I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweatshop prison; all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day’s torture.
For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated window of the old dilapidated building—dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling brick.
In the maw of the shop, raging around me the roar and the clatter, the clatter and the roar, the merciless grind of the pounding machines. Half maddened, half deadened, I struggled to think, to feel, to remember—what am I—who am I—why was I here?
I struggled in vain—bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise.
“America—America—where was America?” it cried in my heart.
The factory whistle—the slowing-down of the machines—the shout of release hailing the noon hour.
I woke as from a tense nightmare—a weary waking to pain.
In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to throb and ache. My childhood choked with drudgery—must my youth too die—unlived?
The odor of herring and garlic—the ravenous munching of food—laughter and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked at those around me. Were they happy or only insensible to their slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with rebellion against this galling grind—the crushing, deadening movements of the body, where only hands live and hearts and brains must die?
A touch on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Yetta Solomon from the machine next to mine.