Working With the Working Woman Part 16

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 acc.u.mulate 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. Circ.u.mstances 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 surpa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sert 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 pa.s.ser-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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nts, 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 G.o.d.

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.