through," the small woman said, with a fierceness that made the big
policeman start and lay his hand on his club. "What's the law worth when
it can't give to you one dollar of two hundred and eight that's owed;
and she that earned them gasping her life out with consumption? If it
was my account alone do you suppose I'd care? Mine's eighty-five, and I
went to law for it, to find she'd as long a head as she has smooth
tongue, and had fixed things so that there wasn't a stick of furniture
nor a dollar of property that could be levied on. If she'd been a man
the new law that gives a cheating employer fifteen days' imprisonment
might have worked with her as it's worked with many a rascal that never
knew he could be brought up with a round turn. But she's a woman and she
slides through, and a judgment against her isn't worth the paper it's
written on. So as I can't take it out in money I take it out in being
even with her. There are the papers that show I don't lie, and here I
sit the time I've fixed to sit, and if she gets the three new hands
she's after, it won't be because I haven't done what came to me to do to
hinder it."
The policeman had moved away before the words ended, the stout gentleman
having descended the steps for a moment, and stood in a position which
rendered his little transaction feasible and almost invisible. He
beckoned to me as the small woman sat down again on the steps, and I
followed him into the vestibule.
"You're interested, my dear madam," he said. "You're interested, and you
ought to be. I've stayed home from business to make sure she wasn't
interfered with, and I'd do it again with the greatest pleasure. I'd
like to post one like her before every establishment in New York where
cheating goes on, and I'm going to see this thing through!"
There was no time for questions. My appointment must be kept, and with
one pause to take the name and number of the small Nemesis I went my
way. Three days later she sat there still, and on the following one, as
the warm spring rain fell steadily, she kept her post, sheathed in a
rubber cloak, and protected by an umbrella which, from its size and
quality, I felt must be the stout gentleman's. With Saturday night her
self-imposed siege ended, and she marched away, leaving the enemy badly
discomfited and much more disposed to consider the rights of the
individual, if not of the worker in general. As Madame's prices were
never less than fifty dollars for the making of a suit, ranging from
this to a hundred or more, and as her three children were still small
and her husband an undiscoverable factor, it became an interesting
question to know where she placed the profits which, even when lessened
by non-paying customers, could never be anything but great. Madame,
however, had been too keen even for the sharp-witted lawyer of the
Protective Union, whose utmost efforts only disclosed the fact that she
was the probable backer of a manufacturer whose factory and farm were on
Long Island, and whose business capacity had till within a few years
never insured him more than a bare living.
It is an old story, yet an always new one, and in this case Madame had
quieted her conscience by providing a comfortable lunch for the workers
and allowing them more space than is generally the portion in a busy
establishment. Well housed and well fed through the day and paid at
intervals enough to meet the demands of rent or board bill, it was easy
to satisfy her hands by the promise of full and speedy settlement, and
when this failed, to tell a pitiful tale of unpaid bills and
conscienceless customers, who could not be forced. When these resources
were exhausted discharge solved any further difficulties, and a new set
came in, to undergo the same experience. In an establishment where
honesty has any place, the wages are rather beyond the average,
skirt-hands receiving from seven to nine dollars a week and waist-hands
from ten to fifteen. In the case of stores this latter class make from
eighteen to forty dollars per week, and often accumulate enough capital
to start in business for themselves. But a skirt-hand like Mary M----
seldom passes on to anything higher, and counts herself well paid if
her week of sixty hours brings her nine dollars, not daring to grumble
seriously if it falls to seven or even six. On the east side the same
work must be done for from four to six dollars a week, the latter sum
being considered high pay. But the work is an advance upon factory work
and has a better sound, the dressmaker's assistant looking down upon the
factory hand or even the seamstress as of an inferior order.
In time I learned the full story of the little woman, ordinarily
reticent and shrinking, but brought by trouble and indignation to the
fiercest protest against oppression. Born in a New-England village she
had learned a milliner's trade, to which she presently added
dressmaking, and succeeded in making a fair living, till bitten by the
desire to see larger life and share all the good that the city seems to
offer the shut-in country life, she came to New York with her small
savings, expecting to find work easily, and did so, going at once into a
store where a friend was at work. Sanitary conditions were all bad. Her
hall bedroom on a fourth floor and the close confinement all did their
work, and a long illness wasted strength and savings. When recovery came
her place had been filled; and she wandered from store to store seeking
employment, doing such odd jobs as were found at intervals, and
powerless to recover the lost ground.
"It was like heaven to me," she said, "when my friend came back to the
city and got me that place as skirt-hand at Madame M----'s. I was so far
gone I had even thought of the river, and said to myself it might be the
easiest way out. You can't help but like Madame, for she's
smooth-tongued and easy, and praises your work, and she made me think
I'd soon be advanced and get the place I ought to have. She paid
regularly at first, and I began to pick up courage. It was over-hours
always. Madame would come in smiling and say: 'Ah, dear girls! What
trouble! It is an order that must be finished so soon. Who will be kind
and stay so leetle longer?' Then we all stayed, and she'd have tea made
and send it in, and sandwiches or something good, and they all said,
'She's an angel. You won't find anybody like Madame.' She was so
plausible, too, that even when there was longer and longer time between
the payments the girls didn't blame her, but borrowed of one another and
put off their landladies and managed all ways to save her feelings.
Jenny G---- had been here longer than any of them, and she worshipped
Madame and wouldn't hear a word even when one or another complained. But
Jenny's feet were on the ground and she hadn't a stitch of warm
underclothes, and she took a cold in December, and by January it had
tight hold of her. I went to Madame myself then, and begged her to pay
Jenny if it wasn't but a little, and she cried and said if she could
only raise the money she would. She didn't; and by and by I went again,
and then she turned ugly. I looked at her dumfounded when she spoke her
real mind and said if we didn't like it we could leave; there were
plenty of others. I wouldn't believe my ears even, and said to myself
she was worn out with trouble and couldn't mean a word of it. I wanted
money for myself, but I wouldn't ask even for anybody but Jenny.
"Next day Madame brought her ten dollars of the two hundred and twenty
she owed her, and Jenny got shoes; but it was too late. I knew it well,
for I'd seen my sister go the same way. Quick consumption ain't to be
stopped with new shoes or anything but new lungs, and there's no patent
for them yet that ever I've heard of. She was going last night when I
went round, and sure as you live I'm going to put her death in the paper
myself. I've been saving my money off lunches to do it, and I'll write
it: 'Murdered by a fashionable dressmaker on ---- Street, in January,
1886, Jenny G----, age nineteen years and six months.' Maybe they won't
put it in, but here it is, ready for any paper that's got feeling enough
to care whether sewing-girls are cheated and starved and killed, or
whether they get what they've earned. I've got work at home now. It
don't matter so much to me; but I'm a committee to attend to this thing,
and I'll find out every fraud in New York that I can. I've got nine
names now,--three of 'em regular fashionables on the west side, and six
of 'em following their example hard as they can on the east; and a
friend of mine has printed, in large letters, 'Beware of' at the head of
a slip, and I add names as fast as I get them, and every girl that comes
in my way I warn against them. Do much good? No. They'll get all the
girls they want, and more; but it's some satisfaction to be able to say
they are cheats, making a living out of the flesh and blood of their
dupes, and I'll say it till I die."
Here stands the experience of one woman with fearlessness enough to
protest and energy enough to have at last secured a tolerable living.
The report, for such it may be considered, might be made of many more
names than those upon her black list, or found on the books of the
Union. Happily for the worker, they form but a small proportion of the
long list of dressmakers who deal fairly. But the life of the ordinary
hand who has not ability enough to rise is, like that of the great
majority who depend on the needle, whether machine or hand, filled with
hardship, uncertainty, overwork, under-pay. The large establishments
have next to no dull season, but we deal in the present chapter only
with private workers; and often, on the east side especially, where
prices and wages are always at the lowest ebb, the girls who have used
all their strength in overwork during the busy season of spring and fall
must seek employment in cigar factories or in anything that offers in
the intermediate time, the wages giving no margin for savings which
might aid in tiding over such periods. The dressmaker herself is often
a sufferer, conscienceless customers abounding, who pay for the work of
one season only when anxious for that of the next. Often it is mere
carelessness,--the recklessness which seems to make up the method of
many women where money obligations are concerned; but often also they
pass deliberately from one dressmaker to another, knowing that New York
holds enough to provide for the lifetime of the most exacting customer.
There is small redress for these cases, and the dressmaker probably
argues the matter for herself and decides that she has every right,
being cheated, to balance the scale by a little of the same order on her
own account.
A final form of rascality referred to in a previous chapter is found
here, as in every phase of the clothing trade, whether on small or large
scale. Girls are advertised for "to learn the trade," and the usual army
of applicants appear, those who are selected being told that the first
week or two will be without wages, and only the best workers will be
kept. Each girl is thus on her mettle, and works beyond her strength and
beyond any fair average, to find herself discharged at the end of the
time and replaced by an equally eager and equally credulous substitute.
There are other methods of fraud that will find place in a consideration
of phases of the same work in the great establishments, some
difficulties of the employer being reserved for the same occasion.
CHAPTER SIXTH.
MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS.
To do justice to employer as well as employed is the avowed object of
our search, yet as it goes on, and the methods made necessary by
competition become more and more clear, it is evident that back of every
individual case of wrong and oppression lies a deeper wrong and a more
systematized oppression. Master and servant alike are in the same bonds,
and the employer is driven as mercilessly as he drives. He may deny it.
He may even be quite unconscious of his own subjection, or, if he thinks
at all of its extent, may look enviously at the man or the corporation
that has had power to enslave him. The monopolist governs not only the
market but the bodies and souls of all who provide wares for that
market; yet the fascination of such power is so tremendous that to stand
side by side with him is the dream of every young merchant,--the goal on
which his eyes are set from the beginning. Only in like power is any
satisfaction to be found. Any result below this high-water mark can be
counted little else than failure.
To this end, then, toils the employer of every grade, bringing every
faculty to bear on the lessening of waste, whether in material or time;
the conservation of every force working in line with his purpose.
Naturally, the same effect is produced as that mentioned in a previous
paper. The employees come to represent "so much producing power," and
are driven at full speed or shut off suddenly like the machines of which
they are the necessary but still more or less accidental associates.
Certain formulas are used, evolved apparently from experience, and
carrying with them an assurance of so much grieved but inevitable
conviction that it is difficult to penetrate below the surface and
realize that, while in degree true, they are in greater degree false. In
various establishments, large and small, beginning with one the pay-roll
of which carries 1,462 employees, and ending with one having hardly a
third this number, the business manager made invariably the same
statement: "We make our money from incidentals rather than from any
given department. You are asking particularly about suits. I suppose
you'll think it incredible, but in suits we work at a dead loss. It is
only an accommodation to our customers that makes us keep that
department open. The work should be put out to mean any profit, but we
can't do that with the choicest materials, and so we make it up in other
directions. You would have to go into business yourself to understand
just how we are driven."
"Suppose you refused to be driven? A firm of your standing must have
matters a good deal in its own hands. Suppose--"
"Suppose!" The manager threw out his hands in a gesture more full of
disclaimer than any words. "There is no room for supposes in business,
madam. We do what we must. How are we to compete with a factory turning
out suits by steam power? Not that we would compete. There is really no
occasion," he added hastily. "But their methods certainly have an
unpleasant influence, and we are obliged to take them into account
slightly."
"Then your statement would be, that no matter how expensive the suit
made up, you can make no profit on it?"
"Absolutely none. It is a concession to a customer's whims. We could buy
the same thing and sell to her at half the price, but she prefers to
select materials and have them put together in our work-room, and we
must humor her. But rents are so enormous that the space for every woman
employed by us in these departments may be said to represent simply so
many cubic feet in good coin, bringing us no return. Our profits are
dwindling with every year."
"Might not co-operation--"
Again the manager threw out his hands.
"Simply another form of robbery. We have investigated the history of
co-operation, and it does not appear to affiliate with our institutions.
The lamentable failure of the Co-operative Dress Association ought to
be the answer to that suggestion. No, madam. There is no profit in
suits, or in any form of made-up clothing for ladies' wear, if it is
done on the premises. You have to turn it over to the wholesale
manufacturer if you want profit."
Having heard this statement in many forms, and recognizing the fact that
increase in rents as well as in systematized competition might well have
reduced profits, it still appeared incredible that the rates charged
held no surplus for the firm. Little by little it has become possible to
supplement each statement by others of a different order. Nothing is
more difficult than to obtain trustworthy information regarding the
methods of a firm whose standing is such that to have served it is
always a passport to other employment; whose payments are regular, and
where every detail of work-room is beyond criticism. It is no question
of bare-faced robbery as in that of many cited, yet even here the old
story tells itself in different form, and with an element which, in many
a less pretentious establishment, has not yet been found to exist.
The work done here is piece-work. French cutters and fitters, receiving
from thirty to fifty dollars a week, give that guarantee of style and
elegance which is inherent in everything bearing the stamp of the firm.
Experts run the machines in the sewing-machine room, being paid by the
day at the rate of from six to eight dollars per week in the busy
season. The buttonholes are made by women who do nothing else, and who
are paid by the dozen, earning from five to seven dollars weekly. All
stitched seams are done in the machine-room, and the dress passes from
there to the sewing-room, into the hands of the sewing-girls, who
receive from three to four dollars and a half for each garment. The
latter price is seldom reached; four dollars and a half or five dollars
paying for a dress loaded with trimming, puffs, flounces, etc.
At this rate there would seem to be a chance for wages a good deal
beyond the average, but it is one of the unwritten laws that no
sewing-girl shall exceed five dollars per week; whether formulated by
superintendent or by firm remains yet to be discovered. The one
unquestionable fact is that if the superintendent of the work-room finds
that any girl is expert enough to make over this amount the price per
garment is docked, to bring her down to the level. They are never
driven. On the contrary, they must wait often, two or three hours at
times, for the arrival of "Madame," who must inspect the work, drape a
skirt, or give some suggestion as to trimming. No entreaty can induce
the superintendent to give out another piece of work which might fill
this vacant time, and the girls dare not state their case to the
employer. No member of the firm enters the work-rooms. Reports are made
by the superintendent of the department, and the firm remains content
with knowing that it has provided every comfort for its employees.
Complaint would insure discharge, and if a girl hints that she cannot
live on five dollars a week the answer has been for the years during
which the present superintendent has held the place, always the same:--
"If you haven't a home so that you have no expense of board, it is your
own fault, and I can't be expected to do anything about it."
There appears to be no question as to the entire "respectability" of the
woman, who would undoubtedly deny the implication contained in her own
words. But there is rivalry between the superintendents as to which
department shall make largest returns in profits, and wages are kept
down to secure that end. There is also no question that a proportion of
those employed are "supported," and merely add this work as a means of
securing a little more pin-money. It is true of but a very few, but of
those few an undeniable fact. It is equally a fact that, in spite of the
managers' assertions, profit can be made and is made from this
department, and that a large percentage of such profit comes directly
from the pocket of the sewing-girl, who, even when she adds
buttonhole-making in the simpler dresses, can never pass beyond a fixed
wage.
In other large establishments on both sides of the city methods are much
the same, with merely slight variations as to comfort of quarters, time
for lunch, sanitary conditions, etc. But in all alike, the
indispensable, but always very helpless, sewing-girl appears to be one
of the chief sources of profit, and to have small capacity and no
opportunity for improving her condition. Even where the work comes from
the manufactory, and steam has taken the place of foot-power, no machine
has yet been run so automatically that the human hand can be entirely
dispensed with. The "finisher" remains a necessity, and as finisher
sometimes passes slightly beyond the rate obtained when merely
sewing-girl. Only slightly, however. It is a deeply rooted conviction
among these workers that a tacit or even, it may be, formal
understanding has been settled upon by employers in general.
"I don't know how it is," said one of the most intelligent among the
many I have talked with; "there's never any trouble about getting work.
I've even had them send after me when I had gone somewhere else in hopes
of doing better. I used to earn ten and twelve dollars a week on suits,
children's or ladies', but now if I earn five or sometimes six I do
well. The work goes on with a rush. It's a whole building except the
first floor,--five stories, and suits of every kind. The rooms are all
crowded, and they give out piece-work, but they've managed it so that we
all earn about alike. When the rush of the fall and spring season is
over they do white work and flannel skirts and such things, and a great
many are discharged in the lull. But go where you will, up-town or
down, it doesn't seem to matter how well you can turn off the work or
how long you have been at it. They all say, if we ask for better pay,
'It can't be had as long as there is such competition. We're losing
straight ahead.' I don't understand. We don't any of us understand,
because here is the great rush of work and it must be done. They can't
do without us, and yet they are grinding us down so that I get half
distracted sometimes, wondering where it will end and if things will
ever be better."
"Would not private sewing be better? There is always a demand for good
seamstresses."
"I don't know anything about private sewing. You have to cut and plan,
and I never learned that. I like to work on things that are cut by a
cutter and just so, and I can make up my dozen after dozen with not an
eighth of an inch difference in my measurements. I'm an expert, you
know."
"But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly you could earn a
dollar and a quarter a day and board and have your evening quite free."
The girl shook her head. "I've had that said to me before, but you know
it's more independent as I am. Maybe things will be better by and by."
There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deep-seated prejudice, and
this exists to a bewildering degree among these workers, who, for some
inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that private employ
of any nature whatever is inevitably a despotism filled with unknown
horrors. There appears to be also a certain _esprit du corps_ that holds
sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of herself as one of such and
such a firm's hands, and to regard this distinction as compensation for
over-hours and under-pay and all known wretchedness encompassing her
trade. The speaker I have quoted was an American girl of twenty-six, had
had three years in public schools, and regarded the city as the only
place in which life could be considered endurable.
"I shouldn't know what to do in the country if I were there," she said.
"I don't seem to like it somehow. It isn't the company, for mother and
me keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know how to get along
in the city, and the country scares me. I like my work if only I could
get more pay for it."
"Do you ever think that if all who work in your line joined together and
made common cause you might even things a little; that it might be
easier for all of you?"
"We wouldn't dare," she answered, aghast. "Why, do you know, there'd be
ten for each one of us that was turned off. Women come there by the
hundred. That's what they say to me in our firm: 'What's the use of
fussing when here are dozens waiting to take your place?' There isn't
any use. They say now that it is the dull season, and they've put our
room on flannel skirts; two tucks and a hem, and a muslin yoke that has
to be gone round four times with the stitching. One day I made ten, but
nine is all one can do without nearly killing themselves, and they pay
us one dollar a dozen for making them. It used to be a dollar and a
half, and that was fair enough. It's the kind of work I like. I
shouldn't be content to do any other; but it's bringing us all down to
starvation point, and I think something ought to be done."
In a case like this, and it is the type of many hundreds of skilled
workers, who regard their calling with a certain pride, and could by no
possibility be induced to seek other lines of work or other methods of
living, there seems little to be accomplished. They are, however, but a
small portion of the army who wait for some deliverance, and who, if
they had been born to a trifle more common sense, would turn in the one
sole direction from which relief is certain, this relief and the reasons
for and against it having no place at this stage of the investigation.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL.