Working With the Working Woman Part 13

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 una.s.sorted 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 b.u.t.tons gone and the old fur collar, over my blue-checked ap.r.o.n, 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 a.s.sured 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 ch.o.r.es 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 b.u.t.toned coat. My wardrobe had all fitted in appropriately to candy and bra.s.s 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 b.u.t.tons. Sat.u.r.day 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 grat.i.tude 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 antic.i.p.ated.

"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 Sat.u.r.day" (I had told him I was in a hurry to get off for lunch this Sat.u.r.day) "because I shall want you should work Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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."