"Not if others will starve because you work," objected Janet.

"If I don't work I starve," said the girl.

"No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all. How
much do you get now?"

"Four dollar and a half."

"You starve now," Janet declared contemptuously. "The quicker you join
us, the sooner you'll get a living wage."

The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and
then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought for
others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling
picketers remained.

Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had
caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously,
resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun.

Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her
unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street.
She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they
ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to
blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with
the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were
not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and
the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother, she reflected