AGAINST A RUSH OF THE HERD
On my return from lunch Mr. Spencer escorted me to a counter marked
“Men’s Department” and introduced me to the head of stock, Nora Joyce, a
neat young girl with serious blue eyes. After introducing me to the
other girls in the department Nora gave me the stand next to her own and
set about explaining the work to me.
There were one hundred and fifty different kinds of articles behind that
counter, all for masculine use. The value of each article was reckoned
in certificates instead of dollars and cents. It takes five coupons to
make a certificate and there are half-coupons and quarter-coupons.
It was all very confusing at first. Noting the dexterity with which the
girls counted the little slips of paper, the ease with which they
recognized each kind by its color, and calculated their value, seemed to
me nothing short of marvellous. While Nora was at lunch and while I was
immersed in a sample package of coupons, struggling to impress their
color and value on my eyes and mind, I suddenly realized that some one
on the other side of the counter was speaking to me. Glancing up, my
eyes encountered those of my first customer.
“If you can spare the time,” she said, with an accent on spare, “I would
like a box of men’s hose—black.” She was an unusually handsome young
woman and stunningly dressed.
On my asking what size she wished she stared at me as though I had made
an impertinent inquiry.
“They are for my husband,” she haughtily informed me, evidently
expecting that to settle the matter. She could not tell me the size of
her husband’s shoe, the size of his glove, what he weighed, nor his
height. After many questions she finally divulged that he was not much
shorter than she and that he was quite thin.
The price of that box of socks was seven hundred and fifty coupons.
Imagine my feelings when that first customer of mine handed me one
hundred coupons and the balance in quarter-coupons. And all the while I
counted them she stood first on one foot, then on the other, sighed
heavily, and in other ways made me aware of her great impatience. Before
I was half through she stalked over to the manager’s office and demanded
to know how much longer she was to be kept waiting for her purchase.
A few minutes after she took her departure Mr. Spencer came across from
his office with a little bench. It was the sixth of its kind behind our
counter, and he placed it at my station.
“The management likes the girls to sit down when not waiting on
customers,” he explained to me. “Sit down as often as you can.”
That evening at dinner, when describing my new position to Alice, I
mentioned the incident of the little bench, and added:
“Crooks or honest folk, they are mighty pleasant to work with.”
It was later that same night that the tragedy hovering over our quiet
rooming-house first made itself heard. I must have been asleep for some
time when I was suddenly awakened by a shriek. Listening breathlessly I
almost imagined that I had dreamed. A second shriek ending in a moan!
Jumping out of bed I ran across the room and looking out the window
listened. The torch on the top of the Metropolitan tower made the back
yards of that entire block as bright as day. Everything was quiet. There
was not a living creature to be seen.
Slipping on my cloak I stepped into the hall. A young man was coming up
the stairs.
“Did you hear a woman scream?” I asked.
“Just as I came in the front door,” he told me. “I’m almost sure it came
from this floor.”
A woman whom I had never seen opened the door next mine.
“I’m the widow of a policeman,” she informed the young man and me. “I
advise you not to go running around a rooming-house at night when you
think you hear somebody scream. I heard nobody scream and I’m a light
sleeper. It was your loud talking before my door that waked me up.”
She looked the man on the stairs over so fiercely that he hastened to
give an account of himself—he was a reporter for a morning paper and
seldom got in before three in the morning. On the slight foundation of
that conversation the policeman’s widow appointed herself
chaperon-in-chief to Alice and me. Her name was Wilkins, and we soon
learned that she was a trimmer of men’s stiff hats.
Our circle of acquaintances broadened so rapidly that within a few days
it included everybody rooming on the top floor. The first of the three
front rooms was occupied by a man who kept a restaurant; next him lived
a little woman who was organist in a near-by church; while in the third
lived a slender young woman, unusually pretty, who was a milliner. In
the front skylight room, companion to the one occupied by the reporter,
lived a man who, according to Molly, the negro maid, had a walking-stick
and a pair of shoes to match every pair of trousers.
After making a survey, as it were, of the inhabitants of our top floor,
Mrs. Wilkins announced to Alice and me that she was convinced that the
shrieks had come from the organist.
“Did you ever see one of ’em at it?” she asked one evening when Alice
and I were in her room being instructed in the art of stiff-hat
trimming. “It’s the hardest work ever I seen—playin’ an organ. They
pound with their fingers, stomp with their feet, and butt with their
head—all at the same time. It’s enough to give anybody nightmare—playin’
an organ.”
At the premium station as time wore on I learned the full significance
of the dreaded Christmas rush. Every morning before the store opened the
sidewalk was banked with people. As soon as the doors were unlocked they
pushed in, trampling everything before them like a herd of cattle. It
seemed to me that at least one-half of them always made straight for our
counter.
There were whole days when I scarcely raised my eyes from the coupons I
counted. Person after person was served without my so much as glancing
at their faces. I had become a machine. My sole aim was to serve
customers as fast as possible, and so lessen the crowd that packed the
space in front of our counter.
And the team-work of the girls behind that counter! I never have seen it
equalled. Never an impatient word nor an angry glance. Whenever a
desired article was beyond the reach of the girl serving a customer some
other girl would reach it for her. If a customer contested the count of
his coupons—and they were continually doing so—the next saleswoman was
always ready to change customers and verify or correct the count.
Don’t imagine that the low money value of the certificates and coupons
prevented such incidents. During the five weeks I served behind that
counter there were scores of persons, men and women, and most of them
well dressed, who disputed hotly over a half, or even a quarter, coupon.
One such individual threatened to have me arrested if I did not
“produce” a quarter-coupon which he claimed to have given me. He was
buying a pipe the value of which was two hundred certificates. In the
soiled, crumpled mass of paper which he handed me he claimed was the
exact number required. My count revealed only five hundred coupons, with
one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine quarter-coupons. I’ve often
wondered what punishment a judge would mete out to a woman accused of
hypothecating a half of a mill.
Of the seven saleswomen in our department—not counting myself—there were
five Roman Catholics, one Protestant, and one Jewess. Church questions
were not infrequently touched on in our conversation. One point on which
they all agreed was that clergymen of all denominations were best
described by a shrug of the shoulders.
One day feeling Nora’s elbow on my ribs I glanced up from the coupons in
my hand.
“That’s my clergyman,” she whispered. “Wait on ’im, please.”
He proved to be pleasanter than I had expected after hearing all the
girls behind the counter declaim against men of his cloth. He did become
irritated when I refused to break a box of silk socks for him. When I
explained that it was against the rules to deliver goods until after the
coupons had been counted, he turned his back on me. He was so much
better than some other customers who had fallen to my lot that I
remonstrated with Nora for refusing to serve him.
“Oh, I know’ em!” she replied impatiently. “See how sleek and fat and
selfish he is! Last week one of ’em came to our flat and worried mother
until she gave him the money she’d been saving for more than six months
to get herself a pair of thick shoes.”
“Much he cared what she was saving for,” the little Jewess chipped in.
“My father keeps a butcher-shop, and whenever mother sees a rabbi coming
she hides everything except the toughest cuts. They only take the best,
and want ’em for nothing.”
“Ministers are like everybody else,” the Protestant girl announced.
“They’ve got to feather their own nests.”
“What would your minister say to that?” I asked her.
“My minister!” she scoffed. “He don’t know me from Adam’s cat. He never
speaks to nobody off Fifth Avenue.”
For years I had heard persons, men and women, declaim against the
incomprehensible devotion of “shop-girls” to chocolate éclairs and
gum-drops. Indeed only a few days before quitting the National Arts Club
I overheard a high-priced music teacher declare that she lost all
patience with “shop-girls” when she saw them lunching on a chocolate
éclair instead of a bowl of oatmeal and milk, or of “good, nourishing
soup.” My five weeks behind the counter furnished me with a proved
solution to the problem.
The first time I tried lunching on a bowl of oatmeal and milk I began to
experience a most uncomfortable sensation under my apron before three
o’clock. By five that sensation had become a sharp griping pain. The day
following I tried soup. In the middle of the afternoon when Nora learned
how I was suffering, she went scurrying around among the girls in
various departments and returned with three gum-drops, which she made me
eat.
After that when I had ten cents or less to spend for lunch I invested in
a chocolate éclair and gum-drops. Without a doubt such a diet does
produce pale faces and a predisposition to tuberculosis. Experience
taught me that it staves off the griping agony produced by hunger and
standing on one’s feet longer than any other food to be had in New York
City for the same money. When a girl’s wage is seven dollars a week, or
less, ten cents a day is all she can spend for lunch.
At that time mothers on the lower East Side were rioting as a protest
against the high price of milk and potatoes On the grocery floor of one
of the largest department stores, where all foodstuffs were usually to
be had at rock-bottom prices, onions were priced to me at thirty-nine
cents the pound, white potatoes at twenty-seven, and butter at
ninety-three. Three small bananas were offered and bought at twenty
cents—a Saturday-night bargain.
Of course Alice and I could afford none of these luxuries. Having
discovered black-eyed peas at ten cents a pound, and that a pound was
enough for four dinners, we vied with each other in proclaiming our
fondness for black-eyed peas. Another discovery was our mutual relish of
peanut butter. We consumed it morning, noon, and night. As a substitute
for meat we never found its equal.
During this time, on several occasions, I had been aroused by a
repetition of that piercing shriek. Because no one else heard it I
allowed Mrs. Wilkins and Alice to half-persuade me that it was a cat.
Three times I got out of bed, and looking out my window tried to
discover in the brilliantly lighted back yards the cat which could so
exactly imitate a human being in agony.
About ten days before Christmas the entire population of our top floor,
along with a good many roomers in other parts of the house, was aroused.
The shrieks and groans came from the room of the young milliner. After
pounding in vain on the milliner’s door the organist ran downstairs and
returned followed by the landlady with her bunch of pass-keys. After
they entered the room we saw the restaurant-keeper hurry out. Later he
returned with a bottle of whiskey. While all this took place Alice, the
newspaperman, and I had been kept in our rooms under the stern
guardianship of the policeman’s widow.
“You don’t know what you’ll get mixed up in in a roomin’-house,” she
warned us. “For all you can tell all who goes in that room will be
hauled into court as witnesses—maybe put in jail.”
The next morning the little organist came to ask Alice and me to use our
influence with Mrs. Brown, the landlady, to prevent her from forcing the
milliner to leave the house.
“Mrs. Howard was in a sort of stupor last night when we got in her
room,” the organist told us, referring to the milliner. “She seemed to
be suffering intensely, and didn’t come round until she had taken a
stiff drink of whiskey and I had rubbed her side. She only wants to stay
until after Christmas; then she won’t be so rushed with work and can
look around for another room, but Mrs. Brown says she was drunk last
night, and must get out.”
Later, on my way to work, I stopped at the door of Mrs. Brown’s room for
the purpose of speaking to her about the milliner. Answering my knock
she came to the door, her face wreathed in smiles. Without giving me
time to open my lips, she exclaimed:
“I’ve just received a letter from Mrs. Houghton-Smith,” she told me,
mentioning the name of one of the most prominent women in New York. “She
wants me to save her an hour this afternoon.” Seeing that I did not
understand, she added: “Mrs. Houghton-Smith has me read her vibrations
before every one of her visits to Washington.”
“Vibrations?” I questioned stupidly.
“Didn’t you know that I discovered the vibration theory?” she demanded.
“Yes, indeed. And when I first came to New York I held my circles in the
drawing-rooms of the most exclusive people in the city. I’d be doing it
now if my son wasn’t such a fool.”
She then informed me that Mrs. Houghton-Smith was such a firm believer
in vibrations that she had tried to induce her, Mrs. Brown, to go to
Washington and get President Wilson’s vibrations. This Mrs. Brown
refused to do, because, being of American Revolutionary stock, she felt
it would not be well for any person to be in a position to control a
President of the United States.
It all sounded like pure nonsense to me, but that afternoon on returning
from work there was a limousine standing before the door. It was a
noticeably handsome car. The chauffeur and footman were in livery.
Judging by the brilliant lights in Mrs. Brown’s rooms I was sure she had
company.
Three evenings later Alice burst into my room while I was cooking our
dinner.
“What on earth has Bernstorf been doing here?” she demanded. “I met him
coming down the front steps.”
“You mean the German ambassador?” I questioned.
“Exactly who I do mean. If ever I saw him I met him on the steps. He got
in the taxi that was waiting at the curb, and turned up Fourth Avenue.”
“Vibrations must be powerful,” I remarked, “to attract such busy people
as Mrs. Houghton-Smith and Count Bernstorf.”
Explaining, I told Alice of my conversation with Mrs. Brown about
vibrations. To both of us it seemed a huge joke, but when later the two
incidents were reported to Mrs. Wilkins, she shook her head.
“Mrs. Brown was a fortune-teller,” she assured us. “But she went under
another name—something I-talian, or French. My husband knew her when she
kept her carriage and horses, and used to go out with swells.”
On my way to work the following morning Mrs. Brown waylaid me on the
stairs. She caught me by the sleeve and drew my ear down to the level of
her lips.
“I’ve found it,” she whispered jubilantly.
“Oh! I’m so glad!” I assured her, remembering that the one safe way to
treat lunatics was to agree with all they said.
“I’ve been concentrating on it for months,” she went on. “Mrs.
Houghton-Smith is the only person whose current I have allowed to touch
my own. I wouldn’t have taken even that risk if I hadn’t needed her
help. She has to take it to the President, you know.”
Being a silent listener I learned that Mrs. Brown’s discovery was
nothing more nor less than a way to stop the war. Beyond the bare
statement that it had something to do with Mexico, and that only
President Wilson would be able to turn the trick, she would tell me
nothing. In the midst of her talk she struck the banister sharply with
her fist, and exclaimed:
“Just to think it might all have come to nothing! That villain Bernstorf
came here last night. He asked for me by my other name, and the maid has
orders never to let such callers in. He made her bring up his card—said
Mrs. Houghton-Smith had given him my address. Had I seen him our
currents would have come into such conflict that I might never have
discovered the way to end the war.”
Saturday before Christmas the crush in the premium station was so great
that several times the doors were closed to keep more customers from
crowding in. There was never a break in the crowd before our counter.
More than once Mr. Spencer wedged his way through the packed humanity to
tell us to keep our seats while waiting on customers. Then he turned to
the waiting throng and called out:
“You people must have patience. I won’t have my girls killing
themselves.”
When six o’clock came, though he had the doors closed promptly, there
was such a crowd inside that it was well past seven before the station
could be cleared. Even then he had to forbid the salespeople waiting on
any more customers, and ordered us out from behind the counters.
On reaching my room I found Alice and Mrs. Wilkins waiting for me with
my dinner nice and hot. On trying to explain my delay I found that I
could not pronounce the words needed by my mind to express my thoughts.
Intuitively, it would seem, Alice recognized what was the matter.
“Wait!” she cried, springing up. “Don’t try to say a word. Get her
undressed, Mrs. Wilkins. I’ll be right back.”
She dashed into her room and came racing back with two white pellets and
a glass of cold water. As soon as I swallowed the pellets they put me to
bed, and I imagine that as soon as my head touched the pillow I fell
asleep.
On waking the next day I found Mrs. Wilkins standing over me with a bowl
of hot milk. It was after two o’clock. Every time I opened my eyes
during that afternoon either Mrs. Wilkins or Alice insisted on my eating
something, which they always had ready.
Later Alice explained that she had suffered from a similar breakdown
from overstudy during a college exam. The two white pellets were left
over from that attack.
Two nights later the whole house was aroused by the milliner’s shrieks.
We learned that she had been suffering almost nightly, but because of
timely care given by the restaurant-keeper and the organist, her attacks
had been checked before becoming acute. Now it so happened that the
restaurant man had been called out of town, and the little organist,
fatigued by rehearsing her choir for Christmas, had not been aroused in
time.
Recalling Mrs. Brown’s threat to turn the girl out if she again
disturbed her roomers, Alice and I stopped in to see the landlady on our
way to work. We explained that the milliner only wished to remain until
the Christmas rush in her trade was over. After that she would be able
to return to her home in Vermont or find another room. The landlady was
so stubborn that Alice was finally forced to use her trump card.
“My mother has ordered me to come home for Christmas—sent me a railroad
ticket. I am leaving to-morrow immediately on leaving work. If you have
really promised Mrs. Howard’s room to another person, I’ll ask her to
use my room until my return. I paid my rent yesterday, you remember.”
Finding that we were both determined to see that the milliner got a
square deal, Mrs. Brown agreed not to give her any more trouble, to
allow her to remain until the end of the milliners’ season.
That day a circular letter from the firm, addressed to their employees
in the premium station, aroused the little Jewess.
“The owners!” she exclaimed. “It’s always the owners. In the subway
they’ve even got papers stuck on the windows, urging us to pay higher
fares so that the owners can get bigger dividends. I’m tired working for
the owners.”
“Who is not?” Nora demanded.
“You said it!” the Protestant girl added.
Though most of the articles being sold at the premium station were for
Christmas presents, there was not much talk of Christmas behind the
counters. The day preceding the holiday one girl joyfully confided to us
all that her mother had promised the family a turkey dinner.
“Turkey!” Nora exclaimed. Then she turned to me. “Groceries have gone up
so that it takes all father and I can do to get the cheapest sorts of
food for the children. Mother is a fine buyer, but we never have meat
more than once a day. Then it is only stew or fish. I used to couldn’t
bear either, but you’ll eat anything when you’re real hungry and
dog-tired.”
Late that afternoon Mr. Spencer stopped at my end of the counter. He had
been watching me, he said, and he liked the way I worked. If I wished to
come back after Christmas he would be glad to give me a permanent
position. Though I had never intended to remain longer than the holiday
rush, his manner was so pleasant, so sincerely appreciative, that before
I realized it I had promised to report the day after Christmas.
That evening, Christmas Eve, on returning from work I found a white
sheet spread on the floor of the hall, just within the front door and by
the side of the stairs. The lines into which the sheet had fallen struck
me as peculiar, and I paused on the stairs and stared down at it. My
eyes wandering farther made out the uniform of a policeman in the dusk
of the rear hall.
“That’s Mrs. Howard,” the voice of the little organist told me as she
developed from the shadow beyond the policeman. “She was taken sick
while at work, this morning—they sent her home in a cab. When I got a
doctor he said she must go at once to a hospital. She died as the
stretcher-bearers were bringing her down the stairs. She has to remain
here on the floor until the coroner comes.”
“Heart trouble?” I asked.
“Yes. The doctor said it was brought on by overwork and underfeeding.”
The little organist’s voice trembled, and she gulped down a sob as she
added: “And on Christmas Eve, too!”
“And in a Christian country,” I agreed. “In the richest city in the
world.”
That Christmas was the first holiday I ever really appreciated.
Remaining in bed the entire day I subsisted on a loaf of stale bread and
two specked apples, both left-overs of the hat-trimmer, who had gone to
spend a week with her brother in Jersey.
During the second week in January Mr. Spencer again brought up the
question of my becoming a regular saleswoman in the premium station.
Nora thought he planned to make me head of stock at a near-by counter.
Forced to give him a definite answer, I told him that conditions at my
home made it necessary for me to leave New York—I would give up my job
at the end of that week. On my telling him good-by he assured me that he
would always have an opening for me whenever I chose to return.
Alice and the hat-trimmer were the only persons who knew that I had
signed a contract with the Sea Foam Hotel, a large hotel at a well-known
resort. I was to serve as waitress.