such conditions, yet we have seen that this lowest order is legion; that
its numbers increase with every day; and that no Board of Health or of
Sanitary Inspectors has yet been able to alter, save here and there, the
facts that are a portion of the tenement-house system.
It is chiefly with the house under the Bridge that we deal at present.
Its upper rooms hold many workers whose testimony has helped to make
plain how the east side lives. Little by little, as the blocks of
granite swung into place and the pier grew, the sunshine vanished, its
warmth and light replaced by the electric glow, cold and hard and
blinding. The day's work has ceased to be the day's work, and the women
who cannot afford the gas or oil that must burn if they work in the
daytime, sleep while day lasts, and when night comes and the electric
light penetrates every corner of the shadowy rooms, turn to the toil by
which their bread is won. Never was deeper satire upon the civilization
of which we boast. Natural law, natural living, abolished once for all,
and this light that blinds but holds no cheer shining upon the mass of
weary humanity who have forgotten what sunshine may mean and who know no
joy that life was meant to hold!
In one of these rooms, clean, if cleanliness were possible where walls
and ceiling and every plank and beam reek with the foulness from sewer
and closet, three women were at work on overalls. Two machines were
placed directly under the windows to obtain every ray of light. The
room, ten by twelve feet, with a small one half the size opening from
it, held a small stove, the inevitable teapot steaming at the back; a
table with cups and saucers and a loaf of bread still uncut; and a small
dresser in one corner, in which a few dishes were ranged. A sickly
geranium grew in an old tomato-can, but save for this the room held no
faintest attempt at adornment of any sort. In many of them the cheapest
colored prints are pinned up, and in one, one side had been decorated
with all the trademarks peeled from the goods on which the family
worked. Here there was no time for even such attempts at betterment. The
machines rushed on as we talked, with only a momentary pause as interest
deepened, and one woman nodded confirmation to the statement of another.
"We've clubbed, so's to get ahead a little," said the finisher, whose
fingers flew as she made buttonholes in the waistband and flap of the
overalls. "We were each in a room by ourselves, but after the fever,
when the children died and I hadn't but two left, it seemed as if we'd
be more sensible to all go in together and see if we couldn't be more
comfortable. We'd have left anyway, and tried for a better place, but
for one thing,--we hadn't time to move; and for another, queer as it
seems, you get used to even the worst places and feel as if you couldn't
change. We'll have to, if the landlord doesn't do something about the
closets. It's no good telling the agent, and I don't know as anybody in
the house knows just who the landlord is. Anyway, the smell's enough to
kill you sometimes, and it's a burning disgrace that human beings have
to live in such a pig-pen. It's cheap rent. We pay five dollars a month
for this place. When I came here it was from a neck-tie place over on
Allen Street, that's moved now, and my husband was mate on a tug and
earned well. But he took to drink and sold off everything I'd brought
with me, and at last he was hurt in a fight round the corner, and died
in hospital of gangrene. Mary's husband there was a bricklayer and had
big wages, but he drank them fast as he made them, and he was ugly when
the drink was in, which mine wasn't. But there's hardly one in this
house, man or woman, that don't take a drop to keep off the fever; and
even I, that hate the sight or smell of it, I wake up in the morning
with an awful kind o' goneness that seems as if a taste might help it.
The tea stops that, though. Tea's the best friend we've got. We'd never
stand it if it wasn't for tea."
"Are overalls steady pay through the year?"
"There's nothing that's steady, so far as I can find out, but want and
misery. Just now overalls are up; the Lord only knows why, for you never
can tell what'll be up and what down. They're up, and we're making a
dollar a dozen on these. I have done a dozen a day, but it's generally
ten. There's the long seams, and the two pockets, and the buckle strap
and the waistband and three buttonholes, and the stays and the
finishing. They're heavy machines too, and take the backbone right out
of you before night comes. But you sleep like the dead, that's one
comfort. It would be more if you didn't have to wake more than they do.
When the overall rush is over, it'll be back to pants again. That's my
trade. I learned it regular after I was married, when I saw Tim wasn't
going to be any dependence. There were the children then, and I thought
I'd send 'em to school and keep things decent maybe. I know all about
pants, the best and the worst, but it's mostly worse these days. First
the German women piled in ready to do your work for half your rates, and
when they'd got well started, in comes the Italians and cuts under, till
it's a wonder anybody keeps soul and body together."
"We don't," one of the women said, turning suddenly. "I got rid o' my
soul long ago, such as 'twas. Who's got time to think about souls,
grinding away here fourteen hours a day to turn out contract goods?
'Tain't souls that count. It's bodies that can be driven, an' half
starved an' driven still, till they drop in their tracks. I'm driving
now to pay a doctor's bill for my three that went with the fever. Before
that I was driving to put food into their mouths. I never owed a cent to
no man. I've been honest and paid as I went and done a good turn when I
could. If I'd chosen the other thing while I'd a pretty face of my own
I'd a had ease and comfort and a quick death. Such life as this isn't
living."
The machine whirled on as she ended, to make up the time lost in her
outburst. The finisher shook her head as she looked at her, then poured
a cup of tea and put it silently on the edge of the table where it could
be reached.
"She's right enough," she said, "but there's no use thinking about it. I
try to sometimes, just to see if there's any way out, but there isn't.
I've even said I'd take a place; but I don't know anything about
housework, and who'd take one looking as I do, and not a rag that's fit
to be put on? I cover up in an old waterproof when I go for work. They
wouldn't give it to me if they saw my dress in rags below, and me with
no time to mend it. But we're doing better than some. We've had meat
twice this week, and we've kept warm. It's the coal that eats up your
money,--twelve cents a scuttle, and no place to keep more if ever we got
ahead enough to get more at a time. It's lucky that tea's so staying.
Give me plenty of tea, and the most I want generally besides is bread
and a scrape of butter. It's all figured out. It's long since I've
spent more than seventy-five cents a week for what I must eat. I've no
time to cook even if I had anything, so it's lucky I haven't. I suppose
there'd be plenty to eat if you once made up your mind to take a place."
It was the second machine that stopped now, and the haggard woman
running it faced about suddenly. "Do you know what come to my girl," she
said,--"my girl that I brought up decent and that was a good girl? I
said to myself a trade was no good, for it was more an' more starvation
wages, and I'd put her with folks that would be good to her, even if the
other girls did look down on her for going into service. She was
fifteen, and a still little thing with soft eyes and a pretty, soft way,
if she did come of a drinking father. I put her with a lady that wanted
a waitress and said she'd train her well. She'd three boarders in the
house, and all gentlemen to look at, and one that's in a bank to-day he
did his best to turn her head on the sly, and when he found he couldn't,
one Sunday when she was alone in the house and none to hear or help, he
had his will. The mistress turned her off the hour she heard it, for
Nettie went to her when she come home. 'Such things don't happen unless
the girl is to blame,' she said. 'Never show your shameless face here
again.' Nettie came home to me kind of dazed, and she stayed dazed till
she went to a hospital and a baby was born dead, and she dead herself a
week after. An' it isn't one time alone or my girl alone. It's over an'
over an' over that that thing happens. There's plenty that go to the bad
of their own free will, but I know plenty more with the same chance that
doesn't, an' there's many a mother that's been in service herself that
says, 'Whatever the mistress may know about it she can't tell, but the
devil's let loose when the master or a son maybe is around, an' they'll
not have their girls standing what they had to stand and then turned off
without a character because they were found with the master talkin' to
'em.' It's women that keeps women down an' is hard on 'em. I'll take my
chances with any Jew you'll bring along before I'll put myself in the
power of women that calls themselves ladies an' hasn't as much heart as
a broomstick; an' I'll warn every girl to keep to herself an' learn a
trade, an' not run the risk she'll run if she goes out to service,
letting alone the way you're looked down on."
There was no time for discussion. The machines must go on; but, as
usual, much more than the fact of which I was in search had come to me,
and, strangely enough, in this house and in others of its kind inspected
one after another, much the same story was told. In the "improved
tenements" close at hand, where comparative comfort reigned, more than
one woman gave willingly the detail of the weekly expenditure for food,
and added, as if the underlying question had made itself felt, "It's
betther to be a little short even an' your own misthress," with other
words that have their place elsewhere. On the upper floor of one of
these houses a pantaloon-maker sat in a fireless room, finishing the
last of a dozen which when taken back would give her money for coal and
food. She had been ill for three days, and on the bed,--an old mattress
on a dry-goods box in the corner. "Even that's more than I had for a
good while," she said. "I'd pawned everything before my husband died,
except the machine. I couldn't make but twenty-two cents a pair on the
pants, an' as long as he could hold up he did the pressing. With him to
help a little I made three a day. That seems little, but there was so
many pieces to each pair,--side and watch and pistol pockets, buckle
strap, waistband, and bottom facings and lap; six buttonholes and nine
buttons. We lived--I don't just know how we lived. He was going in
consumption an' very set about it. 'I'll have no medicine an' no doctor
to make me hang an' drag along,' he says. 'I've got to go, an' I know it,
an' I'll do it as fast as I can.' He was Scotch, an' took his porridge
to the last, but I came to loathe the sight of it. He could live on six
cents a day. I couldn't. 'I'm the kind for your contractors,' he'd say.
'It's a glorious country, and the rich'll be richer yet when there's
more like me.' He didn't mind what he said, an' when a Bible-reader put
her head in one day, 'Come in,' he says. 'My wife's working for a
Christian contractor at sixty-six cents a day, an' I'm what's left of
another Christian's dealings with me, keeping me as a packer in a damp
basement and no fire. Come in and let's see what more Christianity has
to say about it.' He scared her, his eyes was so shiny an' he most gone
then. But there's many a one that doesn't go over fifty cents a week for
what she'll eat. God help them that's starving us all by bits, if there
is a God, but I'm doubting it, else why don't things get better, an' not
always worse an' worse?"
For east and west, however conditions might differ, the final word was
the same, and it stands as the summary of the life that is lived from
day to day by these workers,--"never better, always worse and worse."
CHAPTER TWELFTH.
ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS.
"I suppose if you'd been born on the top of a hill in New Hampshire with
the stones so thick ten miles of stone wall couldn't have used 'em up,
an' the steeple of the Methodist meetin'-house the only thing in sight,
maybe you'd have wanted to get where you could see folks too. It was
just Elkins luck to have another hill between us an' the village so't I
couldn't see beyond the woods between. If there was a contrary side to
anything it always fell to father, an' I'm some like him, though I've
got mother's way of never knowing when I'm knocked flat, though I've had
times enough to find out. But I said straight through, 'If ever there's
a chance of getting to New York I'll take it. Boston won't do. I want
the biggest an' the stirringest thing there is in the United States,'
an' Leander felt just as I did.
"Leander lived down the valley a way, an' such cobble-stones as hadn't
come to our share had come to his. He'd laid wall from the time he was
ten years old, and he'd sat on the hay an' cried for pure lonesomeness.
His folks weren't any hands to talk, an' he couldn't even have the
satisfaction of meetin' Sundays, because they was Seventh Day Baptists,
an' so set a minister couldn't get near 'em. An' Leander was
conscientious an' thought he ought to stay by. I didn't. I told him from
the time we went to school together that I was bound to get to New York,
an' that sort of fired him up, an' we've talked hours to time about what
it was like, an' what we'd do if we ever got there. My folks were set
against the notion, an' so were his, but he went after a while, with
some man that was up in the summer an' that gave him a place in a store.
I couldn't go on account of father's dying sudden an' mother's holdin'
on harder'n ever to me, but she was took within the year, an' there I
was, free enough, an' not a soul in the world but Leander's folks that
seemed to think much one way or another how I was likely to come out.
"There was a mortgage on the farm, an' Dr. Grayson foreclosed an' had
most of the money for his bill; an' when things were all settled I had
forty dollars in cash an' the old furniture. Leander's folks was
dreadful short for things, for they'd been burned out once, an' so I
just turned everything over to them but some small things I could pack
in my trunk, mother's teaspoons an' such, an' walked down to the village
an' took the stage for Portsmouth. I wasn't scared. I didn't care nor
think how I looked. It was heaven to think I was on the way to folks an'
the things folks do. I ain't given to crying, but that day I sat back in
the stage an' cried just for joy to think I was going to have something
different.
"All this time I hadn't thought much what I'd do. Forty dollars seemed a
big lot, enough for weeks ahead. I'd done most everything about a house,
an' I could make everything I wore. I had only to look at a pattern an'
I could go home an' cut out one like it. The dress I had on was cheap
stuff, but when I looked at other folks's I saw it wasn't so much out o'
the way. So I said, most likely some dressmaker would take me, an' I'd
try my luck that way. This was before I got to Boston, an' I went round
there all the afternoon before it was time to take the train, for the
conductor told me just what to do, an' I hadn't a mite of trouble. I
never do going to a strange place. I was half a mind to stay in Boston
when I saw the Common an' the crowds of folks. I sat still there an'
just looked at 'em, an' cried again for joy to think I'd got where there
were so many. 'But there'll be more in New York,' I said, 'an' there'll
be sure to be plenty ready to do a good turn.' I could have hugged 'em
all. I didn't think then the time would ever come that I'd hate the
sight of faces an' wish myself on top of the hill in the cobble-stones,
but it did, an' it does now sometimes.
"I went on board the boat that night sort of crazy. I'd gone an' got
some sandwiches an' things at a place the conductor told me, an' I sat
on the deck in the moonlight an' ate my supper. I'd been too happy to
eat before, an' I was so happy then I could hardly keep still. There was
a girl not far off, a kind of nice-looking girl, an' she watched me, an'
at last she began to talk. In half an hour I knew all about her an' she
about me. She was a Rhode Island girl an' had worked in a mill near
Providence, an' gone to New York at last an' learned fur-sewing. She
said it was a good trade, an' she made ten an' twelve dollars a week
while the season lasted an' never less than five. This seemed a mint of
money, an' when she said one of their old hands had died, an' she could
take me right in as her friend an' teach me herself, I felt as if my
fortune was made.
"Well, I went with her next day. She had a room in Spring Street, near
Hudson,--an old-fashioned house that belonged to two maiden sisters, an'
I went in with her the first night, an' afterward for a while had the
hall bedroom. It didn't take me long to learn. It was a Jew place an'
there were thirty girls, but he treated us well. For my part I've fared
just as well with Jews as ever I did with Christians, an' sometimes
better. I'd taken to Hattie so that I couldn't bear to think of leaving
her, an' so I let my dressmaking plan go. But I'll tell you what I found
out in time. These skins are all dressed with arsenic. The dealers say
there's nothing poisonous about them, but of course they lie. Every pelt
has more or less in it, an' the girls show it just as the
artificial-flower girls show it. Your eyelids get red an' the lids all
puffy, an' you're white as chalk. The dealers say the red eyes come from
the flying hairs. Perhaps they do, but the lids don't, an' every
fur-sewer is poisoned a little with every prick of her needle. What the
flying hair does is just to get into your throat an' nose and
everywhere, an' tickle till you cough all the time, an' a girl with weak
lungs hasn't a chance. The air is full of fur, an' then the work-room is
kept tight shut for fear of moths getting in. The work is easy enough.
It's just an everlasting patchwork, for you're always sewing together
little bits, hundreds of them, that you have to match. You sew over an'
over with linen thread, an' you're always piecing out an' altering
shapes. It's nothing to sew up a thing when you've once got it pieced
together. If it's beaver, all the long hairs must be picked out, an'
it's the same with sealskin. We made up everything; sable an' Siberian
squirrel, bear, fox, marten, mink, otter, an' all the rest. There were
some girls very slow in learning that only got a dollar a week, an' in
the end four, but most of them can average about five. I was seventeen
when I began, an' in a year I had caught all the knack there is to it,
an' was an expert, certain of ten dollars in the season an' about six in
between. It's generally piece-work, with five or six months when you can
earn ten or twelve dollars even, an' the rest of the time five or six
dollars. In the busiest times there'd be fifty girls perhaps, but this
was only for two or three months, an' then they discharged them. 'Tisn't
a trade I'd ever let a girl take up if I could help it; I suppose
somebody's got to do it, but there ought to be higher wages for those
that do.
"This went on five years. I won't take time telling about Leander, but
he'd got to be a clerk at Ridley's an' had eight hundred dollars a year,
an' we'd been engaged for two years, an' just waiting to see if he
wouldn't get another rise. I knew we could manage on that. Leander was
more ambitious than me. He said we ought to live in a showy
boarding-house an' make our money tell that way, but I told him I was
used to the Spring Street house, an' we could have a whole floor an' be
snug as could be an' Hattie board with us. He gave in, an' it's well he
did; for we hadn't been married six months before he had a hemorrhage
an' just went into quick consumption. I'd kept right on with my trade,
but I was pulled down myself an' my eyelids so swollen sometimes I could
hardly see out of 'em. But I got a sewing-machine from money I'd saved,
an' I took in work from a place on Canal Street,--a good one, too, that
always paid fair. The trouble was my eyes. I'd used 'em up, an' they got
so I couldn't see the needle nor sew straight, an' had to give up the
sewing, an' then I didn't know which way to turn, for there was Leander.
The old folks were up there still, wrastling with the stones, but poorer
every year, an' I couldn't get him up there. Leander was patient as a
saint, but he fretted over me an' how I was to get along.
"'You're not to worry,' says I. 'There's more ways than one of earning,
an' if my eyes is bad, I've got two hands an' know how to use 'em. I'll
take a place an' do housework if I can't do nothing else.'
"You'd never believe how the thought o' that weighed on him. He'd wake
me up in the night to say, 'Now, Almiry, jest give up that thought an'
promise me you'll try something else. I think I'd turn in my grave if I
had to know you was slavin' in anybody's kitchen.'
"'What's the odds?' I said. 'You have to be under orders whatever you
do. I think it won't be a bad change from the shop.'
"He took on so, though, that to quiet him I promised him I wouldn't do
it unless I had to, an' 'twasn't long after that that he died. Between
the doctor's bill--an' he was a kind man, I will say, an' didn't charge
a tenth of what he had ought to--an' the funeral an' all, I was cleaned
out of everything. I'd had to pawn a month before he died, an' was just
stripped. Sewing was no good. My eyes went back on me like everything
else, an' in a fortnight I knew there wasn't anything for it but
getting a place. I left such things as I had in charge of the old ladies
an' answered an advertisement for 'a capable girl willing to work.'
"Well, it was a handsome house an' elegant things in the parlors an'
bedrooms, but my heart sunk when she took me into the kitchen. The last
girl had gone off in a rage an' left everything, an' there was grease
and dirt from floor to ceiling. It was a deep basement, with one window
an' a door opening right into the area with glass set in it, an' iron
bars to both; but dirty to that degree you couldn't see three feet
beyond; cockroaches walking round at their ease an' water-bugs so thick
you didn't know where to lay anything.
"'You'll have things quite your own way,' the lady said, 'for I never
come into the kitchen. Bridget attends to upstairs, but you attend to
fires and the meals and washing and ironing, and I expect punctuality
and everything well done.'
"'At least it sounds independent,' I thought, and I made up my mind to
try it, for the wages were fifteen dollars a month, an' that with board
seemed doing well. Bridget came down presently. She was seventeen an' a
pretty girl rather, but she looked fit to drop, an' fell down in a
chair.
"'It's the bell,' she said. 'The comin' an' goin' here niver ceases, an'
whin 'tisn't the front door it's her own bell, an' she'll jingle it or
holler up the tube in the middle o' the night if she takes a notion.'
"I wouldn't ask questions, for I thought I should find out soon enough,
so I said I'd like to go up to my room a minute.
"'It's our room you'll mane,' she said. 'There's but the one, an' it's
hard enough for two to be slapin' on a bed that's barely the width o'
one.'
"My heart sank then, for I'd always had a place that was comfortable all
my life, but it sunk deeper when I went up there. A hall bedroom, with a
single bed an' a small table, with a washbowl an' small pitcher, one
chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things; that was all except
a torn shade at the window. I looked at the bed. The two ragged
comfortables were foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at
Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an' all, an' I began to
cry.
"'You don't look as if you was used to the likes of it,' Bridget said.
'There's another room the same as this but betther. Why not ax for it?'
"I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs. Melrose, who smiled
as if she thought I had been enjoying myself.
"'I'm perfectly willing to try an' do your work as well as I know how,'
I said, 'but I must have a place to myself an' clean things in it.'
"'Highty-tighty!' says she. 'What impudence is this? You'll take what I
give you and be thankful to get it. Plenty as good as you have slept in
that room and never complained.'
"'Then it's time some one did,' I said. 'I don't ask anything but
decency, an' if you can't give it I must try elsewhere.'