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able to get into the union without much opposition, so that whatever the upholstery men got, the women got in the way of wages, working hours and conditions.

But there was this heterogeneous mass of women who worked in the needle trades who were not organized and were struggling to organize. The sweat shop was absolutely prevalent. It was the way of manufacturing anything made with a needle all over New York. There would be a little sweat shop where one man would rent eight or ten machines, then hire girls to work for him. He worked for a contractor who again worked for a Fifth Avenue firm. That was just common. You began to realize that the stuff made in these filthy conditions was sold on Fifth Avenue.

The people got very low wages, but the thing they kicked about most of all were the hours. They worked interminable hours, literally from daylight to midnight. It was a very serious thing. They were very harassed and very unhappy.

They were very class conscious. This is the first time I really ran into class conscious workers. I expect it was because they were recent emigrants from countries into which the Marxist idea had penetrated - they or their families. They talked a great deal about class struggle. They had an attitude toward their bosses which was not