“MORE DEADLY THAN THE MALE”
The day after leaving the District Board for the City of New York I
called at the employment department of the Y. W. The head of the
department greeted me cordially. She had plenty of jobs—up-town,
down-town, in all the suburbs. Reading her card catalogue of openings
she stated that the Suffrage Party was offering ten dollars a week for
canvassers, to work from five to nine evenings.
“Could you place me where I would not be recognized?” I inquired.
“Know many persons on the upper West Side?” she asked. I shook my head.
“Ever see Miss Madeline Marks?” Again I shook my head. “She’s in charge
at the West 78th Street branch. She’s been begging for help. I’ll give
you a card——”
The telephone at her elbow rang vigorously. She took off the receiver
and applied it to her ear, all the while filling in a card introducing
me to Miss Madeline Marks.
“Daskam & Howe? Yes, I remember. You want addressers? Piece-work? One
and a quarter a thousand? No, I can’t send you any one at that.” The
secretary’s tone was final. “One fifty is the least they are taking.
Most demand two. Are they getting it?” A satisfied chuckle. “I’ve listed
about four vacancies to every one I’ve been able to fill. Of course if
any one comes in—What’s that?—one dollar seventy-five?”
“I’ll take it,” I whispered. “Tell them you’ll be able to send one.”
“I may be able to send you one or two at one seventy-five,” she called
over the wire. “Of course I’ll do the best I can for you. Good-by.” As
she hung up the receiver she turned to me. “I was in hopes you’d be
willing to help the Suffrage Party out,” she told me, and it was plainly
evident that she was disappointed. “This is the last week before the
election, and——”
“I’m going to take both positions,” I hastened to interrupt. “My first
job was with Daskam & Howe—mail-order house. The manager of the
addressers is a nice little man; he’ll let me get off afternoons in time
to canvass for suffrage.”
She cut her eyes at me and smiled.
“Any of them will do that now,” she assured me. “They’ll let you do
about anything you want, they are so put to it to get workers. I’m glad
you’re going to work for suffrage. Do you think there’s any chance of
our winning?”
“If I work for it—yes.”
She turned on me and looked me up and down.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“There’s a sort of superstition at home—however hopeless a cause may
appear, if I get busy and work for it it wins.”
“You believe it?”
“Why not?” I parried. “We all thought President Wilson’s chance for
re-election was hopeless. At the eleventh hour I had myself made
vice-president of a Woodrow Wilson League and got busy.”
“That was a close shave!” she breathed.
“My work saved him,” I laughed.
“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, pressing two cards of introduction
into my hand. “Get busy and work for suffrage.”
Within half an hour I presented myself at the employees’ entrance of
Daskam & Howe. Instead of the kindly little manager a young woman with a
face like an Indian tomahawk received me. Being among the late-comers, I
was seated in the room in which the buyers of the firm had their desks.
All these buyers, including corsets and women’s underwear, were men. At
least that was the condition the day that I began work. A day or so
later a woman, the only woman employed by the firm as a buyer, returned
from her vacation.
“Hello, fellers!” she called, stopping in the door on her return. “Damn
busy, I see, chewing the rag. You’re a hell of a lot.” And after this a
long string of oaths.
In the use of swear words I had imagined the men buyers unsurpassed.
They couldn’t touch that girl. It did not seem possible for her to open
her mouth without letting out a string of oaths. She swore at her fellow
buyers, at the men and women who came bringing samples from
manufacturers. She swore at members of the firm, at me, and all the
other addressers, but most of all she swore at the telephone.
Strange to say, the men buyers were shocked. So long as she was in the
room they acted like a handful of mice in the presence of a cat. Puzzled
by this I asked the girl with the tomahawk face for an explanation.
“Who, Miss Sojowski?” she replied. “She’s got these men beat to a
finish. That’s what’s the matter. She’s buyer for women and girls’
suits, hats, and coats—four jobs in one. She’s been with the firm five
years, and she’s never made a mistake—all her styles sell, no
left-overs. Sure she makes big money. Three times as much as any of
these little simps pulls down.” She glared at the men buyers, who could
not have avoided hearing every word she said.
My next-seat neighbor at this place was a young man from Canada. He
spent his time breathing darkly hideous threats against the Germans,
what he would do once he “got across.” Bit by bit his fellow workers
learned that soon after England entered the war he had induced the
sixteen-year-old daughter of his employer, a prosperous farmer, to elope
with him. When, in spite of his marriage he was called to the colors, he
eloped alone to the United States, and had been living in New York under
an assumed name.
It was a shame, he declared, that a young fellow of his ability should
be forced to address envelopes. He had expected to get a position as
manager of some millionaire’s farm—a sort of all-pay-and-no-work job. He
would have got it, too, he assured us, if the people in the States were
not so prejudiced against the Irish. Soon as would-be employers learned
that he was not born in Canada, they turned against him, he
asserted—gave the position to a “dirty Dago” or a man of some other
inferior race.
Recalling the abundance of king-descended men and women of his race, I
inquired about his forebears. Sure enough, he gave me a long list of
kings and saints, and assured us all that only the tyranny of England
prevented him from living in a palace without having to “turn a hand.”
The day that the addressers were paid off this slacker suggested to a
lame man who sat across the table from him that it would be a friendly
thing for him to start a subscription—get up enough money to pay his,
the slacker’s, railroad fare back to Canada.
“If your wife’s daddy is so rich, why don’t you ask him to send you the
money?” the lame man, a middle-aged Jew, asked.
“Him!” the young, healthy Irish-Canadian exclaimed contemptuously. “He
don’t want I should come back. Both of his boys were killed by the
Germans. Now he’s trying to turn my wife against me, saying I deserted
her.”
“Well, didn’t you?” the lame man demanded. “You told me your child was
more than a year old, and you’d never seen it. You said you had never
got enough ahead to send your wife money.”
“She don’t need I should,” the slacker replied. “Her father’s richer
than butter, and she’s all he’s got now.”
The lame man struggled to his feet and lifted his crutch.
“I’m a poor man,” he said, and taking his pay-envelope from his pocket
he held it up, “but if I had a million dollars in this I wouldn’t give
you a nickel. My father brought us from Poland when I was ten years old.
When this war came my brother, the youngest of the family, was the only
one able to fight. My father and I promised to care for his wife and
four children.”
The lame man slipped his pay-envelope back into his pocket, then fitted
the crutch under his arm. You might have heard a pin drop.
“Your brother’ll come back,” a woman addresser assured him hopefully.
The lame man straightened up and swung himself around on his crutch.
“Less than two months after he went away we got the news—he had been
killed in battle.” He turned and faced the slacker. “My brother was a
good husband,” he said; “he loved his children.” Clutching his hat and
his little lunch-box in one hand, he stumped out.
This pay-day brought me a real surprise. Instead of counting the
envelopes I learned that they reckoned by weight. My three days’ work,
according to my own count, amounted to five thousand envelopes. Soon
after the basket in which they had been packed was taken out, the girl
with a face like a tomahawk hurried in and informed me that there were
only three thousand and three hundred. Against the advice of my fellow
addressers I demanded a recount—perhaps I should say a count, for they
had been weighed, never counted.
After considerable bluster my work was turned over to another young
girl. In the first box she found eighty-one while I found one hundred.
On a second counting she also found one hundred. The difference in the
second box was even greater. After that she evidently decided it was a
hopeless task—trying to cheat me. According to her final count, I had
addressed five thousand five hundred and fifty-seven. I was paid for
five thousand.
Beyond a weak protest the day that I began work for Daskam & Howe the
girl manager of the addressing department made no objection to my
stopping work every day at four o’clock. That gave me time to eat a
second cold lunch, and report at the West Side headquarters of the
Suffrage Party by five. When applying for the position I told Miss
Madeline Marks that I would be glad to be assigned to the tenement
section of her district. Thereupon she assured me that she felt sure
that I would be more useful on Riverside Drive and the adjacent side
streets. So taking a list of voters to be seen, and a package of little
yellow pledge-slips, I sallied forth.
The first voter on whom I called, like other individuals whom custom
clothes in trousers, suffered from the hallucination of thinking himself
a man. When I opened the conversation by saying that I had feared not
finding him at home so early, five o’clock, he explained that, being a
“gentleman of leisure,” he was always at home to charming ladies. Being
aware that the race of fools had not been entirely exterminated, I
allowed his explanation, along with the accompanying smirk, to pass
unnoticed, and proceeded to business.
At the mention of suffrage his back stiffened and his eyes flashed
green. When I offered him one of the yellow pledge-slips, asked him to
sign it, he broke forth:
“You women!” he spit at me. “You’ve lost all sense of decency. Do you
realize that our country is at war? Do you realize that men are dying?
Do you realize it? Do you realize it?”
“I realize all of it,” I told him, rising to my feet, and I think my
eyes flashed green. “Besides, I realize that every man at the
front—fighting, dying, and dead—was brought into the world by a woman,
who went through the jaws of death, suffered the pangs of hell, to give
him birth.” I walked to the door of the drawing-room, then turned and
glared at him, standing speechless beside his chair. “There’s something
else I realize—the pity of it that a man like you has to be born of a
woman, when you might just as well have been hatched out of a
goose-egg.”
The footman, whom I had looked upon as an impassive piece of furniture,
followed me out on the stoop.
“If you’ll give me one, lady,” he said, “I’ll be glad to sign it and
send it in by mail.”
Halting on the corner I took myself to task. I admitted without regret
that I had inherited all the temper of my Huguenot and Scot ancestors.
What I did regret was having lost control of that temper, acting, as I
considered, like a shrew. The following afternoon Miss Marks showed me
two signed slips mailed from the same address—master and footman had
pledged themselves to vote for the suffrage amendment.
“Lose your temper!—act like a shrew!” Miss Marks exclaimed, when I
described the incident. “Do anything to get results like that. Why, that
man has been for years a violent Anti.”
It was an Anti who converted me, made a living, working suffragist of
me. The scene of my conversion was the State House of Massachusetts. The
Suffrage Party was making its annual appeal to the lawmakers of their
commonwealth. I attended the meeting because of a promise made, years
before, to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, not because of my interest in suffrage.
While in college Mrs. Howe had asked me to attend such a meeting, and I,
because it was easier to say yes than no, had promised to do so. Not
having any interest in the question, I forgot all about it until I
learned from the _Transcript_ that the meeting had taken place, and that
Mrs. Howe had been the chief speaker. Having been brought up in the
faith that no well-bred man or woman will intentionally break a promise,
I hastened to call on Mrs. Howe and apologize. I told her the truth—that
I had forgotten.
As always, Mrs. Howe was kind and sympathetic. When I was telling her
good-by, while she was still holding my hands, she asked me to give her
another promise—to attend such a meeting at the State House at my
earliest opportunity. That opportunity came while I was taking a
graduate course at Radcliffe—Professor Baker’s course in playwriting.
Learning from the morning paper that the Suffrage Party was to make its
annual appeal in the State House that afternoon, quite a little while
after the appointed hour I drifted in. It was a long room with high
ceiling, and I knew that the broad windows on the side facing the door
by which I entered overlooked Charlestown and the Charles River.
That side, the Charles River side, was packed—every seat taken, and
numbers of women standing against the wall. On the side next the door
there were a good many vacant seats, and without giving the matter a
thought, I took my place beside a woman, who, catching my eye, made room
for me. There were several speeches for and against.
Then a little wisp of a woman got up. She had the face of a blighted
new-born baby—wrinkled and old as the human race. And in her eyes there
shone the patient acceptance of the curse: “The sins of the fathers
shall be visited on their children, to the third and fourth generation.”
She was from Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been working in the mills
since she was ten years old. For years she had supported her delicate
mother and her younger brothers and sisters. These younger ones, having
been forced into the mills before they were strong enough, had sickened
and dropped off like so many flies. So at last she was left the sole
support of a bedridden mother.
She told of conditions in the mills, and I knew she spoke the truth. For
it was soon after the notorious “Lawrence strike,” during which I had
journeyed down from Cambridge and spent a week in the mill town. This
ill-fed little feminine creature, who had never known a care-free day in
her whole life, ended her statement with the appeal:
“Gentlemen, you tell me a woman’s place is the home. Ah, gentlemen, if I
only had a home I’d be too glad to stay in it. I know you can’t give me
a home—there are too many like me. But you can give me the ballot.” She
bent toward the men on the rostrum, the law-makers. “Please give it to
me,” she pleaded, her little voice so husky that it was hardly more than
a hoarse whisper. “Please give me the ballot. Then I can vote, stand a
chance of getting my work hours limited. You don’t let ’em work a horse
day and night, gentlemen. Give me a horse’s chance. Give me the ballot,
gentlemen.”
There may have been applause when she slipped back into her seat. But if
so I was unconscious of it. My heart was like a throbbing, aching tooth
in my bosom. Was there really a God in heaven?
Then across the aisle from the little woman a man stepped out. Such a
man as would make you feel sure that at his birth his mother might have
proclaimed with pride: “Behold, I have brought forth a man child; a man
made in the image of his Maker.”
From the tips of his polished shoes to the crown of his waving iron-gray
hair he personified “the best”—the best breed, the best care, the best
food, the best education, the best fashion, always the best and only the
best. The jewel in his scarf-pin or one of the rings on his hand would
have made the puny factory worker comfortable for the balance of her
days, would have given her a home.
The way he railed at her—that great, strong, well-fed, handsomely
dressed, handsome man. He not only shook his finger in her face, but he
threatened her and all suffragists against following the example of the
militant Englishwomen, who he claimed had poured acid in the
letter-boxes of London. While I did not see him actually grit his teeth,
that was his manner—gritting his teeth and foaming at the mouth with
fury.
At the end he gathered himself together, raising himself to his full
height, and proclaimed his contempt for the women before him. The
“ladies” of his acquaintance not only would refuse to vote were the
ballot given them, but they would draw their skirts aside to keep from
coming in contact with such despicable representatives of their sex.
When he finished, the women around me clapped and shouted like mad.
Amazed, I turned to the woman next me and asked what she meant by it.
“He’s on our side,” she told me, her face glowing with satisfied pride.
“He is our chief speaker. Applaud him. Applaud him.”
I saw a great light. In my stupidity I had taken a seat among the Antis.
Rising I crossed over the aisle. There was no seat, so I took my stand
at the back of the room against the wall. A hand reached back and
touched me.
“I recognized you,” a sweet voice whispered, “and I knew you had gotten
in the wrong pew.” It was a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
As a result of that man’s harangue a few months later I travelled more
than one hundred miles to march in the suffrage parade through Boston.
Now I not only worked for the sake of rubbing my rabbit’s foot and
giving them the victory, but for the sake of getting behind the scenes
and learning by my own personal observations whether or no the women
leaders of the party were competent executives.
I held a good many positions during my four years in the underbrush. In
none did I find more competent leadership. In none did I ever see such
indomitable pluck and perseverance, such undaunted courage. It takes
courage, real courage, to work on regardless of insult and flattery.
Especially when the insults and sneers come from those with whom you are
the most closely associated. It takes pluck and perseverance to lay
siege and to hammer and hammer and hammer to break down prejudice in
small minds. That is what being a leader of the Suffrage Party meant.
At the end of my week I was paid the promised ten dollars as promptly as
I would have been by any other first-class business organization. On
Monday evening I marched in the last suffrage parade in New York City,
from the West Side headquarters to Durland’s. Much to the surprise of
the marchers about me I insisted on carrying both a heavy banner and a
transparency.
The day after that election which gave the women of New York State the
ballot I went to work for the International Young Men’s Christian
Association—proof-reader in the multigraph department, otherwise known
as the “guts” of the Association. Through our hands passed every order,
every report, every circular of every sort before it was given to the
public. Down in two little dark basement rooms we worked under
electricity from eight-thirty until—many times after 10 P. M.