"A NET BY THE WAYSIDE"
Hermann Hoffmann, passing one evening to the little clothes-press
behind the bar in Ludwig Schleger's saloon, and putting on the canvas
coat that was his badge of office, heard the voice of the proprietor
calling his name, and turned to see that stout German-American
beckoning him to enter the back-room where, a month before, O'Malley
had held with Wesley Dyker that conference which had proved so
disastrous to Rose Légère.
He walked through the open door, whistling his Teutonic melody. He
had not that fear of his employer which most employees have of the
man for whom they work. Schleger had proved himself lenient and
good-natured, and Hermann, whose cheerful round face and easy smile
did not interfere with the use of a knotted arm and a mighty fist,
was quite aware that there was no complaint justly to be made against
the manner in which he performed his alloted tasks.
"Hoffmann," said Schleger, smiling, "you're all right."
"Sure," grinned Hermann.
"Yes," pursued the proprietor, "I been thinkin' about you that you
sure have made good."
"I'm glad you vas sadisfied, Schleger."
"I am satisfied; but I think you need a little more time off now an'
then. I haven't got nothin' to do this evenin'. I'll take your
place."
Hermann's eyes brightened with unaffected pleasure. It had not
always been pleasant to work in the nights when Katie was all day
busy in the shop.
"Thanks," he said.
"Yes," nodded Schleger, benignantly; "it will be like old times for
me. You take a night off."
"Shall I start out righd avay?"
"Certainly.--Of course you understand I'll want you around here the
day of the primaries."
Hermann nodded.
"And Hermann, there's somethin' else I've been meanin' to talk to you
about, and kep' forgettin' till O'Malley reminded me of it again this
afternoon."
Hoffmann, pulling off his white jacket, stopped with arms extended.
"O'Malley?" he said in a strained voice. "Vat's dot man got to do
vith me?"
"Well, you know he don't miss no tricks nowheres, an' some time back
I was tellin' him what a good man you was, an' he said we ought to
get you a little more active for him. A fellow behind a bar can do a
whole lot that way, you know,--an' make a good thing of it."
"I know," replied Hermann, ripping off the coat, "but I ain't no
politician."
"Nobody said you was, but all the fellows help a little."
"Sure; only I don't."
"Why not? We want to do well for the slate this time. Wesley
Dyker's on it; you know him; he's all right."
"I ain't no politician, Schleger."
This stolid attitude plainly began to puzzle the proprietor.
"Don't be a fool, Hoffmann," he said. "The boys all have their eye
on you, an' O'Malley don't forget any of his friends."
"Schleger, I got my own friends, und I make my own friends. I don't
vant nussing I don't earn from nobody."
"But that sort of thing won't look right," argued Schleger. "You
see, you're registered from here--
"No I ain't, Schleger; I'm registered from my own blace."
"Well, I didn't know that; you didn't tell me, an' so I registered
you from here."
Hoffmann's pink cheeks became red. He folded his coat neatly over
his arm.
"Vatch here, Schleger," he began. "I ain't no politician. I don't
care----"
But he bit his lip and mastered himself to silence.
The proprietor saw this and appreciated the self-control that it
manifested. There had been a time when he had felt as Hermann felt
now, and so he was not disposed to use harsh argument. He came close
to Hoffmann and, still smiling, dropped his voice to a whisper.
"That's all right," he said, soothingly. "I guess I know how you
look at it. Don't say that I said so, but we'll let the matter drop
if you only lay low a little and keep quiet. You know the brewery's
backin' me in this saloon, an' you know, with the brewery pushin' me
all the time for its money, I couldn't run the place a month if I
didn't keep the side-door open Sundays. Well, then, how could I keep
the place workin' Sundays if it wasn't for O'Malley? Just try not to
be openly again' him, that's all."
Hermann did not commit himself, but his tone had softened when, in
reply, he asked:
"Und should I take to-night off?"
"Certainly you should. Go along now, an' ferget it."
He went, but as he walked down the avenue, "Die Wacht Am Rhein"
issued from his lips to the time of a funeral-march.
His sole consolation lay in the fact that, in the recent glimpses he
had secured of Katie, that young lady had begun to evince signs of
relenting from her former attitude of celibacy. He knew that she had
gradually ceased to descant upon the impossibility of his supporting
a wife, and he thought that she was entertaining hopes of a promotion
in the shop to a position where her own earnings, added to his, would
make a comfortable living-wage for two.
What he did not know--and this for the excellent reason that Katie
would not tell it to him--was that, whatever their prospects for the
future, both Katie and her roommate were still engaged in that battle
with poverty and temptation which had lessened scarcely one whit
since its beginning. For the former the fortunes of war were less
than ever favorable, and for the latter the most that was expected
was the maintenance of her stand in the face of every armed reason to
surrender or retreat.
The strike dragged along its wearied length. Popular sympathy, which
had aided the shirtwaist-makers in their former rebellion, had lost
its interest in the cause, and, as the newspapers said less, the
employers became more demonstrative. Hired thugs guarded the
factories and beat whatever young women dared, by the simplest words,
to plead, in public, with the scab laborers. When these battles
occurred the police, knowing well the interests of their masters,
arrested the mere girls for assault and battery upon the thugs,
forcing them to remain, if detained, on benches with women old in
immorality and crime; and the magistrates before whom these dangerous
female criminals were hailed, not forgetting which party to the suit
could vote at the coming election, would often send the offenders to
the Reformatory or the Island, where they could no longer interfere,
or would impose fines calculated still more to deplete a strike-fund
already pitiably shrunken. Some of the unionists had already laid
down their arms and returned to the factories; more had gone over to
another enemy and disappeared beneath the dark current of the
underworld. The rest--and Carrie was among the number--must soon
come face to face with starvation.
Katie's difficulties, though as yet less physical, were scarcely less
poignant. She found that she was rarely left long in one portion of
the Lennox shop. From the chief woman's-hosiery department, she was
shifted, without warning, to the handkerchief counter, and thence,
again with no explanation, she was sent to help in the main aisle at
a table where there was a special sale of stockings at reduced prices.
At first these frequent shiftings appeared to result from no apparent
cause. She was fined as much as the other clerks, but no more than
they, and she could in no wise account for the changes. But at last
she noticed that after a shift for the worse the sacrosanct Mr.
Porter would usually happen by and open a conversation, and then she
remembered that, before such a shift, this same side-whiskered
gentleman had generally made overtures, and that those overtures had
not been well received. The theory arising from these observations
she resolved to confirm. After the next move she made deliberate
eyes at the man she detested, and she was next day promoted, with a
twenty-five cent increase of pay per week, to the silk-stocking
counter. From that day she saw her warfare developing into a
dangerous game of hide-and-seek in which Mr. Porter was "It," and
from that day dated her increasing tendency to reconsider the
determination not to marry Hermann Hoffmann.
For Violet, meanwhile, the young interne's prophesy had been
fulfilled. Four days after her admission to the hospital there had
been performed upon her that operation which had been made necessary
by her servitude, but to which, had she been consulted, her fears
would never have allowed her to consent. For three weeks she lay in
her narrow bed among other sufferers, and, when at last the fiction
of discharging her as "cured" had been accomplished, and the
five-cent carfare donated by the hospital to charity-patients had
been given, she had been met by Katie and Carrie, and had tottered
between them to their room.
During another week she had now rested there. Her eyes were still
sunken, dull, dark-rimmed; her cheeks white and transparently thin.
The knuckles of her fingers seemed to have grown larger, and her
hands were nearly transparent. But her lips, though bloodless, had
gained a new firmness. Clearly or deeply she could never think,
without help from a stronger and better mind; yet she had made what
use she might of her long leisure and had resolved, more or less
definitely, upon what she would do with her life.
"I went out an' walked a block by myself yesterday," she confessed to
her two friends early on the evening of Hermann's political
discussion with his employer; "an' I didn't get any tired an' wasn't
hardly any scared. Now I want you to take me for a longer walk
to-night an' then by to-morrow I'll be all right."
They protested that she must not spur her convalescence, but she was
determined. It was, she knew, impossible for them much longer to
support her, and the last of her one ten-dollar bill had long ago
been spent.
"I'll tell you what we might do," Carrie at last suggested. "There's
some sort of a concert over at the settlement to-night. We might go
to that. I used to know some of the ladies there, and there's always
a chance that they can get you a job."
While she was speaking Hermann's whistle, more cheerful now than when
he had left the saloon, sounded on the stairs, and Katie, surprised
and glad, opened the door to his knock.
"Late to your work again," she said, with a smile that belied her.
"How'll you ever be holdin' that job, anyhow?"
The newcomer's only answer was a courageous and unrebuked kiss. He
turned to Carrie.
"Vat you sink of such a vay of meetin' me?" he appealed. "My boss
gives me a nighd off, und I haf seen my girl not fur ten days und
den----"
He paused as his unrecognizing eye fell upon Violet.
"Egscuse me," he began. "I didn't see----"
"Of course you didn't see it was your old friend Violet that was an'
Miss Morton that is," interrupted Katie, with a quick desire to
shield her charge. "You're gettin' that near-sighted I wonder how
you can tell a whiskey-glass from a beer-stein."
Hermann hurried forward in rosy embarrassment and saved Violet from
rising. He took her frail hand in his big paw and poured out a
tumbling stream of polite lies upon the matter of her health.
"I guess it ain't quite as good as you say," replied Violet; "but it
soon will be. Have you--I didn't get no news while I was sick. Have
you heard anything about--things?"
"You knew Rose's place was pinched?"
"Yes, Katie told me that."
"Well, dey had some trouble gettin' pail fur her. Everybody vas
afraid fur to do it vith O'Malley after her. Still, dey vorked it
somevays und nobody thought but she'd jump it und run avay; but she
didn't. She tried, but O'Malley had central office men keepin' eyes
on her, und she can't leaf town."
Katie and Carrie were busying themselves in the preparation of the
supper, and the German seated himself beside the invalid.
"Mr. Hoffmann," she said, "I've been tryin' to think of lots of
things while I've been sick, an' I'd like to know how it is that
women like Miss Rose are allowed?"
He looked at her, hesitating, but her eyes were frankly curious.
"Dot's von long story," he answered in his slow tones, "un' dem as
can tell it best is most all in deir houses or in deir graves, or
else, in de streets."
"Then I guess I was lucky to get away."
"If you don't mind me sayin' it--yes, miss."
"But don't the girls get free when the houses are pinched?"
"No," said Hermann, as gently as he could; "dey don't get free. Ofer
to de Night Court a voman has taken five s'ousand to a blace she has,
und how many sink you didn't go back to de vork again? Less'n von
hundret und fifty."
"I don't see how they could," said Violet.
Hermann could not see how they could do anything else, but he only
shrugged his broad shoulders.
"They don't last long anyvays," he remarked.
"You mean they die soon?"
"Effery five year all de girls is new: it's as sure as life
insurance."
The girl shuddered, but mastered herself.
"Don't mind that," she reassured him. "I want to know--honest.
Katie and Carrie won't be bothered----"
"We can't hear a word you're sayin', darlin'," laughed Katie.
"An', honest," Violet concluded. "There's some things I think I've
got to learn so's I can see it--see it _all_."
She appealed, it happened, to an authority. Hermann supplemented his
Marx with facts and statistics of a later date, especially upon the
point at issue, and he was only too glad to find in Violet the
listener that he could never discover in Katie.
"You're righd," he said; "und the only pity is dot more people don't
try to more about it learn. If dey did, maybe ve'd all open our eyes
some."
And he proceeded to open Violet's eyes not a little. He told her of
the hundreds of thousands of girls that are annually caught in the
great net; of how five thousand new ones are every year needed to
maintain Chicago's standing supply of twenty-five thousand; of how
Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco--all the cities and
the towns--are served proportionately, and of how, above all, from
the crowded East Side of New York, there are dragged each week
hundreds of children and young women no one of whom, if sold
outright, brings as much as a capable horse.
"Some ve bring in," he said, "und some ve send out. Ve take from
Italy, und ve send to Sous America. From all ofer the vorld ve take,
und to all ofer the vorld ve send."
"You don't always blame the girls?"
"Plame dem? A girl as lived by us, she did tucking in a undervear
factory. She has coffee und a roll fur preakfast, tea und a roll fur
lunch, von biece of bacon und von egg fur supper effery nighd. Ten
hours a day in a bad smelling room, crowded vis ozzer girls, she runs
dot machine. Part de year she has no vork, because always de factory
does not run, but vhen de years ends, dot machine, makin' four
dousand stitches a minute, she has tucked dree miles of undervear und
got paid dree hundred dollars. Do I plame such a girl if she easy
comes to belief a paid veasel as makes lofe to her und says he
marries her und gets her avay from a factory?"
"All of the girls don't come from such hard jobs though."
"So? Look now!"
He took from an inside pocket a fistful of soiled envelopes and
shuffled them until he found one on which he had transcribed some
figures.
"Yesderday afternoon to dis Astor Library I found a report vat vas
made by people sent out by de State of Massachusetts. It got a kind
of census from four dousand vomen in sixty different cities, all
ofer. Before dey vent bad, five hundret vas garment-vorkers, und
eight hundret vas rope-makers, milliners, laundry people, paper-box,
cigar und cigarette makers, candy-box packers, or vorked in textile
mills or shoe factories. All dem, see, vorked in de poor paid
trades, und a hundret und sixteen come from department-stores, und
dot's as bad as Katie'll tell you. Vorse yet de job of
house-servant--sixty per cent. vas dot. Und all de rest--all de
ozzer sixty-two per cent.--vere girls who hadn't had not jobs, und
dey had to live und couldn't no ozzer vay earn a livin'!"
"Then you think," asked Violet, "they wouldn't go wrong if they could
get decent work at decent wages?"
Hermann looked at her quickly.
"Vould you?" he asked.
She shivered and shook her head and Hermann, seeing that the heat of
his zeal had led him into a personal appeal that all his normally
slow instincts prompted him to avoid, hurried back to the safe ground
of generalities.
"Nobody vat knows," he said, "could belief it. Nobody vat knows
could belief girls'd go into such a life, or once dey got into it
stay dere, because dey vanted to. Vell, vat den? Ve must find out
vhy is it dey gets in und vhy dey stay. It is because all de whole
luckier vorld lets dem be kep' fast, und, first und foremost, because
all de whole luckier vorld lets dose factories dey come from be bad
blaces, und couldn't gif dose ozzer sixty-two-per-cent girls no ozzer
vay to earn a livin' yet."
Violet thought again, as she still so often thought, of Max.
"An' what about the men that start them?" she inquired.
Hermann brought his heavy fist down upon his knee.
"Dem too!" he said. "Dem is de vorst mens in de vorld. If I can
hate any man, dey is him. It makes my red blood to steam und my skin
to get all brickly to see dem or sink of dem. But I know dot dey,
too, are results of conditions, und dey sink dot dey are doing
kindness to de girls by not letting dem go to chail or starve. De
vorst mens in de vorld--next to politicians as lets dem live und
takes most dot dey earn! Und de politicians demselves are only vat
dot big system as makes us all vork for less as ve earn, und makes us
all pay more as ve can--only vat de big system makes dem!"
Violet understood but partially; yet she had seen enough to know that
the slavery must have its political side, and it was concerning this
that she now asked.
That Hermann made wholly clear. He told her the story of the growth
of political parties, the development of political machines, the
necessary preying of these machines, in every city, first upon
gambling and then, as that passed, upon prostitution, and of how this
meant both money and votes.
As he talked, she learned how this brought into being the
"cadets"--the followers of the low heelers--who scoured their own and
other towns, hanging about the doors of factories, tenements,
shops--wherever the life was so hard as to drive those who lived it
to despair--themselves impelled by economic conditions, by the choice
between hard work and small pay on the one hand and base work and
better pay on the other, and themselves forced into the "gangs" of
childish marauders while at the primary schools, and so trained
upward, step by step, to the "gang" of the politician. She learned
how, after the last outcry, a popular leader had struck a cadet, in
the presence of the press-agents, and then, when this one blow was
taken as the end of the infamous relation, had quietly joined with
his fellows in strengthening that relation as it never could have
been strengthened with the attention of the public upon it. And she
learned how the result had been a whole criminal confederacy, with
its capital in the poorer quarters, bound together politically and
financially, with its officers, its agents, and its regularly
retained lawyers, at once to defend and to attack.
Out of his own observation, Hermann told her of the saloons that were
in reality the clubs of these procurers. He sketched the methods of
procuring false bail-bonds, of influencing magistrates, juries, and
even judges, and of turning upon the few conscientious policemen with
suits charging oppression and false arrest.
"O'Malley und dese ozzer mens like him ofer here make sometimes all
of sixty dousand a year," he declared, "und de people lofe dem
because dese O'Malleys take deir daughters durin' twelve mont's und
gif dem coal fur four."
"An' no one person is to blame?" asked Violet in amazement.
"I vish dere vas, but dere ain't."
"So there ain't no way out of it?"
"Von vay--und only von. For de single time badness makes poverty,
ninety-nine times poverty it makes badness. Do avay vith poverty.
Reorganize de whole of de industrial system; gif effery man und voman
a chance to vork; gif effery man und voman effery penny dey earns.
So only you do avay vith poverty, so only you do avay vith unhappy
und discontented homes und unhappy und discontented people, und so
only you do avay vith badness."
He was in the midst of his subject when Katie served the scanty
supper, and he would have had neither time nor inclination for the
mere eating had not his sweetheart sternly ordered him to be silent.
But, as soon as the meal was over and the few dishes washed, he
continued his talk to Violet as, with the two girls ahead of her, she
leaned heavily on his arm all the way to Rivington Street.
The concert was, it must be confessed, interesting chiefly to the
women that had promoted it, the young people that took part in it,
and the relatives of the performers, who succeeded or failed
vicariously. Stiffly seated in the cleared gymnasium, a little
ashamed and wholly ill at ease, the audience, drawn from the
neighborhood and from among the friends of the settlement-workers,
bore it, however, with commendable fortitude. They heard an amateur
orchestra play "La Paloma" out of time; they heard Eva Aaronsohn read
an essay on "A Day in Central Park"; they heard a promising soprano
solo spoiled by fright, and a promising baritone not yet escaped from
the loosening leash of boyhood. Morris Binderwitz delivered a
hesitating oration upon Abraham Lincoln, as culled from his former
debate regarding the great emancipator, and Luigi Malatesta, having
consulted the same original sources, repeated by rote a ten-minute
tribute to the military genius of George Washington. There was a
duet, a piano solo--a simplified version of "O Du Mein Holder
Abendstern." Everything was conscientiously applauded, nearly
everything was encored and then, amid a scraping of chairs and more
strains from the amateur orchestra, the ordeal came to an end.
As the crowd slowly dispersed, Carrie made her way to the side of one
of the women-workers with whom she had some slight acquaintance and,
after the formal catechism upon "how she was doing," made her plea
for Violet. She told, of course, nothing of the girl's story, nor
was anything asked. It was enough that she should say that her
friend was fresh from the hospital, was in need of a position, and,
though still weak, was able to do light housework.
The woman to whom this appeal was made called Marian Lennox to her
side and, with a brief explanation of what the girl had just said,
introduced Carrie.
"Didn't you tell me," she asked, "that you'd heard to-day of somebody
that needed an extra servant?"
Marian had heard of such an opportunity. The word had not come at
first hand, and the housewife was personally unknown to her. She was
sure, however, that the place was entirely estimable, and she at once
gladly gave the address, to which her co-laborer added, upon strength
of Carrie's assurances, a recommendation.
Violet was brought over and presented, and when Marian saw the girl's
wan cheeks and dull eyes, and read there the plain tokens of
suffering, her own fine face shone with sympathy.
She drew Violet aside.
"Have you ever done housework before?" she asked.
"Only at home, ma'am," said Violet.
"Well, you'll like it, I'm sure. I can't see why all you girls are
so foolish as to go into factories. Housework is so much more
healthy and safe, and it's just what women are made for. It pays so
well, too. Even if you can't cook, you can scrub and clean and help
and get three dollars or more a week for it, and board, too."
"I think I'll like it," Violet assented, knowing in her heart that
she would like any work that gave her a living and protection.
"Then be sure to come to see me after you're settled," said Marian.
She was now wholly immersed in the work of the settlement; but,
though she had undertaken no distracting outside investigation, her
indoor duties had thus far brought her into touch chiefly with
children of the neighborhood, and from them, wise beyond their years
as they were, she had learned only enough to feel that she had not
yet come into touch with the great problems that her young heart was
so eager to answer. In this first chance to give what she conceived
to be practical help, it seemed to her that she was at last getting
near to the heart of what she sought.
How near she had come to the heart of another problem, and how that
problem was involved in the problem of her own life, she little
guessed as she smiled into Violet's grateful face and, exacting
another promise that the girl should report to her in any difficulty,
bade her good-night.