A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
"Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace
to the public safety."--Roosevelt.
Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it
which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The
workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot,
the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of
the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is _the
labourer's head_ upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the
vortex of the crowd.
_That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace
society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass._
Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the
Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample
provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish
employment of new machinery--tells on the great manufacturing world.
Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery
or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be
given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical
culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is
securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers'
souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned
out at cheaper cost.
The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made
their demands for shorter hours and better pay.
* * * * *
LYNN
Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a
dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the
self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the
daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour
bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue
noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to
me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air.
I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class
whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out
necessities and luxuries for the market.
[Illustration: A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY--At work in a Lynn shoe
factory]
[Illustration: ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY: A very expert "vamper,"
an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week]
The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows:
Hat $ 40
Sealskin coat 200
Black cloth dress 150
Silk underskirt 25
Kid gloves 2
Underwear 30
----
$ 447
The clothes I put on were as follows:
Small felt hat $ .25
Woolen gloves .25
Flannel shirt-waist 1.95
Gray serge coat 3.00
Black skirt 2.00
Underwear 1.00
Tippet 1.00
----
$9.45
* * * * *
When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in
a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to
back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get
nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my
speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.
* * * * *
One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The
route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet thick
covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter
scene the sun shone brilliantly.
No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former
personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had
discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto
pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder
to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.
Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in
the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the
streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to
this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course,
and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church
stamping the place New England.
Lynn is made up of factories--great masses of ugliness, red brick,
many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this
town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in
our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there
are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is
70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.
The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a
directory and found the address of the Young Women's Christian
Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal
streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once
displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout
my first experience--qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality
and human interest.
"I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the
night."
I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple
decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing
less in the older woman's face.
"Work in the shops?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own
way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy.
She said earnestly: "You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't
know about, child."
She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper.
"Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here.
I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town
just _anywheres_! You might get into trouble."
She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or
directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question,
receive some information; and thus in marvelous friendliness she turned
and outstretched her hand--I was a stranger and this was her welcome.
I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I
myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I
intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or
any aid.
Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden
tenement set back from the road.
"Furnished Room to Rent," read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced
woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said:
"Ve only got a 'sheep' room."
At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a
_cheap_ room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That
was the kind of people she received.
I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was
French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from
Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our
understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always.
My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean,
agreeable room.
Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She
would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the "young ladies"
who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her furniture by
slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to
complain of me--I would take care.
The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of
course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first
floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I
made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame
Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging
manners.
"Mademoiselle Ballard has work?"
"Not yet."
"Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here
three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!"
Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have
slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn!
My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods,
weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated.
The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of
the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks,
frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but
stopped finally before a humbler shop--where a sign swung at the door:
"Hands Wanted." I went in here and opened a door on the third floor
into a small office.
I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
revolving desk-chair.
"I want work. Got any?"
"Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?"
(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)
"Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest."
"Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?"
"It's gluein' suspender straps."
"Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!"
He smiled, indulgent of this whim.
"They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.)
"Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!"
"Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
back."
He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
suspender straps, tempting me with them.
"What you ever done?"
"Nothing. I'm green!"
"That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?"
"Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all."
"Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
no time." ...
Preston's!
That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!
I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my
judgment.
A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
help:
"But I am green; I can't do office work."
Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--"
He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
refusing applicants for work.
"Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm
getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings."
"You'll give me a chance, then?"
"Yes, I will!"
It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
houseless.
With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before
nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets
filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I
wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for
sauce, ate a good meal.
Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time
the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my
goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading:
"_Wanted, Vampers_."
A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand
for work was greeted at the office this time with--"Any signs out?"
"Yes."
(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer
nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor."
Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes
were were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within
a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an
elevator--a freight elevator; there are no others, of course. This
lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook
and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety
doors"--continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to
receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the
shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping
inadvertently to sudden death.
I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was
in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation
and the noise was startling and deafening.
I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for
the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the
employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to
attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect
aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.
Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account
book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me
something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.
"Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green."
She didn't even look at me, but called--shrieked, rather--above the
machine din to her colleagues:
"Got anything for a green hand?"
The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got
from any one in authority in Parsons'.
"Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?"
"No, ma'am."
"I'll have you learned _pressin'_; we need a _presser_. Go take your
things off, then get right down over there."
I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and
coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty
floor.
Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two
hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I
went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained.
I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman.
On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me,
although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who
demanded her time and patience. She was to "learn me pressin'," and she
did.
Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a
pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The
branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows:
Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps,
vamps, etc. Dipping my brush in the glue, I gummed all the extreme
outer edges. When the "case" had been gummed, the first bits were dry,
then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine
little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled
hem flattened with the hammer--this is "pressing." The case goes from
presser to the seaming machine.
The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it
should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All
this means double work later. "_Twict the work_!" my teacher remarks.
Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the
uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from
time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I
have mastered the method--skill and rapidity can be mine only after many
days; but I worked alone, unaided.
As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating
rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the
hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was
kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only
the beginning!
Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to
me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a
greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my
vamps with the ill-smelling glue.
"This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked
they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady
said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's
long's you have.'"
I asked, "What would you rather do than this?"
She didn't seem to know.
"I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you--I bet you!"
(I didn't--but not quite for her reason.)
As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told
Maggie McGowan I was going home.
"Tired already?" There was still an hour to dark.
As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment
spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes--three
dozen pairs.
"I guess I'll have to put it on my card," she soliloquized, "'cause I
learned you."
"Do--do----"
"It's only about seven cents, anyway."
"Three hours' work and that's all I've made?"[2]
[Footnote 2: An expert presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day.
This is rare and maximum.]
She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of
gain and wealth.
"Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?"
[Illustration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND
Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl,
and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at
the same work]
"Ten years."
"And you make?"
"Well, I don't want to discourage you." ...
(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was
her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)
"... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve
dollars a week."
"Then I will make four!"
(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of
ignorance!)
"_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do
housework!"
It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of
women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a
day labour.
"Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?"
"I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook
breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here.
When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!"
My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate,
as she, generous creature, took it to be.
"After you've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I
do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me."
Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!
Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs
climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were
tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat
in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating
spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of
which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming,
singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000
paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one
piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my
tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from
my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends
had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in
Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as
they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure
class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and
beauty from a woman's hands.
Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to
her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are
twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I
never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they
used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're
awful! I do love a nice hand."
The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh
air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils,
sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3]
[Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate
the shop.]
Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as
cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a
shift at a toilet.
Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the
table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper
table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she
waited upon her nine guests.
No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst
of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness of
welcome.
My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew.
"Miss Ballard!" The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced
me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women
besides myself and four men.
"I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange," said my hostess in her
pretty Canadian _patois_. "I want her to be at home here."
I sat down.
"Oh, she'll be at home all right!" A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette
from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling
good-fellowship.
"Come to work in the shops?"
"Yes."
"Ever been to Lynn before?"
"No; live in Paris--stranger."
"My, but that's hard--all alone here! Got a job?"
"Yes."
And I explained to the attentive interest of all.
From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or passed to me
the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every
shred of appetite, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's
stifling heat would have dulled hunger.
Let it go! I was far too interested to eat.
The table was crowded with all manner of substances passing for
food--cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten
at one time and at will; the drink was tea.
At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pass anywhere for a business
man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a
bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika
and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle
Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed),
then Maurice.
Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless
questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent.
Their attitude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which
qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who
suffer privation, who labour.
Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and
Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in
good English and mediocre French.
"It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most
has to get spoken of weeks in advance--introduced by friends, too!"
Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The
landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak
for you to our foreladies."
Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as
though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my
shoulder.
"Yes, _mon enfant_, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange
place. _Ici nous sommes toute une famille_".
"All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a
stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who,
one day by chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your
side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your
clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge
form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face,
brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.
Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her
guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an
hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social
climber's ladder.
Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the _truffle_
buried in _pate de foie gras_; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies
and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a _canard a
la presse_ throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no
labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding
bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry,
eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.
Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so.
The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige.
"But mademoiselle eats nothing--a bird's appetite." And here was
displayed the first hint of vulgarity we are taught to look for in the
other class.
She put her hands about my arms. "_Tiens! un bras tout de meme!_" and
she looked at Maurice, the young man on my right.
"_Maurice c'est toi qui devrait t'informer des bras d'mademoiselle."_
("Maurice, it is you who should inform yourself of mademoiselle's
arms.")
Maurice laughed with appreciation, as did the others. He was the sole
American at table; out of courtesy for him we talked English from time
to time, although he assured us he understood all we said in "the
jargon."
* * * * *
To Maurice a master pen could do justice; none other. His _type_ is seen
stealing around corners in London's Whitechapel and in the lowest
quarters of New York: a lounger, indolent, usually drunk. Maurice was
the type, with the qualities absent. Tall, lank, loosely hung together,
made for muscular effort, he wore a dark flannel shirt, thick with
grease and oil stains, redolent with tobacco, a checked waistcoat, no
collar or cravat. From the collarless circle of his shirt rose his
strong young neck and bullet head; his forehead was heavy and square
below the heavy brows; his black eyes shone deep sunken in their
caverns.
His black hair, stiff as a brush, came low on his forehead; his mouth
was large and sensual, his teeth brilliant. But his hands! never to be
forgotten! Scrubbed till flesh might well have parted from the bones!
clean, even if black and mutilated with toil; fingers forever darkened;
stained ingrained ridges rising around the nails, hard and ink-black as
leather. Maurice was Labour--its Symbol--its Epitome.
At the landlady's remark he had blushed and addressed me frankly:
"Say, I work to de 'Lights.'"
(Lights! Can such a word be expressive of the factory which has daily
blackened and scarred and dulled this human instrument?)
"To the 'Lights,' and it ain't no _cinch_, I can tell you! I got to keep
movin'. Every minute I'm late I get docked for wages--it's a day's work
to the 'Lights.' When _she_ calls me at six--why, I don't turn over and
snooze another! I just turn right out. I walk two miles to my shop--and
every man in his place at 6:45! Don't you forgit it!"
He cleaned his plate of food.
"I jest keep movin' all de time."
He wiped his mouth--rose unceremoniously, put on his pot-like derby
ajaunt, lit a vile cigar, slipped into a miserable old coat, and was
gone, the odour of his weed blending its new smell with kitchen fumes.
He is one of the absolutely real creatures I have ever seen. Of his
likeness types of crime are drawn. Maurice--blade keen-edged, hidden in
its battered sheath, its ugly case--terrible yet attractive specimen of
strength and endurance--Youth and Manhood in you are bound to labour as
on the rack, and in the ordeal you keep (as does the mass of humanity)
Silence!
Eat by this man's side, heap his plate with coarse victuals, feel the
touch of his flannel sleeve against your own flannel blouse, see his
look of brotherhood as he says:
"Say, if de job dey give you is too hard, why, I guess I kin get yer in
to the 'Lights'!"
These are sensations facts alone can give.
* * * * *
After dinner we sit all together in the parlour, the general
living-room: carpet-covered sofa, big table, few chairs--that's all. We
talk an hour--and on what? We discuss Bernhardt, the divine Sarah. "Good
shows don't come to Lynn much; it don't pay them. You can't get more
than fifty cents a seat. Now Bernhardt don't like to act for fifty-cent
houses! But the theatres are crowded if ever there's a good show. We get
tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House." Maude Adams was a
favourite. Réjane had been seen. Of course, the vital American
interest--money--is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The
packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read,
discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the
pleasure it would be to travel and see the world.
At nine, friendly handshaking. "Good-night. You're tired. You'll like
it all right to the shops, see if you don't! You'll make money, too. The
forelady must a-seen that you were ambitious. Why, to my shop when a new
hand applies for a job the foreman asks: 'What does he look like?
Ambitious lookin'? Well, then--there's room."
Ambitious to make shoes! To grind out all you can above the average five
dollars a week, all you may by conscientious, unflagging work during 224
hours out of a month.
Good-night to the working world! Landlady and friendly co-labourers.
"_Il ne faut pas vous gener, mademoiselle; nous sommes toute une
famille_."
Upstairs in my room the excitement died quite out of me. I lay wakeful
in the hard, sheetless bed. It was cold, my window-pane freezing
rapidly. I could not sleep. On either side, through the thin walls of
the house, I could hear my neighbours settling to repose. Maurice's room
was next to mine. He whistled a short snatch of a topical song as he
undressed. On the other side slept the landlady's children; opposite,
the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's
song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed
silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted
to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete.
Before six the next morning--black as night--the call: "Mau--rice!
Mau--_rice_!" rang through the hall. Summons to us all, given through
him on whom the exigencies of life fell the heaviest. Maurice worked by
day system--the rest of us were freed men and women by comparison.
The night before, timid and reluctant to descend the two flights of
pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought
up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be
if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by
pitcher. A little water nearly frozen was at hand for my toilet. By six
I was dressed and my bed made; by 6:15 in the kitchen, dense with smoke
from the frying breakfast. Through the haze the figures of my friends
declared themselves. Codfish balls, bread and butter and coffee formed
the repast.
Maurice is the first to finish, standing a moment to light his pipe, his
hat acock; then he is gone. The sisters wash at the sink, Mika combing
her mass of frowzy dark hair, talking meanwhile. The sisters' toilet,
summary and limited, is frankly displayed.
At my right the bride consumes five enormous fish balls, as well as much
bread. Her husband, a young, handsome, gentle creature, eats sparingly.
His hand is strapped up at the wrist.
"What's wrong?"
"Strained tendons. Doctor says they'd be all right if I could just hold
up a little. They don't get no chance to rest."
"But why not 'hold up' awhile?" He regards me sympathetically as one who
says to an equal, a fellow: "You know why!--for the same reason that you
yourself will work sick or well."
"_On fait ce que l'on peut_!"
("One does one's best!")
When the young couple had left the room our landlady said:
"The little woman eats well, doesn't she! She needs no tonic! All day
long she sits in my parlour and rocks--and rocks."
"She does nothing?"
Madame shrugged.
"But yes! She reads novels!"
It was half-past six when I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is
slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still
half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring to life.
I become, after a block or two, one of a hurrying throng of labour-bound
fellows--dark forms appear from streets and avenues, going in divers
directions toward their homes. Homes? Where one passes most of one's
life, is it not _Home_?
These figures to-day bend head and shoulders against the wind as it
blows neck-coverings about, forces bare hands into coat pockets.
By the time the town has been traversed, railroad track crossed, and
Parsons' in sight, day has nearly broken. Pink clouds float over factory
roofs in a sky growing bluer, flushing to day.
[Illustration: THE WINDOW SIDE OF MISS K.'s PARLOUR AT LYNN, MASS]
From now on the day is shut out for those who here and there enter the
red-brick factories. An hour at noon? Of course, this magnificent hour
is theirs! Time to eat, time to feed the human machine. One hour in
which to stretch limbs, to pull to upright posture the bent body.
Meanwhile daylight progresses from glowing beauty to high noon, and
there the acme of brilliance seems to pause, as freed humanity stares
half-blinded at God's midday rest.
All the remaining hours of daylight are for the leisure world. Not till
night claims Lynn shall the factory girl be free.
Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side
those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in
a cheery tone.
"Working here? Got it good?"
"I guess so."
"That's all right. Good-day."
Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new
class!
On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long,
low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign
to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not fully found the
workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but
was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me--hard ordeal
for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun
my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the
seats beyond me and on either side were filled.
Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks
like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of good-fellowship--coin
freely passed from workwoman to workwoman.
This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush
dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was
massed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like
lightning.
"Do you like your job?" I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to
all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but
made no direct reply. "I used to have what you're doing; it's awful.
That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got _this_."
She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only.
"But don't you smell it from here?"
"Not so bad; this here" (pointing to her black fluid) "smells stronger;
it _drownds_ it.
"I make my wages clear," she announced to me a few minutes later.
"How do you mean?"
"Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward.
I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't
cost me anything!"
So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running,
waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and
not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end!
"I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down
East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side."
My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes
(thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room
grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie,
loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the
like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and
at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because
one had been three hours at work.
A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an
apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a
prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her
half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.
"Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!"
My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded
her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very
indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make
shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.
It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said.
"Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking
down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops."
Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing."
The other laughed sweetly.
"Well, I jest have to sing."
"You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.
"You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me
alone, she whispered:
"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.
"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through
the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_
soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"
Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure
gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads
at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed
shoulders! on the flying hands!
At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to
thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I
went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I
had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and
cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that
which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.
The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired
out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and
folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to
continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue
(oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.
* * * * *
Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it
seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's
this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you
wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."
Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory,
shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the
horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.
Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.
Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions
she was courtesy itself.
"Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from?
Paris!"
My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's
a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?"
She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's
like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is
like!"
The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of
satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast
narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of
the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the
afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over
her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five
cents to-day."
Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune
never to work in a shoe-shop."
"_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!"
Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd
jump into the river!"
She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.
"Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a
lot!"
"I am sick of the shoe-shops."
"How long have you been at this work?"
"Ten years. When you have worked ten years in Lynn you will be sick of
the shops."
I was sick of the shops, and I had not worked ten years. And for my
hard-toiling future, such as she imagined that it would be, I could see
that she pitied me. Once, supposing that since I am so green and so
ill-clad, and so evidently bent on learning my trade the best I knew,
she asked me in a voice quick with sisterhood:
"Say, are you hungry?"
"No, no, no."
"You'll be all right! No American girl need to starve in America."
In the shops the odours are more easily endured than is the noise. All
conversation is shrieked out, and all the vision that one has as one
lifts one's eyes from time to time is a sky seen through dirty
window-panes, distant chimney-pots, and the roof-lines of like houses of
toil.
* * * * *
I gathered this from our interrupted talk that flowed unceasingly
despite the noise of our hammers and the noise of the general room.
They worked at a trade uncongenial. Not one had a good word to say for
shop-labour there, despite its advantages, in this progressive land of
generous pay. Each woman in a narrow, touching degree was a dreamer.
Housework! too servile; but then, compared to shopwork it was leisure.
By four the gas was lit here and there where burners were available.
Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in
semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became
mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and
blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the gas jets in misty circles.
Unaltered alone was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the
machinery, the long soughing of the power-engine.
Here and there a woman stops to rest a second, her head sunk in her
hand; or she rises, stretches limbs and body. A man wanders in from the
next room, a pipe in his mouth, or a bad cigar, and pausing by one of
the pale operators, whose space of rest is done, he flings down in front
of her a new pile of piece-work from the cutting machines.
We are up five flights of stairs. There are at least two hundred girls.
Machine oil, rags, refuse, cover the floor--such _dèbris_ as only awaits
a spark from a lighted match or cigar to burst into flames. Despite laws
and regulations the building is not fire-proof. There is no fire-escape.
A cry of fire, and great Heaven! what escape for two hundred of us from
this mountain height, level with roofs of the distant town!
Thus these women, shapes mysterious in gaslight and twilight, labour:
life is at stake; health, youth, vigour, supply little more than bread.
I rise; my bruised limbs, at first numb, then aching, stir for the first
time after five hours of steady work. The pile of shoes before me is
feeble evidence of the last hours' painful effort.
I get into my clothes--skirt, jacket and hat, all impregnated now with
factory and tenement odours, and stumble downstairs and out into the
street. I have earned fifty cents to-day--but then, I am green!
When once more in the cool, fresh air, released, I draw in a long and
grateful breath.
Lynn on this winter night is a snow-bound, midwinter village. In the
heavens is the moon's ghost, a mist-shrouded, far-away disk. But it is
the Christmas moon, shining on the sleeping thousands in the town, where
night alone is free. The giant factories are silent, the machines at
last quiet, the long workrooms moon-invaded. Labour is holy, but serfdom
is accursed, and toil which demands that every hour of daylight should
be spent in the race for existence--all of the daylight--is kin to
slavery! There is no time for mental or physical upright-standing, no
time for pleasure.
* * * * *
One day I decided to consider myself dismissed from Parsons'. They had
taught me all they could, unless I changed my trade, in that shop; I
wished to learn a new one in another. Therefore, one morning I applied
at another factory, again one of the largest in Lynn. The sign read:
"_Cleaner Wanted_!"
"Cleaner" sounded easy to learn. My experience this time was with a
foreman instead of a forelady. The workroom I sought was on the second
floor, a room filled with men, all of them standing. Far down the room's
centre I saw the single figure of a woman at her job. By her side I was
soon to be, and we two the sole women on the second floor.
The foreman was distinctly a personage. Small, kind, alive, he wore a
straw hat and eye-glasses. He had decided in a moment that my short
application for "something to do" was not to be gainsaid.
"Ever worked before?"
This time I had a branch of a trade at my fingers' ends.
"Yes, sir; presser."
I was proud of my trade.
I did not even know, as I do now, that "cleaning" is the filthiest job
the trade possesses. It is in bad repute and difficult to secure a woman
to do the unpleasant work.
"You come with me," he said cheerfully; "I'll teach you."
The forelady at Parsons' did not know whether I worked well or not. She
never came to see. The foreman in Marches' taught me himself.
Two high desks, like old-time school desks, rose in the workshop's
centre. Behind one of these I stood, whilst the foreman in front of me
instructed my ignorance. The room was filled with high crates rolled
hither and thither on casters. These crates contained anywhere from
thirty-two to fifty pairs of boots. The cases are moved from operator to
operator as each man selects the shoes to apply to them the especial
branch of his trade. From the crate of boots rolled to my side I took
four boots and placed them on the desk before me. With the heel of one
pressed against my breast, I dipped my forefinger in a glass of hot soap
and water, water which soon became black as ink. I passed my wet, soapy
finger all around the boot's edges, from toe to heel. This loosened, in
the space between the sole and vamp, the sticky dye substance on the
leather and particles so-called "dirt." Then with a bit of wood covered
with Turkish toweling I scraped the shoe between the sole and vamp and
with a third cloth polished and rubbed the boot clean. In an hour's time
I did one-third as well as my companion. I cleaned a case in an hour,
whilst she cleaned three.
When my employer had left me I observed the woman at my side: an untidy,
degraded-looking creature, long past youth. Her hands beggared
description; their covering resembled skin not at all, but a dark-blue
substance, leatherlike, bruised, ingrained, indigo-hued. Her nails
looked as though they had been beaten severely. One of her thumbs was
bandaged.
"I lost one nail; rotted off."
"Horrible! How, pray?"
"That there water: it's poison from the shoe-dye."
Swiftly my hands were changing to a faint likeness of my companion's.
"Don't tell him," she said, "that I told you that. He'll be mad; he'll
think I am discouraging you. But you'll lose your forefinger nail, all
right!" Then she gave a little laugh as she turned her boot around to
polish it.
"Once I tried to clean my hands up. Lord! it's no good! I scrub 'em with
a scrubbin'-brush on Sundays."
"How long have you been at this job?"
"Ten months."
They called her "Bobby"; the men from their machines nodded to her now
and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was
ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in
earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from
us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood.
I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet
was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the
morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to
"Bobby." He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his
job she said to me:
"Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor?
You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend."
"Did that man come over to tell you this?"
"Yes. He said it made you tired."
From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man,
bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the
cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole
he held to the flying wheel.
* * * * *
I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is
scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against
forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen
sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks.
"Bobby" was not talkative or communicative simply because she had
nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question
to me during the time I worked by her side: "Do you like your job?" and
although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too
exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She
took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. Every now and then
she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day
was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents.
During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of
shoes.
In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work.
Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial "B" on the tag and
rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into
his active charge.
The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He
was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far
personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say?
"You've been a presser long at the shoe-shops?"
"No."
"I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold
the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right."
"Thank you; perhaps I won't, though."
"Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself," he said; "I know how that
is."
On his next visit he asked me: "Where you goin'; to when you get out of
here to-night?"
I told him that I was all right--that I had a place to stay.
"If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me."
[Illustration: "FANCY GUMMING."
Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her husband also works in a factory, and
between them they have made enough to build a pretty little cottage]
[Illustration: AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND.
Mrs. F., who has worked in the factory more than twenty years, once as
a forewoman, now earns only $5 or $6 a week]
I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity.
"Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose
I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes
you a livin'."
When the foreman had left me I turned to look at "Bobby." She was in the
act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water.
"You're not going to drink that!" I gasped, horrified. "Where did you
get it?"
"Oh, I drawed it awhile ago," she said.
It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for
a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew
the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so
limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an
American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight
years old, and her brain was stunted.
At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down
once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made
the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than
one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands
were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen
and men.
Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage in a vessel. The top
floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained
blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that
eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been
impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and
ate, in spite of the inconveniences, ravenously, and paid for my dinner
fifteen cents. Most of my neighbours took one course, stew or soup. I
rose half-satisfied, dizzy from the fumes and the bad air. I am safe in
saying that I never smelled anything like to Weyman's, and I hope never
to again. Never again shall I hear food and drink discussed by the
_gourmet_--discuss, indeed, with him over his repast--but there shall
rise before me Weyman's restaurant, low-ceiled, foul, crowded to
overflowing. I shall see the diners bend edged appetites to the
unpalatable food. These Weyman patrons, mark well, are the rich ones,
the swells of labour--able to squander fifteen to twenty cents on their
stew and tea. There are dozens, you remember, still in the unaired
fourth and fifth stories--at "lunching" over their sandwiches. Far
more vivid, more poignant even must be to me the vision of "Bobby." I
shall see her eat her filthy sandwich with her blackened hands, see her
stoop to blow the scum of deadly matter from her typhoid-breeding glass.
In Lynn, unless she boards at home, a girl's living costs her at best
$3.75 a week. If she be of the average[4] her month's earnings are
$32. Reduce this by general expenses and living and her surplus is
$16, to earn which she has toiled 224 hours. You will recall that
there are, out of the 22,000 operatives in Massachusetts, 5,000 who
make under $5 a week. I leave the reader to compute from this the
luxuries and possible pleasures consistent with this income.
[Footnote 4: Lynn's average wages are $8 per week.]
A word for the swells of the trade, for swells exist. One of my
companions at 28 Viger Street made $14 a week. Her expenses were $4; she
therefore had at her disposition about $40 a month. She had no
family--_every cent of her surplus she spent on her clothes_.
"I like to look down and see myself dressed nice," she said; "it makes
me feel good. I don't like myself in poor clothes."
She _was_ well-dressed--her furs good, her hat charming. We walked to
work side by side, she the lady of us. Of course she belongs to the
Union. Her possible illness is provided for; her death will bring $100
to a distant cousin. She is only tired out, thin, undeveloped, pale,
that's all. She is almost a capitalist, and extremely well dressed.
Poor attire, if I can judge by the reception I met with in Lynn,
influences only those who by reason of birth, breeding and education
should be above such things. In Viger Street I was more simply clad
than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness.
Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a
spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement
lodging Mika took my hand at the door.
"Good-by." Her eyes actually filled. "I'm awful sorry you're going. If
the world don't treat you good come back to us."
I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on
whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect--the spoiled creature of the
traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New
York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in
time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched
my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and
waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the
favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the
cleaner from Marches'.
* * * * *
THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
* * * * *