GOOD HUNTING-GROUND
On my return after this experience Mrs. Wilkins said that I had lost
twenty pounds, while Alice candidly assured me that I could not look
worse had I been buried and dug up. Such backhanded compliments did not
encourage me to take either of them into my confidence. And, though
Alice remarked on the length of time it had taken me to get to New York,
it did not seem necessary for me to mention having stopped off at a
station in Pennsylvania long enough to be interviewed by the housekeeper
of Sutton House. Neither did I feel called on to confide that the
housekeeper had engaged me to take the position to be left vacant, three
weeks hence, by Mary’s cousin.
Having returned to New York six dollars poorer than I quitted it, the
necessity of paying in advance for my room and my food left me no time
to loaf. Though experience had taught me that Tuesday is the least
desirable day in the week to hunt a job I determined to take my chances
in spite of Mrs. Wilkins and Alice urging me to remain in bed and rest.
Both offered to loan me money.
The most promising advertisement in the help-wanted columns that morning
was that of a biscuit factory on Long Island—women and girls at seven
dollars a week. The advertisement stated that only one car-fare was
needed from Manhattan—such an important detail that it might be called
an inducement.
Begrudging this sixty cents a week I debated with myself the wisdom of
following the advice of Alice and the hat-trimmer—waiting until later in
the week. My antipathy to borrowing money of my friends finally
outweighed my unwillingness to pay car-fare, and I set out. Though I
reached the biscuit factory a half-hour before the doors opened, there
were seven women ahead of me. Fifty-one came later.
After Sea Foam, I enjoyed standing in the open air and chatting with the
women and girls. It was a balmy spring morning, and a sheen of soft
green covered the trees and fields. My fellow applicants were all
comfortably dressed and appeared to be cheerful. There was no pushing
and crowding for place near the entrance.
When finally the doors were opened we filed in smiling and in order. The
bare little employment office was spotlessly clean, and there were
plenty of seats.
The method of selection was unusual. The manager asked all who had
worked for the factory to stand up; fifty-three rose. As he took the
name of each girl and woman he asked why she had left, and if she
preferred to return to the department in which she had previously
worked. About half claimed to have left because they were needed at
home, many had tried other work in hope of bettering themselves, and one
had been discharged.
Instead of asking this girl the reason for her discharge, the manager
handed her paper and pencil and requested her to write it out while he
attended to us other applicants. Not knowing how to spell a word this
girl, who sat next me, showed me what she had written—she had been sent
away from the factory because the boss in the packing department said
she needed a bath.
When my turn came I elected to be sent to the packing department, and
for the single reason that I wished to see and know the boss who had
enough courage to send home a worker who had neglected to wash her face
and hands. This boss, Jane Ward, proved to be one of the most admirable
characters I have ever known and one of the most capable of women. It
took her about three minutes to show me how to pack crackers—I began
with saltines.
The packing department filled one floor of the huge factory. It was
perfectly lighted, heated, and ventilated. The women and girl workers
wore all-enveloping blue cotton aprons with becoming Dutch caps to
match. These caps covered the hair as completely as the aprons covered
our dresses. The men, both workers and managers, wore coats and caps of
white cotton. These garments were all supplied and laundered by the
factory, fresh ones being distributed every other day.
Like folding circulars and addressing envelopes, packing crackers is
monotonous though neither fatiguing nor disagreeable. Indeed, for the
first few days I found it uncommonly pleasant—workers being allowed to
eat all the crackers they wish providing they take none from the
building. Several times during my first morning Jane Ward, when making
her rounds, would fill my apron pockets with various varieties. And the
girls working at the machines would make it convenient to pass me along
a handful of fresh ones from the wide iron flats on which they came hot
from the ovens.
During the first day I ate ravenously. By the afternoon of the second
day it did not require much self-denial to pass a machine without
sampling that bake. At the end of the week I was entirely content to
allow Mrs. Wilkins and Alice to consume the bag of fresh broken crackers
which I purchased at one-third the regular price and took home with me
every evening.
The happy faces of my fellow workers were a continual source of pleasure
to me. In no place where I had worked had I found such unmistakable
evidence of general contentment. In spite of the fatigue resulting from
my Atlantic City experience, I found myself even on my first day feeling
more and more encouraged as the hours wore away. By lunch-time I had
become almost light-hearted.
But when Jane asked a girl who worked at the same table with me to take
me with her to the lunch-room conducted by the factory for its
employees, I drew back. My memory of the lunch-room conducted by the
department store for its employees was still too vivid. Never again
would I be caught in such a trap! I thanked Jane, but when she had
passed on I told the girl that it being my habit to take a walk in the
fresh air during the lunch-hour, I would look for an eating-place on the
street.
“I’ve never been able to stomach the food in these joints around here,”
the girl replied. “And their prices is something fierce.”
On my inquiring if the food she got in the factory lunch-room was really
eatable she very wisely advised me to come and see before putting on my
hat and coat. Stepping inside the door of the restaurant I stared in
amazement at the food, the helpings, and the service.
It was a cafeteria with the serving-counter shaped like an elongated
horseshoe. A squad of men, all in spotless white, stood within the
hollow of the horseshoe serving the workers as they passed along, the
women on one arm of the shoe, the men on the other. On paying their
score the men turned into the men’s dining-room, and the women into that
reserved for women workers.
That, my first lunch, as recorded in my diary, consisted of two slices
of roast beef, each as large as my hand and almost as thick, on a mound
of mashed potatoes with a-plenty of brown gravy; one-eighth of a large
apple pie; bread and butter, a cup of coffee with grade A milk and all
the sugar I wanted—all for eighteen cents. Everything was deliciously
cooked and carefully served. After the atrociously cooked and slovenly
served meals of the Belgrave this factory lunch-room seemed to me
nothing short of marvellous.
That night I recounted my experience to Alice, the hat-trimmer, and the
little organist. They all threatened to give up their jobs and go to
packing crackers. Every evening after that they never failed to ask:
“Well, what did you have for lunch to-day?”
The portions were so surprisingly generous that I often found it
difficult to eat it all. It may have been that our stern course of
appetite suppression had affected me. Be that as it may, there were
several days when only shame prevented me from asking permission to take
home with me the slice of meat I had not been able to eat. Mrs. Wilkins
and Alice would have been glad to get it.
At that time meats of all sorts were so high that none of us women on
the top floor thought of having it oftener than once a day. Potatoes
were so expensive that Mrs. Wilkins and the organist had stopped buying
them—Alice and I were rice-eaters. Milk had gone up a cent a pint, and
the loaf of bread for which we were then paying eight cents was
decreasing in size so rapidly that each time we bought one we wondered
if we would not be forced to use a magnifying-glass to be able to see
our next.
Ah me! The time came all too soon when I had to leave this job of good
food and cheerful surroundings—a whole week before the date set for me
to take the position left vacant by the marriage of Mary’s cousin. And I
bitterly resented the circumstances that caused me to leave though it
was the offer of a promotion.
“We never promote a girl until she has been here two weeks,” Jane Ward
said to me late in the afternoon of my second Friday. “Your second week
won’t be up until next Tuesday, but you have done so well that the
manager says I may put you in charge of that machine.” She indicated a
machine which at the time she spoke was bringing down hot gingersnaps
from the oven on the floor above. Then she added: “It means a dollar a
week raise for you, and it is a sit-down job.”
For two whole days I debated with myself the question—to accept the
promotion or not to accept. Those bountiful well-cooked lunches were a
real temptation. Alice and Mrs. Wilkins had remarked more than once on
the change in my appearance. The scales proved that I had regained seven
of the fifteen pounds lost while in Atlantic City. If Jane had not been
so eager to reward me! Or if only I hadn’t been so eager to make good.
Late Sunday afternoon I posted a letter telling Jane that it would be
impossible for me to return to work the following day as I was needed at
home. Though untrue, that excuse represented the awakening of my sense
of personal responsibility.
For had I accepted that promotion I would have taken the place of some
woman who really needed the dollar a week raise. Besides, I would have
given Jane the trouble of training me. No such qualms of conscience had
troubled me when the manager of the premium station offered me permanent
employment, though I was perfectly aware that fifty-six other women had
been hoping and working for the position.
Before turning away from the biscuit factory I wish to state that even
to-day, after my experience in so many different lines of work, I have
but one criticism to make: There is no reason why women should be forced
to stand while packing crackers.
This may seem a small matter, but to the woman worker it is most
serious. In all my experience I have never found any work so fatiguing
as standing on my feet continuously for several hours at a time. The
fact that the feet are incased in pointed-toed shoes with high heels
does not lessen the strain.
Women should have better sense than to wear such shoes to work. Indeed?
Let any one making such a protest try to buy, in New York, a pair of
shoes with round toes and moderately low heels when the other style is
in fashion. I have tried, and though I succeeded, it was after much
searching and always at an additional cost of several dollars. Besides,
because a woman works for her living does not make her any less a woman;
and every woman, unless she is a fool, wishes to appear well dressed—in
the fashion.
Though I was up and out before eight o’clock the next morning, I
returned to my room late in the afternoon without having secured a
position. It was not for the lack of trying. I called at nine places
advertising for workers. At the first place there were twenty-two
applicants for two vacancies. At another there were forty women waiting
when I arrived, and several came later—only six vacancies. Before the
door of a down-town candy factory I was one of more than fifty women and
girls. Many of them had been waiting since eight o’clock. At twelve a
man came out and roughly ordered us all off. When some of us protested
he burst out laughing and informed us that all vacancies had been filled
before eight-thirty.
The next day I was more fortunate—that is, I was taken on at the first
place to which I applied. This was a candy factory. After packing fancy
chocolates during the morning I was sent to another department and
assigned to the task of helping a chocolate-dipper. This position, so my
fellow packers informed me, was very desirable since the next step up is
chocolate-dipping, a work that always commands a good wage.
“It’s grand!” one little girl, who looked as though she had not washed
her face or combed her hair for a week, assured me. “You’ll learn how to
dip. They make big money, dippers do. I’ve gotter cousin who married a
dipper. She used to make as much as eighteen a week. She has the
swellest clothes!”
During my first day in this candy factory I imagined that the unneat
appearance of my fellow workers was caused by dirt accumulated since
their arrival that morning. The next day taught me better. There were
precious few of them, either men or women, who had the appearance of
having washed their faces before leaving home.
The apron handed me on my second day was so soiled that I asked the
woman in charge how often she had them washed.
“Wash these things,” she cried, laughing, as she held up another apron
in a worse condition than the one she had given me, “they ain’t never
washed sence I been here. When they gets so sticky and stuck up that
they spoil your clothes they take ’em away and give me some more. I
guess they burn ’em. They ain’t fitten for nothing else.”
“If customers knew that, perhaps they wouldn’t pay such high prices for
your candies,” I suggested.
“What folks don’t know don’t hurt ’em none,” she retorted.
That night I had a severe bilious attack, and when morning came I was
too sick to think of going to work. Had it been the biscuit factory or
any other position in which I had worked, excepting the department
store, I would have gotten Alice to telephone and give my reason for not
reporting.
Two days in that candy factory were enough for me. Even the money due
me—at the rate of eight dollars a week—was not sufficient to draw me
back. Now when I see the name of that firm on a candy-box I very gladly
allow other people to consume it. Yet I am fond of candy.
Fortunately, on Friday morning the postman brought me a letter from the
housekeeper at Sutton House enclosing a railroad ticket. When I told
Alice that I had engaged to go as head chambermaid she rose in wrath. A
domestic servant in a hotel was bad enough, she protested, but going in
a private family was a disgrace for which she could not find a name.
“Yet when you are at home you make beds, sweep the floors, and do other
so-called menial work,” I reminded her.
“I’m a college woman,” she haughtily informed me.
“If a lack of education in the worker renders the work disgraceful,” I
replied, trying to argue with her, “then surely my degree together with
my attainments as a writer should remove the stigma.”
But she would not argue. It was disgraceful of me to go as a domestic
servant. Nobody would ever have any respect for me, and that was all
there was to it. It was the one subject to which there was but one side.
Domestic service was disgraceful.
This in the country that my ancestors had struggled to found—that all
under its flag might be free and equal.