MY FIRST STEPS IN THE UNDERBRUSH
A note from Alice Tompkins had been among the batch of mail handed me
the night before as I left the National Art Club. She was in New York,
and particularly wished to see me, as soon as convenient.
“Had she given up her teacher’s position in the school for defective
children?” I wondered, on my way to look her up. “And why was she
stopping in such an out-of-the-way corner of the lower West Side?”
Though I loitered over the three miles and more of streets it was not
quite seven o’clock when I rang the bell at the home for working girls
which I found at the number given in Alice’s note. The stare of
indignant protest hurled at me by the woman who opened the door!
“No,” she snapped, without giving me time to speak, “we haven’t got a
vacancy. Everything’s filled up.” And she would have banged the door
shut had I not put my foot in the opening.
“I’m calling on a guest,” I hastened to say, and taking out Alice’s note
I offered it as proof.
“Oh! I mistook you for one of them laundry-workers,” she told me
apologetically. “They’re always ringing me up this time mornings, though
it do seem like they’d a-found out by now we ain’t goin’ to take ’em in
however often they come.”
“Then you have vacancies?” I asked in surprise as she led the way to the
reception-room of the home.
“Sure! Plenty of them for the kind of girls we want. What price was you
expectin’ to pay?”
She accepted, with a gracious smile, my promise to call on her in case I
decided to come there to live. While waiting for Alice my eyes wandered
speculatively about the bleak little room, and I wondered how much she
was paying.
“Four dollars a week for my room and two meals a day,” she told me,
replying to one of my first questions. “That is one reason I wrote
instead of waiting to call on you. I thought you might know of a better
place?”
“You don’t suppose you could find a place for less money?” Her
discontent nettled me, for I had more than half made up my mind to come
there to live.
“For less money!” Alice shrugged her shoulders. “It means paying four
dollars a week for my room. The meals are simply uneatable.” Then she
explained her presence in New York. Being disappointed in the teacher’s
position obtained immediately on leaving college she had given it up and
hastened to New York, confident that she would be able to get just the
place she wished.
“It’s the wrong season. All the agencies tell me they haven’t a thing in
my line.” Then she added, with a snap of determination in both her tone
and manner: “I’m not going back to Washington City—having people say
that I can’t hold down a job. I answered an advertisement in Sunday’s
paper and got a place with Jones Brothers directing envelopes and
folding circulars.”
My interest became personal. Polly Preston would be able to direct
envelopes and fold circulars.
“What do they pay you?”
Alice shook her head.
“When the manager heard that I had been getting twenty-five dollars a
week, he said he was ashamed to tell me what they paid. He asked what
was the least I would come for. I don’t see how any one can possibly
live on less than twelve dollars a week in New York. Do you?”
“He’ll give you more than that,” was my confident assurance. “He knows
you’re a college woman. He wouldn’t think of paying you less than
fifteen, maybe twenty. If you will let me pay for my breakfast——”
“Don’t you do it,” Alice interrupted, grabbing me by the arm. “The bread
is stale and cold, the butter is uneatable, the coffee is not coffee at
all, and the milk is skimmed until it is a blue-green. You won’t be able
to eat a thing, and they’ll charge you thirty cents for it.”
While thirty cents did not, at that time, seem to me a great price to
pay for a breakfast, stale bread and blue-green milk was not tempting.
Though my plans had never included a second person, it now occurred to
me that if Alice wished to join me she might be of real assistance as
well as a pleasant companion.
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed, on hearing my explanation. “If we can only
stick it out through the Christmas rush you’ll get material for no end
of stories. I’ve always wanted to see just what the Christmas rush is
like in a popular New York store.”
Alice was about twenty-three and small. Like many small women, she was
continually standing on her dignity. And like many men and more women,
the first of their family to attain a college degree, she was
perpetually bringing the fact of having that degree before her
associates. She was the best example I have ever seen of beauty without
symmetry. Her dark hair was stringy, her face was long, her upper lip
short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her
lashes short and dark, her nose long and her dark complexion blotchy.
She had but one really fine feature—eyes, blue-gray in color and
eloquently expressive. Because of her eyes she must always be a
noticeably attractive woman.
On leaving her I walked across town to the Central Branch of the Y. W.
C. A., and after getting a satisfying breakfast for fifteen cents I
asked the price of rooms. The cheapest rate was sixty-five cents the
night with two in a room. Clutching my pocketbook I hurried out—the
purchasing power of five dollars might not be so great as it had
appeared.
A subway train set me down at the entrance of a large department store
whose advertisement for salesladies in that morning’s paper had
attracted my attention. The advertisement read “experience unnecessary”
and I knew the head of the firm to be one of the most widely known
philanthropists in the country.
In the employment department of this great store I stared at the
voluminous application-blank given me to fill out. My age, color,
nationality, my mother’s maiden name, my father’s profession. Were my
parents living or dead. My own personal history for the past ten years.
The names and addresses of two property-owners who would vouch for me.
“Ah!” I congratulated myself, on reading this last item. “The
superintendent has his eye on you for a good position at a fat salary.”
On returning the paper with all the questions truthfully answered the
girl at the window informed me that they would drop me a card in a day
or so telling me when to come to work. A glow of satisfied pride swept
over me. Who said an unskilled woman had a hard time earning an honest
living in New York? Alice hadn’t found it difficult to get a job at a
living wage. I was sure of one. However, no use loafing.
It was past ten o’clock when I applied at a mail-order house advertising
for addressers.
“Any experience?” was the only question asked by the kindly little
manager.
Who has not addressed envelopes? It proved to be piece-work in a
well-lighted, comfortably heated loft. At five o’clock that afternoon I
had finished one thousand envelopes and thereby earned one dollar and a
quarter—it being three-line work. On leaving the building the problem of
where to spend the night faced me. A thought of the municipal
lodging-house for women again occurred to me, but recalling that I was a
working woman, not an investigator, and as Polly Preston would know
nothing about such a place, I pushed the suggestion aside. Returning to
the Y. W. C. A., I meekly asked for a bed in a sixty-five-cent room.
My roommate was an oldish young lady who confided to me that she had
come from a small town in the Middle West to take a position with the
Metropolitan Opera Company. She had no acquaintance with the manager or
any member of the company. Indeed I could not learn that she had an
acquaintance in New York City. Her confidence was nothing short of
sublime. While she might not get a leading rôle, never having studied
abroad, she assured me that she had a hunch that she would get an
important part—far above the chorus.
All the evening and far into the night, when she was not singing the
latest ragtime she was crowing like a hen. She called it exercising her
upper register. Having spent one year as a student in a conservatory of
music I knew from experience the only thing to do was to let her find
out conditions for herself.
The following day by writing steadily from eight to six I managed to
address fifteen hundred envelopes. The companionship of the six women
who shared the long table with me was diverting. Before the day was half
gone each of the five had confided to all within reach of her voice her
personal history and reason for working. During the lunch-hour the sixth
woman continued to write, nibbling from time to time at an apple and
what appeared to be a slice of dry bread. Finally she inquired if I were
married.
“You’re lucky,” she congratulated me. “If I could make sure my four
children would be took care of I’d put myself to sleep and never wake
up.”
“How about your husband?” was my horrified rejoinder.
“He’s gone,” she replied with a quavering little chuckle. “When our
fifth baby came he left.” After a pause she added: “Maybe he wouldn’t
have gone if he’d a-knowd it was goin’ to die so soon.” Another pause.
Then wistfully: “Maybe he would—never no countin’ on a man.”
The next day at eleven the little manager informed us that having
finished all the envelopes he would have no further need of our services
until time to send out their spring catalogues. Having received a
post-card from the department store telling me to report ready for work
at eight-thirty the following Monday morning, this abrupt ending of my
first job caused me no regret.
Deciding to devote the afternoon to looking for rooms, I hurried back to
the Y. W. C. A. and approached the woman in charge of the Rooming
Bureau. When she learned that my limit was two dollars and a half a week
she shook her head. She had not had a room as low as that in at least
two years. So late in the season and two rooms on the same floor?
Impossible! When I reminded her of newspapers and magazine articles
advising working women on the economic division of their wages her face
crinkled into a smile.
“Those people find out the wage of the average working girl—some don’t
even take that trouble—then they sit at their desks and divide it up for
her. Sometimes they make real touching stories. I’ve often wondered how
much they are paid.” She looked me over. “Perhaps you can tell me? You
are a writer.”
The attack was so unexpected that I actually stuttered. When I asked why
she had made such a guess she replied indifferently:
“Only a professional social investigator or a writer could be so
ignorant and at the same time so cock-sure. You are not a social
investigator. At least I never saw one whose shoes were so clean this
late in the week.”
On my making a full confession her interest was aroused. When she was
convinced that Alice and I purposed to live on our earnings she turned
her catalogue of rooms over to me. Selecting twenty of what appeared to
me to be the most desirable addresses I set out.
It was after three o’clock when the door at the last address on my list
closed behind me. The cheapest room I had seen was three dollars and a
half a week. Its only window opened on a shaft and there was no heat of
any sort. In an effort to bolster up my flagging spirits I became
defiantly independent.
Why confine myself to the Y. W. C. A. list? I had passed a number of
attractive-looking houses with the sign “furnished rooms” out. Why not
investigate them? Alice and I were both old enough, had sufficient
experience and judgment, to see if anything was amiss.
Just off one of the most beautiful squares in New York I came upon an
unusually attractive-looking house with a furnished-room sign out. Even
the sign itself was neater and more cheerful-appearing than any that had
previously attracted my attention. The door was opened by the landlady.
It was a charming room—on the second floor with a huge bay window—that
overlooked a well-kept back yard. The bathroom was on the same floor,
and in a little private hall just outside the door of the room there was
a gas-stove with two burners.
On learning that the rent was three dollars the week, including gas for
cooking, I opened my pocketbook to pay a week advance.
“Emily.”
Quickly turning toward the door from which direction the call appeared
to come, I as quickly remembered that my mother had been in her grave
more than fourteen years. Without thought, moved entirely by instinct, I
slipped by the woman and out of the room. Halting on the stairs between
her and the door I explained that it seemed to me wiser to consult Alice
before definitely deciding.
Out on the streets my cheeks tingled with shame. Was I a fool or a
coward or both? There had been nothing suspicious about the woman and
certainly her house was more attractive than any on the Y. W. list. Out
there in the sunlight it seemed the height of absurdity to imagine that
my mother had spoken to me. Deciding to telephone Alice and ask her to
meet me at the house on her way from work I turned toward Third Avenue
to look for the nearest drug-store.
Discovering that I was almost under the eaves of a home for deaconesses,
it occurred to me that they might have a list of decent rooming-houses
in that neighborhood. At any rate, I reasoned, they would certainly be
in a position to reassure me about the house I had just left.
While the little deaconess who opened the door was going over her list
of rooms looking for a vacancy, I mentioned having called at a house on
that block, giving the number.
“Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t think of going there. That
house has been raided by the police three times within the past month.”
When at last she found a rooming-house on her list not marked “filled”
she gave me the address. Within half an hour I had taken and paid for
exactly what Alice and I had set our hearts on—two small clean rooms on
the top floor in the back of an old-fashioned house in a convenient and
decent neighborhood.
“Of course we shall have to keep our living expenses within what you are
now paying,” I told Alice that evening, when she stopped in on her way
from work. “Two dollars and a half each a week for rent and one dollar
and a half each for our household budget. It would have been nicer if
you could have moved to-night.”
“I’d have come quick enough,” Alice retorted. “You told me not to dare
to come before Tuesday.”
“Certainly. You have paid until Tuesday noon. You cannot afford to give
that home the price of five meals and three nights’ room-rent. We are
out to learn the value of money, not how to spend it.”
“I don’t believe we’ll get very much to spend,” Alice replied
despondently. “Everything in New York seems very expensive. Maybe the
food they give us at the Home is as good as——”
“Stop it! If you knew the price of foodstuffs in the push-cart markets
you’d know that three dollars a week will give two women all they can
eat—provided they do their own cooking and use common sense in buying.”
“Will you do the buying for the first week?” Alice demanded.
“No indeed. No weekly shifts for me—either as a buyer or as a cook. A
month is the shortest period one should attempt when economy is to be
considered. I have thought it all out. The one who does the buying cooks
dinner and washes up the breakfast dishes. The other washes the dinner
dishes and cooks breakfast. How does that suit you?”
“I’m willing to do the work,” Alice assured me. “But I believe we’ll
starve to death if we don’t put in more than a dollar and a half a week
for food.”
“I was forgetting to tell you about my adventure,” I said, hoping to
give her a change of thought and thereby stop her croaking. “It was
really exciting.” I then described my experience at the unlisted
rooming-house and the deaconess home.
“How comforting it is to know that the spirits of our loved ones are
always hovering around us, guarding us from harm!” she commented
solemnly. “After such a direct manifestation—What!” she cried,
interrupting herself as she realized the significance of my smile. “Do
you mean to say that you don’t believe your mother could come to warn
you?”
“I know nothing about would or could, but I don’t believe she did. What
you call a direct manifestation seems to me merely a vestigial faculty
inherited from our remote ancestors—who, not yet having developed the
orderly, conscious mind, existed by means of powers akin to instinct of
animals. It may not be very flattering to think of one’s ancestors as
the missing link, but I prefer it to the suspicion that the spirit of my
mother has nothing better to do than to chase around after me.”
For a few minutes there was a profound silence. Then Alice began to snap
and unsnap the fastening of her glove while I continued to polish my
shoes.
“Well,” my friend began with a sigh, “of course every one has a right to
their own opinion. I don’t believe in the missing-link theory. What’s
more, I do believe in a hereafter and that I shall be able to come back
and help the people I love.”
“Don’t forget the parable of Lazarus and Dives,” I cautioned her, as I
stored the bottle of shoe-polish on the shelf of my tiny wardrobe. “In
that parable it is made very plain that as the brothers of Dives had not
heeded the teachings of Moses and the prophets they would pay no
attention to Lazarus risen from the dead. My plans for the next world do
not include any time or thought devoted to the interest of my friends.”
Alice dragged her chair nearer to mine and looked eagerly into my face.
“Tell me,” she asked breathlessly. “What do you plan to do? What is the
very first thing you plan to do when you step behind the curtain of
now?”
“Get Mr. Shakespeare and Lord Bacon in a corner and make the old codgers
tell me who really did write the plays.”
Unable to keep my face straight a moment longer I hurried across the
hall and turned on the water in the bathtub. Returning to the room a few
minutes later it was evident from the prim set of Alice’s lips that she
had decided to overlook my levity. What had come over the girl?—I
wondered. Why had she suddenly become such a killjoy?
“You haven’t asked me about my salary,” she said, almost as though in
reply to my questions. “This was pay-day.”
“How much did you get?” My eagerness was not assumed. “You will remember
my telling you that you’d get a good salary. How much?”
“Eight dollars.”
“What?” The next instant it dawned on me that she was jesting. “Oh, I
see! Eight dollars a day. Do they pay you forty-eight or fifty-six a
week?”
There was a pause, then she glanced up at me with a little twisted
smile.
“Eight dollars a week.” Answering my continued speechless stare she
added: “All the other girls got seven—I saw their envelopes. Some of
them have been working there more than a year. Evidently,” she said
bitterly, “that one dollar is a concession to my college degree.”
Taking my seat on the foot of the bed I stared through the window at the
torch flaming on the top of the Metropolitan tower. Eight hours a day,
six days a week—they did not even give Saturday afternoon. Eight dollars
a week minus sixty cents car-fare—twelve cents the hour. And in a
publishing house of international reputation!
At this thought I burst out laughing. Alice stared.
“Those are the kind of publishers dear kind Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth
used to caution me against,” I explained. “It was just after the
publication of my first novel—a ‘best seller,’ as you may recall. When I
used to grow enthusiastic about my publishers, Mr. Butterworth would
remind me: ‘Don’t forget, my dear, Judas Iscariot was a publisher.’”
But even the silliness of this hoary joke did not make Alice forget her
disappointment. Watching her as she sat silent and woebegone in the
meagre light of the bare little room I congratulated myself on having
induced her to join me. What a mine of material she would furnish me!
Polly Preston working in New York at twelve cents an hour, half-fed,
going without clothes, perhaps walking ten miles a day to save car-fare.
With such a background there could be no doubt about my making an
intensely emotional story. Of course, I reasoned to myself, out of the
abundance of my salary I would see to it that Alice did not actually
suffer.
“What do you advise me to do?” Alice finally asked, interrupting me in
the midst of my ghoulish air-castle architecture. “Do you think I had
better go back to work on Monday or—or go home?”
How I wished she had not asked me that question! It is not easy to act
the ghoul when the person you plan to plunder sits up and holds out her
hands to you. In that instant I saw all the material—the very best
material—needed to build my History of Polly Preston go up, as it were,
in thin smoke. With a sigh of genuine regret I said:
“Go back to work,” and my voice was emphatic. “You don’t want to throw
up the sponge and go back home your first year out of college. Eight
dollars a week will pay your actual living expenses. You needn’t run
behind. Besides,” I added as a morsel of consolation, and with an unholy
sigh, “it won’t be for long. As soon as I get settled in the department
store I’ll look around and get you a good opening.”
“But you don’t know that you are going to get a decent wage!” Alice
wailed. “You may not get much more than they pay me.”
“Don’t be silly,” I reproved, suppressing the irritation caused by being
forced, as I considered it, to fill up with my own hands such a rich
mine of literary material. “If you had seen that application-blank you’d
know that I am to get a good—not wage—but a good salary, a good fat
salary.”