Working With the Working Woman Part 11

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.s 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, c.o.c.kily. "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 b.u.t.tons 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 ap.r.o.n. 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 a.s.sumption 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 bas.e.m.e.nt-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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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 ap.r.o.n 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.