the year; for two and a half months she was entirely idle, and for the
remaining six and a half months she worked from two to five days a week.
Her income for the year had been about $346.

Katia worked with a one-needle machine in a small factory off lower
Broadway. Before that she had been employed as a week worker in a Fifth
Avenue corset factory, which may be called Madame Cora's. Shortly before
Katia left this establishment, Madame Cora changed her basis of payment
from week work to piece-work. The girls' speed increased. Some of the
more rapid workers who had before made $10 were able to make $12. On
discovering this, Madame Cora cut their wages, not by frankly returning
to the old basis, but by suddenly beginning to charge the girls for
thread and needles. She made them pay her 2 cents for every needle.
Thread on a five-needle machine, sometimes with two eyes in each of the
needles, stitches up very rapidly. The girls were frequently obliged to
pay from a dollar and a half to two dollars a week for the thread sewed
into Madame Cora's corsets, and for needles. They rebelled when Madame
Cora refused to pay for these materials herself. From among the three
hundred girls, thirty girls struck, went to Union headquarters, and asked
to be organized. But Madame Cora simply filled their places with other
girls who were willing to supply her with thread for her corsets, and
refused to take them back. Katia did not respect Madame Cora's methods,
and had left before the strike.

Katia spent $2.50 a week for breakfast and dinner and for her share of a
room with a congenial friend, another Russian girl, in Harlem. The room
was close and opened on an air-shaft, but was quiet and rather pleasant.
She paid from $1.25 to $1.50 for luncheons, and, out of the odd hundred
dollars left from her income, had contrived, by doing her own washing and
making her own waists, to buy all her clothing, and to spend $5 for books