I got a job as an errand girl [at Hearn’s Department Store] and was stationed on the first floor where tables were laden with sales merchandise…My weekly salary was $2.16 for a sixty-four-hour week. The sixteen cents was supposed to cover the weekly cost of laundering the over-all apron I was required to wear on the job. It was navy blue muslin with white polka-dots and it was most unattractive, but I saved the sixteen cents by laundering it myself…

After working at Ridley’s for three years, my salary was all of $2.75 a week!

Ann, who worked in a factory making artificial flowers and feathers, was earning much more than I, and more than Martha Apple [who had worked there for 14 years], who still made only $7.00 a week.