Tessie says she's eaten too many candies; her stomach does her pain.
Her feet aren't so hurting now her _magen_ is so bad. I couldn't eat
another chocolate for five dollars, but my stomach refused to feel in
any way that takes my mind in the least off my feet.
Eternity has passed on. It must be beyond the Judgment Day itself.
Ten minutes to 6.
When the bell does ring I am beyond feeling any emotion. There is no
part of me with which to feel emotion. I am all feet, and feet either
do not feel at all or feel all weary unto death. During the summer I
had played one match in a tennis tournament 7-5, 5-7, 13-11. I had
thought I was ready to drop dead after that. It was mere knitting in
the parlor compared to how I felt after standing at that table in that
candy factory from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., with a bit of a half-hour's
sitting at noon.
Somehow you could manage to endure it all if it were not for the
crowning agony of all--standing up on the Subway going home. I am no
aggressive feminist, and I am no old-fashioned clinging vine, but I
surely do hate, hate, hate every man in that Subway who sits back in
comfort (and most of them look as if they had been sitting all day)
while I and my feet stand up. When in my utter anguish I find myself
swaying with the jerks and twists of the express in front of a person
with a Vandyke beard reading _The Gospel According to St. John_, I
long with all the energy left in me (I still have some in my arms) to
grab that book out of his hands, fling it in his face, and hiss,
"Hypocrite!" at him. I do not believe I ever knew what it was really
and honestly to hate a person before. If it had been the _Police
Gazette_ I could have borne up under it. But _The Gospel According to
St. John_--my Gawd!
Thus ends my first factory day. It is small comfort to calculate I
stepped on more chocolates in those nine hours than I usually eat in a
year. To be sure, it was something new on the line of life's
experiences. If that man in front of me were only a chocolate with
soft insides and I could squash him flat! Yes, there was enough energy
in my feet for that. To get my heel square above him and then
_stamp_--ugh! the sinner! He continues reading _The Gospel According
to St. John_, nor so much as looks up to receive my last departing
glare as I drag myself off at 116th Street.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, the next morning my feet feel as if they
had never been stood on before. What if we do have to stand up in the
Subway all the way down? Who minds standing in the Subway? And then
stand in the jammed and elbowing cross-town car. Who cares? And how we
do walk up those factory steps as if we owned the world! The
chestiness of us as we take our key off left-hand hook 1075, ring up
under the clock (twenty minutes early we are) and hang up on No. 1075
right; but it seems you are late if you are not ten minutes early. It
is the little tricks like that you get wise about.
I saunter over to the elevator with a jam of colored girls--the
majority of the girls in that factory were colored. I call out,
"Third, please." Oh, glory be! Why were we ever born? That elevator
man turns around and pierces me with his eye as though I were the man
with the Vandyke beard in the Subway, and he, the elevator man, were
I. "_Third_ floor did ya say? And since when does the elevator lift
ya to the _third_ floor? If ya want the sixth floor ya can ride.
_Third_ floor! My Gawd! _Third_ floor!" And on and on he mutters and
up and up I go, all the proud feelings of owning the world stripped
from me--exposed before the multitudes as an ignoramus who didn't know
any better than to ride in the elevator when she was bound only for
the third floor. "_Third_ floor," continues muttering the elevator
man. At last there is no one left in the elevator but the muttering
man and me. "Well," I falter, chewing weakly on my Black Jack, "What
shall I do, then?"
"I'll leave ya off at the third this time, but don't ya try this trick
again."
"Again? Goodness! You don't think I'd make this mistake twice, do
you?"
"_Twice?_" he bellows. "_Twice?_ Didn't I have this all out with ya
yesterday mornin'?"
"Goodness, no!" I try to assure him, but he is putting me off at third
and calling after me: "Don't I know I did tell ya all this yesterday
mornin'? And don't ya forget it next time, neither." It must be awful
to be that man's wife. But I love him compared to the Vandyke beard in
the Subway reading _The Gospel According to St. John_.
Everybody is squatting about on scant corners and ledges waiting for
the eight o'clock bell. I squat next the thrifty Spanish lady, whereat
she immediately begins telling me the story of her life.
"You married?" she asks. No. "Well don' you do it," says the fat and
mussy Espaniole, as the girls called her. "I marry man--five years,
all right. One morning I say, 'I go to church--you go too?' He say
'No, I stay home.' I go church. I come home. I fin' him got young girl
there. I say, 'You clear out my house, you your young girl!' Out he
go, she go. 'Bout one year 'go he say he come back. I say no you don'.
He beg me, beg me come home. I say no, no, no. He write me letter,
letter, letter. I say no, no, no. Bymby I say alright, you come live
my house don't you _touch_ me, hear? Don' you _touch_ me. He live one
room, I live one room. He no touch me. Two weeks 'go he die. Take all
my money, put him in cemetery. I have buy me black waist, black skirt.
I got no money more. I want move from that house--no want live that
house no more--give me bad dreams. I got no money move. Got son
thirteen. He t'ink me fool have man around like that. I no care. See
he sen's letter, letter, letter. Now I got no money. I have work." The
bell rings. We shiver ourselves into the ice box.
No Tessie across the table. Instead a strange, unkempt female who
sticks it out half an hour, announces she has the chills in her feet,
and departs. Her place is taken by a slightly less disheveled young
woman who claims she'd packed candy before where they had seats and
she thought she'd go back. They paid two dollars less a week, but it
was worth two dollars to sit down. How she packs! The sloppiest work I
ever saw. It outrages my soul. The thrill of new pride I have when Ida
gets through swearing at her and turns to me.
"Keep your eye on this girl, will ya? Gee! she packs like a fright!"
And to the newcomer: "You watch that girl across the table" (me, she
means--me!) "and do the way she does."
No first section I ever got in economics gave me such joy.
But, ah! the first feeling of industrial bitterness creeps in. Here is
a girl getting fourteen dollars a week. Tessie was promised fourteen
dollars a week. I packed faster, better, than either of them for
thirteen dollars. I would have fourteen dollars, too, or know the
reason why. Ida fussed and scolded over the new girls all day. The
sweetness of her entire neglect of me!
By that noon my feet hardly hurt at all. I sit in a quiet corner to
eat rye-bread sandwiches brought from home, gambling on whom I will
draw for luncheon company. Six colored girls sit down at my table. A
good part of the time they spend growling on the subject of overtime.
I am too new to know what it is all about.
The lunch room is a bare, whitewashed, huge affair, with uplifting
advice on the walls here and there. "Any fool can take a chance; it
takes brains to be careful," and such like. One got me all upset:
"America is courteous to its women. Gentlemen will, therefore, please
remove their hats in this room." That Vandyke beard in the Subway!
By 4.30 again I think my feet will be the death of me. That last hour
and a half! Louie, the general errand boy of our packing room, brushes
by our table with some trays and knocks about six of my carefully
packed boxes on the floor. "You Louie!" I holler, and I long to have
acquired the facility to call lightly after him, as anyone else would
have done, "Say, you go to hell!" Instead, mustering all the reserve
force I can, the best showing I am able to make is, "You Louie! Go off
and die!" I almost hold my own--468 boxes of "assorteds" do I pack.
And again the anguishing stand in the Subway. I hate men--hate them. I
just hope every one of them gets greeted by a nagging wife when he
arrives home. Hope she nags all evening.... If enough of those wives
really did do enough nagging, would the men thereupon stay downtown
for dinner and make room in the Subway for folk who had been standing,
except for one hour, from 7.15 A.M.? At last I see a silver lining to
the dark cloud of marital unfelicity....
* * * * *
Lillian of the bright-pink boudoir cap engaged me in conversation this
morning. Lillian is around the Indian summer of life--as to years, but
not atmosphere. Lillian has seen better days. Makes sure you know it.
Never did a lick of work in her life. At that she makes a noise with
her upper lip the way a body does in southern Oregon when he uses a
toothpick after a large meal. "No, sir, never did a lick." Lillian
says "did" and not "done." Practically no encouragement is needed for
Lillian to continue. "After my husband died I blew in all the money he
left me in two years. Since then I have been packing chocolates." How
long ago was that?
"Five years."
"My Gawd," I say, and it comes natural-like. "What did you do with
your feet for five years?"
"Oh, you get used to it," says Lillian. "For months I cried every
night. Don't any more. But I lie down while I'm warmin' up my supper,
and then I go to bed soon as its et."
Five years!
"Goin' to vote?" asks Lillian.
"Sure."
"I'm not," allows Lillian. "To my notions all that votin' business is
nothing for a lady to get mixed up in. No, sir." Lillian makes that
noise with her upper lip again. Lillian's lips are very red, her
eyebrows very black. I'll not do anything, though, with my eyebrows.
Says Lillian: "No, siree, not for a lady. I got a good bet up on the
election. Yes, sir!--fifty dollars on Harding."
And five years of going to bed every night after supper.
Tessie is back. I do love Tessie, and I know Tessie loves me. She had
not gone hunting for another job, as I thought. Her husband had had
his elbow broken with an electric machine of some sort where he works
on milk cans. The morning before she had taken him to the hospital.
That made her ten minutes late to the factory. The little pop-eyed man
told her, "You go on home!" and off she went. "But he tell me that
once more I no come back again," said Tessie, her cheeks very red.
I begin to get the "class feeling"--to understand a lot of things I
wanted to know first hand. In the first place, there is no thought
ever, and I don't see in that factory how there can be, for the boss
and his interests. Who is he? Where is he? The nearest one comes to
him is the pop-eyed man at the door. Once in a while Ida hollers "For
Gawd's sake, girls, work faster!" Now that doesn't inspire to
increased production for long. There stands Tessie across the table
from me--peasant Tessie from near Muenchen, with her sweet face and
white turned-up cap. She packs as fast as she can, but her hands are
clumsy and she can't seem to get the difference between chocolates
very well. It is enough to drive a seer crazy. They change the
positions on the shelves every so often; the dipping-machine tenders
cut capers and mark the same kind of chocolates differently to-day
from yesterday. By three in the afternoon you're too sick of
chocolates to do any more investigating by sampling. Even Ida herself
has sometimes to poke a candy in the bottom--if it feels one way it's
"marsh"; another, it's peach; another, it's coconut. But my feeling is
not educated and I poke, and then end by having to bite, and then,
just as I discover it is peach, after all, some one has run off with
the last box and Ida has to be found and a substitute declared.
Tessie gives up in despair and hurls herself on me. So then Tessie is
nearest to me in the whole factory, and Tessie is slow. The faster I
pack the more it shows up Tessie's slowness. If Ida scolded Tessie it
would break my heart. The thought of the man who owns that factory,
and his orders and his profits and his obligations, never enter my or
any other packer's head. I will not pack so many boxes that Tessie
gets left too far behind.
Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in
packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or
twist comes to me--my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget
the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is
all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait
to get back after lunch. I fly out after the big boxes to pack the
little boxes in. In my haste and ignorance I bring back covers by
mistake and pack dozens of little boxes in covers. It must all be done
over again. Six hundred boxes I pack this day. I've not stopped for
breath. I'm not a bit tired when 6 o'clock comes round. I ask Ida when
she will put me on piecework--it seems the great ambition of my life
is to feel I am on piecework. "When you can pack about two thousand
boxes a day," says Ida. Two thousand! I was panting and proud over six
hundred! "Never mind," says Ida, "you're makin' out fine." Oh, the
thrill of those words! I asked her to show me again about separating
the paper cups. I didn't have it just right, I was sure. "My Gawd!"
sighed Ida, "what ambition!" Yes, but the ambition did not last more
than a few days at that pitch.
Tessie wanted to tell me something about her _Mann_ to-day so badly,
but could not find the English words. Her joy when I said, "Tell me in
German"! How came I to speak German? I'd spent three years in Germany
with an American family, taking care of the children. Honest for once.
"That was luck for you," says Tessie.
"That was sure luck for me," says I--honest again.
Wherever Lena works there floats conversation for a radius of three
tables. The subject matter is ever the same--"dopes." "Is he big?...
Gee! I say!... More like a sister to him.... He never sees the
letters." "Lena" (from Ida), "shut up and get to work!" ... "I picked
him up Sunday.... Where's them waxing papers?... Third she vamped in
two days.... Sure treats a girl swell.... Them ain't pineapples...."
"Lee-na! get to work or I'll knock the hell out a ya!" And pretty Lena
giggles on: "He says.... She says to him.... Sure my father says if he
comes 'round again...."
And Tessie and I; I bend over to hear Tessie's soft, low German as she
tells me how good her _Mann_ is to her; how he never, never scolds, no
matter if she buys a new hat or what; how he brings home all his pay
every week and gives it to her. He is such a good _Mann_. They are
saving all their money. In two years they will go back near Muenchen
and buy a little farm.
Tessie and her poor _Mann_, with his broken elbow and his swollen arm
all black and blue, couldn't sleep last night. Oh dear! this New York!
One man at one corner he talk about Harding, one man other corner he
talk about Cox; one man under their window he talk MacSwiney--New York
talk, talk, talk!
Looked like rain to-day, but how can a body buy an umbrella
appropriate to chocolate packing at thirteen dollars a week when the
stores are all closed before work and closed after? I told Lillian my
troubles. I asked Lillian if a cheap umbrella could be purchased in
the neighborhood.
"Cheap," sniffs Lillian. "I don't know. I got me a nice one--sample
though--at Macy's for twelve-fifty." Lillian may take to her bed after
supper, but while she is awake she is going to be every inch to the
manner born.
By the time I pack the two thousandth box of "assorteds" my soul turns
in revolt. "If you give me another 'assorted' to pack," says I to Ida,
"I'll lie down here on the floor and die."
"The hell you will," says Ida. But she gets me fancy pound boxes with
a top and bottom layer, scarce two candies alike, and Tessie beams on
me like a mother with an only child. "That takes the brains!" says
Tessie. "Not for me! It gives me the ache in my head to think of it."
Indeed it near gives me the ache in mine. Before the next to the last
row is packed the bottom looks completely filled. Where can four fat
chocolates in cups find themselves? I push the last row over gently to
make room,--three chocolates in the middle rear up and stand on end.
Press them gently down and two more on the first row get out of hand.
At last the last row is in--only to discover four candies here and
there have all sprung their moorings. For each one I press down
gently, another some place else acts up. How long can my patience
hold out? Firmly, desperately I press that last obstreperous chocolate
down in its place. My finger goes squash through the crusty brown, and
pink goo oozes up and out. A fresh strawberry heart must be found.
"Ain't no more," announces Fannie. Might just as well tell an artist
there is only enough paint for one eye on his beautiful portrait. Of
course another chocolate can be substituted. But a strawberry heart
was what belonged there!
At last the long rows of boxes are packed, wax paper laid over
each--to blow off every time Louie goes by. Then come covers with
lovely ladies in low-neck dresses on the tops--and the room so cold,
anyhow. Why are all the pictures on all the boxes smiling ladies in
scanty attire, instead of wrapped to the ears in fur coats so that a
body might find comfort in gazing on them in such a temperature?
Ida comes along and peers in one box. "You can consider yourself a
fancy packer now--see?" Harding the night of the election felt less
joyous than do I at her words.
This night there is a lecture at the New School for Social Research to
be attended. If some of those educated foreigners in our room can go
to night school, I guess I can keep up my school. They are all
foreigners but Lillian and Sadie and I. Sadie is about the same
Indian-summer stage as Lillian and uses even better English. Her
eyebrows are also unduly black; her face looks a bit as if she had
been trying to get the ring out of the flour with her teeth
Halloween. Her lips are very red. Sadie has the air of having just
missed being a Vanderbilt. Her boudoir cap is lacy. Her smile is
conscious kindness to all as inferiors. One wonders, indeed, what
brought Sadie to packing chocolates in the autumn of life--a very
wrinkly, powdered autumn. So Lillian, Sadie, and I are the
representatives of what the nation produces--not what she gets
presented with. As for the rest, there are a Hungarian, two Germans,
four Italians, two Spaniards, a Swede, an Englishwoman, and numerous
colored folk. Louie is an Italian. Fannie (bless her dear heart! I
love Fannie) is colored, with freckles. She is Indian summer too--with
a heart of gold. Fannie trudges on her feet all day. Years and years
she has been there. At noon she sits alone in the lunch room, and
after eating puts her head on her arms and, bending over the cold
marble-topped table, gets what rest she can. She was operated on not
so long ago, and every so often still has to go to the hospital for a
day or so. Everything is at sixes and sevens when Fannie is away.
So then, that night I take my sleepy way to a lecture on "The Role of
the State in Modern Civilization." And it comes over me in the course
of the evening, what a satisfactory thing packing chocolates is. The
role of the State--some say this, some say that. A careful teacher
guards against being dogmatic. When it comes to the past, one
interpreter gives this viewpoint, due to certain prejudices; another
that viewpoint, due to certain other prejudices. When it comes to the
future, no sane soul dare prophesy at all. Thus it is with much which
one studies nowadays--we have evolved beyond the era of intellectual
surety. What an almighty relief to the soul, then, when one can pack
six rows of four chocolates each in a bottom layer, seven rows of four
chocolates each in the top, cover them, count them, stack them, pile
them in the truck, and away they go. One job _done_--done now and
forever. A definite piece of work put behind you--and no one coming
along in six months with documents or discoveries or new theories or
practices to upset all your labors. I say it is blessed to pack
chocolates when one has been studying labor problems for some years.
Every professor ought to have a fling at packing chocolates.
Folks wonder why a girl slaves in a factory when she could be earning
good money and a home thrown in doing housework. I think of that as I
watch Annie. Imagine Annie poking about by her lonesome, saying, "No,
ma'm," "Yes, ma'm," "No, sir," "Yes, sir." "Can I go out for a few
moments, Mrs. Jones?" "Oh, all right, ma'm!" Annie, whose talk echoes
up and down the room all day. She is Annie to every Tom, Dick, and
Harry who pokes his nose in our packing room, but they are Tom, Dick,
and Harry to her. It is not being called by your first name that makes
the rub. It is being called it when you must forever tack on the Mr.
and the Mrs. and the Miss. Annie is in awe of no human being. Annie is
the fastest packer in the room and draws the most pay. Annie sasses
the entire factory. Annie never stops talking unless she wants to.
Which is only now and then when her mother has had a bad spell and
Annie gets a bit blue. Little Pauline, an Italian, only a few months
in this country, only a few weeks in the factory, works across the
table from Annie. Pauline is the next quickest packer in our room. She
cannot speak a word of English. Annie gives a sigh audible from one
end of the room to the next. "My Gawd!" moans Annie to the entire
floor. "If this here Eyetalian don't learn English pretty soon I gotta
learn Eyetalian. I can't stand here like a dead one all day with
nobody to talk to." Pauline might perhaps be reasoning that, after
all, why learn English, since she would never get a silent moment in
which to practice any of it.
I very much love little Pauline. All day long her fingers fly; all day
long not a word does she speak, only every now and then little Pauline
turns around to me and we smile at each other. Once on the street, a
block or so from the factory, little Pauline ran up to me, put her arm
through mine, and caught my hand. So we walked to work. Neither could
say a word to the other. Each just smiled and smiled. For the first
time in all my life I really felt the melting pot first hand. To
Pauline I was no agent of Americanization, no superior proclaiming the
need of bathtubs and clean teeth, no teacher of the "Star-spangled
banner" and the Constitution. To Pauline I was a fellow-worker, and
she must know, for such things are always known, that I loved her. To
myself, I felt suddenly the hostess--the generation-long inhabitant
of this land so new and strange to little Pauline. She was my guest
here. I would indeed have her care for my country, have her glad she
came to my home. That day Pauline turned around and smiled more often
than before.
I finally settled down to eating lunch daily between Tessie and Mrs.
Lewis, the Englishwoman. We do so laugh at one another's jokes. I know
everything that ever happened to Tessie and Mrs. Lewis from the time
they were born; all the heartbreaking stories of the first homesick
months in this my land, all the jobs they have labored at. Mrs. Lewis
has worked "in the mills" ever since she was born, it would seem,
first in England, later in Michigan. Tessie and her husband mostly
have hired out together in this country for housework, and she likes
that better than packing chocolates standing up, she says. Mrs. Lewis
is--well, she's Indian summer, too, along with Lillian and Sadie and
Fannie, only she makes no bones about it (nor does black Fannie, for
that matter). Mrs. Lewis is thin and wrinkled, with a skimpy little
dust cap on her head. Her nose is very long and pointed, her teeth
very false. Her eyes are always smiling. She loves to laugh. One day
we were talking about unemployment.
"Don't you know, it's awful in Europe," volunteers Mrs. Lewis.
"One hundred thousand unemployed in Paris alone--saw it in headlines
this morning," I advance.
"Paris?" said Tessie. "Paris? Where's Paris?"
If one could always be so sure of one's facts.
"France."
Mrs. Lewis wheels about in her chair, looks at me sternly over the top
of her spectacles, and:
"Do you know, they're telling me that's a pretty fast country, that
France."
"You don't say!" I look interested.
"No--no I haven't got the details _yet_"--she clasped her chin with
her hand--"but 'fast' was the word I heard used."
Irene is a large, florid, bleached blonde. She worked at the table
behind me about four days. "Y'know"--Irene has a salon air--"y'know, I
jus' can't stand steppen on these soft chocolates. Nobody knows how I
suffer. It just goes through me like a knife." She spent a good part
of each day scraping off the bottoms of her French-heeled shoes with a
piece of cardboard. It evidently was too much for her nerves. She is
no more.
The sign reads, "Saturdays 8-12." When Saturday came around Ida
hollered down the room, "Everybody's gotta work to-day till five." The
howl that went up! I supposed "gotta" meant "gotta." But Lena came up
to me.
"You gonna work till five? Don't you do it. We had to strike to get a
Saturday half holiday. Now they're tellin' us we gotta work till
five--pay us for it, o' course. If enough girls'll stay, pretty soon
they'll be sayin: 'See? What ud we tell ya? The girls want to work
Saturday afternoons'; and they'll have us back regular again." In the
end not a girl in our room stayed, and Ida wrung her hands.
Monday next, though, Ida announced, "Everybody's gotta work till seven
to-night 'cause ya all went home Saturday afternoon. Three nights a
week now you gotta work till seven." To stand from 1 to 7! One girl in
the room belonged to some union or other. She called out, "Will they
pay time and a half for overtime?" At which everyone broke into
laughter. "Gee! Ida, here's a girl wants time and a half!" Tessie,
Mrs. Lewis, Sadie, and I refused to work till 7. Ida used threats and
argument. "I gotta put down your numbers!" We stood firm--6 o'clock
was long enough. "Gee! You don't notice that last hour--goes like a
second," argued Ida. We filed out when the 6-o'clock bell rang.
The girls all fuss over the hour off at noon. It takes at best twenty
minutes to eat lunch. For the rest of the hour there is no place to
go, nothing to do, but sit in the hard chairs at the marble-topped
tables in the whitewashed room for half an hour till the bell rings at
12.50, and you can sit on the edge of a truck upstairs for ten minutes
longer. They all say they wish to goodness we could have half an hour
at noon and get off half an hour earlier at night.
* * * * *
A tragedy the first pay day. I was so excited when that Saturday came
round, to see what it would all be like--to get my first pay envelope.
About 11.30 two men came in, one carrying a wooden box filled with
little envelopes. Girls appear suddenly from every place and crowd
around the two men. One calls out a number, the girl takes her
envelope and goes off. I keep working away, thinking you are not
supposed to step up till your number is called. But, lo! everyone
seems paid off and the men departing, whereat I leave my work with
beating heart and announce: "You didn't call 1075." But it seems I was
supposed to step up and give 1075. I get handed my little envelope.
Connie Parker in one corner, 1075 in the other, the date, and $6.81.
Six dollars and eighty-one cents, and I had expected fourteen dollars.
(I had told Ida at last that I thought I ought to get fourteen
dollars, and she thought so, too, and said she'd "speak to the man"
about it.) I clutched Ida--"only six dollars and eighty one cents!"
"Well, what more do ya want."
"But you said fourteen dollars."
It seems the week goes Thursday to Thursday, instead of Monday to
Saturday, so my first pay covered only three days and a deduction for
my locker key.
At that moment a little cry just behind me from Louisa. Louisa had
been packing with Irene--dark little, frail little Yiddish Louisa; big
brawny bleached-blond Irene.
"I've lost my pay envelope!"
Wan little Louisa! She had been talking to Topsy, Fannie's helper. Her
envelope had slipped out of her waist, and when she went to pick it
up, lo! there was nothing there to pick--fourteen dollars gone! There
was excitement for you. Fourteen dollars in Wing 13, Room 3, was equal
to fourteen million dollars in Wall Street. Everybody pulled out
boxes and searched, got down on hands and knees and poked, and the
rest mauled Louisa from head to foot.
"Sure it ain't in your stocking? Well, look _again_."
"What's this?"--jabbing Louisa's ribs--"this?"
Eight hands going over Louisa's person as if the anguished slip of a
girl could not have felt that stiff envelope with fourteen dollars in
it herself had it been there. She stood helpless, woebegone.
Ida rose Napoleon-like to the rescue. "I'll search everybody in the
room!"
Whereat she made a grab at Topsy and removed her. "They" say Topsy was
stripped to the breezes in Ida's fury, but no envelope.
Topsy, be it known, was already a suspicious character. That very week
Fannie's purse had disappeared under circumstances pointing to Topsy.
Which caused a strained relationship between the two. One day it
broke--such relationship as existed.
Fannie up at her end of the boxes was heard to screech down the line
to where Topsy was sorting chocolate rolls:
"How dare you talk to me like that?"
"I ain't talkin' to you!"
"You am. You called me names."
"I never. I called you nothin', you ole white nigger."
"You stand lie to me like that and call me names?"
"Who say lie? I ain't no liar. You shut up; you ain't my boss. I'll
call you anythin' I please, sassin' me that way!"
"I didn't sassed you. You called me names."
"I don't care what I called you--I know what you _is_." Here Topsy
gathered all her strength and shouted up to Fannie, "You're a
_heifer_, you is."
Now there is much I do not know about the world, and maybe heifer is a
word like some one or two others you are never supposed to set down in
so many letters. If so, it is new to me and I apologize. The way Topsy
called it, and the way Fannie acted on hearing herself called it,
would lead one to believe it is a word never appearing in print.
"You--call--me a _heifer_?" shrieked Fannie. "I'll tell ya landlady on
ya, I will!"
"Don' yo' go mixin' up in my private affairs. You shut yo' mouth, yo'
hear me? yo' _heifer_!"
"I _ain't_ no heifer!"
Fortunately Ida swung into our midst about then and saved folk from
bodily injury. A few days later Fanny informed me privately that she
don't say nothin' when that nigger starts rowin' with her, but if she
jus' has her tin lunch box with her next time when that nigger starts
talkin' fresh--callin' her a heifer--_her!_--she'll slug her right
'cross the face with it.
So Topsy was searched. When she got her garments back on she appeared
at the door--a small black goddess of fury. "Yo' fresh Ida,
yo'--yessa--yo' jus' searched me 'cause I'm black. That's all, 'cause
I'm black. Why don't you search all that white trash standin' there?"
And Topsy flung herself out. Monday she appeared with a new maroon
embroidered suit. Cost every nickel of thirty-eight dollars, Fannie
informed me. In the packing room she had a hat pin in her cap. Some
girl heard Topsy tell some other girls she was going stick that pin in
Fannie if Fannie got sassin' her again. Ida made her remove the hat
pin. In an hour she disappeared altogether and stayed disappeared
forever after. "Went South," Fannie told me. "Always said she was
goin' South when cold weather started.... Huh! Thought she'd stick me
with a hat pin. I was carryin' a board around all mornin'. If she so
much as come near me I was goin' to give her a crack aside the head."
* * * * *
But there was little Louisa--and no longer could she keep back the
tears. Nor could ever the pay envelope be unearthed. Later I found her
sitting on the pile of dirty towels in the washroom, sobbing her heart
out. It was not so much that the money was gone--that was awful
enough--fourteen dollars!--fourteen dollars!--oh-h-h,--but her mother
and father--what would they do to her when she came home and told 'em?
They mightn't believe it was lost and think she'd spent it on
somethin' for herself. The tears streamed down her face. And that was
the last we ever saw of Louisa.
Had "local color" been all we were after, perhaps Wing 13, Room 3,
would have supplied sufficient of that indefinitely, with the
combination of the ever-voluble Lena and the ever-present labor
turnover. Even more we desired to learn the industrial feel of the
thing--what do some of the million and more factory women think about
the world of work? Remaining longer in Wing 13 would give no deeper
clue to that. For all that I could find out, the candy workers there
thought nothing about it one way or the other. The younger unmarried
girls worked because it seemed the only thing to do--they or their
families needed the money, and what would they be doing otherwise?
Lena claimed, if she could have her way in the world, she would sleep
until 12 every day and go to a show every afternoon. But that life
would pall even on Lena, and she giggled wisely when I slangily
suggested as much.
The older married women worked either because they had to, since the
male breadwinner was disabled (an old fat Irishwoman at the chocolate
dipper had a husband with softening of the brain. He was a discharged
English soldier who "got too much in the sun in India") or because his
tenure of job was apt to be uncertain and they preferred to take no
chances. Especially with the feel and talk of unemployment in the air,
two jobs were better than none. A few, like Mrs. Lewis, worked to lay
by toward their old age. Mrs. Lewis's husband had a job, but his wages
permitted of little or no savings. Some of her friends told her: "Oh,
well, somebody's bound to look out for you somehow when you get old.
They don't let you die of hunger and cold!" But Mrs. Lewis was not so
sure. She preferred to save herself from hunger and cold.
Such inconveniences of the job as existed were taken as being all in
the day's work--like the rain or a cold in the head. At some time they
must have shown enough ability for temporary organization to strike
for the Saturday half holiday. I wish I could have been there when
that affair was on. Which girls were the ringleaders? How much
agitation and exertion did it take to acquire the momentum which would
result in enforcing their demands? Had I entered factory work with any
idea of encouraging organization among female factory workers, I
should have considered that candy group the most hopeless soil
imaginable. Those whom I came in contact with had no class feeling, no
ideas of grievances, no ambitions over and above the doing of an
uninteresting job with as little exertion as possible.
I hated leaving Tessie and Mrs. Lewis and little Pauline. Already I
miss the life behind those candy scenes. For the remainder of my days
a box of chocolates will mean a very personal--almost too personal for
comfort!--thing to me. But for the rest of the world....
* * * * *
Some place, some moonlight night, some youth, looking like a collar
advertisement, will present his fair love with a pound box of fancy
assorted chocolates--in brown paper cups; and assured of at least a
generous disposition, plus his lovely collar-advertisement hair, she
will say yes. On the sofa, side by side, one light dimly shining, the
nightingale singing in the sycamore tree beside the front window,
their two hearts will beat as one--for the time being. They will eat
the chocolates I packed and life will seem a very sweet and peaceful
thing indeed. Nor will any disturbing notion of how my feet felt ever
reach them, no jarring "you heifer!" float across the states to where
they sit. Louie to them does not exist--Louie, forever on the run
with, "_Louie_, move these trays!" "_Louie_, bottoms!" "_Louie_,
tops!" "_Louie_, cardboards!" "_Louie_, the truck!" "_Louie_, sweep
the floor! How many times I told you that to-day!" "_Louie_, get me a
box a' ca'mels, that's a good dope!" "_Louie_, turn out them lights!"
"_Louie_, turn on them lights!" "_Louie_, ya leave things settin'
round like that!" "_Louie_, where them covers?" and then Louie smashes
his fingers and retires for ten minutes.
Nor is Ida more than a strange name to those two on the sofa. No
echoes reach them of, "Ida, where them wax papers?" "Ida, where's
Fannie?" "Ida, where them picture tops?" "Ida, ain't no more
'coffees.' What'll I use instead?" "Ida! Where's Ida? Mike wants ya by
the elevator." "Ida, I jus' packed sixty; ten sixty-two is my number."
"Ida, Joe says they want 'drops' on the fifth." "Ida, ain't no more
trays." "Ida, gimme the locker-door key. 'M cold--want ma sweater.
(Gee! it 'u'd freeze the stuffin' outa ya in this ice box!)"
Those chocolates appeared in a store window in Watertown, and that's
enough. Not for their moonlit souls the clang of the men building a
new dipper and roller in our room--the bang of the blows of metal on
metal as they pierce your soul along about 5 of a weary afternoon.
Lena's giggles and Ida's "Lee-na, stop your talk and go to work!...
Louie, stop your whistlin'!... My Gawd! girls, don' you know no better
n' to put two kinds in the same box? ... Hey, Lena, this yere
Eyetalian wants somethin'; come here and find out what's ailin'
her.... Fannie, ain't there no more plantations?... Who left that door
open?... Louie, for Gawd's sake how long you gonna take with that
truck?... Lena, stop your talkin' and go to work...."
And 'round here, there, and every place, "My Gawd! my feet are like
ice!" "Say, len' me some of yo'r cardboards--hey?" "You Pearl White
[black as night], got the tops down there?" "Hey, Ida, the Hungarian
girl wants somethin'. I can't understand her...."
Those two sit on the sofa. The moon shines on the nightingale singing
in the sycamore tree. Nor do they ever glimpse a vision of little
Italian Pauline's swift fingers dancing over the boxes, nor do they
ever guess of wan Louisa's sobs.