“The manager of our plant gets twenty-five thousand a year; I make around twenty-five a week, piece-work, you know; but some of the girls don’t get above twenty—can’t get up to my speed,” she explained. “T’other day the assistant manager let out a hint that wages was to be cut. ‘All right,’ I tells ’im, ‘cut, but begin where they begin to trim a tree—on the top. Just clip off a hundred a week from the manager, shave off fifty of yours, twenty-five of your assistants, and then I’ll let you take one off me.’” “What did he say to that?” I asked, hoping that some hitch would occur to prevent the curtain from rising on time. “Oh, he’s a snitcher. He was getting something to carry his chief—feeling our pulse,” she smiled back at me. “You gave him something.” “Sure. I gave him an earful. Next week we’re going to have a meeting at the house of the girl who lives nearest the shop. When the cut comes we’ll be ready for them.” As the curtain went up I reached across and grasped her hand. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Maybe we’ll meet at another show and I’ll tell you about our fight.” The 1st of October, 1920, I gave up my position with the A. S. P. C. A. and applied for work in the Store Beautiful. This is reputed to be the largest and most beautiful department store in the world. I had been told that its employees came nearer receiving a square deal than in any other large shop in New York City. As I had begun my four years in the underbrush by working in one department store, of which I have never been able to speak a good word, it seemed to me only fair that I should try another. Not being an investigator I wanted to make as good a report of conditions as I truthfully could. I can truthfully say that conditions in the Store Beautiful are far, far ahead of what I had seen and known in the store where my experience began. Instead of one dollar a day I received seventeen a week, which, so far as I could find out, was at that time the minimum wage for a saleswoman. The one and only fault that I have to find with Store Beautiful was put into words by one of the best and most highly esteemed salesman in the department with me. He had held his position for considerably more than ten years, and had many customers who would allow no one else to wait on them. “They’re pressing us pretty hard,” this man remarked, after reading a notice passed around among the salespeople of the department, telling them to report at a certain corner of the department after the store closed. “What do you mean?” asked the floor-walker who had handed him the paper. “I mean that they shouldn’t ask us to remain after hours—give our time free—when if we ask to get off early they charge us for it. This is the third time this week they’ve kept us. Our time’s worth something to us; these girls want to go home. I want to go; you want to go. They mustn’t press us too hard.”