Working With the Working Woman Part 8

"You go easy, now," Minnie whispered after me.

I lacked the nerve, anyhow, and they put on the finishing touches. A bricklayer would not have been so bad. How did I know the chauffeur was not working for a friend of mine? That, later on, would make it more embarra.s.sing for him than me. I should think he would want to wring my neck.

It was about time to find a new job, anyhow. But leaving the bra.s.sworks is like stopping a novel in the middle. What about Rosie and good looking Bella and her brother she was trying to rescue from the grip of the poolroom? Mame-Mame and her kaleidoscope romances, insults, and adventures? I just hate walking off and leaving it all.

And the boss and Miss Hibber so nice to me about everything.

Before a week is gone Minnie will be telling in an awed voice that she knows what happened. She told me not to go out with that chauffeur. I went, anyhow, and they found my mangled body in the gutter in Yonkers.

III

_195 Irons "Family"_

How long, I wonder, does one study or work at anything before one feels justified in generalizing?

I have been re-reading of late some of the writings of some of the women who at one time or another essayed to experience first hand the life of the working girl. They have a bit dismayed me. Is it exactly fair, what they do? They thought, because they changed their names and wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pa.s.s on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the worker.

(Incidentally they were all trials.) I had read in the past those heartrending books and articles and found it ever difficult to hold back the tears. Sometimes they were written by an immigrant, a bona-fide worker. The tragedy of such a life in this business-ridden land of ours tore one's soul.

An educated, cultured individual, used to a life of ease, or easier, if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured people-that more folk do not long for the higher things of life-that factory work is not galling to everybody. But the fact seems to be, if we dare generalize, that there are a very great many persons in this world who are neither educated nor "cultured" nor filled with spiritual longings. The observation might be made that all such are not confined to the working cla.s.ses; that the country at large, from Fifth Avenue, New York, to Main Street, Gopher Prairie, to Market Street, San Francisco, is considerably made up of folk who are not educated or "cultured" or of necessity filled with unsatiable longings of the soul.

It is partly due to the fact that only recently-as geologic time is reckoned-we were swinging in trees, yearning probably for little else than a nut to crack, a mate, a shelter of sorts, something of ape company, and now and then a chance for a bit of a sc.r.a.p. It is partly due to the fact that for the great majority of people, the life they live from the cradle up is not the sort that matures them with a growing ambition or opportunity to experience the "finer" things of life. One point of view would allow that the reason we have so few educated, cultured, and aspiring people is due to a combination of unfortunate circ.u.mstances to do with heredity and environment. They would be cultured and spiritual if only....

The other viewpoint argues that the only reason we have as many cultured and spiritual people as we have is due to a fortunate-"lucky"-combination of circ.u.mstances to do with heredity and environment. These more advanced folk would be far fewer in number if it had not happened that....

It is mostly the "educated and cultured" persons who write the more serious books we read and who tell us what they and the rest of the world think and feel and do-or ought to do. The rest of the world never read what they ought to think and feel and do, and go blithely-or otherwise-on their way thinking and feeling and doing-what they please, or as circ.u.mstances force them.

After all, the world is a very subjective thing, and what makes life worth living to one person is not necessarily what makes it worth living to another. Certain fundamental things everybody is apt to want: enough to eat (but what a gamut that "enough" can run!); a mate (the range and variety of mates who do seem amply to satisfy one another!); a shelter to retire to nights (what a bore if we all had to live complacently on the Avenue!); children to love and fuss over-but one child does some parents and ten children do others, and some mothers go into a decline if everything is not sterilized twice a day and everybody clean behind the ears, and other mothers get just as much satisfaction out of their young when there is only one toothbrush, if that, for everybody (we are writing from the mother's viewpoint and not the welfare of the offspring); some possessions of one's own, but not all stocks and bonds and a box of jewels in the bank, or a library, or an automobile, or even a house and lot, before peace reigns.

Everyone likes to mingle with his kind now and then; to some it is subjectively necessary to hire a caterer, to others peanuts suffice.

Everyone likes to wonder and ponder and express opinions-a prize fight is sufficient material for some; others prefer metaphysics.

Everyone likes to play. Some need box seats at the Midnight Frolic, others a set of second-hand tools, and yet others a game of c.r.a.ps in the kitchen.

No one likes to be hungry, to be weary, to be sick, to be worried over the future, to be lonely, to have his feelings hurt, to lose those near and dear to him, to have too little independence, to get licked in a sc.r.a.p of any kind, to have no one at all who loves him, to have nothing at all to do. The people of the so-called working cla.s.s are more apt to be hungry, weary, and sick than the "educated and cultured" and well-to-do. Otherwise there is no one to say-because there is no way it can be found out-that their lives by and large are not so rich, subjectively speaking, as those with one hundred thousand dollars a year, or with Ph. D. degrees.

Most folk in the world are not riotously happy, not because they are poor, or "workers," but because the combination making for riotous happiness-shall we say health, love, enough to do of what one longs to do-is not often found in one individual. The condition of the bedding, of the clothing; the pictures on the wall; the smells in the kitchen-and beyond; the food on the table-have so much, and no more, to do with it. Whether one sorts soiled clothes in a laundry, or reclines on a chaise-longue with thirty-eight small hand-embroidered and belaced pillows and a pink satin covering, or sits in a library and fusses over Adam Smith, no one of the three is in a position to pa.s.s judgment on the satisfaction or lack of satisfaction of the other two.

All of which is something of an impatient retort to those who look at the world through their own eyes and by no means a justification of the _status quo_. And to introduce the statement-which a month ago would have seemed to me incredible-that I have seen and heard as much contentment in a laundry as I have in the drawing-room of a Fifth Avenue mansion or a college sorority house-as much and no more. Which is not arguing that no improvements need ever be made in laundries.

There was one place I was not going to work, and that was a laundry! I had been through laundries, I had read about laundries, and it was too much to ask anyone-if it was not absolutely necessary-to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and b.u.t.tons and thread manufactured and patterns cut and garments made up, and fitted, or not, and then to keep those garments _clean_! We talk with such superiority of the fact that we wear clothes and heathen savages get along with beads and rushes. For just that some six hundred and fifty thousand people work six days a week doing laundry work alone-not to mention mother at the home washboard-or electric machine. We must be clean, of course, or we would not be civilized, but I do not see why we need be so fearfully sot up about it.

A new Monday morning came along, and I waited from 7.40 to 9.15 in a six-by-nine entry room, with some twenty-five men and women, to answer the advertis.e.m.e.nt:

GIRLS, OVER 18

with public school education, to learn machine ironing, marking, and a.s.sorting linens; no experience necessary; splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions; hours 8 to 5.30; half day Sat.u.r.day.

What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls from the bra.s.sworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.

I was third in line. The manager himself interviewed us inside, since the "Welfare Worker" was ill. What experience had I? I was experienced in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the "family" floor-two vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it so hard as the bra.s.sworks-in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced, instead of the usual twelve. At the end of two weeks, if I wasn't earning more than fourteen dollars-it was a piecework system, with fourteen dollars as a minimum-I'd have to go, and make room for some one who could earn more than fourteen dollars.

I wonder if the Welfare Worker would have made the same speech. That manager was a fraud. On our floor, at least, no one had ever been known to earn more than her weekly minimum. He was a smart fraud. Only I asked too many questions upstairs, he would have had me working like a slave to hold my job.

By the time clock, where I was told to wait, stood the woman just ahead of me in the line. She was the first really bitter soul I had run across in factory work. Her husband had been let out of his job, along with all workers in his plant, without notice. After January 1st they might reopen, but at 1914 wages. There was one child in the family. The father had hunted everywhere for work. For one week the mother had searched. She had tried a shoe polish factory; they put her on gluing labels. The smell of the glue made her terribly sick to her stomach-for three days she was forced to stay in bed. Three times she had tried this laundry. Each day, after keeping her waiting in line an hour or so, they had told her to come back the next day. At last she had gotten as far as the time clock. I saw her several times in the evening line after that; she was doing "pretty well"-"shaking" on the third floor. Her arms nearly dropped off by evening, but she sure was glad of the thirteen dollars a week. Her husband had found nothing.

The third to join our time-clock ranks was a Porto-Rican. She could speak no English at all. They put her at scrubbing floors for twelve dollars a week. About 4 that afternoon she appeared on our floor, all agitated. She needed a Spanish girl there to tell the boss she was leaving. She was one exercised piece of temper when it finally penetrated just what her job was.

"Family" occupied two-thirds of the sixth and top floor-the other third was the "lunch room." Five flights to walk up every morning. But at least there was the lunch room without a step up at noon. And it was worth climbing five flights to have Miss Cross for a forelady.

Sooner or later I must run into a disagreeable forelady, for the experience. To hear folks talk, plenty of that kind exist. Miss Cross was glad I was to be on her floor. She told the manager and me she'd noticed me that morning in line and just thought I'd made a good press ironer. Was I Eyetalian?

She gave me the second press from the door, right in front of a window, and a window open at the top. That was joy for me, but let no one think the average factory girl consciously pines for fresh air.

Miss Cross ironed the lowers of a pair of pajamas to show me how it was done, then the coat part. While she was instructing me in such intricacies, she was deftly finding out all she could about my past, present, and future-married or single, age, religion, and so on. And I watched, fascinated, crumpled pajama legs, with one mighty press of the foot, appear as perfect and flawless as on the Christmas morning they were first removed from the holly-decorated box.

"Now you do it."

I took the coat part of a pair of pink pajamas, smoothed one arm a bit by hand as I laid it out on the stationary side of the ironing press, shaped somewhat like a large metal sleeve board. With both hands I gripped the wooden bar on the upper part, all metal but the bar. With one foot I put most of my weight on the large pedal. That locked the hot metal part on the padded, heated, lower half with a bang. A press on the release pedal, the top flew up-too jarringly, if you did not keep hold of the bar with one hand. That ironed one side of one sleeve. Turn the other side, press, release. Do the other sleeve on two sides. Do the shoulders all around-about four presses and releases to that. Another to one side of the front-two if it is for a big fat man. One under the arm, two or three to the back, one under the other arm, one or two to the other half of the front, one, two, or three to the collar, depending on the style. About sixteen clanks pressing down, sixteen releases flying up, to one gentleman's pajama coat. I had the hang of it, and was left alone. Then I combined ironing and seeing what was what. If a garment was very damp-and most of them were-the press had to be locked several seconds before being released, to dry it out. During those seconds one's eyes were free to wander.

On my left, next the door, worked a colored girl with sh.e.l.l-rimmed spectacles, very friendly, whose name was Irma. Of Irma later. On my right was the most woebegone-looking soul, an Italian widow, Lucia, in deep mourning-husband dead five weeks, with two daughters to support.

She could not speak a word of English, and in this country sixteen years. All this I had from the forelady in between her finding out everything there was to know about me. Bless my soul, if Lucia did not perk up the second the forelady left, edge over, and direct a volume of Italian at me. What won't green earrings do! Old Mrs. Reilly called out, "Ach, the poor soul's found a body to talk to at last!" But, alas! Lucia's hope was short lived. "What!" called Mrs. Reilly, "you ain't Eyetalian? Well, you ought to be, now, because you look it, and because there ought to be somebody here for Lucy to talk to!" Lucia was diseased-looking and unkempt-looking and she ironed very badly.

Everyone tried to help her out. They instructed her with a flow of English. When Lucia would but shake her head they used the same flow, only much louder, several at once. Then Lucia would mumble to herself for several minutes over her ironing. At times, late in the afternoon, Miss Cross would grow discouraged.

"Don't you understand that when you iron a shirt you put the sleeves over the puffer _first_?"

Lucia would shake her head and shrug her shoulders helplessly. Miss Cross would repeat with vehemence. Then one girl would poke Lucia and point to the puffer-"Puffer! puffer!" Another would hold up a shirt and holler "Shirt! shirt!" and Lucia would nod vaguely. The next shirt she did as all the others-puffer last, which mussed the ironed part-until some one stopped her work and did a whole shirt for Lucia correct, from beginning to end.

Next to Lucia stood f.a.n.n.y, colored. She was a good-hearted, helpful, young married thing, not over-cleanly and not overstrong. That first morning she kept her eye on me and came to my rescue on a new article of apparel every so often. Next to f.a.n.n.y stood the three puffers for anyone to use-oval-shaped, hot metal forms, for all gathers, whether in sleeves, waists, skirts, or what not. Each girl had a large egg-shaped puffer on her own table as well. Next to the puffers stood the two sewing machines, where Spanish Sarah and colored Hattie darned and mended.

At the side, behind the machines, stood Ida at her press. All the presses were exactly alike. Ida was a joy to my eyes. At first glance she appeared just a colored girl, but Ida was from Trinidad; her skin was like velvet, her accent Spanish. As the room grew hot from the presses and the steam, along about 4, and our feet began to burn and grow weary, I would look at Ida. It was so easy to picture the exact likes of her, not more than a generation or two ago, squatting under a palm tree with a necklace of teeth, a ring through her nose, tropic breezes playing on that velvet skin. (Please, I know naught of Trinidad or its customs and am only guessing.) And here stood Ida, thumping, thumping on the ironing press, nine hours, lacking ten minutes, a day, on the sixth floor of a laundry in Harlem, that we in Manhattan might be more civilized.

Once she told me she had lost fifteen pounds in this country. "How?"

"Ah, child," she said, "it's tha mother sickness. Don't you ever know it? Back home in Trinidad are my mother, my father, my two little boys. Oh, tha sickness to see them! But what is one to do when you marry a poor man? He must come to this country to find work, and then, after a while, I must come, too."

Behind Ida stood two other colored girls, and at the end press a white girl who started the day after I did. She stayed only five days, and left in disgust-told me she'd never seen such hard work. Beyond the last press were the curtain frames and the large, round padded table for ironing fancy table linen by hand. Then began the lunch tables.

Behind the row of presses by the windows stood the hand ironers who did the fancy work. First came Ella, neat, old, gray-haired, fearfully thin, wrinkled, with a dab of red rouge on each cheek. After all, one really cannot be old if one dabs on rouge before coming to work all day in a laundry. Ella had hand ironed all her life. She had been ten years in her last job, but the place changed hands. She liked ironing, she said. Ella never talked to anybody, even at lunch time.

Behind Ella ironed Anna Golden, black, who wore striped silk stockings. She always had a bad cold. Most of the girls had colds most of the time-from the steam, they said. Anna had spent two dollars on medicine that week, which left her fourteen dollars. Anna was the one person to use an electric iron. It had newly been installed. The others heated their irons over gas flames. Every so often Miss Cross would call out, "I smell gas!" So did everybody else. After Anna, Lucile, blackest of all and a widow. And then-Mrs. Reilly.

Mrs. Reilly and Hattie were the characters of the sixth floor. Mrs.

Reilly was old and fat and Irish. She had stood up hand ironing so long the part of her from the waist up seemed to have settled down into her hips. Eleven years had Mrs. Reilly ironed in our laundry. She was the one pieceworker in the building. In summer she could make from twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, but she claimed she lost a great part of it in winter. She said she was anxious to get on timework. One afternoon I saw Mrs. Reilly iron just two things-the rest of the while, nothing to do, she sat on an old stool with her eyes closed.

The first afternoon, Mrs. Reilly edged over to me on pretext of ironing out a bit of something on my press.