Therefore, being curious, we decided to work in factories. In addition to wanting to feel a bona-fide part of a cross section of the world before only viewed second or third hand through books, there was the desire better to understand the industrial end of things by trying a turn at what some eight million or so other women are doing. “Women's place is the home.” All right—that side of life we know first hand. But more and more women are not staying home, either from choice or from necessity. Reading about it is better than nothing. Being an active part of it all is better still. It is one thing to lounge on an overstuffed davenport and read about the injurious effect on women of long hours of standing. It is another to be doing the standing.
Yet another reason for giving up some months to factory work, besides the adventure of it, besides the desire to see other angles of life for oneself, to experience first hand the industrial end of it. So much of the technic of the world to-day we take as a matter of course. Clothes appear ready to put on our backs. As far as we know or care, angels left them on the hangers behind the mirrored sliding doors. Food is set on our tables ready to eat. It might as well have been created that way, for all our concern. The thousands of operations that go into an article before the consumer buys it—no, there is no reason why use and want should make us callous and indifferent to the hows and wherefores. Never was there such an age. Let's poke behind the scenes a bit.
So, factories it was to be. Not as a stranger snooping in to “investigate.” As a factory girl working at her job—with all that, we determined to peek out of the corner of our eyes, and keep both ears to the wind, lest we miss anything from start to finish. Artificial, of course. Under the circumstances, since we were born how and as we were, and this had happened and that, we were not an honest Eyetalian living in a back bedroom on West Forty-fourth Street near the river.
We did what we could to feel the part. Every lady in the land knows the psychology of dress—though not always expressed by her in those terms. She feels the way she looks, not the other way round. So then, we purchased large green earrings, a large bar pin of platinum and brilliants ($1.79), a goldy box of powder (two shades), a lip stick. During the summer we faded a green tam-o'shanter so that it would not look too new. For a year we had been saving a blue-serge dress (original cost $19) from the rag bag for the purpose. We wore a pair of old spats which just missed being mates as to shade, and a button off one. Silk stockings—oh yes, silk—but very darned. A blue sweater, an orange scarf, and last, but not least—