PRISONERS OF POVERTY
WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS,
THEIR TRADES AND THEIR LIVES.
By HELEN CAMPBELL
AUTHOR OF "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME,"
"MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," ETC.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1900
_Copyright, 1887_,
BY HELEN CAMPBELL
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE
PRISONERS OF POVERTY.
"_Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once. We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength.
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted,--
See if we cannot beat Thy angels yet._"
"_Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;
The hands are mighty were the head not blind.
Priest is the staff of king,
And chains and clouds one thing,
And fettered flesh with devastated mind.
Open thy soul to see,
Slave, and thy feet are free.
Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind,
And of thy fears thine irons wrought,
Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought._"
PREFACE.
The chapters making up the present volume were prepared originally as a
series of papers for the Sunday edition of "The New York Tribune," and
were based upon minutest personal research into the conditions
described. Sketchy as the record may seem at points, it is a photograph
from life; and the various characters, whether employers or employed,
were all registered in case corroboration were needed. While research
was limited to New York, the facts given are much the same for any large
city, and thus have a value beyond their immediate application. No
attempt at an understanding of the labor question as it faces us to-day
can be successful till knowledge of its underlying conditions is
assured.
It is such knowledge that the writer has aimed to present; and it takes
more permanent form, not only for the many readers whose steady interest
has been an added demand for faithful work, but, it is hoped, for a
circle yet unreached, who, whether agreeing or disagreeing with the
conclusions, still know that to learn the struggle and sorrow of the
workers is the first step toward any genuine help.
ORANGE, NEW JERSEY, _March_, 1887.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER FIRST. WORKER AND TRADE 7
CHAPTER SECOND. THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY 18
CHAPTER THIRD. SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM 30
CHAPTER FOURTH. THE BARGAIN COUNTER 43
CHAPTER FIFTH. A FASHIONABLE DRESSMAKER 55
CHAPTER SIXTH. MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS 66
CHAPTER SEVENTH. NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL 76
CHAPTER EIGHTH. THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER 88
CHAPTER NINTH. THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET 100
CHAPTER TENTH. BETWEEN THE RIVERS 113
CHAPTER ELEVENTH. UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND 126
CHAPTER TWELFTH. ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS 139
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER
WHO EXPERIMENTED 150
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. THE WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS 160
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS 173
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. TWO HOSPITAL BEDS 186
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK 199
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK 210
CHAPTER NINETEENTH. DOMESTIC SERVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS 221
CHAPTER TWENTIETH. MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE 233
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. END AND BEGINNING 244
PRISONERS OF POVERTY.
CHAPTER FIRST.
WORKER AND TRADE.
In that antiquity which we who only are the real ancients look back upon
as the elder world, counting those days as old which were but the
beginning of the time we reckon, there were certain methods with workers
that centuries ago ceased to have visible form. The Roman matron, whose
susceptibilities from long wear and tear in the observation of fighting
gladiators and the other mild amusements of the period, were a trifle
blunted, felt no compunction in ordering a disobedient or otherwise
objectionable slave into chains, and thereafter claiming the same
portion of work as had been given untrammelled. The routine of the day
demanded certain offices; but how these offices should be most easily
fulfilled was no concern of master or mistress, who required simply
fulfilment, and wasted no time on consideration of methods. In the homes
of Pompeii, once more open to the sun, are the underground rooms where
wretched men and women bowed under the weight of fetters, whose
corrosion was not only in weary flesh, but in the no less weary soul;
and Rome itself can still show the same remnants of long-forgotten wrong
and oppression.
That day is over, and well over, we say. Only for a few barbarians still
unreached by the march of civilization is any hint of such conditions
possible, and even for them the days of darkness are numbered. And so
the century moves on; and the few who question if indeed the bonds are
quite broken, if civilization has civilized, and if men and women may
claim in full their birthright of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," are set down as hopeless carpers,--unpleasant, pragmatic,
generally disagreeable objectors to things as they are. Or if it is
admitted that there are defects here and there, and that much remains to
be remedied, we are pointed with pride to the magnificent institutions
of modern charity, where every possible want of all sorts and conditions
of men is met and fulfilled.
"What more would you have?" cries the believer in things as they are.
"What is higher or finer than the beautiful spirit that has taken
permanent form in brick and mortar? Never since time began has charity
been on so magnificent a scale; never has it been so intelligent, so
far-seeing. No saints of the past were ever more vowed to good works
than these uncanonized saints of to-day who give their lives to the
poor and count them well lost. Shame on man or woman who questions the
beautiful work or dares hint that under this fair surface rottenness and
all foulness still seethe and simmer!"
It is not easy in the face of such feeling to affirm that, perfect as
the modern system may be, beautiful as is much of the work accomplished,
it still is wanting in one element, the lack of which has power to
vitiate the whole. No good-will, no charity, however splendid, fills or
can fill the place owned by that need which is forever first and most
vital between man and man,--justice. No love, no labor, no
self-sacrifice even, can balance that scale in which justice has no
place. No knowledge nor wisdom nor any understanding that can come to
man counts as force in the universe of God till that one word heads the
list of all that must be known and loved and lived before ever the
kingdom of heaven can begin upon earth.
It is because this is felt and believed by a few as a compelling power,
by many as a dimly comprehended need, so far in the shadow that its form
is still unknown, that I begin to-day the search for the real presence.
What I write will be no fanciful picture of the hedged-in lives the
conditions of which I began, many years ago, to study. If names are
withheld, and localities not always indicated, it is not because they
are not recorded in full, ready for reference or any required
corroboration. Where the facts make against the worker, they are given
with as minute detail as where they make against the employer. The one
aim in the investigation has been and is to tell the truth simply,
directly, and in full, leaving it for the reader to determine what share
is his or hers in the evil or in the good that the methods of to-day may
hold. That our system of charities and corrections is unsurpassable does
not touch the case of the worker who wants no charity and needs no
correction. It is something beyond either that must be understood. Till
the methods of the day are analyzed, till one has defined justice, asked
what claim it makes upon the personal life of man and woman, and
mastered every detail that render definition more possible, the
questions that perplex even the most conservative can have no solution
for this generation or for any generation to come. To help toward such
solution is the one purpose of all that will follow.
In the admirable report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1885,
made under the direction of Mr. Charles Peck, whose name is already the
synonyme for careful and intelligent work, the number of working-women
in New York is given as very nearly two hundred thousand. Investigations
of the same nature have been made at other points, notably Boston, in
the work of Mr. Carroll D. Wright, one of the most widely known of our
statisticians. But neither Boston nor any other city of the United
States offers the same facilities or gives as varied a range of
employment as is to be found in New York, where grinding poverty and
fabulous wealth walk side by side, and where the "life limit" in wages
was established long before modern political economy had made the phrase
current. This number does not include domestic servants, but is limited
to actual handicrafts. Ninety-two trades are given as standing open to
women to-day, and several have been added since the report was made. A
lifetime would hardly be sufficient for a detailed examination of every
industry in the great city, but it is quite possible to form a just
judgment of the quality and character of all those which give employment
to women. The city which affords the largest percentage of habitual
drunkards, as well as the largest number of liquor saloons to the mile,
is naturally that in which most women are forced to seek such means of
subsistence may be had.
The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of
training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to
another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined.
That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one
thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is
the one most overcrowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments
lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too
dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in some of
its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence;
and the woman with drunken or otherwise vicious husband, more helpless
often than the widow who turns in the same direction, seeks the same
sources of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some
reference, employment is often found by her in factory or some large
establishments where regular workers have place. But if, as is often the
case, the need for work arises from the death or the evil habits of the
natural head of the family, fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that
often the only clothing left is on the back of the worker, in the last
stages of demoralization; and the sole method of securing work is
through the middle-men or "sweaters," who ask no questions and require
no reference, but make as large a profit for themselves as can be wrung
from the helplessness and the bitter need of those with whom they
reckon.
The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support
is limited to the needle, whether in machine or hand work, fourfold. (1)
Her own incompetency must very often head the list and prevent her from
securing first-class work; (2) middle-men or sweaters lower the price to
starvation point; (3) contract work done in prisons or reformatories
brings about the same result; and (4) she is underbid from still another
quarter, that of the country woman who takes the work at any price
offered.
These conditions govern the character and quality of the work obtained,
even the best firms being somewhat affected by the last two clauses. And
in every trade there may always be found three distinct classes of
employers: the west-side firms, which in many cases care for their
workmen, in degree at least, and where the work is done under conditions
that must be called favorable; the east-side firms, representing
generally cheaper material and lower rates; and last, the slop-work,
which may be either east or west, most often the former, and includes
every form of outrage and oppression that workers can know.
Clothing in all its multiplied forms takes the first place in the
ninety-two trades, and the workers on what is known as "white wear" form
the large majority of the always increasing army. For many reasons, the
shirt-makers naturally head the list,--the shirt-makers about whom has
hung a certain sentimental interest since the day when poor Tom Hood's
impassioned plea in their behalf first saw the light. Yet to-day, in
spite of popular belief that they are the class most grossly wronged,
the shirt-maker fares far better than the majority of the workers on any
other form of clothing. This always, however, if she is fortunate enough
to have direct relation with some large factory, or with an
establishment which gives out the work directly into the hands of the
women themselves. Given these conditions, it is possible for a
first-class operator to make from seven to twelve dollars per week, the
latter sum being certain only in the factories where steam is the motive
power and where experience has given the utmost facility in handling the
work. In one factory on the west side, employing some one hundred and
fifty girls, and where everything had been brought to almost
mathematical accuracy, the price paid per dozen for shirts was $2.40.
But one of the operatives was able to make a dozen a day, her usual
average being about nine, or five dozen per week of sixty hours. Here
every condition was exceptionally favorable. The building occupied the
centre of a small square, and thus had light on all sides; ventilation
was good; and the forewoman, on whose intelligence and good disposition
much of the comfort of the operatives depends, was far beyond the
average woman in this position. The working day was ten hours, with half
an hour for dinner, and the sanitary conditions more favorable than in
any other establishment of the same size. Many of the operatives had
been there for years, and the dull season, common to all phases of the
clothing trade, was never marked enough here to produce discharges or
materially lessen production. The wages averaged seven dollars per week,
though the laundry women and finishers seldom exceeded five. No
middle-men were employed, and none of the customary exactions in the way
of fines and other impositions were practised. Piece-work was regarded
as the only secure method for both employer and employed, as in such
case it rested with the girl herself to make the highest or the lowest
rate at pleasure. There were no holidays beyond the legal ones, but all
the freedom possible to constant labor was given, the place representing
the best conditions of this special industry. Another firm quite as well
known and employing equal number of workers had found it more expedient
to give up the factory system, and simply retained rooms for cutting and
general handling of the completed work, giving it out in packages to
workers at home. One woman employed by them for seven years had never
made anything but the button-holes in the small piece attached to the
bosom, and such fine lettering as was ordered for custom shirts, her
wages in the busy season being often twelve dollars a week, the year's
average, however, bringing them to seven. She worked exclusively at
home, and represented the best paid and most comfortable phase of the
industry.
Descending a step, and turning to establishments on the east side, one
found every phase of sanitary condition, including under this head bad
ventilation, offensive odors, facilities for washing, quality of
drinking water, position of water-closets, length of time allowed for
lunch, length of working day, etc. Here the quality of the work was
lower, material, thread, and sewing being all of an order to be expected
from the price of the completed garment, ranging from forty to sixty
cents. The wages, however, did not fall so far below the average as
might be expected, the operator earning from five to eight dollars a
week during the busy season. But the greater number of manufacturers on
both east and west sides of the city turn over the work to middle-men,
or send it to the country, many factories being run in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, where rents are merely nominal. This proved to be the case
with several firms whose names represent a large business, but who find
less trouble and more profit in the contract system.
Still another method has gone far toward reducing the rates of payment
to the city worker, and this is the giving out the work in packages to
the wives and daughters of farmers in the outlying country. These women,
having homes, and thus no rent or general expenses to meet, take the
work at rates which for the city operators mean simply starvation, and
thus prices are kept down, and one more stumbling-block put in the way
of the unprotected worker. Careful examination of this phase shows that
the applicants, many of whom give assumed names, work simply for the
sake of pin-money, which is expended in dress. Now and then it is a case
of want, and often that of a woman who, failing to make her husband see
that she has any right to an actual cash share in what the work of her
own hands has helped to earn, turns to this as the only method of
securing some slight personal income. But for the most part, it is only
for pin-money; and no argument could convince these earners that their
work is in any degree illegitimate or fraught with saddest consequences
to those who, because of it, receive just so much the less. Nor would it
be possible to bring such argument to bear. To earn seems the
inalienable right of any who are willing to work, and the result of
methods will never be questioned by employer or employed, unless they
are forced to it by more powerful considerations than any at present
brought forward.
I have chosen to give these details minutely because they are,
practically, the summing up, not only for shirt-making, but for every
trade which can be said to come under the head of clothing, whether for
men, women, or children,--this including every form of trimming or other
adornment used in dress from artificial flowers to gimps, fringes, and
buttons. And now, having given this general outline, we may pass to the
stories of the units that make up this army,--stories chosen from
quarters where doubt is impossible, and confirmed often by the unwilling
testimony of those from whom the work has come, giving with them also
the necessary details of the trades they may represent, and seeking
first, last, and always, only the actual facts that make up the life of
the worker.
CHAPTER SECOND.
THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY.
"The case of Rose Haggerty." So it stands on the little record-book in
which long ago certain facts began to have place, each one a count in
the indictment of the civilization of to-day, and each one the story not
only of Rose but of many another in like case. For the student of
conditions among working-women soon discovers that workers divide
themselves naturally into four classes: (1) those who have made
deliberate choice of a trade, fitted themselves carefully for it, and in
time become experts, certain of employment and often of becoming
themselves employers; (2) those who by death of relatives or other
accident of fortune have been thrown upon their own resources and accept
blindly the first means of support that offers, sometimes developing
unexpected power and meeting with the same success as the first class;
(3) those who have known no other life but that of work, and who accept
that to which they most incline with neither energy nor ability enough
to rise beyond a certain level; and (4) those who would not work at all
save for the pressure of poverty, and who make no effort to gain more
knowledge or to improve conditions. But the ebb and flow in this great
sea of toiling humanity wipes out all dividing lines, and each class so
shades into the next that formal division becomes impossible, but is
rather a series of interchanges with no confinement to fixed limits.
Often in passing from one trade to another, chance brings about much the
same result for each class, and no energy or patience of effort is
sufficient to check the inevitable descent into the valley of the
shadow, where despair walks forever hand in hand with endeavor.
This time had by no means come for Rose, with just enough of her
happy-go-lucky father's nature to make her essentially optimistic. Born
in a Cherry Street tenement-house, she had refused to be killed by
semi-starvation or foul smells, or dirt of any nature whatsoever. Dennis
Haggerty, longshoreman professionally, and doer of all odd jobs in the
intervals of his discharges and re-engagements, explained the situation
to his own satisfaction, if not to that of Rose and the five other small
Haggertys remaining from the brood of twelve.
"If a man wants his dhrink that bad that no matter what he's said
overnight he'd sell his soul by the time mornin' comes for even a
thimbleful, he's got jist to go to destruction, an' there's no sthoppin'
him. An' I've small call to be blamin' Norah whin she comforts herself a
bit in the same manner of way, nor will I so long's me name's Dennis
Haggerty. But you, Rose, you look out an' get any money you'll find in
me pockets, an' keep the children straight, an' all the saints'll see
you through the job."
Rose listened, the laugh in her blue eyes shadowed by the sense of
responsibility that by seven was fully developed. She did not wonder
that her mother drank. Why not, when there was no fire in the stove, and
nothing to cook if there had been, and the children counted it a day
when they had a scraping of butter on the bread? But, as often happens
in these cases, the disgust at smell and taste of liquor grew with every
month of her life, and two at least of the children shared it. They were
never beaten; for Haggerty at his worst remained good-natured, and when
sober wept maudlin tears over his flock and swore that no drop should
ever pass his lips again; and Norah echoed every word, and for days
perhaps washed and scrubbed and scoured, earning fair wages, and
gradually redeeming the clothes or furniture pledged round the corner.
Rose went to school when she had anything to wear, and learned in time,
when she saw the first symptoms of another debauch, to bundle every
wearable thing together and take them and all small properties to the
old shoemaker on the first floor, where they remained in hiding till it
was safe to produce them again. She had learned this and many another
method before the fever which suddenly appeared in early spring took
not only her father and mother, but the small Dennis whose career as
newsboy had been her pride and delight, and who had been relied upon as
half at least of their future dependence. There remained, then, Norah,
hopelessly incurable of spinal disease and helpless to move save as Rose
lifted her, and the three little ones, as to whose special gifts there
was as yet no definite knowledge. In the mean time they were simply
three very clamorous mouths to be stopped with such food as might be;
and Rose entered a bag-factory a block away, leaving bread and knife and
molasses-pitcher by Norah's bed, and trusting the saints to avert
disaster from the three experimenting babies. She earned the first month
ten dollars, or two and a half a week, but being exceptionally quick,
was promoted in the second to four dollars weekly. The rent was six
dollars a month; and during the first one the old shoemaker came to the
rescue, had an occasional eye to the children, and himself paid the
rent, telling Rose to return it when she could. When the ten hours'
labor ended, the child, barely fourteen, rushed home to cook something
warm for supper, and when the children were comforted and tucked away in
the wretched old bed, that still was clean and decent, washed and mended
their rags of clothes, and brought such order as she could into the
forlorn room.
It was the old shoemaker, a patient, sad-eyed old Scotchman, who also
had his story, who settled for her at last that a machine must be had
in order that she might work at home. The woman in the room back of his
took in shirts from a manufacturer on Division Street, and made often
seven and eight dollars a week. She was ready to teach, and in two or
three evenings Rose had practically mastered details, and settled that,
as she was so young, she would not apply for work in person, but take it
through Mrs. Moloney, who would be supposed to have gone into business
on her own account as a "sweater." Whatever temptations Mrs. Moloney may
have had to make a little profit as "middle-man," she resisted and
herself saw that the machine selected was a good one; that no advantage
was taken of Rose's inexperience; and that the agent had no opportunity
to follow out what had now and then been his method, and hint to the
girl that her pretty face entitled her to concessions that would be best
made in a private interview. Shame in every possible form and phase had
been part of the girl's knowledge since babyhood, but it had slipped
away from her, as a foul garment might fall from the fair statue over
which it had chanced to be thrown. It was not the innocence of
ignorance,--a poor possession at best. It was an ingrained repulsion,
born Heaven knows how, and growing as mysteriously with her growth, an
invisible yet most potent armor, recognized by every dweller in the
swarming tenement. She had her father's quick tongue and laughing eyes,
but they could flash as well, and the few who tried a coarse jest
shrunk back from both look and scorching word.
Thus far all went well with the poor little fortunes. She worked always
ten and twelve, sometimes fourteen, hours a day, yet her strength did
not fail, and there was no dearth of work. It was in 1880, and prices
were nearly double the present rates. To-day work from the same
establishment means not over $4.50 per week, and has even fallen as low
as $3.50. In 1880 the shirts were given out by the dozen as at present,
going back to the factory to pass through the hands of the finisher and
buttonhole maker. The machine operator could make nine of the best class
of shirts in a day of ten hours, being paid for them at the rate of
$1.75 per dozen. Four spools of cotton, two hundred yards each, were
required for a dozen, the price of which must be deducted from the
receipts; but the firm preferred to supply twenty-four-hundred-yard
spools, at fifty cents for six-cord cotton used for the upper thread,
and thirty cents for the three-cord cotton used as under thread, the
present prices for same quality and size being respectively forty-five
and twenty-five cents. Making nine a day, the week's wages would be for
the four dozen and a half $7.87, or $7.50 deducting thread; but Rose
averaged five dozen weekly, and for nearly two years counted herself as
certain of not less than thirty dollars per month and often thirty-five.
The machine had been paid for. The room took on as comfortable a look
as its dingy walls and narrow windows would allow; and Bridget, age
five, had developed distinct genius for housekeeping, and washed dishes
and faces with equal energy and enthusiasm. She did all errands also,
and could not be cheated in the matter of change. She knew where the
largest loaves were to be had, and sniffed suspiciously at the packets
of tea.
"By the time she's seven, she'll do all but the washing," Rose said with
pride, and Bridget reverted to childhood for an instant, and spun round
on one foot as she made answer:--
"Shure, I could now, if you'd only be lettin' me."
"There's women on the west side that'll earn $2.50 a dozen, for work no
better than you're doing now," some one who had come from that quarter
said to her one day, but Rose shook her head. There is a curious
conservatism among these workers, who cling to familiar haunts and
regard unknown regions with suspicion and even terror.
"I've no time for change," Rose said. "It might not be as certain when
I'd got it. I'll run no risks;" and she tugged her great bundle of work
up the stairs, rejoicing that living so near saved just so much on
expressage, a charge paid by the workers themselves.
There were signs well known to the old hands of a probable reduction of
prices, weeks before the first cut came. More fault was found. A slipped
stitch or a break in the thread was pounced upon with even more
promptness than had been their usual portion. Some hands were
discharged, and at last came the general cut, resented by some, wailed
over by all, but accepted as inevitable. Another, and another, and
another followed. Too much production; too many Jew firms competing and
under-bidding; more and more foreigners coming in ready to take the work
at half price. These reasons and a dozen others of the same order were
given glibly, and at first with a certain show of kindliness and attempt
to soften harsh facts as much as possible. But the patience of diplomacy
soon failed, and questioners of all orders were told that if they did
not like it they had nothing to do but to leave and allow a crowd of
waiting substitutes to take their places at half rates. The shirt that
had sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar had gone down to
forty-five and sixty cents respectively, and as cottons and linens had
fallen in the same proportion, there was still profit for all but the
worker. Here and there were places on Grand or Division Streets where
they might even be bought for thirty and forty cents, the price per
dozen to the worker being at last from fifty to sixty cents. In the
factories it was still possible to earn some approximation to the old
rate, but employers had found that it was far cheaper to give out the
work; some choosing to give the entire shirt at so much per dozen;
others preferring to send out what is known as "team work," flaps being
done by one, bosoms by another, and so on.
For a time Rose hemmed shirt-flaps at four cents a dozen, then took
first one form and then another of underclothing, the rates on which had
fallen in the same proportion, to find each as sure a means of
starvation as the last. She had no knowledge of ordinary family sewing,
and no means of obtaining such work, had any training fitted her for it;
domestic service was equally impossible for the same reason, and the
added one that the children must not be left, and she struggled on,
growing a little more haggard and worn with every week, but the pretty
eyes still holding a gleam of the old merriment. Even that went at last.
It was a hard winter. The steadiest work could not give them food enough
or warmth enough. The children cried with hunger and shivered with cold.
There was no refuge save in Norah's bed, under the ragged quilts; and
they cowered there till late in the day, watching Rose as she sat silent
at the sewing-machine. There was small help for them in the house. The
workers were all in like case, and for the most part drowned their
troubles in stale beer from the bucket-shop below.
"Put the children in an asylum, and then you can marry Mike Rooney and
be comfortable enough," they said to her, but Rose shook her head.
"I've mothered 'em so far, and I'll see 'em through," she said, "but the
saints only knows how. If I can't do it by honest work, there's one way
left that's sure, an' I'll try that."
There came a Saturday night when she took her bundle of work, shirts
again, and now eighty-five cents a dozen. There were five dozen, and
when the $1.50 was laid aside for rent it was easy to see what remained
for food, coal, and light. Clothing had ceased to be part of the
question. The children were barefoot. They had a bit of meat on Sundays,
but for the rest, bread, potatoes, and tea were the diet, with a cabbage
and bit of pork now and then for luxuries. Norah had been failing, and
to-night Rose planned to buy her "something with a taste to it," and
looked at the sausages hanging in long links with a sudden reckless
determination to get enough for all. She was faint with hunger, and
staggered as she passed a basement restaurant, from which came savory
smells, snuffed longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was
long in coming, and as she laid her bundle on the counter she saw
suddenly that her needle had "jumped," and that half an inch or so of a
band required resewing. As she looked the foreman's knife slipped under
the place, and in a moment half the band had been ripped.
"That's no good," he said. "You're getting botchier all the time."
"Give it to me," Rose pleaded. "I'll do it over."
"Take it if you like," he said indifferently, "but there's no pay for
that kind o' work."
He had counted her money as he spoke, and Rose cried out as she saw the
sum.
"Do you mean you'll cheat me of the whole dozen because half an inch on
one is gone wrong?"
"Call it what you like," he said. "R. & Co. ain't going to send out
anything but first-class work. Stand out of the way and let the next
have a chance. There's your three dollars and forty cents."
Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost her
work altogether, but as she left the dark stairs and felt again the
cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than
despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her
than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that
gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals. She
turned toward it as the thought came, but some one had her arm, and she
cried out suddenly and tried to wrench away.
"Easy now," a voice said. "You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an'
here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of
it, for my pocket's full to-night, an' that's more 'n it'll be in the
mornin' if you don't take me in tow."
It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a
moment. Then she took his arm and walked with him toward Roosevelt
Street.
It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the
children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty
years, and it had been a vain struggle. She took his money when morning
came, and went home with the look that is on her face to-day.
"I'll marry you out of hand," the sailor said to her; but Rose answered,
"No man alive'll ever marry me after this night," and she has kept her
word. She has her trade, and it is a prosperous one, in which wages
never fail. The children are warm and have no need to cry for hunger any
more.
"It's not a long life we live," Rose says quietly. "My kind die early,
but the children will be well along, an' all the better when the time
comes that they've full sense for not having to know what way the living
comes. But let God Almighty judge who's to blame most--I that was
driven, or them that drove me to the pass I'm in."
CHAPTER THIRD.
SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM.
"The emancipation of women is certainly well under way, when all
underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up
at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more
difficult for a woman to clothe herself without thought or worry, than
it has long been for a man."
This was the word heard at a woman's club not long ago, and reinforced
within the week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of
women at large. The editorial page of one held a fervid appeal for
greater simplicity of dress and living in general, followed by half a
column of entreaty to women to buy ready-made clothing, and thus save
time for higher pursuits and the attainment of broader views. With
feebler pipe, but in the same key, sounded the second advocate of
simplification, adding:--
"Never was there a time when women could dress with as much real
elegance on as small an expenditure of money. Bargains abound, and
there is small excuse for dowdiness. The American woman is fast
taking her place as the best-dressed woman in the civilized world."
Believing very ardently that the right of every woman born includes not
only "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but beauty also, it
being one chief end of woman to include in her own personality all
beauty attainable by reasonable means, I am in heartiest agreement with
one side of the views quoted. But in this quest we have undertaken, and
from which, once begun, there is no retreat, strange questions arise;
and in this new dawn of larger liberty and wider outlook is seen the
little cloud which, if no larger than a man's hand, holds the seed of as
wild a storm as has ever swept over humanity.
For emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation
for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after
garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of
ordinary home sewing, marvelling a little that a few dollars can give
such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul
basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life-blood is
on these garments. Through burning, scorching days of summer; through
marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags, with white-faced
children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long
weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil
on, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done.
The slice of baker's bread and the bowl of rank black tea, boiled to
extract every possibility of strength, are taken, still at the machine.
It is easier to sit there than in rising and movement to find what
weariness is in every limb. There is always a child old enough to boil
the kettle and run for a loaf of bread; and all share the tea, which
gives a fictitious strength, laying thus the foundation for the fragile,
anæmic faces and figures to be found among the workers in the
bag-factories, paper-box manufactories, etc.
"Why don't they go into the country?" is often asked. "Why do they
starve in the city when good homes and ample pay are waiting for them?"
It is not with the class to whom this question is applicable that we
deal to-day. Of the army of two hundred thousand who battle for bread,
nearly a third have no resource but the needle, and of this third many
thousands are widows with children, to whom they cling with a devotion
as strong as wiser mothers feel, and who labor night and day to prevent
the scattering into asylums, and consequent destruction of the family as
a family. They are widows through many causes that can hardly be said to
come under the head of "natural." Drunkenness leads, and the thousand
accidents that are born of drunkenness, but there are other methods
arising from the same greed that underlies most modern civilization. The
enormous proportion of accidents, which, if not killing instantly, imply
long disability and often death as the final result, come nine tenths of
the time from criminal disregard of any ordinary means of protecting
machinery. One great corporation, owning thousands of miles of railroad,
saw eight hundred men disabled in greater or less degree in one year,
and still refused to adopt a method of coupling cars which would have
saved the lives of the sixty-eight brakemen who were sacrificed to the
instinct of economy dominating the superintendent. The same man refused
to roof over a spot where a number of freight-handlers were employed
during a stormy season, rheumatism and asthma being the consequences for
many, and his reason had at least the merit of frankness,--a merit often
lacking in explanations that, even when most plausible, cover as
essential a brutality of nature.
"Men are cheaper than shingles," he said. "There's a dozen waiting to
fill the place of one that drops out."
In another case, in a great saw-mill, the owner had been urged to
protect a lath-saw, swearing at the persistent request, even after the
day when one of his best men was led out to the ambulance, his right
hand hanging by a bit of skin, his death from lockjaw presently leaving
one more widow to swell the number. It is of such men that a sturdy
thinker wrote last year, "Man is a self-damnable animal," and it is on
such men that the curse of the worker lies heaviest. That they exist at
all is hardly credited by the multitude who believe that, for this
country at least, oppression and outrage are only names. That they
exist in numbers will be instantly denied; yet to one who has heard the
testimony given by weeping women, and confirmed by the reluctant
admissions of employers themselves, there comes belief that no words can
fully tell what wrong is still possible from man to man in this America,
the hope of nations.
Is this a digression hardly to be pardoned in a paper on the trades and
lives of women,--a deliberate turning toward an issue which has neither
place nor right in such limits? On the contrary, it is all part of the
same wretched story. The chain that binds humanity in one has not one
set of links for men and another for women; and the blow aimed at one is
felt also not only by those nearest, but by successive ranks to whom the
shock, though only by indirect transmission, is none the less deadly in
effect. And thus the wrong done on the huge scale appropriate to a great
corporation finds its counterpart in a lesser but quite as well
organized a wrong, born also of the spirit of greed, and working its
will as pitilessly.
"If you employed on a large scale you would soon find that you ceased to
look at your men as men," said an impatient iron-worker not long ago.
"They are simply so much producing power. I don't propose to abuse them,
but I've no time even to remember their faces, much less their names."
Precisely on this principle reasons the employer of women, who are even
less to be regarded as personalities than men. For the latter, once a
year at least the employer becomes conscious of the fact that these
masses of "so much producing power" are resolvable into votes, and on
election day, if on no other, worthy of analysis. There is no such
necessity in the case of women. The swarming crowd of applicants are
absolutely at the mercy of the manager or foreman, who, unless there is
a sudden pressure of work, makes the selections according to fancy,
youth and any gleam of prettiness being unfailing recommendations. There
are many firms of which this could not be said with any justice. There
are many more in which it is the law, tacitly laid down, but none the
less a fact. With such methods of selection go other methods supposed to
be confined to the lowest grade of work and the lowest type of employer,
both being referred to regions like Baxter or Division Streets. But they
are to be found east or west indifferently, the illustration at present
in mind being on Canal Street, within sound of Broadway. It is a
prosperous firm, one whose trade-mark can be trusted; and here are a few
of the methods by which this prosperity has been attained, and goes on
in always-increasing ratio.
In the early years of their existence as a firm they manufactured on the
premises, but, like many other firms, found that it was a very
unnecessary expense. A roof over the heads of a hundred or more women,
with space for their machines, meant not less than twenty-five hundred
dollars a year to be deducted from the profits. Even floors in some
cheaper quarter were still an expense to be avoided if possible. The
easy way out of the difficulty was to make the women themselves pay the
rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the less certainly
in fact. Nothing could be simpler. Manufacturing on the premises had
only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the women that
they were allowed to work at home. The rule established itself at once,
and the firm, smiling serenely at the stoppage of this most damaging and
most unnecessary leak, proceeded to make fresh discoveries of equally
satisfactory possibilities. To each woman who applied for work it was
stated:--
"We send all packages from the cutting-room by express, the charges to
be paid by you. It's a small charge, only fifteen cents, to be paid when
the bundle comes in."
"We can come for ours. We live close by. We don't want to lose the
fifteen cents," a few objected, but the answer was invariable:--
"It suits us best to make up the packages in the cutting-room, and if
you don't like the arrangement there are plenty waiting that it will
suit well enough."
Plenty waiting! How well they knew it, and always more and more as the
ships came in, and the great tide of "producing power" flowed through
Castle Garden, and stood, always at high-water mark, in the wards where
cheap labor may be found. Plenty waiting; and these women who could not
wait went home and turned over their small store of pennies for the
fifteen cents, the payment of which meant either a little less bread or
an hour or two longer at the sewing-machine, defined as the emancipator
of women.
In the mean time the enterprising firm had made arrangements with a
small express company to deliver the packages at twelve cents each, and
could thus add to the weekly receipts a clear gain of three cents per
head. It is unnecessary to add that they played into each other's hands,
and that the wagon-drivers had no knowledge of anything beyond the fact
that they were to collect the fifteen cents and turn it over to their
superiors. But in some manner it leaked out; and a driver whose feelings
had been stirred by the sad face of a little widow on Sixth Street told
her that the fifteen cents was "a gouge," and they had all better put
their heads together and refuse to pay more than twelve cents.
"If we had any heads, it might do to talk about putting them together,"
the little widow said bitterly. "For my part, I begin to believe women
are born fools, but I'll see what I can do."
This "seeing" involved earning a dollar or two less for the week, but
the cheat seemed so despicable a one that indignation made her
reckless, and she went to the woman who had first directed her to the
firm and had been in its employ almost from the beginning.
"It's like 'em; oh, yes, it's like 'em!" she said, "but we've no time to
spend in stirring up things, and you know well enough what would be the
end of it if we did,--discharged, and somebody else getting our wages.
You'd better not talk too much if you want to keep your place."
"That isn't any worse than the thread dodge," another woman said. "I
know from a clerk in the house where they buy their thread, that they
charge us five cents a dozen more than it costs them, though they make a
great point of giving it to us at cost and cheaper than we could buy it
ourselves."
"Why don't you club together and buy, then?" the little widow asked, to
hear again the formula, "And get your walking-ticket next day? We know a
little better than that."
A few weeks later a new system of payment forced each worker to
sacrifice from half an hour to an hour of precious time, her only
capital. Hitherto payments had been made at the desk when work was
brought in, but now checks were given on a Bowery bank, and the women
must walk over in heat and storm alike, and wait their turn in the long
line on the benches. If paid by the week this would make little
difference, as any loss of time would be the employers', but this form
of payment is practically abolished, piece-work done at home meaning the
utmost amount of profit to the employer, every loss in time being paid
by the workers themselves. When questioned as to why the check system of
payment had been adopted by this and various other firms, the reply was
simply:--
"It saves trouble. The bank has more time to count out money than we
have."
"But the women? Does it seem quite fair that they should be the losers?"
"Fair? Anything's fair in business. You'd find that out if you undertook
to do it."