The first day Mabel and Yetta picketed together. They stood on the sidewalk before the largest of the vest shops and tried to talk to every one who went in. Mabel did most of it. She used the old, time-worn arguments of the unionists. The only chance for the workers was in standing together. If the scabs took the strikers' jobs, they were helping the boss more than themselves. After a strike is settled the bosses always fire the scabs and take back their old force. If they did get steady work sooner or later, somebody would scab on them. If they joined the union they would get enough strike benefits to live on, and with a strong organization the trade would be a good one. And after all it is dirty business stealing jobs from your brother workers. Most of the scabs hurriedly passed them, a few listened sullenly, one or two replied with insults. To an outsider, picketing looks hopeless. You very rarely see any one quit work. But long experience has taught the unions that it does pay. It is not so much the rare cases where a dozen scabs stop at once as the regular drain of those who are ashamed to face the pickets and who do not come back to work again. Mabel was too busy to picket very often. She had her hands full trying to save what she could out of the wreckage of the skirt-finishers' strike. And there were a thousand and one things to do for the vest-makers, arranging meetings, trying to interest the newspapers, spurring on the Advisory Council to raise money. They had collected a good deal, but the poverty of the vest-makers was appalling; "strike benefits" kept the treasury always empty. She had to see to replenishing it daily. Yetta, however, was on picket duty every day. Gradually it became evident that the "picket" was successful. Most of the imported vest-makers, the skilled operatives, had joined the union. Only a few of the shops were running at all and at great expense on account of the uneconomy of raw hands. The smaller bosses were going into bankruptcy. Jake Goldfogle had been the first to fall. Five days had cleaned him out. The next day two more went under. Credit was beginning to tighten for even the biggest bosses. The Association of Vest Manufacturers saw that it was necessary to break the picket at any cost. There were a number of secret conferences with city politicians. The police magistrate who was sitting at Essex Market Court was transferred to an uptown jurisdiction, and his place was taken by a magistrate named Cornett, notorious for his outspoken hostility to unionism. The police also got their orders.