Prisoners of Poverty Part 7

over with linen thread, an' you're always piecing out an' altering shapes. It's nothing to sew up a thing when you've once got it pieced together. If it's beaver, all the long hairs must be picked out, an'

it's the same with sealskin. We made up everything; sable an' Siberian squirrel, bear, fox, marten, mink, otter, an' all the rest. There were some girls very slow in learning that only got a dollar a week, an' in the end four, but most of them can average about five. I was seventeen when I began, an' in a year I had caught all the knack there is to it, an' was an expert, certain of ten dollars in the season an' about six in between. It's generally piece-work, with five or six months when you can earn ten or twelve dollars even, an' the rest of the time five or six dollars. In the busiest times there'd be fifty girls perhaps, but this was only for two or three months, an' then they discharged them. 'Tisn't a trade I'd ever let a girl take up if I could help it; I suppose somebody's got to do it, but there ought to be higher wages for those that do.

"This went on five years. I won't take time telling about Leander, but he'd got to be a clerk at Ridley's an' had eight hundred dollars a year, an' we'd been engaged for two years, an' just waiting to see if he wouldn't get another rise. I knew we could manage on that. Leander was more ambitious than me. He said we ought to live in a showy boarding-house an' make our money tell that way, but I told him I was used to the Spring Street house, an' we could have a whole floor an' be snug as could be an' Hattie board with us. He gave in, an' it's well he did; for we hadn't been married six months before he had a hemorrhage an' just went into quick consumption. I'd kept right on with my trade, but I was pulled down myself an' my eyelids so swollen sometimes I could hardly see out of 'em. But I got a sewing-machine from money I'd saved, an' I took in work from a place on Ca.n.a.l Street,--a good one, too, that always paid fair. The trouble was my eyes. I'd used 'em up, an' they got so I couldn't see the needle nor sew straight, an' had to give up the sewing, an' then I didn't know which way to turn, for there was Leander.

The old folks were up there still, wrastling with the stones, but poorer every year, an' I couldn't get him up there. Leander was patient as a saint, but he fretted over me an' how I was to get along.

"'You're not to worry,' says I. 'There's more ways than one of earning, an' if my eyes is bad, I've got two hands an' know how to use 'em. I'll take a place an' do housework if I can't do nothing else.'

"You'd never believe how the thought o' that weighed on him. He'd wake me up in the night to say, 'Now, Almiry, jest give up that thought an'

promise me you'll try something else. I think I'd turn in my grave if I had to know you was slavin' in anybody's kitchen.'

"'What's the odds?' I said. 'You have to be under orders whatever you do. I think it won't be a bad change from the shop.'

"He took on so, though, that to quiet him I promised him I wouldn't do it unless I had to, an' 'twasn't long after that that he died. Between the doctor's bill--an' he was a kind man, I will say, an' didn't charge a tenth of what he had ought to--an' the funeral an' all, I was cleaned out of everything. I'd had to p.a.w.n a month before he died, an' was just stripped. Sewing was no good. My eyes went back on me like everything else, an' in a fortnight I knew there wasn't anything for it but getting a place. I left such things as I had in charge of the old ladies an' answered an advertis.e.m.e.nt for 'a capable girl willing to work.'

"Well, it was a handsome house an' elegant things in the parlors an'

bedrooms, but my heart sunk when she took me into the kitchen. The last girl had gone off in a rage an' left everything, an' there was grease and dirt from floor to ceiling. It was a deep bas.e.m.e.nt, with one window an' a door opening right into the area with gla.s.s set in it, an' iron bars to both; but dirty to that degree you couldn't see three feet beyond; c.o.c.kroaches walking round at their ease an' water-bugs so thick you didn't know where to lay anything.

"'You'll have things quite your own way,' the lady said, 'for I never come into the kitchen. Bridget attends to upstairs, but you attend to fires and the meals and washing and ironing, and I expect punctuality and everything well done.'

"'At least it sounds independent,' I thought, and I made up my mind to try it, for the wages were fifteen dollars a month, an' that with board seemed doing well. Bridget came down presently. She was seventeen an' a pretty girl rather, but she looked fit to drop, an' fell down in a chair.

"'It's the bell,' she said. 'The comin' an' goin' here niver ceases, an'

whin 'tisn't the front door it's her own bell, an' she'll jingle it or holler up the tube in the middle o' the night if she takes a notion.'

"I wouldn't ask questions, for I thought I should find out soon enough, so I said I'd like to go up to my room a minute.

"'It's our room you'll mane,' she said. 'There's but the one, an' it's hard enough for two to be slapin' on a bed that's barely the width o'

one.'

"My heart sank then, for I'd always had a place that was comfortable all my life, but it sunk deeper when I went up there. A hall bedroom, with a single bed an' a small table, with a washbowl an' small pitcher, one chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things; that was all except a torn shade at the window. I looked at the bed. The two ragged comfortables were foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an' all, an' I began to cry.

"'You don't look as if you was used to the likes of it,' Bridget said.

'There's another room the same as this but betther. Why not ax for it?'

"I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs. Melrose, who smiled as if she thought I had been enjoying myself.

"'I'm perfectly willing to try an' do your work as well as I know how,'

I said, 'but I must have a place to myself an' clean things in it.'

"'Highty-tighty!' says she. 'What impudence is this? You'll take what I give you and be thankful to get it. Plenty as good as you have slept in that room and never complained.'

"'Then it's time some one did,' I said. 'I don't ask anything but decency, an' if you can't give it I must try elsewhere.'

"'Then you'd better set about it at once,' she says, an' with that I bid her good-afternoon an' walked out. I had another number in my pocket, an' I went straight there; an' this time I had sense enough to ask to see my room. It was bare enough, but clean. There were only three in the family, an' it was a little house on Perry Street. There I stayed two years. They were strange years. The folks were set in their ways an'

they had some money. But every day of that time the lady cut off herself from the meat what she thought I ought to have, an' ordered me to put away the rest. She allowed no dessert except on Sunday, an' she kept cake and preserves locked in an upstairs closet. I wouldn't have minded that. What I did mind was that from the time I entered the house till I left it there was never a word for me beyond an order, any more than if I hadn't been a human being. She couldn't find fault. I was born clean, an' that house shone from top to bottom; but a dog would have got far more kindness than they gave me. At last I said I'd try a place where there were children an' maybe they'd like me. Mrs. Smith was dumb with surprise when I told her I must leave. 'Leave!' she says. 'We're perfectly satisfied. You're a very good girl, Almira.' 'It's the first time you've ever told me so,' I says, 'an' I think a change is best all round.' She urged, but I was set, an' I went from there when the month was up.

"Well, my eyes stayed bad for sewing, an' I must keep on at housework.

I've been in seven places in six years. I could have stayed in every one, an' about every one I could tell you things that make it plain enough why a self-respecting girl would rather try something else. I don't talk or think nonsense about wanting to be one of the family. I don't. I'd much rather keep to myself. But out of these seven places there was just one in which the mistress seemed to think I was a human being with something in me the same as in her. I've been underfed an'

worked half to death in two of the houses. The mistress expected just so much, an' if it failed she stormed an' went on an' said I was a shirk an' good for nothing an' all that. There was only one of them that had a decently comfortable room or that thought to give me a chance at a book or paper now an' then. As long as I had a trade I was certain of my evenings an' my Sundays. Now I'm never certain of anything. I'm not a shirk. I'm quick an' smart, an' I know I turn off work. In ten hours I earn more than I ever get. But I begin my day at six an' in summer at five, an' it's never done before ten an' sometimes later. This place I'm in now seems to have some kind of fairness about it, an' Mrs. Henshaw said yesterday, 'You can't tell the comfort it is to me, Almira, to have some one in the house I can trust. I hope you will be comfortable an'

happy enough to stay with us.' 'I'll stay till you tell me to go,' I says, an' I meant it. My little room looks like home an' is warm and comfortable. My kitchen is bright an' light, an' she's told me always to use the dining-room in the evenings for myself an' for friends. She tries to give me fair hours. If there were more like her there'd be more willing for such work, but she's the first one I've heard of that tries to be just. That's something that women don't know much about. When they do there'll be better times all round."

Here stands the record of a woman who has become invaluable to the family she serves, but whose experiences before this harbor was reached include every form of oppression and even privation. Many more of the same nature are recorded and are arranging themselves under heads, the whole forming an unexpected and formidable arraignment of household service in its present phases. This arraignment bides its time, but while it waits it might be well for the enthusiastic prescribers of household service as the easy and delightful solution of the working-woman's problem to ask how far it would be their own choice if reduced to want, and what justice for both sides is included in their personal theory of the matter.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO EXPERIMENTED.

The business face in the great cities is a.s.similating to such degree that all men are brothers in a sense and to an extent unrealized by themselves. Compet.i.tion has deepened lines, till one type of the employer in his first estate, while the struggle is still active and success uncertain, loses not only youth and freshness, but with them, too often, any token of owning a soul capable of looking beyond the muckrake by which money is drawn in. If he acquires calm and graciousness, it is the calmness of subtlety and the graciousness of the determined schemer, who, finding every man's hand practically against him, arranges his own life on the same basis, and wages war against the small dealer or manufacturer below and the monopolist above, his one pa.s.sionate desire being to escape from the ranks of the first and find his name enrolled among the last. He retains a number of negative virtues. He is, as a rule, "an excellent provider" where his own family is concerned, and he is kind beyond those limits if he has time for it.

He would not deliberately harm man or woman who serves him; but to keep even with his compet.i.tors--if possible, to get beyond them--demands and exhausts every energy, leaving none to spare for other purposes. Such knowledge as comes from perpetual contact with the grasping, scheming side of humanity is his in full. As the fortune grows and ease becomes certain, a well-fed, well-groomed look replaces the eager sharpness of the early days. He may at this stage turn to horses as the most positive source of happiness. He is likely also, with or without this tendency, to acquire a taste for art, measuring its value by what it costs, and to plan for himself a house representing the utmost that money can buy. But the house and its treasures is, after all, but a mausoleum, and the grave it covers holds the man that might have been. Life in its larger meanings has remained a sealed book, and the gold counted as chief good becomes at last an impenetrable barrier between him and any knowledge of what might have been his portion. He is content, and remains content till the end, and that new beginning in which the starved soul comes to the first consciousness of its own most desperate and pitiful poverty.

This for one type, and a type more and more common with every year of the system in which compet.i.tion is king. But here and there one finds another,--that of the man whose conscience remains sensitive, no matter what familiarity with legalized knavery may come, and who ponders the question of what he owes to those by whose aid his fortune is made. Nor is he the employer who evades the real issue by a series of what he calls benefactions, and who organizes colonies for his work-people, in which may be found all the charm of the feudal system, and an underlying despotism no less feudal. He would gladly make his workers copartners with him were intelligence enough developed among them to admit such action, and he experiments faithfully and patiently.

It is such an employer whose own words best give the story he has to tell. It is not an American that speaks but a German Jew,--a t.i.tle often the synonyme for depths of trickery, but more often than is known meaning its opposite in all points. Keen sagacity rules, it is true, but there is also a large and tender nature, sorrowing with the sorrow of humanity and seeking anxiously some means by which that sorrow may lessen. A small manufacturer, fighting his way against monopoly, he is determinately honest in every thread put into his goods, in every method of his trade; his face shrewd yet gentle and wise,--a face that child or woman would trust, and the business man be certain he could impose upon until some sudden turn brought out the shrewdness and the calm a.s.surance of absolute knowledge in his own lines. For thirty years and more his work has held its own, and he has made for himself a place in the trade that no crisis can affect. His own view of the situation is distinctly serious, but even for him there was a flickering smile as he recalled some pa.s.sages of the experience given here in part. His English limps slightly at moments of excitement, but his mastery of its shades of meaning never, and this is his version of the present relation between employer and employed:--

"In me always are two peoples,--one that loves work well, that must work ever to be happy, and one that will think and think ever how hard is life even with work that is good and with much to love. In village or in city, for I begin with one and go on to the other, in both alike it is work always that is too much; long hours when strength is gone and there should be rest, but when always man and woman, yes, and child, must go on for the little more that more hours will earn. For myself, I want not what is called pleasure when the day is done. A book that is good contents me, and is friend and amus.e.m.e.nt in one. But as I love a book more and more, and desire more time to be with them, I begin first to think, why should so many hours be given to work that there are none in which men have strength or time or desire left for something that is better? These things I think much of before I come to America. I have my trade from my father and his father. We are silk-weavers from the time silk is known, but for myself I have chosen ribbons, and it is ribbons I make all my life and that my son will make after me.

"At first when I come here to this country that for years I hope for and must not reach, because I am held to my father who is old--at first I have little money and can only be with another who manufactures. But already some dishonesties have come in. The colors are not firm; the silk has weight given it, so that more body than is belongs to the ribbon; there is an inch, maybe, cut short in the lengths. There is every way to make the most and give the least. And there is something that from the days I begin to think at all, seems ever injustice and wrong. Side by side it may be, men and women work together at the looms; but for the women it is half, sometimes two thirds, what the man can earn, yet the work the same. This is something to alter when time is ripe, and at last it is come. I have saved as I earned and added to what I bring with me, and I buy for myself the plant of a man who retires, and get me a place, this place where I am, and that changes little. His workers come with me,--a few, for I begin with four looms only, but soon have seven, and so go on. At first I think only of how I may shorten hours and make time for them to rest and learn what they will, but a good friend of mine from the beginning is doctor, and as I go on he speaks to me much of things I should do for health. And then I think of them and study, and I see that there is much I have never learned and that they must learn also with me.

"There is one thing that Americans will, more than all peoples of the earth. They will have a place so hot that breath is nowhere, and women more even than men. I begin to think how I shall keep them warm yet give them to breathe. The place is old, as you see. No builder thought ever of air in such time as this was built, and if they think to-day, it is chiefly wrong, for in all places I go one breathes the breath of all others, never true air of heaven. At first I open windows from top and before they come; but when they see it they cry out and say, 'O Mr.

B----! You want to freeze us!' 'Not so,' I say; 'I would make you healthy.' And they say, 'We're healthy enough. We don't want draughts.'

It is true. There were draughts, and I begin to think how this shall be changed, and try many things, and all of them they pull down or push out or stop up tight, whichever way will most surely abolish air. At last I bring up my doctor who is wise and can explain better than I, and I say that work may stop and all listen and learn. They listen but they laugh, all but one, and say, 'How funny! What is use of so much fuss?'

"While I do these things which I keep on and will not stop, finding best at last a shaft and a hole above, that they cannot pull out or reach to fill, I think of other things. They eat at noon what they bring,--pie that is dear to Americans, and small cakes, many of them; but good bread that has nourishment, or good drink like soup or coffee, no. They stand many hours and: faint and weak. So I say there must be good coffee for them, and I tell them, 'Girls, I will buy a big urn and there shall be coffee and milk, and for two cents you have a big cup so sweet as you will, or if you like better it shall be hot soup.' Above in a room was a a Swiss that knew good soup, and that would, if I pay her a little, buy all that is wanted and a make a big pot, so that each could have a bowl.

This also I would have them pay for, three cents a bowl, and they like this best, and it is done for three weeks. They go up there and have full bowls, and I have a long table made before a bench where sometimes they rest, with oil-cloth, and here they eat and are comfortable. Three days soup, three days hot coffee; and I have place where the men can heat what is in their pails.

"But they do such things! They pick out vegetable from soup and throw on the floor. They pour away coffee. They make the place like a home of animals, and when I say, 'Girls, I want much that all should be clean and nice, and that you never waste,' they laugh again. I find that difficult, for what answer can be made to laugh? I go on, but they break bowls and insult the Swiss that make the soup, and tell her I buy dog-meat and such, and she say she will no more of it. Then I call the doctor again and say to them, 'Listen while he tells you what is good to eat.' They were not all so fools, but the fool ones rule, and they listen, but they laugh always. That is American,--to laugh and think everything joke and not see what earnest must be for any good living. I give the coffee-urn to the best girl and tell her to have care of it, but do what we will they think somehow I am silly, and like best to eat their pie and then talk. A small pie at the corner is three cents, and they buy one, sometimes two, and it is sweet and fills and they are content. It is only men that think that will change a habit. I find for the worker always till thought begins they are conservative, and an experiment, a change, is distress to them. So I say, 'Let them do they will. Air is here and that they cannot stop, but for food I will do no more.'

"These all were small things, and as I went on I said, as in the beginning, that for those who did the same work must be the same wage.

My men had always ten dollars, and sometimes twelve or fifteen dollars a week; but the best woman had ten dollars, and she had worked five years and knew all. It is a law--unwritten, but still a law--that women shall not have what men earn; and when I say one is good as another, the brother of the woman I make equal with him said first this should never be; and when I said 'It must,' he talk to all the men at noon, and before the looms begin again they come and tell me that if I do so they will work no more. I talk to them all: 'This is a country where men boast always that woman has much honor, but I see not that she has more justice than where there is less honor. Shame on men that will let women work all the hours and as well as they,--yes, many times better,--and then threaten strike if they are paid the same!' But it was all no good.

For that time I must yield, because I had much work that was promised; but I said: 'For now I do as you will. With January, that is but a month away, it shall be as I will.'

"Well, I have tried. Many changes have been made, much time lost, much money. I call them to my house in the evening. I talk with them and try to teach them justice, and some are willing, but most not. New men spoil my work, and I lose much profit and take the old ones again. But this, too, is a small thing. My own mind goes on and I see that they should share with me. I read of co-operation, and to me it is truer than profit-sharing. I have seventy men and girls at work. I say they must understand this business. I will try to teach them. Two evenings a week I meet them all and talk and listen to them. One or two feel it plain.

For most they say, 'Old B---- wants to get a rise out of us somehow.' At last I see that they are too foolish to understand co-operation, but it may be they will let profit-sharing be a step. Over and over, many times over and over, I tell it all, and in the end some agree, and for a year it does well. But the next year was bad. Silk was high, and my ribbons honest ribbons and profit small; and when they saw how small, they cried that they were cheated and that I kept all for myself. I read them the books. I said, 'Here, you may see with your eyes. This year I make not enough to live if there were not other years in which I saved. I am almost failed. The business might stop, but I will go on for our names'

sake.' 'All a dodge,' they said. No words were plain enough to make them know. They even called me cheat and liar, there in the place where I had tried to work for them.

"And so I share profits no more. I give large wage. I never cut down, do the market what it will. But some things are plain. It is not alone oppression and greed from above that do what you call grind the worker.

No, I am not alone. There are men like me with a wish for humanity and wiser than I, and alike they are not heard when they speak; alike their wish is naught and their effort vain. It is ignorance that rules. There is no knowledge, no understanding. In my trade and in all trades I know it is the same. A man will not believe a fact, and he will believe that to cheat is all one over him can wish. Even my workers that care for me, a few of them, they laugh no more to my face, but they say: 'Oh, he has notions, that man! He will never get very rich, he has so many notions.'

They listen and they think a little. One man said yesterday: 'If this had been put in my head when I was a growing lad it would have straightened many a thing. Why ain't we taught?' And I said to him: 'Jacob, teachers are not taught. There is only one here, one there, that thinks what only it is well to learn,--justice for all the world. I who would do justice am made to wait, but the sin is with you, not with me.'

"So to-day I wait for such time as wisdom may come. My son is one with me in this. He has a plan and soon he will try, and where I failed his more knowledge may do better. But for me, I think that this generation must suffer much, and in pain and want learn, it may be, what is life.

To-day it knows not and cares not, save a few. How shall the many be made to know?"