"I can't just move across the country!" 

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The boy might have been charming but it's better to be on the safe side. New York can be a scary place for a single immigrant girl such as yourself.

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You continue down Broadway and find yourself at one of the peddler's carts selling nosh. As you bite into the warm dough filled with chicken and spinach you think of the home you left behind. For the first time you realize how alone you are, which fills you with a determination to bring your mother and two sisters to America as quickly as possible.

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You sit on the bench and begin reading The Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish-language newspaper. You start reading about news from home, the Old Country to you now. As you make your way to the Help Wanted section, you spot an advertisement for a seamstress at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

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The pay is low, but at $6.00 a week, it is better than what you could have made helping your cousin roll cigars. At .02 cents, the horse drawn omnibus is a bargain and so you ride down to the Triangle Factory.

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You are greeted by a haggard-looking woman sitting at the receptionist desk. She directs you upstairs to the manager who asks you a series of questions. "How old are you?" "Are you married?" "Have you ever been in trouble with the police?" "Do you know how to sew?"

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He barely glances up from his accounting books during the interview. Without any form of ceremony he replies, "You start work as an operator tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., don't be late."

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With that you begin your new career as a sewing machine operator working 13 hours a day, 6 days a week with Sundays off. Your work is long and tedious. You spend the entire day sewing pieces of cloth together to make a garment called a shirtwaist. A new form of women's fashion that is more loose and comfortable than the old-fashioned dresses and corsets that are going out of style.

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Male managers stand watch to make sure that the operators are not wasting company time talking. When you go to the bathroom someone is there to monitor the time. If you fix your own collar the supervisor reprimands you about wasting time. You have two half hour breaks, one for lunch and one for supper, which usually consists of dark rye bread, potatoes, and dried herring that you brought from home. Even though you hate your job, you know it's better than being back in the shetl. At night you go to school to learn English. One day you hope to go to college and become a teacher.

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After four months you have managed to send $20 dollars to your mother. Perhaps by next year, your family will be with you in New York and life won't be so lonely. In fact, things are already starting to get better. You have made a few friends with the other women at the factory.

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One spring day on March 25, 1911, you are just finishing up your work at the factory when someone yells, "Fire!" You see the smoke rising through the floorboards and immediately race to the door on the far side of the room- the only exit to the stairwell and out of the building. The door is locked. The manager has the key and has a habit of locking the doors during work hours so the workers don't steal cloth.

Someone races back to find the floor manager. Meanwhile, you search for something to break down the door. You find a piece of pipe but the door won't budge. The smoke and heat are becoming more intense and the screams of your co-workers rise up in panic.

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The smoke quickly becomes so thick that you can hardly breathe. Your head swims and just before you pass out you notice some women jumping from the 9th floor window to their deaths.