between 16 and 36; learners and experienced assemblers and
foot-press operators on small brass parts; steady; half day
Saturday all year around; good pay and bonus. Apply
Superintendent's office.
The first prospects were rather formidable--some fifty men and boys,
no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance
and we shivered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is
wont under the circumstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose
and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went
into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night
before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess admitted
she had never danced.
"What?" almost yelled the bride, "Never _danced_? Good Gawd! girl, you
might as well be _dead_!"
"You said it!" I chimed in. "Might as well dig a hole in the ground
and crawl in it."
"You said it!" and the husky bride and erstwhile (up to the week
before) elevator operator at twenty-three dollars a week (she said)
gave me a smart thump of understanding. "Girl, you never _danced_?
It's--it's the grandest thing in _life_!"
The plump Jewess looked a little out of things. "I know," she sighed,
"they tell me it 'u'd make me thin, too, but my folks don't let me go
out no place."
Whereat we changed to polishing off profiteers and the high cost of
living. The Jewish girl's brother knew we were headin' straight for
civil war. "They'll be comin' right in folks' homes and killen 'em
before a year's out. See if they don't." I asked her if she'd ever
worked in a union shop. "Na, none of that stuff for me! Wouldn't go
near a union." Both girls railed over the way people were losing their
jobs. Anyhow, the bride was goin' to a dance that night, you jus' bet.
At last some one with a heart came out and told the girls we could
step inside. By that time there were some ten of us, all ages and
descriptions. What would a "typical" factory girl be like, I wonder.
Statistics prove she is young and unmarried more than otherwise, but
each factory does seem to collect the motleyest crew of a little of
everything--old, young, married, single, homely, stupid, bright,
pretty, sickly, husky, fat, thin, and so on down the line. Certain it
is that they who picture a French-heeled, fur-coated, dolled-up
creature as the "typical factory girl" are far wide of the mark. The
one characteristic which so far does seem pretty universal is that one
and all, no matter what the age or looks, are perfectly willing to
tell you everything they know on short acquaintance. At first I felt a
hesitancy at asking questions about their personal lives, yet I so
much wanted to know what they did and thought, what they hoped and
dreamed about. It was early apparent that sooner or later everything
would come out with scant encouragement, and no amount of questioning
ever is taken amiss. They in turn ask me questions, and I lie until I
hate myself.
The plump Jewess was the first interviewed. When she heard the pay she
departed. The elevator bride and I were taken together, and together
we agreed to everything--wages thirteen dollars a week, "with one
dollar a week bonus" (the bonus, as was later discovered, had numerous
strings to it. I never did get any). Work began at 7.45, half hour for
lunch, ended at 5. The bride asked if the work was dangerous. "That's
up to you. Goin' upstairs is dangerous if you don't watch where you
put your feet. Eh?" We wanted to start right in--I had my apron under
my arm--but to-morrow would be time. I got quite imploring about
beginning on that day. No use.
The bride and I departed with passes to get by with the next morning.
That was the last I saw of the bride--or any of that group, except one
little frozen thing without a hat. She worked three days, and used to
pull my apron every time she went by and grin.
The factory was 'way over on the East Side. It meant gettin' up in the
dark and three Subways--West Side, the Shuttle, East Side which could
be borne amicably in the morning, but after eight and three-quarter
hours of foot-press work, going home with that 5-6 rush--that mob who
shoved and elbowed and pushed and jammed--was difficult to bear with
Christian spirit. Except that it really is funny. What idea of human
nature must a Subway guard between the hours of 5 and 6 be possessed
of?
At noon I used to open my lunch anxiously, expecting to see nothing
but a doughy mass of crumpled rye bread and jam. Several times on the
Subway the apple got shoved into my ribs over a period where it seemed
as if either the apple or the ribs would have to give in. But by noon
my hunger was such that any state of anything edible was as nectar and
ambrosia.
I am thinking that even a hardened factory hand might remember her
first day at the brassworks. Up three flights of stairs, through a
part of the men's factory, over a narrow bridge to a back building,
through two little bobbing doors, and there you were admitted to that
sanctuary where, according to the man who hired you, steady work and
advancement to a rosy future awaited one.
True, I had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as
working experience went. But I have been through factories and
factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen
like the brassworks. First was the smell--the stale smell of gas and
metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down
to the brassworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness--a
single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was
working, but there were areas where there were no workers. Up the end
of the floor, among the power presses, all belts and machines and
whirring wheels, there were only three or four shaded lights. Windows
lined both sides of the floor, but they had never been washed since
the factory was built, surely. Anyhow, it was dark and rainy outside.
The walls once had been white, but were now black. Dim, dirty, uneven
boxes containing brass parts filled the spaces between the long tables
where the foot presses stood. Third, the noise--the clump of the foot
presses, the whirring of the pattern cutters--one sounded ever like a
lusty woodpecker with a metal beak pecking on metal; rollings and
rumblings from the floor above; jarrings and shakings from below.
Two-thirds of the entire floor was filled with long tables holding the
foot presses--tables which years ago were clean and new, tables which
now were worn, stained, and uneven, and permanently dirty. On each
side of each long table stood five black iron presses, but there
seemed to be never more than one or two girls working at a side. Each
press performed a different piece of work--cut wick holes, fitted or
clamped parts together, shaped the cones, and what not, but with only
two general types of operation so far as the foot part went. One type
took a long, firm, forward swing on the pedal; the other a short,
hard, downward "kick." With the end of the pressure the steel die cut
through the thin brass cone, or completed whatever the job was. As the
pedal and foot swung back to position the girl removed the brass part,
dropping it in a large box at her right. She kept a small bin on the
table at the left of the press filled with parts she was to work on.
Around the sides of the floor were the table workers--girls adjusting
parts by hand, or soldering.
The other third of the floor was taken up with the machine presses,
which mostly clicked away cutting patterns in the brass parts to hold
the lamp chimney. In a far corner were the steaming, bleaching tubs
where dull, grimy brass parts were immersed in several preparations, I
don't know what, to emerge at last shining like the noonday sun.
The cold little girl with no hat, a strange, somewhat unsociable, new
person, and I stood there waiting one hour. Some one took our names.
The experienced feeling when they asked me where I had worked last
and how long was I there, and why did I leave! At the end of an hour
the forelady beckoned me--such a neat, sweet person as she was--and I
took my initial whack at a foot press. If ever I do run an automobile
the edge of first enjoyment is removed. A Rolls-Royce cannot make me
feel any more pleased with life than the first ten minutes of that
foot press. In ten minutes the job was all done and there I sat for an
hour and a half waiting for another. Hard on a person with the
foot-press fever. The times and times later I would gratefully have
taken any part of that hour and a half to ease my weary soul!
Be it known, if I speak feelingly at times of the weariness of a foot
press, that, though nothing as to size, I am a very husky
person--perhaps the healthiest of the eight million women in industry!
It was a matter of paternal dismay that I arrived in the world female
instead of male. What Providence had overlooked, mortal ability would
do everything possible to make up for--so argued a disappointed
father. From four years of age on I was taught to do everything a boy
could or would do; from jumping off cars while they were moving to
going up in a balloon. A good part of my life I have played tennis and
basketball and hockey, and swum, and climbed mountains, and ridden
horseback, and rowed, and fished. I do not know what it is to have an
ache or a pain from one end of the year to the other. All of which is
mentioned merely because if certain work taxes my strength, who
seldom has known what it is to be weary, what can it do to the average
factory worker, often without even a fighting physical chance from
birth on?
The jobs on our third floor where the girls and women worked concerned
themselves with lamps--the old-fashioned kind, city folks are apt to
think. Yet goodness knows we seemed during even my sojourn to make
more lamp parts than creation ever had used in the heyday of lamps.
Well, all but five per cent of farm women still use kerosene lamps, so
the government tells us. Also fat Lizzie informed me, when I asked her
who in the world could ever use just them lamp cones I made some one
particular day, "Lor', child, they send them lamps all over the
world!" She made a majestic sweep with both arms. "Some of 'em goes as
far--as far--as _Philadelphia_!" Once we were working on a rush order
for fifty thousand lamps of one certain kind. Curiosity got the better
of me and I took occasion to see where the boxes were being addressed.
It was to a large mail-order house in Chicago.
The first noon whistle--work dropped--a rush for the washroom. Let no
one think his hands ever were dirty until he labors at a foot press in
a brassworks. Such sticky, grimy, oily, rough blackness never was--and
the factory supplies no soap nor towels. You are expected to bring
your own--which is all right the second day when you have found it out
and come prepared.
The third floor had seemed dark and dismal enough during the morning;
at noon all lights are turned off. Many of the workers went out for
lunch, the rest got around in dismal corners, most of them singly, and
ate by their machines, on the same hard seats they have been on since
a quarter to 8. What a bacchanal festival of color and beauty now
appeared the candy-factory whitewashed lunch room with the
marble-topped tables! The airy sociability of it! I wandered about
with my lunch in my hand, to see what I could see. Up amid the belts
and power machines sat one of the girls who began that morning--not
the cold, hatless one.
"You gonna stick it out?" she asked me.
"Sure. I guess it's all right."
"Oh gee! Ain't like no place I ever worked yet. Don't catch me
standin' this long."
She did stand it four days. Minnie suggested then she stick it out
till Christmas. "You'll need the money for Christmas y'know, an' you
might not get the next job so easy now."
"Damn Christmas!" was all the new girl had to say to that.
"Sure now," said Irish Minnie, "an' she's takin her chances. It's an
awful disgrace y'know, to be gettin' presents when y'ain't got none to
give back. Ain't it, now? I'd never take no chances on a job so close
to Christmas."
I talked to five girls that noon. None of them had been there longer
than a week. None of them planned to stay.
All afternoon I worked the foot press at one job. My foot-press
enthusiasm weakened--four thousand times I "kicked"--two thousand
lamp-wick slots I make in the cones. Many of the first five hundred
looked a bit sad and chewed at. The "boss" came by and saw that I was
not one hundred per cent perfect. He gave me pointers and I did
better. Each cone got placed over a slanted form just so; kick, and
half the slot is made. Lift the cone up a wee bit, twist it round to
an exact position, hold it in place, kick, and the other half is cut.
The kick must be a stout kick--bing! down hard, to make a clean job of
it. The thing they gave you to sit on! A high, narrow, homemade-looking,
wooden stool, the very hardest article of furniture under the blue
canopy of heaven. Some of them had little, narrow, straight backs--just
boards nailed on behind. All of them were top heavy and fell over if
you got off without holding on. By 4.30 standing up at the candy job
seemed one of the happiest thoughts on earth. What rosy good old days
those were! Dear old candy factory! Happy girls back there bending
over the chocolates!
Next sat Louisa, an Italian girl who stuttered, and I had to stop my
press to hear her. She stopped hers to talk. She should worry. It's
the worst job she ever saw, and for thirteen dollars a week why should
she work? She talked to me, kicked a few times, got a drink, kicked,
talked, stood up and stretched, kicked, talked, got another drink. She
is married, has a baby a year old, another coming in three months. She
will stay her week out, then she goes, you bet. Her husband was
getting fifty dollars a week in a tailor job--no work now for
t-t-t-two months. He does a little now and then in the b-b-barber
business. Oh, but life was high while the going was good! She leaned
way over and told me in a hushed, inspired tone, to leave me
awestruck, "When we was m-m-married we t-t-took a h-h-h-honeymoon!" I
gasped and wanted details. To West Virginia they'd gone for a month.
The fare alone, each way, had come to ten dollars apiece, and then
they did no work for that month, but lived in a little hotel. Her
husband was crazy of her, and she was of him now, but not when she was
married. He's very good to her. After dinner every single night they
go to a show.
"Every night?"
"Sure, every night, and Sundays two times."
It all sounded truly glowing.
"You married?"
"No."
"Well, don' you do it. Wish I wasn't married. Oh gee! Wish I wasn't
married. I'm crazy of my husband, but I wish I wasn't married.
See--once you married--pisht!--there you are--stay that way."