To Katie's cheerful cynicism that blind optimist was an object of unfailing tenderness. She knew how he had been left, when his father's heart was broken after a long battle against an oppressive landlord system, with a gentle mother whom he worshiped and who thus became entirely dependent upon him; how he had sold the few remaining family belongings, escaped the threat of a compulsory military service that would have left Frau Hoffmann in destitution, and come, lured by the glittering promises of one of the immigration agents of a steamship company, to the land where he had been told there existed equality of opportunity for all men. And he had told Katie, in his convincingly simple English, how, a shred at a time, the fabric of his ideal had been torn away; how bitterly he had toiled only to keep his foothold; how the little mother had fallen beneath the stress, and yet how, to the last, he still retained his high hope, and still dreamed of a genuine democracy in a country where the men that worked would eventually become the owners of the wealth that their hands created. She was thinking of this when, that night, she returned to her tenement and found waiting at her door her neighbor Carrie Berkowicz, the shirt-waist worker, who had told her of the chance of a position at the Lennox shop. "Hello," said Katie. "Lookin' for me?" "Yes." "Come on in." Katie led the way and lit the lamp, which threw a kindly light over the neat, bare room, with its stiff wooden chairs, its oilcloth-covered table, and the lithograph of Our Lady of the Rosary tacked against the room door. A gas-stove, a cot, a bureau, and a screened-off sink completed the furnishings. "I'm just gettin' a bite of supper," she said, before she asked the cause of Carrie's visit. "You'd better have some." "No, thank you," replied the caller, with her careful night-school inflection. "I had mine early." Katie looked at the speaker, whose round cheeks seemed drawn in a new determination, and whose jaw was swollen as if from a blow. "How did you get through so early, Carrie?" she inquired. The little Lithuanian's eyes sparkled. "We've done it," she said. "Done what?" "Gone out." "Struck?" Carrie nodded. "You know how it was," she explained; "all the girls around here do. We've had to work all day long from early morning till late night, Sundays too, and five dollars for the seven days is counted pretty good wages." "But somebody said the firms' books showed your pay was higher." "Oh, the books did show it. You see, they carry only a few of us on their salary list, and then each of the foremen hires helpers paid out of one girl's wages. You know as well as I do that most of us live on oatmeal and crackers, and rent one bed in somebody else's tenement." Katie was acquainted with enough of the shirt-waist makers to be aware that this was true. "That's so," she granted; "only I thought them things were all ended after the last row."