The Triangle Waist Company occupied the top three
floors of the Asch Building. On the eighth floor, forty cutters,1 all men, worked at long wooden tables. Nearby, about a hundred women did basting2 and other tasks. Paper patterns hung from lines of string over the tables. Although cutters wasted as little fabric as possible, there were always scraps, which they threw into bins under the tables. Every two months or so, a rag dealer took away about a ton of scraps, paying about seven cents a pound. He then sold them back
10 to cotton mills to remake into new cloth. The last pickup was in January.
