[question] We were pieceworkers, girls were hired by the boss who they worked for, not by the big shots. No, I hardly ever seen Mr. Blanck, until I work there a week already, then he came walking through and everyone got extra busy with the work and I didn’t know why until a girl explained. I seen more of his face at the trial than I ever seen at the Triangle when I was working there every day. Mr. Harris, I see all the time, he is always walking around, snooping into everything, asking questions, checking the work, making everyone nervous. He made even the bosses nervous the way he was always checking into everything. The boss we worked for was Morris Jacobs, he’s the one who hired us. He had all the girls in our row working for him, and another row besides. We get these slips to write how much we do every day, how many waists we finish, and those numbers are double-checked by Magda, the girl who takes them to the finishing area, this nice Hungarian girl who told me how much worse off she was in a necktie factory before she came to this job, and I think she got very badly burned in the fire. So we give him, Mr. Jacobs, all our slips at the end of the week, and then he pays us, but we always have to watch him, because he was a thief who would steal from the girls any way he could, he would count crooked and then act like he didn’t notice the mistake, but if he is such a bad counter, why are all the mistakes in his favor and he never makes a mistake in our favor?

[question] You want to hear about the day of the fire. This is what happened. I am working at my machine, just before the workday is over with just a few minutes to go, and I know I have only two right sleeves to finish in my work—my sister Pauline did the left sleeves and I did the right sleeves. We just got our pay packets from Mr. Jacobs, and he gave me also my sister’s, and I tucked them into my stocking, so she could keep working to finish what she can do for the week. And then all of a sudden there is a big noise behind me, while I am still bending down fixing my stocking with the money, like nothing I ever heard before, like a bomb has gone off, or some explosion. Next thing, there are flames coming up the window from underneath us, we didn’t know that until after, and the heat is breaking the windows, they’re breaking from the fire, that’s the thing—everyone who could do it got out from the eighth floor, and up on the tenth floor over us they got a phone call and they know about the fire, but on the ninth floor, nobody tells us about the fire.