Another presented a petition signed by his women employees, appealing against being prevented from working eleven hours a day! Nine working girls appeared in support of the bill, and after learned counsel for the Manufacturers' Association had argued against the measure, two of the girls were allowed to speak.

The Manufacturers' Association presented the business aspect of the question, the girls confined themselves to the human side.

Agnes Nestor, secretary of the Glove Makers' Union of the United States and Canada, was one of the two girls who spoke.

Miss Nestor, whose eyes are blue, whose manners are gentle, and whose best weight is ninety-five pounds, had to stand on a chair that the law makers might see her when she made her plea: Elizabeth Maloney, of the Waitresses' Union, was the other speaker.
They described details in the daily lives of working women not generally known except to the workers themselves.

Among these was the piece-work system, which too often means a system whereby the utmost possible speed is extorted from the toiler, in order that she may earn a living wage.
The legislators were asked to imagine themselves operating a machine whose speed was gauged up to nine thousand stitches a minute; to consider how many stitches the operator's hand must guide in a week, a month, a year, in order to earn a living; working thus eleven, twelve hours a day, knowing that the end was nervous breakdown, and decrease of earning power.
"I am a waitress," said Miss Maloney, "and I work ten hours a day.