After the decision was made to strike at Cooper Union in 1909, after the workers gathered there raised their hands and recited the oath, a delegation of fifteen women (along with a man, appointed to lead them) ran to nearby halls to report the decision to the thousands of workers who had overflowed from the main meeting. In these halls, too, the strike was unanimously approved. In the morning, they went in to work at shirtwaist factories across the city. They sat at their machines and waited for the walkout to begin. At one factory, a sixteen-year-old worker named Rose Perr later reported that the women sat silently for what seemed a long time, that the room was alive with some kind of energy, but that no one moved until somehow they were all on their feet at once, without any one of them having taken the lead.