Carrie nodded.
"You know how it was," she explained; "all the girls around here do. We've had to work all day long from early morning till late night, Sundays too, and five dollars for the seven days is counted pretty good wages."
"But somebody said the firms' books showed your pay was higher."
"Oh, the books did show it. You see, they carry only a few of us on their salary list, and then each of the foremen hires helpers paid out of one girl's wages. You know as well as I do that most of us live on oatmeal and crackers, and rent one bed in somebody else's tenement."
Katie was acquainted with enough of the shirt-waist makers to be aware that this was true.
"That's so," she granted; "only I thought them things were all ended after the last row."
"Well, they weren't ended; they were only helped for a few months, and now it's summer and most of us would have been laid off. It's the worst time to strike—we know that—but things came to a point where we had to make a fight, or there wouldn't have been any of us left to fight when a better time did come."
"You're talkin' about the union?"
"Yes, that's the real point. The bosses started a union of their own."
"Among themselves?"