through wid 'em, an' on for me taste o' purgatory, not hintin' that
there mightn't be more 'n a taste," Mrs. Maloney said, on a day in which
she unfolded to me her views of life in general, her small gray eyes
twinkling, her arms akimbo on her mighty hips, and her cap-border
flapping about a face weather-beaten and high-colored to a degree not
warranted even by her present profession as apple-woman. Whether
whiskey or stale beer is more responsible is unknown. It is only
certain that, having submitted with the utmost cheerfulness to the
perennial beatings of a husband only half her size, she found
consolation in a glass now and then with a sympathizing neighbor and at
last in a daily resort to the same friend. There had been a gradual
descent from prosperity. Dennis, if small, was wiry and phenomenally
strong, and earned steady wages as porter during their first years in
the country. But the children, as they grew, went to the bad entirely,
living on the earnings of the mother, who washed and scrubbed and
slaved, with a heart always full of excuses for the hulking brutes, who
came naturally at last to the ends that might have been foretold. Their
education had been in the Fourth Ward; they were champion bullies and
ruffians of whom the ward still boasts, Mrs. Maloney herself acquiring a
certain distinction as the mother of the hardest cases yet sent up from
Cherry Street. But if she had no power to save her own, life became
easier for whomsoever she elected to guard. Wretched children crept
under her wing to escape the beating awaiting them when they had failed
to bring home the amount demanded of them. Women, beaten and turned out
into the night, fled to her for comfort, and the girl who had lost her
place, or to whom worse misfortune had come, told her story to the
big-hearted sinner, who nodded and cried and said, "It's the Widdy
Maloney that'll see you're not put upon more. Hold on an' be aisy,
honey, an' all'll come out the way you'd be havin' it, an' why not?"
It was at this stage of experience that Mrs. Maloney decided to remove
to the Big Flat. The last raid of Dennis, the youngest and only boy not
housed at the expense of the State, had reduced her belongings to their
lowest terms, and she took possession of her new quarters, accompanied
only by a rickety table, three chairs, a bed with two old straw
mattresses, and some quilts too ragged to give any token of their
original characteristics, a stove which owned but one leg,--the rest
being supplied by bricks,--and such dishes and other small furniture as
could be carried in a basket. But there went with her a girl kicked out
by the last man who had temporarily called her his mistress,--a mere
child still, who at ten had begun work in a bag-factory passing through
various grades of slightly higher employment, till seduced by the
floor-walker of the store that it had been her highest ambition to
reach. Almost as much her fault as his undoubtedly, her silly head
holding but one desire, that for fine clothes and never to work any
more, but a woman's heart waking in her when the baby came, and
prompting her to harder work and better life than she had ever known.
There was no chance of either with the baby, and when at last she farmed
out the encumbrance to an old couple in a back building who made this
their business, and took a place again in the store, it was relief as
well as sorrow that came when the wretched little life was over. But the
descent had been a swift one. When what she had called life was quite
over, and she sat dumb and despairing in the doorway to which she had
been thrust, thinking of the river as the last refuge left, the widow
had pushed her before her up the stairs and said,--
"Poor sowl, if there's none to look out for ye, then who but me should
do it?"
This was the companion who lay by her side under the ragged quilts, life
still refusing to give place to death, though every paroxysm of coughing
shortened the conflict.
"She's that patient that the saints themselves--all glory to their
blessed names!--couldn't be more so; but I'd not know how to manage if
it wasn't for the foot-warmer I call her; that's Angela there, wid eyes
that go through you an' the life beaten out of her by the man that
called himself her father, an' wasn't at all, at all. It's she that does
the kaping of the house, an' sleeps across the foot, an' it's mine they
think the two av 'em, else they'd never a let me in, the rules bein',
'no lodgers.' It's not lodgers they are. It's me boarders, full fledged,
an' who's a better right than me, though I'd not be sayin' so to the
housekeeper that'd need forty pair o' eyes to her two to see what's
goin' on under her nose."
The "foot-warmer's" office had ceased for one of them before the month
ended, and when the Potter's Field had received the pine coffin followed
only by the two watchers, the widow made haste to bring in another
candidate for the same position; one upon whom she had kept her eye for
a month, certain that worse trouble was on the way than loss of work.
"There was the look on her that manes but the one thing," she said
afterward. "There's thim that sthand everything an' niver a word, an'
there's thim that turns disperate. She was a disperate wan."
Never had a "disperate wan" better reason. A factory girl almost from
babyhood, her apprenticeship having begun at seven, she had left the
mill at fourteen, a tall girl older than her years in look and
experience. New York was her Mecca, and to New York she came, with a
week's wages in her pocket on which to live till work should be found,
and neither relative nor friend save a girl who had preceded her by a
few months and was now at work in a fringe and gimp factory, earning
seven dollars a week and promising the same to the child after a few
weeks' training. But seven years in a cotton-mill, if they had given
quickness in one direction, had blunted all power in others. The fingers
were unskilful and clumsy and her mind too wandering and inattentive to
master details, and the place was quickly lost. She entered her name as
candidate for the first vacancy in a Grand Street store, and in the mean
time went into a coffee and spice mill and became coffee-picker at
three dollars a week. This lasted a month or two, but even here there
was dissatisfaction with lack of thoroughness, and she was presently
discharged. The vacancy had come, and she went at once into the store,
her delicate face and pretty eyes commending her to the manager, who
lost no time in telling her what impression she could produce if she
were better dressed. Weak, irresponsible, hopelessly careless, and past
any power to undo these conditions, there was some instinct in the
untaught life that put her instantly on the defensive.
"I'm not good for much," she said, "but I'm too good for that. There's
nothing you could promise would get you your will and there won't be."
Naturally, as the siege declared itself a hopeless one, the manager
found it necessary to fill her place by some more competent hand. There
was an interval of waiting in which she pawned almost the last article
of clothing remaining that could be dispensed with, and then went into a
bakery, where the hours were from seven A. M. to ten P. M., sometimes
later. She was awkward at making change, but her gentle manners
attracted customers, and the baker himself soon cast a favorable eye
upon her, and speedily made the same proposition that had driven her
from her last employment. The baker's wife knew the symptoms, and on the
same day discharged the girl.
"I don't say it's your fault," she said, "but he's started about you,
and it's for your own good I tell you to go. The best thing for you is
to go back to your mother, or else take a place with some nice woman
that'll keep an eye to you. You'll always be run after. I know your
kind, that no man looks at without wanting to fool with 'em. You take my
advice and go into a place."
The chance came that night. The mistress of a cheap boarding-house in
East Broadway, her patrons chiefly young clerks from Grand and Division
Street stores, offered her home and eight dollars a month, and Lizzie,
who by this time was frightened and discouraged, accepted on the
instant. She was well accustomed to long hours, and she had never minded
standing as many of the girls did, her apprenticeship in the mill having
made it comparatively easy.
But the drudgery undergone here was beyond anything her life had ever
known. Her day began at five and it never ended before eleven. She slept
on an old mattress on the kitchen floor, and as her strength failed from
the incessant labor, lost all power of protest and accepted each new
demand as something against which there could be no revolt. There was
abundance of coarse food and thus much advantage, but she had no
knowledge that taught her how to make work easier, nor had her mistress
any thought of training her. She was a dish-washing machine chiefly, and
broke and chipped even the rough ware that formed the table furniture,
till the exasperated mistress threatened to turn her off if another
piece were destroyed. It was a case of hopeless inaptitude; and when in
early spring she sickened, and the physician grudgingly called in
declared it a case of typhus brought on by the conditions in which she
had lived, she was sent at once to the hospital and left to such fate as
might come.
A clean bed, rest, and attendance seemed a heaven to the girl when
consciousness came back, and she shrank from any thought of going out
again to the fight for existence.
"I don't know what the matter is," she said to the doctor as she mended,
"but somehow I ain't fit to make a living. I shall have to go back to
the mill, but I said I never would do that."
"You shall go to some training-school and be taught," said the doctor,
who had stood looking at her speculatively yet pitifully.
"Ah, but I couldn't learn. Somehow things don't stick to me. I'm not fit
to earn a living."
"You're of the same stuff as a good many thousand of your kind," the
doctor said under his breath, and turned away with a sigh.
Lizzie went out convalescent, but still weak and uncertain, and took
refuge with one of the bakery girls who had half of a dark bedroom in a
tenement house near the Big Flat. She looked for work. She answered
advertisements, and at last began upon the simplest form of necktie, and
in her slow, bungling fashion began to earn again. But she had no
strength. She sat at the window and looked over to the Big Flat and
watched the swarm that came and went; five hundred people in it, they
told her, and half of them drunk at once. It was certain that there were
always men lying drunk in the hallways in the midst of ashes and filth
that accumulated there almost unchecked. The saloon below was always
full; the stale beer dives all along the street full also, above all, at
night, when the flaunting street-walkers came out, and fiddles squeaked,
and cheap pianos rattled, and songs and shouts were over-topped at
moments by the shrieks of beaten women or the oaths and cries of a
sudden fight. Slowly it was coming to the girl that this was all the
life New York had for her; that if she failed to meet the demand
employer after employer had made upon her, she would die in this hole,
where neither joy nor hope had any place. Her clothes were in rags. She
went hungry and cold, and had grown too stupefied with trouble to plan
anything better. At last it was plain to her that death must be best.
She said to herself that the river could never tell, and that there
would be rest and no more cold or hunger, and it was to the river that
she went at night as the Widow Maloney rose before her and said,--
"You'll come home wid me, me dear, an' no wurruds about it."
Lizzie looked at her stupidly. "You'd better not stop me," she said.
"I'm no good. I can't earn my living anywhere any more. I don't know
how. I'd better be out of the way."
"Shure you'll be enough out o' the way whin you're in the top o' the Big
Flat," said Mrs. Maloney. "An' once there we'll see."
Lizzie followed her without a word, but when the stairs were climbed and
she sunk panting and ghastly on one of the three chairs, it was quite
plain to the widow that more work had begun. That it will very soon end
is also quite plain to whoever dares the terrors of the Big Flat, and
climbs to the wretched room, which in spite of dirt and foulness within
and without is a truer sanctuary than many a better place. The army of
incompetents will very shortly be the less by one, but more recruits are
in training and New York guarantees an unending supply.
"Shure if there's naught they know how to do," says the widow, "why
should one be lookin' to have thim do what they can't. It's one thing
I've come to, what with seein' the goings on all me life, but chiefly in
the Big Flat, that if childers be not made to learn, whither they like
it or not, somethin' that'll keep hands an' head from mischief, there's
shmall use in laws an' less in muddlin' about 'em when they're most done
with livin' at all, at all. But that's a thing that's beyond me or the
likes o' me, an' I'm only wonderin' a thrifle like an' puttin' the
question to meself a bit, 'What would you be doin', Widdy Maloney, if
the doin' risted on you an' no other?'"
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.
AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.
Why this army of women, many thousand strong, is standing behind
counters, over-worked and underpaid, the average duration of life among
them as a class lessening every year, is a question with which we can at
present deal only indirectly. It is sufficient to state that the retail
stores of wellnigh every order, though chiefly the dry-goods retail
trade, have found their quickness and aptness to learn, the honesty and
general faithfulness of women, and their cheapness essentials in their
work; and that this combination of qualities--cheapness dominating
all--has given them permanent place in the modern system of trade. A
tour among many of the larger establishments confirmed the statement
made by employers in smaller ones, the summary being given in the words
of a manager of one of the largest retail houses to be found in the
United States.
"We don't want men," he said. "We wouldn't have them even if they came
at the same price. Of course cheapness has something to do with it, and
will have, but for my part give me a woman to deal with every time. Now
there's an illustration over at that hat-counter. We were short of hands
to-day, and I had to send for three girls that had applied for places,
but were green--didn't know the business. It didn't take them ten
minutes to get the hang of doing things, and there they are, and you'd
never know which was old and which was new hand. Of course they don't
know all about qualities and so on, but the head of the department looks
out for that. No, give me women every time. I've been a manager thirteen
years, and we never had but four dishonest girls, and we've had to
discharge over forty boys in the same time. Boys smoke and lose at
cards, and do a hundred things that women don't, and they get worse
instead of better. I go in for women."
"How good is their chance of promotion?"
"We never lose sight of a woman that shows any business capacity, but of
course that's only as a rule in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets
about the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here are
public-school girls and live at home. You see that makes things pretty
easy, for the family pool their earnings and they dress well and live
well. We don't take from the poorer class at all. These girls earn from
four and a half to eight dollars a week. A few get ten dollars, and
they're not likely to do better than that. Forty dollars a month is a
fortune to a woman. A man must have his little fling, you know. Women
manage better."
"If they are really worth so much to you, why can't you give better pay?
What chance has a girl to save anything, unless she lives at home?"
"We give as high pay as anybody, and we don't give more because for
every girl here there are a dozen waiting to take her place. As to
saving, she doesn't want to save. There isn't a girl here that doesn't
expect to marry before long, and she puts what she makes on her back,
because a fellow naturally goes for the best-looking and the
best-dressed girl. That's the woman question as I've figured it out, and
you'll find it the same everywhere."
Practically he was right, for the report, though varying slightly,
summed up as substantially the same. Descending a grade, it was found
that even in the second and third rate stores the system of fines for
any damage soon taught the girls carefulness, and that while a few were
discharged for hopeless incompetency, the majority served faithfully and
well.
"I dare say they're put upon," said the manager of one of the cheaper
establishments. "They're sassy enough, a good many of them, and some of
the better ones suffer for their goings-on. But they ain't a bad
set--not half; and these women that come in complaining that they ain't
well-treated, nine times out of ten it's their own airs that brought it
on. It's a shop-girl's interest to behave herself and satisfy customers,
and she's more apt to do it than not, according to my experience."
"They'd drive a man clean out of his mind," said another. "The tricks of
girls are beyond telling. If it wasn't for fines there wouldn't one in
twenty be here on time, and the same way with a dozen other things. But
they learn quick, and they turn in anywhere where they're wanted. They
make the best kind of clerks, after all."
"Do you give them extra pay for over-hours during the busy season?"
"Not much! We keep them on, most of them, right through the dull one.
Why shouldn't they balance things for us when the busy time comes? Turn
about's fair play."
A girl who had been sent into the office for some purpose shook her head
slightly as she heard the words, and it was this girl who, a day or two
later, gave her view of the situation. The talk went on in the pretty,
home-like parlors of a small "Home" on the west side, where rules are
few and the atmosphere of the place so cheery that while it is intended
only for those out of work, it is constantly besieged with requests to
enlarge its borders and make room for more. Half a dozen other girls
were near: three from other stores, one from a shirt factory, one an
artificial-flower-maker who had been a shop-girl.
"When I began," said the first, "father was alive, and I used what I
earned just for dressing myself. We were up at Morrisania, and I came
down every day. I was in the worsted and fancy department at D----'s,
and I had such a good eye for matching and choosing that they seemed to
think everything of me. But then father fell sick. He was a painter, and
had painter's colic awfully and at last paralysis. Then he died finally
and left mother and me, and she's in slow consumption and can't do much.
I earned seven dollars a week because I'd learned fancy work and did
some things evenings for the store, and we should have got along very
well. We'd had to move out a little farther, to the place mother was
born in, because rent was cheaper and she could never stand the city.
But this is the way it worked. I have to be at the store at eight
o'clock. The train that leaves home at seven gets me to the store two
minutes after eight, but though I've explained this to the manager he
says I've got to be at the store at eight, and so, summer and winter, I
have to take the train at half-past six and wait till doors are open.
It's the same way at night. The store closes at six, and if I could
leave then I could catch an express train that would get me home at
seven. The rules are that I must stop five minutes to help the girls
cover up the goods, and that just hinders my getting the train till
after seven, so that I am not home till eight."
I looked at the girl more attentively. She was colorless and emaciated,
and, when not excited by speaking, languid and heavy.
"Are you sure that you have explained the thing clearly so that the
manager understands?" I asked.
"More than once," the girl answered, "but he said I should be fined if I
were not there at eight. Then I told him that the girls at my counter
would be glad to cover up my goods, and if he would only let me go at
six it would give me a little more time for mother. I sit up late anyway
to do things she can't, for we live in two rooms and I sew and do a good
many things after I go home."
Inquiry a day or two later showed that her story was true in every
detail and also that she was a valuable assistant, one of the best among
a hundred or so employed. The firm gives largely to charitable objects,
and pays promptly, and at rates which, if low, are no lower than usual;
but they continue to exact this seven minutes' service from one whose
faithfulness might seem to have earned exemption from a purely arbitrary
rule--in such a case mere tyranny. The girl had offered to give up her
lunch hour, but the manager refused; and she dared not speak again for
fear of losing her place.
"After all, she's better off than I am or lots of others," said one who
sat near her. "I'm down in the basement at M----'s, and forty others
like me, and about forty little girls. There's gas and electric light
both, but there isn't a breath of air, and it's so hot that after an
hour or two your head feels baked and your eyes as if they would fall
out. The dull season--that's from spring to fall--lasts six months, and
then we work nine and a half hours and Saturdays thirteen. The other six
months we work eleven hours, and holiday time till ten and eleven. I'm
strong. I'm an old hand and somehow stand things, but I've a cousin at
the ribbon counter, the very best girl in the world, I do believe. She
always makes the best of things, but this year it did seem as if the
whole town was at that counter. They stood four and five deep. She was
penned in with the other girls, a dozen or two, with drawers and cases
behind and counter in front, and there she stood from eight in the
morning till ten at night, with half an hour off for dinner and for
supper. She could have got through even that, but you see there has to
be steady passing in that narrow space, and she was knocked and pushed,
first by one and then by another, till she was sore all over; and at
last down she dropped right there, not fainting, but sort of gone, and
the doctor says she's most dead and can't go back, he doesn't know when.
Down there in the basement the girls have to put on blue glasses, the
glare is so dreadful, but they don't like to have us. The only comfort
is you're with a lot and don't feel lonesome. I can't bear to do
anything alone, no matter what it is."
A girl with clear dark eyes and a face that might have been almost
beautiful but for its haggard, worn-out expression, turned from the
table where she had been writing and smiled as she looked at the last
speaker.
"That is because you happen to be made that way," she said. "I am always
happier when I can be alone a good deal, but of course that's never
possible, or almost never. I shall want the first thousand years of my
heaven quite to myself, just for pure rest and a chance to think."
"I don't know anything about heaven," the last speaker said hastily,
"but I'm sure I hope there's purgatory at least for some of the people
I've had to submit to. I think a woman manager is worse than a man. I've
never had trouble anywhere and always stay right on, but I've wanted to
knock some of the managers down, and it ought to have been done. Just
take the new superintendent. We loved the old one, but this one came in
when she died, and one of the first things she did was to discharge one
of the old girls because she didn't smile enough. Good reason why. She'd
lost her mother the week before and wasn't likely to feel much like
smiling. And then she went inside the counters and pitched out all the
old shoes the girls had there to make it easier to stand. It 'most kills
you to stand all day in new shoes, but Miss T---- pitched them all out
and said she wasn't going to have the store turned into an old-clothes
shop."
"Well, it's better than lots of them, no matter what she does," said
another. "I was at H----'s for six months, and there you have to ask a
man for leave every time it is necessary to go upstairs, and half the
time he would look and laugh with the other clerks. I'd rather be where
there are all women. They're hard on you sometimes, but they don't use
foul language and insult you when you can't help yourself."
This last complaint has proved for many stores a perfectly well-founded
one. Wash-rooms and other conveniences have been for common use, and
many sensitive and shrinking girls have brought on severe illnesses
arising solely from dread of running this gantlet.