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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Working With the Working Woman, by
+Cornelia Stratton Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Working With the Working Woman
+
+Author: Cornelia Stratton Parker
+
+Release Date: March 30, 2008 [EBook #24959]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKING WITH THE WORKING WOMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Markus Brenner, Irma Spehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+                    WORKING WITH THE WORKING WOMAN
+
+                                 _By_
+                       CORNELIA STRATTON PARKER
+                    _Author of_ "AN AMERICAN IDYLL"
+
+                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
+                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+                               _MCMXXII_
+
+
+                    WORKING WITH THE WORKING WOMAN
+
+                 Copyright, 1922, by Harper & Brothers
+                Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+                                     PAGE
+
+     INTRODUCTION                    vii
+
+I.   NO. 1075 PACKS CHOCOLATES         1
+
+II.  286 ON BRASS                     42
+
+III. 195 IRONS "FAMILY"               75
+
+IV.  IN A DRESS FACTORY              109
+
+V.   NO. 536 TICKETS PILLOW CASES    137
+
+VI.  NO. 1470, "PANTRY GIRL"         173
+
+     CONCLUSION                      226
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The number of books on the labor problem is indeed legion. The tragedy
+of the literature on any dynamic subject is that most of it is written
+by people who have time to do little else. Perhaps the best books on
+many subjects will never be written because those folk, who would be
+most competent to do the writing, through their vital connection with
+the problem at hand, never find the spare minutes to put their
+findings down on paper.
+
+There could be no more dynamic subject than labor, since labor is
+nothing less than human beings, and what is more dynamic than human
+beings? It is, therefore, the last subject in the world to be
+approached academically. Yet most of the approach to the problems of
+labor is academic. Men in sanctuaries forever far removed from the
+endless hum and buzz and roar of machinery, with an intellectual
+background and individual ambitions forever far removed from the
+interests and desires of those who labor in factory and mill,
+theorize--and another volume is added to the study of labor.
+
+But, points out some one, there are books on labor written by
+bona-fide workers. First, the number is few. Second, and more
+important, any bona-fide worker capable of writing any kind of book on
+any subject, puts himself so far above the rank and file that one is
+justified in asking, for how many does he speak?
+
+Suppose that for the moment your main intellectual interest was to
+ascertain what the average worker--not the man or woman so far
+advanced in the cultural scale that he or she can set his ideas
+intelligently on paper--thought about his job and things in general.
+To what books could you turn? Indeed I have come to feel that in the
+pages of O. Henry there is more to be gleaned on the psychology of the
+working class than any books to be found on economic shelves. The
+outstanding conclusion forced upon any reader of such books as
+consciously attempt to give a picture of the worker and his job is
+that whoever wrote the books was bound and determined to find out
+everything that was wrong in every investigation made, and tell all
+about the wrongs and the wrongs only. Goodness knows, if one is
+hunting for the things which should be improved in this world, one
+life seems all too short to so much as make a start. In all honesty,
+then, such books on labor should be classified under "Troubles of
+Workers." No one denies they are legion. Everybody's troubles are, if
+troubles are what you want to find.
+
+The Schemer of Things has so arranged, praise be, that no one's life
+shall be nothing but woe and misery. Yea, even workers have been known
+to smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The experiences lived through in the following pages may strike the
+reader as superficial, artificial. In a way they were. Yet, they
+fulfilled their object in my eyes, at least. I wanted to feel for
+myself the general "atmosphere" of a job, several jobs. I wanted to
+know the worker without any suspicion on the part of the girls and
+women I labored among that they were being "investigated." I wanted to
+see the world through their eyes--for the time being to close my own
+altogether.
+
+There are no startling new facts or discoveries here recorded. Nothing
+in these pages will revolutionize anything. To such as wish the lot of
+the worker painted as the most miserable on earth, they will be
+disappointing.
+
+Yet in being as honest as I could in recording the impressions of my
+experiences, I am aware that I have made possible the drawing of false
+conclusions. Already such false conclusions have been drawn. "See,"
+says an "old-fashioned" employer, "the workers are happy--these
+articles of Mrs. Parker's show it. Why should they have better
+conditions? They don't want them!"
+
+A certain type of labor agitator, or a "parlor laborite," prefer to
+see only the gloomy side of the worker's life. They are as dishonest
+as the employer who would see only the contentment. The picture must
+be viewed in its entirety--and that means considering the workers not
+as a labor problem, but as a social problem. Workers are not an
+isolated group, who keep their industrial adversities or industrial
+blessings to themselves. They and their families and dependents are
+the majority of our population. As a nation, we rise no higher in the
+long run than the welfare of the majority. Nor can the word "welfare,"
+if one thinks socially, ever be limited to the word "contentment." It
+is quite conceivable--nay, every person has seen it in actuality--that
+an individual may be quite contented in his lot and yet have that lot
+incompatible with the welfare of the larger group.
+
+It is but as a part of the larger group that worker, employer, and the
+public must come to view the labor problem. When a worker is found who
+appears perfectly amenable to long hours, bad air, unhygienic
+conditions in general--and many are--somebody has to pay the price.
+There are thousands of contented souls, as we measure contentment, in
+the congested tenement districts of East Side New York. Does that fact
+add to our social welfare? Because mothers for years were willing to
+feed their children bad milk, was then the movement to provide good
+milk for babies a waste of time and money? Plenty of people always
+could be found who would willingly drink impure water. Society found
+that too costly, and cities pride themselves to-day on their pure
+water supply and low typhoid rate.
+
+There are industrial conditions flourishing which insidiously take a
+greater toll of society than did ever the death of babies from unclean
+milk, the death of old and young from impure water. The trouble is
+that their effects permeate in ways difficult for the unwilling eye to
+see.
+
+Perhaps in the long run, one of the most harmful phases of modern
+civilization is this very contentment of not only the workers, but the
+employer and society at large, under conditions which are not building
+up a wholesome, healthy, intelligent population. Indeed, it is not so
+much the fault of modern industrialism as such. Perhaps it is because
+there are so many people in the world and the ability of us human
+beings, cave men only ten thousand years ago, to care for so many
+people has not increased with the same rapidity as the population. Our
+numbers have outrun our capacities. Twentieth century development
+calls for large-scale organization for which the human mind has shown
+itself inadequate.
+
+It is well to keep in mind that no situation is the product of its own
+day. The working woman, for instance, we have had with us since the
+beginning of women--and they began a good spell ago. The problem of
+the working woman, as we think of it to-day, began with the beginning
+of modern industry. Nor is it possible to view her past without
+realizing that the tendency has ever been, with but few interruptions,
+toward improvement.
+
+In the early factory days in our country it is known that women rose
+at four, took their breakfast with them to the mills, and by five were
+hard at work in badly constructed buildings, badly heated, badly
+lighted. From seven-thirty to eight-thirty there was an hour for
+breakfast, at noon half an hour, and from then on steady work until
+half past seven at night. It would be perhaps eight o'clock before the
+mill girls reached home, sometimes too tired to stay awake till the
+end of supper. Later, hours were more generally from five in the
+morning until seven at night. In Lowell the girls worked two hours
+before breakfast and went back to the mills again in the evening after
+supper. By 1850 twelve hours had come to be the average working
+day.[1]
+
+    [Footnote 1: Abbot, _Women in Industry_.]
+
+Wages were very low--around seventy-five cents or a dollar a week with
+board. Mills and factories were accustomed to provide room and board
+in the corporation boarding houses, poorly constructed, ill-ventilated
+buildings, girls often sleeping six and eight in a room. In 1836 it
+was estimated that the average wage for women in industry (excluding
+board) was thirty-seven and one-half cents a day, although one
+thousand sewing women investigated received on an average twenty-five
+cents a day. In 1835 the New York _Journal of Commerce_ estimated that
+at the beginning of the century women's labor brought about fifty
+cents a week, which was equivalent to twenty-five cents in 1835. In
+1845 the New York _Tribune_ reported fifty thousand women averaging
+less than two dollars a week wages, and thousands receiving one dollar
+and fifty cents. Another investigation in 1845 found "female labor in
+New York in a deplorable degree of servitude, privation and misery,
+drudging on, miserably cooped up in ill-ventilated cellars and
+garrets." Women worked fifteen to eighteen hours a day to earn one to
+three dollars a week.
+
+And yet authorities tell us that some of the mill towns of New
+England, Lowell in particular, are looked back upon as being almost
+idyllic as regards the opportunities for working women. On examination
+it is found that what was exceptional from our point of view was not
+the conditions, but the factory employees. In those days work in the
+mills was "socially permissible." Indeed there was practically no
+other field of employment open to educated girls. The old domestic
+labors had been removed from the household--where could a girl with
+spirit and ability make the necessary money to carry out her
+legitimate desires? Her brothers "went west"--she went into the
+factories--with the same spirit. Ambitious daughters of New England
+farmers formed the bulk of cotton mill employees the first half of the
+nineteenth century. Their granddaughters are probably college
+graduates of the highest type to-day. After the long factory hours
+they found time for reading, debating clubs, lectures, church
+activities, French, and German classes. Part of the time some of the
+mill operatives taught school. Many of them looked forward to
+furthering their own education in such female seminaries as existed in
+those days, the expense to be met from their mill earnings. Poorly
+paid as mill hands were, it was often six to seven times what teachers
+received.
+
+"The mills offered not only regular employment and higher wages, but
+educational advantages which many of the operatives prized even more
+highly. Moreover, the girl who had worked in Lowell was looked upon
+with respect as a person of importance when she returned to her rural
+neighborhood. Her fashionable dress and manners and her general air of
+independence were greatly envied by those who had not been to the
+metropolis and enjoyed its advantages."[2]
+
+    [Footnote 2: Abbot, _Women in Industry_.]
+
+By 1850 the situation had altered. With the opening of the west,
+opportunities for women of gumption and spirit increased. The
+industrial depression of 1848-49 lowered wages, and little by little
+the former type of operative left the mill, her place being filled
+largely by Irish immigrants.
+
+The Civil War saw a great change in the world of working women.
+Thousands of men were taken from industry into war, and overnight
+great new fields of opportunity were opened to women. The more
+educated were needed as nurses, for teaching positions, and for
+various grades of clerical work deserted by men. After the close of
+the war farmers became more prosperous and their daughters were not
+forced to work for the wherewithal to acquire advantages. Add to all
+this the depression caused in the cotton industry due to the war--and
+the result of these new conditions was that when the mills reopened it
+was with cheap immigrant labor. What then could have been considered
+high wages were offered in an attempt to induce the more efficient
+American women operatives back to the mills, but the cost of living
+had jumped far higher even than high wages. The mills held no further
+attractions. Even the Irish deserted, their places being filled with
+immigrants of a lower type.
+
+Since the Civil War look at us--8,075,772 women in industry, as
+against 2,647,157 in 1880. Almost a fourth of the entire female
+population over ten years of age are at work, as against about
+one-seventh in 1880. The next census figures will show a still larger
+proportion. Those thousands of women the World War threw into
+industry, who never had worked before, did not all get out of industry
+after the war. Take just the railroads, for example. In April, 1918,
+there were 65,816 women employed in railroad work; in October, 1918,
+101,785; and in April, 1919, 86,519. In the 1910 census, of all the
+kinds of jobs in our country filled by men, only twelve were not also
+filled by women--and the next census will show a reduction there:
+firemen (either in manufacturing or railroads), brakemen, conductors,
+plumbers, common laborers (under transportation), locomotive
+engineers, motormen, policemen, soldiers, sailors, and marines. The
+interesting point is that in only one division of work are women
+decreasing in proportion to men--and that was women's work at the
+beginning--manufacturing. In agriculture, in the professions, in
+domestic and personal service, in trade and transportation, the number
+of women is creeping up, up, in proportion to the number of men. From
+the point of view of national health and vitality for this and the
+next generation, it is indeed a hopeful sign if women are giving way
+to men in factories, mills, and plants, and pushing up into work
+requiring more education and in turn not demanding such physical and
+nervous strain as does much of the machine process. Also, since on
+the whole as it has been organized up to date, domestic service has
+been one of the least attractive types of work women could fill, it is
+encouraging (though not to the housewife) to find that the proportion
+of women going into domestic and personal service has fallen from
+forty-four and six-tenths per cent, in 1880, to thirty-two and
+five-tenths per cent, in 1910.
+
+Women working at everything under the sun--except perhaps being
+locomotive engineers and soldiers and sailors. Why?
+
+First, it is part of every normal human being to want to work.
+Therefore, women want to work. Time was when within the home were
+enough real life-sized jobs to keep a body on the jump morning and
+night. Not only mother but any other females handy. There are those
+who grumble that women could find enough to do at home now if they
+only tried. They cannot, unless they have young children or unless
+they putter endlessly at nonessentials, the doing of which leaves them
+and everybody else no better off than before they began. And it is
+part of the way we are made that besides wanting to work, we need to
+work at something we feel "gets us some place." We prefer to work at
+something desirable and useful. Perhaps what we choose is not really
+so desirable and useful, looked at in the large, but it stacks up as
+more desirable and more useful than something else we might be doing.
+And with it all, if there is to be any real satisfaction, must go some
+feeling of independence--of being on "one's own."
+
+So, then, women go out to work in 1921 because there is not enough to
+do to keep them busy at home. They follow in part their age-old
+callings, only nowadays performed in roaring factories instead of by
+the home fireside. In part they take to new callings. Whatever the job
+may be, women _want_ to work in preference to the nonproductiveness of
+most home life to-day.
+
+Graham Wallas, in his _Great Society_, quotes the answers given by a
+number of girls to a woman who held their confidence as to why they
+worked. He wished to learn if they were happy. The question meant to
+the girls evidently, "Are you happier than you would have been at
+home?" and practically every answer was "Yes."
+
+In a "dismal and murky," but fairly well-managed laundry, six Irish
+girls all answered they were happy. One said the work "took up her
+mind, she had been awfully discontented." Another that "you were of
+some use." Another, "the hours went so much faster. At home one could
+read, but only for a short time. Then there was the awful lonesome
+afternoon ahead of you." "Asked a little girl with dyed hair but a
+good little heart. She enjoyed her work. It made her feel she was
+worth something."
+
+At another laundry, the first six girls all answered they were happy
+because the "work takes up your mind," and generally added, "It's
+awful lonesome at home," or "there is an awful emptiness at home."
+However, one girl with nine brothers and sisters was happy in the
+collar packing room just because "it was so awful lonesome"--she
+could enjoy her own thoughts. An Irishwoman at another laundry who had
+married an Italian said, "Sure I am always happy. It leaves me no time
+to think." At a knitting plant one girl said "when she didn't work,
+she was always thinking of dead people, but work always made her cheer
+up directly."
+
+The great industrial population comes from crowded tenements. It is
+inconceivable that enough work could be found within those walls to
+make life attractive to the girls and young women growing to maturity
+in such households.
+
+So much for the psychological side. The fact remains that the great
+bulk of women in industry work because they _have_ to work--they enter
+industrial life to make absolutely necessary money. The old tasks at
+which a woman could be self-supporting in the home are no longer
+possible in the home. She earns her bread now as she has earned it for
+thousands of years--spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, cooking--only
+to-day she is one of hundreds, thousands in a great factory. Nor is
+she longer confined to her traditional tasks. Men are playing a larger
+part in what was since time began and up to a few years ago woman's
+work. Women, in their need, are finding employment at any work that
+can use unskilled less physically capable labor.
+
+Ever has it been the very small proportion of men who could by their
+unaided effort support the entire family. At no time have all the men
+in a country been able to support all the women, regardless of
+whether that situation would be desirable. Always must the aid of
+womenfolk be called in as a matter of course. We have a national ideal
+of a living wage to the male head of the family which will allow him
+to support his family without forcing his wife and children into
+industry. Any man who earns less than that amount during the year must
+depend on the earnings of wife and children or else fall below the
+minimum necessary to subsistence, with all which that implies. In
+1910, four-fifths of the heads of families in the United States earned
+under eight hundred dollars a year. At that same time, almost
+nine-tenths of the women workers living at home in New York City
+working in factories, mills, and such establishments, paid their
+entire earnings to the family. Of 13,686 women investigated in
+Wisconsin in 1914, only 2 per cent gave nothing to the family support.
+Of girls in retail stores living at home in New York City, 84 per cent
+paid their entire earnings to the family. Work, then, for the majority
+of women, is more apt to be cold economic necessity--not only for
+herself, but for her family.
+
+Besides the fact that great numbers of women must work and many want
+to work, there are the reasons for women's work arising in modern
+industry itself. First, a hundred years ago, there was the need for
+hands in the new manufactures, and because of the even more pressing
+agricultural demands, men could not be spared. The greater the
+subdivisions of labor up to a certain point, the simpler the process,
+and the more women can be used, unskilled as they are ever apt to be.
+Also they will work at more monotonous, more disagreeable work than
+men, and for less wages. Again, women's entrance into new industries
+has often been as strike breakers, and once in, there was no way to
+get them out. Industrial depressions throw men out of work, and also
+women, and in the financial pressure following, women turn to any sort
+of work at any sort of pay, and perhaps open a new wedge for women's
+work in a heretofore untried field, desirable or undesirable.
+
+The freedom from having to perform every and all domestic functions
+within the four walls of home is purchased at the expense of millions
+of toilers outside the home, the majority of whom do not to-day
+receive enough wages, where they are the menfolk, to support their own
+families; nor where they are single women, to support themselves. The
+fact that men cannot support their families forces women in large
+numbers into industry. There would be nothing harmful in that, if only
+industry were organized so that participation in it enriched human
+lives. Remembering always that where industry takes women from the
+care of young children, society and the nation pay dearly; for,
+inadequate and ignorant as mothers often are regarding child care,
+their substitutes to-day are apt to be even less efficient.
+
+Pessimists marshal statistics to show that modern industrialism is
+going to rack and ruin. Maybe it is. But pessimism is more a matter of
+temperament than statistics. An optimist can assemble a most cheerful
+array of figures to show that everything is on the up. Temperament
+again. Industry is what industry does. If you are feeling gloomy
+to-day, you can visit factories where it is plain to see that no human
+being could have his lot improved by working there. Such factories
+certainly exist. If you would hug your pessimism to your soul, then
+there are many factories you must stay away from. Despite all the
+pessimists, there is a growing tendency to increase the welfare of
+human beings in industry.
+
+It is but an infinitesimal drop any one individual can contribute to
+hasten a saner industrialism. Yet some of us would so fain contribute
+our mite! Where the greatest need of all lies is that the human beings
+in industry, the employer and the employees, shall better understand
+one another, and society at large better understand both. My own
+amateur and humble experiences here recorded have added much to my own
+understanding of the problems of both manager and worker.
+
+Can they add even a fraction to the understanding of anyone else?
+
+                                        CORNELIA STRATTON PARKER.
+
+  Woods Hole,
+    _August_, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+                    WORKING WITH THE WORKING WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+                                   I
+
+                      _No. 1075 Packs Chocolates_
+
+
+Wise heads tell us we act first--or decide to act first--and reason
+afterward. Therefore, what could be put down in black and white as to
+why we took up factory work is of minor value or concern. Yet everyone
+persists in asking why? So then, being merely as honest as the Lord
+allows, we answer first and foremost because we wanted to. Isn't that
+enough? It is the why and wherefore of almost everything anyone does
+any place at any time. Only the more adept can concoct much weightier
+reasons as an afterthought. There is only one life most of us doubting
+humans are absolutely sure of. That one life gets filled with so much
+of the same sort of performance day in and day out; usually only an
+unforeseen calamity--or stroke of luck--throws us into a way of living
+and doing things which is not forever just as we lived and did things
+yesterday and the day before.
+
+Yet the world is so full of the unexplored! To those who care more for
+people than places, around every corner is something new--a world only
+dreamt of, if that. Why should all one's life be taken up with the
+kind of people we were born among, doing the sort of things our aunts
+and our uncles and our cousins and our friends do? Soon there creeps
+in--soon? yes, by six years or younger--that comforting belief that as
+we and our aunts and our uncles and our cousins and our friends do, so
+does--or should do--the world. And all the time we and our aunts and
+our uncles and our cousins and our friends are one little
+infinitesimal drop in one hundred million people, and what those above
+and below and beyond and around about think and do, we know nothing,
+nor care nothing, about. But those others are the world, with us, a
+speck of--well, in this case it happened to be curiosity--in the midst
+of it all.
+
+Therefore, being curious, we decided to work in factories. In addition
+to wanting to feel a bona-fide part of a cross section of the world
+before only viewed second or third hand through books, there was the
+desire better to understand the industrial end of things by trying a
+turn at what some eight million or so other women are doing. "Women's
+place is the home." All right--that side of life we know first hand.
+But more and more women are not staying home, either from choice or
+from necessity. Reading about it is better than nothing. Being an
+active part of it all is better still. It is one thing to lounge on an
+overstuffed davenport and read about the injurious effect on women of
+long hours of standing. It is another to be doing the standing.
+
+Yet another reason for giving up some months to factory work, besides
+the adventure of it, besides the desire to see other angles of life
+for oneself, to experience first hand the industrial end of it. So
+much of the technic of the world to-day we take as a matter of course.
+Clothes appear ready to put on our backs. As far as we know or care,
+angels left them on the hangers behind the mirrored sliding doors.
+Food is set on our tables ready to eat. It might as well have been
+created that way, for all our concern. The thousands of operations
+that go into an article before the consumer buys it--no, there is no
+reason why use and want should make us callous and indifferent to the
+hows and wherefores. Never was there such an age. Let's poke behind
+the scenes a bit.
+
+So, factories it was to be. Not as a stranger snooping in to
+"investigate." As a factory girl working at her job--with all that, we
+determined to peek out of the corner of our eyes, and keep both ears
+to the wind, lest we miss anything from start to finish. Artificial,
+of course. Under the circumstances, since we were born how and as we
+were, and this had happened and that, we were not an honest Eyetalian
+living in a back bedroom on West Forty-fourth Street near the river.
+
+We did what we could to feel the part. Every lady in the land knows
+the psychology of dress--though not always expressed by her in those
+terms. She feels the way she looks, not the other way round. So then,
+we purchased large green earrings, a large bar pin of platinum and
+brilliants ($1.79), a goldy box of powder (two shades), a lip stick.
+During the summer we faded a green tam-o'shanter so that it would not
+look too new. For a year we had been saving a blue-serge dress
+(original cost $19) from the rag bag for the purpose. We wore a pair
+of old spats which just missed being mates as to shade, and a button
+off one. Silk stockings--oh yes, silk--but very darned. A blue
+sweater, an orange scarf, and last, but not least--
+
+If you had been brought up in a fairly small city by female relatives
+who were one and all school-teachers, who had watched over your
+vocabulary (unsuccessfully) as they hung over your morals; if you had
+been taught, not in so many words, but insidiously, that breaking the
+Ten Commandments (any one or the entire ten), split infinitives, and
+chewing gum, were one in the sight of God, or the devil--then you
+could realize the complete metamorphosis when, in addition to the
+earrings and the bar pin, the green tam and the lip stick, you stepped
+up to the Subway newsstand and boldly demanded a package of--chewing
+gum. And then and there got out a stick and chewed it, and chewed it
+on the Subway and chewed it on the streets of New York. Some people
+have to go to a masquerade ball to feel themselves some one else for a
+change. Others, if they have been brought up by school-teachers, can
+get the same effect with five cents' worth of chewing gum.
+
+After all, one of the most attractive features about being "well
+brought up" is the fun of sloughing off. The fun of sloughing off a
+lot at once! Had it ever been known ahead of time the fascination of
+doing forbidden things, just that first factory morning would have
+been worth the whole venture. To read the morning paper over other
+people's shoulders--not furtively, but with a bold and open eye. To
+stare at anything which caught one's attention. (Bah! all that is
+missed in New York because it has been so ground into the bone that it
+is impolite to stare!) And to talk to any one, male or female, who
+looked or acted as if he or she wanted to talk to you. Only even a
+short experience has taught that that abandon leads to more trouble
+than it is worth. What a pity mere sociability need suffer so much
+repression! We hate to make that concession to our upbringers.
+
+When the time for beginning factory work came there appeared but one
+advertisement among "Help Wanted--Female" which did not call for
+"experience." There might have to be so much lying, direct and
+indirect, to do. Better not start off by claiming experience when
+there was absolutely none--except, indeed, had we answered
+advertisements for cooks only, or baby tenders, or maids of all work.
+One large candy factory bid for "girls and women, good wages to start,
+experience not necessary," and in a part of town which could be
+reached without starting out the night before. At 7.15 of a Monday
+morning we were off, with a feeling something akin to stage fright.
+Once we heard a hobo tell of the first time he ever tried to get on a
+freight train in the dark of night when it was moving. But we chewed
+our gum very boldly.
+
+One of the phases of finding a job often criticized by those who would
+add somewhat of dignity to labor is the system of hiring. Like a lot
+of other things, perhaps, you don't mind the present system if you get
+by. Here was this enormous good-looking factory. On one side of the
+front steps, reaching all the way up into the main entrance hall,
+stood a line of men waiting for jobs; on the other side, though not
+near so long a line, the girls. The regular employees file by. At
+last, about eight o'clock, the first man is beckoned. Just behind the
+corner of a glassed-in telephone booth, but in full view of all, he is
+questioned by an employee in a white duck suit. Man after man is sent
+on out, to the growing discouragement, no doubt, of those remaining in
+line. At last, around a little corner in the stairs, the first girl is
+summoned. The line moves up. A queer-looking man with pop eyes asks a
+few questions. The girl goes on upstairs. I am fourth in line--a steam
+heater next and the actions of my insides make the temperature seem
+120 at least. My turn.
+
+"How much experience you've had?"
+
+"None."
+
+"What you work in last?"
+
+"Didn't work in a factory--been doin' housework--takin' care of kids."
+
+"Well, I start you packing. You get thirteen dollars this week,
+fourteen dollars next--you understand?"
+
+He writes something on a little card and I go upstairs with it. There
+I am asked my name, age (just did away with ten years while I was at
+it). Married or single? Goodness! hadn't thought of that. In the end a
+lie there would make less conversation. Single. Nationality--Eyetalian?
+No, American. It all has to be written on a card. At that point my eye
+lights on a sign which reads: "Hours for girls 8 A.M.-6 P.M. Saturdays
+8-12." Whew! My number is 1075. The time clock works so. My key hangs
+on this hook; then after I ring up, it hangs here. (That was an
+entrancing detail I had not anticipated--made me wish we had to ring up
+at noon as well as morning and night.) Locker key 222. A man takes me
+in the elevator to the third floor and there hands me over to Ida. The
+locker works thus and so. Didn't I have no apron? No--but to-morrow I'd
+bring it, and a cap. Sure.
+
+Three piles of boxes and trucks and barrels and Ida opens a great door
+like a safe, and there we are in the packing room--from the steam
+heater downstairs to the North Pole. Cold? Nothing ever was so cold.
+Ten long zinc-topped tables, a girl or two on each side. At the right,
+windows which let in no air and little light, nor could you see out at
+all. On the left, shelves piled high with wooden boxes. Mostly all a
+body can think of is how cold, cold, cold it is. Something happens to
+chocolates otherwise.
+
+That first day it is half-pound boxes. My side of the table holds some
+sixty at a time. First the date gets stamped on the bottom, then
+partitions are fitted in. "Here's your sample. Under the table you'll
+find the candies, or else ask Fannie, there. You take the paper cups
+so, in your left hand, give them a snap so, lick your fingers now and
+then, slip a cup off, stick the candy in with your right hand." And
+Ida is off.
+
+The saints curse the next person who delicately picks a chocolate from
+its curled casing and thinks it grew that way--came born in that paper
+cup. May he or she choke on it! Can I ever again buy chocolates
+otherwise than loose in a paper bag? You push and shove--not a cup
+budges from its friends and relatives. Perhaps your fingers need more
+licking. Perhaps the cups need more "snapping." In the end you hold a
+handful of messed-up crumpled erstwhile cup-shaped paper containers,
+the first one pried off looking more like a puppy-chewed mat by the
+time it is loose and a chocolate planted on its middle. By then,
+needless to remark, the bloom is off the chocolate. It has the look of
+being clutched in a warm hand during an entire circus parade. Whereat
+you glance about furtively and quickly eat it. It is nice the room is
+cold; already you fairly perspire. One mussed piece of naked brown
+paper in a corner of a box.
+
+The table ahead, fingers flying like mad over the boxes, works Annie.
+It is plain she will have sixty boxes done before I have one. Just
+then a new girl from the line of that morning is put on the other side
+of my table. She is very cold. She fares worse with brown paper cups
+than I. Finally she puts down the patient piece of chocolate candy
+and takes both hands to the job of separating one cup from the others.
+She places what is left of the chocolate in the middle of what is left
+of the paper, looks at me, and better than any ouija board I know what
+is going on in her head. I smile at her, she smiles back, and she eats
+that first chocolate. Tessie and I are friends for life.
+
+Then we tackle the second union of chocolate and paper. Such is life.
+Allah be praised, the second goes a shade less desperately than the
+first, the third than the second, and in an hour chocolate and paper
+get together without untoward damage to either. But the room stays
+feeling warm. Anon a sensation begins to get mixed up with the hectic
+efforts of fingers. Yes, yes--now it's clear what it is--feet! Is one
+never to sit down again as long as one lives? Clumsy fingers--feet.
+Feet--clumsy fingers. Finally you don't give a cent if you never learn
+to pry those paper cups loose without wrenching your very soul in the
+effort. If once before you die--just once--you can sit down! Till 12
+and then after, 1 till 6. Help!
+
+A bell rings. "All right, girls!" sings Ida down the line. Everyone
+drops everything, and out into the warm main third floor we go. All
+the world is feet. Somehow those same feet have to take their
+possessor out to forage for food. Into a little dirty, crowded grocery
+and delicatessen store we wedge ourselves, to stand, stand, stand,
+until at last we face the wielder of a long knife. When in Rome do as
+the Romans do. "A bologna and a ham sandwich and five cents' worth of
+pickles." Slabs of rye bread, no butter, large, generous slices of
+sausage and ham which hang down curtainlike around the bread--twenty-one
+cents. Feet take me back to the factory lunch room. At last I flop on
+a chair. Sing songs to chairs; write poems to chairs; paint chairs!
+
+Dear German Tessie, pal of the morning, she who ate more chocolates
+than I and thus helped to sustain my moral courage--Tessie and I eat
+bologna sausage sandwiches together and _sit_. The feet of Tessie are
+very, very badly off--ach!--but they feel--they feel--jus' fierce--and
+till six o'clock--"Oh, my Gawd!" says Tessie, in good English.
+
+A gong sounds. Up we go to the ice box packing room. It sends the
+shivers down our spines. But already there is a feeling of sauntering
+in like an old hand at the game. What's your business in life? Packing
+chocolates. The half-pound boxes get finished, wax paper on top,
+covered, stacked, counted, put on the truck.
+
+"Lena! Start the girl here in on 'assorteds.'"
+
+Pert little Lena sidles up alongside and nudges me in the ribs.
+
+"Say, got a fella?"
+
+I give Lena one look, for which Belasco should pay me a thousand
+dollars a night. Lena reads it out loud quick as a wink. She snickers,
+pokes me in the ribs again, and, "What to hell do I think you are,
+hey?" That's just what I'd meant. "Gee!" says Lena. "Some fool what
+can't get some kind of a dope!"
+
+"You said it!"
+
+"Say, got more 'n one dope?" asks Lena, hopefully. Meanwhile she sets
+out, with my aid, row after row of dinky little deep boxes.
+
+"Say now," say I to Lena, "and what would a girl be doin' with jus'
+_one_ dope?"
+
+"You said it!" says Lena.
+
+At which follows a discussion on dopes, ending by Lena's promising
+never to vamp my dope if I won't vamp hers.
+
+"Where'd ya work last?" asks Lena.
+
+One thing the first day taught me. If you want to act the part and
+feel the part, earrings and gum help, but if there is one thing you
+are more conscious of than all else, it is such proper English as you
+possess--which compared to Boston is not much, but compared to Lena
+and Ida and Mary and Louise and Susie and Annie is painfully flawless.
+Chew hard as ever you can, if you tell Fannie, "There aren't any more
+plantations," it echoes and re-echoes and shrieks at you from the four
+sides of Christendom. But holler, "Fannie, there ain't no more
+plantations!" and it is like the gentle purring of a home cat by
+comparison. Funny how it is easier to say "My Gawd!" and "Where t'
+hell's Ida!" than "I 'ain't got none." Any way round, you never do get
+over being conscious of your grammar. If it is correct, it is lonesome
+as the first robin. If it is properly awful, there are those
+school-teacher upbringers. I am just wondering if one might not be
+dining with the head of the university philosophy department and his
+academic guests some night and hear one's voice uttering down a
+suddenly silent table, "She ain't livin' at that address no more."
+Utterly abashed, one's then natural exclamation on the stillness would
+be, "My Gawd!" Whereat the hostess would busily engage her end of the
+table in anguished conversation, giving her husband one look, which,
+translated into Lena's language, would say, "What t' hell did we ask
+her for, anyhow?"
+
+Is one to write of factory life as one finds it, or expurgated? I can
+hear the upbringers cry "expurgated"! Yet the way the girls talked was
+one of the phases of the life which set the stamp of difference on it
+all. What an infinitesimal portion of the population write our books!
+What a small proportion ever read them! How much of the nation's
+talking is done by the people who never get into print! The proportion
+who read and write books, especially the female folk, live and die in
+the belief that it is the worst sort of bad taste, putting it mildly,
+to use the name of the Creator in vain, or mention hell for any
+purpose whatsoever. Yet suddenly, overnight, you find yourself in a
+group who would snap their fingers at such notions. Sweet-faced,
+curly-headed Annie wants another box of caramels. Elizabeth
+Witherspoon would call, "Fannie, would you be so kind as to bring me
+another box of caramels?" Annie, without stopping her work or so much
+as looking up, raises her voice and calls down the room--and in her
+heart she is the same exactly as Elizabeth W.--"Fannie, you bum, bring
+me a box of car'mels or I'll knock the hell clean out o' ya."
+
+According to Elizabeth's notions Fannie should answer her, "One
+moment, Miss Elizabeth; I'm busy just now." What Fannie (with her soul
+as pure as drifted snow) does call back to Annie is, "My Gawd! Keep
+your mouth shut. 'Ain't you got sense enough to see I'm busy!"
+
+Annie could holler a hundred times, and she does, that she'd knock the
+hell out of Fannie, and God would love her every bit as much as he
+would love Miss Elizabeth Witherspoon, who has been taught otherwise
+and never said hell in her life, not even in a dark closet. Fannie and
+all the other Fannies and Idas and Louisas, say, "My Gawd!" as Miss
+Elizabeth says "You don't say!" and it is all one to the Heavenly
+Father. Therefore, gentle reader, it must be all one to you. There is
+not the slightest shade of disrespect in Annie's or Fannie's hearts as
+they shower their profanity on creation in general. There is not the
+slightest shade in mind as I write of them.
+
+So then, back that first day Lena asked, "Where'd ya work last?"
+
+"Didn't work in a factory before."
+
+"'Ain't ya?"
+
+"No, I 'ain't." (Gulp.) "I took care of kids."
+
+"Gee! but they was fresh."
+
+"You said it!"
+
+"Lena!" hollers Ida. "Get ta work and don't talk so much!" Whereat
+Lena gives me another poke in my cold ribs and departs. And Tessie and
+I pack "assorteds": four different chocolates in the bottom of each
+box, four still different ones in the top--about three hundred and
+fifty boxes on our table. We puff and labor on the top layer and Ida
+breezes along. "My Gawd! Look at that! Where's your cardboards?"
+
+Tessie and I look woebegone at one another. Cardboards? Cardboards?
+
+Ida glues her Eyetalian eye on Lena down the line. "Lena, you fool,
+didn't you tell these here girls about cardboards?... My Gawd! My
+Gawd!" says Ida. Whereat she dives into our belabored boxes and grabs
+those ached-over chocolates and hurls them in a pile. "Get all them
+top ones out. Put in cardboards. Put 'em all in again." Tessie and I
+almost could have wept. By that time it is about 4. We are all feet,
+feet, FEET. First I try standing on one foot to let the other think I
+might really, after all, be sitting down. Then I stand on it and give
+the other a delusion. Then try standing on the sides, the toes, the
+heels. FEET! "Ach! Mein Gott!" moans Tessie. "To-morrow I go look for
+a job in a biscuit factory."
+
+"Leave me know if you get a sit-down one."
+
+And in that state--FEET--Ida makes us pack over the whole top layer in
+three hundred and fifty boxes. Curses on Lena and her "dopes." Or
+curses on me that I could so suddenly invent such picturesque love
+affairs that Lena forgot all about cardboards.
+
+About then my locker key falls through a hole in my waist pocket and
+on to the floor and out of sight. In the end it takes a broom handle
+poked about diligently under the bottom shelf of our table to make a
+recovery. Before the key appear chocolates of many shapes and sizes,
+long reposing in oblivion under the weighty table. The thrifty Spanish
+woman behind me gathers up all the unsquashed ones and packs them.
+"Mus' be lots of chocolates under these 'ere tables, eh?" she notes
+wisely and with knit brows. As if to say that, were she boss, she'd
+poke with a broom under each and every bottom shelf and fill many a
+box.
+
+At least my feet get a moment's rest while I am down on my hands and
+knees among the debris from under the tables.
+
+By five o'clock Tessie thinks she'll throw up her job then and there.
+"Ach! Ach! My feet!" she moans. I secretly plan to kill the next
+person who gives me a box of chocolate candy.
+
+Surely it is almost 6.
+
+Five minutes after 5.
+
+The bell has forgotten to ring. It must be 7.
+
+Quarter after 5.
+
+Now for sure and certain it is midnight.
+
+Half-past 5.
+
+My earrings begin to hurt. You can take off earrings. But FEET--
+
+Tessie says she's eaten too many candies; her stomach does her pain.
+Her feet aren't so hurting now her _magen_ is so bad. I couldn't eat
+another chocolate for five dollars, but my stomach refused to feel in
+any way that takes my mind in the least off my feet.
+
+Eternity has passed on. It must be beyond the Judgment Day itself.
+
+Ten minutes to 6.
+
+When the bell does ring I am beyond feeling any emotion. There is no
+part of me with which to feel emotion. I am all feet, and feet either
+do not feel at all or feel all weary unto death. During the summer I
+had played one match in a tennis tournament 7-5, 5-7, 13-11. I had
+thought I was ready to drop dead after that. It was mere knitting in
+the parlor compared to how I felt after standing at that table in that
+candy factory from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., with a bit of a half-hour's
+sitting at noon.
+
+Somehow you could manage to endure it all if it were not for the
+crowning agony of all--standing up on the Subway going home. I am no
+aggressive feminist, and I am no old-fashioned clinging vine, but I
+surely do hate, hate, hate every man in that Subway who sits back in
+comfort (and most of them look as if they had been sitting all day)
+while I and my feet stand up. When in my utter anguish I find myself
+swaying with the jerks and twists of the express in front of a person
+with a Vandyke beard reading _The Gospel According to St. John_, I
+long with all the energy left in me (I still have some in my arms) to
+grab that book out of his hands, fling it in his face, and hiss,
+"Hypocrite!" at him. I do not believe I ever knew what it was really
+and honestly to hate a person before. If it had been the _Police
+Gazette_ I could have borne up under it. But _The Gospel According to
+St. John_--my Gawd!
+
+Thus ends my first factory day. It is small comfort to calculate I
+stepped on more chocolates in those nine hours than I usually eat in a
+year. To be sure, it was something new on the line of life's
+experiences. If that man in front of me were only a chocolate with
+soft insides and I could squash him flat! Yes, there was enough energy
+in my feet for that. To get my heel square above him and then
+_stamp_--ugh! the sinner! He continues reading _The Gospel According
+to St. John_, nor so much as looks up to receive my last departing
+glare as I drag myself off at 116th Street.
+
+Bless the Lord, O my soul, the next morning my feet feel as if they
+had never been stood on before. What if we do have to stand up in the
+Subway all the way down? Who minds standing in the Subway? And then
+stand in the jammed and elbowing cross-town car. Who cares? And how we
+do walk up those factory steps as if we owned the world! The
+chestiness of us as we take our key off left-hand hook 1075, ring up
+under the clock (twenty minutes early we are) and hang up on No. 1075
+right; but it seems you are late if you are not ten minutes early. It
+is the little tricks like that you get wise about.
+
+I saunter over to the elevator with a jam of colored girls--the
+majority of the girls in that factory were colored. I call out,
+"Third, please." Oh, glory be! Why were we ever born? That elevator
+man turns around and pierces me with his eye as though I were the man
+with the Vandyke beard in the Subway, and he, the elevator man, were
+I. "_Third_ floor did ya say? And since when does the elevator lift
+ya to the _third_ floor? If ya want the sixth floor ya can ride.
+_Third_ floor! My Gawd! _Third_ floor!" And on and on he mutters and
+up and up I go, all the proud feelings of owning the world stripped
+from me--exposed before the multitudes as an ignoramus who didn't know
+any better than to ride in the elevator when she was bound only for
+the third floor. "_Third_ floor," continues muttering the elevator
+man. At last there is no one left in the elevator but the muttering
+man and me. "Well," I falter, chewing weakly on my Black Jack, "What
+shall I do, then?"
+
+"I'll leave ya off at the third this time, but don't ya try this trick
+again."
+
+"Again? Goodness! You don't think I'd make this mistake twice, do
+you?"
+
+"_Twice?_" he bellows. "_Twice?_ Didn't I have this all out with ya
+yesterday mornin'?"
+
+"Goodness, no!" I try to assure him, but he is putting me off at third
+and calling after me: "Don't I know I did tell ya all this yesterday
+mornin'? And don't ya forget it next time, neither." It must be awful
+to be that man's wife. But I love him compared to the Vandyke beard in
+the Subway reading _The Gospel According to St. John_.
+
+Everybody is squatting about on scant corners and ledges waiting for
+the eight o'clock bell. I squat next the thrifty Spanish lady, whereat
+she immediately begins telling me the story of her life.
+
+"You married?" she asks. No. "Well don' you do it," says the fat and
+mussy Espaniole, as the girls called her. "I marry man--five years,
+all right. One morning I say, 'I go to church--you go too?' He say
+'No, I stay home.' I go church. I come home. I fin' him got young girl
+there. I say, 'You clear out my house, you your young girl!' Out he
+go, she go. 'Bout one year 'go he say he come back. I say no you don'.
+He beg me, beg me come home. I say no, no, no. He write me letter,
+letter, letter. I say no, no, no. Bymby I say alright, you come live
+my house don't you _touch_ me, hear? Don' you _touch_ me. He live one
+room, I live one room. He no touch me. Two weeks 'go he die. Take all
+my money, put him in cemetery. I have buy me black waist, black skirt.
+I got no money more. I want move from that house--no want live that
+house no more--give me bad dreams. I got no money move. Got son
+thirteen. He t'ink me fool have man around like that. I no care. See
+he sen's letter, letter, letter. Now I got no money. I have work." The
+bell rings. We shiver ourselves into the ice box.
+
+No Tessie across the table. Instead a strange, unkempt female who
+sticks it out half an hour, announces she has the chills in her feet,
+and departs. Her place is taken by a slightly less disheveled young
+woman who claims she'd packed candy before where they had seats and
+she thought she'd go back. They paid two dollars less a week, but it
+was worth two dollars to sit down. How she packs! The sloppiest work I
+ever saw. It outrages my soul. The thrill of new pride I have when Ida
+gets through swearing at her and turns to me.
+
+"Keep your eye on this girl, will ya? Gee! she packs like a fright!"
+And to the newcomer: "You watch that girl across the table" (me, she
+means--me!) "and do the way she does."
+
+No first section I ever got in economics gave me such joy.
+
+But, ah! the first feeling of industrial bitterness creeps in. Here is
+a girl getting fourteen dollars a week. Tessie was promised fourteen
+dollars a week. I packed faster, better, than either of them for
+thirteen dollars. I would have fourteen dollars, too, or know the
+reason why. Ida fussed and scolded over the new girls all day. The
+sweetness of her entire neglect of me!
+
+By that noon my feet hardly hurt at all. I sit in a quiet corner to
+eat rye-bread sandwiches brought from home, gambling on whom I will
+draw for luncheon company. Six colored girls sit down at my table. A
+good part of the time they spend growling on the subject of overtime.
+I am too new to know what it is all about.
+
+The lunch room is a bare, whitewashed, huge affair, with uplifting
+advice on the walls here and there. "Any fool can take a chance; it
+takes brains to be careful," and such like. One got me all upset:
+"America is courteous to its women. Gentlemen will, therefore, please
+remove their hats in this room." That Vandyke beard in the Subway!
+
+By 4.30 again I think my feet will be the death of me. That last hour
+and a half! Louie, the general errand boy of our packing room, brushes
+by our table with some trays and knocks about six of my carefully
+packed boxes on the floor. "You Louie!" I holler, and I long to have
+acquired the facility to call lightly after him, as anyone else would
+have done, "Say, you go to hell!" Instead, mustering all the reserve
+force I can, the best showing I am able to make is, "You Louie! Go off
+and die!" I almost hold my own--468 boxes of "assorteds" do I pack.
+And again the anguishing stand in the Subway. I hate men--hate them. I
+just hope every one of them gets greeted by a nagging wife when he
+arrives home. Hope she nags all evening.... If enough of those wives
+really did do enough nagging, would the men thereupon stay downtown
+for dinner and make room in the Subway for folk who had been standing,
+except for one hour, from 7.15 A.M.? At last I see a silver lining to
+the dark cloud of marital unfelicity....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lillian of the bright-pink boudoir cap engaged me in conversation this
+morning. Lillian is around the Indian summer of life--as to years, but
+not atmosphere. Lillian has seen better days. Makes sure you know it.
+Never did a lick of work in her life. At that she makes a noise with
+her upper lip the way a body does in southern Oregon when he uses a
+toothpick after a large meal. "No, sir, never did a lick." Lillian
+says "did" and not "done." Practically no encouragement is needed for
+Lillian to continue. "After my husband died I blew in all the money he
+left me in two years. Since then I have been packing chocolates." How
+long ago was that?
+
+"Five years."
+
+"My Gawd," I say, and it comes natural-like. "What did you do with
+your feet for five years?"
+
+"Oh, you get used to it," says Lillian. "For months I cried every
+night. Don't any more. But I lie down while I'm warmin' up my supper,
+and then I go to bed soon as its et."
+
+Five years!
+
+"Goin' to vote?" asks Lillian.
+
+"Sure."
+
+"I'm not," allows Lillian. "To my notions all that votin' business is
+nothing for a lady to get mixed up in. No, sir." Lillian makes that
+noise with her upper lip again. Lillian's lips are very red, her
+eyebrows very black. I'll not do anything, though, with my eyebrows.
+Says Lillian: "No, siree, not for a lady. I got a good bet up on the
+election. Yes, sir!--fifty dollars on Harding."
+
+And five years of going to bed every night after supper.
+
+Tessie is back. I do love Tessie, and I know Tessie loves me. She had
+not gone hunting for another job, as I thought. Her husband had had
+his elbow broken with an electric machine of some sort where he works
+on milk cans. The morning before she had taken him to the hospital.
+That made her ten minutes late to the factory. The little pop-eyed man
+told her, "You go on home!" and off she went. "But he tell me that
+once more I no come back again," said Tessie, her cheeks very red.
+
+I begin to get the "class feeling"--to understand a lot of things I
+wanted to know first hand. In the first place, there is no thought
+ever, and I don't see in that factory how there can be, for the boss
+and his interests. Who is he? Where is he? The nearest one comes to
+him is the pop-eyed man at the door. Once in a while Ida hollers "For
+Gawd's sake, girls, work faster!" Now that doesn't inspire to
+increased production for long. There stands Tessie across the table
+from me--peasant Tessie from near Muenchen, with her sweet face and
+white turned-up cap. She packs as fast as she can, but her hands are
+clumsy and she can't seem to get the difference between chocolates
+very well. It is enough to drive a seer crazy. They change the
+positions on the shelves every so often; the dipping-machine tenders
+cut capers and mark the same kind of chocolates differently to-day
+from yesterday. By three in the afternoon you're too sick of
+chocolates to do any more investigating by sampling. Even Ida herself
+has sometimes to poke a candy in the bottom--if it feels one way it's
+"marsh"; another, it's peach; another, it's coconut. But my feeling is
+not educated and I poke, and then end by having to bite, and then,
+just as I discover it is peach, after all, some one has run off with
+the last box and Ida has to be found and a substitute declared.
+
+Tessie gives up in despair and hurls herself on me. So then Tessie is
+nearest to me in the whole factory, and Tessie is slow. The faster I
+pack the more it shows up Tessie's slowness. If Ida scolded Tessie it
+would break my heart. The thought of the man who owns that factory,
+and his orders and his profits and his obligations, never enter my or
+any other packer's head. I will not pack so many boxes that Tessie
+gets left too far behind.
+
+Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in
+packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or
+twist comes to me--my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget
+the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is
+all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait
+to get back after lunch. I fly out after the big boxes to pack the
+little boxes in. In my haste and ignorance I bring back covers by
+mistake and pack dozens of little boxes in covers. It must all be done
+over again. Six hundred boxes I pack this day. I've not stopped for
+breath. I'm not a bit tired when 6 o'clock comes round. I ask Ida when
+she will put me on piecework--it seems the great ambition of my life
+is to feel I am on piecework. "When you can pack about two thousand
+boxes a day," says Ida. Two thousand! I was panting and proud over six
+hundred! "Never mind," says Ida, "you're makin' out fine." Oh, the
+thrill of those words! I asked her to show me again about separating
+the paper cups. I didn't have it just right, I was sure. "My Gawd!"
+sighed Ida, "what ambition!" Yes, but the ambition did not last more
+than a few days at that pitch.
+
+Tessie wanted to tell me something about her _Mann_ to-day so badly,
+but could not find the English words. Her joy when I said, "Tell me in
+German"! How came I to speak German? I'd spent three years in Germany
+with an American family, taking care of the children. Honest for once.
+
+"That was luck for you," says Tessie.
+
+"That was sure luck for me," says I--honest again.
+
+Wherever Lena works there floats conversation for a radius of three
+tables. The subject matter is ever the same--"dopes." "Is he big?...
+Gee! I say!... More like a sister to him.... He never sees the
+letters." "Lena" (from Ida), "shut up and get to work!" ... "I picked
+him up Sunday.... Where's them waxing papers?... Third she vamped in
+two days.... Sure treats a girl swell.... Them ain't pineapples...."
+"Lee-na! get to work or I'll knock the hell out a ya!" And pretty Lena
+giggles on: "He says.... She says to him.... Sure my father says if he
+comes 'round again...."
+
+And Tessie and I; I bend over to hear Tessie's soft, low German as she
+tells me how good her _Mann_ is to her; how he never, never scolds, no
+matter if she buys a new hat or what; how he brings home all his pay
+every week and gives it to her. He is such a good _Mann_. They are
+saving all their money. In two years they will go back near Muenchen
+and buy a little farm.
+
+Tessie and her poor _Mann_, with his broken elbow and his swollen arm
+all black and blue, couldn't sleep last night. Oh dear! this New York!
+One man at one corner he talk about Harding, one man other corner he
+talk about Cox; one man under their window he talk MacSwiney--New York
+talk, talk, talk!
+
+Looked like rain to-day, but how can a body buy an umbrella
+appropriate to chocolate packing at thirteen dollars a week when the
+stores are all closed before work and closed after? I told Lillian my
+troubles. I asked Lillian if a cheap umbrella could be purchased in
+the neighborhood.
+
+"Cheap," sniffs Lillian. "I don't know. I got me a nice one--sample
+though--at Macy's for twelve-fifty." Lillian may take to her bed after
+supper, but while she is awake she is going to be every inch to the
+manner born.
+
+By the time I pack the two thousandth box of "assorteds" my soul turns
+in revolt. "If you give me another 'assorted' to pack," says I to Ida,
+"I'll lie down here on the floor and die."
+
+"The hell you will," says Ida. But she gets me fancy pound boxes with
+a top and bottom layer, scarce two candies alike, and Tessie beams on
+me like a mother with an only child. "That takes the brains!" says
+Tessie. "Not for me! It gives me the ache in my head to think of it."
+
+Indeed it near gives me the ache in mine. Before the next to the last
+row is packed the bottom looks completely filled. Where can four fat
+chocolates in cups find themselves? I push the last row over gently to
+make room,--three chocolates in the middle rear up and stand on end.
+Press them gently down and two more on the first row get out of hand.
+At last the last row is in--only to discover four candies here and
+there have all sprung their moorings. For each one I press down
+gently, another some place else acts up. How long can my patience
+hold out? Firmly, desperately I press that last obstreperous chocolate
+down in its place. My finger goes squash through the crusty brown, and
+pink goo oozes up and out. A fresh strawberry heart must be found.
+"Ain't no more," announces Fannie. Might just as well tell an artist
+there is only enough paint for one eye on his beautiful portrait. Of
+course another chocolate can be substituted. But a strawberry heart
+was what belonged there!
+
+At last the long rows of boxes are packed, wax paper laid over
+each--to blow off every time Louie goes by. Then come covers with
+lovely ladies in low-neck dresses on the tops--and the room so cold,
+anyhow. Why are all the pictures on all the boxes smiling ladies in
+scanty attire, instead of wrapped to the ears in fur coats so that a
+body might find comfort in gazing on them in such a temperature?
+
+Ida comes along and peers in one box. "You can consider yourself a
+fancy packer now--see?" Harding the night of the election felt less
+joyous than do I at her words.
+
+This night there is a lecture at the New School for Social Research to
+be attended. If some of those educated foreigners in our room can go
+to night school, I guess I can keep up my school. They are all
+foreigners but Lillian and Sadie and I. Sadie is about the same
+Indian-summer stage as Lillian and uses even better English. Her
+eyebrows are also unduly black; her face looks a bit as if she had
+been trying to get the ring out of the flour with her teeth
+Halloween. Her lips are very red. Sadie has the air of having just
+missed being a Vanderbilt. Her boudoir cap is lacy. Her smile is
+conscious kindness to all as inferiors. One wonders, indeed, what
+brought Sadie to packing chocolates in the autumn of life--a very
+wrinkly, powdered autumn. So Lillian, Sadie, and I are the
+representatives of what the nation produces--not what she gets
+presented with. As for the rest, there are a Hungarian, two Germans,
+four Italians, two Spaniards, a Swede, an Englishwoman, and numerous
+colored folk. Louie is an Italian. Fannie (bless her dear heart! I
+love Fannie) is colored, with freckles. She is Indian summer too--with
+a heart of gold. Fannie trudges on her feet all day. Years and years
+she has been there. At noon she sits alone in the lunch room, and
+after eating puts her head on her arms and, bending over the cold
+marble-topped table, gets what rest she can. She was operated on not
+so long ago, and every so often still has to go to the hospital for a
+day or so. Everything is at sixes and sevens when Fannie is away.
+
+So then, that night I take my sleepy way to a lecture on "The Role of
+the State in Modern Civilization." And it comes over me in the course
+of the evening, what a satisfactory thing packing chocolates is. The
+role of the State--some say this, some say that. A careful teacher
+guards against being dogmatic. When it comes to the past, one
+interpreter gives this viewpoint, due to certain prejudices; another
+that viewpoint, due to certain other prejudices. When it comes to the
+future, no sane soul dare prophesy at all. Thus it is with much which
+one studies nowadays--we have evolved beyond the era of intellectual
+surety. What an almighty relief to the soul, then, when one can pack
+six rows of four chocolates each in a bottom layer, seven rows of four
+chocolates each in the top, cover them, count them, stack them, pile
+them in the truck, and away they go. One job _done_--done now and
+forever. A definite piece of work put behind you--and no one coming
+along in six months with documents or discoveries or new theories or
+practices to upset all your labors. I say it is blessed to pack
+chocolates when one has been studying labor problems for some years.
+Every professor ought to have a fling at packing chocolates.
+
+Folks wonder why a girl slaves in a factory when she could be earning
+good money and a home thrown in doing housework. I think of that as I
+watch Annie. Imagine Annie poking about by her lonesome, saying, "No,
+ma'm," "Yes, ma'm," "No, sir," "Yes, sir." "Can I go out for a few
+moments, Mrs. Jones?" "Oh, all right, ma'm!" Annie, whose talk echoes
+up and down the room all day. She is Annie to every Tom, Dick, and
+Harry who pokes his nose in our packing room, but they are Tom, Dick,
+and Harry to her. It is not being called by your first name that makes
+the rub. It is being called it when you must forever tack on the Mr.
+and the Mrs. and the Miss. Annie is in awe of no human being. Annie is
+the fastest packer in the room and draws the most pay. Annie sasses
+the entire factory. Annie never stops talking unless she wants to.
+Which is only now and then when her mother has had a bad spell and
+Annie gets a bit blue. Little Pauline, an Italian, only a few months
+in this country, only a few weeks in the factory, works across the
+table from Annie. Pauline is the next quickest packer in our room. She
+cannot speak a word of English. Annie gives a sigh audible from one
+end of the room to the next. "My Gawd!" moans Annie to the entire
+floor. "If this here Eyetalian don't learn English pretty soon I gotta
+learn Eyetalian. I can't stand here like a dead one all day with
+nobody to talk to." Pauline might perhaps be reasoning that, after
+all, why learn English, since she would never get a silent moment in
+which to practice any of it.
+
+I very much love little Pauline. All day long her fingers fly; all day
+long not a word does she speak, only every now and then little Pauline
+turns around to me and we smile at each other. Once on the street, a
+block or so from the factory, little Pauline ran up to me, put her arm
+through mine, and caught my hand. So we walked to work. Neither could
+say a word to the other. Each just smiled and smiled. For the first
+time in all my life I really felt the melting pot first hand. To
+Pauline I was no agent of Americanization, no superior proclaiming the
+need of bathtubs and clean teeth, no teacher of the "Star-spangled
+banner" and the Constitution. To Pauline I was a fellow-worker, and
+she must know, for such things are always known, that I loved her. To
+myself, I felt suddenly the hostess--the generation-long inhabitant
+of this land so new and strange to little Pauline. She was my guest
+here. I would indeed have her care for my country, have her glad she
+came to my home. That day Pauline turned around and smiled more often
+than before.
+
+I finally settled down to eating lunch daily between Tessie and Mrs.
+Lewis, the Englishwoman. We do so laugh at one another's jokes. I know
+everything that ever happened to Tessie and Mrs. Lewis from the time
+they were born; all the heartbreaking stories of the first homesick
+months in this my land, all the jobs they have labored at. Mrs. Lewis
+has worked "in the mills" ever since she was born, it would seem,
+first in England, later in Michigan. Tessie and her husband mostly
+have hired out together in this country for housework, and she likes
+that better than packing chocolates standing up, she says. Mrs. Lewis
+is--well, she's Indian summer, too, along with Lillian and Sadie and
+Fannie, only she makes no bones about it (nor does black Fannie, for
+that matter). Mrs. Lewis is thin and wrinkled, with a skimpy little
+dust cap on her head. Her nose is very long and pointed, her teeth
+very false. Her eyes are always smiling. She loves to laugh. One day
+we were talking about unemployment.
+
+"Don't you know, it's awful in Europe," volunteers Mrs. Lewis.
+
+"One hundred thousand unemployed in Paris alone--saw it in headlines
+this morning," I advance.
+
+"Paris?" said Tessie. "Paris? Where's Paris?"
+
+If one could always be so sure of one's facts.
+
+"France."
+
+Mrs. Lewis wheels about in her chair, looks at me sternly over the top
+of her spectacles, and:
+
+"Do you know, they're telling me that's a pretty fast country, that
+France."
+
+"You don't say!" I look interested.
+
+"No--no I haven't got the details _yet_"--she clasped her chin with
+her hand--"but 'fast' was the word I heard used."
+
+Irene is a large, florid, bleached blonde. She worked at the table
+behind me about four days. "Y'know"--Irene has a salon air--"y'know, I
+jus' can't stand steppen on these soft chocolates. Nobody knows how I
+suffer. It just goes through me like a knife." She spent a good part
+of each day scraping off the bottoms of her French-heeled shoes with a
+piece of cardboard. It evidently was too much for her nerves. She is
+no more.
+
+The sign reads, "Saturdays 8-12." When Saturday came around Ida
+hollered down the room, "Everybody's gotta work to-day till five." The
+howl that went up! I supposed "gotta" meant "gotta." But Lena came up
+to me.
+
+"You gonna work till five? Don't you do it. We had to strike to get a
+Saturday half holiday. Now they're tellin' us we gotta work till
+five--pay us for it, o' course. If enough girls'll stay, pretty soon
+they'll be sayin: 'See? What ud we tell ya? The girls want to work
+Saturday afternoons'; and they'll have us back regular again." In the
+end not a girl in our room stayed, and Ida wrung her hands.
+
+Monday next, though, Ida announced, "Everybody's gotta work till seven
+to-night 'cause ya all went home Saturday afternoon. Three nights a
+week now you gotta work till seven." To stand from 1 to 7! One girl in
+the room belonged to some union or other. She called out, "Will they
+pay time and a half for overtime?" At which everyone broke into
+laughter. "Gee! Ida, here's a girl wants time and a half!" Tessie,
+Mrs. Lewis, Sadie, and I refused to work till 7. Ida used threats and
+argument. "I gotta put down your numbers!" We stood firm--6 o'clock
+was long enough. "Gee! You don't notice that last hour--goes like a
+second," argued Ida. We filed out when the 6-o'clock bell rang.
+
+The girls all fuss over the hour off at noon. It takes at best twenty
+minutes to eat lunch. For the rest of the hour there is no place to
+go, nothing to do, but sit in the hard chairs at the marble-topped
+tables in the whitewashed room for half an hour till the bell rings at
+12.50, and you can sit on the edge of a truck upstairs for ten minutes
+longer. They all say they wish to goodness we could have half an hour
+at noon and get off half an hour earlier at night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A tragedy the first pay day. I was so excited when that Saturday came
+round, to see what it would all be like--to get my first pay envelope.
+About 11.30 two men came in, one carrying a wooden box filled with
+little envelopes. Girls appear suddenly from every place and crowd
+around the two men. One calls out a number, the girl takes her
+envelope and goes off. I keep working away, thinking you are not
+supposed to step up till your number is called. But, lo! everyone
+seems paid off and the men departing, whereat I leave my work with
+beating heart and announce: "You didn't call 1075." But it seems I was
+supposed to step up and give 1075. I get handed my little envelope.
+Connie Parker in one corner, 1075 in the other, the date, and $6.81.
+Six dollars and eighty-one cents, and I had expected fourteen dollars.
+(I had told Ida at last that I thought I ought to get fourteen
+dollars, and she thought so, too, and said she'd "speak to the man"
+about it.) I clutched Ida--"only six dollars and eighty one cents!"
+"Well, what more do ya want."
+
+"But you said fourteen dollars."
+
+It seems the week goes Thursday to Thursday, instead of Monday to
+Saturday, so my first pay covered only three days and a deduction for
+my locker key.
+
+At that moment a little cry just behind me from Louisa. Louisa had
+been packing with Irene--dark little, frail little Yiddish Louisa; big
+brawny bleached-blond Irene.
+
+"I've lost my pay envelope!"
+
+Wan little Louisa! She had been talking to Topsy, Fannie's helper. Her
+envelope had slipped out of her waist, and when she went to pick it
+up, lo! there was nothing there to pick--fourteen dollars gone! There
+was excitement for you. Fourteen dollars in Wing 13, Room 3, was equal
+to fourteen million dollars in Wall Street. Everybody pulled out
+boxes and searched, got down on hands and knees and poked, and the
+rest mauled Louisa from head to foot.
+
+"Sure it ain't in your stocking? Well, look _again_."
+
+"What's this?"--jabbing Louisa's ribs--"this?"
+
+Eight hands going over Louisa's person as if the anguished slip of a
+girl could not have felt that stiff envelope with fourteen dollars in
+it herself had it been there. She stood helpless, woebegone.
+
+Ida rose Napoleon-like to the rescue. "I'll search everybody in the
+room!"
+
+Whereat she made a grab at Topsy and removed her. "They" say Topsy was
+stripped to the breezes in Ida's fury, but no envelope.
+
+Topsy, be it known, was already a suspicious character. That very week
+Fannie's purse had disappeared under circumstances pointing to Topsy.
+Which caused a strained relationship between the two. One day it
+broke--such relationship as existed.
+
+Fannie up at her end of the boxes was heard to screech down the line
+to where Topsy was sorting chocolate rolls:
+
+"How dare you talk to me like that?"
+
+"I ain't talkin' to you!"
+
+"You am. You called me names."
+
+"I never. I called you nothin', you ole white nigger."
+
+"You stand lie to me like that and call me names?"
+
+"Who say lie? I ain't no liar. You shut up; you ain't my boss. I'll
+call you anythin' I please, sassin' me that way!"
+
+"I didn't sassed you. You called me names."
+
+"I don't care what I called you--I know what you _is_." Here Topsy
+gathered all her strength and shouted up to Fannie, "You're a
+_heifer_, you is."
+
+Now there is much I do not know about the world, and maybe heifer is a
+word like some one or two others you are never supposed to set down in
+so many letters. If so, it is new to me and I apologize. The way Topsy
+called it, and the way Fannie acted on hearing herself called it,
+would lead one to believe it is a word never appearing in print.
+
+"You--call--me a _heifer_?" shrieked Fannie. "I'll tell ya landlady on
+ya, I will!"
+
+"Don' yo' go mixin' up in my private affairs. You shut yo' mouth, yo'
+hear me? yo' _heifer_!"
+
+"I _ain't_ no heifer!"
+
+Fortunately Ida swung into our midst about then and saved folk from
+bodily injury. A few days later Fanny informed me privately that she
+don't say nothin' when that nigger starts rowin' with her, but if she
+jus' has her tin lunch box with her next time when that nigger starts
+talkin' fresh--callin' her a heifer--_her!_--she'll slug her right
+'cross the face with it.
+
+So Topsy was searched. When she got her garments back on she appeared
+at the door--a small black goddess of fury. "Yo' fresh Ida,
+yo'--yessa--yo' jus' searched me 'cause I'm black. That's all, 'cause
+I'm black. Why don't you search all that white trash standin' there?"
+And Topsy flung herself out. Monday she appeared with a new maroon
+embroidered suit. Cost every nickel of thirty-eight dollars, Fannie
+informed me. In the packing room she had a hat pin in her cap. Some
+girl heard Topsy tell some other girls she was going stick that pin in
+Fannie if Fannie got sassin' her again. Ida made her remove the hat
+pin. In an hour she disappeared altogether and stayed disappeared
+forever after. "Went South," Fannie told me. "Always said she was
+goin' South when cold weather started.... Huh! Thought she'd stick me
+with a hat pin. I was carryin' a board around all mornin'. If she so
+much as come near me I was goin' to give her a crack aside the head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But there was little Louisa--and no longer could she keep back the
+tears. Nor could ever the pay envelope be unearthed. Later I found her
+sitting on the pile of dirty towels in the washroom, sobbing her heart
+out. It was not so much that the money was gone--that was awful
+enough--fourteen dollars!--fourteen dollars!--oh-h-h,--but her mother
+and father--what would they do to her when she came home and told 'em?
+They mightn't believe it was lost and think she'd spent it on
+somethin' for herself. The tears streamed down her face. And that was
+the last we ever saw of Louisa.
+
+Had "local color" been all we were after, perhaps Wing 13, Room 3,
+would have supplied sufficient of that indefinitely, with the
+combination of the ever-voluble Lena and the ever-present labor
+turnover. Even more we desired to learn the industrial feel of the
+thing--what do some of the million and more factory women think about
+the world of work? Remaining longer in Wing 13 would give no deeper
+clue to that. For all that I could find out, the candy workers there
+thought nothing about it one way or the other. The younger unmarried
+girls worked because it seemed the only thing to do--they or their
+families needed the money, and what would they be doing otherwise?
+Lena claimed, if she could have her way in the world, she would sleep
+until 12 every day and go to a show every afternoon. But that life
+would pall even on Lena, and she giggled wisely when I slangily
+suggested as much.
+
+The older married women worked either because they had to, since the
+male breadwinner was disabled (an old fat Irishwoman at the chocolate
+dipper had a husband with softening of the brain. He was a discharged
+English soldier who "got too much in the sun in India") or because his
+tenure of job was apt to be uncertain and they preferred to take no
+chances. Especially with the feel and talk of unemployment in the air,
+two jobs were better than none. A few, like Mrs. Lewis, worked to lay
+by toward their old age. Mrs. Lewis's husband had a job, but his wages
+permitted of little or no savings. Some of her friends told her: "Oh,
+well, somebody's bound to look out for you somehow when you get old.
+They don't let you die of hunger and cold!" But Mrs. Lewis was not so
+sure. She preferred to save herself from hunger and cold.
+
+Such inconveniences of the job as existed were taken as being all in
+the day's work--like the rain or a cold in the head. At some time they
+must have shown enough ability for temporary organization to strike
+for the Saturday half holiday. I wish I could have been there when
+that affair was on. Which girls were the ringleaders? How much
+agitation and exertion did it take to acquire the momentum which would
+result in enforcing their demands? Had I entered factory work with any
+idea of encouraging organization among female factory workers, I
+should have considered that candy group the most hopeless soil
+imaginable. Those whom I came in contact with had no class feeling, no
+ideas of grievances, no ambitions over and above the doing of an
+uninteresting job with as little exertion as possible.
+
+I hated leaving Tessie and Mrs. Lewis and little Pauline. Already I
+miss the life behind those candy scenes. For the remainder of my days
+a box of chocolates will mean a very personal--almost too personal for
+comfort!--thing to me. But for the rest of the world....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some place, some moonlight night, some youth, looking like a collar
+advertisement, will present his fair love with a pound box of fancy
+assorted chocolates--in brown paper cups; and assured of at least a
+generous disposition, plus his lovely collar-advertisement hair, she
+will say yes. On the sofa, side by side, one light dimly shining, the
+nightingale singing in the sycamore tree beside the front window,
+their two hearts will beat as one--for the time being. They will eat
+the chocolates I packed and life will seem a very sweet and peaceful
+thing indeed. Nor will any disturbing notion of how my feet felt ever
+reach them, no jarring "you heifer!" float across the states to where
+they sit. Louie to them does not exist--Louie, forever on the run
+with, "_Louie_, move these trays!" "_Louie_, bottoms!" "_Louie_,
+tops!" "_Louie_, cardboards!" "_Louie_, the truck!" "_Louie_, sweep
+the floor! How many times I told you that to-day!" "_Louie_, get me a
+box a' ca'mels, that's a good dope!" "_Louie_, turn out them lights!"
+"_Louie_, turn on them lights!" "_Louie_, ya leave things settin'
+round like that!" "_Louie_, where them covers?" and then Louie smashes
+his fingers and retires for ten minutes.
+
+Nor is Ida more than a strange name to those two on the sofa. No
+echoes reach them of, "Ida, where them wax papers?" "Ida, where's
+Fannie?" "Ida, where them picture tops?" "Ida, ain't no more
+'coffees.' What'll I use instead?" "Ida! Where's Ida? Mike wants ya by
+the elevator." "Ida, I jus' packed sixty; ten sixty-two is my number."
+"Ida, Joe says they want 'drops' on the fifth." "Ida, ain't no more
+trays." "Ida, gimme the locker-door key. 'M cold--want ma sweater.
+(Gee! it 'u'd freeze the stuffin' outa ya in this ice box!)"
+
+Those chocolates appeared in a store window in Watertown, and that's
+enough. Not for their moonlit souls the clang of the men building a
+new dipper and roller in our room--the bang of the blows of metal on
+metal as they pierce your soul along about 5 of a weary afternoon.
+Lena's giggles and Ida's "Lee-na, stop your talk and go to work!...
+Louie, stop your whistlin'!... My Gawd! girls, don' you know no better
+n' to put two kinds in the same box? ... Hey, Lena, this yere
+Eyetalian wants somethin'; come here and find out what's ailin'
+her.... Fannie, ain't there no more plantations?... Who left that door
+open?... Louie, for Gawd's sake how long you gonna take with that
+truck?... Lena, stop your talkin' and go to work...."
+
+And 'round here, there, and every place, "My Gawd! my feet are like
+ice!" "Say, len' me some of yo'r cardboards--hey?" "You Pearl White
+[black as night], got the tops down there?" "Hey, Ida, the Hungarian
+girl wants somethin'. I can't understand her...."
+
+Those two sit on the sofa. The moon shines on the nightingale singing
+in the sycamore tree. Nor do they ever glimpse a vision of little
+Italian Pauline's swift fingers dancing over the boxes, nor do they
+ever guess of wan Louisa's sobs.
+
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+                            _286 On Brass_
+
+
+Sweetness and Light.
+
+So now appears the candy factory in retrospect.
+
+Shall we stumble upon a job yet that will make brass seem as a haven
+of refuge? Allah forbid!
+
+After all, factory work, more than anything so far, has brought out
+the fact that life from beginning to end is a matter of comparisons.
+The factory girl, from my short experience, is not fussing over what
+her job looks like compared to tea at the Biltmore. She is comparing
+it with the last job or with home. And it is either slightly better or
+slightly worse than the last job or home. Any way round, nothing to
+get excited over. An outsider, soul-filled college graduate with a
+mission, investigates a factory and calls aloud to Heaven: "Can such
+things be? Why do women _stay_ in such a place?"
+
+The factory girl, if she heard those anguished cries, would as like as
+not shrug her shoulders and remark: "Ugh! she sh'u'dda seen ----'s
+factory where I worked a year ago." Or, "Gawd! what does she think a
+person's goin' to do--sit home all day and scrub the kitchen?"
+
+And yet the fact remains that some things get too much on even a
+philosophical factory girl's nerves. Whereat she merely walks out--if
+she has gumption enough. The labor turnover, from the point of view of
+production and efficiency, can well be a vital industrial concern. To
+the factory girl, it saves her life, like as not. Praise be the labor
+turnover!
+
+If it were not for that same turnover, I, like the soul-filled college
+graduate, might feel like calling aloud, not to Heaven, but to the
+President of the United States and Congress and the Church and Women's
+clubs: "Come quick and rescue females from the brassworks!" As it is,
+the females rescue themselves. If there's any concern it's "the boss
+he should worry." He must know how every night girls depart never to
+cross those portals again, so help them Gawd. Every morning a new
+handful is broken in, to stay there a week or two, if that long, and
+take to their heels. Praise be the labor turnover, as long as we have
+such brassworks.
+
+Before eight o'clock of a cold Monday morning (thank goodness it was
+not raining, since we stood in shivering groups on the sidewalk) I
+answered the Sunday-morning "ad":
+
+                            GIRLS AND WOMEN
+
+     between 16 and 36; learners and experienced assemblers and
+     foot-press operators on small brass parts; steady; half day
+     Saturday all year around; good pay and bonus. Apply
+     Superintendent's office.
+
+The first prospects were rather formidable--some fifty men and boys,
+no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance
+and we shivered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is
+wont under the circumstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose
+and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went
+into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night
+before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess admitted
+she had never danced.
+
+"What?" almost yelled the bride, "Never _danced_? Good Gawd! girl, you
+might as well be _dead_!"
+
+"You said it!" I chimed in. "Might as well dig a hole in the ground
+and crawl in it."
+
+"You said it!" and the husky bride and erstwhile (up to the week
+before) elevator operator at twenty-three dollars a week (she said)
+gave me a smart thump of understanding. "Girl, you never _danced_?
+It's--it's the grandest thing in _life_!"
+
+The plump Jewess looked a little out of things. "I know," she sighed,
+"they tell me it 'u'd make me thin, too, but my folks don't let me go
+out no place."
+
+Whereat we changed to polishing off profiteers and the high cost of
+living. The Jewish girl's brother knew we were headin' straight for
+civil war. "They'll be comin' right in folks' homes and killen 'em
+before a year's out. See if they don't." I asked her if she'd ever
+worked in a union shop. "Na, none of that stuff for me! Wouldn't go
+near a union." Both girls railed over the way people were losing their
+jobs. Anyhow, the bride was goin' to a dance that night, you jus' bet.
+
+At last some one with a heart came out and told the girls we could
+step inside. By that time there were some ten of us, all ages and
+descriptions. What would a "typical" factory girl be like, I wonder.
+Statistics prove she is young and unmarried more than otherwise, but
+each factory does seem to collect the motleyest crew of a little of
+everything--old, young, married, single, homely, stupid, bright,
+pretty, sickly, husky, fat, thin, and so on down the line. Certain it
+is that they who picture a French-heeled, fur-coated, dolled-up
+creature as the "typical factory girl" are far wide of the mark. The
+one characteristic which so far does seem pretty universal is that one
+and all, no matter what the age or looks, are perfectly willing to
+tell you everything they know on short acquaintance. At first I felt a
+hesitancy at asking questions about their personal lives, yet I so
+much wanted to know what they did and thought, what they hoped and
+dreamed about. It was early apparent that sooner or later everything
+would come out with scant encouragement, and no amount of questioning
+ever is taken amiss. They in turn ask me questions, and I lie until I
+hate myself.
+
+The plump Jewess was the first interviewed. When she heard the pay she
+departed. The elevator bride and I were taken together, and together
+we agreed to everything--wages thirteen dollars a week, "with one
+dollar a week bonus" (the bonus, as was later discovered, had numerous
+strings to it. I never did get any). Work began at 7.45, half hour for
+lunch, ended at 5. The bride asked if the work was dangerous. "That's
+up to you. Goin' upstairs is dangerous if you don't watch where you
+put your feet. Eh?" We wanted to start right in--I had my apron under
+my arm--but to-morrow would be time. I got quite imploring about
+beginning on that day. No use.
+
+The bride and I departed with passes to get by with the next morning.
+That was the last I saw of the bride--or any of that group, except one
+little frozen thing without a hat. She worked three days, and used to
+pull my apron every time she went by and grin.
+
+The factory was 'way over on the East Side. It meant gettin' up in the
+dark and three Subways--West Side, the Shuttle, East Side which could
+be borne amicably in the morning, but after eight and three-quarter
+hours of foot-press work, going home with that 5-6 rush--that mob who
+shoved and elbowed and pushed and jammed--was difficult to bear with
+Christian spirit. Except that it really is funny. What idea of human
+nature must a Subway guard between the hours of 5 and 6 be possessed
+of?
+
+At noon I used to open my lunch anxiously, expecting to see nothing
+but a doughy mass of crumpled rye bread and jam. Several times on the
+Subway the apple got shoved into my ribs over a period where it seemed
+as if either the apple or the ribs would have to give in. But by noon
+my hunger was such that any state of anything edible was as nectar and
+ambrosia.
+
+I am thinking that even a hardened factory hand might remember her
+first day at the brassworks. Up three flights of stairs, through a
+part of the men's factory, over a narrow bridge to a back building,
+through two little bobbing doors, and there you were admitted to that
+sanctuary where, according to the man who hired you, steady work and
+advancement to a rosy future awaited one.
+
+True, I had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as
+working experience went. But I have been through factories and
+factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen
+like the brassworks. First was the smell--the stale smell of gas and
+metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down
+to the brassworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness--a
+single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was
+working, but there were areas where there were no workers. Up the end
+of the floor, among the power presses, all belts and machines and
+whirring wheels, there were only three or four shaded lights. Windows
+lined both sides of the floor, but they had never been washed since
+the factory was built, surely. Anyhow, it was dark and rainy outside.
+The walls once had been white, but were now black. Dim, dirty, uneven
+boxes containing brass parts filled the spaces between the long tables
+where the foot presses stood. Third, the noise--the clump of the foot
+presses, the whirring of the pattern cutters--one sounded ever like a
+lusty woodpecker with a metal beak pecking on metal; rollings and
+rumblings from the floor above; jarrings and shakings from below.
+
+Two-thirds of the entire floor was filled with long tables holding the
+foot presses--tables which years ago were clean and new, tables which
+now were worn, stained, and uneven, and permanently dirty. On each
+side of each long table stood five black iron presses, but there
+seemed to be never more than one or two girls working at a side. Each
+press performed a different piece of work--cut wick holes, fitted or
+clamped parts together, shaped the cones, and what not, but with only
+two general types of operation so far as the foot part went. One type
+took a long, firm, forward swing on the pedal; the other a short,
+hard, downward "kick." With the end of the pressure the steel die cut
+through the thin brass cone, or completed whatever the job was. As the
+pedal and foot swung back to position the girl removed the brass part,
+dropping it in a large box at her right. She kept a small bin on the
+table at the left of the press filled with parts she was to work on.
+Around the sides of the floor were the table workers--girls adjusting
+parts by hand, or soldering.
+
+The other third of the floor was taken up with the machine presses,
+which mostly clicked away cutting patterns in the brass parts to hold
+the lamp chimney. In a far corner were the steaming, bleaching tubs
+where dull, grimy brass parts were immersed in several preparations, I
+don't know what, to emerge at last shining like the noonday sun.
+
+The cold little girl with no hat, a strange, somewhat unsociable, new
+person, and I stood there waiting one hour. Some one took our names.
+The experienced feeling when they asked me where I had worked last
+and how long was I there, and why did I leave! At the end of an hour
+the forelady beckoned me--such a neat, sweet person as she was--and I
+took my initial whack at a foot press. If ever I do run an automobile
+the edge of first enjoyment is removed. A Rolls-Royce cannot make me
+feel any more pleased with life than the first ten minutes of that
+foot press. In ten minutes the job was all done and there I sat for an
+hour and a half waiting for another. Hard on a person with the
+foot-press fever. The times and times later I would gratefully have
+taken any part of that hour and a half to ease my weary soul!
+
+Be it known, if I speak feelingly at times of the weariness of a foot
+press, that, though nothing as to size, I am a very husky
+person--perhaps the healthiest of the eight million women in industry!
+It was a matter of paternal dismay that I arrived in the world female
+instead of male. What Providence had overlooked, mortal ability would
+do everything possible to make up for--so argued a disappointed
+father. From four years of age on I was taught to do everything a boy
+could or would do; from jumping off cars while they were moving to
+going up in a balloon. A good part of my life I have played tennis and
+basketball and hockey, and swum, and climbed mountains, and ridden
+horseback, and rowed, and fished. I do not know what it is to have an
+ache or a pain from one end of the year to the other. All of which is
+mentioned merely because if certain work taxes my strength, who
+seldom has known what it is to be weary, what can it do to the average
+factory worker, often without even a fighting physical chance from
+birth on?
+
+The jobs on our third floor where the girls and women worked concerned
+themselves with lamps--the old-fashioned kind, city folks are apt to
+think. Yet goodness knows we seemed during even my sojourn to make
+more lamp parts than creation ever had used in the heyday of lamps.
+Well, all but five per cent of farm women still use kerosene lamps, so
+the government tells us. Also fat Lizzie informed me, when I asked her
+who in the world could ever use just them lamp cones I made some one
+particular day, "Lor', child, they send them lamps all over the
+world!" She made a majestic sweep with both arms. "Some of 'em goes as
+far--as far--as _Philadelphia_!" Once we were working on a rush order
+for fifty thousand lamps of one certain kind. Curiosity got the better
+of me and I took occasion to see where the boxes were being addressed.
+It was to a large mail-order house in Chicago.
+
+The first noon whistle--work dropped--a rush for the washroom. Let no
+one think his hands ever were dirty until he labors at a foot press in
+a brassworks. Such sticky, grimy, oily, rough blackness never was--and
+the factory supplies no soap nor towels. You are expected to bring
+your own--which is all right the second day when you have found it out
+and come prepared.
+
+The third floor had seemed dark and dismal enough during the morning;
+at noon all lights are turned off. Many of the workers went out for
+lunch, the rest got around in dismal corners, most of them singly, and
+ate by their machines, on the same hard seats they have been on since
+a quarter to 8. What a bacchanal festival of color and beauty now
+appeared the candy-factory whitewashed lunch room with the
+marble-topped tables! The airy sociability of it! I wandered about
+with my lunch in my hand, to see what I could see. Up amid the belts
+and power machines sat one of the girls who began that morning--not
+the cold, hatless one.
+
+"You gonna stick it out?" she asked me.
+
+"Sure. I guess it's all right."
+
+"Oh gee! Ain't like no place I ever worked yet. Don't catch me
+standin' this long."
+
+She did stand it four days. Minnie suggested then she stick it out
+till Christmas. "You'll need the money for Christmas y'know, an' you
+might not get the next job so easy now."
+
+"Damn Christmas!" was all the new girl had to say to that.
+
+"Sure now," said Irish Minnie, "an' she's takin her chances. It's an
+awful disgrace y'know, to be gettin' presents when y'ain't got none to
+give back. Ain't it, now? I'd never take no chances on a job so close
+to Christmas."
+
+I talked to five girls that noon. None of them had been there longer
+than a week. None of them planned to stay.
+
+All afternoon I worked the foot press at one job. My foot-press
+enthusiasm weakened--four thousand times I "kicked"--two thousand
+lamp-wick slots I make in the cones. Many of the first five hundred
+looked a bit sad and chewed at. The "boss" came by and saw that I was
+not one hundred per cent perfect. He gave me pointers and I did
+better. Each cone got placed over a slanted form just so; kick, and
+half the slot is made. Lift the cone up a wee bit, twist it round to
+an exact position, hold it in place, kick, and the other half is cut.
+The kick must be a stout kick--bing! down hard, to make a clean job of
+it. The thing they gave you to sit on! A high, narrow, homemade-looking,
+wooden stool, the very hardest article of furniture under the blue
+canopy of heaven. Some of them had little, narrow, straight backs--just
+boards nailed on behind. All of them were top heavy and fell over if
+you got off without holding on. By 4.30 standing up at the candy job
+seemed one of the happiest thoughts on earth. What rosy good old days
+those were! Dear old candy factory! Happy girls back there bending
+over the chocolates!
+
+Next sat Louisa, an Italian girl who stuttered, and I had to stop my
+press to hear her. She stopped hers to talk. She should worry. It's
+the worst job she ever saw, and for thirteen dollars a week why should
+she work? She talked to me, kicked a few times, got a drink, kicked,
+talked, stood up and stretched, kicked, talked, got another drink. She
+is married, has a baby a year old, another coming in three months. She
+will stay her week out, then she goes, you bet. Her husband was
+getting fifty dollars a week in a tailor job--no work now for
+t-t-t-two months. He does a little now and then in the b-b-barber
+business. Oh, but life was high while the going was good! She leaned
+way over and told me in a hushed, inspired tone, to leave me
+awestruck, "When we was m-m-married we t-t-took a h-h-h-honeymoon!" I
+gasped and wanted details. To West Virginia they'd gone for a month.
+The fare alone, each way, had come to ten dollars apiece, and then
+they did no work for that month, but lived in a little hotel. Her
+husband was crazy of her, and she was of him now, but not when she was
+married. He's very good to her. After dinner every single night they
+go to a show.
+
+"Every night?"
+
+"Sure, every night, and Sundays two times."
+
+It all sounded truly glowing.
+
+"You married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, don' you do it. Wish I wasn't married. Oh gee! Wish I wasn't
+married. I'm crazy of my husband, but I wish I wasn't married.
+See--once you married--pisht!--there you are--stay that way."
+
+I agreed I was in no hurry about matrimony.
+
+"Hurry? Na, no hurry; that's right. The h-h-hurrier you are the
+b-b-b-badder off you get!"
+
+The next morning the Italian girl was late. The forelady gave her
+locker to some one else. Such a row! Louisa said: "I got mad, I did. I
+told her to go to hell. That's only w-w-w-way anybody gets anything in
+this world--get mad and say you go to h-h-hell. Betcha."
+
+A little later the forelady, when the Italian was on one of her trips
+after a drink, leaned over and gave me her side of the story. She is
+such a very nice person, our forelady--quiet, attractive, neat as a
+pin. Her sister addresses boxes and does clerical work of one sort or
+another. Two subdued old maids they are; never worked any place but
+right on our third floor. "Ain't like what it used to be," she told
+me. "In the old days girls used to work here till they got married. We
+used to have parties here and, say! they was nice girls in them days.
+Look at 'em now! Such riffraff! New ones comin' in all the time, new
+ones worse each time. Riffraff, that's what they are. It sure looks
+nice to see a girl like you." (What good were the earrings doing?)
+"We'll make it just as nice here for you as we can." (Oh, how guilty I
+began to feel!)
+
+She looked around to see if the Italian was about.
+
+"Now you take this Eyetalian girl next to you. Gee! she's some fright.
+Oughtta heard her this morning. 'Spected me to keep her locker for her
+when she was late. How'd I know she was comin' back? I gave it to
+another girl. She comes tearin' at me. 'What the hell you think you're
+doin'?' she says to me. Now I ain't used to such talk, and I was for
+puttin' my hat and coat on right then and there and walkin' out. I
+must say I gotta stand all sorts of things in my job. It's awful what
+I gotta put up with. I never says nothin' to her. But any girl's a
+fool 'l talk to a person that way. Shows she's got nothin' up here
+[knocking her head] or she sure'd know better than get the forelady
+down on her like that. Gee! I was mad!"
+
+Louisa returned and Miss Hibber moved on. "Some fright, that
+forelady," remarked Louisa. That night Louisa departed for good.
+
+The second day I kicked over six thousand times. It seemed a lot when
+you think of the hard stool. It was a toss between which was the
+worse, the stool or the air. This afternoon, I was sure it must be
+3.30. I looked back at the clock--1.10. It had seemed like two hours
+of work and it was forty minutes. No ventilation whatever in that
+whole room--not a crack of air. Wonder if there ever was any since the
+place was built decades ago. Once Louisa and I became desperate and
+got Tony to open a window. The forelady had a fit; so did Tillie. Both
+claimed they'd caught cold.
+
+Tony is the Louis of the brassworks. He is young and very lame--one
+leg considerably shorter than the other. It makes me miserable to see
+him packing heavy boxes about. He told me he must get another job or
+quit. Finally they did put him at a small machine press. So many
+maimed and halt and decrepit as they employed about the works! Numbers
+of the workers were past-telling old, several were very lame, one
+errand boy had a fearfully deformed face, one was cross-eyed. I
+remarked to Minnie that the boss of the works must have a mighty good
+heart. Minnie has been working twenty-three years and has had the
+bloom of admiration for her fellow-beings somewhat worn off in that
+time. "Hm!" grunted Minnie. "He gets 'em cheaper that way, I guess."
+
+The elevator man is no relation to the one at the candy factory. He is
+red faced and grinning, most of his teeth are gone, and he always
+wears a derby hat over one eye. One morning I was late. He jerked his
+head and thumb toward the elevator. "Come on, I'll give ya a lift up!"
+and when we reached our floor, though it was the men's side, "Third
+Avenue stop!" he called out cheerily, and grinned at the world. He had
+been there for years. The boss on our floor had been there for
+years--forty-three, to be exact. Miss Hibber would not tell how many
+years she had worked there, nor would Tillie. Tillie said she was born
+there.
+
+If it were only the human element that counted, everyone would stay at
+the brassworks forever. I feel like a snake in the grass, walking off
+"on them" when they all were so nice. Nor was it for a moment the
+"dearie" kind of niceness that made you feel it was orders from above.
+From our floor boss down, they were people who were born to treat a
+body square. All the handicaps against them--the work itself, the
+surroundings, the low pay--had so long been part of their lives, these
+"higher ups" seemed insensible to the fact that such things were
+handicaps.
+
+To-day was sunny and the factory not so dark--in fact, part of the
+time we worked with no electric lights. The crisp early morning air
+those four blocks from the Subway to the factory--it sent the spring
+fever through the blood. In the gutter of that dirty East Side street
+a dirty East Side man was burning garbage. The smoke curled up lazily.
+The sun just peeping up over the hospital at the end of the street
+made slanting shafts through the smoke. As I passed by it suddenly was
+no longer the East Side of New York City....
+
+    Now the Four Way Lodge is open,
+    Now the hunting winds are loose,
+    Now the smokes of spring go up to clear the brain....
+
+Breakfast in a canon by the side of a stream--the odor of pines....
+The little bobbing doors went to behind me and there I stood in floor
+three, the stale gas and metal smell ... the whirs of the belts ...
+the jarring of the presses....
+
+Next to me this glorious morning sat a snip of a little thing all in
+black--so pretty she was, so very pretty. I heard the boss tell her
+it's not the sort of work she's been used to, she'll find it hard. Is
+she sure she wants to try it? And in the course of the morning I heard
+the story of Mame's life.
+
+Mame's husband died three weeks ago. They had been married one month
+and two days--after waiting three years. Shall I write a story of Mame
+on the sob-sister order to bring the tears to your eyes? It could
+easily be done. But not honestly. Little Mame--how could her foot ever
+reach the press? And when she walked off after a drink, I saw that she
+was quite lame. A widow only three weeks. She'd never worked before,
+but there was no money. She lived all alone, wandered out for her
+meals--no mother, no father, no sisters or brothers. She cried every
+night. Her husband had been a traveling salesman--sometimes he made
+eighty-five dollars a week. They had a six-room apartment and a
+servant! She'd met him at a dance hall. A girl she was with had dared
+her to wink at him. Sure she'd do anything anybody dared her to. He
+came over and asked her what she was after, anyhow. That night he left
+the girl he'd taken to the dance hall to pilot her own way back to
+home and mother, and he saw Mame to her room. He was swell and tall.
+She showed me his picture in a locket around her neck. Meanwhile Mame
+kicked the foot press about twice every five minutes.
+
+Why had they waited so long to get married? Because of the war. He was
+afraid he'd be killed and would leave her a widow. "He asked me to
+promise never to get married again if he did marry me and died.
+But,"--she leaned over my way--"that only meant if he died during the
+war, ain't that so? Lookit how long the war was over before he died."
+
+He was awful good to her after they got married. He took her to a show
+every night--jes swell; and she had given him a swell funeral--you bet
+she did. The coffin had cost eighty-five dollars--white with real
+silver handles; and the floral piece she bought--"Gee! What's your
+name?... Connie, you oughtta seen that floral piece!" and Mame laid
+off work altogether to use her hands the better. It was shaped so, and
+in the middle was a clock made out of flowers, with the hands at the
+very minute and hour he'd died. (He passed away of a headache--very
+sudden.) Then below, in clay, were two clasped hands--his and hers.
+"Gee! Connie, you never seen nothin' so swell. Everybody seen it said
+so."
+
+Once he bought her a white evening dress, low neck, fish-tail train,
+pearls all over the front--cost him one whole week's salary,
+eighty-five dollars! She had diamond earrings and jewels worth at
+least one thousand dollars. She had lovely clothes. Couldn't she just
+put a black band around the arms and go on wearing them? She took a
+look at my earrings. Gee! they were swell. She had some green ones
+herself. Next morning she appeared in her widow's weeds with
+bright-green earrings at least a quarter of an inch longer than mine.
+
+From the first Mame clung to me morning and night. Usually mornings
+she threw her arms around me in the dressing room. "Here's my Connie!"
+I saw myself forced to labor in the brassworks for life because of
+Mame's need of me. This need seemed more than spiritual. One day her
+pocketbook with twelve dollars had been stolen in the Subway. I lent
+her some cash. Another time she left her money at the factory. I lent
+her the wherewithal to get home with, etc. One day I was not at work.
+Somehow the other girls all were down on Mame. I have pondered much on
+that. When it came to the needed collection Mame found it hard
+pickings. She got a penny from this girl, another from that one, until
+she had made up a nickel to get home with. Irish Minnie gave her a
+sandwich and an apple. The girls all jumped on me: "The way you let
+that Frenchie work ya! Gee! you believe everything anybody tells ya."
+
+"But," says I, "she's been a widow only three weeks and I'm terrible
+sorry for her."
+
+"How d'ya know she ever had a husband?" "How d'ya know he's dead?"
+"How'd ya...."
+
+The skepticism of factory workers appals me. They suspect everybody
+and everything from the boss down. I believed almost everything about
+Mame, especially since she paid back all she ever borrowed. No one
+else in that factory believed a word she said. They couldn't "stand
+her round."
+
+"How d'ya know she lost her pocketbook?" (Later she advertised and got
+it back--a doctor's wife found it on the early Subway.)
+
+"Doctor's wife," sniffed Minnie. "Who ever heard of a doctor's wife up
+at seven o'clock in the mornin'?"
+
+And now I have walked off and left Mame to that assemblage of
+unbelievers. At least Mame has a tongue of her own she is only too
+glad of a chance to use. It is meat and drink to Mame to have a man
+look her way. "Did you see that fella insult me?" and she calls back
+protective remarks for half a block. Sentiments that usually bring in
+mention of the entertained youth's mother and sisters, and wind up
+with allusions to a wife, which if he doesn't possess now, he may some
+day. Once I stopped with Mame while she and Irene phoned a "fella" of
+Irene's from a drug-store telephone booth. Such gigglings and goings
+on, especially since the "fella" was unknown to Mame at the time.
+Outside in the store a pompous, unromantic man grew more and more
+impatient for a turn at that booth. When Mame stepped out he remarked
+casually that he hoped she felt she'd gotten five cents' worth. The
+dressing down Mame then and there heaped upon that startled gentleman!
+Who was he to insult her? I grew uneasy and feared a scene, but the
+pompous party took hasty refuge in the telephone booth and closed the
+door. Mame was very satisfied with the impression she must have made.
+"The fresh old guy!"
+
+Another time Mame sought me out in the factory, her eyes blazing.
+"Connie, I been insulted, horribly insulted, and I don't see how I can
+stay in this factory! You know that girl Irene? Irene she says to me,
+'Mamie, you plannin' to get married again?'
+
+"'I dunno,' I says to her, 'but if I do it'll be to some single
+fella.'
+
+"'Huh!' Irene says to me, 'You won't get no single fella; you'll have
+to marry a widower with two or three children.' Think of her insultin'
+me like that! I could 'a' slapped her right in the face!"
+
+I asked Mame one Saturday what she'd be doing Sunday. She sighed.
+"I'll be spendin' the day at the cemetery, I expect."
+
+Monday morning I asked Mame about Sunday. She'd been to church in the
+morning (Mame, like most of the girls at the brassworks, was a
+Catholic), a show in the afternoon, cabaret for dinner, had danced
+till 1, and played poker until 4 A.M. "If only my husband was alive,"
+said Mame, "I'd be the happiest girl on earth."
+
+One night Mame's landlady wanted to go out and play poker. She asked
+Mame to keep her eye and ear out for the safety of the house. Every
+five minutes Mame thought she heard a burglar or somethin'. "Gee! I
+hardly slept at all; kep' wakin' up all the time. An' that landlady
+never got in till six this mornin'!"
+
+"My Gawd!" I exclaimed. "Hope she was lucky after playin' poker that
+long!"
+
+"She sure was," sighed Mame. "Gee! I jus' wish ya c'u'd see the swell
+prize she won!--the most beau-teful statue--stands about three feet
+high--of Our Blessed Lady of the Immaculate Conception."
+
+Mame's friendship could become almost embarrassing. One day she
+announced she wanted me to marry one of her brothers-in-law. "I got
+two nice ones and we'll go out some Sunday afternoon and you can have
+your pick. One's a piano tuner; the other's a detective." I thought
+offhand the piano tuner sounded a bit more domestic. He was swell,
+Mame said.
+
+Mame didn't think she'd stay long in the brassworks. It was all
+right--the boss she thought was sort of stuck on her. Did he have a
+wife? (The boss, at least sixty years old.) Also Charlie was making
+eyes at her. (Charlie was French; so was Mame. Charlie knew six words
+of English. Mame three words of French. Charlie was sixteen). No,
+aside from matrimony, Mame was going to train in Bellevue Hospital and
+earn sixty dollars a week being a children's nurse. She'd heard if you
+got on the right side of a doctor it was easy, and already a doctor
+was interested in getting Mame in.
+
+And I've just walked off and left Mame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kicked the foot press 7,149 times by the meter to-day and expected to
+die of weariness. Thumped, thumped, thumped without stopping. As with
+candy, I got excited about going on piecework. Asked Miss Hibber what
+the rates were for my job--four and a half cents for one hundred and
+fifty. Since I had to kick twice for every cone top finished, that
+would have meant around one dollar fifteen cents for the day. Vanished
+the piece-rate enthusiasm. Tillie seemed the only girl on our floor
+doing piecework. Tillie, who "was born there." She was thin and stoop
+shouldered, wore spectacles, and did her hair according to the
+pompadour styles of some twenty years ago. The work ain't so bad.
+Tillie don't mind it. There's just one thing in the world Tillie
+wants. What's that? "A man!" Evidently Tillie has made no bones of her
+desire. The men call back kindly to Tillie as she picks her way up the
+dark stairs in the morning, "Hello there, sweetheart!" That week had
+been a pretty good one for Tillie--she'd made sixteen dollars
+forty-nine cents.
+
+"Ain't much, p'raps, one way, but there's jus' this about it, it's
+steady. They never lay anybody off here, and there's a lot. You hear
+these girls 'round here talk about earnin' four, five, six dollars a
+day. Mebbe they did, but why ain't they gettin' it now? 'Shop closed
+down,' or, 'They laid us off.' That's it. Add it up over a year and my
+sixteen forty-nine'll look big as their thirty dollars to forty
+dollars a week, see if it don't."
+
+Tillie's old, fat, wheezy mother works on our floor--maybe Tillie
+really was born there.
+
+One day I decided to see what could be done if I went the limit.
+Suppose I had a sick mother and a lame brother--a lot of factory girls
+have. I was on a press where you had to kick four separate times on
+each piece--small lamp cones, shaped, slot already in. My job was to
+punch four holes for the brackets to hold the chimney. The day before
+I had kicked over 10,000 times. This morning I gritted my teeth and
+started in. Between 10 and 11 I had gotten up to 2,000 kicks an hour.
+Miss Hibber went by and I asked her what piece rates for that machine
+were. She said six and one-quarter cents for one hundred and fifty. I
+did not stop then to do any figuring. Told her rather chestily I could
+kick 2,000 times an hour. "That all? You ought to do much more than
+that!" Between 11 and 12 I worked as I had never worked. It was
+humanly impossible to kick that machine oftener than I did. Never did
+I let my eyes or thoughts wander. When the whistle blew at 12 I had
+kicked 2,689. For a moment I figured. It takes about an hour in the
+morning to get on to the swing. From 11 to 12 was always my best
+output. After lunch was invariably deadly. From 12.30 until 2.30 it
+seemed impossible to get up high speed. That left at best 2.30 to 4
+for anything above average effort. From 4 to 5 it was hard again on
+account of physical weariness. But say I could average 2,500 an hour
+during the day. That would have brought me in, four kicks to each
+cone, around two dollars and a quarter a day. The fact of the matter
+was that after kicking 8,500 times that morning I gave up the ghost as
+far as that job went. I ached body and soul. By that time I had been
+on that one job several days and was sick to death of it. Each cone I
+picked up to punch those four holes in made something rub along my
+backbone or in the pit of my stomach or in my head--or in all of them
+at once. Yet the old woman next me had been at her same job for over a
+week. The last place she'd worked she'd done the identical thing six
+months--preferred it to changing around. Most of the girls took that
+attitude. Up to date that is the most amazing thing I have learned
+from my factory experiences--the difference between my attitude toward
+a monotonous job, and the average worker's. In practically every case
+the girl has actually preferred the monotonous job to one with any
+variety. The muscles in my legs ached so I could almost have shed
+tears. The day before I had finished at 5 tired out. That morning I
+had wakened up tired--the only time in my life. I could hardly kick at
+all the first half hour. There was a gnawing sort of pain between my
+shoulders. Suppose I really had been on piecework and had to keep up
+at that breaking rate, only to begin the next morning still more worn
+out? My Gawd!
+
+Most of the girls kick with the same leg all the time. I tried
+changing off now and then. With the four-hole machine, using the left
+leg meant sitting a little to the right side. Also I tried once using
+my left hand to give the right a rest. Thus the boss observed me.
+
+"Now see here, m'girl, why don't you do things the way you're taught?
+That ain't the right way!"
+
+He caught me at the wrong moment. I didn't care whether the earth
+opened up and swallowed me.
+
+"I know the right way of runnin' this machine good as you do," I
+fairly glared at him. "I'm sick and tired of doin' it the right way,
+and if I want to do it wrong awhile for a change I guess I can!"
+
+"You ain't goin' to get ahead in this world if you don't do things
+_right_, m'girl." And he left me to my fate.
+
+At noon that day the girls got after me. "You're a fool to work the
+way you do. You never took a drink all this mornin'--jus' sit there
+kickin', kickin', kickin'. Where d'ya think ya goin' to land? In a
+coffin, that's where. The boss won't thank ya for killin' yourself on
+his old foot press, neither. You're jus' a fool, workin' like that."
+And that's just what I decided. "Lay off now and then." Yes indeed, I
+was going to lay off now and then.
+
+"I see myself breakin' my neck for thirteen dollars a week," Bella
+chipped in.
+
+"You said it!" from all the others.
+
+So I kicked over 16,000 times that day and let it go as my final swan
+song. No more breaking records for me. My head thumped, thumped,
+thumped all that night. After that I strolled up front for a drink and
+a gossip or back to a corner of the wash room where two or three were
+sure to be squatting on some old stairs, fussing over the universe.
+When the boss was up on the other end of the floor, sometimes I just
+sat at my machine and did nothing. It hurt something within my soul at
+first, but my head and hands and legs and feet and neck and general
+disposition felt considerably better.
+
+Lunch times suited me exactly at the brassworks, making me feel I was
+getting what I was after. Three of us used to gather around Irish
+Minnie, put two stools lengthwise on the floor, and squat along the
+sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her
+figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little
+sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they
+unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present,
+and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really
+committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights
+a week could a girl dance and work next day? Minnie was past her
+dancing days. She'd been married 'most twenty years and was getting
+fat and unformed-looking; shuffled about in a pair of old white tennis
+shoes and a pink boudoir cap. (No one else wore a cap at the
+brassworks.) Minnie had worked fifteen years at a power press, eleven
+years at her last job. She was getting the generous stipend of
+fourteen dollars a week (one dollar more than the rest of us). She had
+earned as much as twenty-five dollars a week in her old job at the tin
+can company, piecework. Everybody about the factory told her troubles
+to Minnie, who immediately told them to everybody else. It made for a
+certain community interest. One morning Minnie would tell me, as I
+passed her machine, "Rosie 'n' Frank have had a fight." With that cue
+it was easy to appear intelligent concerning future developments.
+Frank was one of the machinists, an Italian. Rosie had let him make
+certain advances--put his arm around her and all that--but she told us
+one lunch time, "he'd taken advantage of her," so she just sassed him
+back now. Bella announced Frank was honeying around her. "Well, watch
+out," Rosie advised, with the air of Bella's greataunt.
+
+As to dancing, Bella's chum in Detroit used to go to a dance every
+single night and work all day. Sundays she'd go to a show and a dance.
+Bella tried it one week and had to lay off three days of the next week
+before she could get back to work. Lost her twenty-one dollars. No
+more of that for Bella. Just once in a while was enough for her.
+
+They did not talk about "vamping dopes" at the brassworks. Everyone
+asked you if you were "keepin' company," and talked of fellas and
+sweethearts and intended husbands. That was the scale. As before, all
+the married ones invariably advised against matrimony. Irish Minnie
+told us one lunch time that it was a bad job, this marrying business.
+"Of course," she admitted, pulling on a piece of roast pork with her
+teeth, "my husband ain't what you'd call a _bad_ man." That was as far
+as Minnie cared to go.
+
+Perhaps one reason why the brassworks employed so many crooked and
+decrepit was as an efficiency measure. The few males who were whole
+caused so many flutterings among the female hands that it seriously
+interfered with production. Rosie's real cause for turning Frank down
+was that she was after Good Lookin'. Good Lookin' would not have been
+so good lookin' out along the avenue, but in the setting of our third
+floor he was an Adonis. Rosie worked a power press. I would miss the
+clank of her machine. There she would be up in the corner of the floor
+where Good Lookin' worked. Good Lookin' would go for a drink. Rosie
+would get thirsty that identical moment. They would carry on an
+animated conversation, to be rudely broken into by a sight of the boss
+meandering up their way. Rosie would make a dash for her machine, Good
+Lookin' would saunter over to his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the start I had pestered the boss to be allowed on a power press,
+for two reasons: one just because I wanted to--the same reason why a
+small boy wants to work at machinery; secondly, I wanted to be able to
+pose at the next job as an experienced power-press worker and sooner
+or later get a high-power machine. One day the boss was watching me
+at the foot press. "Y'know, m'girl, I think you really got
+intelligence, blessed if I don't. I'm goin' to push you right ahead.
+I'll make a machinist out of you yet, see if I don't. You stay right
+on here and you'll be making big money yet." (Minnie--eleven years in
+her last job--fourteen dollars a week now.) Anyway, one morning he
+came up--and that morning foot presses of every description had lost
+all fascination for me--and he said, "You still want a power press?"
+
+"Bet your life I do!"
+
+And he gave me a power press deserted that morning by one of the boys.
+Life looked worth living again. All I had to do to work miracles was
+press ever so lightly a pedal. The main point was to get my foot off
+it as quick as I got it on, or there was trouble. I wasn't to get my
+fingers here or there, or "I'd never play the piano in this life." If
+the belt flew off I wasn't to grab it, or I'd land up at the ceiling.
+For the rest, I merely clamped a round piece on the top of a nail-like
+narrow straight piece--the part that turned the lamp wick up and down.
+Hundreds and thousands of them I made. The monotony did not wear on me
+there; it was mixed with no physical exertion. I could have stayed on
+at the brassworks the rest of my life--perhaps.
+
+One night I was waiting at a cold, windy corner on Fifth Avenue for a
+bus. None came. A green Packard limousine whirled by. The chauffeur
+waved and pointed up the Avenue. In a flash I thought, now if I really
+were a factory girl I'd surely jump at a chance to ride in that green
+Packard. Up half a block I ran, and climbed in the front seat, as was
+expected of me. He was a very nice chauffeur. His mistress, "the old
+lady," was at a party and he was killing time till 11.30. Would I like
+to ride till then? No, I wanted to get home--had to be up too early
+for joy riding. Why so early? The factory. And before I realized it
+there I sat, the factory girl. Immediately he asked me to dinner any
+night I said. Now I really thought it would be worth doing; no one
+else I knew had been out to dine with a chauffeur. Where would he take
+me? What would he talk about? But my nerve failed me. No, I didn't
+think I'd go. I fussed about for some excuse. I was sort of new in New
+York--out West, it was different. There you could pick up with
+anybody, go any place. "Good Gawd! girl," said the chauffeur,
+earnestly, "don't try that in New York; you'll get in awful trouble!"
+All through Central Park he gave me advice about New York and the
+pitfalls it contained for a Westerner. He'd be very careful about me
+if I'd go out with him, any place I said, and he'd get me home early
+as I said. But I didn't say. I'd have to think it over. He could
+telephone to me. No, he couldn't. The lady I lived with was very
+particular. Well, anyhow, stormy days he'd see to it he'd be down by
+the factory and bring me home. Would I be dressed just the way I was
+then? Just the way--green tam and all.
+
+The next day while I thumped out lamp parts I tried to screw my
+courage up to go out with that chauffeur. Finally I decided to put it
+up to the girls. I meandered back to the wash room. There on the old
+stairs sat Irish Minnie and Annie, fat and ultradignified. They were
+discussing who the father of the child really was. I breezed in
+casually.
+
+"Vamped a chauffeur last night."
+
+"Go-an."
+
+"Sure. He asked me to ride home with him an' I did."
+
+"Got in the machine with him?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"You _fool_! You young _fool_!"
+
+Goodness! I was unprepared for such comment.
+
+"What did he do to ya?"
+
+"Nothin'. An' he wants me to go to dinner with him. What'll I say?"
+
+Both pondered. "Sure," said Minnie, "I b'lieve in a girl gettin' all
+that's comin' to her, but all I want to tell ya is, chauffeurs are a
+bad lot--the worst, I tell ya."
+
+"You said it!" nodded fat Annie, as if years of harrowing experience
+lay behind her. "He was all right to ya the first time so as to lure
+you out the next."
+
+"But," says Minnie, "if ya go to dinner with him, don't you go near
+his machine. Steer clear of machines. Eat all ya can off him, but
+don't do no ridin'."
+
+"You said it!" again Annie backed her up. Annie was a regular sack
+slinger. She could have hurled two men off Brooklyn Bridge with one
+hand. "If you was as big an' strong as me you c'u'd take 'most any
+chance. I'd like to see a guy try to pull anythin' on me." I'd like to
+see him, too.
+
+"Some day"--Minnie wanted to drive her advice home by concrete
+illustration--"some day a chauffeur'll hold a handkerchief under your
+nose with somethin' on it. When ya come to, goodness knows where
+you'll be."
+
+I began to feel a little as if I'd posed as too innocent.
+
+"You see, out West--" I began.
+
+"My Gawd!"--Minnie waved a hand scornfully--"don't be tryin' to tell
+me all men are angels out West."
+
+Just then Miss Hibber poked her head in and we suddenly took ourselves
+out.
+
+"You go easy, now," Minnie whispered after me.
+
+I lacked the nerve, anyhow, and they put on the finishing touches. A
+bricklayer would not have been so bad. How did I know the chauffeur
+was not working for a friend of mine? That, later on, would make it
+more embarrassing for him than me. I should think he would want to
+wring my neck.
+
+It was about time to find a new job, anyhow. But leaving the
+brassworks is like stopping a novel in the middle. What about Rosie
+and good looking Bella and her brother she was trying to rescue from
+the grip of the poolroom? Mame--Mame and her kaleidoscope romances,
+insults, and adventures? I just hate walking off and leaving it all.
+And the boss and Miss Hibber so nice to me about everything.
+
+Before a week is gone Minnie will be telling in an awed voice that she
+knows what happened. She told me not to go out with that chauffeur. I
+went, anyhow, and they found my mangled body in the gutter in
+Yonkers.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+
+                         _195 Irons "Family"_
+
+
+How long, I wonder, does one study or work at anything before one
+feels justified in generalizing?
+
+I have been re-reading of late some of the writings of some of the
+women who at one time or another essayed to experience first hand the
+life of the working girl. They have a bit dismayed me. Is it exactly
+fair, what they do? They thought, because they changed their names and
+wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pass
+on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the worker.
+(Incidentally they were all trials.) I had read in the past those
+heartrending books and articles and found it ever difficult to hold
+back the tears. Sometimes they were written by an immigrant, a
+bona-fide worker. The tragedy of such a life in this business-ridden
+land of ours tore one's soul.
+
+An educated, cultured individual, used to a life of ease, or easier,
+if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory
+worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher
+things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to
+be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured
+people--that more folk do not long for the higher things of life--that
+factory work is not galling to everybody. But the fact seems to be, if
+we dare generalize, that there are a very great many persons in this
+world who are neither educated nor "cultured" nor filled with
+spiritual longings. The observation might be made that all such are
+not confined to the working classes; that the country at large, from
+Fifth Avenue, New York, to Main Street, Gopher Prairie, to Market
+Street, San Francisco, is considerably made up of folk who are not
+educated or "cultured" or of necessity filled with unsatiable longings
+of the soul.
+
+It is partly due to the fact that only recently--as geologic time is
+reckoned--we were swinging in trees, yearning probably for little else
+than a nut to crack, a mate, a shelter of sorts, something of ape
+company, and now and then a chance for a bit of a scrap. It is partly
+due to the fact that for the great majority of people, the life they
+live from the cradle up is not the sort that matures them with a
+growing ambition or opportunity to experience the "finer" things of
+life. One point of view would allow that the reason we have so few
+educated, cultured, and aspiring people is due to a combination of
+unfortunate circumstances to do with heredity and environment. They
+would be cultured and spiritual if only....
+
+The other viewpoint argues that the only reason we have as many cultured
+and spiritual people as we have is due to a fortunate--"lucky"--combination
+of circumstances to do with heredity and environment. These more
+advanced folk would be far fewer in number if it had not happened
+that....
+
+It is mostly the "educated and cultured" persons who write the more
+serious books we read and who tell us what they and the rest of the
+world think and feel and do--or ought to do. The rest of the world
+never read what they ought to think and feel and do, and go
+blithely--or otherwise--on their way thinking and feeling and
+doing--what they please, or as circumstances force them.
+
+After all, the world is a very subjective thing, and what makes life
+worth living to one person is not necessarily what makes it worth
+living to another. Certain fundamental things everybody is apt to
+want: enough to eat (but what a gamut that "enough" can run!); a mate
+(the range and variety of mates who do seem amply to satisfy one
+another!); a shelter to retire to nights (what a bore if we all had to
+live complacently on the Avenue!); children to love and fuss over--but
+one child does some parents and ten children do others, and some
+mothers go into a decline if everything is not sterilized twice a day
+and everybody clean behind the ears, and other mothers get just as
+much satisfaction out of their young when there is only one
+toothbrush, if that, for everybody (we are writing from the mother's
+viewpoint and not the welfare of the offspring); some possessions of
+one's own, but not all stocks and bonds and a box of jewels in the
+bank, or a library, or an automobile, or even a house and lot, before
+peace reigns.
+
+Everyone likes to mingle with his kind now and then; to some it is
+subjectively necessary to hire a caterer, to others peanuts suffice.
+Everyone likes to wonder and ponder and express opinions--a prize
+fight is sufficient material for some; others prefer metaphysics.
+Everyone likes to play. Some need box seats at the Midnight Frolic,
+others a set of second-hand tools, and yet others a game of craps in
+the kitchen.
+
+No one likes to be hungry, to be weary, to be sick, to be worried over
+the future, to be lonely, to have his feelings hurt, to lose those
+near and dear to him, to have too little independence, to get licked
+in a scrap of any kind, to have no one at all who loves him, to have
+nothing at all to do. The people of the so-called working class are
+more apt to be hungry, weary, and sick than the "educated and
+cultured" and well-to-do. Otherwise there is no one to say--because
+there is no way it can be found out--that their lives by and large are
+not so rich, subjectively speaking, as those with one hundred thousand
+dollars a year, or with Ph. D. degrees.
+
+Most folk in the world are not riotously happy, not because they are
+poor, or "workers," but because the combination making for riotous
+happiness--shall we say health, love, enough to do of what one longs
+to do--is not often found in one individual. The condition of the
+bedding, of the clothing; the pictures on the wall; the smells in the
+kitchen--and beyond; the food on the table--have so much, and no more,
+to do with it. Whether one sorts soiled clothes in a laundry, or
+reclines on a chaise-longue with thirty-eight small hand-embroidered
+and belaced pillows and a pink satin covering, or sits in a library
+and fusses over Adam Smith, no one of the three is in a position to
+pass judgment on the satisfaction or lack of satisfaction of the other
+two.
+
+All of which is something of an impatient retort to those who look at
+the world through their own eyes and by no means a justification of
+the _status quo_. And to introduce the statement--which a month ago
+would have seemed to me incredible--that I have seen and heard as much
+contentment in a laundry as I have in the drawing-room of a Fifth
+Avenue mansion or a college sorority house--as much and no more. Which
+is not arguing that no improvements need ever be made in laundries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one place I was not going to work, and that was a laundry! I
+had been through laundries, I had read about laundries, and it was too
+much to ask anyone--if it was not absolutely necessary--to work in a
+laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I
+entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly
+come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a
+large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working
+day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The
+labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons
+and thread manufactured and patterns cut and garments made up, and
+fitted, or not, and then to keep those garments _clean_! We talk with
+such superiority of the fact that we wear clothes and heathen savages
+get along with beads and rushes. For just that some six hundred and
+fifty thousand people work six days a week doing laundry work
+alone--not to mention mother at the home washboard--or electric
+machine. We must be clean, of course, or we would not be civilized,
+but I do not see why we need be so fearfully sot up about it.
+
+A new Monday morning came along, and I waited from 7.40 to 9.15 in a
+six-by-nine entry room, with some twenty-five men and women, to answer
+the advertisement:
+
+                            GIRLS, OVER 18
+
+     with public school education, to learn machine ironing,
+     marking, and assorting linens; no experience necessary;
+     splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions;
+     hours 8 to 5.30; half day Saturday.
+
+What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became
+clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I
+venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the
+rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls
+from the brassworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since
+I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.
+
+I was third in line. The manager himself interviewed us inside, since
+the "Welfare Worker" was ill. What experience had I? I was experienced
+in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the "family" floor--two
+vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it
+so hard as the brassworks--in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He
+would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced,
+instead of the usual twelve. At the end of two weeks, if I wasn't
+earning more than fourteen dollars--it was a piecework system, with
+fourteen dollars as a minimum--I'd have to go, and make room for some
+one who could earn more than fourteen dollars.
+
+I wonder if the Welfare Worker would have made the same speech. That
+manager was a fraud. On our floor, at least, no one had ever been
+known to earn more than her weekly minimum. He was a smart fraud. Only
+I asked too many questions upstairs, he would have had me working like
+a slave to hold my job.
+
+By the time clock, where I was told to wait, stood the woman just
+ahead of me in the line. She was the first really bitter soul I had
+run across in factory work. Her husband had been let out of his job,
+along with all workers in his plant, without notice. After January 1st
+they might reopen, but at 1914 wages. There was one child in the
+family. The father had hunted everywhere for work. For one week the
+mother had searched. She had tried a shoe polish factory; they put her
+on gluing labels. The smell of the glue made her terribly sick to her
+stomach--for three days she was forced to stay in bed. Three times she
+had tried this laundry. Each day, after keeping her waiting in line an
+hour or so, they had told her to come back the next day. At last she
+had gotten as far as the time clock. I saw her several times in the
+evening line after that; she was doing "pretty well"--"shaking" on the
+third floor. Her arms nearly dropped off by evening, but she sure was
+glad of the thirteen dollars a week. Her husband had found nothing.
+
+The third to join our time-clock ranks was a Porto-Rican. She could
+speak no English at all. They put her at scrubbing floors for twelve
+dollars a week. About 4 that afternoon she appeared on our floor, all
+agitated. She needed a Spanish girl there to tell the boss she was
+leaving. She was one exercised piece of temper when it finally
+penetrated just what her job was.
+
+"Family" occupied two-thirds of the sixth and top floor--the other
+third was the "lunch room." Five flights to walk up every morning. But
+at least there was the lunch room without a step up at noon. And it
+was worth climbing five flights to have Miss Cross for a forelady.
+Sooner or later I must run into a disagreeable forelady, for the
+experience. To hear folks talk, plenty of that kind exist. Miss Cross
+was glad I was to be on her floor. She told the manager and me she'd
+noticed me that morning in line and just thought I'd made a good press
+ironer. Was I Eyetalian?
+
+She gave me the second press from the door, right in front of a
+window, and a window open at the top. That was joy for me, but let no
+one think the average factory girl consciously pines for fresh air.
+Miss Cross ironed the lowers of a pair of pajamas to show me how it
+was done, then the coat part. While she was instructing me in such
+intricacies, she was deftly finding out all she could about my past,
+present, and future--married or single, age, religion, and so on. And
+I watched, fascinated, crumpled pajama legs, with one mighty press of
+the foot, appear as perfect and flawless as on the Christmas morning
+they were first removed from the holly-decorated box.
+
+"Now you do it."
+
+I took the coat part of a pair of pink pajamas, smoothed one arm a bit
+by hand as I laid it out on the stationary side of the ironing press,
+shaped somewhat like a large metal sleeve board. With both hands I
+gripped the wooden bar on the upper part, all metal but the bar. With
+one foot I put most of my weight on the large pedal. That locked the
+hot metal part on the padded, heated, lower half with a bang. A press
+on the release pedal, the top flew up--too jarringly, if you did not
+keep hold of the bar with one hand. That ironed one side of one
+sleeve. Turn the other side, press, release. Do the other sleeve on
+two sides. Do the shoulders all around--about four presses and
+releases to that. Another to one side of the front--two if it is for a
+big fat man. One under the arm, two or three to the back, one under
+the other arm, one or two to the other half of the front, one, two, or
+three to the collar, depending on the style. About sixteen clanks
+pressing down, sixteen releases flying up, to one gentleman's pajama
+coat. I had the hang of it, and was left alone. Then I combined
+ironing and seeing what was what. If a garment was very damp--and most
+of them were--the press had to be locked several seconds before being
+released, to dry it out. During those seconds one's eyes were free to
+wander.
+
+On my left, next the door, worked a colored girl with shell-rimmed
+spectacles, very friendly, whose name was Irma. Of Irma later. On my
+right was the most woebegone-looking soul, an Italian widow, Lucia, in
+deep mourning--husband dead five weeks, with two daughters to support.
+She could not speak a word of English, and in this country sixteen
+years. All this I had from the forelady in between her finding out
+everything there was to know about me. Bless my soul, if Lucia did not
+perk up the second the forelady left, edge over, and direct a volume
+of Italian at me. What won't green earrings do! Old Mrs. Reilly called
+out, "Ach, the poor soul's found a body to talk to at last!" But,
+alas! Lucia's hope was short lived. "What!" called Mrs. Reilly, "you
+ain't Eyetalian? Well, you ought to be, now, because you look it, and
+because there ought to be somebody here for Lucy to talk to!" Lucia
+was diseased-looking and unkempt-looking and she ironed very badly.
+Everyone tried to help her out. They instructed her with a flow of
+English. When Lucia would but shake her head they used the same flow,
+only much louder, several at once. Then Lucia would mumble to herself
+for several minutes over her ironing. At times, late in the afternoon,
+Miss Cross would grow discouraged.
+
+"Don't you understand that when you iron a shirt you put the sleeves
+over the puffer _first_?"
+
+Lucia would shake her head and shrug her shoulders helplessly. Miss
+Cross would repeat with vehemence. Then one girl would poke Lucia and
+point to the puffer--"Puffer! puffer!" Another would hold up a shirt
+and holler "Shirt! shirt!" and Lucia would nod vaguely. The next shirt
+she did as all the others--puffer last, which mussed the ironed
+part--until some one stopped her work and did a whole shirt for Lucia
+correct, from beginning to end.
+
+Next to Lucia stood Fanny, colored. She was a good-hearted, helpful,
+young married thing, not over-cleanly and not overstrong. That first
+morning she kept her eye on me and came to my rescue on a new article
+of apparel every so often. Next to Fanny stood the three puffers for
+anyone to use--oval-shaped, hot metal forms, for all gathers, whether
+in sleeves, waists, skirts, or what not. Each girl had a large
+egg-shaped puffer on her own table as well. Next to the puffers stood
+the two sewing machines, where Spanish Sarah and colored Hattie darned
+and mended.
+
+At the side, behind the machines, stood Ida at her press. All the
+presses were exactly alike. Ida was a joy to my eyes. At first glance
+she appeared just a colored girl, but Ida was from Trinidad; her skin
+was like velvet, her accent Spanish. As the room grew hot from the
+presses and the steam, along about 4, and our feet began to burn and
+grow weary, I would look at Ida. It was so easy to picture the exact
+likes of her, not more than a generation or two ago, squatting under
+a palm tree with a necklace of teeth, a ring through her nose, tropic
+breezes playing on that velvet skin. (Please, I know naught of
+Trinidad or its customs and am only guessing.) And here stood Ida,
+thumping, thumping on the ironing press, nine hours, lacking ten
+minutes, a day, on the sixth floor of a laundry in Harlem, that we in
+Manhattan might be more civilized.
+
+Once she told me she had lost fifteen pounds in this country. "How?"
+
+"Ah, child," she said, "it's tha mother sickness. Don't you ever know
+it? Back home in Trinidad are my mother, my father, my two little
+boys. Oh, tha sickness to see them! But what is one to do when you
+marry a poor man? He must come to this country to find work, and then,
+after a while, I must come, too."
+
+Behind Ida stood two other colored girls, and at the end press a white
+girl who started the day after I did. She stayed only five days, and
+left in disgust--told me she'd never seen such hard work. Beyond the
+last press were the curtain frames and the large, round padded table
+for ironing fancy table linen by hand. Then began the lunch tables.
+
+Behind the row of presses by the windows stood the hand ironers who
+did the fancy work. First came Ella, neat, old, gray-haired, fearfully
+thin, wrinkled, with a dab of red rouge on each cheek. After all, one
+really cannot be old if one dabs on rouge before coming to work all
+day in a laundry. Ella had hand ironed all her life. She had been ten
+years in her last job, but the place changed hands. She liked
+ironing, she said. Ella never talked to anybody, even at lunch time.
+
+Behind Ella ironed Anna Golden, black, who wore striped silk
+stockings. She always had a bad cold. Most of the girls had colds most
+of the time--from the steam, they said. Anna had spent two dollars on
+medicine that week, which left her fourteen dollars. Anna was the one
+person to use an electric iron. It had newly been installed. The
+others heated their irons over gas flames. Every so often Miss Cross
+would call out, "I smell gas!" So did everybody else. After Anna,
+Lucile, blackest of all and a widow. And then--Mrs. Reilly.
+
+Mrs. Reilly and Hattie were the characters of the sixth floor. Mrs.
+Reilly was old and fat and Irish. She had stood up hand ironing so
+long the part of her from the waist up seemed to have settled down
+into her hips. Eleven years had Mrs. Reilly ironed in our laundry. She
+was the one pieceworker in the building. In summer she could make from
+twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, but she claimed she lost a great
+part of it in winter. She said she was anxious to get on timework. One
+afternoon I saw Mrs. Reilly iron just two things--the rest of the
+while, nothing to do, she sat on an old stool with her eyes closed.
+
+The first afternoon, Mrs. Reilly edged over to me on pretext of
+ironing out a bit of something on my press.
+
+"An' how are you makin' out?"
+
+"All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get
+tired?
+
+"Shure, child, an' what good would it do for my feet to get tired when
+they're all I got to stand on? An' did you ever try settin' nine hours
+a day? Shure an' that would be the death of anybody.
+
+Mrs. Reilly's indoor sport was marrying the sixth floor off. Poor
+Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly.
+She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated
+Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second
+marriage--or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she
+was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a "sex complex it
+was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy
+marrying off herself, she called back: "The Lord be praised! And
+didn't I get more than enough of the one man I had?"
+
+At least twice a week Mrs. Reilly saw a ghost, and she would tell us
+about it in the morning. She laughed then, and we all laughed, but you
+could easily picture the poor old fearful soul meeting that inevitable
+2 A.M. guest, quaking over it in her lonely bed. Once the ghost was
+extra terrifying. "It may have been the banama sauce," admitted Mrs.
+Reilly. And Mrs. Reilly's feet did hurt often. She used sometimes to
+take off her worn shoes and try tying her feet up in cardboards.
+
+The other workers on our floor were Mabel and Mary, two colored girls
+who finished off slight rough edges in the press ironing and folded
+everything; Edna, a Cuban girl who did handkerchiefs on the mangle;
+Annie, the English girl, lately married to an American. She had an
+inclosure of shelves to work in and there she did the final sorting
+and wrapping of family wash. Annie was the most superior person on our
+floor.
+
+And Miss Cross. In face, form, neatness, and manners Miss Cross could
+have held her own socially anywhere. But according to orthodox
+standards Miss Cross's grammar was faulty. She had worked always in
+our laundry, beginning as a hand ironer. She knew the days when hours
+were longer than nine and pay lower than fourteen dollars a week. She
+remembered when the family floor had to iron Saturdays until 10 and 11
+at night, instead of getting off at 12.45, as we did now. They stood
+it in those days; but how? As it was now, not a girl on our floor but
+whose feet ached more or less by 4 or 4.30. Ordinarily we stopped at
+5.30. Everyone knew how everyone else felt that last half hour. During
+a week with any holiday the girls had to work till 6.15 every night,
+and Saturday afternoon. They all said--we discussed it early one
+morning--that in such weeks they could iron scarcely anything that
+last hour, their feet burned so.
+
+The candy factory was hard--one stood nine hours, but the work was
+very light.
+
+The brassworks was hard--one sat, but the foot exercise was wearying
+and the seat fearfully uncomfortable.
+
+Ironing was hardest--one stood all day and used the feet for hard
+pressure besides. Yet I was sorry to leave the laundry!
+
+Perhaps it was just as well for me that Lucia could not talk English.
+She might have used it on me, and already the left ear was talked off
+by Irma. Miss Cross stood for just so much conversation, according to
+her mood. Even if she were feeling very spry, our sixth-floor talk
+could become only so general and lively before Miss Cross would call:
+"Girls! girls! not so much noise!" If it were late in the afternoon
+that would quiet us for the day--no one had enough energy to start up
+again.
+
+The first half hour Irma confided in me that she had cravings.
+"Cravings? Cravings for what?" I asked her.
+
+"Cravings for papers."
+
+It sounded a trifle goatlike.
+
+"Papers?"
+
+"Yes, papers. I want to read papers on the lecture platform."
+
+Whereat I heard all Irma's spiritual longings--cravings. She began in
+school to do papers. That was two years ago. Since then she has often
+been asked to read the papers she wrote in school before church
+audiences. Just last Sunday she read one at her church in New York,
+and four people asked her afterward for copies.
+
+What was it about?
+
+It was about the True Woman. When she wrote it, she began, "Dear
+Teacher, Pupils, and Friends." But when she read it in churches she
+skipped the Teacher and Pupils and began: "Dear Friends, ... now we
+are met together on this memorable occasion to consider the subject of
+the True Woman. First we must ask" (here Irma bangs down on a helpless
+nightshirt and dries it out well beyond its time into a nice bunch of
+wrinkles) "What is woman? Woman was created by God because Dear
+Friends God saw how lonely man was and how lonesome and so out of
+man's ribs God created woman to be man's company and helpmate...."
+
+"Irma!" Miss Cross's voice had an oft-repeated tone to it. She called
+out from the table where she checked over each girl's work without so
+much as turning her head. "You ironed only one leg of these pajamas!"
+
+Irma shuffled over on her crooked high heels and returned with the
+half-done pajamas. "That fo'-lady!" sighed Irma, "she sure gets on ma
+nerves. She's always hollerin' at me 'bout somethin'. She never
+hollers at the other girls that way--she just picks on me."
+
+And Irma continued with the True Woman: "There's another thing the
+True Woman should have and that's a good character...."
+
+"Irma!" (slight impatience in Miss Cross's tone) "you ironed this
+nightgown on the wrong side!"
+
+Irma looked appealingly at me. "There she goes again. She makes me
+downright nervous, that fo'-lady does."
+
+Poor, persecuted Irma!
+
+During that first morning Irma had to iron over at least six things.
+Then they looked like distraction. I thought of the manager's
+introductory speech to me--how after two weeks I might have to make
+way for a more efficient person.
+
+"How long you been here?" I asked Irma.
+
+"Four months."
+
+"What you makin'?"
+
+"Thirteen a week."
+
+"Ever get extra?"
+
+"Na."
+
+Suspicions concerning the manager.
+
+Irma had three other papers. One was on Testing Time. What was Testing
+Time? It might concern chemical tubes. It might be a bit of romance.
+And she really meant Trysting Time. No, to everybody a time comes when
+he or she must make a great decision. It was about that.
+
+"Irma! you've got your foot in the middle of that white apron!"
+
+Another paper was on Etee-quette (q pronounced).
+
+"Irma! you creased one of these pajama legs down the middle! Do it
+over."
+
+I pondered much during my laundry days as to why they kept Irma. She
+told me she first worked down on the shirt-and-collar floor and used
+to do "one hundred and ten shirts an hour," but the boss got down on
+her. It took her sometimes three-quarters of an hour to do one boy's
+shirt on our floor, and then one half the time she had it to do over.
+Her ironing was beyond all words fearful to behold (there must be an
+Irma in every laundry). She was all-mannered slow. She forgot to tag
+her work. She hung it over her horse so that cuffs and apron strings
+were always on the floor. Often she was late. Sometimes Miss Cross
+would grow desperate--but there Irma remained. Below, in that little
+entryway, were girls waiting for jobs. Did they figure that on the
+whole Irma wrecked fewer garments than the average new girl, or what?
+And the manager had tried to scare me!
+
+The noon bell rings--we dash for the lunch-room line. You can purchase
+pies and soup and fruit, hash and stew, coffee and tea, cafeteria
+style. There are only two women to serve--the girls from the lower
+floors have to stand long in line. I do not know where to sit, and by
+mistake evidently get at a wrong table. No one talks to me. I surely
+feel I am not where I belong. The next day I get at another wrong
+table. It is so very evident I am not wanted where I am. Rather
+disconcerting. I sit and ponder. I had thought factory girls so much
+more friendly to one another on short acquaintance than "cultured"
+people. But it is merely that they are more natural. When they feel
+friendly they show it with no reserves. When they do not feel friendly
+they show that without reserve. Which is where the unnaturalness of
+"cultured" folk sometimes helps.
+
+It seems etee-quette at the laundry requires each girl sit at the
+table where her floor sits. That second day I was at the
+shirt-and-collar table, and they, I was afterward told, are
+particularly exclusive. Indeed they are.
+
+At 12.45 the second bell rings. Miss Cross calls out, "All right,
+girls!" Clank, the presses begin again, and all afternoon I iron
+gentlemen's underpinnings. During the course of my days in the laundry
+I iron three sets round for every man in New York and thereby acquire
+a domestic attitude toward the entire male sex in the radius sending
+wash to our laundry. Nobody loves a fat man. But their underclothes do
+fit more easily over the press.
+
+I iron and I iron and I iron, and along about 4.30 the first afternoon
+it occurs to my cynical soul to wonder what the women are doing with
+themselves with the spare time which is theirs, because I am thumping
+that press down eight hours and fifty minutes a day. Not that it is
+any of my business.
+
+Also along about five o'clock it irritates me to have to bother with
+what seems to me futile work. I am perfectly willing to take great
+pains with a white waistcoat--in one day I learn to make a work of art
+of that. But why need one fuss over the back of a nightshirt? Will a
+man sleep any better for a wrinkle more or less? Besides, so soon it
+is all wrinkles.
+
+The second day I iron soft work all morning--forever men's
+underclothes, pajamas, and nightshirts. Later, when I am promoted to
+starched work, I tend to grow antifeminist. Why can men live and move
+and have their beings satisfactorily incased in soft garments, easy to
+iron, comfortable to wear, and why must women have everything starched
+and trying on the soul to do up? One minute you iron a soft
+nightshirt; the next a nightgown starched like a board, and the worst
+thing to get through with before it dries too much that ever appears
+in a laundry.
+
+After lunch I am promoted to hospital work. All afternoon I iron
+doctors' and interns' white coats and trousers. It is more interesting
+doing that. But a bit hard on the soul. For it makes you think of
+sickness and suffering. Yet sickness and suffering white-coated men
+relieve. It makes you think, too, of having babies--that being all you
+know of hospitals personally. But on such an occasion you never
+noticed if the doctor had on a white coat or not, and surely spent no
+time pondering over who ironed it. Yet if a doctor wore a coat Irma
+ironed I think the woman would note it even in the last anguished
+moments of labor.
+
+Irma did an officer's summer uniform once. I do wish I could have
+heard him when he undid the package. While Irma was pounding down on
+it she was discoursing to me how, besides papers, she had cravings for
+poetry.
+
+"You remember that last snowstorm? I sat at my window and I wrote:
+
+    "Oh, beautiful snow
+    When will you go?
+    Not until spring,
+    When the birds sing."
+
+There were several other stanzas. And about then Miss Cross dumped a
+bundle of damp clothes into Irma's box and said, "Iron these next and
+do them decent!" I peered suspiciously into the box. It was my own
+family laundry!
+
+"Hey, Irma," I said, cannily, "leave me do this batch, eh?"
+
+I might as well be paying myself for doing up my own wash, and it
+would look considerably better than if Irma ironed it.
+
+The third day my feet are not so weary, and while I iron I mull over
+ideas on women in industry. After all, have not some of us with the
+good of labor at heart been a bit too theoretical? Take the welfare
+idea so scoffed at by many. After all, there is more to be said for
+than against. Of course, provided--It is all very well to say labor
+should be allowed to look after itself, and none of this paternalism.
+Of course, the paternalism can be overdone and unwisely done. But, at
+least where women workers are concerned, if we are going to wait till
+they are able to do things for themselves we are going to wait,
+perhaps, too long for the social good while we are airing our
+theories. It is something like saying that children would be better
+off and have more strength of character if they learned to look after
+themselves. But you can start that theory too young and have the child
+die on your hands, or turn into a gutter waif. The child needs entire
+looking after up to a point where he can begin little by little to
+look after himself. And after he has learned to dress himself it does
+not necessarily mean he can select his own food, his hour of retiring,
+his habits of cleanliness and hygiene.
+
+I look about at the laundry workers and think: Suppose we decide
+nothing shall be done for these girls until they demand it themselves
+and then have charge of it themselves. In other words, suppose we let
+welfare work and social legislation wait on organization. The people
+who talk that way are often college professors or the upper crust of
+labor. They have either had no touch or lost touch with the rank and
+file of women workers. It is going to be years and years and years, if
+ever, before women in this country organize by and large to a point
+where they can become permanently effective. What organization demands
+more than any other factor is, first, a sense of oppression; second,
+surplus energy. Women have been used to getting more or less the tag
+end of things for some thousands of years. Why expect them suddenly,
+in a second of time, as it were, to rear up and say, "We'll not stand
+for this and that"? If we are going to wait for working women to feel
+oppressed enough to weld themselves together into a militant class
+organization, capable of demanding certain conditions and getting
+them, we shall wait many a long day. In the meantime, we are putting
+off the very situation we hope for--when women, as well as men, shall
+have reached the point where they can play a dignified part in the
+industrial scheme of things--by sending them from work at night too
+weary and run down to exert themselves for any social purpose. I say
+that anything and everything which can be done to make women more
+capable of responsibility should be done. But the quickest and sanest
+way to bring that about is not to sit back and wait for factory women
+to work out their own salvation. Too few of them have the intelligence
+or gumption to have the least idea how to go about it, did it ever
+occur to them that things might be radically improved. (And the pity
+of it is that so often telling improvements could be made with so
+little effort.)
+
+Nor is it anything but feminist sentimentality, as far as I can see,
+to argue against special legislation for women. What women can do
+intellectually as compared with men I am in no position to state. To
+argue that women can take a place on a physical equality with man is
+simply not being honest. Without sentimentalizing over motherhood, it
+seems allowable to point out the fact that women are potential
+mothers, and this fact, with every detail of its complexities,
+feminists or no to the contrary, is a distinct handicap to women's
+playing a part in the industrial field on a par with man. And society
+pays more dearly for a weary woman than for a tired man.
+
+Therefore, why not lunch rooms, and attractive lunch rooms, and good
+food, well cooked? Yes, it is good business, and besides it puts a
+woman on a much more efficient level to herself and society. At our
+tables the girls were talking about different lunch-room conditions
+they had come across in their work. One girl told of a glass company
+she had worked for that recently was forced to shut down. She dwelt
+feelingly on the white lunch room and the good food, and especially
+the paper napkins--the only place she had worked where they gave
+napkins. She claimed there was not a girl who did not want to cry when
+she had to quit that factory. "Everybody loved it," she said. I tried
+to find out if she felt the management had been paying for the
+polished brass rails, the good food, and the napkins out of the
+workers' wages. "Not on your life!" she answered. She had been a file
+clerk.
+
+Take dental clinics in the factories. Four teeth on our floor were
+extracted while I was at the laundry. For a couple of days each girl
+moaned and groaned and made everybody near her miserable. Then she got
+Miss Cross's permission to go to some quack dentist, and out came the
+tooth. Irma had two out at one dollar each. It was going to cost her
+forty dollars to get them back in. A person with his or her teeth in
+good condition is a far better citizen than one suffering from the
+toothache.
+
+If I had my way I should like to see a rest room in every factory
+where women are employed, and some time, however short, allowed in the
+middle of the afternoon to make use of it.
+
+Eight hours is long enough for any woman to do sustained physical
+work, with no possibility for overtime.
+
+Nor have we so much as touched on what it means to live on thirteen
+dollars or fourteen dollars a week.
+
+"But then you have taken away all the arguments for organization!"
+
+Should organization be considered as an end in and of itself, or as
+one possible means to an end?
+
+Word was passed this morning that "company" was coming! The bustling
+and the hustling and the dusting! Every girl had to clean her press
+from top to bottom, and we swept the floor with lightning speed. Miss
+Cross dashed to her little mirror and put powder on her nose. Hattie
+tied a curtain around her head to look like a Red Cross nurse. Every
+time the door opened we all got expectant palpitations. We were not
+allowed to speak, yet ever and anon Hattie or Mrs. Reilly would let
+out some timely remarks. Whereat we all got the giggles. Miss Cross
+would almost hiss, "GIRLS!" whereat we subsided. It was nerve
+wracking. And the company never came! They got as far as the third
+floor and gave out. But it was not until afternoon that we knew
+definitely that our agony was for naught.
+
+Lucia's machine got out of order--steam escaped at a fearful rate.
+While the mechanic was fixing it he discoursed to me on the laundry.
+He had been there nine months--big, capable-looking six-footer. Out of
+the corner of his mouth he informed me, "Once anybody comes to work
+here they never leave!" It surely does seem as if they had no end of
+people who had worked there years and years. Miss Cross says they used
+to have more fun than nowadays, before so many colored girls were
+employed. They gave parties and dances and everyone was chummy with
+everyone else.
+
+To-day, in the midst of hilarity and all unannounced, "company" did
+appear. We subsided like a schoolroom when the teacher suddenly
+re-enters. A batch of women, escorted by one of the management. He
+gesticulated and explained. I could not catch his words, for the noise
+of the presses, though goodness knows I craned my ears. They
+investigated everything. Undoubtedly their guide dwelt eloquently on
+the victrola in the lunch room; it plays every noon. On their way out
+two of the young women stopped by my press. "Didn't this girl iron
+that nightgown nicely?" one said to the other. I felt it obligatory to
+give them the "once over."
+
+The second the door was closed I dashed for Miss Cross. "Who were them
+females?" I asked her.
+
+Miss Cross grunted. "Them were Teachers College girls." She wrinkled
+her nose. "They send 'em over here often. And let me tell _you_, I
+never seen _one_ of 'em with any class _yet_.... They talk about
+college girls--pooh! I never seen a college girl yet looked any
+classier than us laundry girls. Most of 'em don't look _as_ classy.
+Only difference is, if you mixed us all up, they're gettin' educated."
+
+One of my erstwhile jobs at the University of California had been
+piloting college girls around through factories in just that fashion.
+I had to laugh in my sleeve as I suspected the same remarks may have
+been passed on us after our departure!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have much fun at our lunch table. A switchboard operator and file
+clerk from the office eats with us. She and I "guy" each other a good
+deal during the meal. Miss Cross wipes her eyes and sighs: "Gee!
+Ain't it fun to laugh!" and Eleanor and I look pleased with ourselves.
+
+In the paper this morning appeared a picture of one of New York's
+leading society women "experiencing the life of the working girl first
+hand." She was shown in a French bonnet, a bunch of orchids at her
+waist, standing behind a perfumery counter. What our table did to Mrs.
+X!
+
+"These women," fusses Miss Cross, "who think they'll learn what it's
+like to be a working girl, and stand behind a perfumery counter!
+Somebody's always trying to find out what it's like to be a
+worker--and then they get a lot of noteriety writin' articles about
+it. All rot, I say. Pity, if they really want to know what workin's
+like, they wouldn't try a laundry."
+
+"She couldn't eat her breakfast in bed if she did that!" was my
+cutting remark.
+
+"Or quit at three," from Annie.
+
+"Hisst!" I whisper, "I'm a lady in disguise!" And I quirk my little
+finger as I drink my coffee and order Eleanor to peer without to see
+if my limousine waits.
+
+We discuss rich folk and society ladies, and no one envies or is
+bitter. Miss Cross guesses some of them think they get as weary flying
+around to their parties and trying on clothes as we do in the laundry.
+I guess she is partly right.
+
+Then we discuss what a bore it would be not to work. At our table sit
+Miss Cross, Edna (Miss Cross calls her Edner), the Cuban girl, who
+refused to eat with the colored girls; Annie, the English girl, who
+had worked in a retail shoe shop in London; Mrs. Reilly, who is always
+morose at lunch and never speaks, except one day when she and Miss
+Cross nearly came to blows over religion. Each got purple in the face.
+Then it came out that there was a feud between them--two years or more
+it had lasted--and neither ever speaks to the other. (Yet Mrs. Reilly
+gave one dollar, twice as much as the rest of us, toward Miss Cross's
+Christmas present.) Then there are three girls from the office
+downstairs. Everyone there had had some experience in being out of
+work or not working. To each of them at such a time life has been a
+wearisome thing. Each declared she would 'most rather work at any old
+thing than stay home and do nothing.
+
+Between the first and second bells after lunch the sixth-floor girls
+foregather and sit on the ironing tables, swing our heels, and pass
+the time of day. To-day I start casually singing, "Jesus Wants Me for
+a Sunbeam." Everyone on our floor knows the song and there the whole
+lot of us sit, swinging our heels, singing at the top of our lungs, "A
+_sunbeam_, a _sunbeam_, Jesus wants me for a _sunbeam_," which is how
+I got the name of "Sunbeam" on our floor. Except that Miss Cross, for
+some reason of her own, usually called me "Constance."
+
+I teach them "My Heart's a Little Bird Cage," and we add that to our
+repertoire. Then we go on to "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly
+Light," "Rock of Ages."
+
+It appears we are a very religious lot on our floor. All the colored
+girls are Baptists. Miss Cross is an ardent Presbyterian, Annie is an
+Episcopalian, Edna and Mrs. Reilly are Catholics, but Edna knows all
+the hymns we daily sing.
+
+And, lo! before many days I am startled by hearing Lucia
+sing--woebegone Lucia. She sings to no tune whatever and smiles at me,
+"Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam." So she has learned one English
+word in sixteen years. That is better in quality than German Tessie
+did. She told me, at the candy factory, that the first thing she
+learned in English was "son of a gun."
+
+But as a matter of fact Lucia does know two other words. Once I ironed
+a very starched nightgown. It was a very, very large and gathered
+nightgown. I held it up and made Lucia look at it.
+
+Lucia snickered. "Da big-a, da fat-a!" said Lucia.
+
+Mrs. Reilly let out a squeal. "She's learnt English!" Mrs. Reilly
+called down the line.
+
+"And," I announce, "I'll teach her 'da small-a, da thin-a.'"
+
+Thereafter I held up garments to which those adjectives might apply,
+and tried to "learn" Lucia additional English. Lucia giggled and
+giggled and waited every evening to walk down the six flights of
+stairs with me, and three blocks until our ways parted. Each time I
+patted her on the back when we started off and chortled: "Hey, Lucia,
+da big-a, da fat-a!" Lucia would giggle again, and that is all we
+would have to say. Except one night Lucia pointed to the moon and
+said, "Luna." So I make the most of knowing that much Italian.
+
+Oh yes, Lucia and I had one other thing in common. One day at the
+laundry I found myself humming a Neapolitan love song, from a victrola
+record we have. Lucia's face brightened. The rest of the afternoon I
+hummed the tune and Lucia sang the words of that song, much to Mrs.
+Reilly's delight, who informed the floor that now, for sure, Lucia was
+in love again.
+
+There was much singing on our floor. Irma used often to croon negro
+religious songs, the kind parlor entertainers imitate. I loved to
+listen to her. It was not my clothes she was ironing. Hattie, down the
+line, mostly dwelt on "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam." Hattie had
+straight, short hair that stood out all over her head, and a face like
+a negro kewpie. She was up to mischief seven hours of the nine, nor
+could Miss Cross often subdue her. Hattie had been on our floor four
+years. One lively day Irma was singing with gusto "Abide With Me." For
+some reason I had broken into the rather unfactory-like ballad of
+"Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and Lucia was
+caroling some Italian song lustily--all of us at one and the same
+time. Finally Miss Cross called over, "For land's sakes, two of you
+girls stop singing!" Since Irma and I were the only two of the three
+to understand her, we made Christian martyrs of ourselves and let
+Lucia have the floor.
+
+Miss Cross was concerned once as to how I happened to know so many
+hymns. Green earrings do not look particularly hymny. The fact was, I
+had not thought of most of the hymns our sixth floor sang since I was
+knee high. In those long ago days a religious grandmother took me once
+to a Methodist summer camp meeting, at which time I resolved before my
+Maker to join the Salvation Army and beat a tambourine. So when Miss
+Cross asked me how I knew so many hymns, and the negro-revivalist
+variety, I answered that I once near joined the Salvation Army. "You
+don't say!" said the amazed Miss Cross.
+
+One day Miss Cross and Jacobs, a Jew who bossed some department which
+brought him often to our floor, to see, for instance, should they wash
+more curtains or do furniture covers, had a great set-to on the
+subject of religion. Jacobs was an iconoclast. Edna left her
+handkerchiefs to join in. I eavesdropped visibly. Jacobs 'lowed there
+was no hell. Whereat Miss Cross and Edna wanted to know the sense of
+being good. Jacobs 'lowed there was no such thing as a soul. Miss
+Cross and Edna fairly clutched each other.
+
+"Then what is there that makes you happy or unhappy, if it ain't your
+soul?" asked Miss Cross, clenchingly.
+
+"Oh, hell!" grunted Jacobs, impatiently, after having just argued
+there was no such place.
+
+Jacobs uttered much heresy. Miss Cross and Edna perspired in anguish.
+Then I openly joined the group.
+
+Miss Cross turned to me. "I tell you how I feel about Christianity. If
+a lot of these educated college professors and lawyers and people
+like that, when they read all the books they do and are smart as they
+are--if Christianity is good enough for them, it's good enough for
+me!"
+
+Jacobs was so disgusted that he left.
+
+Whereat Edna freed her soul of all the things she wanted to say about
+hell and punishment for sins. She went too far for Miss Cross. Edna
+spoke of thieves and murderers and evildoers in general, and what they
+ought to get in both this world and the next. Quite a group had
+collected by this time.
+
+Then Miss Cross turned to us all and said: "We're in no position to
+pass judgment on people that do wrong. Look at us. Here we are, girls
+what have everything. We got nice homes, enough to eat and wear, we
+have 'most everything in the world we want. We don't know what it's
+like to be tempted, 'cause we're so fortunate. An' I say we shouldn't
+talk about people who go wrong."
+
+That--in a laundry.
+
+And only Edna seemed not to agree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-day at lunch the subject got around to matrimony. Eleanor said:
+"Any girl can get married, if she wants to so bad she'll take any old
+thing, but who wants to take any old thing?"
+
+"Sure," I added, cockily. "Who wants to pick up with anyone they can
+vamp in the Subway?"
+
+Whereupon I get sat upon and the line of argument was interesting.
+Thus it ran:
+
+After all, why wasn't a man a girl vamped in the Subway the safest
+kind? Where did working girls get a chance to meet men, anyhow? About
+the only place was the dance hall, and goodness knows what kind of men
+you did meet at a dance hall. They were apt to be the kind to make
+questionable husbands; like as not they were "sports." But the Subway!
+Now there you were more likely to pick up with the dependable kind.
+Every girl at the table knew one or several married couples whose
+romances had begun on the Subway, and "every one of 'em turned out
+happy." One girl told of a man she could have vamped the Sunday before
+in the Subway, but he was too sportily dressed and she got scared and
+quit in the middle. The other girls all approved her conduct. Each
+expressed deep suspicion of the "sporty" man. Each supported the
+Subway romance.
+
+I withdrew my slur on the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A guilty feeling came over me as the day for leaving the laundry
+approached. Miss Cross and I had become very friendly. We planned to
+do all sorts of things together. Our floor was such a companionable,
+sociable place. It didn't seem square to walk off and leave those
+girls, black and white, who were my friends. In the other factories I
+just disappeared as suddenly as I came. After a few days I could not
+stand it and penned a jiggly note to Miss Cross. Unexpectedly, I was
+going to have to move to Pennsylvania (that was true, for Christmas
+vacation). I hated to leave her and the girls, etc., etc. I was her
+loving friend, "Constance," alias "Sunbeam."
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+                         _In a Dress Factory_
+
+
+Fingers poke through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with
+two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers,
+spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes,
+duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag
+with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old
+brown-leather bag. In the old brown-leather bag is an old black purse.
+In the old black purse are fifty-five cents, a key, and a safety pin.
+In the old brown bag are also two sticks of Black Jack chewing gum, a
+frayed handkerchief, and the crumpled list of possibilities. If you
+should lose the list!
+
+That list was copied from the Sunday _World_--from the "Female Help
+Wanted, Miscellaneous." The future looked bright Sunday. Now after
+four attempts to land jobs had ended in being turned down cold, the
+future did not look bright at all. Because, you understand, we are
+going on the assumption that the old black purse in the old brown bag
+with fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin were all that stood
+between us and--well, a number of dismal things. Which was fifty-five
+cents and a key and a safety pin more than some folk had that Monday
+morning in New York.
+
+You must know in days of unemployment that it is something of a
+catastrophe if you do not land the first job you apply for Monday
+morning. For by the time you reach the second place on the list, no
+matter how fast you go, it is apt to be filled up from the group who
+were waiting there from 7.30 on, as you had waited at your first hope.
+The third chance is slimmer still by far, and if you keep on until 10
+or 11 it is mostly just plain useless.
+
+And if you do not land a job Monday, that whole week is as good as
+lost. Of course, there is always a chance--the smallest sort of
+hopeless chance--that something can be found later on in the week. The
+general happening is that you stake your all on the 7.30 to 8.30 wait
+Monday morning. Often it is 9 before the firm sees fit to announce it
+wants no more help, and there you are with fifty-five cents and a key
+and a safety pin--or less--to do till Monday next.
+
+Strange the cruel comfort to be felt from the sight of the countless
+others hurrying about hopelessly, hopefully, that raw Monday morning.
+On every block where a firm had advertised were girls scanning their
+already worn-looking lists, making sure of the address, hastening on.
+Nor were they deterred by the procession marching away--even if some
+one called, "No use goin' up there--they don't want no more." Perhaps,
+after all, thought each girl to herself, the boss would want _her_.
+The boss did not.
+
+First, early in the morning and full of anticipation I made for the
+bindery on West Eighteenth Street. That sounded the likeliest of the
+possibilities. No need to get out the paper to make sure again of the
+number. It must be where that crowd was on the sidewalk ahead, some
+thirty girls and as many men and boys. Everyone was pretty
+cheerful--it was twenty minutes to eight and most of us were young.
+Rather too many wanted the same job, but there were no worries to
+speak of. Others might be unlucky--not we. So our little group talked.
+Bright girls they were, full of giggles and "gee's." Finally the
+prettiest and the brightest of the lot peered in through the street
+doors. "Say, w'at d'ye know? I see a bunch inside! Come on!"
+
+In we shoved our way, and there in the dismal basement-like first
+floor waited as many girls and men as on the sidewalk. "Good night! A
+fat show those dead ones outside stand!" And we passed the time of day
+a bit longer. The pretty and smart one was not for such tactics long.
+"W'at d'ye say we go up to where the firm is and beat the rest of 'em
+to it!" "You said it!" And we tore up the iron stairs. On the second
+flight we passed a janitor. "Where's the bindery?"
+
+"Eighth floor."
+
+"My Gawd!" And up seven flights we puffed in single file, conversation
+impossible for lack of wind.
+
+The bright one opened the door and our group of nine surged in. There
+stood as many girls and men as were down on the first floor and out on
+the sidewalk.
+
+"My Gawd!" There was nothing else to say.
+
+We edged our way through till we stood by the time clock. The bright
+one was right,--that was the strategic point. For at 8.30 a forelady
+appeared at that very spot, just suddenly was--and in a pleasant tone
+of voice announced, "We don't need any more help, male or female, this
+morning!" Two scared-looking girls just in front of me screwed up
+their courage and said, pleadingly, "But you told us Saturday we
+should come back this morning and you promised us work!"
+
+"Oh, all right! Then you two go to the coat room."
+
+Everyone looked a bit dazed. At least one hundred girls and over that
+many men had hopes of landing a job at that bindery--and they took on
+two girls from Saturday.
+
+We said a few things we thought, and dashed for the iron stairs. We
+rushed down pell-mell, calling all the way. By this time a steady
+procession was filing up. "No use. Save your breath." Some kept on,
+regardless.
+
+From the bindery I rushed to a factory making muslin underwear. By the
+time I got there--only six blocks uptown--the boss looked incredulous
+that I should even be applying at such an advanced hour, although it
+was not yet 9. No, he needed no more. From there to the address of an
+"ad" for "light factory work," whatever it might turn out to be. A
+steady stream of girls coming and going. Upstairs a young woman,
+without turning her head, her finger tracing down a column of
+figures, called out, "No more help wanted!"
+
+A rush to a wholesale millinery just off Fifth Avenue--the only
+millinery advertising for learners. The elevator was packed going up,
+the hallway was packed where we got out. The girls already there told
+us newcomers we must write our names on certain cards. Also we must
+state our last position, what sort of millinery jobs we expected to
+get, and what salary. The girl ahead of me wrote twenty-eight dollars.
+I wrote fourteen dollars. She must have been experienced in some
+branch of the trade. All the rest of us at our crowded end of the
+entry hall were learners. The "ad" here had read "apply after 9.30."
+It was not yet 9.30. A few moments after I got there, my card just
+filled out, the boss called from a little window: "No more learners.
+All I want is one experienced copyist." There was apparently but one
+experienced copyist in the whole lot. Everyone was indignant. Several
+girls spoke up: "What made you advertise learners if you don't want
+none?" "I did want some, but I got all I want." We stuffed the
+elevator and went on down.
+
+As a last try, my lunch and apron and I tore for the Subway and Park
+Place, down by the Woolworth Building. By the time I reached that
+bindery there were only two girls ahead of me. A man interviewed the
+younger. She had had a good bit of bindery experience. The man was
+noncommittal. The very refined middle-aged woman had had years of
+experience. She no sooner spoke of it than the man squinted his eyes
+at her and said: "You belong to the union then, don't you?" "Yes," the
+woman admitted, with no hesitation, "I do, but that makes no
+difference. I'm perfectly willing to work with nonunion girls. I'm a
+good worker and I don't see what difference it should make." The man
+turned abruptly to me. "What bindery experience have you had?" I had
+to admit I had had no bindery experience, but I made it clear I was a
+very experienced person in many other fields--oh, many other--and so
+willing I was, and quick to learn.
+
+"Nothing doing for you."
+
+But he had advertised for learners.
+
+"Yes, but why should I use learners when I turned away over seventy
+experienced girls this morning, ready to do any work for any old
+price?"
+
+I was hoping to hear what else he might say to the union member, but
+the man left me no excuse for standing around.
+
+I ate my lunch at home.
+
+When the next Sunday morning came, again the future looked bright. I
+red-penciled eleven "ads"--jobs in three different dress factories,
+sewing buttons on shoes. You see, I have to pick only such "ads" as
+allow for no previous experience--it is only unskilled workers I am
+eligible to be among as yet; girls to pack tea and coffee, to work for
+an envelope company, in tobacco, on sample cards; girls to pack hair
+nets, learners on fancy feathers, and learners to operate book-sewing
+machines.
+
+The rest of the newspaper told much of trouble in the garment trades.
+I decided to try the likeliest dress factory first. I was hopeful, but
+not enough so to take my lunch and apron.
+
+At the first dress factory address before eight o'clock there were
+about nine girls ahead of me. We waited downstairs by the elevator, as
+the boss had not yet arrived. The "ad" I was answering read:
+"WANTED--Bright girls to make themselves useful around dress factory."
+
+Some of us looked brighter than others of us.
+
+Upstairs in the hall we assembled to wait upon the pleasure of the
+boss. The woodwork was white, the floor pale blue--it was all very
+impressive.
+
+Finally, second try, the boss glued his eye on me.
+
+"Come in here." A white door closed behind us, and we stood in a
+little room which looked as if a small boy of twelve had knocked it
+together out of old scraps and odds and ends, unpainted.
+
+"What experience you have had?"
+
+He was a nice-looking, fairly young Jew, who spoke with a considerable
+German accent.
+
+"None in a dress factory, but ..." and I regaled him with the vast
+amount of experience in other lines that was mine, adding that I had
+done a good deal of "private dressmaking" off and on, and also
+assuring him, almost tremblingly, I did so want to land a job--that I
+was the most willing of workers.
+
+"What you expect to get?"
+
+"What will you pay me?"
+
+"No, I'm asking you. What do you expect to get?"
+
+"Fourteen dollars."
+
+"All right, go on in."
+
+If the room where the boss had received me could have been the work of
+a twelve-year-old, the rest of the factory must have been designed and
+executed by a boy of eight, or a lame, halt, and blind carpenter just
+tottering to his grave. There was not a straight shelf. There was not
+a straight partition. Boards of various woods and sizes had been used
+and nothing had ever been painted. Such doors as existed had odd ways
+of opening and closing. The whole place looked as if it had cost about
+seven dollars and twenty-nine cents to throw together. But, ah! the
+white and pale blue of the show rooms!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dress factory job was like another world compared with candy,
+brass, and the laundry. In each of those places I had worked on one
+floor of a big plant, doing one subdivided piece of labor among
+equally low-paid workers busy at the same sort of job as myself. Of
+what went on in the processes before and after the work we did, I knew
+and saw nothing. We packed finished chocolates; we punched slots in
+already-made lamp cones; we ironed already washed, starched, and
+dampened clothes. Such work as we did took no particular skill, though
+a certain improvement in speed and quality of work came with practice.
+One's eyes could wander now and then, one's thoughts could wander
+often, and conversation with one's neighbors was always possible.
+
+Behold the dress factory, a little complete world of its own on one
+small floor where every process of manufacture, and all of it skilled
+work, could be viewed from any spot. Not quite every process--the
+designer had a room of her own up front nearer where the woodwork was
+white.
+
+"Ready-made clothing!" It sounds so simple--just like that. Mrs. Fine
+Lady saunters into a shop, puts up her lorgnette, and lisps, "I'd like
+to see something in a satin afternoon dress." A plump blonde in
+tight-fitting black with a marcel wave trips over to mirrored doors,
+slides one back, takes a dress off its hanger--and there you are! "So
+much simpler than bothering with a dressmaker."
+
+But whatever happened to get that dress to the place where the blonde
+could sell it? "Ready-made," indeed! There has to be a start some
+place before there is any "made" to it. It was at that point in our
+dress factory when the French designer first got a notion into her
+head--she who waved her arms and gesticulated and flew into
+French-English rages just the way they do on the stage. "_Mon Dieu!
+Mon Dieu!_"--gray-haired Madame would gasp at our staid and portly Mr.
+Rogers. Ada could say "My Gawd!" through her Russian nose to him and
+it had nothing like the same wilting effect.
+
+Ready-made--yes, ready-made. But first Madame got her notion, and then
+she and her helpers concocted the dress itself. A finished article, it
+hung inside the wire inclosure where the nice young cutter kept
+himself and his long high table. The cutter took a look at the
+finished garment hanging on the side of his cage, measured a bit with
+his yardstick, and then proceeded to cut the pattern out of paper.
+Whereupon he laid flat yards and yards of silks and satins on his
+table and with an electric cutter sliced out his parts. One
+mistake--one slice off the line--_Mon Dieu!_ it's too terrible to
+think of! All these pieces had to be sorted according to sizes and
+colors, and tied and labeled. (Wanted--bright and useful girl right
+here.)
+
+Next came the sewing machine operators (electric power)--a long narrow
+table, nine machines at a side, but not more than fourteen operators
+were employed--thirteen girls and one lone young man. They said that
+on former piece rates this man used to make from ninety dollars to one
+hundred dollars a week. The operators were all well paid, especially
+by candy, brass, and laundry standards, but they were a skilled lot. A
+very fine-looking lot too--some of the nicest-looking girls I've seen
+in New York. Everyone had a certain style and assurance. It was good
+for the eyes to look on them after the laundry thirteen-dollar-a-week
+type.
+
+When the first operators had done their part the dresses were handed
+over to the drapers. There were two drapers; they were getting around
+fifty dollars a week before the hard times. One of the drapers was as
+attractive a girl as I ever saw any place--bobbed hair, deep-set eyes,
+a Russian Jewess with features which made her look more like an
+Italian. She spoke English with hardly any accent. She dressed very
+quietly and in excellent taste. All day long the two draped dresses on
+forms--ever pinning and pinning. The drapers turned the dresses over
+to certain operators, who finished all machine sewing. The next work
+fell to the finishers.
+
+In that same end of the factory sat the four finishers, getting "about
+twenty dollars a week," but again no one seemed sure. Two were
+Italians who could talk little English. One was Gertie, four weeks
+married--"to a Socialist." Gertie was another of the well-dressed
+ones. If you could know these dress factory girls you would realize
+how, unless gifted with the approach of a newspaper reporter--and I
+lack that approach--it was next to impossible to ask a girl herself
+what she was earning. No more than you could ask a lawyer what his
+fees amounted to. The girls themselves who had been working long
+together in the same shop did not seem to know what one another's
+wages were. It was a new state of affairs in my factory experience.
+
+The finishers, after sewing on all hooks and eyes and fasteners and
+doing all the remaining handwork on the dresses, turned them over to
+the two pressers, sedate, assured Italians, who ironed all day long
+and looked prosperous and were very polite.
+
+They brought the dresses back to Jean and her helper--two girls who
+put the last finishing touches on a garment before it went into the
+showroom--snipping here and there, rough edges all smoothed off. It
+was to Jean the boss called my second morning, very loud so all could
+hear: "If you find anything wrong mit a dress, don't _look_ at it,
+don't _bodder wid_ it--jus' t'row it in dere faces and made dem do it
+over again! It's not like de old days no more!" (Whatever he meant by
+that.) So--there was your dress, "ready-made."
+
+Such used to be the entire factory, adding the two office girls; the
+model, who was wont to run around our part of the world now and then
+in a superior fashion, clad in a scanty pale-pink-satin petticoat
+which came just below her knees and an old gray-and-green sweater;
+plus various male personages, full of business and dressed in their
+best. Goodness knows what all they did do to keep the wheels of
+industry running--perhaps they were salesmen. They had the general
+appearance of earning at least ten to twenty thousand dollars a year.
+It may possibly have risen as high as two thousand.
+
+And Peters--who was small though grown, and black, and who cleaned up
+with a fearful dust and snitched lead pencils if you left them around.
+
+At present, in addition, there were the sixteen crochet beaders,
+because crochet beading is stylish in certain quarters--this
+"department" newly added just prior to my arrival. But before the
+beaders could begin work the goods had to be stamped, and before they
+could be stamped Mr. Rogers (he was middle-aged and a dear and an
+Italian and his name wasn't "Rogers," but some unpronounceable thing
+the Germans couldn't get, so it just naturally evolved into something
+that began with the same letter which they could pronounce) had to
+concoct a design. He worked in the cage at a raised end of the
+cutting table. He pricked the pattern through paper with a machine, at
+a small table outside by the beaders, that was always piled high with
+a mess of everything from spools to dresses, which Mr. Rogers
+patiently removed each time to some spot where some one else found
+them on top of something she wanted, and less patiently removed them
+to some other spot, where still less patiently they were found in the
+way and dumped some place else. Such was life in one factory. And Ada
+would call out still later: "Mr. Rogers, did you see a pile of dresses
+on this table when you went to work?"
+
+Whereat in abject politeness and dismay Mr. Rogers would dash from
+"inside" to "outside" and explain in very broken English that there
+had been some things on the table, but "vaire carefully" he had placed
+them--here. And to Mr. Rogers's startled gaze the pile had
+disappeared.
+
+If a dress had to be beaded, Mr. Rogers took the goods after the
+cutter finished his job, and he and his helpers stamped the patterns
+on sleeves, front and back, skirt, by rubbing chalk over the paper.
+Upon the scene at this psychological moment enters the bright girl to
+make herself useful. The bright girl "framed-up" the goods for the
+beaders to work on. (In fact, you noted she entered even earlier, by
+helping the cutter tie the bundles according to size and color.)
+
+"Frame-up" means taking boards the proper length with broad tape
+tacked along one edge. First you pin the goods lengthwise, pins close
+together. Then you find side boards the desired length and pin the
+goods along the sides. Then with four iron clamps you fasten the
+corners together, making the goods as tight as a drum. There is a real
+knack to it, let me tell you--especially when it comes to queerly
+shaped pieces--odd backs or fronts or sleeves. Or where you have a
+skirt some six or eight feet long and three broad. But I can frame!
+Ada said so.
+
+When I got a piece framed (Now I write those six words and grin) ...
+"_when_" ... Two little skinny horses I had to rest the frames upon.
+The space I had in which to make myself useful was literally about
+three by four feet just in front of the shelves where the thread and
+beads were kept. That is, I had it if no one wanted to get anything in
+the line of thread or beads, which they always did want to get.
+Whereupon I moved out--which meant my work might be knocked on the
+floor, or if it was bigger I had to move the work out with me. Or I
+crawled under it and got the thread or beads myself. If it were a
+skirt I was framing up I earned the curses, though friendly, of the
+assemblage. No one could pass in any direction. The beaders were shut
+in their quarters till I got through, or they crawled under. Or I
+poked people in the back with the frames while I was clamping them. I
+fought and bled and died over every large frame I managed to get
+together, for the frame was larger than the space I had to work in.
+Until in compassion they finally moved me around the corner into the
+dressmaking quarters, which tried Joe's soul. Joe was the Italian
+foreman of that end of things. He was nice. But he saw no reason why I
+should be moved up into his already crowded space. Indeed, I was only
+a little better off. The fact of the matter was that the more useful I
+became the more in everybody's way I got. Indeed, it can be taken as a
+tribute to human nature that everyone in that factory was not a
+crabbed nervous wreck from having to work on top of everyone else. It
+was almost like attempting dressmaking in the Subway. The boss at
+times would gaze upon my own frantic efforts, and he claimed: "Every
+time I look at you the tears come in my eis." And I would tell him,
+"Every time I think about myself the tears come in mine." About every
+other day he appeared with a hammer and some nails and would pound
+something some place, with the assurance that his every effort spelled
+industrial progress and especial help to me.
+
+"All I think on is your comfort, yes?"
+
+"Don't get gray over it!"
+
+Nor will I forget that exhibition of the boss's ideas of scientific
+management. Nothing in the factory was ever where anyone could find
+it. It almost drove me crazy. What was my joy then when one day the
+boss told me to put the spools in order. There was a mess of
+every-colored spool, mixed with every other color, tangled ends, dust,
+buttons, loose snappers, more dust, beads, more spools, more dust. A
+certain color was wanted by a stitcher. There was nothing to do but
+paw. The spool, like as not, would be so dusty it would take blowings
+and wipings on your skirt before it could be discovered whether the
+color was blue or black. I tied my head in tissue paper and sat down
+to the dusty job of sorting those spools. Laboriously I got all the
+blacks together and in one box. Laboriously all the whites. That
+exhausted all the boxes I could lay hands on. I hunted up the boss. "I
+can't do that spool job decent if I ain't got no boxes to put the
+different colors in."
+
+"Boxes, boxes! What for you want boxes?"
+
+"For the spools."
+
+"'Ain't you got no boxes?"
+
+"'Ain't got another one."
+
+He hustled around to the spool shelves where I was working.
+
+"_Ach_, boxes! Here are two boxes. What more you want?"
+
+Majestically, energetically, he dumped my black spools out of one box,
+my white spools out of the other--dumped them back with a flourish
+into the mess of unassorted dust and colors.
+
+"Here are two boxes! What more you want?"
+
+What redress had I for such a grievance except to wail at him: "My
+Gawd! my Gawd! I jus' put those spools in them boxes!"
+
+"_Ach_, so!" says the boss. "Vell, put um back in again."
+
+With the sweat of my life's blood I unearthed a ragged empty box here,
+another there, no two sizes the same. After three days of using every
+minute to be spared from other jobs on those shelves, I had every
+single spool where it belonged and each box labeled as to color. How
+wondrous grand it looked! How clean and dusted! I made the boss
+himself gaze upon the glory of it.
+
+"_Ach_, fine!" he beamed.
+
+Two days later it was as if I had never touched a spool. The boxes
+were broken, the spools spilled all over--pawing was again in season.
+Not yet quite so much dust, but soon even the dust would be as of
+yore.
+
+"One cause of labor unrest is undoubtedly the fact that the workers
+are aware that present management of industry is not always 100 per
+cent efficient."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So then, I framed up. Nor was it merely that I worked under
+difficulties as to space. Another of the boss's ideas of scientific
+management seemed to be to employ as few bright and useful girls as
+possible. He started with three. He ended with just one. From dawn to
+dewy eve I tore. It was "Connie, come here!" (Ada, the beadwork
+forelady.) "Connie, come here!" (The cutter.) "Connie, thread, thread,
+yes? There's a good girl!" (The beaders.) "Connie, changeable beads,
+yes? That's the girl!" "Connie, unframe these two skirts quick as you
+can!" "Connie, never mind finishing those skirts; I got to get this
+'special' framed up right away!" "Connie, didn't you finish unframing
+those skirts?" "Connie, tissue paper, yes? Thanks awfully." "Connie,
+did you see that tag I laid here? Look for it, will you?"
+
+But the choice and rare moment of my bright and useful career was when
+the boss himself called, "Oh, Miss Connie, come _mal_ here, yes?" And
+when I got _mal_ there he said, "I want you should take my shoes to
+the cobblers _so fort_ yes?... And be sure you get a check ... and go
+quick, yes." Whereupon he removed his shoes and shuffled about in a
+pair of galoshes.
+
+I put on the green tam. I put on the old brown coat with now three
+buttons gone and the old fur collar, over my blue-checked apron, and
+with the boss's shoes under my arm out I fared, wishing to goodness I
+would run into some one I knew, to chuckle with me. Half an hour later
+the boss called me again.
+
+"I think it is time you should bring my shoes back, yes?" I went. The
+cobbler said it would be another five minutes. Five minutes to do what
+I would within New York! It was a wondrous sensation. Next to the
+cobbler's a new building was going up. I have always envied the folks
+who had time to hang over a railing and watch a new building going up.
+At last--my own self, my green tam, my brown coat over the
+blue-checked apron, chewing a stick of Black Jack, hung over the
+railing and for five whole minutes and watched the men on the steel
+skeleton. All the time my salary was going on just the same.
+
+I was hoping the boss would tip me--say, a dime--for running his
+errands. Otherwise I might never get a tip from anyone. He did not. He
+thanked me, and after that he called me "dearie."
+
+Ada's face wore an anxious look when I got back. She was afraid I
+might not have liked running errands. Running errands, it seemed, was
+not exactly popular. I assured her it was "so swell watchin' the
+riveters on the new buildin'" I didn't care about the shoes.
+
+The first day in any new job seems strange, and you wonder if you ever
+will get acquainted. In the dress factory I felt that way for several
+days. Hitherto I had always worked with girls all round me, and it was
+no time before we were chatting back and forth. In the dress factory I
+worked by myself at chores no one else did. Also, the other girls had
+the sort of jobs which took concentration and attention--there was
+comparatively little talk. Also, the sewing machines inside and the
+riveting on that steel building outside made too much noise for easy
+conversation.
+
+At lunch time most of the girls went out to eat at various restaurants
+round about. They looked so grand when they got their coats and hats
+on that I could never see them letting me tag along in my old green
+tam and two-out-of-five buttoned coat. My wardrobe had all fitted in
+appropriately to candy and brass and the laundry, but not to
+dressmaking. So I ate my lunch out of a paper bag in the factory with
+such girls as stayed behind. They were mostly the beaders. And they
+were mostly "dead ones"--the sort who would not talk had they been
+given a bonus and share in the profits for it. They read the _Daily
+News_, a group of some five to one paper, and ate.
+
+By Thursday of the first week I was desperate. How was I ever to "get
+next" to the dress factory girls? During the lunch hour Friday I
+gulped down my food and tore for Gimbel's, where I bought five new
+buttons. Saturday I sewed them on my coat, and Monday and all the next
+week I ate lunch with Ada and Eva and Jean and Kate at a Yiddish
+restaurant where the food had strange names and stranger tastes. But
+at least there was conversation.
+
+Ada I loved--our forelady in the bead work--young, good-looking,
+intelligent. She rather took me under her wing, in gratitude for which
+I showed almost immediate improvement along those lines whereon she
+labored over me. My grammar, for instance. When I said "it ain't," Ada
+would say, "Connie, Connie, _ain't_!" Whereat I gulped and said
+"isn't," and Ada smiled approval. Within one week I had picked up
+wonderfully. At the end of that week Ada and I were quite chummy. She
+asked me one day if I were married. No. Was she? "You don't think I'd
+be working like this if I was, do you?" When I asked her what she
+would be doing if she didn't have to work, she answered, "Oh, lots of
+things." Nor could I pin her to details. She told me she'd get married
+to-morrow only her "sweetheart" was a poor man. But she was crazy
+about him. Oh, she was! The very next day she flew over to where I was
+framing up. "I've had a fight with my sweetheart!"
+
+It was always difficult carrying on a conversation with Ada. She was
+being hollered for from every corner of the factory continually, and
+in the few seconds we might have had for talk I was hollered for.
+Especially is such jumpiness detrimental to sharing affairs of the
+heart. I know only fragments of Ada's romance. The fight lasted all of
+four days. Then he appeared one evening, and next morning, she
+beamingly informed me that "her sweetheart had made up. Oh, but he's
+_some_ lover, _I_ tell you!"
+
+Ada was born in Russia, but came very young to this country. She spoke
+English without an accent. Never had she earned less than twenty
+dollars a week, starting out as a bookkeeper. When crochet beading
+first became the rage, about five years ago, she went over to that and
+sometimes made fifty dollars and sixty dollars a week. Here as
+forelady, she made forty dollars. Twenty dollars of that she gave each
+week to her mother for board and lodging. Often she had gone on summer
+vacations. For three years she had paid for a colored girl to do the
+housework at home. I despaired at first of having Ada so much as take
+notice of the fact that I was alive. What was my joy then, at the end
+of the first week, to have her come up and say to me: "Do you know
+what I want? I want you to come over to Brooklyn and live with me and
+my folks."
+
+Oh, it's wretched to just walk off and leave folks like that!
+
+That same Saturday morning the boss said he wanted to see me after
+closing time. There seemed numerous others he wanted to see. Then I
+discovered, while waiting my turn with these others, that practically
+no one there knew her "price." There was a good deal of resentment
+about it, too. He had hired these girls and no word about pay. The
+other girls waiting that morning were beaders. I learned one trick of
+the trade which it appears is more or less universal. They had left
+their former jobs to come to this factory in answer to an "ad" for
+crochet beaders. If after one week it was found they were getting less
+than they had at the old place, they would go back and say they had
+been sick for a week. Otherwise they planned to stay on at this
+factory. Each girl was called in alone, and alone bargained with the
+boss. Monday, Sadie, just for instance, ahead of me in the Saturday
+line, reported the conversation she had had with the boss:
+
+"Well, miss, what you expect to get here?"
+
+"What I'm worth."
+
+"Yes, yes--you're worth one hundred dollars, but I'm talking just
+plain English. What you expect to get?"
+
+"I tell you what I'm worth."
+
+"All right, you're worth one hundred dollars; you think you'll get
+thirty dollars. I'll pay you twenty dollars."
+
+(Sadie had previously told me under no consideration would she remain
+under twenty-five dollars, but she remained for twenty dollars.)
+
+My turn. I thought there was no question about my "price." It was
+fourteen dollars. But perhaps seeing how I had run my legs almost off,
+and pinned my fingers almost off all week, the boss was going
+voluntarily to raise me.
+
+"What wages you expect to get here?"
+
+Oh, well, since he thus opened the question we would begin all new. I
+had worked so much harder than I had anticipated.
+
+"Sixteen dollars a week."
+
+"Ho--sixteen dollars!--and last Monday it was fourteen dollars. You're
+going up, yes?"
+
+"But the work's much harder 'n I thought it 'ud be."
+
+"So you go from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars and I got you here
+to tell you you'd get twelve dollars."
+
+Oh, but I was mad--just plain mad! "You let me work all week thinkin'
+I was gettin' fourteen dollars. It ain't fair!"
+
+"Fair? I pay you what I can afford. Times are hard now, you know."
+
+I could not speak for my upset feelings. To pay me twelve dollars for
+the endless labor of that week when he had allowed me to think I was
+getting fourteen dollars! To add insult to injury, he said, "Next week
+I want you should work later than the other girls evenings, and make
+no date for next Saturday" (I had told him I was in a hurry to get off
+for lunch this Saturday) "because I shall want you should work
+Saturday afternoon."
+
+Such a state of affairs is indeed worth following up....
+
+Monday morning he came around breezily--he really was a cordial,
+kindly soul--and said; "Well, dearie, how are you this morning?"
+
+I went on pinning.
+
+"Good as anybody can be on twelve dollars a week."
+
+"_Ach_, forget it, forget it! Always money, money! Whether a person
+gets ten cents or three hundred dollars--it's not the money that
+counts"--his hands went up in the air--"it's the _service_!"
+
+Yet employers tell labor managers they must not sentimentalize.
+
+A bit later he came back. "I tell you what I'll do. You stay late
+every night this week and work Saturday afternoon like I told you you
+should, and I'll pay you for it!"
+
+To such extremes a sense of justice can carry one! (Actually, he had
+expected that extra work of me gratis!)
+
+During the week I figured out that in his own heart that boss had
+figured out a moral equivalent for a living wage. There was nothing he
+would not do for me. Did he but come in my general direction, I was
+given a helping hand. He joked with me continually. The hammer and
+nails were always busy. I was not only "dearie," I was "sweetheart."
+But fourteen dollars a week--that was another story.
+
+Ada was full of compassion and suggested various arguments I should
+use next week on the boss. It was awful what he paid me, Ada declared.
+She too would talk to him.
+
+The second week I got closer to the girls. Or, more truthfully put,
+they got closer to me. At the other factories I had asked most of the
+questions and answered fewer. Here I could hardly get a question in
+edgewise for the flood which was let loose on me. I explained in each
+factory that I lived with a widow who brought me from California to
+look after her children. I did some work for her evenings and Saturday
+afternoon and Sunday, to pay for my room and board. Not only was I
+asked every conceivable question about myself, but at the dress
+factory I had to answer uncountable questions about the lady I lived
+with--her "gentlemen friends," her clothes, her expenses. It was like
+pulling teeth for me to get any information out of the girls.
+
+In such a matter as reading, for example. Every girl I asked was fond
+of reading. What kind of books? Good books. Yes, but the names. I got
+_We Two_ out of Sarah, and Jean was reading Ibsen's _Doll's House_. It
+was a swell book, a play. After hours one night she told me the story.
+Together with Ada's concern over my grammar it can be seen that I left
+the dress factory in intellectual advance over the condition in which
+I entered.
+
+The girls I had the opportunity of asking were not such "movie"
+enthusiasts, on the whole. Only now and then they went to "a show."
+Less frequently they spoke of going to the Jewish Theater. No one was
+particularly excited over dancing--in fact, Sarah, who looked the
+blond type of the dance-every-night variety, thought dancing
+"disgusting." Shows weren't her style. She liked reading. Whenever I
+got the chance I asked a girl what she did evenings. The answer
+usually was, "Oh, nothing much." One Friday I asked a group of girls
+at lunch if they weren't glad the next day was Saturday and the
+afternoon off. Four of them weren't glad at all, because they had to
+go home and clean house Saturday afternoons, and do other household
+chores. "Gee! don't you hate workin' round the house?"
+
+I wonder how much of the women-in-industry movement is traceable to
+just that.
+
+The first day I was at the dress factory a very dirty but
+pleasant-faced little Jewish girl said to me, "Ever try workin' at
+home? Ain't it just awful?" She had made thirty-two dollars a week
+beading at her last place--didn't know what she'd get here.
+
+I had hoped to hear murmurings and discussions about the conditions of
+the garment trades and the unions--not a word the whole time. Papers
+were full of a strike to be called the next week throughout the city,
+affecting thousands of waist and dress makers. It might as well have
+been in London. Not an echo of interest in it reached our factory. I
+asked Sarah if she had ever worked in a union shop. "Sure." "Any
+different from this?" "Different? You bet it's different. Boss
+wouldn't dare treat you the way you get treated here." But as usual I
+was yelled for and got no chance ever to pin Sarah to details.
+
+A group of girls in the dressing room exploded one night, "Gee! they
+sure treat you like dogs here! No soap, no towels--nothing." The
+hours were good--8.30 to 12.15; 1 to 5.15. One Saturday Ada and the
+boss asked the beaders to work in the afternoon. Not one stayed. Too
+many had heard the tales of girls working overtime and not being paid
+anything extra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wednesday I went back after my last week's pay. When the cashier
+caught sight of me she was full of interest. "I was writing you a
+letter this very day. The boss wants you back awful badly. He's out
+just now for lunch. Can't you wait?"
+
+Just then the boss stepped from the elevator. "_Ach_, here you are!
+Now, dearie, if it's just a matter of a few dollars or so--"
+
+I was leaving town. Much discussion. No, I couldn't stay on. Well, if
+I insisted--yes, he'd get my pay envelope. My, oh, my, they missed me!
+Why so foolish as to leave New York? Now, as for my wages, they could
+easily be fixed to suit.... All right, all right, he'd get my last pay
+envelope.
+
+And there was my pay envelope with just twelve dollars again. "What
+about my overtime?"
+
+Overtime? Who said anything about overtime? He did himself. He'd
+promised me if I worked every night that week late I'd get paid for
+it. Every single night I had stayed, and where was my pay for it?
+
+He shook his finger at my time card.
+
+Show him one hour of overtime on that card!
+
+I showed him where every night the time clock registered overtime.
+
+Yes, but not once was it a full hour. And didn't I know overtime
+never counted unless it was at least a full hour?
+
+No, he had never explained anything about that. I'd worked each night
+until everything was done and I'd been told I could go.
+
+Well, of course he didn't want to rob me. I really had nothing coming
+to me. Each night I'd stayed on till about 6. But they would figure it
+out and see what they could pay me. They figured. I waited. At length
+majestically he handed out fifty-six cents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fat, older brother in the firm rode down in the elevator with
+me--he who used to move silently around the factory about four times a
+day, squinting out of his beady eyes, such light as shown there
+bespeaking 100 per-cent possession. He held his fat thumbs in the
+palms of his fat hands and benignly he was wont to survey his realm.
+Mine! Mine! Mine! his every inch of being said. Nor could his
+proportion of joy have been greater if he had six floors of his own to
+survey, instead of one little claptrap back room. It did make him so
+happy. He wore a kindly and never-changing expression, and he never
+spoke.
+
+Going down in the elevator, he edged over to my corner. He pinched my
+arm, he pinched my cheeks. _Ach_, but he'd miss me bad. Nice girl, I
+was.
+
+Evidently he, too, had evolved a moral equivalent for a living wage.
+Little kindly personal attentions were his share for anything not
+adequately covered by twelve dollars and fifty-six cents.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+
+                    _No. 536 Tickets Pillow Cases_
+
+
+Ah, one should write of the bleachery _via_ the medium of poetry! If
+the thought of the brassworks comes in one breath and the bleachery in
+the next, the poetry must needs be set to music--the Song of the
+Bleachery. What satisfaction there must be to an employer who grows
+rich--or makes his income, whatever it may be--from a business where
+so much light-heartedness is worked into the product! Let those who
+prefer to sob over woman labor behind factory prison bars visit our
+bleachery. Better still, let them work there. Here at least is one
+spot where they can dry their tears. If the day ever dawns when the
+conditions in that bleachery can be referred to as typical of American
+industrial life, exist the agitator, the walking delegate, the closed
+and open shop fight.
+
+I can hear a bleachery operator grunting, "My Gawd! what's the woman
+ravin' over? Is it _our_ bleachery she's goin' on about?" Most of the
+workers in the bleachery know no other industrial experience. In that
+community, so it seems, a child is born, attends school up to the
+minimum required, or a bit beyond, and then goes to work in the
+bleachery--though a few do find their way instead to the overall
+factory, and still fewer to the shirtwaist factory. No other openings
+exist at the Falls.
+
+There is more or less talk nowadays about Industrial Democracy. Some
+of us believe that the application of the democratic principle to
+industry is the most promising solution to industrial unrest and
+inefficiency. The only people who have written about the idea or
+discussed it, so far, have been either theorizers or propagandists
+from among the intellectuals, or enthused appliers of the principle,
+more or less high up in the business end of the thing. What does
+Industrial Democracy mean to the rank and file working under it? Is it
+one of those splendid programs which look epoch-making in spirit, but
+never permeates to those very people whom it is especially designed to
+affect?
+
+It was to find out what the workers themselves thought of Industrial
+Democracy that I boarded a boat and journeyed seventy miles up the
+Hudson to work in the bleachery, where, to the pride of those
+responsible, functions the Partnership Plan.
+
+What do the workers think of working under a scheme of Industrial
+Democracy?
+
+What do the citizens of the United States think of living under a
+scheme of Political Democracy?
+
+The average citizen does not think one way or the other about it three
+hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Even voting days the rank and
+file of us do not ponder overlong on democracy _versus_ autocracy.
+Indeed, if it could be done silently, in the dead of night, and the
+newspapers would promise not to say a word about it, perhaps we might
+change to a benevolent autocracy, and if we could silence all orators,
+as well as the press, what proportion of the population would be
+vitally concerned in the transition? Sooner or later, of course,
+alterations in the way of doing this and that would come about, the
+spirit of the nation would change. But through it all--autocracy, if
+it were benevolent, or democracy--there would be little conscious
+concern on the part of the great majority. Always provided the press
+and orators would keep quiet.
+
+From my own experience, the same could be said of Industrial
+Democracy. Autocracy, democracy, the rank and file of the workers,
+especially the women workers, understand not, ponder not.
+
+"Say," chuckled Mamie, "I could 'a' died laughin' once. A fella came
+through here askin' everybody what we thought of the Partnership Plan.
+My Gawd! when he got to me I jus' told him I didn't understand the
+first thing about it. What ud he do but get out a little book and
+write what I said down. Never again! Anybody asks me now what I think
+of the Partnership Plan, and I keep my mouth shut, you bet."
+
+Once an enthused visitor picked on me to ask what I thought of working
+under the Partnership Plan. After he moved on the girls got the
+giggles. "Say, these folks that come around here forever asking what
+we think about the Partnership Plan! Say, what any of us knows about
+that could be put in a nutshell."
+
+And gray-haired Ella Jane, smartest of all, ten years folding pillow
+cases, said: "I don't know anything about that Partnership Plan. All I
+know is that we get our share of the profits and our bonuses, and I
+can't imagine a nicer place to work. They do make you work for what
+you get, though. But it's all white and aboveboard and you know
+nobody's trying to put something over on you."
+
+But the general spirit of the place? Could that be traced to anything
+else but the special industrial scheme of things? One fact at least is
+certain--the employing end is spared many a detail of management; the
+shift in responsibility is educating many a worker to the problems of
+capital. And production is going up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever tried to find a spare bed in a town where there seems to
+be not a spare bed to be had? I left my belongings in an ice cream
+store and followed every clue, with a helpful hint from the one
+policeman, or the drug store man, or a fat, soiled grandmother who
+turned me down because they were already sleeping on top of one
+another in her house. In between I dropped on a grassy hillside and
+watched Our Bleachery baseball team play a Sunday afternoon game with
+the Colored Giants. We won.
+
+And then I took up the hunt again, finally being guided by the Lord to
+the abode of the sisters Weston--two old maids, combined age one
+hundred and forty-nine years, who took boarders. Only there were no
+more to take. The Falls was becoming civilized. Improvements were
+being installed in most of the houses. Boarders, which meant mainly
+school-teachers, preferred a house with Improvements. The abode of the
+sisters Weston had none. It was half a company house, with a pump in
+the kitchen which drew up brown water of a distressing odor.
+
+The sisters Weston had worked in the overall factory in their earlier
+years, hours 7 to 6, wages five dollars a week, paid every five to six
+weeks. Later they tried dressmaking; later still, boarders. I belonged
+to the last stage of all--they no longer took boarders, they took a
+boarder. Mr. Welsh from the electrical department in the bleachery,
+whose wife was in Pennsylvania on a visit to her folks, being sickly
+and run down, as seemed the wont of wives at the Falls, took his meals
+at our boarding house, when he was awake for them. Every other week
+Mr. Welsh worked night shift.
+
+My belongings were installed in the room assigned me, and the younger
+of the sisters Weston, seventy-three, sat stiffly but kindly in a
+chair. "Now about the room rent...?" she faltered. Goodness! yes! My
+relief at finding a place to sleep in after eleven turn-downs was so
+great that I had completely neglected such a little matter as what the
+room might cost me.
+
+"What do you charge?" I asked.
+
+"What do you feel you can pay? We want you should have some money left
+each week after your board's paid. What do you make at the
+bleachery?"
+
+My conscience fidgeted within me a bit at that. "I'd rather you
+charged me just what you think the room and board are worth to you,
+not what you think I can pay."
+
+"Well, we used to get eight dollars a week for room and board. It's
+worth that."
+
+It is cheaper to live than die in the Falls at that rate. Three hot
+meals a day I got: breakfast, coffee, toast, two eggs, mush, later
+fruit; dinner, often soup, always meat, potatoes, vegetables, coffee,
+and a dessert; supper, what wasn't finished at dinner, and tea. Always
+there was plenty of everything. Sometimes too much, if it were
+home-canned goods which had stood too many years on the shelves, due
+to lack of boarders to eat the same. But the sisters Weston meant the
+best.
+
+"How d'ya like the punkin pie?" the older, Miss Belle, would ask.
+
+The pumpkin pie had seemed to taste a trifle strange, but we laid it
+to the fact that it was some time since we had eaten pumpkin pie. "It
+tastes all right."
+
+"Now, there! Glad to hear you say it. Canned that punkin ourselves.
+Put it up several years ago. Thought it smelled and looked a bit
+spoiled, but I says, guess I'll cook it up; mebbe the heat 'n' all'll
+turn it all right again. There's more in the kitchen!"
+
+But it suddenly seemed as if I must get to work earlier that noon than
+I had expected. "Can't ya even finish your pie? I declare I'm scared
+that pie won't keep long."
+
+Mr. Welsh got sick after the first couple of meals, but bore on
+bravely, nor did the matter of turned string beans consciously worry
+Mr. Welsh. The sisters themselves were always dying; their faithful
+morning reports of the details of what they had been through the night
+before left nothing to the imagination. "Guess I oughtn't ta 'a' et
+four hot cakes for supper when I was so sick yesterday afternoon. I
+sure was thinking I'd die in the night.... 'Liza, pass them baked
+beans; we gotta git them et up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At six o'clock in the morning the bleachery whistle blows three times
+loud enough to shake the shingles on the roofs of the one-hundred-year-old
+houses and the leaves on the more than one-hundred-year-old trees
+about the Falls. Those women who have their breakfasts to get and
+houses to straighten up before they leave for work--and there are a
+number--must needs be about before then. Seven o'clock sees folks on
+all roads leading to the bleachery gate. At 7.10 the last whistle
+blows; at 7.15 the power is turned on, wheels revolve, work begins.
+
+It must be realized that factory work, or any other kind of work, in a
+small town is a different matter from work in a large city, if for no
+other reason than the transportation problem. Say work in New York
+City begins at 7.45. That means for many, if not most, of the workers,
+an ordeal of half an hour's journey in the Subways or "L," shoving,
+pushing, jamming, running to catch the shuttle; shoving, pushing,
+jamming, running for the East Side Subway; shoving, pushing, jamming,
+scurrying along hard pavements to the factory door; and at the end of
+a day of eight or nine hours' work, all that to be done over again to
+get home.
+
+Instead, at the Falls, it meant a five minutes' leisurely--unless one
+overslept--walk under old shade trees, through the glen along a path
+lined with jack-in-the-pulpits, wild violets, moss--the same five
+minutes' walk home at noon to a hot lunch, plenty of time in which to
+eat it, a bit of visiting on the way back to the factory, and a
+leisurely five minutes' walk home in the late afternoon. No one has
+measured yet what crowded transportation takes out of a body in the
+cities.
+
+New York factories are used to new girls--they appear almost daily in
+such jobs as I have worked in. At the Falls a strange person in town
+is excitement enough, a strange girl at the bleachery practically an
+unheard-of thing. New girls appear now and then to take the places of
+those who get married or the old women who must some time or other
+die. But not strange girls. Everyone in the bleachery grew up with
+everyone else; as Ella Jane said, you know their mothers and their
+grandmothers, too.
+
+It so happened that a cataclysmic event had visited the Falls the week
+before my appearance. A family had moved away, thereby detaching a
+worker from the bleachery--the girl who ticketed pillow cases. The
+Sunday I appeared in town, incidentally, seven babies were born. That
+event--or those events--plus me, minus the family who moved away and
+an old man who had died the week before, made the population of the
+Falls 4,202. Roughly, half that number either worked at the bleachery
+or depended on those who worked there. Who or what the other half
+were, outside the little group of Main Street tradespeople, remained a
+mystery. Of course, there were the ministers of the gospel and their
+families--in the same generous overdose--apportioned to most small
+towns. The actual number working in the bleachery was about six
+hundred and twenty men and women.
+
+Odd, the different lights in which you can see a small town. The
+chances are that, instead of being a worker, I might have spent the
+week end visiting some of the "_elite_" of the Falls. In that case we
+should have motored sooner or later by the bleachery gate and past
+numerous company houses. My host, with a wave of the hand, would have
+dispatched the matter by remarking, "The town's main industry. The
+poor devils live in these houses you see."
+
+Instead, one day I found myself wandering along the street of the
+well-to-do homes. What in the world...? Who all ever lived way up
+here? Whatever business had they in our Falls? Did they have anyone to
+talk to, anything to do? I laid the matter before Mamie O'Brien.
+
+"Any rich folk living around here?"
+
+"Guess so. Some swell estates round about--never see the people much."
+
+"Are they stuck up?"
+
+"Dunno--na. Saw one of 'em at the military funeral last week. She
+wasn't dressed up a bit swell--just wore a plaid skirt. Didn't look
+like anybody at all."
+
+In other words, we were the town. It was the bleachery folk you saw on
+the streets, in the shops, at the post office, at the movies. The
+bleachery folk, or their kind, I saw at the three church services I
+attended. If anyone had dared sympathize with us--called us "poor
+devils"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first morning at the bleachery the foreman led me to the narrow
+space in the middle of three large heavy tables placed "U" shape,
+said, "Here's a girl to ticket," and left me. The foreman knew who I
+was. Employment conditions at the bleachery were such that it was
+necessary to make sure of a job by arranging matters ahead of time
+with the manager. Also, on a previous occasion I had visited the
+bleachery, made more or less of an investigation, and sat in on a
+Board of Operatives' meeting. Therefore, I left off my earrings,
+bought no Black Jack, did not feel constrained to say, "It ain't,"
+though saw no reason why I too should not indulge in "My Gawd!" if I
+felt like it. I find it one of the most contagious expressions in the
+language. The girls did not seem to know who I was or what I was. Not
+until the second day did the girl who stood next to me ask my name--a
+formality gone through within the first five minutes in any New York
+job. I answered Cornelia Parker. She got it Miss Parks, and formally
+introduced me around the table--"Margaret, meet Miss Parks--Miss
+White, Miss Parks." Also all very different from New York. About the
+only questions asked by any girl were, "You're from New York?" and,
+"Where did you work before you came here?" Some wondered if I wasn't
+lonesome without my folks. I didn't have any folks. There was none of
+the expressed curiosity of the New York worker as to my past, present,
+and future. Not until the last few days did I feel forced to volunteer
+now and then enough information so that they would get my name and me
+more or less clear in their minds and never feel, after their
+heart-warming cordiality, that I had tried "to put anything over on
+them." Whether I was Miss Parks or Mrs. Parker, it made no difference
+to them. It did to me, for I felt here at last I could keep up the
+contacts I had made; and instead of walking off suddenly, leaving good
+friends behind without a word, I could honestly say I was off to the
+next job, promise everyone I'd write often and come again to the
+Falls, and have everyone promise to write me and never come to New
+York without letting me know. I can lie awake nights and imagine what
+fun it is going to be getting back to the Falls some day and waiting
+by the bridge down at the bleachery for the girls to come out at noon,
+seeing them all again. Maybe Mrs. Halley will call out her, "Hi! look
+'ose 'ere!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At our bleachery, be it known, no goods were manufactured. We took
+piece goods in the rough, mostly white, bleached, starched, and
+finished it, and rolled or folded the finished stuff for market. In
+Department 10, where most of the girls worked, the west end of the big
+third floor, three grades of white goods were made into sheets and
+pillow cases, ticketed, bundled, and boxed for shipping. Along the
+entire end of the room next the windows stood the operating machines,
+with rows of girls facing one another, all hemming sheets or making
+pillow cases. There were some ten girls who stood at five heavy
+tables, rapidly shaking out the hemmed sheets, inspecting them for
+blemishes of any kind, folding them for the mangle, hundreds and
+hundreds a day. At other tables workers took the ironed sheets,
+ticketed them, tied them in bundles, wrapped and labeled and stacked
+the bundles, whereupon they sooner or later were wheeled off to one
+side and boxed. Four girls worked at the big mangle. Besides the
+mangle, one girl spent her day hand-ironing such wrinkles as appeared
+now and then after the mangle had done its work.
+
+So much for sheets. There were three girls (the term "girl" is used
+loosely, since numerous females in our department will never see fifty
+again) who slipped pillow cases over standing frames which poked out
+the corners. After they were mangled they were inspected and folded,
+ticketed, bundled, and wrapped at our three U-shaped tables. Also
+there, one or two girls spent part time slipping pieces of dark-blue
+paper under the hemstitched part of the pillow cases and sheets, so
+that the ultimate consumer might get the full glory of her purchase.
+
+The first week Nancy, a young Italian girl (there were only two
+nationalities in the Falls--Italians and Americans), and I ticketed
+pillow cases. At the end of that time I had become efficient enough so
+that I alone kept the bundler busy and Nancy was put on other work.
+Ticketing means putting just the right amount of smelly paste on the
+back of a label, slapping it swiftly just above the center of the hem.
+There are hundreds of different labels, according to the size and
+quality of the pillow cases and the store which retails them. My best
+record was ticketing about six thousand seven hundred in one day. The
+cases come folded three times lengthwise, three times across, sixty in
+a bundle. As fast as I ticketed a bundle I shoved them across to the
+"bundler," who placed six cases one way, six the other, tied the
+bundle of twelve at each end with white tape, stacked them in layers
+of three until the pile was as high as possible for safety, when it
+was shoved across to the wrapper. How Margaret's fingers flew! She had
+each dozen in its paper, tied and labeled, in the wink of an eye,
+almost.
+
+In our department there were three boys who raced up and down with
+trucks; one other who wrapped the sheets when he did not have his arm
+gayly around some girl; and the little man to pack the goods in their
+shipping boxes and nail them up. There were two forewomen--pretty,
+freckled-faced Tess and the masculine Winnie. Over all of us was
+"Hap," the new boss elected by Department 10 as its representative on
+the Board of Operatives. It is safe to say he will be re-elected as
+long as death or promotion spare him. Hap is a distinct success. He
+never seems to notice anybody or anything--in fact, most of the time
+you wonder where in the world he is. But on Hap's shoulders rests the
+output for our entire department. The previous "boss" was the kind who
+felt he must have his nose in everything and his eye on everybody. The
+month after Hap and his methods of letting folks alone came into
+power, production jumped ahead.
+
+But Hap spoke up when he felt the occasion warranted it. The mangle
+girls started quitting at 11.30. They "got by" with it until the
+matter came to Hap's notice. He lined the four of them up and, while
+the whole room looked on with amused interest, he told them what was
+what. After that they stayed till 12.
+
+Another time a piece-rate girl allowed herself to be overpaid two
+dollars and said nothing about it. Hap called her into the office.
+
+"Didn't you get too much in your envelope this week?"
+
+"I dunno. I 'ain't figured up yet."
+
+"Don't you keep track of your own work?"
+
+"Yes, but I 'ain't figured up yet."
+
+"Bring me your card."
+
+The girl reddened and produced a card with everything up to date and
+two dollars below the amount in her pay envelope.
+
+"You better take a week off," said Hap. But he repented later in the
+afternoon and took it back, only he told her to be more careful.
+
+It was the bundler who took me under her wing that first day--pretty
+Mamie O'Brien--three generations in the Falls. There was no talk of
+vamping, no discussions of beaus. Everyone told everything she had
+done since Saturday noon.
+
+"Hey, Margaret, didjagototha movies Saturday night?"
+
+"Sure. Swell, wasn't it?"
+
+"You said it. I 'ain't ever saw sweller...."
+
+"I seen Edna's baby Sunday. Awful cute. Had on them pink shoes Amy
+made it...."
+
+"Say, ain't that awful about Mr. Tinney's grandchild over to
+Welkville! Only lived three hours...."
+
+"They're puttin' in the bathtub at Owenses'...."
+
+"What dya know! After they got the bathroom all papered at Chases'
+they found they'd made a mistake and it's all got to be ripped down.
+Bathtub won't fit in." ("Improvements" were one of the leading topics
+of conversation day in and day out at the Falls.)
+
+"Ain't that new hat of Jess Tufts a fright? I 'ain't never saw her
+look worse."
+
+Back and forth it went--all the small gossip of the small town where
+everyone knows everything about everyone else from start to finish. It
+was all a bit too mild for Mamie, as I later learned--indeed, I began
+to learn it that day. It was no time before Mamie was asking my
+opinion on every detail of the Stillman case: Did I think Mrs. Stokes
+would get her divorce? Did I consider somebody or other guilty of some
+crime or other? Somebody gets the electric chair to-morrow? Wasn't it
+the strangest thing that somebody's body hadn't been recovered yet?
+Whatdyaknow about a father what'll strangle his own child? A man got
+drowned after he'd been married only two days. And did I think Dempsey
+or Carpentier would win the fight? "Gee! Wouldn't you give your hat to
+see that fight?"
+
+Meanwhile I was nearly drowning myself and the labels in paste, at the
+same time trying to appear intelligent about a lot of things I
+evidently was most uninformed about; working up an enthusiasm for the
+Dempsey-Carpentier fight which would have led anyone to believe my
+sole object in working was to accumulate enough cash to pay the price
+of admission. And all this time I was feasting my eyes on fresh-faced
+girls in summer wash dresses, mostly Americans, some Italians; no
+rouge whatever; not a sign of a lipstick, except on one girl; little
+or no powder; a large, airy, clean, white room, red-and-white striped
+awnings at the windows; and wherever the eye looked hillsides solid
+with green trees almost close enough to touch (the bleachery was built
+down in a hollow beside a little river). Oh, it was too good to be
+true, after New York!
+
+Pretty gray-haired, pink-cheeked (real genuine pink-cheeked) Mrs. Hall
+and I were talking about the bleachery on our way to work one morning.
+Mrs. Hall had been a forelady in a New York private dressmaking
+establishment. She had what is called "style and personality." Her
+wages in New York had been thirty-five dollars a week, and she had
+much variety and responsibility, which she loved. Circumstances
+brought her to the Falls. She had never worked in a factory; the very
+idea had appalled her, yet she must work. One day she went up to
+Department 10 to see what it was all like. "Why," she said, "it took
+my breath away! I felt as if I was in one of those lovely rooms where
+they did Red Cross work during the war. Of course I get only a small
+amount a week and it's the same thing over and over again, and after
+what I was used to in New York that's hard. But it never seems like I
+was in a factory, somehow."
+
+Just so. There was never the least "factory atmosphere" about the
+place. It used to make me think of a reception, the voice of the
+machines for the music, with always, always the sound of much talk and
+laughter above the whir. Sometimes--especially Mondays, with everyone
+telling everyone else what she had done over the week end, and for
+some reason or other Fridays, the talk was "enough to get you crazy,"
+Margaret used to say. "Sure it makes my head swim." Nor was the
+laughter the giggling kind, indulged in when the forelady was not
+looking. It was the riotous variety, where at least one of a group
+would "laugh till she most cried"; nor did it make the least
+difference, whether the forelady was one foot or one hundred away.
+Like as not the forelady was laughing with the rest. Only once did I
+ever see authority exerted to curb merriment. On that occasion things
+reached a climax. All those not directly concerned with the joke
+became so curious as to what it was all about that one by one the
+girls left their machines and gathered up one end of the room to laugh
+with the rest, until production, it was apparent, was at a standstill.
+Winnie went out and told Hap. Hap merely stepped inside the room, and
+every girl did "sure get busy." It was the only time even Hap so much
+as paid the least attention to what went on. All day there was talk,
+all day laughter, all day visiting a bit here and there, back and
+forth. Yet in the month of April production had reached the highest
+point ever, and the month I was there was expected to surpass April.
+It is significant that with all the fun, the standard of efficiency
+and production in our bleachery was such that out of eighteen like
+industries in the country, we were one of the only two running full
+time. Thirteen were shut down altogether.
+
+That first day I asked Mamie what time work began in the morning.
+Mamie giggled. "I dunno. Say, Margaret, what time does work begin in
+the morning?" "Seven-fifteen, I think." Under the Partnership Plan I
+knew that each operative was allowed a week's vacation on full pay.
+But every time late, after fifteen times, deducted so many minutes
+from the vacation, just as any time off without sufficient cause meant
+that much less vacation.
+
+"Ever been late?" I asked Mamie.
+
+More giggles. "Say, Margaret, she wants to know if I was ever late!"
+To me: "Ninety-seven times last year--no vacation at all for mine. Ask
+Margaret how many time she's been late."
+
+Still more giggles. Margaret giggled, I giggled. Margaret had been
+late one hundred eighteen times. Some of the girls were late
+practically every day; they were like small boys who would not for the
+world have anyone think they would try to do in school what was
+expected of them. Yet there were several girls who were to come into
+their full week off--the names and dates were posted on the bulletin
+board; others were given five days, three days, down to a few whose
+allotment out of a possible week was one-half day. But several of the
+most boastful over their past irregular record, and who were receiving
+no vacation at all, claimed they were going to be on time every day
+this coming year--"Sure." This was the first year the vacation with
+pay had been granted. I thought of Tessie at the candy factory--Tessie
+who had been sent speedily home by the pop-eyed man at the door
+because she was ten minutes late, due to taking her husband to the
+hospital. Verily, there is no "factory atmosphere" about the
+bleachery, compared with New York standards. The men, they say, take
+the whole matter of punctuality and attendance more seriously than the
+women.
+
+The second day I began my diary with, "A bleachery job is no job at
+all." That again was by contrast. Also, those first two days were the
+only two, until the last week, that we did not work overtime at our
+table. When orders pour in and the mangle works every hour and extra
+folders are put on and the bundles of pillow cases pile up, then, no
+matter with what speed you manage to slap on those labels, you never
+seem to catch up. Night after night Nancy, Mamie, Margaret, and I
+worked overtime. From 7.15 in the morning till 6 at night is a long
+day. Then for sure and certain we did get tired, and indeed by the end
+of a week of it we were well-nigh "tuckered out." But the more orders
+that came in the more profits to be divided fifty-fifty between
+Capital and Labor.
+
+(The Handbook on the Partnership Plan reads: "Our profit sharing is a
+50-50 proposition. The market wage of our industry is paid to Labor
+and a minimum of 6% is paid to Capital. After these have been paid,
+together with regular operating expenses, depreciation reserve, taxes,
+etc., and after the Sinking Funds have been provided for by setting
+aside 15% of the next profits for Labor and 15% for Capital, the
+remaining net profits are divided 50% for Capital and 50% for the
+operatives, and the latter sum divided in proportion to the amount of
+each one's pay for the period.... A true partnership must jointly
+provide for losses as well as for the sharing of profits.... These
+Sinking Funds are intended to guarantee Capital its minimum return of
+6% during periods when this shall not have been carried, and to
+provide unemployment insurance for the operatives, paying half wages
+when the company is unable to furnish employment.")
+
+In the candy factory back in New York, Ida, the forelady, would holler
+from the end of the room, "My Gawd! girls, work faster!" At the
+bleachery, when extra effort was needed, the forelady passed a letter
+around our table from a New York firm, saying their order must be
+filled by the end of that week or they would feel justified in
+canceling the same. Every girl read the letter and dug her toes in. No
+one ever said, "You gotta work overtime to-night!" We just mutually
+decided there was nothing else to do about it, so it was, "Let's work
+overtime to-night again." It was time-and-a-half pay for overtime, to
+be sure, but it would be safe to assert it was not alone for the time
+and a half we worked. We felt we had to catch up on orders. A few
+times only, some one by about four o'clock would call: "Oh, gee! I'm
+dead; I've been workin' like a horse all day. I jus' can't work
+overtime to-night." The chances were if one girl had been working like
+a horse we all had. Such was the interrelation of jobs at our table.
+
+Except, indeed, Italian Nancy. Whether it was because Nancy was young,
+or not overstrong, or not on piece rates, or a mixture of the three,
+Nancy never anguished herself working, either during the day or
+overtime. One evening she spent practically the entire overtime hour,
+at time and a half, washing and ironing a collar and cuffs for one of
+the girls. Nor did any of our table think it at all amiss.
+
+During the day Nancy was the main little visitor from our table. She
+ambled around and brought back the news. If interesting enough from
+any quarter, another of us would betake herself off for more details.
+One day Nancy's young eyes were as big as saucers.
+
+"Say, whatdyaknow! That Italian girl Minna, she's only fifteen and
+she's got a gold ring on with a white stone in it and she says she's
+engaged!" We sent Nancy back for more details. For verification she
+brought back the engagement ring itself. "Whatdyaknow! Only fifteen!"
+(Nancy herself was a year beyond that mature age.) "The man she's
+goin' to marry is awful old, twenty-five! Whatdyaknow!" At a previous
+time Nancy had regaled our table with an account of how, out of a
+sense of duty to a fellow-countryman, she had announced to this same
+Minna that she simply must take a bath. "Na," said Minna, "too early
+yet." That was the end of May.
+
+We were all, even I after the third day, on piecework at our table,
+except Nancy. Most of the girls in Department 10 were on piecework.
+There was one union in the bleachery; that was in another department
+where mostly men were employed--the folders. They worked time rates.
+With us, as soon as a girl's record warranted it, she was put on piece
+rates. Nancy and most of those young girls were still, after one or
+two years, on time rates--around eleven dollars a week they made.
+There was one case of a girl who did little, day in and day out, but
+her hair. She was the one girl who used a lipstick. They had taken her
+off time rates and put her on piecework. She was a machine operator.
+The last week I was there her earnings were a little over two dollars
+for the week. She was incorrigible. Some of the machine operators made
+around thirty dollars a week. The mangle girls earned around
+twenty-five dollars. Old Mrs. Owens, standing up and inspecting
+sheets at the table behind me, made from twenty dollars to twenty-five
+dollars. (Mrs. Owens had inspected sheets for thirteen years. I asked
+her if she ever felt she wanted to change and try something else. "No,
+sir," said Mrs. Owens; "a rolling stone gathers no moss.") Mamie,
+bundler, made around sixteen dollars; Margaret, at our table, went as
+high once as twenty-five dollars, but she averaged around twenty
+dollars. My own earnings were twelve dollars and fifty-three cents the
+first week, fifteen dollars and twenty-three cents the second, eight
+dollars and twenty-seven cents the third. All the earnings at our
+table were low that last week--Margaret's were around twelve dollars.
+For one thing, there was a holiday. No wonder employers groan over
+holidays! The workers begin to slacken up about two days ahead and it
+takes two days after the day off to recover. Then, too, we indulged in
+too much nonsense that last week. We laughed more than we worked, and
+paid for it. The next week Mamie and Margaret claimed they were going
+to bring their dinners the whole week to work that noon hour and make
+up for our evil days. But as gray-haired Ella Jane said, she laughed
+so much that week she claimed she had a stomach ache. "We'll be a long
+time dead, once we die. Why not laugh when you get a chance?"
+
+Why not?--especially in a small town where it is well to take each
+chance for fun and recreation as it comes--since goodness knows when
+the next will show itself. Outside of the gayety during working
+hours, there was little going on about the Falls. Movies--of course,
+movies. Four times a week the same people, usually each entire family,
+conscientiously change into their best garments and go to the movie
+palace. The children and young people fill the first rows, the grown
+folk bring up the rear. Four times a week young and old get fed on
+society dramas, problem plays, bathing girl comedies. Next day it is
+always:
+
+"Sadie, did ya saw the show last night? Wasn't it swell where she
+recognized her lover just before he got hung?"
+
+Just once since movies were has the town been taken by storm, and that
+was while I was there. It was "The Kid" that did it. Many that day at
+the bleachery said they weren't going--didn't like Charlie
+Chaplin--common and pie-slinging; cheap; always all of that.
+Sweet-faced Mamie, who longs to go through Sing Sing some day--"That's
+where they got the biggest criminals ever. Wonder if they let you see
+the worst ones"--Mamie, who had thrilled to a trip through the insane
+asylum; Mamie, who could discuss for hours the details of how a father
+beat his child to death; Mamie, to whom a divorce was meat and a
+suicide drink--Mamie wasn't going to see Charlie Chaplin. All that
+pie-slinging stuff made her sick.
+
+Usually a film shows but once at the Falls. "The Kid" ran Monday
+matinee. Monday night the first time in history the movie palace was
+filled and over two hundred turned away. Tuesday night it was shown
+to a third full house. Everyone was converted.
+
+As for dancing, once a week, Friday nights, there was a dance at the
+"Academy." Time was when Friday night's dance was an event, and the
+male contingent from the largest near-by city was wont to attend. But
+it cost twenty-four cents to journey by trolley from the largest
+near-by city to the Falls, fifty cents to attend the dance.
+Unemployment at the largest near-by city meant that any dancing
+indulged in by its citizens was at home, minus car fare. Also, the
+music for dancing at the Falls was not favorably commented upon. So
+sometimes there were six couples at the dance, once in a great while
+twenty. The youths present were home talent, short on thrills for the
+fair ones present.
+
+Indeed, the problem of the Falls was the problem of every small
+town--where in the world could an up-and-doing girl turn for a beau?
+The only young men in the place were those married still younger and
+anchored there, or the possessors of too little gumption to get out.
+Those left hung over the rail at the end of the Main Street bridge and
+eyed every female passer-by. It was insult heaped on boredom, from the
+girls' point of view, that a Falls youth never so much as tipped his
+hat when spoken to. "Paralysis of the arms is here widespread," Bess
+put it. "You oughta see 'em in winter," Margaret giggled one Sunday
+while four of us were walking the streets for diversion. "If you want
+to know where the gallants of the Falls are in winter, look for a
+sunny spot. They collect in patches of sun, like some kind of bugs or
+animals."
+
+As for reading, "Do you like to read?"
+
+"Crazy 'bout readin'."
+
+"What, for instance?"
+
+"Oh, books, movie magazines. Don't ever remember the names of
+anything. Swell stories. Gee! I cried and cried over the last one...."
+
+Or, "Do much reading?"
+
+"Na, never git time to read."
+
+My old maids never so much as took the newspaper. They figured that if
+news was important enough they'd hear about it sooner or later, and
+meanwhile there was much to keep up with at the Falls.
+
+"Can't hardly sleep nights, got so much on my mind," the seventy-sixer
+would say.
+
+One night she just got nervous fidgets something awful, worrying lest
+her brother might not get to the Baptist chicken dinner after all,
+when he'd gone and paid seventy-five cents for his ticket.
+
+Sunday there was church to attend, the Catholics flourishing, the
+Episcopalians next, four other denominations tottering this way and
+that. I heard the Baptist minister preach that every word in the Bible
+was inspired by God, ending with a plea for the family altar.
+
+"Christian brethren, I'm a man who has seen both sides of life. I
+could have gone one way. It is by the grace of God and the family
+altar that I stand before you the man I am."
+
+There were thirty-one people in the congregation who heard his young
+though quavering words, eight of them children, two the organist and
+her husband, nine of the remainder women over sixty.
+
+The Methodist, that morning, preached on the need of a revival at the
+Falls, and Mr. Welsh, the electrician, whose wife was resting up in
+Pennsylvania, thought he was right. Sunday baseball--that day our
+bleachery team played the Keen Kutters--pained Mr. Welsh. The
+Methodist minister before this one had been a thorn in the flesh of
+his congregation. He frankly believed in amusements, disgraced them by
+saying out loud at a union service that he favored Sunday baseball.
+Another minister got up and "sure made a fool of him," thank goodness.
+Where was the renegade now? Called to a church in a large Middle West
+city where they have no more sense than to pay him twice what he was
+getting at the Falls.
+
+That night I heard a visiting brother at the Methodist church plead
+for support for foreign missions, that we might bring the light of the
+ideal Christian civilization under which we live to the thirsty
+savages in dark places. He poured his message to an audience of
+twenty-one, ten of them gray-haired women, one a child.
+
+All the ministers prayed long for Harding and were thankful he was a
+child of God.
+
+Three of us girls rowed up the lake one night and cooked our supper
+and talked about intimate things. It was a lake worth traveling miles
+to see. It was one block from the post office. Mamie had been to the
+lake twice in all her life. It was good for canoeing, rowing, fishing,
+swimming, and, best of all, just for the eyesight. Yet to the great
+majority it did not exist.
+
+The bleachery, through its Partnership Plan, ran a village club house
+on Main Street. The younger boys, allowing only for school hours,
+worked the piano player from morn till night. There was a gymnasium.
+Suppers were given now and then. It was supposed to be for the use of
+the girls certain days, but they took little or no advantage of it.
+
+Otherwise, and mostly, when the weather permitted, up and down the
+street folk sat on their front porches and rocked or went inside and
+played the victrola.
+
+"Gawd! If I could shake the Falls!" many a girl sighed. Yet they had
+no concrete idea what they would shake it for. Just before I came the
+bleachery girls were called into meeting and it was explained to them
+that Bryn Mawr College was planning a two months' summer school for
+working girls. Its attractions and possibilities were laid forth in
+detail. It was explained that Vassar College and a woman's club were
+making it possible for two bleachery girls to go, with all expenses
+paid. Out of 184 eligible girls four signed up as being interested.
+One of those later withdrew her name. The two chosen were Bess and
+Margaret, as fine girls as ever went to any college. There was much
+excitement the Saturday morning their telegrams came, announcing Bryn
+Mawr had passed favorably upon their candidacy. Bess especially was
+beside herself. "Oh, it's what I've longed to have a chance to do all
+my life!" She had clutched a _New Republic_ under her arms for days
+containing an article about the summer school. Both Margaret and Bess
+had spent a couple of years at West Point during the war as servants,
+for a change. They had worked for the colonel's wife and loved it.
+"Gee! the fun we had!"
+
+Yet it was no time before Main Street characteristics came to the
+front.
+
+Only four girls had so much as expressed an interest in the Bryn Mawr
+scheme. Within a week after the two girls received the telegrams,
+tongues got busy. Margaret looked ready to cry one afternoon.
+
+"Hey! what's the matter?"
+
+"My Gawd! This place makes you sick. Can't no one let a person get
+started enjoyin' themselves but what they do their best to spoil it
+for you!" Her hands were wrapping pillow case bundles like lightning,
+her head bent over her work. "Don't I know I ain't nothin' but a
+factory girl? Don't I know I probably won't ever be nothin' but one?
+Can't a person take a chance to get off for two months and go to that
+college without everybody sayin' you're tryin' to be stuck up and get
+to be somethin' grand and think you won't be a factory girl no more? I
+don't see anything I'm gettin' out of this that's goin' to make me
+anything but just a factory girl still. I'm not comin' back and put on
+any airs. My Gawd! My Gawd! Why can't they leave you alone?"
+
+I asked two of the Falls men I knew if their sex would have acted the
+same as the girls, had it been two men going off for a two months'
+treat. "You bet," they answered. "It's your darn small-town jealousy,
+and not just female at all."
+
+Suppose, then, on top of all the drawbacks of small-town life, the
+girls had to work under big-city factory conditions? At least there
+was always the laughter, always the talk, always the visiting back and
+forth, at the bleachery.
+
+My last day on the job witnessed a real event. Katie Martin was to be
+married in ten days. Therefore, she must have her tin shower at the
+bleachery. Certain traditions of that sort were unavoidable. At
+Christmas time the entire Department 10 was decorated from end to end
+until it was resplendent. Such merrymaking as went on, such presents
+as were exchanged! And when any girl, American or Italian, was to be
+married, the whole department gave her a tin shower.
+
+Katie Martin inspected and folded sheets. She was to marry the brother
+of young Mrs. Annie Turner, who ticketed sheets. Annie saw to it that
+Katie did not get to work promptly that noon. When she did appear, all
+out of breath and combing back her hair (no one ever wore a hat to
+work), there on two lines above her table hung the "shower." The rest
+of us had been there fifteen minutes, undoing packages, giggling,
+commenting. Except old Mrs. Brown's present. It was her first
+experience at a tin shower and she came up to me in great distress.
+"Can't you stop them girls undoin' all her packages? 'Tain't right.
+She oughta undo her own. I jus' won't let 'em touch what I brought!"
+Ever and again a girl would spy Mrs. Brown's contribution. "Hey!
+Here's a package ain't undone." "No, no, don't you touch it! Ain't to
+be undone by anybody but her." Poor Mrs. Brown was upset enough for
+tears.
+
+There were a few other packages not to be undone by anybody but her,
+because their contents were meant to, and did, cause peals of laughter
+to the audience and much embarrassment to Katie. On the lines hung
+first an array of baby clothes, all diminutive size, marked, "For
+little Charlie." Such are the traditions. Also hung seven kitchen
+pans, a pail, an egg-beater and gem pans; a percolator, a double
+boiler and goodness knows what not. On the table stood six cake tins,
+more pots and pans, salt and pepper shakers, enough of kitchenware to
+start off two brides. Everybody was pleased and satisfied. Charlie,
+the groom-to-be, got a friend with a Ford to take the shower home.
+
+The last night of all at the Falls I spent at my second Board of
+Operatives' meeting, held the first Friday night of each month. The
+Board of Operatives is intended to represent the interests of the
+workers in the bleachery. The Board is elected annually by secret
+ballot by and from the operatives in the eleven different departments
+of the mill. Margaret and Bess went, too, on request from above, that
+they might appear more intelligent should anyone ask at Bryn Mawr
+about the Partnership Plan. ("My land, what _would_ we tell them?"
+they wailed.) The Board meetings are officially set down as open to
+all the operatives, only no one ever heard of anyone else ever
+attending. The two girls were "fussed" at the very idea of being
+present, and dressed in their best.
+
+The president, elected representative from the starch room, called the
+meeting to order from his position at the head of the table in the
+Village Club House. Every member of the Board shaves and puts on his
+Sunday clothes, which includes a white collar, for the Board meeting.
+It is no free show, either. They are handed out two dollars apiece for
+attending, at the end of the meeting, the same idea as if it were Wall
+Street. The secretary reads the minutes of the Board of Management.
+("The Board of Management was set up by the Board of Directors in
+July, 1919, as a result of a request from the Board of Operatives for
+more than merely 'advisory' power which the Board of Operatives then
+enjoyed in reference to matters of mill management, wages, working
+conditions, etc. The Board of Management consists of six members,
+three of whom are the treasurer, the New York agent, and the local
+manager, and three of whom are elected by the Board of Operatives from
+their number.... The Board of Management is authorized to settle and
+adjust such matters of mill management as may arise....") The Company
+statement, up to March 31, 1921, was read. There followed a report
+from the Housing Committee--first a financial statement. Then it
+seemed somebody wanted to put somebody else out of a house, and there
+were many complications indeed arising therefrom, which took much
+discussion from everyone and bitter words. It looked as if it would
+have to be taken to court. The conclusion seemed to be that the Board
+felt that its executive secretary, chosen by the management, though
+paid out of the common funds, had exceeded his authority in making
+statements to tenants. We girls rather shivered at the acrimony of the
+discussion. Had they been lady board members having such a row, half
+of them would have been in tears. Next, old Mrs. Owens, who shook
+sheets behind me, wanted to buy a certain house on a certain
+avenue--company house, of course. Third, one Mr. Jones on Academy
+Street wants us to paper his kitchen--he will supply the paper. And
+there followed other items regarding paint for this tenant, new floor
+for that, should an old company boarding house be remodeled for a new
+club house or an apartment house; it was decided to postpone roofing a
+long row of old company houses, etc.
+
+The operative from the folding and packing room was chairman of the
+Housing Committee, a strong union enthusiast. The representative from
+the mechanical department reported for the Recreation and Education
+Committee; all the night school classes had closed, with appropriate
+final exercises, for the season: the children's playground would be
+ready for use July 1st. The man from the "gray" room and singe house
+reported for the Working Conditions Committee. Something about
+watchmen and a drinking fountain, and wheels and boxes in the starch
+room; washing facilities for shovelers; benches and back stairs.
+
+The Finance Committee reported a deficit on the mechanical and
+electrical smoker. Much discussion as to why a deficit and who ought
+to pay it, and what precedent were they setting, and all and all, but
+it was ordered paid--this time. Webster's bills were too high for
+papering and painting company houses. He was a good worker, his
+plaster and his paper stuck where they belonged, which hadn't been the
+rule before. But it was decided he was too costly even so, and they
+were going back to the company paperers--perhaps their work would
+stick better next time. A report from the Board of Directors was
+discussed and voted upon.... The minutes of the Board of Operatives
+were posted all through the mill. Did anyone read them? If so, or if
+not so, should the Board of Management minutes also be posted? It was
+voted to postpone posting such minutes, though they were open to any
+operative, as in the past.
+
+Under Old Business was a long discussion on health benefits and
+old-age pensions. For some months now the bleachery has been concerned
+on the subject of old-age pensions. Health benefits have been in
+operation for some time. The question was, should they pay the second
+week for accident cases, until the state started its payments the
+third week?
+
+Under New Business the resignation of the editors of _Bleachery Life_
+was read and accepted. Acrimonious discussion as to the running of the
+_Bleachery Life_. Again we girls shivered. It was announced a certain
+rich man who recently died had left the Village Club House five
+hundred dollars--better write no letter of thanks until they got the
+money. Should the new handbook be printed by union labor at
+considerably greater expense, or by an open shop? Unanimously voted by
+union labor. More health-benefit discussions under New Business. It
+was voted to increase the Board of Management by two additional
+members--one operative, one from the employing side. Election then and
+there by a secret ballot. The operative from the "gray" room and singe
+house was elected over the man from the office force by two votes.
+Some further housing discussions, and at 11.15 P.M. the meeting
+adjourned.
+
+"Say, I'm for coming every time." Perhaps we three girls will have
+started the style of outside attendance at the meetings.
+
+Whether a wider participation of operatives, a deeper understanding of
+Industrial Democracy and the Partnership Plan, develops or not,
+certainly they are a long step on the way to some sort of permeation
+of interest. For the next morning early, my last morning, as I started
+work, I heard toothless old Mrs. Holley call over to aged Mrs. Owens,
+whose husband even these days is never sober: "Hi, Mrs. Owens, what do
+ye know habout hit! Hain't it grand we got out over five million five
+hundred thousand yards last month?"
+
+"I say it's grand," grinned Mrs. Owens. "More 'n a million over what
+we done month before."
+
+"Hi say--over fifteen million the last three months. Hi say we're some
+bleachery, that's what _hi_ say!"
+
+
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+                       _No. 1470, "Pantry Girl"_
+
+
+Perhaps, more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working
+woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly
+co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers,
+where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and washing have
+not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and
+launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it
+might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the
+growth of such normal intercourse between the sexes as leads to happy
+matrimony. No need to depend on dance halls or the Subway to pick up a
+"fella." No need for external administrations from wholesome social
+workers whose aim is to enable the working man or woman to see
+something of the opposite sex.
+
+Yet forever are there flies in ointments. Flossie was one of the salad
+girls in the main kitchen. Flossie was Irish, young, most of her teeth
+gone. Her sister had worked at our hotel two years earlier, then had
+sent for Flossie to come from Ireland. The sister was now married.
+
+Innocently, interestedly, I asked, "To a man she knew here at the
+hotel?"
+
+Flossie cast a withering eye upon me. "The good Lord save us! I should
+say not! And what decent girl would ever be marryin' the likes of a
+man who worked around a hotel? She couldn't do much worse! Just steer
+clear of hotel men, I'm tellin' ya. They're altogether too wise to be
+safe for any girl."
+
+We were eating supper. The table of eight all nodded assent.
+
+Too wise or not too wise--at least there is a--cordiality--a
+predisposition toward affection on the part of male hotel workers
+which tends to make one's outside male associates seem fearfully
+formal, if not stiffly antagonistic. If one grows accustomed to being
+called "Sweetheart," "Darling" on first sight, ending in the evening
+by the time-clock man's greeting of, "Here comes my little bunch of
+love!"--is it not plain that outside in the cruel world such words as
+a mere "How-do-you-do" or "Good morning" seem cold indeed?
+
+What happens when a girl works three years in this affectionate
+atmosphere and then marries a plumber who hollers merely "say" at her?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Behind the scenes in a hotel--what is it all about? To find that out I
+poked around till the employment-office entrance of one of New York's
+biggest and newest hotels was discovered. There had been no "ad." in
+the Sunday paper which would give a hint that any hotel needed
+additional help. We took our chances. Some twenty men waited in a
+little hallway, two women inside the little office. One of the women
+weighed at least two hundred and fifty, the other not a pound over
+ninety. Both could have been grandmothers, both wanted chamber work.
+The employment man spied me.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"A job."
+
+"What kind of a job?"
+
+"Anything but bein' chambermaid."
+
+"What experience have you had in hotel work?"
+
+"None, but lots in private homes. I'd like a job around the kitchen
+some place."
+
+"Ever try pantry work?"
+
+"Not in a hotel, but lots in private families. I can do that swell!"
+(What pantry work meant I hadn't the least idea--thought perhaps
+washing glasses and silverware.)
+
+He put on his coat and hat and dashed upstairs. He always put on his
+coat _and_ hat to go upstairs. In a few moments he dashed hurriedly
+back, followed by another man whose teeth were all worn down in the
+front. I learned later that he was an important steward.
+
+He asked me all over again all the questions the first man had asked,
+and many more. He was in despair and impatient when he found I had not
+a single letter of recommendation from a single private family I had
+worked for. I could have written myself an excellent one in a few
+moments. Could I bring a letter back later in the day?
+
+"Can you fix salads?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"You think you could do the job?"
+
+"_Sure!_"
+
+"Well, you look as if you could. Never mind the letter, but get one to
+have by you--comes in handy any job you want. Now about pay--I can't
+pay you what you been used to getting, at least not first month." (I'd
+mentioned nothing as to wages.) "Second month maybe more. First month
+all I can pay you is fifty and your meals. That all right?"
+
+As usual, my joy at landing a job was such that any old pay was
+acceptable.
+
+"Be back in two hours."
+
+Just then the employment man called out to the hall filled with
+waiting men, "No jobs for any men this morning." I don't know what
+became of the old women.
+
+I was back before my two hours were up, so anxious to begin. The
+employment man put on his hat and coat and dashed upstairs after my
+steward. Just incidentally, speaking of hats and coats, it can be
+mentioned that all this was in the middle of one of the hottest
+summers New York ever knew.
+
+The steward led the way up one flight of iron stairs and into the main
+kitchen. Wasn't I all eyes to see what was what! If anyone is looking
+for a bit of muck-raking about the hinterland of restaurants, let him
+not bother to read farther. Nothing could have been cleaner than the
+kitchen conditions in our hotel. And orders up and down the line were
+to serve _nothing_ which was not absolutely as it should be.
+
+In a corner of the main kitchen the steward turned me over to Bridget,
+who was to take me here, there, and the other place. By 11.30 A.M., I
+was back where I started from, only, thanks to aged Bridget and her
+none-too-sure leadings, I was clad in a white cap and white all-over
+apron-dress, and had had my lunch. Thereupon the steward escorted me
+to my own special corner of the world, where, indeed, I was to be lord
+of all I surveyed--provided my gaze fell not too far afield.
+
+That particular corner was down one short flight of stairs from the
+main kitchen into a hustling, bustling, small and compact, often
+crowded, place where were prepared the breakfasts, lunches, and
+dinners of such folk who cared more for haste and less for style than
+the patrons of the main dining rooms. Our cafe fed more persons in a
+day than the other dining rooms combined. Outside we could seat five
+hundred at a time, sixty-five of those at marble counters, the rest at
+small tables. But our kitchen quarters could have been put in one
+corner of the spacious, airy upstairs main kitchen.
+
+Through the bustle of scurrying and ordering waiters I was led to a
+small shelved-off compartment. Here I was to earn my fifty dollars a
+month from 1.30 P.M. to 9 P.M. daily except Sunday, with one-half hour
+off for supper. I was entitled to eat my breakfast and lunch at the
+hotel as well.
+
+This first day, I was instructed to watch for two hours the girl I
+was to relieve at 1.30. Her hours were from 6 in the morning to 1.30,
+which meant she got the brunt of the hard work--all of the breakfast
+and most of the lunch rush. To me fell the tail end of the lunch
+rush--up to about 2.15, and supper or dinner, which only occasionally
+could be spoken of as "rush" at all. I discovered later that we both
+got the same pay, although she had to work very much harder, and also
+she had been at our hotel almost two years, though only nine months at
+this special pantry job. Before that she had made toast, and toast
+only, upstairs in the main kitchen.
+
+The first question Mary asked me that Monday morning was, "You
+Spanish?" No, I wasn't. Mary was a Spanish grass widow. Ten years she
+had been married, but only five of that time had she lived with her
+husband. Where was he? Back in Spain. "No good." She had come on to
+this country because it was too hard for a woman to make her way in
+Spain. She spoke little English, but with that little she showed that
+she was kindly disposed and anxious to help all she could. She herself
+had a stolid, untidy efficiency about her, and all the while, poor
+thing, suffered with pains in her stomach.
+
+By the time 1.30 came around I knew what I had to do and could be left
+to my own devices. To the pantry girl of our cafe fell various and
+sundry small jobs. But the end and aim of her life had to be speed.
+
+To the left of my little doorway was a small, deep sink. Next to the
+sink was a very large ice chest. On the side of the ice chest next
+the sink hung the four soft-boiled-egg machines--those fascinating
+contrivances in which one deposited the eggs, set the notch at two,
+three, four minutes, according to the desires of the hurried guest
+without, sank the cup-shaped container in the boiling water, and never
+gave the matter another thought. At the allotted moment the eggs were
+hoisted as if by magic from out their boilings. Verily are the wonders
+of civilization manifold! The sink and the protruding ice chest filled
+the entire left side of my small inclosure. Along the entire right and
+front was a wide work-shelf. On this shelf at the right stood the
+electric toasting machine which during busy hours had to be kept going
+full blast.
+
+"Toast for club!" a waiter sang out as he sped by, and zip! the
+already partially toasted bread went into the electric oven to be done
+so crisply and quickly that you could call out to that waiter, "Toast
+for club" before he could come back and repeat his ominous, "Toast for
+club!" at you. People who order club sandwiches seem always to be in a
+special hurry.
+
+In the front corner just next the toaster stood the tray of bread
+sliced ready to toast, crusts off for dry or buttered toast, crusts on
+for "club," very thin slices for "toast Melba." Directly in front, and
+next the bread tray, came the tray filled with little piles of graham
+and milk crackers, seven in a pile. What an amazing number of folk
+order graham or milk crackers in a cafe! It seems unbelievable to one
+who has always looked upon a place furnishing eatables outside a home
+as a chance to order somewhat indigestible food prepared entirely
+differently from what any home could accomplish. Yet I know it to be a
+fact that people seat themselves at a table or a counter in a more or
+less stylish cafe and order things like prunes or rhubarb and graham
+or milk crackers, and perhaps top off, if they forget themselves so
+far, with a shredded-wheat biscuit.
+
+It is bad enough if a man feels called upon to act that way before 2
+P.M. When he puts in an order for such after 6 in the evening--then
+indeed it is a case for tears. I would get the blues wondering
+whatever could ail adult humanity that it ordered shredded-wheat
+biscuits after dark.
+
+Just above the counter holding the bread and crackers was the counter
+on which were placed the filled orders for the waiters to whisk away.
+It was but a step from there to my ice box. The orders it was my
+business to fill were for blackberries, blueberries, prunes, sliced
+oranges, rhubarb, grapefruit, whole oranges, apples, sliced peaches
+and bananas, muskmelons, and four kinds of cheese. These pretty well
+filled the upper half of the ice chest, together with the finished
+salads I kept ahead, say three of each, lettuce and tomato, hearts of
+lettuce, plain lettuce, and sliced tomatoes.
+
+In the lower half stood the pitchers of orange and grape juice, jams
+and jellies for omelettes to be made down the line, olives, celery,
+lettuce, cucumbers, a small tub of oranges and a large bowl of sliced
+lemons. The lemons, lemons, lemons I had daily to slice to complete
+the ice-tea orders! The next pantry-girl job I fill will be in winter
+when there is no demand for ice tea. I had also to keep on hand a bowl
+of American cheese cut the proper size to accompany pie, and together
+with toast and soft-boiled eggs and crackers and a crock of French
+dressing set in ice. Such was my kingdom, and I ruled it alone.
+
+During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to
+keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second
+apart, each calling an order, "Half a cantaloupe!" "Two orders of
+buttered toast!" "Combination salad!" (that meant romaine and lettuce
+leaves, shredded celery, sliced cucumbers, quartered tomatoes, green
+pepper, watercress, which always had to be made up fresh); "Sliced
+peaches!" (they could never be sliced in advance); "One order orange
+juice!" "Toast for club!" then how one's fingers sped!
+
+The wonder of it was no one ever seemed to lose his patience or his
+temper. That is, nobody out our way. Maybe in the cafe there was some
+millionaire hastily en route to a game of golf who cursed the universe
+in general and the clumsy fingers of some immigrant pantry girl in
+particular. (Not so fearfully clumsy either.)
+
+Between 2 and 2.30 the rush subsided, and that first day I caught my
+breath and took time to note the lay of the land.
+
+My compartment came first, directly next the dishes. Next me was a
+beautiful chef with his white cap set on at just the chef angle. He
+was an artist, with a youngster about fifteen as his assistant. Some
+day that youngster will be a more beautiful chef than his master and
+more of an artist. His master, I found out in my slack hours that
+first afternoon, was French, with little English at his command,
+though six years in this country. I know less French than he does
+English, but we got to be good friends over the low partition which
+separated us. There was nothing at all fresh or affectionate about
+that French chef. I showed my gratitude for that by coming over in the
+afternoon and helping him slice hot potatoes for potato salad while my
+floor got washed. Every day I made him a bow and said, "_Bon jour,
+Monsieur le Bon Chef_," which may be no French at all. And every day
+he made me a bow back and said, "_Bon jour_" something or other, which
+I could tell was nice and respectful, but--I can't write it down.
+Monsieur Le Bon Chef made splendid cold works of art in jellies, and
+salads which belonged to another realm than my poor tomatoes and
+lettuce. Also, he and his assistant--the assistant was Spanish--made
+wonder sandwiches. They served jellied soups from their counter. Poor
+humble me would fill "One order graham crackers, little one!" But to
+Monsieur Le Bon Chef it would be "Two Cream of Cantaloupes!" "One
+chicken salad!" "One (our hotel) Plate!" (What a creation of a little
+of everything that was!) Monsieur Le Bon Chef taught me some tricks of
+the trade, but this is no treatise on domestic science.
+
+I will tell you about Monsieur Le Bon Chef, though by no means did I
+learn this all my first afternoon. I only picked up a little here and
+there, now and then. He came to this country a French immigrant from
+near Toulouse six or so years ago, his heart full of dreams as to the
+opportunities in America. Likely as not we might now have to add that,
+after many searchings, he landed a job peeling potatoes at fifteen
+dollars a month. Monsieur Le Bon Chef was no Bon Chef at all when he
+landed--knew none of the tricks of "chefness" to speak of. His first
+day in America he sought out an employment office. Not a word of
+English could he speak. While the employment agent was just about to
+shake his head and say, "Nothing to-day," a friend, or at least a
+countryman, dashed up. "I have a job for you," said the countryman,
+and he led my Bon Chef to New York's most aristocratic hotel. Monsieur
+Le Bon Chef could not know there was a cooks' strike on. Down to the
+kitchen they led him, and for some weeks he drew ten dollars a day
+wages and his room and board right there at the hotel. To fall from
+Toulouse into a ten-dollar-a-day job! And when one knew scarce more
+than how to boil potatoes!
+
+Of course, when the strike was over, there were no such wages paid as
+ten dollars a day. Nothing like that was he earning these six years
+later when he could make the beauteous works of art in jelly. I asked
+him if he liked his work. He shrugged his shoulders and brushed one
+side of his rather bristly blond mustache. "Na--no like so
+much--nothing in it but the moaney--make good moaney." He shrugged
+his shoulders again and brushed up the other side of his mustache. "No
+good work just for tha moaney." You see he really is an artist. He was
+my quiet, nice friend, Monsieur Le Bon Chef. Indeed, one night he gave
+me a wondrously made empty cigar box with a little lock to it. "Ooh
+La-la!" I cried, and made a very deep bow, and said in what I'm sure
+was correct French--because Monsieur Le Bon Chef said it was--"Thank
+you very much!"
+
+So then, all there was on our side of the kitchen was my little
+compartment and the not quite so little compartment of Monsieur Le Bon
+Chef, whose confines reached around the corner a bit. Around that
+corner and back a little way were two fat Porto-Rican women who washed
+glasses and spoke no English. Beyond them, at the right of the stairs
+going up to the main kitchen, were clean dishes. They came on
+dumb-waiters from some place either above or below.
+
+At the left of the stairs were some five chefs of as many
+nationalities--Italian, Spanish, South American, French, Austrian, who
+filled hot orders, frying and broiling and roasting. Around the corner
+and opposite the Bon Chef and me were first the two cashiers, then my
+special friends, the Spanish dessert man and the Greek coffee and tea
+man. That is, they were the main occupants of their long compartment,
+but at the time of lunch rush at least six men worked there. Counting
+the chore persons of various sorts and not counting waiters, we had
+some thirty-eight working in or for our cafe--all men but the two fat
+Porto-Rican glass washers and me.
+
+Bridget, the dear old soul, came down that first afternoon to see how
+I was getting along. I had cleaned up spick and span after the Spanish
+woman--and a mess she always managed to leave. The water was out of
+the egg-boiling machine and that all polished; the heat turned off in
+the toasting machine and that wiped off; lemons sliced; celery
+"Julietted"; and I was peeling a tubful of oranges--in the way the
+steward had showed me--to be sliced by Spanish Mary for breakfast next
+morning.
+
+"I'm sure gettin' along swell," I told Bridget.
+
+"God bless ye," said my dear old guide, and picked her way upstairs
+again.
+
+It was plain to see that down our way everybody's work eased up
+between 3.30 and 5. Then everyone visited about, exchanged newspapers,
+gossiped over counters. We changed stewards at three. Kelly, the
+easy-going, jovial (except at times) Irishman, took himself off, and a
+narrow-shouldered, small, pernickety German Jew came on for the rest
+of my time. When we closed up at nine he went to some other part of
+the hotel and stewarded.
+
+My first afternoon Schmitz sauntered about to see what he could find
+out. Where did I live, what did I do evenings, what time did I get up
+mornings, what did I do Sundays? One question mark was Schmitz. One
+thing only he did not ask me, because he knew that. He always could
+tell what nationality a person was just by looking at him. So? Yes,
+and he knew first thing what nationality I was. So? Yes, I was a
+Turk. But the truth of it was that at the hotel I was part Irish and
+part French and part Portuguese, but all I could talk was the Irish
+because my parents had both died while I was very young. Another day,
+my Greek friend, the coffee man, said he was sure there was a little
+Greek in me; and an Austrian waiter guessed right away I was a bit
+Austrian; and every Spaniard in the kitchen--and the hotel was full of
+them--started by talking a mile-a-minute Spanish at me. So a
+cosmopolitan, nondescript, melting-pot face is an asset in the labor
+world in our fair land--all nationalities feel friendly because they
+think you are a countryman. But a Turk--that stretched boundaries a
+bit.
+
+For every question Schmitz asked me I asked him one back. His wife and
+daughter, sixteen, were in France for three months, visiting the
+wife's parents. As Schmitz's pernicketyness became during the next
+days more and more impossible to ignore, I solaced my harassed
+feelings with the thought of how much it must mean to Mrs. Schmitz to
+be away from Mr. Schmitz and his temperament and disposition for three
+blessed months. Perhaps the daughter, sixteen, had spoken of that
+phase of the trip to Mrs. Schmitz. Mrs. Schmitz, being a dutiful wife
+who has stood Mr. Schmitz at least, we surmise, some seventeen years,
+replied to such comments of her sixteen-year-old daughter, "Hush,
+Freda!"
+
+At five minutes to five Schmitz graciously told me I might go up to my
+supper, though the law in the statute books stood five. Everybody
+upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service
+elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten
+different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and
+female, are indeed a friendly lot.
+
+The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a
+short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is
+called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids'
+sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.
+
+There are, it seems, class distinctions among hotel help. The chefs
+eat in a dining room of their own. Then, apparently next in line, came
+our dining room. I, as pantry girl, ranked a "second officer." We had
+round tables seating from eight to ten at a table, table cloths and
+cafeteria style of getting one's food. The chefs were waited upon. In
+our dining room ate the bell boys, parlor maids, laundry workers,
+seamstresses, housekeepers, hotel guards and police, the employment
+man, pantry girls--a bit of everything. To reach our dining room we
+had to pass through the large room where the chambermaids ate. They
+had long bare tables, no cloths, and sat at benches without backs.
+
+As to food, our dining room but reflected the state of mind any and
+every hotel dining room reflects, from the most begilded and
+bemirrored down. Some thought the food good, some thought it awful,
+some thought nothing about it at all, but just sat and ate. One thing
+at least was certain--there was enough. For dinner there was always
+soup, two kinds of meat, potatoes, vegetables, dessert, ice tea, milk,
+or coffee. For supper there was soup again, meat or fish, potatoes, a
+salad, and dessert, and the same variety of drinkables to choose from.
+Once I was late at lunch and ate with the help's help. The woman who
+dished up the vegetables was in a fearful humor that day. People had
+been complaining about the food. "They make me sick!" she grunted.
+"They jus' oughta try the ---- Hotel. I worked in their help's dinin'
+room for four years and we hardly ever seen a piece of meat, and as
+for eggs--I'm tellin' ya a girl was lucky if she seen a egg them four
+years."
+
+The people in our dining room were like the people in every dining
+room: some were sociable and talked to their neighbors, some were not
+sociable at all. There was no regular way of seating. Some meals you
+found yourself at a table where all was laughter and conversation. The
+next meal, among the same number of people, not one word would be
+spoken. "Pass the salt" would grow to sound warm and chummy.
+
+Half an hour was the time allowed everyone for meals. With a friendly
+crowd at the table that half hour flew. Otherwise, there was no way of
+using up half an hour just eating. And then what?
+
+After a couple of days, some one mentioned the recreation room.
+Indeed, what's in a name? Chairs were there, two or three settees, a
+piano, a victrola, a Christy picture, a map of South America, the
+dying soldier's prayer, and three different sad and colored pictures
+of Christ. Under one of these was pinned a slip of paper, and in
+homemade printing the worthy admonition:
+
+"No cursing no stealing when tempted look on his kindly face."
+
+There were all these things, but no girls. Once in a while a forlorn
+bunch of age would sit humped in a chair, now and then a victrola
+record sang forth its worn contents, twice the piano was heard. After
+some ten days my large fat friend from the help's pantry informed me
+that she and I weren't supposed to be there--the recreation room was
+only for chambermaids and like as not any day we'd find the door
+locked. Sure enough, my last day at the hotel I sneaked around in the
+middle of the afternoon, as usual, to see what gossip I could pick up,
+and the door was locked. But I made the recreation room pay for itself
+as far as I was concerned. Every day I managed to pick up choice
+morsels of gossip there that was grist to my mill.
+
+After my first supper I could find nothing to do or no one to talk to,
+so back I went to work--feeling a good deal like teacher's pet. About
+four o'clock it was my business to tell Schmitz what supplies we were
+out of and what and how much we'd need for supper. When I got back
+from supper there were always trays of food to be put in the ice
+chest, salads to be fixed, blackberries to dish out, celery to wash,
+and the like. By the time that was done supper was on in our cafe.
+That is, for some it was supper; for others, judging by the looks of
+the trays which passed hurriedly by my compartment, stopping only
+long enough for sliced lemon for the ice tea, it was surely dinner.
+Dinner _de luxe_ now and then! Such delectable dishes! How did anybody
+ever know their names enough to order them?
+
+From 6 to 7.30 was the height of the supper rush. What a variable
+thing our patrons made of it! Some evenings there would be a regular
+run on celery salads, then for four nights not a single order.
+Camembert cheese would reign supreme three nights in succession--not
+another order for the rest of the week. Sometimes it seemed as if the
+whole of creation sat without, panting for sliced tomatoes. The next
+night stocked up in advance so as to keep no one waiting--not a human
+being looked at a tomato.
+
+At eight o'clock only stragglers remained to be fed, and my job was to
+clear out the ice chest of all but two of each dish, send it upstairs
+to the main kitchen, and then start scrubbing house. Schmitz let it be
+known that one of the failings of her whose place I was now filling,
+the one who was asked to leave the Friday night before the Monday
+morning I appeared, was that she was not clean enough. At first, a
+year and a half ago, she was cleanly and upright--that is, he spoke of
+such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore
+on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly
+corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed
+to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up
+toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to labor
+inside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz
+almost looked approving. Only it was congenital with Schmitz that he
+never really showed approval of anything or anybody. Schmitz was the
+kind (poor Mrs. Schmitz with her three months only of freedom) who
+always had to change everything just a little. There would echo down
+the line an order, "One Swiss cheese, little one" (that referred to
+me, not the cheese). Schmitz would stroll over from where he was
+trying to keep busy watching everyone at once, enter the very confines
+of my compartment, and stand over me while I sliced that Swiss cheese.
+It was always either too big, in which case he took the knife from my
+hands and sliced off one-sixteenth of an inch on one end; or too
+small, in which case Schmitz would endeavor to slice a new piece
+altogether. The chances were it would end in being even smaller than
+the slice I cut. In that case, Schmitz would say, "Led it go, anyway."
+And then, because he would always be very fair, he stood and explained
+at length why the piece was too big, if it were too big, or too small,
+if too small. "You know, it's dis vay--" My Gawd! not once, but every
+night. There was always one slice too many or too few on the
+sliced-tomato order. Schmitz would say, "There must be five slices."
+The next time I put on five slices Schmitz stuck that nose of his
+around the waiter's shoulder.
+
+"Hey, vhat's dat? Only five slices? De guests won't stand for dat, you
+know. Dey pay good money here. Put anoder slice on."
+
+I was wont to get fearfully exasperated at times.
+
+"But," I remonstrated, "last time I had on six and you told me to put
+on five!"
+
+"Yes, yes, but I expect you to use your common sense!"
+
+That was his invariable comeback. And always followed by his patient:
+
+"You see, it's dis vay--If you put on too much the hotel, vhy, dey
+lose money, and of course you see it's dis vay: naturally" (that was a
+pet word of Schmitz's), "naturally the hotel don't vant to lose
+money--you can see dat for yourself. Now on the odder hand if you
+don't put on enough, vhy of course you see it's dis vay, naturally a
+guest vants to get his money's vorth, you can see dat for
+yourself--you've just got to use your common sense, you can see dat
+for yourself." Not once, but day after day, night after night. Poor,
+poor Mrs. Schmitz! Verily there are worse things than first-degree
+murder and intoxication.
+
+But for all that Schmitz deigned not to allow it to be known that my
+scrubbings found favor in his sight, my own soul approved of me. The
+shelves and the sink I scrubbed. Then every perishable article in my
+ice chest or elsewhere got placed upon trays to go upstairs. By this
+time it was two minutes to nine. Schmitz, always with his hands
+clasped behind him, except when he was doing over everything I did,
+said, "You can go now."
+
+Upstairs among the lockers on the third floor the temperature was like
+that of a live volcano, only nothing showed any signs of exploding.
+Fat women who could speak little or no English were here and there
+puffily dismantling, exchanging the hotel work-uniform for street
+garments. Everyone was kindly and affectionate. One old Irishwoman
+came up while I was changing my clothes.
+
+"Well, dearie, and how did it go?"
+
+"Sure it went swell."
+
+"That's good. The Lord bless ye. But there's one bit of advice I must
+be giving ye. There's one thing you must take care of now. I'm tellin'
+ye, dearie, you must guard your personality! I'm tellin' ye, there 're
+the men y' know, but guard y' personality!"
+
+I thanked her from the bottom of my heart and said I'd guard it,
+surest thing she knew.
+
+"Oh, the good Lord and the Virgin Mary bless ye, child!" And she
+patted me affectionately on the back.
+
+Indeed, I had been getting affectionate pats most of the time, though
+the majority of them were from the male help. The composite impression
+of that first day as I took my way home on the sticky Subway was that
+the world was a very affectionate place, nor was I quite sure just
+what to do about it.
+
+The second morning I was given a glimpse of what can be done about it.
+As I was waiting for the elevator on the service floor to be taken
+down to work, a very attractive girl came along and immediately we
+became chummy. She had been at the hotel three weeks; her job was to
+cut fruit. Had she done this sort of work long? Not in this country,
+but in Europe. Just one year had she been in America. At that moment
+two youths passed. I saw nothing, but quick as a flash my new friend
+flared up, "You fresh guy--keep your hands to yourself!" So evidently
+that's the way it's done. I practiced it mentally. "Lots o' fresh guys
+round here," I sniffed. "You said it," muttered the still ruffled
+fruit cutter.
+
+Downstairs, Kelly was waiting with a welcoming nod--Kelly, the
+unpernickety steward. Everyone was as friendly as if we had been
+feeding humanity side by side these many years. During the rush the
+waiters called out as they sped by: "Hi there, little one!" "There's
+the girlie!" "Ah there, sweetheart!" Verily the world is an
+affectionate place. If a waiter had an order to give he passed the
+time of day as he gave it and as he collected his order.
+
+"And how's the little girl to-day?"
+
+"Tiptop--and yourself?"
+
+"A little low in spirits I was to-day until I seen you'd come--an'
+then. You love me as much as you did yesterday?"
+
+"Move on there. W'at y' a-doin' talkin' to my girl! Now, honey, I'm
+tellin' you this here guy is too fresh for any lady. I'd like one
+order of romaine lettuce, bless your sweet heart, if it won't be
+tirin' your fingers too much. That's the dearie--I'm back in a
+moment."
+
+Across the way, arms resting on the counter, head ducked under the
+upper shelf, leaned a burly redheaded helper to the Greek.
+
+Every time the pantry girl looked his way he beamed and nodded and
+nodded and beamed. "How you lak?" "Fine!" More beams and nods. Soon a
+waiter slipped a glass of ice coffee, rich in cream and sugar, under
+my counter. Beams and nods fit to burst from the assistant coffee man
+across the way. Beams and nods from the pantry girl. Thus every day.
+Our sole conversation was, "How you lak?" "Fine!" He said the rest
+with coffee.
+
+With the lunch rush over, Kelly sneaked around my entrance and jerked
+his head sidewise. That meant, naturally, that I was to approach and
+harken unto what he had to say. When Kelly imparted secrets--and much
+of what Kelly had to impart was that sort of information where he felt
+called upon to gaze about furtively to make sure no one was
+over-hearing--when he had matters of weight then to impart he talked
+down in his boots and a bit out of the corner of his mouth.
+
+"Say, kid"--Kelly jerked his head--"want to tell you about this eatin'
+business. Y'know, ain't no one supposed to eat nothin' on this floor.
+If the boss catches ya, it's good-by dolly. Sign up over the door
+sayin' you'll be dismissed _at once_ if you eat anything--see? But I'm
+givin' ya a little tip--see? I don't care how much ya eat--it's
+nothin' to me. I say eat all ya got a mind to. Only for Gawd's sake
+don't let the Big Boss catch ya." (The Big Boss was the little chief
+steward, who drew down a fabulous salary and had the whole place
+scared to death.) "See--pull a cracker box out so and put what ya got
+to eat behind it this way, then ya can sit down and sorta take your
+time at it. If the boss does come by--it's behind the cracker box and
+you should worry! Have a cup of coffee?"
+
+I was full up of coffee from my gentleman friend across the way, so
+declined Kelly's assistance in obtaining more. Every day, about 2.30,
+Kelly got in a certain more or less secluded corner of my compartment
+and ate a bit himself. "Been almost fired a couple of times for doin'
+this--this place is full o' squealers--gotta watch out all the time.
+Hell of a life I say when a fella has to sneak around to eat a bit of
+food."
+
+That second afternoon, Kelly stopped in the middle of a gulp of
+coffee.
+
+"Say, w'at t' hell's a girl like you workin' for, anyhow? Say, don't
+you know you could get married easy as--my Gawd! too easy. Say, you
+could pick up with one of these waiters just like that! They're good
+steady fellas, make decent pay. You could do much worse than marry a
+waiter. I'm tellin' ya there's no sense to a girl like you workin'."
+
+That was an obsession with Kelly. He drilled it into me daily. Kelly
+himself was a settled married man. Of his state we talked often. I
+asked Kelly the very first day if he ever went to Coney Island.
+
+"Ustta--'ain't been for ten years."
+
+"Why not for ten years?"
+
+Kelly looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. "Got married ten
+years ago."
+
+"Well, and w'at of it? Don't you have no more fun?"
+
+"You said it! I'm tellin' ya there's no more fun. Gee! I sure don't
+know myself these ten years. I was the kind of a fella"--here Kelly
+was moved in sheer admiration to do a bit of heavy cursing--"I was the
+kind of fella that did everything--I'm tellin' ya, _everything_. Bet
+there ain't a thing in this world I 'ain't done at least once, and
+most of 'em a whole lot more 'n that. An' now--look at me now! Get up
+at four every mornin', but Sundays, get down here at six" (Kelly was a
+suburbanite), "work till three, git home, monkey with my tools a bit
+or play with the kids, eat dinner, sit around a spell, go to bed."
+
+A long pause. "Ain't that a hell of a life, I'm askin' ya?"
+
+Another pause in which Kelly mentally reviewed his glowing past. He
+shook his head and smiled a sad smile. "If you could 'a' seen me ten
+years ago!"
+
+Kelly told me the story of his life more or less in detail some days
+later. I say advisedly "more or less." Considering the reputation he
+had given himself, I am relieved to be able to note that he must have
+left some bits out, though goodness knows he put enough in. But
+Kelly's matrimonial romance must be told.
+
+Kelly went with a peach of a girl in the years gone by--swellest
+little kid--gee! he respected that girl--never laid hands on her. She
+wanted to go back to the old country for a visit, so he paid her way
+there and back--one hundred and sixty-five dollars it had cost him.
+Coming home from a ball where Kelly had been manager--this at 4
+A.M.--a remark of the girl's led Kelly to suspect she was not the
+stainless bit of perfection his love had pictured. So after three
+years of constant devotion Kelly felt that he had been sold out. He
+turned around and said then and there to his fair one, "You go to
+hell!" He never laid eyes on her again.
+
+A few years later Kelly met an American girl. He went with her three
+years, was making seventy-five dollars a month, had saved eight
+hundred and seventy-six dollars, and in addition possessed one hundred
+and ten dollars in life insurance. So he asked the lady to marry him.
+Y' know w'at she said to Kelly? Kelly leaned his shaggy mop of hair my
+way. She said, "I won't marry nobody on seventy-five dollars a month!"
+Again Kelly's manhood asserted itself. Do you know w'at Kelly said to
+her? He says, says he, once more, "You go to hell!" He quit.
+
+Whereupon Kelly drew out every cent he possessed and sailed for
+Europe. When he landed again in New York City, d' y'know how much
+money Kelly had in his pocket? Thirty-five cents. Then he went West
+for seven or eight years, and tore up the country considerable, Kelly
+did. He came back to New York again, again minus cash. A few days
+after his return the girl of eight years before met him by appointment
+at the Grand Central Station. What d' y'know? She asked Kelly to marry
+her--just like that. Heck! by that time Kelly didn't give a darn one
+way or the other. She bought the ring, she hired the minister, she did
+the whole business. Kelly married her--that's the wife he's got right
+now.
+
+One of Kelly's steady, dependable waiters approached about 5 P.M.
+"Say, girl, I like you!" Of course, the comeback for that now, as
+always, was, "Aw go-an!"
+
+"Sure, I like you. Say, how about goin' out this evening with me?
+We'll sure do the old town!"
+
+"I say, you sound like as if you got all of twenty-five cents in your
+pocket!"
+
+He leaned way over my counter.
+
+"I got twenty-five dollars, and it's yours any time you say the word!"
+
+It's words like that which sometimes don't get said.
+
+For supper that night I sat at a table with a housekeeper, a parlor
+maid, and a seamstress, and listened to much talk. Mainly, it was a
+discussion of where the most desirable jobs were to be had in their
+respective lines. There was complete unanimity of opinion. Clubs
+headed the list, and the cream of cream were men's clubs. The
+housekeeper and parlor maid together painted a picture which would
+lead one to conclude that the happiest women in all New York City were
+the housekeepers in men's clubs. The work was light, they were well
+treated--it was a job for anyone to strive for. The type of men or
+women in clubs, they remarked, was ahead of what you'd draw in any
+hotel.
+
+The parlor maid, an attractive, gray-haired woman--indeed, all three
+were gray-haired--was very pleased with her job at our hotel. She
+slept there and loved it. The rooms were so clean--your towels were
+changed daily just as for the guests. Sure she was very contented. If
+her mother were only alive--she died two years ago--she'd be the
+happiest woman in the world, she just knew it. But every single
+morning she woke up with an empty feeling in her heart for the
+longings after her mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My diary of Thursday of that first week starts: "The best day since
+I've been trying jobs--Glory be, it was rich!" And pages follow as to
+the wonders of that one day--wonders to me, who was after what the
+workers themselves think about the universe in general.
+
+When I found how hard the Spanish woman I relieved at 1.30 had to
+work, how much more rushed she was from 6 to 1.30 than ever I was from
+1.30 to 9, and when I learned, in addition, that she received no more
+pay for all her extra labors, I told her I would come early every day
+and help her during the rush. This is all good psychology and I give
+it for what it is worth. The first few days, this Thursday being one
+of them, she was very grateful--spoke often of how much it helped to
+have me there early. My last morning during my two weeks of the hotel
+job I was so rushed with final errands to do before leaving New York
+that it was impossible for me to arrive at work before 1.30, my
+regular and appointed time. The Spanish woman knew it was my last day.
+But she was so put out to think I had not arrived early that she
+whisked out of that compartment the second I arrived, only taking time
+to give me one fearful and unmistakable glare. Kelly caught the
+remnants of it as she swung by him. He sauntered over to my counter.
+"Say, the nerve of some people!"
+
+That Thursday noon, I ate with the workers in the help's kitchen. So
+much talk! First there was a row on fit to rend the rafters. One of
+the Irish girls plumped herself down to eat and raved on about Lizzie,
+an Armenian girl, and something or other Lizzie had done or hadn't
+done with the silverware. Everyone was frank as to what each thought
+about Lizzie. Armenian stock was very low that day. Just then Lizzie
+appeared, a very attractive, neat girl who had been friendly and kind
+to me. I had no idea it was she about whose character such blusterous
+words were being spoken. With Lizzie and the Irish girl face to
+face--Heaven help us! I expected to see them at each other's throats.
+Such talk! Finally another Irish girl turned to the Armenian. "Why
+t'hell do you get so mad over it all, now?" Lizzie stopped, gave the
+second Irish girl a quizzical look. Slowly a smile spread over her
+face. She gave a little chuckle. "Ho! Why t'hell?" We all laughed and
+laughed, and the fight was off.
+
+It seems Lizzie was known far and wide for her temper. She had been
+fired from waiting on the chefs because she let it loose in their
+dining room one night. Now they were trying her out up at our end of
+the service floor. Minnie, the oldest Irish woman at our table and in
+a decidedly ruffled mood that day, claimed it was the Armenian in
+her. "They're all like that. Shure, I got a Armenian helper--that kid
+over there. Wait till he says one word more to me. I'll bust a plate
+on his head and kick his prostrate form into the gutter. It'll be a
+happy day in my life!"
+
+They all asked me about my work and how I liked it. Evidently mine was
+a job high in favor. "Shure you're left alone and no one to be under
+your feet or botherin' with y' every minute of the day. You're yo'r
+own boss."
+
+The talk got around to the strike at the Hotel McAlpin of a few years
+ago. It was for more pay. The strike was lost. I asked why. "Shure,
+they deserved to lose it. Nobody hung together."
+
+We discussed domestic service. Every day at that hotel I wondered why
+any girl took work in a private home if she could possibly get a hotel
+job. Here was what could be considered by comparison with other jobs,
+good pay, plus three nourishing meals a day, decent hours, and before
+and after those hours freedom. In many cases, also, it meant a place
+to sleep. There was a chance for talk and companionship with one's
+kind during the day. Every chance I got I asked a girl if she liked
+working in a private home, or would change her hotel job if she got a
+chance. The only person who was not loud in decrying private service
+was Minnie during this special Thursday lunch. But Minnie was so sore
+on the world that day. I do believe she would have objected to the
+Virgin Mary, had the subject come up. Minnie had worked years in
+private families and only six years in hotels. She wished she'd never
+seen the inside of a hotel.
+
+That same night at the supper table the subject came up again before
+an entirely different crowd. Three at the table had tried domestic
+service. Never again! Why? Always the answer was the same. "Aw, it's
+the feeling of freedom ya never get there, and ya do get it in a
+hotel." One sweet gray-haired woman told of how she had worked some
+years as cook in a swell family where they kept lots of servants. She
+got grand wages, and naively she added, you get a chance to make lots
+on the side, o' course. I asked her if she meant tips from guests. Oh
+no! She meant what you made off tradespeople. Don't you see, if you
+got the butcher bill up so high, you got so much off the butcher, and
+the same with the grocer and the rest. She had a sister not cooking
+long who made over one hundred dollars a month, counting what she got
+off tradespeople. It is a perfectly accepted way of doing, mentioned
+with no concern.
+
+But on the whole, that supper table agreed that domestic service was a
+good deal like matrimony. If you got a good family, all right; but how
+many good families were there in the world? One woman spoke of working
+where they'd made a door mat of her. Barely did she have food enough
+to eat. There were four in the family. When they had chops the lady of
+the house ordered just four, which meant she who cooked the chops got
+none.
+
+After lunch this full Thursday I rushed to assist Mary. I loved going
+down the stairs into our hot scurry of excitement. Indeed, it was
+seeing behind the scenes. And always the friendly nods from everyone,
+even though the waiters especially looked ready to expire in pools of
+perspiration. At Monsieur Le Bon Chef's counter some sticky waiter had
+ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The heat had made him skeptical. "Call
+that beef?" The waiter next him glared at him with a chuckle. "An'
+must we then always lead in the cow for you to see?" A large Irishman
+breezed up to my Bon Chef. "Two beef a la modes. Make it snappy,
+chief. Party's in a hurry. Has to catch the five-thirty train"--this
+at one o'clock. Everyone good-natured, and the perspiration literally
+rolling off them.
+
+Most of the waiters were Irish. One of them was a regular dude--such
+immaculateness never was. He was the funny man of the place, and
+showed off for my special benefit, for I made no bones of the fact
+that he amused me highly. He was a very chippy-looking waiter--pug
+nose, long upper lip. When he ordered ice coffee he sneaked up on the
+Greek a la Bill Hart, ready to pull a gun on him. He had two names at
+his disposal and used one or the other with every order, no matter who
+the chef was. In a very deep tone of voice, it was either, "James,
+custard pie!" or, "Dinsmore, one veal cutlet." But to me it was
+always: "Ah there, little one! Toast, I say _toast_. Dry, little one.
+Ah yes! There be them who out of force of habit inflicted upon them
+take even their toast dry. You get me, little one?"
+
+He was especially immaculate this Thursday. I guessed he must be
+taking at least three ladies out that evening. He looked at me out of
+the corner of his eyes. "_Three_, little one, this hot night? Winter
+time, yes, a man can stand a crowd about him, but not to-night. No.
+To-night, little one, I take but one lady. It allows for more
+circulation of air. And you will be that One?"
+
+The Greek this hot Thursday became especially friendly. He twirled his
+heavy black mustache and carried on an animated broken-English
+conversation most of the afternoon. Incidentally, he sent over one ice
+coffee with thick cream and two frosted chocolates.
+
+The little Spaniard next to him, he who served pies and ice cream and
+more amazing desserts--he, too, became very friendly. There was
+nothing the least fresh about the little Spaniard. He mostly leaned on
+his counter, in moments of lull in trade, and when I so much as looked
+his way, he sighed heavily. Finally he made bold to converse. I
+learned that he had been two years in this country, eight months at
+his present job. When I asked him how he spent his off time, he
+replied in his very broken English that he knew nobody and went
+nowhere. "It is no pleasure to go alone." He rooms with an American
+family on the East Side. They are very nice. For some years he had
+been in the printing trade in South America; there was something to a
+job like that. But in New York he did not know enough English to be a
+printer, and so, somehow, he found himself dishing pies and ice cream
+at our hotel.
+
+Later on that day he asked me, "Why are you so happy?"
+
+Indeed I was very cheerful and made no secret of it. I had sung every
+song I knew and then whistled them all as I worked. But Schmitz, who
+surely had never smiled in all his life, could stand it no longer.
+"You better not make so much noise," he said. "You see, it's dis
+vay--" Poor Schmitz, he had a miserable time of it that afternoon. For
+my expressions of contentment with the world had spread. Unconsciously
+a chef would whistle a bit here as he mixed his gravy ingredients,
+another there as he minced chicken, yet another in still another
+direction as he arranged a bowl of vegetables. Schmitz's head swirled
+first in one direction, then in another. Aching he was to reduce the
+universe to his perpetual state of gloom. But chefs he stood in awe
+of. He dared silence only me, and every so often I forgot.
+
+So the Spaniard asked me why I was so happy. I had no reason. Only a
+great multitude of reasons why there was no excuse to be anything
+else, but I did not go into that. He would know, though.
+
+"What did you do last night?"
+
+"Ho!" I laughed at him, "rode home on the top of a bus!"
+
+A bit later a piece of folded paper landed almost in my French
+dressing. It was a note from the Spaniard: "Will you go riding with me
+to-night?" I wrote on the bottom of the paper: "Not to-night. Perhaps
+next week, yes?" A few moments later a folded menu landed on the
+floor. On the back was written: "I will be very pleased whenever you
+can or wish. Could it be Sunday? I hope you wouldn't take it amiss my
+asking you this. Frank."
+
+I really wanted to take that bus ride with Frank. It still worries me
+that I did not. He was such a lonesome person.
+
+Then there was the tall, lean, dark Irish waiter I called Mr.
+O'Sullivan. He was a continual joy to my heart and gave me cause for
+many a chuckle. A rebel, was Mr. O'Sullivan. I heard Kelly call him
+down twice for growling at what he considered inexcusable desires in
+the matter of food or service on the part of patrons by telling Mr.
+O'Sullivan it was none of his ---- business. But I loved to listen to
+Mr. O'Sullivan's growlings, and once he realized that, he used to stop
+at my counter, take extra long to collect three slices of lemon, and
+tell me his latest grievance. To-night, this Thursday, he was
+sputtering.
+
+"Shure and de y'know what now? I've two parties out there want finger
+bowls. _Finger bowls!_" sputtered Mr. O'Sullivan.
+
+"Shure an' it's a long ways from the sight of finger bowls them two
+was born. It had better be a pail apiece they'd be askin' for. Finger
+bowls indeed!" Mr. O'Sullivan had gotten down to a mumble. "Shure an'
+they make me _sick_!"
+
+Mr. O'Sullivan knew that I gave ear to his sentiments upon such
+matters as old parties, male or female, who must needs order special
+kinds of extra digestible bread, and usually that bread must in
+addition be toasted. While it was toasting, Mr. O'Sullivan voiced his
+views on Old Maids with Indigestion. Much of it does not bear
+repeating. When the toast was done, Mr. O'Sullivan would hold out his
+plate with the napkin folded ready for the toast. "Shure an yo'r the
+sweetest child my eyes ever looked upon" (Mr. O'Sullivan would say
+just the same thing in the same way to a toothless old hag of ninety).
+"Mind you spare yo'rself now from both bein' an old maid and sufferin'
+to the point where y' can't eat plain white bread!"
+
+This particular Thursday I had even found some one to talk to in the
+recreation room when I sneaked up at three o'clock. There came a time
+when Schmitz's patience was strained over my regular disappearance
+from about 3 to 3.30. There was absolutely nothing for me to do just
+then in my own line, so I embraced that opportunity daily to take my
+way to the recreation room and see what pickings I could gather up.
+But one afternoon Schmitz's face bore an extra-heavy frown. "Say, what
+you do every day that keeps you from your work all this time? Don't
+you know that ain't no way to do? Don't you understand hotel work is
+just like a factory? Everybody must be in his place all day and not go
+wandering off!"
+
+"Ever work in a factory?" I asked Schmitz.
+
+He deigned no answer.
+
+"Well, then, I'm telling _you_ I have, and hotel work ain't like a
+factory at _all_."
+
+"Vell, you see it's dis vay--naturally--"
+
+This Thursday up in the recreation room I found an ancient scrubwoman,
+patched and darned to pieces, with stringy thin hair, and the fat,
+jovial Irishwoman from the help's pantry. The three of us had as giddy
+a half hour as anyone in all New York. We laughed at one another's
+jokes till we almost wept, and forgot all about the thermometer. The
+fat Irishwoman had worked at the hotel two years, the scrubwoman
+almost that long. Both "lived out." They, too, informed me I had one
+of the best jobs in the hotel--nobody messin' in with what you're
+doin'--they leave y'alone. The fat one had worked some time in the
+linen room, but preferred pantry work. The linen room was too much
+responsibility--had to count out aprons and towels and things in piles
+of ten and tie them, and things like that--made a body's head swim.
+
+Realizing Schmitz's growing discomfort, I finally had to tear myself
+away. The fat Irishwoman called after me, "Good-by, dear, and God
+bless y'."
+
+Upstairs at supper that night I had the luck to land again at a
+talkative table. We discussed many things--Ireland, for one. One girl
+was she who had come two years ago from Ireland and did salads in the
+main kitchen. Such a brogue! An Irish parlor maid had been long years
+in this country. The two asked many questions of each other about
+their life in the Old Country. "Shure," sighed one, "I love every
+stick and every stone and tree and blade of grass in Ireland!"
+"Shure," sighed the other, "an' that's just the way I feel about it,
+too!"
+
+Everyone at the table liked working at our hotel. According to them,
+the hotel was nice, the girls nice, hours nice.
+
+The subject of matrimony, as ever, came up. Not a soul at the table
+but what was ag'in' it. Why should a woman get married when she can
+support herself? All she'd get out of it would be a pack of kids to
+clean up after, and work that never ended. Of course, the concession
+was eventually made, if you were sure you were gettin' a good man--
+But how many good men were there in the world? And look at the
+divorces nowadays! Why try it at all? One girl reported as
+statistically accurate that there was one divorce in the United States
+to every four marriages. "You don't say!" was the chorus.
+
+The subject changed to summer hotels. One woman had worked last summer
+as a waitress at one of the beaches. That was the swellest job
+ever--just like a vacation! All summer she had two tables only to wait
+on, two persons at a table. Each table had tipped her five dollars a
+week. Next summer we all must try it.
+
+The minutes flew by too fast that supper. Before I knew it, 5.30 had
+come around, and by the time I was downstairs again it was five
+minutes past my appointed half hour. Poor, poor Schmitz! And yet lucky
+Schmitz. It must have caused his soul much inner satisfaction to have
+a real honest-to-goodness grievance to complain about. (You see, he
+could not go up for his supper until I came down from mine.) Schmitz
+upbraided me, patiently, with explanations. Every single night from
+then on, when at five he would tell me I could go upstairs, he always
+added, "And be sure you're back at half past five!" In natural
+depravity of spirit, it was my delight one night to be able to sneak
+down at about 5.25 without being seen by Schmitz. Then I shrank into a
+corner of my compartment, out of his line of vision, and worked busily
+on my evening chores. At 5.30, Schmitz began his anxious scanning of
+our large clock. By 5.40 he was a wreck and the clock had nearly been
+glared off its hinges. Then it was a waiter called out to me the first
+evening order. With the crucified steps of a martyr, a ten-minute-hungry
+martyr at that, Schmitz made his way over to fill that order. And
+there I was, busily filling it myself! Of course, I hope I have made
+it clear that Schmitz was the kind who would say, "I knew she was
+there all along."
+
+The rush of this particular Thursday night! More lettuce had to be
+sent for in the middle of the evening, more tomatoes, more
+blackberries, more cantaloupes, more bread for toast. There was no
+stopping for breath. In the midst of the final scrubbings and
+cleanings came an order of "One combination salad, Sweetheart!" That
+done and removed and there sounded down the way, "One cantaloupe,
+Honey!" Back the waiter came in a moment. "The old party says it's too
+ripe." There were only two left to choose from. "Knock his slats in
+if he don't like that, the old fossil." In another moment the waiter
+was back again with the second half. "He says he don't want no
+cantaloupe, anyhow. Says he meant an order of Philadelphia cream
+cheese."
+
+But nine o'clock came round and somehow the chores were all done and
+Schmitz nodded his regal head ever so little--his sign for, "Madam,
+you may take your departure," and up I flew through the almost
+deserted main kitchen, up the three flights to the service floor, down
+four flights to the time-clock floor (elevators weren't always handy),
+to be greeted by my friend the time-clock man with his broad grin and
+his, "Well, if here ain't my little bunch o' love!"
+
+If he and Schmitz could only have gotten mixed a bit in the original
+kneading....
+
+By Saturday of that week I began my diary: "Goodness! I couldn't stand
+this pace long--waiters are too affectionate." I mention such a matter
+and go into some detail over their affection here and there, because
+it was in no sense personal. I mean that any girl working at my job,
+provided she was not too ancient and too toothless and too ignorant of
+the English language, would have been treated with equal enthusiasm.
+True, a good-looking Irishman did say to me one evening, "I keep
+thinkin' to myself durin' the day, what is there about you that's
+different. I shure like it a lot what it is, but I just can't put my
+finger on it." I used as bad grammar as the next; I appeared, I
+hoped, as ignorant as the next. Yet another Irishman remarked, "I
+don't know who you are or where you came from or where you got your
+education, but you shure have got us all on the run!" But any girl
+with the least wits about her would have had them on the run. She was
+the only girl these men got a chance to talk to the greater part of
+the day.
+
+But what if a girl had a couple of years of that sort of thing? Or
+does she get this attention only the first couple of weeks of the
+couple of years, anyhow? Does a waiter grow tired of expressing his
+affection before or after the girl grows tired of hearing it? I could
+not help but feel that most of it was due to the fact that perhaps
+among those waiters and such girls as they knew a purely friendly
+relationship was practically unknown. Sex seemed to enter in the first
+ten minutes. Girls are not for friends--they're to flirt with. It was
+for the girl to set the limits; the man had none.
+
+But eight and one-half hours a day of parrying the advances of
+affectionate waiters--a law should be passed limiting the cause for
+such exertion to two hours a day, no overtime. Nor have I taken the
+gentle reader into my confidence regarding the Spanish chef in the
+main kitchen. He did the roasting. I had to pass his stove on my way
+to the elevators. At which he dropped everything, wiped his hands on
+his apron, and beamed from ear to ear until I got by. One day he
+dashed along beside me and directed an outburst of Spanish into my
+ear. When I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders and got it into
+his head that I was not a countrywoman, his dismay was purely
+temporary. He spoke rather flowery English. Would I walk up the stairs
+with him? No, I preferred the elevator. He, did too. I made the most
+of it by asking him questions too fast for him to ask me any. He was a
+tailor by trade, but business had been dull for months. In despair he
+had taken to roasting. Some six months he had been at our hotel. He
+much preferred tailoring, and in two months he would be back at his
+trade in a little shop of his own, making about fifty to seventy-five
+dollars a week. And then he got in his first question.
+
+"Are you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Could I then ask you to go out with me some evening?"--all this with
+many beams and wipings of hands on his apron.
+
+Well, I was very busy.
+
+But one evening. Oh, just one evening--surely one evening.
+
+Well, perhaps--
+
+To-night, then?
+
+No, not to-night.
+
+To-morrow night?
+
+No, no night this week or next week, but perhaps week after next.
+
+Ah, that is so long, so long!
+
+There was no earthly way to get to the stairs or elevators except by
+his stove. I came to dread it. Always the Spanish ex-tailor dropped
+everything with a clatter and chased after me. I managed to pass his
+confines at greater and greater speed. Invariably I heard his panting,
+"Listen! Listen!" after me, but I tore on, hoping to get an elevator
+that started up before he could make it.
+
+One day the Spaniard, this tall thin roaster with the black mustache,
+was waiting as I came out of the locker room.
+
+"Listen! Listen!" he panted, from force of habit. "Next week is still
+so very long off."
+
+It so happened it was my last day at the hotel. I told him I was
+leaving that night.
+
+"Oh, miss!" He looked really upset. "Then you will go out to-night
+with me. Surely to-night."
+
+No, I had a date.
+
+To-morrow night.
+
+No, I had another date.
+
+Sunday--oh, Sunday, just one Sunday.
+
+Sunday I had two dates.
+
+I should be able to flatter my female soul that at least he forgot the
+seasoning that night in his roasts.
+
+Downstairs that first Saturday the little quiet Spaniard of the pies
+and ice cream screwed up his courage, crossed over to my precinct,
+leaned his arms on my front counter, and said, "If I had a wife like
+you I would be happy all the rest of my life!"
+
+Having delivered himself of those sentiments, he hastily returned to
+his pies and ice cream.
+
+The Greek coffee man would take me to a show that night.
+
+Saturday, to my surprise, was a slack day in the cafe business. Trade
+is always light. Sunday our kitchen closed shop. Another reason why my
+job held allurements. I was the only girl to get Sunday off. Also,
+because we were the only department in the hotel to close down
+altogether, it seems we were wont to have an annual picnic. Alas that
+I had to miss it!
+
+Plans were just taking shape, too, for this year's event. Last year
+they motored over to Long Island. Much food, many drinks. It was a
+rosy memory. This year Kelly wanted a hay ride. Kelly, he of the
+highly colored past, even so contended there was nothing in the world
+like the smell of hay.
+
+There was no fun to the supper that Saturday night. I sat at a table
+with a deaf girl, two dirty men, and a fat, flabby female with pop
+eyes, and not a one of them acted as if he possessed the ability to
+speak. Except the deaf girl, who did tell me she couldn't hear.
+
+So I ate hastily and made for the recreation room. For the first time
+the piano was in use. A chambermaid, surrounded by four admiring
+fellow-workers, was playing "Oh, they're killin' men and women for a
+wearin' of the green." That is, I made out she meant it for that tune.
+With the right hand she picked out what every now and then approached
+that melody. With the left she did a tum-te-dum which she left
+entirely to chance, the right hand and its perplexities needing her
+entire attention. During all of this, without intermission, her foot
+conscientiously pressed the loud pedal.
+
+Altogether there were seven in the chambermaid's audience. I sat down
+next to a little wrinkled auburn-haired Irish chambermaid whose face
+looked positively inspired. She beat time with one foot and both
+hands. "Ain't it jus' grand!" she whispered to me. "If I c'u'd jus'
+play like that!" Her eyes sought the ceiling. When the player had
+finished her rendition there was much applause. One girl left the
+clouds long enough to ask, "Oh, Jennie, is it really true you never
+took a lesson?" Jennie admitted it was true. "Think of that, now!" the
+little woman by me gasped.
+
+The chambermaid next gave an original interpretation of "Believe me if
+all those endearing young charms." At least it was nearer that than
+anything else. I had to tear myself away in the middle of what five
+out of seven people finally would have guessed was "Way down upon the
+Suwanee River." The faces of the audience were still wreathed in that
+expression you may catch on a few faces at Carnegie Hall.
+
+Monday there was a chambermaids' meeting. Much excitement. They had
+been getting seven dollars a week. The management wished to change and
+pay them by the month, instead--thirty dollars a month. There was
+something underhanded about it, the girls were sure of that. In
+addition there was a general feeling that everyone was in for more or
+less of a cut in wages about September. A general undertone of
+suspicion that day was over everything and everybody. Several
+chambermaids were waiting around the recreation room the few moments
+before the meeting. They were upset over that sign under the picture
+of Christ, "No cursing no stealing when tempted look on his kindly
+face." As long as they'd been in that hotel they'd never heard no
+cursin' among the girls, and as for stealin'--well, they guessed the
+guests stole more than ever the girls did. There were too many
+squealers around that hotel, that was the trouble. One girl spoke up
+and said it wasn't the hotel. New York was all squealers--worst "race"
+she ever knew for meanness to one another--nothin' you'd ever see in
+the Irish!
+
+I thought back over the dinner conversation that noon. An Irish girl
+asked me what my hurry was, when my work didn't begin till 1.30. I
+told her I helped out the Spanish woman and remarked that I thought it
+wrong that she didn't get more pay than I. "Say," said the Irish girl,
+"you jus' look out for your own self in this world and don't you go
+round worryin' over no one else. You got number one to look out for
+and that's all."
+
+The excitement of the day was that the Big Boss for the first time
+took note of the fact I was alive. He said good evening and thought
+he'd look in my ice chest. My heart did flutter, but I knew I was
+safe. I had scrubbed and polished that ice chest till it creaked and
+groaned the Saturday night before. The brass parts were blinding. But
+there was too much food in it for that hour of the night. He called
+Schmitz--Schmitz was abject reverence and acquiescence. It was, of
+course, Kelly's fault for leaving so much stuff there when he went at
+3. And Kelly was gruff as a bear next day. Evidently the Big Boss
+spoke to him about sending stuff upstairs after the lunch rush was
+over. He almost broke the plates hurling things out of the ice box at
+2.30. And the names he called Schmitz I dare not repeat. He swore and
+he swore and he _swore_! And he stripped the ice box all but bare.
+
+How down on prohibition were Kelly and many of those waiters! Perhaps
+all the waiters, but I did not hear all express opinions. A waiter was
+talking to Kelly about it in front of my counter one day. "How can we
+keep this up?" the waiter moaned. "There was a time when if you got
+desperate you could take a nip and it carried you over. But I ask you,
+how can a man live when he works like this and works and then goes
+home and sits around and goes to bed, and then gets up and goes back
+and works and works, and then goes home and sits around? You put a
+dollar down on the table and look at it, and then pick it up and put
+it in your pocket again. Hell of a life, I say, and I don't see how we
+can keep it up with never a drink to make a man forget his troubles!"
+
+Kelly put forth that favorite claim that there was far more evil-doing
+of every sort and description since prohibition than before--and then
+added that everyone had his home-brew anyhow. He told of how the chefs
+and he got to the hotel early one morning and started to make up six
+gallons of home-brew down in our kitchen. Only, o' course, "some
+dirty guy had to go an' squeal" on 'em and Kelly 'most lost his job,
+did Kelly.
+
+I had a very nice Italian friend--second cook, he called himself--who
+used to come over to the compartment of Monsieur Le Bon Chef and talk
+over the partition to me every afternoon from four to half past. He
+also was not in the least fresh, but just talked and talked about many
+things. His first name in Italian was "Eusebio," but he found it more
+convenient in our land to go under the name of "Vwictor." He came from
+a village of fifty inhabitants not far from Turin, almost on the Swiss
+border, where they had snow nine months in the year. Why had he
+journeyed to America? "Oh, I donno. Italians in my home town have too
+little money and too many children."
+
+Victor was an intelligent talker. I asked him many questions about the
+labor problem generally. When he first came to this country seven
+years ago he started work in the kitchen of the Waldorf-Astoria. In
+those days pay for the sort of general unskilled work he did was
+fifteen to eighteen dollars a month. Every other day hours were from 6
+A.M. to 8.30 P.M.; in between days they got off from 2 to 5 in the
+afternoon. Now, in the very same job, a man works eight hours a day
+and gets eighteen dollars a week. Victor at present drew twenty-two
+dollars a week, plus every chef's allotment of two dollars and forty
+cents a week "beer money." (It used to be four bottles of beer a day
+at ten cents a bottle. Now that beer was a doubtful bestowal, the
+hotels issued weekly "beer money." You could still buy beer at ten
+cents a bottle, only practically everyone preferred the cash.)
+
+But Victor thought he was as well off seven years ago on eighteen
+dollars a month as he would be to-day on eighteen dollars a week.
+Then, it seems, he had a nice room with one other man for four dollars
+a month, including laundry. Now he rooms alone, it is true, but he
+pays five dollars a week for a room he claims is little, if any,
+better than the old one, and a dollar a week extra for laundry. Then
+he paid two to three dollars for a pair of shoes, now ten or twelve,
+and they wear out as fast as the two-dollar shoes of seven years
+before. Now fifty dollars for a suit no better than the one he used to
+get for fifteen dollars. Thus spoke Victor.
+
+Besides, Victor could save nothing now, for he had a girl, and you
+know how it is with women. It's got to be a present all the time. You
+can't get 'em by a store window without you go in and buy a waist or a
+hat or goodness knows what all a girl doesn't manage to want. He went
+into detail over his recent gifts. Why was he so generous as all that
+to his fair one? Because if he didn't get the things for her he was
+afraid some other man would.
+
+Nor could Victor understand how people lived in this country without
+playing more. Every night, every single night, he must find some
+countryman and play around a little bit before going to bed. "These
+fellas who work and work all day, and then eat some dinner, and then
+go home and sit around and go to bed." No, Victor preferred death to
+such stagnation. If it was only a game of cards and a glass of wine
+(prohibition did not seem to exist for Victor and his countrymen) or
+just walking around the streets, talking. _Anything_, so long as it
+was _something_.
+
+Victor was a union man. Oh, sure. He was glowing with pride and
+admiration in the union movement in Italy--there indeed they
+accomplished things! But in this country, no, the union movement would
+never amount to much here. For two reasons. One was that working
+people on the whole were treated too well here to make good unionists.
+Pay a man good wages and give him the eight-hour day--what kind of a
+union man will he make? The chances are he won't join at all.
+
+But the main reason why unions would never amount to much here was
+centered in the race question. Victor told of several cooks' strikes
+he had been in. What happens? A man stands up and says something, then
+everybody else says, "Don't listen to him; he's only an Irishman."
+Some one else says something, and everyone says, "Don't pay any
+attention to him; he's only an Italian." The next man--he's only a
+Russian, and so on.
+
+Then pretty soon what happens next? Pretty soon a Greek decides he'll
+go back to work, and then all the Greeks go back; next an Austrian
+goes back--all his countrymen follow. And, anyhow, says my Italian
+friend Eusebio, you can't understand nothin' all them foreigners say,
+anyhow.
+
+I asked him if Monsieur Le Bon Chef after his start as a strike
+breaker had finally joined a union. "Oh, I guess he's civilized now,"
+grinned Victor.
+
+Numerous times one person or another about our hotel spoke of the
+suddenness with which the workers there would be fired. "Bing, you
+go!" just like that. Kelly, who had been working there over two years,
+told me that the only way to think of a job was to expect to be fired
+every day. He claimed he spent his hour's ride in to work every
+morning preparing himself not to see his time card in the rack, which
+would mean no more job for him.
+
+I asked Victor one day about the girl who had held my job a year and a
+half and why she was fired. There was a story for you! Kelly a few
+days before had told me that he was usually able to "get" anybody.
+"Take that girl now what had your job. I got her. She was snippy to me
+two or three times and I won't stand that. It's all right if anybody
+wants to get good and mad, but I detest snippy folks. So I said to
+myself, 'I'll get you, young lady,' and within three days I had her!"
+
+Kelly was called away and never finished the story, but Victor did.
+The girl, it seems, got several slices of ham one day from one of the
+chefs. She wrapped them carefully in a newspaper and later started up
+the stairs with the paper folded under her arm, evidently bound for
+the locker room. Kelly was standing at the foot of the stairs--"Somebody
+had tipped him off, see?"
+
+"What's the news to-day?" asked Kelly.
+
+"'Ain't had time to read the paper yet," the girl replied.
+
+"Suppose we read it now together," said Kelly, whereupon he slipped
+the paper out from under her arm and exposed the ham to view.
+
+"You're fired!" said Kelly.
+
+He sent her up to the Big Boss, and he did everything he could think
+of to get the girl to tell which chef had given her the ham. The girl
+refused absolutely to divulge that.
+
+The Big Boss came down to our kitchen. He asked each chef in turn if
+he had given the girl the ham, and each chef in turn said _No_.
+
+The Big Boss came back again in a few minutes. "We can put the
+detective force of the hotel on this job and find out within a few
+days who _did_ give that ham away and the man will be fired. But I
+don't want to do it that way. If the man who did it will confess right
+now that he did I promise absolutely he will not be fired."
+
+A chef spoke up, "I did it."
+
+Within fifteen minutes he was fired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As ever, the day for leaving arrived. This time I gave notice to Kelly
+three days in advance, so that a girl could be found to take my place.
+"The Big Chief and I both said when we seen you, she won't stay long
+at this job."
+
+"Why not?" I indignantly asked Kelly.
+
+"Ah, shucks!" sighed Kelly. Later: "Well, you're a good kid. You were
+making good at your job, too. Only I'll tell y' this. You're too
+conscientious. Don't pay."
+
+And still later, "Aw, forget this working business and get married."
+
+There was much red tape to leaving that hotel--people to see, cards to
+sign and get signed. Everyone was nice. I told Kelly--and the news
+spread--the truth, that I was unexpectedly going to Europe, being
+taken by the same lady who brought me out from California, her whose
+kids I looked after. If after six months I didn't like it in
+Europe--and everyone was rather doubtful that I would, because they
+don't treat workin' girls so very well in Europe--the lady would pay
+my way back to America second-class. (The Lord save my soul.)
+
+I told Schmitz I was going on the afternoon of the evening I was to
+leave. Of course he knew it from Kelly and the others. "Be sure you
+don't forget to leave your paring knife," was Schmitz's one comment.
+
+Farewells were said--I did surely feel like the belle of the ball that
+last half hour. On the way out I decided to let bygones be bygones and
+sought out Schmitz to say good-by.
+
+"You sure you left that paring knife?" said Schmitz.
+
+
+
+
+                              CONCLUSION
+
+
+Here I sit in all the peace and stillness of the Cape Cod coast, days
+filled with only such work as I love, and play aplenty, healthy
+youngsters frolicky about me, the warmest of friends close by. The
+larder is stocked with good food, good books are on the shelves, each
+day starts and ends with a joyous feeling about the heart.
+
+And I, this sunburnt, carefree person, pretend to have been as a
+worker among workers. Again some one says, "The artificiality of it!"
+
+Back in that hot New York the girls I labored among are still packing
+chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing "family,"
+beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming
+sheets and ticketing pillow cases. In the basement of the hotel some
+pantry girl, sweltering between the toaster and the egg boiler, is
+watching the clock to see if rush time isn't almost by.
+
+Granted at the start, if you remember, and granted through each
+individual job, it was artificial--my part in it all. But what in the
+world was there to do about that? I was determined that not forever
+would I take the say-so of others on every phase of the labor problem.
+Some things I would experience for myself. Certain it is I cannot know
+any less than before I started. Could I help knowing at least a bit
+more? I do know more--I know that I know more!
+
+And yet again I feel constrained to call attention to the fact that
+six jobs, even if the results of each experience were the very richest
+possible, are but an infinitesimal drop in what must be a full bucket
+of industrial education before a person should feel qualified to speak
+with authority on the subject of labor. Certain lessons were learned,
+certain tentative conclusions arrived at. They are given here for what
+they may be worth and in a very humble spirit. Indeed, I am much more
+humble in the matter of my ideas concerning labor than before I took
+my first job.
+
+Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned was that a deep distrust of
+generalizations has been acquired, to last, I hope, the rest of life.
+It is so easy, so comfortable, to make a statement of fact to cover
+thousands of cases. Nowhere does the temptation seem to be greater
+than in a discussion of labor. "Labor wants this and that!" "Labor
+thinks thus and so!" "Labor does this and the other thing!" Thus
+speaks the labor propagandist, feeling the thrill of solid millions
+behind him; thus speaks the "capitalist," feeling the antagonism of
+solid millions against him.
+
+And all this time, how many hearts really beat as one in the labor
+world?
+
+Indeed, the situation would clear up with more rapidity if we went to
+the other extreme and thought of labor always as thirty million
+separate individuals. We would be nearer the truth than to consider
+them as this one great like-minded mass, all yearning for the same
+spiritual freedom; all eager for the downfall of capitalism.
+
+What can one individual know of the hopes and desires of thirty
+millions? Indeed, it is a rare situation where one person can speak
+honestly and intelligently for one hundred others. Most of us know
+precious little about ourselves. We understand still less concerning
+anyone else. In a very general way, everyone in the nation wants the
+same things. That is a good point to remember, for those who would
+exaggerate group distinctions. In a particular way, no two people
+function exactly alike, have the same ambitions, same capacities.
+
+There is, indeed, no great like-minded mass of laborers. Instead we
+have millions of workers split into countless small groups, whose
+group interests in the great majority of cases loom larger on the
+horizon than any hold the labor movement, as such, might have on them.
+Such interests, for instance, as family, nationality, religion,
+politics. Besides, there is the division which sex interests and
+rivalries make--the conflict, too, between youth and age.
+
+Yet for the sake of a working efficiency we must do a minimum of
+classifying. Thirty million is too large a number to handle
+separately. There seems to be a justification for a division of labor,
+industrially considered, into three groups, realizing the division is
+a very loose one:
+
+     1. Labor or class-conscious group.
+     2. Industrially conscious group.
+     3. Industrially nonconscious group.
+
+The great problem of the immediate future is to get groups 1 and 3
+into Group 2. The more idealistic problem of the more distant future
+is to turn a great industrially conscious group into a socially
+conscious group.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the first group, the labor or class-conscious group, is meant the
+members of the American Federation of Labor, Industrial Workers of the
+World, four railroad Brotherhoods, Amalgamated Clothing Workers,
+socialist and communist organizations--workers whose affiliations with
+certain bodies tend to make them ultraconscious of the fact that they
+are wage workers and against the capitalist system. Class antagonism
+is fostered. There is much use of the word "exploited." In their press
+and on their platforms such expressions are emphasized as "profits for
+the lazy who exploit the workers." Everything possible is done to
+paint labor white, the employer black, forgetting that no side has the
+monopoly in any shade.
+
+To those who from sympathy or antagonism would picture at least
+organized labor as like-minded, it must be pointed out that for the
+great part the several millions represented by Group 1 are perhaps
+more often warring in their aims and desires than acting as one. Never
+have they acted as one. Organized labor represents but a fraction of
+labor as a whole. Some more or less spectacular action on the part of
+capital against labor always tends to solidify the organized workers.
+They are potentially like-minded in specific instances. Otherwise the
+interests of the carpenters' union tends to overshadow the interests
+of the A. F. of L. as a whole; the interests of the A. F. of L. tend
+most decidedly to overshadow the interests of organized labor as a
+whole. Socialists bark at communists. Charges of capitalist tendencies
+are made against the four Brotherhoods. The women's unions feel
+legislated against in the affairs of labor. Indeed, only utter
+stupidity on the part of capital ever could weld organized labor into
+enough solidarity to get society or anyone else agitated for long.
+Much of the "open shop" fight borders on such stupidity.
+
+Group 2 is at present but an infinitesimal fraction of labor. It
+comprises those workers whose background has been fortunate enough, as
+to both heredity and environment, to allow of their main industrial
+interests centering around the doing of their particular job well for
+the sake of their industry as a whole, to which a sentiment of loyalty
+has been aroused and held. There is no feeling of class antagonism, no
+assurance that the interests of labor are forever inimical to those of
+the employer, and _vice versa_. Where such an attitude exists on the
+part of workers it presupposes an employer of unusual breadth of
+understanding or a deep love for his fellow-man. As co-operation in
+industry can be shown to pay socially and financially, so may this
+type of employer come more and more to supersede the old-fashioned
+"boss."
+
+Group 3, the industrially nonconscious workers, includes the great
+majority of labor in the United States. Under this heading come all
+those who for reasons connected with the type of industry engaged in,
+or because of individual or sex characteristics, remain apart from any
+so-called labor movement. Practically all women fall under this head,
+most of the foreign labor population, most of unskilled labor. Many
+members of labor organizations technically belonging in Group 1 really
+fall under Group 3. The great majority of American labor undoubtedly
+are not class or group conscious in the sense that they feel
+themselves as workers pitted against a capitalist class.
+Temperamentally, intellectually, the doctrines of Karl Marx are not
+for them. They never heard of Karl Marx. They get up and go to work in
+the morning. During the day they dub away at something or other,
+whatever it may be--the chances are it changes rather often--putting
+no more effort into the day's work than is necessary to hold down an
+uninteresting job. They want their pay at the end of the week. Many
+have not the minimum intellectual capacity necessary to do a piece of
+work properly. Many more have not the minimum physical capacity
+required for even routine tasks. Very many, indeed, are nervous
+misfits.
+
+Yet a goodly number in Group 3 represent a high type of worker to whom
+the doctrine of class warfare is repugnant, and yet whose industrial
+experience has never resulted in making them industrially conscious.
+They feel no particular call to show more than average interest in
+their job.
+
+Peace, efficiency, production in industry, can come only as Group 2
+increases. To recruit from Group 1 will always be difficult. Once
+labor feels itself hostile to the employer and his interests, which is
+another way of saying, once the employing group by its tactics
+succeeds in making labor conclude that "the working class and the
+employing class have nothing in common," the building up of a spirit
+of co-operation is difficult indeed. Class consciousness is poor soil
+in which to plant any seeds of industrial enthusiasm.
+
+Would you, then, asks a dismayed unionist, build up your so-called
+industrially conscious group at the expense of organized labor? The
+answer is a purely pragmatic one, based on the condition of things as
+they are, not as idealists would have them. Rightly or wrongly, the
+American employing group long ago decided that the organized-labor
+movement was harmful to American industry. The fact that the labor
+movement was born of the necessity of the workers, and in the main
+always flourished because of the continued need of the workers, was
+never taken into account. Every conceivable argument was and is used
+against organized labor. Many of those arguments are based on half
+truths; or no truths at all. The fact remains that probably the
+majority of the American public believes the organized-labor movement
+to be against our social, civic, and industrial welfare. However
+right or wrong such a deduction is, it is safe to say that for the
+great part those who hold that belief do so in absolute good faith.
+
+The result is that the American labor movement has developed ever in
+an atmosphere so hostile that the effect on the growth of the movement
+has been that which hostile environment always exerts on any growing
+thing. It has warped the movement. It has emphasized everything
+hostile within the movement itself. No wonder a fighting spirit has
+ever been in evidence. No wonder only the fighting type of labor
+leader has emerged. The movement has had little or no opportunity for
+construction. Always the struggle for existence itself has been
+uppermost. No wonder the conclusion can justly be drawn that the
+American labor movement has not always played a highly productive role
+in American industry.
+
+It has been everybody's fault, if we are searching for a resting place
+for the blame of it all. Which gets us no place.
+
+The point is, looked at without the tinted glasses of either capital
+or labor, that the psychology of the American employer for the past,
+assuredly the present, and at least the near future, has been, and is,
+and will be, so inimical to organized labor that the movement would
+not be allowed to function as a constructive industrial force. Too
+much of its energies must go to fighting. At the same time, too much
+of the energies of the employer go to fighting it. The public pays
+the price, and it is enormous. The spiritual cost of bitterness of
+spirit far outweighs any monetary loss to industry, tremendous as that
+is.
+
+Why is not the present, then, a wise time in which to encourage an
+alternative movement, one that has not the effect of a red rag to a
+bull? Labor can shout its loudest; the fact remains that in this
+country labor is very far from controlling the industrial situation.
+Therefore, the employer must still be taken into account in any
+program of industrial reform. That being so, it might be saner to try
+some scheme the employer will at least listen to than stubbornly
+continue to fight the issue out along the old lines of organized labor
+alone, at the very mention of which the average employer grows red in
+the face.
+
+It is not, indeed, that we would do away with the organized-labor
+movement, if we could. The condition is far too precarious for that.
+Labor too often needs the support of unionism to keep from being
+crushed. The individual too often needs the educational influence
+organization exerts. Organized labor, despite the handicaps within and
+without, has too much of construction to its credit. The point is,
+further growth in the organized-labor movement, considering the
+development forced upon the movement by its own past and the ever
+antagonistic attitude of business, will not, for the present and
+immediate future, necessarily spell peace, efficiency, production.
+Rather, continued, if not increased, bitterness.
+
+What is the development, at least for the present and immediate
+future, which will improve the situation?
+
+The first move--and by that we mean the thing to start doing
+_to-day_--is to begin converting the non-industrially conscious group
+into the industrially conscious group. Group 3 is peaceful--they call
+no attention to themselves by any unrest or demands or threats. But
+they are not efficient or productive, the reason being that they have
+not enough interest in their jobs, or in many cases are not physically
+or mentally competent. Theirs are sins of omission, not commission.
+
+The process of this conversion means many things. It means first and
+foremost an understanding of human nature; a realization that the
+great shortcoming of industry has been that it held, as organized, too
+little opportunity for a normal outlet to the normal and more or less
+pressing interests and desires of human beings.
+
+It worked in a vicious circle. The average job gave the worker little
+or no chance to show any initiative, to feel any sense of ownership or
+responsibility, to use such intellect and enthusiasm as he possessed.
+The attitude of the average employer built up no spirit of loyalty or
+co-operation between management and men. Hence these very human
+tendencies, compelling expression in a normal personality, became
+atrophied, as far as the job was concerned, and sought such
+functioning as a discouraging environment left them capable of in
+fields outside of industry--in many cases, within the labor movement
+itself. The less capacity the job called out, the more incapable the
+worker became. Tendencies inherent in human nature, whose expressions
+all these years could have been enriching the individual and industry,
+and therefore the nation as a whole, have been balked entirely, or
+shunted off to find expression often in antisocial outlets. In some
+cases the loss to industry was small, since the individual capacities
+at best were small. In other cases the loss was great indeed. In every
+case, encouragement of the use of capacities increases the
+possibilities of those capacities.
+
+The first step in this process of conversion then is to reorganize the
+relationship between management and men so that as many outlets as
+possible within industry can be found for those human expressions
+whose functioning will enrich the individual and industry. Which means
+that little by little the workers must share in industrial
+responsibilities. The job itself, with every conceivable invention for
+calling out the creative impulse, can never, under the machine
+process, enlist sufficient enthusiasm for sustained interest and
+loyalty on the part of the worker. He must come to have a word in
+management, in determining the conditions under which he labors five
+and a half to seven days a week.
+
+It is a nice point here. The parlor Bolshevik pictures all labor eager
+and anxious and capable of actually controlling industry. The fact of
+the matter is that most individuals from any and every walk of life
+prefer to sidestep responsibility. Yet everyone does better under
+some. Too much may have a more disastrous effect than not enough--to
+the individual as well as industry. Here again is where there must be
+caution in generalizing. Each employer has a problem of his own. Nor
+can the exact amount of responsibility necessary to call out maximum
+efficiency and enthusiasm ever be determined in advance.
+
+I have talked to numerous employers whose experience has been the
+same. At first their employees showed no desire for any added
+responsibility whatever. Had there not been the conviction that they
+were on the right track, the whole scheme of sharing management with
+the workers would have been abandoned. Little by little, however,
+latent abilities were drawn out; as more responsibilities were
+intrusted to the workers, their capacities for carrying the
+responsibilities increased. In two cases that I know of personally,
+the employees actually control the management of their respective
+companies. In both these companies the employers announced that their
+businesses were making more money than under one-sided management.
+
+On the whole, this development of the partnership idea in industry is
+a matter of the necessary intellectual conviction that the idea is
+sound--whether that conviction be arrived at _via_ ethics or "solid
+business judgment"--to be followed by the technical expert who knows
+how to put the idea into practice. That he will know only after
+careful study of each individual plant as a situation peculiar unto
+itself. He is a physician, diagnosing a case of industrial anaemia. As
+in medicine, so industry has its quacks--experts who prescribe pink
+pills for pale industries, the administration of which may be attended
+with a brief show of energy and improvement, only to relapse into the
+old pallor. As between a half-baked "expert" and an "ignorant"
+employer whose heart is in the right place--take the employer. If he
+sincerely feels that long enough has he gone on the principle, "I'll
+run my business as I see fit and take suggestions from no one"; if it
+has suddenly come over him that, after all, the employee is in most
+ways but another like himself, and that all this time that employee
+might be laboring under the notion, often more unconscious than
+conscious, that he would "like to run his job as he saw fit and take
+suggestions from no one"; if, then, that employer calls his men
+together and says, "let's run the business as we all together see fit
+and take suggestions from one another"--then is that employer and that
+business on the road to industrial peace, efficiency, and production,
+expert or no expert. The road is uphill, the going often rough and
+discouraging, but more often than not the load of management becomes
+lighter, easing overburdened muscles; the load of labor in a sense
+heavier, yet along with the added weight, as they warm to the task
+there develops a sense that they are trusted, are necessary to the
+success of the march, that they now are men, doing man-sized work.
+Perhaps in only a minimum of cases will the load ever be divided
+"fifty-fifty." Too soon would the workers tire of their added burden,
+too few could carry the added weight. The fact remains that with
+management carrying the whole load, the march is going very badly
+indeed on the whole. At times the procession scarcely seems to move.
+There can surely be no harm in the employing end shifting a bit of the
+burden. A bit cannot wreck either side. Managerial shoulders may feel
+more comfortable under the decreased weight and try another shift.
+
+In recruiting Group 2 from Group 3, it is the employer, on the whole,
+who must take the initiative. Labor may show no desire to help
+shoulder the burden. Yet they must shoulder some of it to amount to
+anything themselves, if for no other reason. It may take actual
+pushing and shoving at first to get them on their way.
+
+Recruiting from Group 1 is a different matter. There sometimes are
+workers who would grab most of the load at the start--or all of it.
+Their capacities are untried, the road and its twistings and turnings
+is unknown to them. Each side has been throwing stones at the other,
+tripping each other up. There is a hostile spirit to begin with, a
+spirit of distrust between management and men. Here then is a more
+difficult problem. It is more than a matter of shifting the load a
+bit; it is a matter of changing the spirit as well. That takes much
+patience, much tact. It is not a case of the employer making all the
+overtures. Each side is guilty of creating cause for suspicion and
+distrust. Each side has to experience a change of heart. It is one
+thing to convince a previously unthinking person; it is another to
+bring about a change of heart in one frankly antagonistic. Making
+industrially enthusiastic workers out of class and labor-conscious
+workers will indeed be a task requiring determination, tact, patience
+without end, and wisdom of many sorts--on both sides. Some one has to
+sell the idea of co-operation to labor as well as to the employer. And
+then know the job is only begun. But the biggest start is made when
+the atmosphere is cleared so that the partnership idea itself can take
+root. Some on both sides never will be converted.
+
+What about the great body of workers unfit physically, mentally,
+nervously, to carry any additional load at all? Here is a field for
+the expert. Yet here is a field where society as a whole must play a
+part. Most of the physical, mental, nervous harm is done before ever
+the individual reaches industry. Indeed, at most, industry is but one
+influence out of many playing on the lives of the human beings who
+labor. Nor can it ever be studied as a sphere entirely apart. Much is
+aggravated by conditions over which industry itself has no direct
+control. Health centers, civic hygienic measures of all sorts, are of
+great importance. A widespread education in the need of healthy and
+spiritually constructive influences during the first ten years of
+life, if we are to have healthy, wholesome, and capable adults, must
+gain headway. Saner preparation for life as a whole must take the
+place of the lingering emphasis on the pedagogical orthodoxy still
+holding sway.
+
+While industry is not responsible for many conditions which make
+subnormal workers, industry cannot evade the issue or shift the burden
+if it desires peace, efficiency, production. These goals cannot be
+obtained on any basis other than the welfare of the workers. No matter
+how sane is welfare work within the plant, there must develop a
+growing interest and understanding in "off the plant" work. The job is
+blamed for much. Yet often the worker's relation to the job is but the
+reflection of the conditions he left to go to work in the morning, the
+conditions he returns to after the day's work is done. There again is
+a vicious circle. The more unfortunate the conditions of a man's home
+life--we do not refer to the material side alone--the less efficiently
+he is apt to work during the day. The less efficiently he works during
+the day, the less competent he will be to better his home conditions.
+
+When men expressed themselves in their particular handicraft they
+found much of their joy in life in their work. One of the by-products
+of large-scale industry and the accompanying subdivision of labor has
+been the worker's inevitable lack of interest in the monotonous job.
+Since too long hours spent at mechanical, repetitious labor result in
+a lowered standard of efficiency, and rebellion on the part of the
+worker, there has followed a continual tendency toward a reduction in
+the length of the working day. The fewer hours spent on the job, the
+greater the opportunity conditions outside industry proper have to
+exert their influence on character formation. With the shorter working
+day there develop more pressing reasons than ever for the emphasis on
+off-the-plant activities, and wholesome home and civic conditions. All
+these together, and not industry alone, make the worker.
+
+The growth of the spirit and fruit of industrial democracy will not
+bring any millennium. It will merely make a somewhat better world to
+live in here and now. The dreamers of us forget that in the long run
+the world can move only so far and so fast as human nature allows for,
+and few of us evaluate human nature correctly. The six industrial
+experiences in this book have made me feel that the heart of the world
+is even warmer than I had thought--folk high and low are indeed
+readier to love than to hate, to help than to hinder. But on the whole
+our circles of understanding and interest are bounded by what our own
+eyes see and our own ears hear. The problems of industry are
+enormously aggravated by the fact that the numbers of individuals
+concerned even in particular plants, mills, mines, factories, stretch
+the capacities of human management too often beyond the possibilities
+of human understanding and sympathy. More or less artificial machinery
+must be set up to bring management and men in contact with each other
+to the point where the problems confronting each side are within
+eyesight and earshot of the other. Up to date it has been as
+impossible for labor to understand the difficulties of management as
+for management to understand the difficulties of labor. Neither side
+ever got within shouting distance of the other--except, indeed, to
+shout abuse! Many a strike would have been averted had the employer
+been willing to let his workers know just what the conditions were
+which he had to face; or had the workers in other instances shown any
+desire to take those conditions into account.
+
+For, when all is said and done, the real solution of our industrial
+difficulties lies not in expert machinery, however perfect, for the
+adjustment or avoidance of troubles. "Industrial peace must come not
+as a result of the balance of power with a supreme court of appeal in
+the background. It must arise as the inevitable by-product of mutual
+confidence, real justice, constructive good will."[3]
+
+    [Footnote 3: From Constitution of Industrial Council for the
+    Building Industry, England.]
+
+Any improved industrial condition in the future must take as its
+foundation the past one hundred years of American industry. The fact
+that this foundation was not built of mutual confidence, real justice,
+constructive good will is what makes the task of necessary
+reconstruction so extremely difficult. Countless persons might be
+capable of devising the mechanical approach to peace and
+prosperity--courts of arbitration, boards of representation, and the
+like. But how bring about a change of heart in the breast of millions?
+
+It is a task so colossal that one would indeed prefer to lean heavily
+on the shoulders of an all-wise Providence and let it go with the
+consoling assurance that, as to a solution, "the Lord will provide."
+But the echoes of recriminations shouted by each side against the
+other; the cries of foul play; the accusations of willful injustice;
+the threats of complete annihilation of capital by organized labor, of
+organized labor by capital--must reach to heaven itself, and
+Providence might well pause in dismay. Constructive good will? Where
+make a beginning?
+
+The beginnings, however, are being made right on earth, and here and
+now. It is a mistake to look for spectacular changes, reforms on a
+large scale. Rather do the tendencies toward mutual understanding and
+this all-necessary good will evince themselves only here and there, in
+quiet experiments going on in individual plants and factories. The
+seed will bear fruit but slowly. But the seed is planted.
+
+Planted? Nay, the seed has been there forever, nor have the harshest
+developments in the most bloodless of industries ever been able to
+crush it out. It is part and parcel of human nature that we can love
+more easily and comfortably than hate, that we can help more readily
+than hinder. Flourishing broadcast through all human creation is
+enough good will to revolutionize the world in a decade. It is not the
+lack of good will. Rather the channels for its expression are
+blocked--blocked by the haste and worry of modern life, by the
+multiplicity of material possessions which so frequently choke our
+sympathies; by the cruelties of competition, too often run to the
+extremes of crushing out inborn human kindness. And most of all,
+blocked by ignorance and misunderstanding of our fellow-beings.
+
+It is a sound business deduction that the greatest stumbling blocks in
+the difficulties between labor and capital to-day resolve themselves
+down to just that lack of understanding of our fellow-beings. Yet
+without that understanding, how build up a spirit of mutual
+confidence, real justice, constructive good will? On what other
+foundation can a saner industrialism be built?
+
+The place to make the beginning is in each individual shop and
+business and industry. The spark to start the blaze in each human
+heart, be it beating on the side of capital or on that of labor, is
+the sudden revelation that every worker is far more the exact
+counterpart of his employer in the desires of his body and soul than
+otherwise; that the employer is no other than the worker in body and
+soul, except that his scope and range of problems to be met are on a
+different level. True it is that we are all far more "sisters and
+brothers under the skin" than strangers.
+
+No sane person is looking for a perfect industrialism, is watching for
+the day when brotherly love will be the motive of all human conduct.
+But it is within the bounds of sanity to work toward an increase in
+understanding between the human factors in industry; it is justifiable
+to expect improved industrial conditions, once increased understanding
+is brought about. Industry needs experts in scientific management, in
+mental hygiene, in cost accounting--in fields innumerable. But what
+industry needs more than anything else--more, indeed, than all the
+reformers--are translators--translators of human beings to one
+another. "Reforms" will follow of themselves.
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+                      _Books of Art and Artcraft_
+
+HISTORY OF ART BY ELIE FAURE
+
+Vol. I--Ancient Art
+
+_Translated from the French by Walter Pach_
+
+No History of Art fills the place of this one. First, it shows art to
+be the expression of the race, not an individual expression of the
+artist. Second, it reverses the usual process of art history--it tells
+_why_, not _how_, man constructs works of art. Nearly 200 unusual and
+beautiful illustrations selected by the author.
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMBROIDERY IN AMERICA BY CANDACE WHEELER
+
+A history of embroidery in America, from the quill and beadwork of the
+American Indians and the samplers of Colonial days, to the achievement
+of the present. _Thirty-two pages of illustrations_--some in full
+color--correlate perfectly with the text and furnish examples for the
+student or general reader. A book to delight the collector and to be a
+complete, authentic guide, historically and as to methods, for the art
+student, the designer, and the practical worker.
+
+HOW FRANCE BUILT HER CATHEDRALS BY ELIZABETH BOYLE O'REILLY
+
+The Boston _Herald_ writes: "It is a monumental work, of living
+interest alike to the erudite devotee of the arts and to the person
+who simply enjoys, in books or his travels, the wonderful and
+beautiful things that have come from the hand of man.... In a
+particularly happy fashion, Miss O'Reilly has told the story of the
+French cathedrals against a human background--of the great men and
+women of the time." _With 31 illustrations in tint._
+
+
+                  _Life Stories of Famous Americans_
+
+MARK TWAIN: A Biography BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
+
+Mr. Paine gave six years to the writing of this famous life history,
+traveling half way round the world to follow in the footsteps of his
+subject; during four years of the time he lived in daily association
+with Mark Twain, visited all the places and interviewed every one who
+could shed any light upon his subject.
+
+EDISON: HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS BY FRANK LEWIS DYER AND THOMAS
+COMMERFORD MARTIN
+
+The authors are men both close to Edison. One of them is his counsel,
+and practically shares his daily life; the other is one of his leading
+electrical experts. It is the personal story of Edison and has been
+read and revised by Edison himself.
+
+MY QUARTER CENTURY OF AMERICAN POLITICS BY CHAMP CLARK
+
+A fascinating story of one of the most prominent and best liked men in
+American political history of our times, which will appeal to persons
+of all shades of political belief. The book is not only interesting,
+but highly important as a permanent record of our generation.
+_Illustrated._
+
+LIFE OF THOMAS NAST BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
+
+The story of America's first and foremost cartoonist; the man who
+originated all the symbols; whose pictures elected presidents and
+broke up the _Tweed ring_. More than four hundred reproductions of
+Nast's choicest work.
+
+                           HARPER & BROTHERS
+                       FRANKLIN SQUARE   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
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