THE GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION.
Soon after I had bidden farewell to the Blackwell’s Island Insane
Asylum, I was summoned to appear before the Grand Jury. I answered the
summons with pleasure, because I longed to help those of God’s most
unfortunate children whom I had left prisoners behind me. If I could not
bring them that boon of all boons, liberty, I hoped at least to
influence others to make life more bearable for them. I found the jurors
to be gentlemen, and that I need not tremble before their twenty-three
august presences.
I swore to the truth of my story, and then I related all—from my start
at the Temporary Home until my release. Assistant District-Attorney
Vernon M. Davis conducted the examination. The jurors then requested
that I should accompany them on a visit to the Island. I was glad to
consent.
No one was expected to know of the contemplated trip to the Island, yet
we had not been there very long before one of the commissioners of
charity and Dr. MacDonald, of Ward’s Island, were with us. One of the
jurors told me that in conversation with a man about the asylum, he
heard that they were notified of our coming an hour before we reached
the Island. This must have been done while the Grand Jury were examining
the insane pavilion at Bellevue.
The trip to the island was vastly different to my first. This time we
went on a clean new boat, while the one I had traveled in, they said,
was laid up for repairs.
Some of the nurses were examined by the jury, and made contradictory
statements to one another, as well as to my story. They confessed that
the jury’s contemplated visit had been talked over between them and the
doctor. Dr. Dent confessed that he had no means by which to tell
positively if the bath was cold and of the number of women put into the
same water. He knew the food was not what it should be, but said it was
due to the lack of funds.
If nurses were cruel to their patients, had he any positive means of
ascertaining it? No, he had not. He said all the doctors were not
competent, which was also due to the lack of means to secure good
medical men. In conversation with me, he said:
“I am glad you did this now, and had I known your purpose, I would have
aided you. We have no means of learning the way things are going except
to do as you did. Since your story was published I found a nurse at the
Retreat who had watches set for our approach, just as you had stated.
She was dismissed.”
Miss Anne Neville was brought down, and I went into the hall to meet
her, knowing that the sight of so many strange gentlemen would excite
her, even if she be sane. It was as I feared. The attendants had told
her she was going to be examined by a crowd of men, and she was shaking
with fear. Although I had left her only two weeks before, yet she looked
as if she had suffered a severe illness, in that time, so changed was
her appearance. I asked her if she had taken any medicine, and she
answered in the affirmative. I then told her that all I wanted her to do
was tell the jury all we had done since I was brought with her to the
asylum, so they would be convinced that I was sane. She only knew me as
Miss Nellie Brown, and was wholly ignorant of my story.
She was not sworn, but her story must have convinced all hearers of the
truth of my statements.
“When Miss Brown and I were brought here the nurses were cruel and the
food was too bad to eat. We did not have enough clothing, and Miss Brown
asked for more all the time. I thought she was very kind, for when a
doctor promised her some clothing she said she would give it to me.
Strange to say, ever since Miss Brown has been taken away everything is
different. The nurses are very kind and we are given plenty to wear. The
doctors come to see us often and the food is greatly improved.”
Did we need more evidence?
The jurors then visited the kitchen. It was very clean, and two barrels
of salt stood conspicuously open near the door! The bread on exhibition
was beautifully white and wholly unlike what was given us to eat.
We found the halls in the finest order. The beds were improved, and in
hall 7 the buckets in which we were compelled to wash had been replaced
by bright new basins.
The institution was on exhibition, and no fault could be found.
But the women I had spoken of, where were they? Not one was to be found
where I had left them. If my assertions were not true in regard to these
patients, why should the latter be changed, so to make me unable to find
them? Miss Neville complained before the jury of being changed several
times. When we visited the hall later she was returned to her old place.
Mary Hughes, of whom I had spoken as appearing sane, was not to be
found. Some relatives had taken her away. Where, they knew not. The fair
woman I spoke of, who had been sent here because she was poor, they said
had been transferred to another island. They denied all knowledge of the
Mexican woman, and said there never had been such a patient. Mrs. Cotter
had been discharged, and Bridget McGuinness and Rebecca Farron had been
transferred to other quarters. The German girl, Margaret, was not to be
found, and Louise had been sent elsewhere from hall 6. The Frenchwoman,
Josephine, a great, healthy woman, they said was dying of paralysis, and
we could not see her. If I was wrong in my judgment of these patients’
sanity, why was all this done? I saw Tillie Mayard, and she had changed
so much for the worse that I shuddered when I looked at her.
I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw
everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they
did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I
had proposed.
I have one consolation for my work—on the strength of my story the
committee of appropriation provides $1,000,000 more than was ever before
given, for the benefit of the insane.
[THE END.]
[Illustration]
Miscellaneous Sketches.
BY NELLIE BLY.
TRYING TO BE A SERVANT.
_MY STRANGE EXPERIENCE AT TWO EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES_.
None but the initiated know what a great question the servant question
is and how many perplexing sides it has. The mistresses and servants, of
course, fill the leading _roles_. Then, in the lesser, but still
important parts, come the agencies, which despite the many voices
clamoring against them, declare themselves public benefactors. Even the
“funny man” manages to fill a great deal of space with the subject. It
is a serious question, since it affects all one holds dear in life—one’s
dinner, one’s bed, and one’s linen. I had heard so many complaints from
long-suffering mistresses, worked-out servants, agencies, and lawyers,
that I determined to investigate the subject to my own satisfaction.
There was only one way to do it. That was to personate a servant and
apply for a situation. I knew that there might be such a thing as
“references” required, and, as I had never tested my abilities in this
line, I did not know how to furnish them. Still, it would not do to
allow a little thing like a “reference” to stop me in my work, and I
would not ask any friend to commit herself to further my efforts. Many
girls must at one time be without references, I thought, and this
encouraged me to make the risk.
On Monday afternoon a letter came to the _World_ office from a lawyer,
complaining of an agency where, he claimed, a client of his had paid for
a servant, and the agent then refused to produce a girl. This shop I
decided to make my first essay. Dressed to look the character I wanted
to represent, I walked up Fourth Avenue until I found No. 69, the place
I wanted. It was a low frame building which retained all the impressions
of old age. The room on the first floor was filled with a conglomeration
of articles which gave it the appearance of a second-hand store. By a
side door, leaning against the wall, was a large sign which told the
passing public that that was the entrance to the “Germania Servants’
Agency.” On a straight, blue board, fastened lengthwise to a
second-story window, was, in large, encouraging white letters, the
ominous word “Servants.”
I entered the side door, and as there was nothing before me but the
dirty, uncarpeted hall and a narrow, rickety-looking staircase, I went
on to my fate. I passed two closed doors on the first landing, and on
the third I saw the word “Office.” I did not knock, but turned the knob
of the door, and, as it stuck top and bottom, I pressed my shoulder
against it. It gave way, so did I, and I entered on my career as a
servant with a tumble. It was a small room, with a low ceiling, a dusty
ingrain carpet and cheaply papered walls. A heavy railing and a high
desk and counter which divided the room gave it the appearance of a
police court. Around the walls were hung colored advertisements of
steamship lines and maps. Above the mantel, which was decorated with two
plaster-paris busts, was a square sheet of white paper. I viewed the
large black letters on this paper with a quaking heart. “References
Investigated!!” with two exclamation points. Now, if it had only been
put quietly and mildly, or even with one exclamation point, but
two—dreadful. It was a death-warrant to the idea I had of writing my own
references if any were demanded.
[Illustration: IN THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE.]
A young woman who was standing with a downcast head by the window turned
to look at the abrupt newcomer. A man who had apparently been conversing
with her came hastily forward to the desk. He was a middle-sized man,
with a sharp, gray eye, a bald head, and a black frock-coat buttoned up
tightly, showing to disadvantage his rounded shoulders.
“Well?” he said to me, in a questioning manner, as he glanced quickly
over my “get up.”
“Are you the man who gets places for girls?” I asked, as if there were
but one such man.
“Yes, I’m the man. Do you want a place?” he asked, with a decidedly
German twang.
“Yes, I want a place,” I replied.
“What did you work at last?”
“Oh, I was a chambermaid. Can you get me a position, do you think?”
“Yes, I can do that,” he replied. “You’re a nice-looking girl and I can
soon get you a place. Just the other day I got a girl a place for $20 a
month, just because she was nice-looking. Many gentlemen, and ladies
also, will pay more when girls are nice-looking. Where did you work
last?”
“I worked in Atlantic City,” I replied, with a mental cry for
forgiveness.
“Have you no city reference?”
“No, none whatever; but I want a job in this city, that’s why I came
here.”
“Well, I can get you a position, never fear, only some people are mighty
particular about references.”
“Have you no place you can send me to now?” I said, determined to get at
my business as soon as possible.
“You have to pay to get your name entered on the book first,” he said,
opening a large ledger as he asked, “What is your name?”
“How much do you charge?” I asked, in order to give me time to decide on
a name.
“I charge you one dollar for the use of the bureau for a month, and if I
get you a big salary you will have to pay more.”
“How much more?”
“That depends entirely on your salary,” he answered, non-committal.
“Your name?”
“Now, if I give you a dollar you will assure me a situation?”
“Certainly; that’s what I’m here for.”
“And you guarantee me work in this city?” I urged.
“Oh, certainly, certainly; that’s what this agency is for. I’ll get you
a place, sure enough.”
“All right, I’ll give you a dollar, which is a great deal for a girl out
of work. My name is Sally Lees.”
“What shall I put you down for?” he asked.
[Illustration: OUT OF WORK.]
“Oh, anything,” I replied, with a generosity that surprised myself.
“Then I shall put it chambermaid, waitress, nurse or seamstress.” So my
name, or the one assumed, was entered in the ledger, and as I paid my
dollar I ventured the information that if he gave me a situation
directly I should be pleased to give him more money. He warmed up at
this and told me he should advertise me in the morning.
“Then you have no one in want of help now?”
“We have plenty of people, but not just now. They all come in the
morning. This is too late in the day. Where are you boarding?”
At this moment a woman clad in a blue dress, with a small, black shawl
wrapped around her, entered from a room in the rear. She also looked me
over sharply, as if I was an article for sale, as the man told her in
German all that he knew about me.
“You can stay here,” she said, in broken, badly broken English, after
she had learned that I was friendless in the city. “Where is your
baggage?”
“I left my baggage where I paid for my lodging to-night,” I answered.
They tried to induce me to stop at their house. Only $2.50 a week, with
board, or 20 cents a night for a bed. They urged that it was immaterial
to them, only I had a better chance to secure work if I was always
there; it was only for my own good they suggested it. I had one glance
of the adjoining bedroom, and that sight made me firm in my
determination to sleep elsewhere.
As the evening drew on I felt they would have no more applications for
servants that afternoon, and after asking the hour that I should return
in the morning, I requested a receipt for my money. “You don’t need to
be so particular,” he said, crossly, but I told him I was, and insisted
until he was forced to comply. It was not much of a receipt. He wrote on
the blank side of the agency’s advertising card:
“Sally Lees has paid $1. Good for one month use of bureau.
69 4th ave.”
On the following morning, about 10:30, I made my appearance at the
agency. Some eight or ten girls were in the room and the man who had
pocketed my fee on the previous afternoon still adorned the throne back
of the desk. No one said good-morning, or anything else for that matter,
so I quietly slid onto a chair near the door. The girls were all
comfortably dressed, and looked as if they had enjoyed hearty
breakfasts. All sat silent, with a dreamy expression on their faces,
except two who stood by the window watching the passing throng and
conversing in whispers with one another. I wanted to be with or near
them, so that I might hear what was said. After waiting for some time I
decided to awake the man to the fact that I wanted work, not a rest.
“Have you no place to send me this morning?”
“No; but I advertised you in the paper,” and he handed me the _Tribune_
of October 25 and pointed out the following notice:
“NURSE, &c.—By excellent, very neat English girl as nurse and
seamstress, chambermaid and waitress, or parlor maid. Call at 69 4th
ave.; no cards answered.”
I choked down a laugh as I read myself advertised in this manner, and
wondered what my _role_ would be the next time. I began to hope some one
would soon call for the excellent girl, but when an aged gentleman
entered I wished just as fervently that he was not after me. I was
enjoying my position too much, and I fear I could not restrain my
gravity if any one began to question me. Poor old gentleman! He looked
around helplessly, as if he was at a loss to know what to do. The agent
did not leave him long in doubt. “You want a girl, sir?”
“Yes; my wife read an advertisement in the _Tribune_ this morning, and
she sent me here to see the girl.”
“Yes, yes, excellent girl, sir, come right back here,” opening the gates
and giving the gentleman a chair behind the high counter. “You come
here, Sally Lees,” indicating a chair beside the visitor for me. I sat
down with an inward chuckle and the agent leaned over the back of a
chair. The visitor eyed me nervously, and after clearing his throat
several times and making vain attempts at a beginning, he said:
“You are the girl who wants work?” And after I answered in the
affirmative, he said: “Of course you know how to do all these things—you
know what is required of a girl?”
“Oh, yes, I know,” I answered confidently.
“Yes—well, how much do you want a month?”
“Oh, anything,” I answered, looking to the agent for aid. He understood
the look, for he began hurriedly:
“Fourteen dollars a month, sir. She is an excellent girl, good, neat,
quick and of an amiable disposition.”
I was astonished at his knowledge of my good qualities, but I maintained
a lofty silence.
“Yes, yes,” the visitor said, musingly. “My wife only pays ten dollars a
month, and then if the girl is all right she is willing to pay more, you
know. I really couldn’t, you know——”
“We have no ten-dollar-girls here, sir,” said the agent with dignity;
“you can’t get an honest, neat, and respectable girl for that amount.”
“H’m, yes; well, this girl has good references, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes; I know all about her,” said the agent, briskly and
confidently. “She is an excellent girl, and I can give you the best
personal reference—the best of references.”
Here I was, unknown to the agent. So far as he knew, I might be a
confidence woman, a thief, or everything wicked, and yet the agent was
vowing that he had good personal references.
“Well, I live in Bloomfield, N. J., and there are only four in the
family. Of course you are a good washer and ironer?” he said, turning to
me. Before I had time to assure him of my wonderful skill in that line
the agent interposed: “This is not the girl you want. No, sir, this girl
won’t do general housework. This is the girl you are after,” bringing up
another. “She does general housework,” and he went on with a long list
of her virtues, which were similar to those he had professed to find in
me. The visitor got very nervous and began to insist that he could not
take a girl unless his wife saw her first. Then the agent, when he found
it impossible to make him take a girl, tried to induce the gentleman to
join the bureau. “It will only cost you $2 for the use of the bureau for
a month,” he urged, but the visitor began to get more nervous and to
make his way to the door. I thought he was frightened because it was an
agency, and it amused me to hear how earnestly he pleaded that really he
dare not employ a girl without his wife’s consent.
After the escape of the visitor we all resumed our former positions and
waited for another visitor. It came in the shape of a red-haired Irish
girl.
“Well, you are back again?” was the greeting given her.
“Yes. That woman was horrible. She and her husband fought all the time,
and the cook carried tales to the mistress. Sure and I wouldn’t live at
such a place. A splendid laundress, with a good ‘karacter,’ don’t need
to stay in such places, I told them. The lady of the house made me wash
every other day; then she wanted me to be dressed like a lady, sure, and
wear a cap while I was at work. Sure and it’s no good laundress who can
be dressed up while at work, so I left her.”
The storm had scarcely passed when another girl with fiery locks
entered. She had a good face and a bright one, and I watched her
closely.
“So you are back, too. You are troublesome,” said the agent. Her eyes
flashed as she replied:
“Oh, I’m troublesome, am I? Well, you can take a poor girl’s money,
anyway, and then you tell her she’s troublesome. It wasn’t troublesome
when you took my money; and where is the position? I have walked all
over the city, wearing out my shoes and spending my money in car-fare.
Now, is this how you treat poor girls?”
“I did not mean anything by saying you were troublesome. That was only
my fun,” the agent tried to explain; and after awhile the girl quieted
down.
Another girl came and was told that as she had not made her appearance
the day previous she could not expect to obtain a situation. He refused
to send her word if there was any chance. Then a messenger boy called
and said that Mrs. Vanderpool, of No. 36 West Thirty-ninth Street,
wanted the girl advertised in the morning paper. Irish girl No. 1 was
sent, and she returned, after several hours’ absence, to say that Mrs.
Vanderpool said, when she learned where the girl came from, that she
knew all about agencies and their schemes, and she did not propose to
have a girl from them. The girl buttoned Mrs. Vanderpool’s shoes, and
returned to the agency to take her post of waiting.
I succeeded at last in drawing one of the girls, Winifred Friel, into
conversation. She said she had been waiting for several days, and that
she had no chance of a place yet. The agency had a place out of town to
which they tried to force girls who declared they would not leave the
city. Quite strange they never offered the place to girls who said they
would work anywhere. Winifred Friel wanted it, but they would not allow
her to go, yet they tried to insist on me accepting it.
“Well, now, if you won’t take that I would like to see you get a place
this winter,” he said, angrily, when he found that I would not go out of
the city.
“Why, you promised that you would find me a situation in the city.”
“That’s no difference; if you won’t take what I offer you can do
without,” he said, indifferently.
“Then give me my money,” I said.
“No, you can’t have your money. That goes into the bureau.” I urged and
insisted, to no avail, and so I left the agency, to return no more.
My second day I decided to apply to another agency, so I went to Mrs. L.
Seely’s, No. 68 Twenty-second Street. I paid my dollar fee and was taken
to the third story and put in a small room which was packed as close
with women as sardines in a box. After edging my way in I was unable to
move, so packed were we. A woman came up, and, calling me “that tall
girl,” told me roughly as I was new it was useless for me to wait there.
Some of the girls said Mrs. Seely was always cross to them, and that I
should not mind it. How horribly stifling those rooms were! There were
fifty-two in the room with me, and the two other rooms I could look into
were equally crowded, while groups stood on the stairs and in the
hallway. It was a novel insight I got of life. Some girls laughed, some
were sad, some slept, some ate, and others read, while all sat from
morning till night waiting a chance to earn a living. They are long
waits too. One girl had been there two months, others for days and
weeks. It was good to see the glad look when called out to see a lady,
and sad to see them return saying that they did not suit because they
wore bangs, or their hair in the wrong style, or that they looked
bilious, or that they were too tall, too short, too heavy, or too
slender. One poor woman could not obtain a place because she wore
mourning, and so the objections ran.
I got no chance the entire day, and I decided that I could not endure a
second day in that human pack for two situations, so framing some sort
of excuse I left the place, and gave up trying to be a servant.
Nellie Bly as a White Slave.
_HER EXPERIENCE IN THE ROLE OF A NEW YORK SHOP-GIRL MAKING PAPER BOXES._
Very early the other morning I started out, not with the
pleasure-seekers, but with those who toil the day long that they may
live. Everybody was rushing—girls of all ages and appearances and
hurrying men—and I went along, as one of the throng. I had often
wondered at the tales of poor pay and cruel treatment that working girls
tell. There was one way of getting at the truth, and I determined to try
it. It was becoming myself a paper box factory girl. Accordingly, I
started out in search of work without experience, reference, or aught to
aid me.
It was a tiresome search, to say the least. Had my living depended on
it, it would have been discouraging, almost maddening. I went to a great
number of factories in and around Bleecker and Grand streets and Sixth
Avenue, where the workers number up into the hundreds. “Do you know how
to do the work?” was the question asked by every one. When I replied
that I did not, they gave me no further attention.
“I am willing to work for nothing until I learn,” I urged.
“Work for nothing! Why, if you paid us for coming we wouldn’t have you
in our way,” said one.
“We don’t run an establishment to teach women trades,” said another, in
answer to my plea for work.
“Well, as they are not born with the knowledge, how do they ever learn?”
I asked.
[Illustration: THE PASTING TABLE.]
“The girls always have some friend who wants to learn. If she wishes to
lose time and money by teaching her, we don’t object, for we get the
work the beginner does for nothing.”
By no persuasion could I obtain an entree into the larger factories, so
I concluded at last to try a smaller one at No. 196 Elm Street. Quite
unlike the unkind, brusque men I had met at other factories, the man
here was very polite. He said: “If you have never done the work, I don’t
think you will like it. It is dirty work and a girl has to spend years
at it before she can make much money. Our beginners are girls about
sixteen years old, and they do not get paid for two weeks after they
come here.”
“What can they make afterward?”
“We sometimes start them at week work—$1.50 a week. When they become
competent they go on piecework—that is, they are paid by the hundred.”
“How much do they earn then?”
“A good worker will earn from $5 to $9 a week.”
“Have you many girls here?”
“We have about sixty in the building and a number who take the work
home. I have only been in this business for a few months, but if you
think you would like to try it, I shall speak to my partner. He has had
some of his girls for eleven years. Sit down until I find him.”
He left the office, and I soon heard him talking outside about me, and
rather urging that I be given a chance. He soon returned, and with him a
small man who spoke with a German accent. He stood by me without
speaking, so I repeated my request. “Well, give your name to the
gentleman at the desk, and come down on Monday morning, and we will see
what we can do for you.”
And so it was that I started out early in the morning. I had put on a
calico dress to work in and to suit my chosen trade. In a nice little
bundle, covered with brown paper with a grease-spot on the center of it,
was my lunch. I had an idea that every working-girl carried a lunch, and
I was trying to give out the impression that I was quite used to this
thing. Indeed, I considered the lunch a telling stroke of thoughtfulness
in my new _role_, and eyed with some pride, in which was mixed a little
dismay, the grease-spot, which was gradually growing in size.
Early as it was I found all the girls there and at work. I went through
a small wagon-yard, the only entrance to the office. After making my
excuses to the gentleman at the desk, he called to a pretty little girl,
who had her apron full of pasteboard, and said:
“Take this lady up to Norah.”
“Is she to work on boxes or cornucopias?” asked the girl.
“Tell Norah to put her on boxes.”
Following my little guide, I climbed the narrowest, darkest, and most
perpendicular stair it has ever been my misfortune to see. On and on we
went, through small rooms, filled with working girls, to the top
floor—fourth or fifth story, I have forgotten which. Any way, I was
breathless when I got there.
“Norah, here is a lady you are to put on boxes,” called out my pretty
little guide.
All the girls that surrounded the long tables turned from their work and
looked at me curiously. The auburn-haired girl addressed as Norah raised
her eyes from the box she was making, and replied:
“See if the hatchway is down, and show her where to put her clothes.”
Then the forewoman ordered one of the girls to “get the lady a stool,”
and sat down before a long table, on which was piled a lot of pasteboard
squares, labeled in the center. Norah spread some long slips of paper on
the table; then taking up a scrub-brush, she dipped it into a bucket of
paste and then rubbed it over the paper. Next she took one of the
squares of pasteboard and, running her thumb deftly along, turned up the
edges. This done, she took one of the slips of paper and put it quickly
and neatly over the corner, binding them together and holding them in
place. She quickly cut the paper off at the edge with her thumb-nail and
swung the thing around and did the next corner. This I soon found made a
box lid. It looked and was very easy, and in a few moments I was able to
make one.
I did not find the work difficult to learn, but rather disagreeable. The
room was not ventilated, and the paste and glue were very offensive. The
piles of boxes made conversation impossible with all the girls except a
beginner, Therese, who sat by my side. She was very timid at first, but
after I questioned her kindly she grew more communicative.
“I live on Eldrige Street with my parents. My father is a musician, but
he will not go on the streets to play. He very seldom gets an
engagement. My mother is sick nearly all the time. I have a sister who
works at passementerie. She can earn from $3 to $5 a week. I have
another sister who has been spooling silk in Twenty-third Street for
five years now. She makes $6 a week. When she comes home at night her
face and hands and hair are all colored from the silk she works on
during the day. It makes her sick, and she is always taking medicine.”
“Have you worked before?”
“Oh, yes; I used to work at passementerie on Spring Street. I worked
from 7 until 6 o’clock, piecework, and made about $3.50 a week. I left
because the bosses were not kind, and we only had three little oil lamps
to see to work by. The rooms were very dark, but they never allowed us
to burn the gas. Ladies used to come here and take the work home to do.
They did it cheap, for the pleasure of doing it, so we did not get as
much pay as we would otherwise.”
“What did you do after you left there?” I asked.
“I went to work in a fringe factory on Canal Street. A woman had the
place and she was very unkind to all the girls. She did not speak
English. I worked an entire week, from 8 to 6, with only a half-hour for
dinner, and at the end of the week she only paid me 35 cents. You know a
girl cannot live on 35 cents a week, so I left.”
“How do you like the box factory?”
“Well, the bosses seem very kind. They always say good-morning to me, a
thing never done in any other place I ever worked, but it is a good deal
for a poor girl to give two weeks’ work for nothing. I have been here
almost two weeks, and I have done a great deal of work. It’s all clear
gain to the bosses. They say they often dismiss a girl after her first
two weeks on the plea that she does not suit. After this I am to get
$1.50 a week.”
When the whistles of the surrounding factories blew at 12 o’clock the
forewoman told us we could quit work and eat our lunch. I was not quite
so proud of my cleverness in simulating a working girl when one of them
said:
“Do you want to send out for your lunch?”
“No; I brought it with me,” I replied.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, with a knowing inflection and amused smile.
“Is there anything wrong?” I asked, answering her smile.
[Illustration: FINISHING UP.]
“Oh, no,” quickly; “only the girls always make fun of any one who
carries a basket now. No working-girl will carry a lunch or basket. It
is out of style because it marks the girl at once as a worker. I would
like to carry a basket, but I don’t dare, because they would make so
much fun of me.”
The girls sent out for lunch and I asked of them the prices. For five
cents they get a good pint of coffee, with sugar and milk if desired.
Two cents will buy three slices of buttered bread. Three cents, a
sandwich. Many times a number of the girls will put all their money
together and buy quite a little feast. A bowl of soup for five cents
will give four girls a taste. By clubbing together they are able to buy
warm lunch.
At one o’clock we were all at work again. I having completed sixty-four
lids, and the supply being consumed was put at “molding in.” This is
fitting the bottom into the sides of the box and pasting it there. It is
rather difficult at first to make all the edges come closely and neatly
together, but after a little experience it can be done easily.
On my second day I was put at a table with some new girls and I tried to
get them to talk. I was surprised to find that they are very timid about
telling their names, where they live or how. I endeavored by every means
a woman knows, to get an invitation to visit their homes, but did not
succeed.
“How much can girls earn here?” I asked the forewoman.
“I do not know,” she said; “they never tell each other, and the bosses
keep their time.”
“Have you worked here long?” I asked.
“Yes; I have been here eight years, and in that time I have taught my
three sisters.”
“Is the work profitable?”
“Well, it is steady; but a girl must have many years’ experience before
she can work fast enough to earn much.”
The girls all seem happy. During the day they would make the little
building resound with their singing. A song would be begun on the second
floor, probably, and each floor would take it up in succession, until
all were singing. They were nearly always kind to one another. Their
little quarrels did not last long, nor were they very fierce. They were
all extremely kind to me, and did all they could to make my work easy
and pleasant. I felt quite proud when able to make an entire box.
There were two girls at one table on piecework who had been in a great
many box factories and had had a varied experience.
“Girls do not get paid half enough at any work. Box factories are no
worse than other places. I do not know anything a girl can do where by
hard work she can earn more than $6 a week. A girl cannot dress and pay
her boarding on that.”
“Where do such girls live?” I asked.
“There are boarding-houses on Bleecker and Houston, and around such
places, where girls can get a room and meals for $3.50 a week. The room
may be only for two, in one bed, or it may have a dozen, according to
size. They have no conveniences or comforts, and generally undesirable
men board at the same place.”
“Why don’t they live at these homes that are run to accommodate working
women?”
“Oh, those homes are frauds. A girl cannot obtain any more home
comforts, and then the restrictions are more than they will endure. A
girl who works all day must have some recreation, and she never finds it
in homes.”
“Have you worked in box factories long?”
“For eleven years, and I can’t say that it has ever given me a living.
On an average I make $5 a week. I pay out $3.50 for board, and my wash
bill at the least is 75 cents. Can any one expect a woman to dress on
what remains?”
“What do you get paid for boxes?”
“I get 50 cents a hundred for one-pound candy boxes, and 40 cents a
hundred for half-pound boxes.”
“What work do you do on a box for that pay?”
“Everything. I get the pasteboard cut in squares the same as you did. I
first ‘set up’ the lids, then I ‘mold in’ the bottoms. This forms a box.
Next I do the ‘trimming,’ which is putting the gilt edge around the box
lid. ‘Cover striping’ (covering the edge of the lid) is next, and then
comes the ‘top label,’ which finishes the lid entire. Then I paper the
box, do the ‘bottom labeling;’ and then put in two or four laces (lace
paper) on the inside as ordered. Thus you see one box passes through my
hands eight times before it is finished. I have to work very hard and
without ceasing to be able to make two hundred boxes a day, which earns
me $1. It is not enough pay. You see I handle two hundred boxes sixteen
hundred times for $1. Cheap labor, isn’t it?”
One very bright girl, Maggie, who sat opposite me, told a story that
made my heart ache.
“This is my second week here,” she said, “and, of course, I won’t
receive any pay until next week, when I expect to receive $1.50 for six
days’ work. My father was a driver before he got sick. I don’t know what
is wrong, but the doctor says he will die. Before I left this morning he
said my father will die soon. I could hardly work because of it. I am
the oldest child, and I have a brother and two sisters younger. I am
sixteen, and my brother is twelve. He gets $2 a week for being
office-boy at a cigar-box factory.”
“Do you have much rent to pay?”
“We have two rooms in a house on Houston Street. They are small and have
low ceilings, and there are a great many Chinamen in the same house. We
pay for these rooms $14 per month. We do not have much to eat, but then
father doesn’t mind it because he can’t eat. We could not live if
father’s lodge did not pay our rent.”
“Did you ever work before?”
“Yes, I once worked in a carpet factory at Yonkers. I only had to work
there one week until I learned, and afterward I made at piecework a
dollar a day. When my father got so ill my mother wanted me at home, but
now when we see I can earn so little they wish I had remained there.”
“Why do you not try something else?” I asked.
“I wanted to, but could find nothing. Father sent me to school until I
was fourteen, and so I thought I would learn to be a telegraph operator.
I went to a place in Twenty-third Street, where it is taught, but the
man said he would not give me a lesson unless I paid fifty dollars in
advance. I could not do that.”
I then spoke of the Cooper Institute, which I thought every New Yorker
knew was for the benefit of just such cases. I was greatly astonished to
learn that such a thing as the Cooper Institute was wholly unknown to
all the workers around me.
“If my father knew that there was a free school he would send me,” said
one.
“I would go in the evenings,” said another, “if I had known there was
such a place.”
Again, when some of them were complaining of unjust wages, and some of
places where they had been unable to collect the amount due them after
working, I spoke of the mission of the Knights of Labor, and the newly
organized society for women. They were all surprised to hear that there
were any means to aid women in having justice. I moralized somewhat on
the use of any such societies unless they entered the heart of these
factories.
One girl who worked on the floor below me said they were not allowed to
tell what they earned. However, she had been working here five years,
and she did not average more than $5 a week. The factory in itself was a
totally unfit place for women. The rooms were small and there was no
ventilation. In case of fire there was practically no escape.
The work was tiresome, and after I had learned all I could from the
rather reticent girls I was anxious to leave. I noticed some rather
peculiar things on my trip to and from the factory. I noticed that men
were much quicker to offer their places to the working-girls on the cars
than they were to offer them to well-dressed women. Another thing quite
as noticeable, I had more men try to get up a flirtation with me while I
was a box-factory girl than I ever had before. The girls were nice in
their manners and as polite as ones reared at home. They never forgot to
thank one another for the slightest service, and there was quite a
little air of “good form” in many of their actions. I have seen many
worse girls in much higher positions than the white slaves of New York.
THE END.
[Illustration]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.