The second day I was in the factory, a girl come to me in the hall and asked me if I'd go out with her to lunch. I said I had my roll and a banana; but I'd walk along with her and eat 'em. She said that was what she meant--she had some crackers and an apple. So we walked down the block. Her name was Rose Everly. There was a place half-way along there where some policemen were always sitting out, and when we went past there one of them spoke to her. She stopped, and she gave me an introduction. "Miss Wakely," she says, "you meet Sergeant Ebbit." "Pleased to make your acquaintance," says he. "How's the strike coming on?" "I don't know as I know anything about any strike," she says, throwing up her head. "How about you?" he says to me. "You whinin' too?" I didn't know what he meant, and I guess he see I didn't. He laughed, and brought us out a couple of oranges. "I'll be the first to run in the both of you, though," he says, "if you start any nonsense." "What's he mean?" I says, when we went on. "He's new over here, or he wouldn't be so sassy, not to me," says Rose. "Well, I brought you out here to put you wise." Then she told me, while we walked up and down and et our oranges. It seems there was things in the factory that I didn't have any notion about. My own job was in the printing office, connected with the factory. I was running a Gordon press, at slow speed, learning to feed it right. At the first of the next week, I was going to be put on full speed. We was to print from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand envelopes a day, then; and I knew what that meant, from watching the other machines. There was a time keeper over the full-speed machines, and it was hurry, hurry, hurry, all day long. It was all right while I was learning it, but I hated to think about making the same motion twelve or fifteen thousand times every day. In our room there was sixty or so. I used to notice the air, it smelled of some kind of gas and it was full of paper dust. When they swept up they never wet the broom; and when I asked the man if he didn't know enough to do that he swore at me. It wasn't a nice place to work. But it seems there was other things that I didn't know about yet. There was fines for everything, and dockings for most that many. We had to go through the other factory to get out, and it seems they locked the doors on us as soon as we got in, and of course that was bad if there'd be a fire. Then there was things about the foreman; and there wasn't any Saturday half-holiday. And it seems the girls had joined together and asked for better things. And Rose wanted to know if I'd be one of them. "Sure," I says, "is there anybody that won't?" "Them that's afraid of their jobs," she says. "If we don't get what we think we ought to have, we'll--quit. We're going to have a meeting to-morrow night. Can you come, and will you talk?" "Sure I'll come," I says. "But I can't talk. I don't know enough."