Grossvater, and let us look at the little house he knows. There is land,
two acres, and a barn and a cow, and all for so little. I could be
stronger then."
"That is folly," the old man said angrily. "It would be but shillings
there, where here it is dollars. Wait and you will see."
Lotte looked after him wonderingly as he turned away. To save was
becoming his passion. He grudged her even her shoes and the dress she
must have, though no one had so little. Peter revolted openly and came
less and less. Lieschen cried, but still looked at the week's wages as
compensation for many evils, and Lotte worked on, the pink spot fixing
itself on her cheeks, and her blue eyes growing sadder with every week.
Franz, the son of their old neighbor at home, hated this crowded city as
she did, and urged her to take her chances and marry him, even if, as
yet, he was only laborer in the market gardens out on the Island. There
were minutes when Lotte nearly yielded, but the Grossvater seemed to
hold her as with chains. She loved him, and she had always submitted.
Perhaps in time he would yield and learn again to care for the old life
of the country.
At last a change came, but there was in it no release, only closer
imprisonment. Peter and Annchen had followed a brother to Chicago and
opened a shop double the size of the old one, and they were hardly
settled when Lieschen sickened suddenly and after long illness died. For
many weeks there was no earning. Even the angry Grossvater saw that it
was impossible, and doled out reluctantly the money they had helped him
to save. Lieschen had always fretted him. Lotte was the best gift she
had ever made the Bauer name, and when the funeral was over, he went
home, secretly relieved that the long watch was over; went home to find
that the precious chest, hidden always under piles of bedding in the
closet where he locked his own possessions, had disappeared. There had
been a moving from the story above. Men had gone up and down for an
hour, and no one had noticed specially what was carried. There was no
clew, even after days of searching; and Grossvater Bauer, who had rushed
madly to the police station, haunted it now, with imploring questions,
till told they could do nothing and that he must keep away. He sank then
into the sort of apathy that had held him when the news came from Sedan.
He went to his work, but there was no heart in it, and sat by the fire
when night came, with only an impatient shake of the head when Lotte
tried to comfort him. Till then no one had realized his age, but now his
hair whitened and his broad shoulders bowed. He was an old man; and
Lotte said to herself that his earning days were nearly over, and worked
an hour or two later that the week's gain might be a little larger and
so comfort him.
She came home one afternoon with her bundle of work. Gretchen, who was
nearly thirteen, had helped her carry it, and had shrunk back frightened
as the foreman put a finger under her chin, and nodded smilingly at the
peach-like face and the great blue eyes. Lotte struck down his hand
passionately. She knew better than Gretchen what the smile meant. The
child should never know if she could help it, and she did not mind the
evil glance that followed her toward the door. There were people
standing at their doors as she went slowly up the stairs, her breath
coming quickly, as now it always did when she climbed them.
"Poor soul!" one of them said. "She little knows what she's coming to."
"Was ist los?" Lotte cried as the door opened, and then shrieked aloud,
for the Grossvater lay there on the bed, crushed and disfigured and
almost speechless, but lifting one hand feebly as she flew toward him.
"A sugar hogshead," somebody said. "It rolled over him when he thought
it was firm, and brought down some barrels with it. He's past helping.
May the saints have a heart for the poor children! He would be brought
here, but what will you do with him?"
"There'll be naught to do by morning," said another. "Can't you see he's
going?" But by morning no change had come, nor for many mornings. The
wounds and bruises slowly healed, but save for the one hand that moved
toward her, there were no signs of life. The strong body held by
paralysis might linger for years, and Lotte must earn for him and for
all. Even then a living might have been possible, for Gretchen had a
place as cash-girl and earned two dollars a week, and Lisa was promised
one after New Year's. But it was a hard winter. They ate only what they
must, and Lotte's blue eyes looked out from hollow sockets, and she
shivered with cold. Wages had fallen, and they fell faster and faster
till by January her ten and twelve hours' work brought her but six
dollars instead of the eight or nine she had always earned. The foreman
she hated made everything as difficult as possible. Though the bundle
came ready from the cutting room, he had managed more than once to slip
out some essential piece, and thus lessened her week's wages, no price
being paid where a garment was returned unfinished. He had often done
this where girls had refused his advances, yet it was impossible to make
complaint. The great house on Canal Street left these matters entirely
with him, and regarded complaint as mere blackmailing. Lotte tried
others, but wages were even less. She was sure of work here, and pay was
prompt. With the spring things must be better. But long before the
spring Lisa had sickened and died, and Lotte buried her in the Potter's
Field, and hurried home to make up the lost time, and hush the crying
little ones as she could. It did not occur to her that she could write
to Annchen and ask for help, and Franz had quarrelled with her because
she did not put the Grossvater in a hospital and send the children to
some asylum.
"I will even marry you with the children," he said, "but never with the
Grossvater who hindered and spoiled everything."
"He has cared for me always, even when he was hard," said Lotte. "I
shall care for him now;" and Franz rushed away and had come no more.
For a year Lotte's struggle went on. She knew only the one form of work;
and she dared not take time to learn another.
"If it were not for the Grossvater," she said, "and the children, I
should have a place and work in the country and grow strong, but I
cannot. If I die before them what can they do?"
There was other trouble. Gretchen's light little head could never guard
her pretty face. She was fourteen now, and tall and fair, fretting
against the narrow life and refusing to stay indoors when evening came.
One day she did not come home; and when Lotte sought her she saw only
the evil smile and triumphant eyes of the foreman who had followed her a
year ago and who laughed in her face as he shut the door.
"You'd better come in yourself," he called. "You'd fare better if you
did."
Lotte went home dumb, and sat down at her machine. There was no money in
the house, nor would be till she had taken home this work; but as she
bent over it the blood poured in a stream from her mouth. She tried to
rise, but fell back; and when the screaming children had brought in
neighbors, Lotte's struggle was quite over. When they had buried her in
the Potter's Field by Lisa, they took the bundle of work stained with
her life-blood and carried it back to its owners.
"She'll need no more," said the old neighbor from the floor above as she
laid it on the counter. "You've cut her down and cut her down, till
there wasn't life left to stand it longer. There's not one of you to
blame, you say, but I that know, know you've fastened her coffin-lid
with nails o' your own makin', an' that sooner or later you'll come face
to face, an' find that red-hot is cowld to the hate that's makin' ready
for you. An' as for him that stands there smilin', if it weren't for the
laws that spare the guilty and send the innocent to their deaths, God
knows it would be the best thing these hands ever did to tear him to
bits. But there's no one to blame. Ye're sure o' that. Wait a while. The
day's comin' when you'll maybe think different; an' may God speed it!"
CHAPTER NINTH.
THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET.
"If underwear, whether for men or women, has proven itself a most
excellent medium for starvation; if suits and dresses in general rank
but a grade above; if shirts, whether of cotton or woollen, are a
despair; and in each and all competition has cheapened material and
manufacture and brought labor to the 'life limit' and below, at least it
cannot be so bad with cloaks and jackets. Here are single garments,
often of the most expensive material and put together in the most
finished and perfect manner. Skilled labor is demanded, careful
handling, spotless neatness. Here is one industry which must give not
only a living wage, but a surplus. These women must be on the way to at
least semi-prosperity."
This was the thought in the days in which one phase after another of the
underwear problem presented itself, each one more bewildering, more
heart-sickening, than the last. Here and there had been the encounter
with one who had always been sure of work and who had never failed to
receive a fair return. But the summary had been inevitably as it stands
recorded,--overwork, under-pay; a fruitless struggle against
overwhelming odds.
With this thought the quest began anew. The manufacturers of cloaks and
jackets reported "piece-work" as the rule. The great dry-goods
establishments had the same word. Here and there was one where work was
done on the premises, and where skilled hands held the same places year
after year, the wages ranging from six to ten dollars, hardly varying.
But for most of them the same causes stated in the third chapter, "The
Methods of a Prosperous Firm," have operated, and it has been found
expedient to settle upon "piece-work" and let rent be paid and space be
furnished by the workers themselves.
"They like it better," said the business manager of the great firm
against whom there have never been charges of dishonesty or unkindness
in their treatment of employees. "It would be impossible to do all our
work on the premises. We should want the entire block if we even half
did it. But we know some of the women, and we pay as high as anybody;
perhaps higher. It saves them car fares and going out in all weathers,
and a great many other inconveniences, when they work at home, and I
don't see why there should be any objections made. The amount of it is,
there are too many women. The best thing to be done is to ship them
West. They say they're wanted there, and there is certainly not room
enough for them here. Machinery will soon take their place, anyway. I
have one in mind now that ought to do the work of ten women perfectly,
and require simply a tender and finisher. We shall get the thing down to
a fine point very soon. Hard on the women? Why, no. We always hold on to
first-class workers, and there's nothing much to be done with second and
third class except to use them through the busy season, and let them go
in the dull."
"Go where?"
The manager paused and looked reflectively at his well-kept
finger-nails.
"My dear madam, that's a question I have no time to consider. I dare say
they earn a living somehow. Indeed, I'm told they go into cigar
factories. There's always plenty of work."
"Plenty of work,"--a form of words so familiar that I looked for it now
from both employer and employed. But for the last was an addition
finding no place on the lips of the first: "Plenty of work? Oh, yes! I
can always get plenty of work. The trouble is to get the wages for it."
A block or so below, and further west, one great window of a cheaper
establishment held jackets and wraps large and small, marked down for
the holidays, their advertisement in a morning paper having read,
"Jackets from $4 up." Still further over, another window displayed
numbers as great, and a placard at one side announced: "These elegant
jackets from $2.87 up." The cloth might be shoddy, but here was a
garment, fashionably cut, well finished to all appearance, and
unexceptionable in pattern and color. All along the crowded avenue the
story was the same, and as east took the place of west, and Grand Street
and the Bowery and Third Avenue gave in their returns, "These elegant
jackets from $2.35 up" gave the final depth to which cheapness could
descend.
If this was retail, what could be the wholesale price, and what was
likely to be the story of the worker from whose hands they had come? It
is worth while to follow these jackets as they emerge from the
cutting-room, and in packages holding such number of dozens as has been
agreed upon, pass to the express wagon which distributes them among the
workers, the firm in mind at present, like many others, preferring this
arrangement to any which involves dealing directly with the women.
First on the list stands the name of a woman a little over fifty years
old, whose husband is a painter and who left Germany eight years ago,
urged to come over by a daughter more adventurous than the rest, who had
married and emigrated at once. Work was plentiful when they arrived, and
the husband found immediate employment at his trade, with wages so high
that the wife had no occasion for any employment outside her own rooms.
The youngest child, a girl of nine, went to school. They lived in
comfortable rooms on a decent street, put money in a savings bank, and
felt that America held more good even than the name had always seemed to
promise. Then came the financial troubles of 1879 and 1881, the gradual
fall of wages, the long seasons when there was no work, and last, the
fate that overtakes the worker in lead, whether painter or in any other
branch,--first painter's colic, and the long train of symptoms preceding
the paralysis which came at last, the stroke a light one, but leaving
the patient with the "drop hand" and all the other complications,
testifying that the working days were over. Strength enough returned for
an odd job now and then, and the little man accepted his fate cheerily,
and congratulated himself that the bank held a little fund and that thus
the lowering wages could be pieced out. The bank settled this question
by almost immediate failure; a long and expensive illness for the wife
followed; and when it ended furniture and small valuables of every sort
had been pawned, and they left the empty rooms for narrower quarters and
sought for work in which all could share. To add to the complication,
the daughter, who had had good sense enough to take a place as child's
nurse, broke her leg, and became, even when able to walk again, too
disabled to return to this work. She could run the machine, and her
mother was an expert buttonhole-maker and had already learned various
forms of work on cloth, both in cheap coats and pantaloons, and in
jackets and cloaks. The jackets seemed to promise most, for in 1884 each
one brought to the maker sixty cents, buttonholes being $1.50 per
hundred, the presser receiving ten cents each and the finisher six
cents, these amounts being deducted from the price paid on each. To save
this amount the husband learned how to press, and though his crippled
hands can barely grasp the iron, and often his wife must help him place
the cramped fingers in position, he stands there smiling and well
content to add this mite to the fund. For a year their home has been in
a deep basement, where, save at noonday, it is impossible to run the
machines without artificial light. A dark room opens from the one in
which they work, itself dark, unventilated save from the hall, and
chosen as abiding place because it represents but four dollars a month
in rent. Two machines run by mother and daughter stand as near the
window as possible, and close by is the press-board and the pale but
optimistic little man, who looks proudly at each seam as he lays it
open. Jackets are everywhere,--piled on chairs and scattered over the
floor,--waiting the various operations necessary before they can at last
be bundled on the ex-painter's back, who smiles to himself as he toils
down to the firm's headquarters, reflecting that he has saved the
expressage another week. What are the returns? Lisa will give them,--the
wife whose English is still uncertain, and whose gentle, anxious eyes
grow eager and bright as she talks, the husband nodding confirmation, or
shaking his head as he sees the tears come suddenly, with a "Not so, not
so, Lisa."
"I know not if we shall live at all," she says. "For see. We two, my
Gretchen and I, we make but ten for a day. Tree dollar? Yes, but you
must take from it de buttonhole an' finish and much else, and it is so
short--so short that we can work on them. The season, that is it--six
weeks--two months, maybe, and then pantaloon till spring jacket come.
See. It is early that we begin,--seven, maybe,--and all day we shall sew
and sew. We eat no warm essen. On table dere is bread and beer in
pitcher and cheese to-day. We sit not down, for time goes away so. No,
we stand and eat as we must, and sew more and more. Ten jackets to one
day--so Gretchen and me can make ten jackets to one day, but we sit
always--we go not out. It is fourteen hours efery day--yes, many time
sixteen--we work and work. Then we fall on bed and sleep, and when we
wake again it is work always. And I must stop a leetle; not much, but a
leetle, for my back have such pain that I fall on the bed to say, 'Ach
Gott! is it living to work so in this rich, free America?' But he is
sick always, my man, even if he will laugh. He say he must laugh alway
for two because I cannot. For when this work is past it is only
pantaloons, and sew so hard as we may it is five, six pair maybe, for
Gretchen and me all day, and that not always. Many day we do nothing
because they say work is dull, and then goes away all we save before.
But we need not to ask help. So much is good that we work and earn, but
I think I die soon of my pain, and who then helps his fingers so stiff
to press or thinks how he will ache even when he will laugh? It is
because America is best that we come, but how is it best to die because
it is always work and no joy, no hope, never one so small stop?"
"Never one so small stop." The attic had the same story, and the
white-faced, hollow-eyed woman who tried to smile as she spoke turned
also from the waiting pile of jackets and drew one or two back to the
sheet spread for them on the floor to which they had slipped. A table
and two chairs, a small stove in which burned bare handful of coals, the
two machines, at one of which a girl of twenty still sewed on, and in
the corner a bed, on which lay another girl of the same age, but with
the crimson spot on her cheeks and the shining eyes of advanced
consumption. It had been one of the faces so often seen behind the
counters of the great stores, delicate in features and coloring, with
soft dark eyes and fair masses of hair loose on the pillow.
"I try to keep her tidy," the mother said, "but she can't bear her hair
up a minute, it's so heavy on her head, an' I've no time to 'tend to it
but the minute I take in the morning. It's jackets now that I'm on. I
thought maybe there'd be less risk in them than cloaks. Cloaks seem to
give 'em so much chance to cheat. I wouldn't work at all at home, I'd be
out doing by the day, for I had a good run of work, but there's Maggie,
and I can't leave her, though God knows she gets little good of me but
the knowing I'm here. I'll tell you what they did to me on cloaks. I
work for S---- & Co., far down on Broadway, and they give out the most
expensive kind of cloaks, and nine dollars a dozen for the making; other
kinds, too, but I'd been on them a good while and knew just how. The pay
was regular, but before I'd had work from them a month I saw they were
bound to make complaints and dock pay whether there was any fault in the
work or not. One and another took their turn, and no help for it; for if
they complained the foreman just said: 'You needn't take any work unless
you like. There are plenty waiting to fill your place.' Poor souls! What
could they do but go on?
"At last came my turn. He tossed them all over. 'It's poor work,' he
said. 'They're not finished properly. You can't be paid for botching.
There's three dollars, and that's too much.' 'The work is the same it's
always been. There's no botching,' I said; but he held out the three
dollars. 'No,' I said, 'If you won't pay fair I'll go to the Woman's
Protective Union and see what they'll do.' His face was black as
thunder. 'Take your money,' he says, holding out the rest, 'but you may
sing for more work from this establishment,' and he flung the money on
the floor. That didn't trouble me, because I knew I could get work just
below, and I did that same day; twenty cloaks, ten to be made at sixty
cents apiece, and ten at fifty-five cents. I had Angie here to help, and
when they were done I carried them down. This man was a Jew, but there's
small difference. If the Jew knew best how to cheat in the beginning,
the Christian caught up with him long ago. 'The buttons are all on
wrong,' he said. 'I told you to set them an inch further back. We'll
have to alter them every one and charge you for the time.' 'I can take
oath they are on as I was told to put them on,' I said, 'but if they
must be changed I'll change them myself and save the money.'
"It took long talking to make him agree, but at last he said I could
come next morning but one, and he'd let me alter them as a great favor.
I did come down, but he said they couldn't wait and had made the change,
and he charged me six dollars for what he said was my mistake. It was no
use to complain. He could swear I had done the job wrong, and so I went
home with $5.50 instead of eleven dollars for nearly a fortnight's work.
I changed the place, and so far nobody has docked me; but doing my best,
and Angie working as steady as I do, we can't make more than twenty
cents on a jacket, and it's a short season. When it's over I do coats,
but it's less pay than jackets, and there's living and Maggie's
medicine and the doctor, though he won't take anything. I'd feel better
if he did, but he won't. Angie used to be in a factory, but there's the
baby now, and she doesn't know what way to turn but this. See, he's here
by Maggie." The sick girl lifted a corner of the quilt, and something
stirred,--a baby of seven or eight months whose great eyes looked out
from a face weazened and sharpened, deep experience seeming graven in
every line.
"He's a wise one," the sick girl said. "He's found it's no use to cry,
and he likes to be by me because it's warm. But he frightens me
sometimes, for he just lies and looks at me as if he knew a million
things and could tell them every one. He's always hungry, and maybe that
makes him wiser. I'm sure I could tell some things that people don't
know."