"It ain't no use," the sad and worn Mrs. Cohen coughed from the foot of the table. "There ain't nothing that'll do any good. Women ain't got no chance." The motor began with a roar. It is a strange fact of life, how sometimes a sudden light will be turned on a familiar environment, making it all seem new and entirely different from what we are accustomed to. Four years Yetta had worked in that shop. She had accepted it all as an inevitability, which no more admitted change or "reform" than the courses of the stars. The speeches to which she had listened made it suddenly appear in its true human aspect. It was no longer a thing unalterable, it was an invention of human greed. It was a laboratory where, instead of base metals, the blood of women and young girls was transmuted into gold. The alchemists had failed to find the Philosopher's Stone. The sweat-shop was a modern substitute. It was a contrivance by which such priceless things as youth and health and the hope of the next generation could be coined into good and lawful money of the realm. Her nimble fingers flying subconsciously at the terrible speed through the accustomed motions, Yetta saw all the grim reality of the shop as never before. She saw the broken door to the shamefully filthy toilet, saw the closed, unwashed windows, which meant vitiated, tuberculosis-laden air, saw the backs of the women bent into unhealthy attitudes, saw the strained look in their eyes. More vaguely she saw a vision of the might-be life of these women,--clean homes and happy children. And behind her she felt the existence of the "office", where Jake Goldfogle sat and watched them through his spying window, and contrived new fines. And even more clearly than when she had made her speech, she saw her own function in this infernal scheme of greed, saw herself a lieutenant of the slave-driver behind her. She wondered if the other women hated her as she deserved to be hated. But habit is a hard thing to break, and her fingers sped on as of old. When the day's work was over, a sorry sort of a woman, named Levine, a woman who had had many children and more troubles and very few joys, lingered in the shop and told Goldfogle the gossip about Yetta's speech. She had expected some reward, a quarter--or even a dime--with which to buy a little more food for her children. But she got only curses. During the day one of Jake's loans had been called. What was he to do, hounded by his creditors, threatened from within? If he had been an Oriental despot he would have slain the bearer of these bad tidings. Yetta, afraid of meeting Harry Klein outside, clung as close as might be to Mrs. Weinstein on her way home. She ran the few blocks she had to go alone.