The Woman Who Toils Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND

Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl, and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at the same work]

"Ten years."

"And you make?"

"Well, I don't want to discourage you." ...

(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)

"... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve dollars a week."

"Then I will make four!"

(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of ignorance!)

"_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do housework!"

It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a day labour.

"Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?"

"I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here.

When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!"

My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate, as she, generous creature, took it to be.

"After you've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me."

Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!

Novel situations, long walks. .h.i.ther and thither through Lynn, stairs climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure cla.s.s under the use of instruments and materials d.a.m.ning softness and beauty from a woman's hands.

Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're awful! I do love a nice hand."

The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils, sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3]

[Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate the shop.]

Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a shift at a toilet.

Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper table was just enough room for the landlady to pa.s.s to and fro as she waited upon her nine guests.

No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst of the little world here a.s.sembled, than I felt the quick kindness of welcome.

My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew.

"Miss Ballard!" The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women besides myself and four men.

"I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange," said my hostess in her pretty Canadian _patois_. "I want her to be at home here."

I sat down.

"Oh, she'll be at home all right!" A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling good-fellowship.

"Come to work in the shops?"

"Yes."

"Ever been to Lynn before?"

"No; live in Paris--stranger."

"My, but that's hard--all alone here! Got a job?"

"Yes."

And I explained to the attentive interest of all.

From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or pa.s.sed to me the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every shred of appet.i.te, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's stifling heat would have dulled hunger.

Let it go! I was far too interested to eat.

The table was crowded with all manner of substances pa.s.sing for food--cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten at one time and at will; the drink was tea.

At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pa.s.s anywhere for a business man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed), then Maurice.

Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent.

Their att.i.tude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who suffer privation, who labour.

Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in good English and mediocre French.

"It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most has to get spoken of weeks in advance--introduced by friends, too!"

Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak for you to our foreladies."

Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my shoulder.

"Yes, _mon enfant_, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange place. _Ici nous sommes toute une famille_".

"All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a stranger, not all one family! I belong to the cla.s.s of the woman who, one day by chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face, brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.

Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social climber's ladder.

Not one family, but part of the cla.s.s whose tongues turn the _truffle_ buried in _pate de foie gras_; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a _canard a la presse_ throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry, eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.

Not one family, I blush to say! G.o.d will not have it so.