Girls at Trenton's Star Porcelain Works on strike because they are forbidden to sing

CAN'T SING, SO THEY STRIKE.

Girls in Trenton Porcelain Works Have a Real Grievance.

Special to The New York Times.

TRENTON, N. J., Sept. 23. -- The management of the Star Porcelain Works here is advertising for girls who will "work and not warble."

The girls of the works have been out on strike since Saturday morning. For generations the girls of the porcelain works have sung as they worked, and nobody ever said them nay. Some of the best singers in these parts have received their early training in the porcelain works. "She used to work in the porcelain works" is like a gilt-edged diploma here. Besides, visitors have remarked that Trenton is more up to date in song knowledge than Broadway and Twenty-eighth Street. The porcelain works did it, and the girls say they can prove it.

Last week the manager was talking over the telephone to a customer in New York. The office windows were open, and in floated the notes and bars of the working, singing girls. This condition is so old to the manager that he didn't notice it. He couldn't appreciate what had happened until afterward. What follows is strictly true.

"Why don't you send on that de luxe set we ordered last week?" asked the customer. The manager answered, but above his voice rolled:

"My wife won't let me."

The customer evidently rang off at that point, thinking he had got the wrong connection. But he soon got the works again. Then he asked:

"Is it possible that you are discriminating against us in favor of somebody elese in the matter of early shipments?"

"I have a cozy corner in my heart for you," he heard. His next question, which isn't hard to guess, received this answer:

"When the harvest days are over, Jessie dear."

The customer threw his receiver to the hook with unaccountable abruptness. The manager later figured it all out. Then he gave the anti-singing order.