What is to be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky

Viéra Pavlovna's sewing union was established. The foundations were very simple at first -- so simple, indeed, that it is not worth while to speak of them. Viéra Pavlovna did not make any rules at all for her first three seamstresses, except that she would pay them a trifle more than the regular seamstresses were getting at the shops. There was nothing particularly strange about the business; the seamstresses saw that Viéra Pavlovna was not a woman of mere words, not fickle; and therefore, without any hesitation they accepted her offer to work with her. There was no reason for hesitation in the fact that a woman of moderate means wanted to establish a sewing shop. These three girls found three or four more. They selected them with the same care with which Viéra Pavlovna proposed to them, and in these conditions of choice there was nothing worthy of suspicion; that is, there was nothing out of the ordinary run about it. A young and modest woman wishes the working girls in her establishment to be girls of straightforward character, kind, considerate, inclined to stay in one place; is there anything strange about that? She does not want any quarrels, that's all; and therefore it's clever of her, and nothing more. Viéra Pavlovna made acquaintance with these chosen girls; she became very well acquainted with them before she agreed to accept them; that was natural. It shows that she is a woman of sound common sense, and that's all. There is nothing to deliberate about; there is nothing to distrust.

Thus they worked a month, receiving in due time the wages which had been agreed upon. Viéra Pavlovna was constantly at the shop, and they learned to look upon her as an economical, careful, and reasonable woman, with unusual consideration for them, and thus she won their full confidence. The was nothing extraordinary about that either, nor was anything noticeable except that the mistress was a good mistress, in whose hands the business would succeed; she knows how to manage.