her good-afternoon an' walked out. I had another number in my pocket,
an' I went straight there; an' this time I had sense enough to ask to
see my room. It was bare enough, but clean. There were only three in the
family, an' it was a little house on Perry Street. There I stayed two
years. They were strange years. The folks were set in their ways an'
they had some money. But every day of that time the lady cut off herself
from the meat what she thought I ought to have, an' ordered me to put
away the rest. She allowed no dessert except on Sunday, an' she kept
cake and preserves locked in an upstairs closet. I wouldn't have minded
that. What I did mind was that from the time I entered the house till I
left it there was never a word for me beyond an order, any more than if
I hadn't been a human being. She couldn't find fault. I was born clean,
an' that house shone from top to bottom; but a dog would have got far
more kindness than they gave me. At last I said I'd try a place where
there were children an' maybe they'd like me. Mrs. Smith was dumb with
surprise when I told her I must leave. 'Leave!' she says. 'We're
perfectly satisfied. You're a very good girl, Almira.' 'It's the first
time you've ever told me so,' I says, 'an' I think a change is best all
round.' She urged, but I was set, an' I went from there when the month
was up.
"Well, my eyes stayed bad for sewing, an' I must keep on at housework.
I've been in seven places in six years. I could have stayed in every
one, an' about every one I could tell you things that make it plain
enough why a self-respecting girl would rather try something else. I
don't talk or think nonsense about wanting to be one of the family. I
don't. I'd much rather keep to myself. But out of these seven places
there was just one in which the mistress seemed to think I was a human
being with something in me the same as in her. I've been underfed an'
worked half to death in two of the houses. The mistress expected just so
much, an' if it failed she stormed an' went on an' said I was a shirk
an' good for nothing an' all that. There was only one of them that had a
decently comfortable room or that thought to give me a chance at a book
or paper now an' then. As long as I had a trade I was certain of my
evenings an' my Sundays. Now I'm never certain of anything. I'm not a
shirk. I'm quick an' smart, an' I know I turn off work. In ten hours I
earn more than I ever get. But I begin my day at six an' in summer at
five, an' it's never done before ten an' sometimes later. This place I'm
in now seems to have some kind of fairness about it, an' Mrs. Henshaw
said yesterday, 'You can't tell the comfort it is to me, Almira, to have
some one in the house I can trust. I hope you will be comfortable an'
happy enough to stay with us.' 'I'll stay till you tell me to go,' I
says, an' I meant it. My little room looks like home an' is warm and
comfortable. My kitchen is bright an' light, an' she's told me always to
use the dining-room in the evenings for myself an' for friends. She
tries to give me fair hours. If there were more like her there'd be more
willing for such work, but she's the first one I've heard of that tries
to be just. That's something that women don't know much about. When they
do there'll be better times all round."
Here stands the record of a woman who has become invaluable to the
family she serves, but whose experiences before this harbor was reached
include every form of oppression and even privation. Many more of the
same nature are recorded and are arranging themselves under heads, the
whole forming an unexpected and formidable arraignment of household
service in its present phases. This arraignment bides its time, but
while it waits it might be well for the enthusiastic prescribers of
household service as the easy and delightful solution of the
working-woman's problem to ask how far it would be their own choice if
reduced to want, and what justice for both sides is included in their
personal theory of the matter.
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.
SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO EXPERIMENTED.
The business face in the great cities is assimilating to such degree
that all men are brothers in a sense and to an extent unrealized by
themselves. Competition has deepened lines, till one type of the
employer in his first estate, while the struggle is still active and
success uncertain, loses not only youth and freshness, but with them,
too often, any token of owning a soul capable of looking beyond the
muckrake by which money is drawn in. If he acquires calm and
graciousness, it is the calmness of subtlety and the graciousness of the
determined schemer, who, finding every man's hand practically against
him, arranges his own life on the same basis, and wages war against the
small dealer or manufacturer below and the monopolist above, his one
passionate desire being to escape from the ranks of the first and find
his name enrolled among the last. He retains a number of negative
virtues. He is, as a rule, "an excellent provider" where his own family
is concerned, and he is kind beyond those limits if he has time for it.
He would not deliberately harm man or woman who serves him; but to keep
even with his competitors--if possible, to get beyond them--demands and
exhausts every energy, leaving none to spare for other purposes. Such
knowledge as comes from perpetual contact with the grasping, scheming
side of humanity is his in full. As the fortune grows and ease becomes
certain, a well-fed, well-groomed look replaces the eager sharpness of
the early days. He may at this stage turn to horses as the most positive
source of happiness. He is likely also, with or without this tendency,
to acquire a taste for art, measuring its value by what it costs, and to
plan for himself a house representing the utmost that money can buy. But
the house and its treasures is, after all, but a mausoleum, and the
grave it covers holds the man that might have been. Life in its larger
meanings has remained a sealed book, and the gold counted as chief good
becomes at last an impenetrable barrier between him and any knowledge of
what might have been his portion. He is content, and remains content
till the end, and that new beginning in which the starved soul comes to
the first consciousness of its own most desperate and pitiful poverty.
This for one type, and a type more and more common with every year of
the system in which competition is king. But here and there one finds
another,--that of the man whose conscience remains sensitive, no matter
what familiarity with legalized knavery may come, and who ponders the
question of what he owes to those by whose aid his fortune is made. Nor
is he the employer who evades the real issue by a series of what he
calls benefactions, and who organizes colonies for his work-people, in
which may be found all the charm of the feudal system, and an underlying
despotism no less feudal. He would gladly make his workers copartners
with him were intelligence enough developed among them to admit such
action, and he experiments faithfully and patiently.
It is such an employer whose own words best give the story he has to
tell. It is not an American that speaks but a German Jew,--a title often
the synonyme for depths of trickery, but more often than is known
meaning its opposite in all points. Keen sagacity rules, it is true, but
there is also a large and tender nature, sorrowing with the sorrow of
humanity and seeking anxiously some means by which that sorrow may
lessen. A small manufacturer, fighting his way against monopoly, he is
determinately honest in every thread put into his goods, in every method
of his trade; his face shrewd yet gentle and wise,--a face that child or
woman would trust, and the business man be certain he could impose upon
until some sudden turn brought out the shrewdness and the calm assurance
of absolute knowledge in his own lines. For thirty years and more his
work has held its own, and he has made for himself a place in the trade
that no crisis can affect. His own view of the situation is distinctly
serious, but even for him there was a flickering smile as he recalled
some passages of the experience given here in part. His English limps
slightly at moments of excitement, but his mastery of its shades of
meaning never, and this is his version of the present relation between
employer and employed:--
"In me always are two peoples,--one that loves work well, that must work
ever to be happy, and one that will think and think ever how hard is
life even with work that is good and with much to love. In village or in
city, for I begin with one and go on to the other, in both alike it is
work always that is too much; long hours when strength is gone and there
should be rest, but when always man and woman, yes, and child, must go
on for the little more that more hours will earn. For myself, I want not
what is called pleasure when the day is done. A book that is good
contents me, and is friend and amusement in one. But as I love a book
more and more, and desire more time to be with them, I begin first to
think, why should so many hours be given to work that there are none in
which men have strength or time or desire left for something that is
better? These things I think much of before I come to America. I have my
trade from my father and his father. We are silk-weavers from the time
silk is known, but for myself I have chosen ribbons, and it is ribbons I
make all my life and that my son will make after me.
"At first when I come here to this country that for years I hope for and
must not reach, because I am held to my father who is old--at first I
have little money and can only be with another who manufactures. But
already some dishonesties have come in. The colors are not firm; the
silk has weight given it, so that more body than is belongs to the
ribbon; there is an inch, maybe, cut short in the lengths. There is
every way to make the most and give the least. And there is something
that from the days I begin to think at all, seems ever injustice and
wrong. Side by side it may be, men and women work together at the looms;
but for the women it is half, sometimes two thirds, what the man can
earn, yet the work the same. This is something to alter when time is
ripe, and at last it is come. I have saved as I earned and added to what
I bring with me, and I buy for myself the plant of a man who retires,
and get me a place, this place where I am, and that changes little. His
workers come with me,--a few, for I begin with four looms only, but soon
have seven, and so go on. At first I think only of how I may shorten
hours and make time for them to rest and learn what they will, but a
good friend of mine from the beginning is doctor, and as I go on he
speaks to me much of things I should do for health. And then I think of
them and study, and I see that there is much I have never learned and
that they must learn also with me.
"There is one thing that Americans will, more than all peoples of the
earth. They will have a place so hot that breath is nowhere, and women
more even than men. I begin to think how I shall keep them warm yet give
them to breathe. The place is old, as you see. No builder thought ever
of air in such time as this was built, and if they think to-day, it is
chiefly wrong, for in all places I go one breathes the breath of all
others, never true air of heaven. At first I open windows from top and
before they come; but when they see it they cry out and say, 'O Mr.
B----! You want to freeze us!' 'Not so,' I say; 'I would make you
healthy.' And they say, 'We're healthy enough. We don't want draughts.'
It is true. There were draughts, and I begin to think how this shall be
changed, and try many things, and all of them they pull down or push out
or stop up tight, whichever way will most surely abolish air. At last I
bring up my doctor who is wise and can explain better than I, and I say
that work may stop and all listen and learn. They listen but they laugh,
all but one, and say, 'How funny! What is use of so much fuss?'
"While I do these things which I keep on and will not stop, finding best
at last a shaft and a hole above, that they cannot pull out or reach to
fill, I think of other things. They eat at noon what they bring,--pie
that is dear to Americans, and small cakes, many of them; but good bread
that has nourishment, or good drink like soup or coffee, no. They stand
many hours and: faint and weak. So I say there must be good coffee for
them, and I tell them, 'Girls, I will buy a big urn and there shall be
coffee and milk, and for two cents you have a big cup so sweet as you
will, or if you like better it shall be hot soup.' Above in a room was a
a Swiss that knew good soup, and that would, if I pay her a little, buy
all that is wanted and a make a big pot, so that each could have a bowl.
This also I would have them pay for, three cents a bowl, and they like
this best, and it is done for three weeks. They go up there and have
full bowls, and I have a long table made before a bench where sometimes
they rest, with oil-cloth, and here they eat and are comfortable. Three
days soup, three days hot coffee; and I have place where the men can
heat what is in their pails.
"But they do such things! They pick out vegetable from soup and throw on
the floor. They pour away coffee. They make the place like a home of
animals, and when I say, 'Girls, I want much that all should be clean
and nice, and that you never waste,' they laugh again. I find that
difficult, for what answer can be made to laugh? I go on, but they break
bowls and insult the Swiss that make the soup, and tell her I buy
dog-meat and such, and she say she will no more of it. Then I call the
doctor again and say to them, 'Listen while he tells you what is good to
eat.' They were not all so fools, but the fool ones rule, and they
listen, but they laugh always. That is American,--to laugh and think
everything joke and not see what earnest must be for any good living. I
give the coffee-urn to the best girl and tell her to have care of it,
but do what we will they think somehow I am silly, and like best to eat
their pie and then talk. A small pie at the corner is three cents, and
they buy one, sometimes two, and it is sweet and fills and they are
content. It is only men that think that will change a habit. I find for
the worker always till thought begins they are conservative, and an
experiment, a change, is distress to them. So I say, 'Let them do they
will. Air is here and that they cannot stop, but for food I will do no
more.'
"These all were small things, and as I went on I said, as in the
beginning, that for those who did the same work must be the same wage.
My men had always ten dollars, and sometimes twelve or fifteen dollars a
week; but the best woman had ten dollars, and she had worked five years
and knew all. It is a law--unwritten, but still a law--that women shall
not have what men earn; and when I say one is good as another, the
brother of the woman I make equal with him said first this should never
be; and when I said 'It must,' he talk to all the men at noon, and
before the looms begin again they come and tell me that if I do so they
will work no more. I talk to them all: 'This is a country where men
boast always that woman has much honor, but I see not that she has more
justice than where there is less honor. Shame on men that will let women
work all the hours and as well as they,--yes, many times better,--and
then threaten strike if they are paid the same!' But it was all no good.
For that time I must yield, because I had much work that was promised;
but I said: 'For now I do as you will. With January, that is but a month
away, it shall be as I will.'
"Well, I have tried. Many changes have been made, much time lost, much
money. I call them to my house in the evening. I talk with them and try
to teach them justice, and some are willing, but most not. New men spoil
my work, and I lose much profit and take the old ones again. But this,
too, is a small thing. My own mind goes on and I see that they should
share with me. I read of co-operation, and to me it is truer than
profit-sharing. I have seventy men and girls at work. I say they must
understand this business. I will try to teach them. Two evenings a week
I meet them all and talk and listen to them. One or two feel it plain.
For most they say, 'Old B---- wants to get a rise out of us somehow.' At
last I see that they are too foolish to understand co-operation, but it
may be they will let profit-sharing be a step. Over and over, many times
over and over, I tell it all, and in the end some agree, and for a year
it does well. But the next year was bad. Silk was high, and my ribbons
honest ribbons and profit small; and when they saw how small, they cried
that they were cheated and that I kept all for myself. I read them the
books. I said, 'Here, you may see with your eyes. This year I make not
enough to live if there were not other years in which I saved. I am
almost failed. The business might stop, but I will go on for our names'
sake.' 'All a dodge,' they said. No words were plain enough to make them
know. They even called me cheat and liar, there in the place where I had
tried to work for them.
"And so I share profits no more. I give large wage. I never cut down, do
the market what it will. But some things are plain. It is not alone
oppression and greed from above that do what you call grind the worker.
No, I am not alone. There are men like me with a wish for humanity and
wiser than I, and alike they are not heard when they speak; alike their
wish is naught and their effort vain. It is ignorance that rules. There
is no knowledge, no understanding. In my trade and in all trades I know
it is the same. A man will not believe a fact, and he will believe that
to cheat is all one over him can wish. Even my workers that care for me,
a few of them, they laugh no more to my face, but they say: 'Oh, he has
notions, that man! He will never get very rich, he has so many notions.'
They listen and they think a little. One man said yesterday: 'If this
had been put in my head when I was a growing lad it would have
straightened many a thing. Why ain't we taught?' And I said to him:
'Jacob, teachers are not taught. There is only one here, one there, that
thinks what only it is well to learn,--justice for all the world. I who
would do justice am made to wait, but the sin is with you, not with me.'
"So to-day I wait for such time as wisdom may come. My son is one with
me in this. He has a plan and soon he will try, and where I failed his
more knowledge may do better. But for me, I think that this generation
must suffer much, and in pain and want learn, it may be, what is life.
To-day it knows not and cares not, save a few. How shall the many be
made to know?"
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
THE WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS.
To the old New-Yorker taking his pensive way through streets where only
imagination can supply the old landmarks, long ago vanished, there is a
conviction that he knows the city foot by foot as it has crept
northward; and he repudiates the thought that its growth has ended such
possibility, and that many a dark corner is as remote from his or any
knowledge save that of its occupants as if in Caffre-land. The newest
New-Yorker has small interest in anything but the west side and the
space down-town occupied by his store or office.
And so it chances that in spite of occasional series of descriptive
articles, in spite of an elaborately written local history and
unnumbered novels whose background is the city life and thought, there
is little real knowledge, and, save among charitable workers, the
police, and adventurous newspaper men, no thought of what life may be
lived not a stone's-throw from the great artery of New York, Broadway.
On one point there can be no doubt. Not Africa in its most pestilential
and savage form holds surer disease or more determined barbarians than
nest together under many a roof within hearing of the rush and roar of
the busy streets where men come and go, eager for no knowledge or wisdom
under the sun save the knowledge that will make them better bargainers.
There comes even a certain impatient distrust of those who persist in
unsavory researches and more unsavory details of the results. If there
is not distrust; if the easy-going kindliness that is a portion of the
American temperament is stirred, it is but for the moment; and when the
hand that sought the pocket or the check-book instinctively has
presented its gift, interest is over. A fresh sensation wipes out all
trace of the transient feeling, and though it may again be roused by
judicious effort, how rarely is it that more than the automatic movement
toward the pocket results! What might come if for even one hour the
impatient giver walked through the dark passages, stood in the foul,
dimly lighted rooms and saw what manner of creature New York nourishes
in her slums, giving to every child in freest measure that training in
all foulness that eye or ear or mind can take in that will fit it in
time for the habitation in prison or reformatory on which money is never
spared,--who shall say? They are filled by free choice, these nests of
all evil. The men and women who herd in them know nothing better;
indeed, may have known something even worse. They are Polish Jews,
Bohemians, the lowest order of Italians, content with unending work,
the smallest wage, and an order of food that the American, no matter how
low he may be brought, can never stomach. Yet they assimilate in one
point, being as bent upon getting on as the most determined American,
and accepting to this end conditions that seem more those of an Inferno
than anything the upper world has known. It is among these people,
chiefly Polish Jews and Bohemians, with the inevitable commixture of
Irish, that one finds the worst forms of child-labor; children that in
happy homes are still counted babies here in these dens beginning at
four or five to sew on buttons or pick out threads.
It is not of child-labor and the outrages involved in it that I speak
to-day, save indirectly, as it forms part of the mass of evil making up
the present industrial system and to be encountered at every turn by the
most superficial investigation. It is rather of certain specific
conditions, found at many points in tenement-house life, but never in
such accumulated degree of vileness at any point save one outside the
Fourth Ward. And if the reader, like various recent correspondents, is
disposed to believe that I am merely "making up a case," using a little
experience and a great deal of imagination, I refer him or her to the
forty-third annual report of the New York Association for the
Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. There, in detail to a degree
impossible here, will be found the official report of the inspector
appointed to examine the conditions of life in the building known as
"The Big Flat," in Mulberry Street. There are smaller houses that are
worse in construction and condition, but there is none controlled by one
management where so many are gathered under one roof. The first floor
has rooms for fourteen families, the remaining five for sixteen each;
and the census of 1880 gave the number of inhabitants as 478, a
sufficient number to make up the population of the average village. The
formal inspection and the report upon it were made in September, 1886,
and the report is now accessible to all who desire information on these
phases of city life. It is Mrs. Maloney herself whose methods best give
us the heart of the matter, and who, having several callings, is the
owner of an experience which appears to hold as much surprise for
herself as for the hearer.