Working With the Working Woman Part 7

And I've just walked off and left Mame.

Kicked the foot press 7,149 times by the meter to-day and expected to die of weariness. Thumped, thumped, thumped without stopping. As with candy, I got excited about going on piecework. Asked Miss Hibber what the rates were for my job-four and a half cents for one hundred and fifty. Since I had to kick twice for every cone top finished, that would have meant around one dollar fifteen cents for the day. Vanished the piece-rate enthusiasm. Tillie seemed the only girl on our floor doing piecework. Tillie, who "was born there." She was thin and stoop shouldered, wore spectacles, and did her hair according to the pompadour styles of some twenty years ago. The work ain't so bad.

Tillie don't mind it. There's just one thing in the world Tillie wants. What's that? "A man!" Evidently Tillie has made no bones of her desire. The men call back kindly to Tillie as she picks her way up the dark stairs in the morning, "h.e.l.lo there, sweetheart!" That week had been a pretty good one for Tillie-she'd made sixteen dollars forty-nine cents.

"Ain't much, p'raps, one way, but there's jus' this about it, it's steady. They never lay anybody off here, and there's a lot. You hear these girls 'round here talk about earnin' four, five, six dollars a day. Mebbe they did, but why ain't they gettin' it now? 'Shop closed down,' or, 'They laid us off.' That's it. Add it up over a year and my sixteen forty-nine'll look big as their thirty dollars to forty dollars a week, see if it don't."

Tillie's old, fat, wheezy mother works on our floor-maybe Tillie really was born there.

One day I decided to see what could be done if I went the limit.

Suppose I had a sick mother and a lame brother-a lot of factory girls have. I was on a press where you had to kick four separate times on each piece-small lamp cones, shaped, slot already in. My job was to punch four holes for the brackets to hold the chimney. The day before I had kicked over 10,000 times. This morning I gritted my teeth and started in. Between 10 and 11 I had gotten up to 2,000 kicks an hour.

Miss Hibber went by and I asked her what piece rates for that machine were. She said six and one-quarter cents for one hundred and fifty. I did not stop then to do any figuring. Told her rather chestily I could kick 2,000 times an hour. "That all? You ought to do much more than that!" Between 11 and 12 I worked as I had never worked. It was humanly impossible to kick that machine oftener than I did. Never did I let my eyes or thoughts wander. When the whistle blew at 12 I had kicked 2,689. For a moment I figured. It takes about an hour in the morning to get on to the swing. From 11 to 12 was always my best output. After lunch was invariably deadly. From 12.30 until 2.30 it seemed impossible to get up high speed. That left at best 2.30 to 4 for anything above average effort. From 4 to 5 it was hard again on account of physical weariness. But say I could average 2,500 an hour during the day. That would have brought me in, four kicks to each cone, around two dollars and a quarter a day. The fact of the matter was that after kicking 8,500 times that morning I gave up the ghost as far as that job went. I ached body and soul. By that time I had been on that one job several days and was sick to death of it. Each cone I picked up to punch those four holes in made something rub along my backbone or in the pit of my stomach or in my head-or in all of them at once. Yet the old woman next me had been at her same job for over a week. The last place she'd worked she'd done the identical thing six months-preferred it to changing around. Most of the girls took that att.i.tude. Up to date that is the most amazing thing I have learned from my factory experiences-the difference between my att.i.tude toward a monotonous job, and the average worker's. In practically every case the girl has actually preferred the monotonous job to one with any variety. The muscles in my legs ached so I could almost have shed tears. The day before I had finished at 5 tired out. That morning I had wakened up tired-the only time in my life. I could hardly kick at all the first half hour. There was a gnawing sort of pain between my shoulders. Suppose I really had been on piecework and had to keep up at that breaking rate, only to begin the next morning still more worn out? My Gawd!

Most of the girls kick with the same leg all the time. I tried changing off now and then. With the four-hole machine, using the left leg meant sitting a little to the right side. Also I tried once using my left hand to give the right a rest. Thus the boss observed me.

"Now see here, m'girl, why don't you do things the way you're taught?

That ain't the right way!"

He caught me at the wrong moment. I didn't care whether the earth opened up and swallowed me.

"I know the right way of runnin' this machine good as you do," I fairly glared at him. "I'm sick and tired of doin' it the right way, and if I want to do it wrong awhile for a change I guess I can!"

"You ain't goin' to get ahead in this world if you don't do things _right_, m'girl." And he left me to my fate.

At noon that day the girls got after me. "You're a fool to work the way you do. You never took a drink all this mornin'-jus' sit there kickin', kickin', kickin'. Where d'ya think ya goin' to land? In a coffin, that's where. The boss won't thank ya for killin' yourself on his old foot press, neither. You're jus' a fool, workin' like that."

And that's just what I decided. "Lay off now and then." Yes indeed, I was going to lay off now and then.

"I see myself breakin' my neck for thirteen dollars a week," Bella chipped in.

"You said it!" from all the others.

So I kicked over 16,000 times that day and let it go as my final swan song. No more breaking records for me. My head thumped, thumped, thumped all that night. After that I strolled up front for a drink and a gossip or back to a corner of the wash room where two or three were sure to be squatting on some old stairs, fussing over the universe.

When the boss was up on the other end of the floor, sometimes I just sat at my machine and did nothing. It hurt something within my soul at first, but my head and hands and legs and feet and neck and general disposition felt considerably better.

Lunch times suited me exactly at the bra.s.sworks, making me feel I was getting what I was after. Three of us used to gather around Irish Minnie, put two stools lengthwise on the floor, and squat along the sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present, and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights a week could a girl dance and work next day? Minnie was past her dancing days. She'd been married 'most twenty years and was getting fat and unformed-looking; shuffled about in a pair of old white tennis shoes and a pink boudoir cap. (No one else wore a cap at the bra.s.sworks.) Minnie had worked fifteen years at a power press, eleven years at her last job. She was getting the generous stipend of fourteen dollars a week (one dollar more than the rest of us). She had earned as much as twenty-five dollars a week in her old job at the tin can company, piecework. Everybody about the factory told her troubles to Minnie, who immediately told them to everybody else. It made for a certain community interest. One morning Minnie would tell me, as I pa.s.sed her machine, "Rosie 'n' Frank have had a fight." With that cue it was easy to appear intelligent concerning future developments.

Frank was one of the machinists, an Italian. Rosie had let him make certain advances-put his arm around her and all that-but she told us one lunch time, "he'd taken advantage of her," so she just sa.s.sed him back now. Bella announced Frank was honeying around her. "Well, watch out," Rosie advised, with the air of Bella's greataunt.

As to dancing, Bella's chum in Detroit used to go to a dance every single night and work all day. Sundays she'd go to a show and a dance.

Bella tried it one week and had to lay off three days of the next week before she could get back to work. Lost her twenty-one dollars. No more of that for Bella. Just once in a while was enough for her.

They did not talk about "vamping dopes" at the bra.s.sworks. Everyone asked you if you were "keepin' company," and talked of fellas and sweethearts and intended husbands. That was the scale. As before, all the married ones invariably advised against matrimony. Irish Minnie told us one lunch time that it was a bad job, this marrying business.

"Of course," she admitted, pulling on a piece of roast pork with her teeth, "my husband ain't what you'd call a _bad_ man." That was as far as Minnie cared to go.

Perhaps one reason why the bra.s.sworks employed so many crooked and decrepit was as an efficiency measure. The few males who were whole caused so many flutterings among the female hands that it seriously interfered with production. Rosie's real cause for turning Frank down was that she was after Good Lookin'. Good Lookin' would not have been so good lookin' out along the avenue, but in the setting of our third floor he was an Adonis. Rosie worked a power press. I would miss the clank of her machine. There she would be up in the corner of the floor where Good Lookin' worked. Good Lookin' would go for a drink. Rosie would get thirsty that identical moment. They would carry on an animated conversation, to be rudely broken into by a sight of the boss meandering up their way. Rosie would make a dash for her machine, Good Lookin' would saunter over to his.

From the start I had pestered the boss to be allowed on a power press, for two reasons: one just because I wanted to-the same reason why a small boy wants to work at machinery; secondly, I wanted to be able to pose at the next job as an experienced power-press worker and sooner or later get a high-power machine. One day the boss was watching me at the foot press. "Y'know, m'girl, I think you really got intelligence, blessed if I don't. I'm goin' to push you right ahead.

I'll make a machinist out of you yet, see if I don't. You stay right on here and you'll be making big money yet." (Minnie-eleven years in her last job-fourteen dollars a week now.) Anyway, one morning he came up-and that morning foot presses of every description had lost all fascination for me-and he said, "You still want a power press?"

"Bet your life I do!"

And he gave me a power press deserted that morning by one of the boys.

Life looked worth living again. All I had to do to work miracles was press ever so lightly a pedal. The main point was to get my foot off it as quick as I got it on, or there was trouble. I wasn't to get my fingers here or there, or "I'd never play the piano in this life." If the belt flew off I wasn't to grab it, or I'd land up at the ceiling.

For the rest, I merely clamped a round piece on the top of a nail-like narrow straight piece-the part that turned the lamp wick up and down.

Hundreds and thousands of them I made. The monotony did not wear on me there; it was mixed with no physical exertion. I could have stayed on at the bra.s.sworks the rest of my life-perhaps.

One night I was waiting at a cold, windy corner on Fifth Avenue for a bus. None came. A green Packard limousine whirled by. The chauffeur waved and pointed up the Avenue. In a flash I thought, now if I really were a factory girl I'd surely jump at a chance to ride in that green Packard. Up half a block I ran, and climbed in the front seat, as was expected of me. He was a very nice chauffeur. His mistress, "the old lady," was at a party and he was killing time till 11.30. Would I like to ride till then? No, I wanted to get home-had to be up too early for joy riding. Why so early? The factory. And before I realized it there I sat, the factory girl. Immediately he asked me to dinner any night I said. Now I really thought it would be worth doing; no one else I knew had been out to dine with a chauffeur. Where would he take me? What would he talk about? But my nerve failed me. No, I didn't think I'd go. I fussed about for some excuse. I was sort of new in New York-out West, it was different. There you could pick up with anybody, go any place. "Good Gawd! girl," said the chauffeur, earnestly, "don't try that in New York; you'll get in awful trouble!"

All through Central Park he gave me advice about New York and the pitfalls it contained for a Westerner. He'd be very careful about me if I'd go out with him, any place I said, and he'd get me home early as I said. But I didn't say. I'd have to think it over. He could telephone to me. No, he couldn't. The lady I lived with was very particular. Well, anyhow, stormy days he'd see to it he'd be down by the factory and bring me home. Would I be dressed just the way I was then? Just the way-green tam and all.

The next day while I thumped out lamp parts I tried to screw my courage up to go out with that chauffeur. Finally I decided to put it up to the girls. I meandered back to the wash room. There on the old stairs sat Irish Minnie and Annie, fat and ultradignified. They were discussing who the father of the child really was. I breezed in casually.

"Vamped a chauffeur last night."

"Go-an."

"Sure. He asked me to ride home with him an' I did."

"Got in the machine with him?"

"Sure!"

"You _fool_! You young _fool_!"

Goodness! I was unprepared for such comment.

"What did he do to ya?"

"Nothin'. An' he wants me to go to dinner with him. What'll I say?"

Both pondered. "Sure," said Minnie, "I b'lieve in a girl gettin' all that's comin' to her, but all I want to tell ya is, chauffeurs are a bad lot-the worst, I tell ya."

"You said it!" nodded fat Annie, as if years of harrowing experience lay behind her. "He was all right to ya the first time so as to lure you out the next."

"But," says Minnie, "if ya go to dinner with him, don't you go near his machine. Steer clear of machines. Eat all ya can off him, but don't do no ridin'."

"You said it!" again Annie backed her up. Annie was a regular sack slinger. She could have hurled two men off Brooklyn Bridge with one hand. "If you was as big an' strong as me you c'u'd take 'most any chance. I'd like to see a guy try to pull anythin' on me." I'd like to see him, too.

"Some day"-Minnie wanted to drive her advice home by concrete ill.u.s.tration-"some day a chauffeur'll hold a handkerchief under your nose with somethin' on it. When ya come to, goodness knows where you'll be."

I began to feel a little as if I'd posed as too innocent.

"You see, out West-" I began.

"My Gawd!"-Minnie waved a hand scornfully-"don't be tryin' to tell me all men are angels out West."

Just then Miss Hibber poked her head in and we suddenly took ourselves out.