Working With the Working Woman Part 4

A tragedy the first pay day. I was so excited when that Sat.u.r.day came round, to see what it would all be like-to get my first pay envelope.

About 11.30 two men came in, one carrying a wooden box filled with little envelopes. Girls appear suddenly from every place and crowd around the two men. One calls out a number, the girl takes her envelope and goes off. I keep working away, thinking you are not supposed to step up till your number is called. But, lo! everyone seems paid off and the men departing, whereat I leave my work with beating heart and announce: "You didn't call 1075." But it seems I was supposed to step up and give 1075. I get handed my little envelope.

Connie Parker in one corner, 1075 in the other, the date, and $6.81.

Six dollars and eighty-one cents, and I had expected fourteen dollars.

(I had told Ida at last that I thought I ought to get fourteen dollars, and she thought so, too, and said she'd "speak to the man"

about it.) I clutched Ida-"only six dollars and eighty one cents!"

"Well, what more do ya want."

"But you said fourteen dollars."

It seems the week goes Thursday to Thursday, instead of Monday to Sat.u.r.day, so my first pay covered only three days and a deduction for my locker key.

At that moment a little cry just behind me from Louisa. Louisa had been packing with Irene-dark little, frail little Yiddish Louisa; big brawny bleached-blond Irene.

"I've lost my pay envelope!"

Wan little Louisa! She had been talking to Topsy, Fannie's helper. Her envelope had slipped out of her waist, and when she went to pick it up, lo! there was nothing there to pick-fourteen dollars gone! There was excitement for you. Fourteen dollars in Wing 13, Room 3, was equal to fourteen million dollars in Wall Street. Everybody pulled out boxes and searched, got down on hands and knees and poked, and the rest mauled Louisa from head to foot.

"Sure it ain't in your stocking? Well, look _again_."

"What's this?"-jabbing Louisa's ribs-"this?"

Eight hands going over Louisa's person as if the anguished slip of a girl could not have felt that stiff envelope with fourteen dollars in it herself had it been there. She stood helpless, woebegone.

Ida rose Napoleon-like to the rescue. "I'll search everybody in the room!"

Whereat she made a grab at Topsy and removed her. "They" say Topsy was stripped to the breezes in Ida's fury, but no envelope.

Topsy, be it known, was already a suspicious character. That very week Fannie's purse had disappeared under circ.u.mstances pointing to Topsy.

Which caused a strained relationship between the two. One day it broke-such relationship as existed.

Fannie up at her end of the boxes was heard to screech down the line to where Topsy was sorting chocolate rolls:

"How dare you talk to me like that?"

"I ain't talkin' to you!"

"You am. You called me names."

"I never. I called you nothin', you ole white n.i.g.g.e.r."

"You stand lie to me like that and call me names?"

"Who say lie? I ain't no liar. You shut up; you ain't my boss. I'll call you anythin' I please, sa.s.sin' me that way!"

"I didn't sa.s.sed you. You called me names."

"I don't care what I called you-I know what you _is_." Here Topsy gathered all her strength and shouted up to Fannie, "You're a _heifer_, you is."

Now there is much I do not know about the world, and maybe heifer is a word like some one or two others you are never supposed to set down in so many letters. If so, it is new to me and I apologize. The way Topsy called it, and the way Fannie acted on hearing herself called it, would lead one to believe it is a word never appearing in print.

"You-call-me a _heifer_?" shrieked Fannie. "I'll tell ya landlady on ya, I will!"

"Don' yo' go mixin' up in my private affairs. You shut yo' mouth, yo'

hear me? yo' _heifer_!"

"I _ain't_ no heifer!"

Fortunately Ida swung into our midst about then and saved folk from bodily injury. A few days later f.a.n.n.y informed me privately that she don't say nothin' when that n.i.g.g.e.r starts rowin' with her, but if she jus' has her tin lunch box with her next time when that n.i.g.g.e.r starts talkin' fresh-callin' her a heifer-_her!_-she'll slug her right 'cross the face with it.

So Topsy was searched. When she got her garments back on she appeared at the door-a small black G.o.ddess of fury. "Yo' fresh Ida, yo'-yessa-yo' jus' searched me 'cause I'm black. That's all, 'cause I'm black. Why don't you search all that white trash standin' there?"

And Topsy flung herself out. Monday she appeared with a new maroon embroidered suit. Cost every nickel of thirty-eight dollars, Fannie informed me. In the packing room she had a hat pin in her cap. Some girl heard Topsy tell some other girls she was going stick that pin in Fannie if Fannie got sa.s.sin' her again. Ida made her remove the hat pin. In an hour she disappeared altogether and stayed disappeared forever after. "Went South," Fannie told me. "Always said she was goin' South when cold weather started.... Huh! Thought she'd stick me with a hat pin. I was carryin' a board around all mornin'. If she so much as come near me I was goin' to give her a crack aside the head."

But there was little Louisa-and no longer could she keep back the tears. Nor could ever the pay envelope be unearthed. Later I found her sitting on the pile of dirty towels in the washroom, sobbing her heart out. It was not so much that the money was gone-that was awful enough-fourteen dollars!-fourteen dollars!-oh-h-h,-but her mother and father-what would they do to her when she came home and told 'em?

They mightn't believe it was lost and think she'd spent it on somethin' for herself. The tears streamed down her face. And that was the last we ever saw of Louisa.

Had "local color" been all we were after, perhaps Wing 13, Room 3, would have supplied sufficient of that indefinitely, with the combination of the ever-voluble Lena and the ever-present labor turnover. Even more we desired to learn the industrial feel of the thing-what do some of the million and more factory women think about the world of work? Remaining longer in Wing 13 would give no deeper clue to that. For all that I could find out, the candy workers there thought nothing about it one way or the other. The younger unmarried girls worked because it seemed the only thing to do-they or their families needed the money, and what would they be doing otherwise?

Lena claimed, if she could have her way in the world, she would sleep until 12 every day and go to a show every afternoon. But that life would pall even on Lena, and she giggled wisely when I slangily suggested as much.

The older married women worked either because they had to, since the male breadwinner was disabled (an old fat Irishwoman at the chocolate dipper had a husband with softening of the brain. He was a discharged English soldier who "got too much in the sun in India") or because his tenure of job was apt to be uncertain and they preferred to take no chances. Especially with the feel and talk of unemployment in the air, two jobs were better than none. A few, like Mrs. Lewis, worked to lay by toward their old age. Mrs. Lewis's husband had a job, but his wages permitted of little or no savings. Some of her friends told her: "Oh, well, somebody's bound to look out for you somehow when you get old.

They don't let you die of hunger and cold!" But Mrs. Lewis was not so sure. She preferred to save herself from hunger and cold.

Such inconveniences of the job as existed were taken as being all in the day's work-like the rain or a cold in the head. At some time they must have shown enough ability for temporary organization to strike for the Sat.u.r.day half holiday. I wish I could have been there when that affair was on. Which girls were the ringleaders? How much agitation and exertion did it take to acquire the momentum which would result in enforcing their demands? Had I entered factory work with any idea of encouraging organization among female factory workers, I should have considered that candy group the most hopeless soil imaginable. Those whom I came in contact with had no cla.s.s feeling, no ideas of grievances, no ambitions over and above the doing of an uninteresting job with as little exertion as possible.

I hated leaving Tessie and Mrs. Lewis and little Pauline. Already I miss the life behind those candy scenes. For the remainder of my days a box of chocolates will mean a very personal-almost too personal for comfort!-thing to me. But for the rest of the world....

Some place, some moonlight night, some youth, looking like a collar advertis.e.m.e.nt, will present his fair love with a pound box of fancy a.s.sorted chocolates-in brown paper cups; and a.s.sured of at least a generous disposition, plus his lovely collar-advertis.e.m.e.nt hair, she will say yes. On the sofa, side by side, one light dimly shining, the nightingale singing in the sycamore tree beside the front window, their two hearts will beat as one-for the time being. They will eat the chocolates I packed and life will seem a very sweet and peaceful thing indeed. Nor will any disturbing notion of how my feet felt ever reach them, no jarring "you heifer!" float across the states to where they sit. Louie to them does not exist-Louie, forever on the run with, "_Louie_, move these trays!" "_Louie_, bottoms!" "_Louie_, tops!" "_Louie_, cardboards!" "_Louie_, the truck!" "_Louie_, sweep the floor! How many times I told you that to-day!" "_Louie_, get me a box a' ca'mels, that's a good dope!" "_Louie_, turn out them lights!"

"_Louie_, turn on them lights!" "_Louie_, ya leave things settin'

round like that!" "_Louie_, where them covers?" and then Louie smashes his fingers and retires for ten minutes.

Nor is Ida more than a strange name to those two on the sofa. No echoes reach them of, "Ida, where them wax papers?" "Ida, where's Fannie?" "Ida, where them picture tops?" "Ida, ain't no more 'coffees.' What'll I use instead?" "Ida! Where's Ida? Mike wants ya by the elevator." "Ida, I jus' packed sixty; ten sixty-two is my number."

"Ida, Joe says they want 'drops' on the fifth." "Ida, ain't no more trays." "Ida, gimme the locker-door key. 'M cold-want ma sweater.

(Gee! it 'u'd freeze the stuffin' outa ya in this ice box!)"

Those chocolates appeared in a store window in Watertown, and that's enough. Not for their moonlit souls the clang of the men building a new dipper and roller in our room-the bang of the blows of metal on metal as they pierce your soul along about 5 of a weary afternoon.

Lena's giggles and Ida's "Lee-na, stop your talk and go to work!...

Louie, stop your whistlin'!... My Gawd! girls, don' you know no better n' to put two kinds in the same box? ... Hey, Lena, this yere Eyetalian wants somethin'; come here and find out what's ailin'

her.... Fannie, ain't there no more plantations?... Who left that door open?... Louie, for Gawd's sake how long you gonna take with that truck?... Lena, stop your talkin' and go to work...."

And 'round here, there, and every place, "My Gawd! my feet are like ice!" "Say, len' me some of yo'r cardboards-hey?" "You Pearl White [black as night], got the tops down there?" "Hey, Ida, the Hungarian girl wants somethin'. I can't understand her...."

Those two sit on the sofa. The moon shines on the nightingale singing in the sycamore tree. Nor do they ever glimpse a vision of little Italian Pauline's swift fingers dancing over the boxes, nor do they ever guess of wan Louisa's sobs.