I
_No. 1075 Packs Chocolates_
Wise heads tell us we act first--or decide to act first--and reason
afterward. Therefore, what could be put down in black and white as to
why we took up factory work is of minor value or concern. Yet everyone
persists in asking why? So then, being merely as honest as the Lord
allows, we answer first and foremost because we wanted to. Isn't that
enough? It is the why and wherefore of almost everything anyone does
any place at any time. Only the more adept can concoct much weightier
reasons as an afterthought. There is only one life most of us doubting
humans are absolutely sure of. That one life gets filled with so much
of the same sort of performance day in and day out; usually only an
unforeseen calamity--or stroke of luck--throws us into a way of living
and doing things which is not forever just as we lived and did things
yesterday and the day before.
Yet the world is so full of the unexplored! To those who care more for
people than places, around every corner is something new--a world only
dreamt of, if that. Why should all one's life be taken up with the
kind of people we were born among, doing the sort of things our aunts
and our uncles and our cousins and our friends do? Soon there creeps
in--soon? yes, by six years or younger--that comforting belief that as
we and our aunts and our uncles and our cousins and our friends do, so
does--or should do--the world. And all the time we and our aunts and
our uncles and our cousins and our friends are one little
infinitesimal drop in one hundred million people, and what those above
and below and beyond and around about think and do, we know nothing,
nor care nothing, about. But those others are the world, with us, a
speck of--well, in this case it happened to be curiosity--in the midst
of it all.
Therefore, being curious, we decided to work in factories. In addition
to wanting to feel a bona-fide part of a cross section of the world
before only viewed second or third hand through books, there was the
desire better to understand the industrial end of things by trying a
turn at what some eight million or so other women are doing. "Women's
place is the home." All right--that side of life we know first hand.
But more and more women are not staying home, either from choice or
from necessity. Reading about it is better than nothing. Being an
active part of it all is better still. It is one thing to lounge on an
overstuffed davenport and read about the injurious effect on women of
long hours of standing. It is another to be doing the standing.
Yet another reason for giving up some months to factory work, besides
the adventure of it, besides the desire to see other angles of life
for oneself, to experience first hand the industrial end of it. So
much of the technic of the world to-day we take as a matter of course.
Clothes appear ready to put on our backs. As far as we know or care,
angels left them on the hangers behind the mirrored sliding doors.
Food is set on our tables ready to eat. It might as well have been
created that way, for all our concern. The thousands of operations
that go into an article before the consumer buys it--no, there is no
reason why use and want should make us callous and indifferent to the
hows and wherefores. Never was there such an age. Let's poke behind
the scenes a bit.
So, factories it was to be. Not as a stranger snooping in to
"investigate." As a factory girl working at her job--with all that, we
determined to peek out of the corner of our eyes, and keep both ears
to the wind, lest we miss anything from start to finish. Artificial,
of course. Under the circumstances, since we were born how and as we
were, and this had happened and that, we were not an honest Eyetalian
living in a back bedroom on West Forty-fourth Street near the river.
We did what we could to feel the part. Every lady in the land knows
the psychology of dress--though not always expressed by her in those
terms. She feels the way she looks, not the other way round. So then,
we purchased large green earrings, a large bar pin of platinum and
brilliants ($1.79), a goldy box of powder (two shades), a lip stick.
During the summer we faded a green tam-o'shanter so that it would not
look too new. For a year we had been saving a blue-serge dress
(original cost $19) from the rag bag for the purpose. We wore a pair
of old spats which just missed being mates as to shade, and a button
off one. Silk stockings--oh yes, silk--but very darned. A blue
sweater, an orange scarf, and last, but not least--
If you had been brought up in a fairly small city by female relatives
who were one and all school-teachers, who had watched over your
vocabulary (unsuccessfully) as they hung over your morals; if you had
been taught, not in so many words, but insidiously, that breaking the
Ten Commandments (any one or the entire ten), split infinitives, and
chewing gum, were one in the sight of God, or the devil--then you
could realize the complete metamorphosis when, in addition to the
earrings and the bar pin, the green tam and the lip stick, you stepped
up to the Subway newsstand and boldly demanded a package of--chewing
gum. And then and there got out a stick and chewed it, and chewed it
on the Subway and chewed it on the streets of New York. Some people
have to go to a masquerade ball to feel themselves some one else for a
change. Others, if they have been brought up by school-teachers, can
get the same effect with five cents' worth of chewing gum.
After all, one of the most attractive features about being "well
brought up" is the fun of sloughing off. The fun of sloughing off a
lot at once! Had it ever been known ahead of time the fascination of
doing forbidden things, just that first factory morning would have
been worth the whole venture. To read the morning paper over other
people's shoulders--not furtively, but with a bold and open eye. To
stare at anything which caught one's attention. (Bah! all that is
missed in New York because it has been so ground into the bone that it
is impolite to stare!) And to talk to any one, male or female, who
looked or acted as if he or she wanted to talk to you. Only even a
short experience has taught that that abandon leads to more trouble
than it is worth. What a pity mere sociability need suffer so much
repression! We hate to make that concession to our upbringers.
When the time for beginning factory work came there appeared but one
advertisement among "Help Wanted--Female" which did not call for
"experience." There might have to be so much lying, direct and
indirect, to do. Better not start off by claiming experience when
there was absolutely none--except, indeed, had we answered
advertisements for cooks only, or baby tenders, or maids of all work.
One large candy factory bid for "girls and women, good wages to start,
experience not necessary," and in a part of town which could be
reached without starting out the night before. At 7.15 of a Monday
morning we were off, with a feeling something akin to stage fright.
Once we heard a hobo tell of the first time he ever tried to get on a
freight train in the dark of night when it was moving. But we chewed
our gum very boldly.
One of the phases of finding a job often criticized by those who would
add somewhat of dignity to labor is the system of hiring. Like a lot
of other things, perhaps, you don't mind the present system if you get
by. Here was this enormous good-looking factory. On one side of the
front steps, reaching all the way up into the main entrance hall,
stood a line of men waiting for jobs; on the other side, though not
near so long a line, the girls. The regular employees file by. At
last, about eight o'clock, the first man is beckoned. Just behind the
corner of a glassed-in telephone booth, but in full view of all, he is
questioned by an employee in a white duck suit. Man after man is sent
on out, to the growing discouragement, no doubt, of those remaining in
line. At last, around a little corner in the stairs, the first girl is
summoned. The line moves up. A queer-looking man with pop eyes asks a
few questions. The girl goes on upstairs. I am fourth in line--a steam
heater next and the actions of my insides make the temperature seem
120 at least. My turn.
"How much experience you've had?"
"None."
"What you work in last?"
"Didn't work in a factory--been doin' housework--takin' care of kids."
"Well, I start you packing. You get thirteen dollars this week,
fourteen dollars next--you understand?"
He writes something on a little card and I go upstairs with it. There
I am asked my name, age (just did away with ten years while I was at
it). Married or single? Goodness! hadn't thought of that. In the end a
lie there would make less conversation. Single. Nationality--Eyetalian?
No, American. It all has to be written on a card. At that point my eye
lights on a sign which reads: "Hours for girls 8 A.M.-6 P.M. Saturdays
8-12." Whew! My number is 1075. The time clock works so. My key hangs
on this hook; then after I ring up, it hangs here. (That was an
entrancing detail I had not anticipated--made me wish we had to ring up
at noon as well as morning and night.) Locker key 222. A man takes me
in the elevator to the third floor and there hands me over to Ida. The
locker works thus and so. Didn't I have no apron? No--but to-morrow I'd
bring it, and a cap. Sure.
Three piles of boxes and trucks and barrels and Ida opens a great door
like a safe, and there we are in the packing room--from the steam
heater downstairs to the North Pole. Cold? Nothing ever was so cold.
Ten long zinc-topped tables, a girl or two on each side. At the right,
windows which let in no air and little light, nor could you see out at
all. On the left, shelves piled high with wooden boxes. Mostly all a
body can think of is how cold, cold, cold it is. Something happens to
chocolates otherwise.
That first day it is half-pound boxes. My side of the table holds some
sixty at a time. First the date gets stamped on the bottom, then
partitions are fitted in. "Here's your sample. Under the table you'll
find the candies, or else ask Fannie, there. You take the paper cups
so, in your left hand, give them a snap so, lick your fingers now and
then, slip a cup off, stick the candy in with your right hand." And
Ida is off.
The saints curse the next person who delicately picks a chocolate from
its curled casing and thinks it grew that way--came born in that paper
cup. May he or she choke on it! Can I ever again buy chocolates
otherwise than loose in a paper bag? You push and shove--not a cup
budges from its friends and relatives. Perhaps your fingers need more
licking. Perhaps the cups need more "snapping." In the end you hold a
handful of messed-up crumpled erstwhile cup-shaped paper containers,
the first one pried off looking more like a puppy-chewed mat by the
time it is loose and a chocolate planted on its middle. By then,
needless to remark, the bloom is off the chocolate. It has the look of
being clutched in a warm hand during an entire circus parade. Whereat
you glance about furtively and quickly eat it. It is nice the room is
cold; already you fairly perspire. One mussed piece of naked brown
paper in a corner of a box.
The table ahead, fingers flying like mad over the boxes, works Annie.
It is plain she will have sixty boxes done before I have one. Just
then a new girl from the line of that morning is put on the other side
of my table. She is very cold. She fares worse with brown paper cups
than I. Finally she puts down the patient piece of chocolate candy
and takes both hands to the job of separating one cup from the others.
She places what is left of the chocolate in the middle of what is left
of the paper, looks at me, and better than any ouija board I know what
is going on in her head. I smile at her, she smiles back, and she eats
that first chocolate. Tessie and I are friends for life.
Then we tackle the second union of chocolate and paper. Such is life.
Allah be praised, the second goes a shade less desperately than the
first, the third than the second, and in an hour chocolate and paper
get together without untoward damage to either. But the room stays
feeling warm. Anon a sensation begins to get mixed up with the hectic
efforts of fingers. Yes, yes--now it's clear what it is--feet! Is one
never to sit down again as long as one lives? Clumsy fingers--feet.
Feet--clumsy fingers. Finally you don't give a cent if you never learn
to pry those paper cups loose without wrenching your very soul in the
effort. If once before you die--just once--you can sit down! Till 12
and then after, 1 till 6. Help!
A bell rings. "All right, girls!" sings Ida down the line. Everyone
drops everything, and out into the warm main third floor we go. All
the world is feet. Somehow those same feet have to take their
possessor out to forage for food. Into a little dirty, crowded grocery
and delicatessen store we wedge ourselves, to stand, stand, stand,
until at last we face the wielder of a long knife. When in Rome do as
the Romans do. "A bologna and a ham sandwich and five cents' worth of
pickles." Slabs of rye bread, no butter, large, generous slices of
sausage and ham which hang down curtainlike around the bread--twenty-one
cents. Feet take me back to the factory lunch room. At last I flop on
a chair. Sing songs to chairs; write poems to chairs; paint chairs!
Dear German Tessie, pal of the morning, she who ate more chocolates
than I and thus helped to sustain my moral courage--Tessie and I eat
bologna sausage sandwiches together and _sit_. The feet of Tessie are
very, very badly off--ach!--but they feel--they feel--jus' fierce--and
till six o'clock--"Oh, my Gawd!" says Tessie, in good English.
A gong sounds. Up we go to the ice box packing room. It sends the
shivers down our spines. But already there is a feeling of sauntering
in like an old hand at the game. What's your business in life? Packing
chocolates. The half-pound boxes get finished, wax paper on top,
covered, stacked, counted, put on the truck.
"Lena! Start the girl here in on 'assorteds.'"
Pert little Lena sidles up alongside and nudges me in the ribs.
"Say, got a fella?"
I give Lena one look, for which Belasco should pay me a thousand
dollars a night. Lena reads it out loud quick as a wink. She snickers,
pokes me in the ribs again, and, "What to hell do I think you are,
hey?" That's just what I'd meant. "Gee!" says Lena. "Some fool what
can't get some kind of a dope!"
"You said it!"
"Say, got more 'n one dope?" asks Lena, hopefully. Meanwhile she sets
out, with my aid, row after row of dinky little deep boxes.
"Say now," say I to Lena, "and what would a girl be doin' with jus'
_one_ dope?"
"You said it!" says Lena.
At which follows a discussion on dopes, ending by Lena's promising
never to vamp my dope if I won't vamp hers.
"Where'd ya work last?" asks Lena.
One thing the first day taught me. If you want to act the part and
feel the part, earrings and gum help, but if there is one thing you
are more conscious of than all else, it is such proper English as you
possess--which compared to Boston is not much, but compared to Lena
and Ida and Mary and Louise and Susie and Annie is painfully flawless.
Chew hard as ever you can, if you tell Fannie, "There aren't any more
plantations," it echoes and re-echoes and shrieks at you from the four
sides of Christendom. But holler, "Fannie, there ain't no more
plantations!" and it is like the gentle purring of a home cat by
comparison. Funny how it is easier to say "My Gawd!" and "Where t'
hell's Ida!" than "I 'ain't got none." Any way round, you never do get
over being conscious of your grammar. If it is correct, it is lonesome
as the first robin. If it is properly awful, there are those
school-teacher upbringers. I am just wondering if one might not be
dining with the head of the university philosophy department and his
academic guests some night and hear one's voice uttering down a
suddenly silent table, "She ain't livin' at that address no more."
Utterly abashed, one's then natural exclamation on the stillness would
be, "My Gawd!" Whereat the hostess would busily engage her end of the
table in anguished conversation, giving her husband one look, which,
translated into Lena's language, would say, "What t' hell did we ask
her for, anyhow?"
Is one to write of factory life as one finds it, or expurgated? I can
hear the upbringers cry "expurgated"! Yet the way the girls talked was
one of the phases of the life which set the stamp of difference on it
all. What an infinitesimal portion of the population write our books!
What a small proportion ever read them! How much of the nation's
talking is done by the people who never get into print! The proportion
who read and write books, especially the female folk, live and die in
the belief that it is the worst sort of bad taste, putting it mildly,
to use the name of the Creator in vain, or mention hell for any
purpose whatsoever. Yet suddenly, overnight, you find yourself in a
group who would snap their fingers at such notions. Sweet-faced,
curly-headed Annie wants another box of caramels. Elizabeth
Witherspoon would call, "Fannie, would you be so kind as to bring me
another box of caramels?" Annie, without stopping her work or so much
as looking up, raises her voice and calls down the room--and in her
heart she is the same exactly as Elizabeth W.--"Fannie, you bum, bring
me a box of car'mels or I'll knock the hell clean out o' ya."
According to Elizabeth's notions Fannie should answer her, "One
moment, Miss Elizabeth; I'm busy just now." What Fannie (with her soul
as pure as drifted snow) does call back to Annie is, "My Gawd! Keep
your mouth shut. 'Ain't you got sense enough to see I'm busy!"
Annie could holler a hundred times, and she does, that she'd knock the
hell out of Fannie, and God would love her every bit as much as he
would love Miss Elizabeth Witherspoon, who has been taught otherwise
and never said hell in her life, not even in a dark closet. Fannie and
all the other Fannies and Idas and Louisas, say, "My Gawd!" as Miss
Elizabeth says "You don't say!" and it is all one to the Heavenly
Father. Therefore, gentle reader, it must be all one to you. There is
not the slightest shade of disrespect in Annie's or Fannie's hearts as
they shower their profanity on creation in general. There is not the
slightest shade in mind as I write of them.