“Oi weh, Yetta! I can't stand it!” The cry broke from me. “I didn't come to America to turn into a machine. I came to America to make from myself a person. Does America want only my hands, only the strength of my body, not my heart, not my feelings, my thoughts?”
“Our heads ain't smart enough,” said Yetta, practically. “We ain't been to school, like the American-born.”
“What for did I come to America but to go to school, to learn, to think, to make something beautiful from my life?”
“'Sh! 'Sh! The boss! the boss!” came the warning whisper.
A sudden hush fell over the shop as the boss entered. He raised his hand. There was breathless silence. The hard, red face with the pig's eyes held us under its sickening spell. Again I saw the Cossack and heard him thunder the ukase. Prepared for disaster, the girls paled as they cast at one another sidelong, frightened glances.
“Hands,” he addressed us, fingering the gold watch-chain that spread across his fat stomach, “it's slack in the other trades, and I can get plenty girls begging themselves to work for half what you're getting; only I ain't a skinner. I always give my hands a show to earn their bread. From now on I'll give you fifty cents a dozen shirts instead of seventy-five, but I'll give you night-work, so you needn't lose nothing.” And he was gone.
The stillness of death filled the shop. Every one felt the heart of the other bleed with her own helplessness. A sudden sound broke the silence. A woman sobbed chokingly. It was Balah Rifkin, a widow with three children.
“Oi weh!”—she tore at her scrawny neck,—“the bloodsucker! the thief! How will I give them to eat, my babies, my hungry little lambs!”
“Why do we let him choke us?”
“Twenty-five cents less on a dozen—how will we be able to live?”