The Eternal Grind

Louise works in a New York sweatshop as a sewing-machine girl, alongside her sister Amy and Gertrude, who is sick from the work and deprivation. Louise struggles to keep them all alive. Amy is seduced and, until Louise's intervention, abandoned by the son of the shopowner. But the desperate circumstances take a great turn when the shopowner's other son, whom Louise loves, is injured in a cave-in at the shop.