My turn. I thought there was no question about my “price.” It was fourteen dollars. But perhaps seeing how I had run my legs almost off, and pinned my fingers almost off all week, the boss was going voluntarily to raise me. “What wages you expect to get here?” Oh, well, since he thus opened the question we would begin all new. I had worked so much harder than I had anticipated. “Sixteen dollars a week.” “Ho—sixteen dollars!—and last Monday it was fourteen dollars. You're going up, yes?” “But the work's much harder 'n I thought it 'ud be.” “So you go from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars and I got you here to tell you you'd get twelve dollars.” Oh, but I was mad—just plain mad! “You let me work all week thinkin' I was gettin' fourteen dollars. It ain't fair!” “Fair? I pay you what I can afford. Times are hard now, you know.” I could not speak for my upset feelings. To pay me twelve dollars for the endless labor of that week when he had allowed me to think I was getting fourteen dollars! To add insult to injury, he said, “Next week I want you should work later than the other girls evenings, and make no date for next Saturday” (I had told him I was in a hurry to get off for lunch this Saturday) “because I shall want you should work Saturday afternoon.” Such a state of affairs is indeed worth following up.... Monday morning he came around breezily—he really was a cordial, kindly soul—and said; “Well, dearie, how are you this morning?” I went on pinning. “Good as anybody can be on twelve dollars a week.” “_Ach_, forget it, forget it! Always money, money! Whether a person gets ten cents or three hundred dollars—it's not the money that counts”—his hands went up in the air—“it's the _service_!” Yet employers tell labor managers they must not sentimentalize. A bit later he came back. “I tell you what I'll do. You stay late every night this week and work Saturday afternoon like I told you you should, and I'll pay you for it!” To such extremes a sense of justice can carry one! (Actually, he had expected that extra work of me gratis!) During the week I figured out that in his own heart that boss had figured out a moral equivalent for a living wage. There was nothing he would not do for me. Did he but come in my general direction, I was given a helping hand. He joked with me continually. The hammer and nails were always busy. I was not only “dearie,” I was “sweetheart.” But fourteen dollars a week—that was another story. Ada was full of compassion and suggested various arguments I should use next week on the boss. It was awful what he paid me, Ada declared. She too would talk to him.