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Excerpt on hats from Clara Lemlich article about 1909 strike

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"Sometimes a girl has a new hat. It is never much to look at because it never costs more than fifty cents, but it's pretty sure to be spoiled after it's been at the shop. There are no dressing rooms for the girls in the shops, no place to hang a hat where it will not be spoiled by the end of the day. We’re human, all of us girls, and we’re young. We like new hats as well as any other young women. Why shouldn’t we? And if one of us gets a new one, even if it hasn’t cost more than 50 cents, that means that we have gone for weeks on two-cent lunches—dry cakes and nothing else."

“Leader Tells Why 40,000 Girls Struck," New York Evening Journal, November 26, 1909, 3. Quoted in Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 8, 146-147.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Excerpt on hats from Clara Lemlich article about 1909 strike." (Viewed on March 19, 2024) <http://jwa.org/media/excerpt-on-hats-from-clara-lemlich-article-about-1909-strike>.