austria when she was a little thing of nine, and had been self-supporting
ever since she was fourteen, machine-sewing in Vienna and London and New
York.

She had been in New York for about a year, lodging, or rather sleeping at
night, in the tenement kitchen of some distant cousins of hers,
practically strangers. The kitchen opened on an air-shaft, and it was
used, not only as a kitchen, but as a dining room and living-room. For
the first four months after her arrival Sarah earned about $5 a week,
working from nine and one-half to ten hours a day as a finisher of boys'
trousers. From this wage she paid $3 a week for her kitchen sleeping
space and breakfast and supper. Luncheon cost her 7 cents a day. She had
been able to buy so very little clothing that she had kept no account of
it. She did her own washing, and walked to work.

She had never had any education until she came to America, and she now
attended a night school, in which she was keenly interested. She was
living in this way when her factory closed.

She then searched desperately for employment for two weeks, finding it
at last in a cloak factory[20] where she was employed from half past
seven in the morning until half past six or seven in the evening, with a
respite of only a few minutes at noon for a hasty luncheon. Her wage was
$3 a week. Working her hardest, she could not keep the wolf from the
door, and was obliged to go hungry at luncheon time or fail to pay the
full rent for her place to sleep in the kitchen.

Sarah was very naturally unstrung and nervous in this hardness of