"Hurry? Na, no hurry; that's right. The h-h-hurrier you are the
b-b-b-badder off you get!"
The next morning the Italian girl was late. The forelady gave her
locker to some one else. Such a row! Louisa said: "I got mad, I did. I
told her to go to hell. That's only w-w-w-way anybody gets anything in
this world--get mad and say you go to h-h-hell. Betcha."
A little later the forelady, when the Italian was on one of her trips
after a drink, leaned over and gave me her side of the story. She is
such a very nice person, our forelady--quiet, attractive, neat as a
pin. Her sister addresses boxes and does clerical work of one sort or
another. Two subdued old maids they are; never worked any place but
right on our third floor. "Ain't like what it used to be," she told
me. "In the old days girls used to work here till they got married. We
used to have parties here and, say! they was nice girls in them days.
Look at 'em now! Such riffraff! New ones comin' in all the time, new
ones worse each time. Riffraff, that's what they are. It sure looks
nice to see a girl like you." (What good were the earrings doing?)
"We'll make it just as nice here for you as we can." (Oh, how guilty I
began to feel!)
She looked around to see if the Italian was about.
"Now you take this Eyetalian girl next to you. Gee! she's some fright.
Oughtta heard her this morning. 'Spected me to keep her locker for her
when she was late. How'd I know she was comin' back? I gave it to
another girl. She comes tearin' at me. 'What the hell you think you're
doin'?' she says to me. Now I ain't used to such talk, and I was for
puttin' my hat and coat on right then and there and walkin' out. I
must say I gotta stand all sorts of things in my job. It's awful what
I gotta put up with. I never says nothin' to her. But any girl's a
fool 'l talk to a person that way. Shows she's got nothin' up here
[knocking her head] or she sure'd know better than get the forelady
down on her like that. Gee! I was mad!"
Louisa returned and Miss Hibber moved on. "Some fright, that
forelady," remarked Louisa. That night Louisa departed for good.
The second day I kicked over six thousand times. It seemed a lot when
you think of the hard stool. It was a toss between which was the
worse, the stool or the air. This afternoon, I was sure it must be
3.30. I looked back at the clock--1.10. It had seemed like two hours
of work and it was forty minutes. No ventilation whatever in that
whole room--not a crack of air. Wonder if there ever was any since the
place was built decades ago. Once Louisa and I became desperate and
got Tony to open a window. The forelady had a fit; so did Tillie. Both
claimed they'd caught cold.
Tony is the Louis of the brassworks. He is young and very lame--one
leg considerably shorter than the other. It makes me miserable to see
him packing heavy boxes about. He told me he must get another job or
quit. Finally they did put him at a small machine press. So many
maimed and halt and decrepit as they employed about the works! Numbers
of the workers were past-telling old, several were very lame, one
errand boy had a fearfully deformed face, one was cross-eyed. I
remarked to Minnie that the boss of the works must have a mighty good
heart. Minnie has been working twenty-three years and has had the
bloom of admiration for her fellow-beings somewhat worn off in that
time. "Hm!" grunted Minnie. "He gets 'em cheaper that way, I guess."
The elevator man is no relation to the one at the candy factory. He is
red faced and grinning, most of his teeth are gone, and he always
wears a derby hat over one eye. One morning I was late. He jerked his
head and thumb toward the elevator. "Come on, I'll give ya a lift up!"
and when we reached our floor, though it was the men's side, "Third
Avenue stop!" he called out cheerily, and grinned at the world. He had
been there for years. The boss on our floor had been there for
years--forty-three, to be exact. Miss Hibber would not tell how many
years she had worked there, nor would Tillie. Tillie said she was born
there.
If it were only the human element that counted, everyone would stay at
the brassworks forever. I feel like a snake in the grass, walking off
"on them" when they all were so nice. Nor was it for a moment the
"dearie" kind of niceness that made you feel it was orders from above.
From our floor boss down, they were people who were born to treat a
body square. All the handicaps against them--the work itself, the
surroundings, the low pay--had so long been part of their lives, these
"higher ups" seemed insensible to the fact that such things were
handicaps.
To-day was sunny and the factory not so dark--in fact, part of the
time we worked with no electric lights. The crisp early morning air
those four blocks from the Subway to the factory--it sent the spring
fever through the blood. In the gutter of that dirty East Side street
a dirty East Side man was burning garbage. The smoke curled up lazily.
The sun just peeping up over the hospital at the end of the street
made slanting shafts through the smoke. As I passed by it suddenly was
no longer the East Side of New York City....
Now the Four Way Lodge is open,
Now the hunting winds are loose,
Now the smokes of spring go up to clear the brain....
Breakfast in a canon by the side of a stream--the odor of pines....
The little bobbing doors went to behind me and there I stood in floor
three, the stale gas and metal smell ... the whirs of the belts ...
the jarring of the presses....
Next to me this glorious morning sat a snip of a little thing all in
black--so pretty she was, so very pretty. I heard the boss tell her
it's not the sort of work she's been used to, she'll find it hard. Is
she sure she wants to try it? And in the course of the morning I heard
the story of Mame's life.
Mame's husband died three weeks ago. They had been married one month
and two days--after waiting three years. Shall I write a story of Mame
on the sob-sister order to bring the tears to your eyes? It could
easily be done. But not honestly. Little Mame--how could her foot ever
reach the press? And when she walked off after a drink, I saw that she
was quite lame. A widow only three weeks. She'd never worked before,
but there was no money. She lived all alone, wandered out for her
meals--no mother, no father, no sisters or brothers. She cried every
night. Her husband had been a traveling salesman--sometimes he made
eighty-five dollars a week. They had a six-room apartment and a
servant! She'd met him at a dance hall. A girl she was with had dared
her to wink at him. Sure she'd do anything anybody dared her to. He
came over and asked her what she was after, anyhow. That night he left
the girl he'd taken to the dance hall to pilot her own way back to
home and mother, and he saw Mame to her room. He was swell and tall.
She showed me his picture in a locket around her neck. Meanwhile Mame
kicked the foot press about twice every five minutes.
Why had they waited so long to get married? Because of the war. He was
afraid he'd be killed and would leave her a widow. "He asked me to
promise never to get married again if he did marry me and died.
But,"--she leaned over my way--"that only meant if he died during the
war, ain't that so? Lookit how long the war was over before he died."
He was awful good to her after they got married. He took her to a show
every night--jes swell; and she had given him a swell funeral--you bet
she did. The coffin had cost eighty-five dollars--white with real
silver handles; and the floral piece she bought--"Gee! What's your
name?... Connie, you oughtta seen that floral piece!" and Mame laid
off work altogether to use her hands the better. It was shaped so, and
in the middle was a clock made out of flowers, with the hands at the
very minute and hour he'd died. (He passed away of a headache--very
sudden.) Then below, in clay, were two clasped hands--his and hers.
"Gee! Connie, you never seen nothin' so swell. Everybody seen it said
so."
Once he bought her a white evening dress, low neck, fish-tail train,
pearls all over the front--cost him one whole week's salary,
eighty-five dollars! She had diamond earrings and jewels worth at
least one thousand dollars. She had lovely clothes. Couldn't she just
put a black band around the arms and go on wearing them? She took a
look at my earrings. Gee! they were swell. She had some green ones
herself. Next morning she appeared in her widow's weeds with
bright-green earrings at least a quarter of an inch longer than mine.
From the first Mame clung to me morning and night. Usually mornings
she threw her arms around me in the dressing room. "Here's my Connie!"
I saw myself forced to labor in the brassworks for life because of
Mame's need of me. This need seemed more than spiritual. One day her
pocketbook with twelve dollars had been stolen in the Subway. I lent
her some cash. Another time she left her money at the factory. I lent
her the wherewithal to get home with, etc. One day I was not at work.
Somehow the other girls all were down on Mame. I have pondered much on
that. When it came to the needed collection Mame found it hard
pickings. She got a penny from this girl, another from that one, until
she had made up a nickel to get home with. Irish Minnie gave her a
sandwich and an apple. The girls all jumped on me: "The way you let
that Frenchie work ya! Gee! you believe everything anybody tells ya."
"But," says I, "she's been a widow only three weeks and I'm terrible
sorry for her."
"How d'ya know she ever had a husband?" "How d'ya know he's dead?"
"How'd ya...."
The skepticism of factory workers appals me. They suspect everybody
and everything from the boss down. I believed almost everything about
Mame, especially since she paid back all she ever borrowed. No one
else in that factory believed a word she said. They couldn't "stand
her round."
"How d'ya know she lost her pocketbook?" (Later she advertised and got
it back--a doctor's wife found it on the early Subway.)
"Doctor's wife," sniffed Minnie. "Who ever heard of a doctor's wife up
at seven o'clock in the mornin'?"
And now I have walked off and left Mame to that assemblage of
unbelievers. At least Mame has a tongue of her own she is only too
glad of a chance to use. It is meat and drink to Mame to have a man
look her way. "Did you see that fella insult me?" and she calls back
protective remarks for half a block. Sentiments that usually bring in
mention of the entertained youth's mother and sisters, and wind up
with allusions to a wife, which if he doesn't possess now, he may some
day. Once I stopped with Mame while she and Irene phoned a "fella" of
Irene's from a drug-store telephone booth. Such gigglings and goings
on, especially since the "fella" was unknown to Mame at the time.
Outside in the store a pompous, unromantic man grew more and more
impatient for a turn at that booth. When Mame stepped out he remarked
casually that he hoped she felt she'd gotten five cents' worth. The
dressing down Mame then and there heaped upon that startled gentleman!
Who was he to insult her? I grew uneasy and feared a scene, but the
pompous party took hasty refuge in the telephone booth and closed the
door. Mame was very satisfied with the impression she must have made.
"The fresh old guy!"
Another time Mame sought me out in the factory, her eyes blazing.
"Connie, I been insulted, horribly insulted, and I don't see how I can
stay in this factory! You know that girl Irene? Irene she says to me,
'Mamie, you plannin' to get married again?'
"'I dunno,' I says to her, 'but if I do it'll be to some single
fella.'
"'Huh!' Irene says to me, 'You won't get no single fella; you'll have
to marry a widower with two or three children.' Think of her insultin'
me like that! I could 'a' slapped her right in the face!"
I asked Mame one Saturday what she'd be doing Sunday. She sighed.
"I'll be spendin' the day at the cemetery, I expect."
Monday morning I asked Mame about Sunday. She'd been to church in the
morning (Mame, like most of the girls at the brassworks, was a
Catholic), a show in the afternoon, cabaret for dinner, had danced
till 1, and played poker until 4 A.M. "If only my husband was alive,"
said Mame, "I'd be the happiest girl on earth."
One night Mame's landlady wanted to go out and play poker. She asked
Mame to keep her eye and ear out for the safety of the house. Every
five minutes Mame thought she heard a burglar or somethin'. "Gee! I
hardly slept at all; kep' wakin' up all the time. An' that landlady
never got in till six this mornin'!"
"My Gawd!" I exclaimed. "Hope she was lucky after playin' poker that
long!"
"She sure was," sighed Mame. "Gee! I jus' wish ya c'u'd see the swell
prize she won!--the most beau-teful statue--stands about three feet
high--of Our Blessed Lady of the Immaculate Conception."
Mame's friendship could become almost embarrassing. One day she
announced she wanted me to marry one of her brothers-in-law. "I got
two nice ones and we'll go out some Sunday afternoon and you can have
your pick. One's a piano tuner; the other's a detective." I thought
offhand the piano tuner sounded a bit more domestic. He was swell,
Mame said.
Mame didn't think she'd stay long in the brassworks. It was all
right--the boss she thought was sort of stuck on her. Did he have a
wife? (The boss, at least sixty years old.) Also Charlie was making
eyes at her. (Charlie was French; so was Mame. Charlie knew six words
of English. Mame three words of French. Charlie was sixteen). No,
aside from matrimony, Mame was going to train in Bellevue Hospital and
earn sixty dollars a week being a children's nurse. She'd heard if you
got on the right side of a doctor it was easy, and already a doctor
was interested in getting Mame in.
And I've just walked off and left Mame.
* * * * *
Kicked the foot press 7,149 times by the meter to-day and expected to
die of weariness. Thumped, thumped, thumped without stopping. As with
candy, I got excited about going on piecework. Asked Miss Hibber what
the rates were for my job--four and a half cents for one hundred and
fifty. Since I had to kick twice for every cone top finished, that
would have meant around one dollar fifteen cents for the day. Vanished
the piece-rate enthusiasm. Tillie seemed the only girl on our floor
doing piecework. Tillie, who "was born there." She was thin and stoop
shouldered, wore spectacles, and did her hair according to the
pompadour styles of some twenty years ago. The work ain't so bad.
Tillie don't mind it. There's just one thing in the world Tillie
wants. What's that? "A man!" Evidently Tillie has made no bones of her
desire. The men call back kindly to Tillie as she picks her way up the
dark stairs in the morning, "Hello there, sweetheart!" That week had
been a pretty good one for Tillie--she'd made sixteen dollars
forty-nine cents.
"Ain't much, p'raps, one way, but there's jus' this about it, it's
steady. They never lay anybody off here, and there's a lot. You hear
these girls 'round here talk about earnin' four, five, six dollars a
day. Mebbe they did, but why ain't they gettin' it now? 'Shop closed
down,' or, 'They laid us off.' That's it. Add it up over a year and my
sixteen forty-nine'll look big as their thirty dollars to forty
dollars a week, see if it don't."
Tillie's old, fat, wheezy mother works on our floor--maybe Tillie
really was born there.
One day I decided to see what could be done if I went the limit.
Suppose I had a sick mother and a lame brother--a lot of factory girls
have. I was on a press where you had to kick four separate times on
each piece--small lamp cones, shaped, slot already in. My job was to
punch four holes for the brackets to hold the chimney. The day before
I had kicked over 10,000 times. This morning I gritted my teeth and
started in. Between 10 and 11 I had gotten up to 2,000 kicks an hour.
Miss Hibber went by and I asked her what piece rates for that machine
were. She said six and one-quarter cents for one hundred and fifty. I
did not stop then to do any figuring. Told her rather chestily I could
kick 2,000 times an hour. "That all? You ought to do much more than
that!" Between 11 and 12 I worked as I had never worked. It was
humanly impossible to kick that machine oftener than I did. Never did
I let my eyes or thoughts wander. When the whistle blew at 12 I had
kicked 2,689. For a moment I figured. It takes about an hour in the
morning to get on to the swing. From 11 to 12 was always my best
output. After lunch was invariably deadly. From 12.30 until 2.30 it
seemed impossible to get up high speed. That left at best 2.30 to 4
for anything above average effort. From 4 to 5 it was hard again on
account of physical weariness. But say I could average 2,500 an hour
during the day. That would have brought me in, four kicks to each
cone, around two dollars and a quarter a day. The fact of the matter
was that after kicking 8,500 times that morning I gave up the ghost as
far as that job went. I ached body and soul. By that time I had been
on that one job several days and was sick to death of it. Each cone I
picked up to punch those four holes in made something rub along my
backbone or in the pit of my stomach or in my head--or in all of them
at once. Yet the old woman next me had been at her same job for over a
week. The last place she'd worked she'd done the identical thing six
months--preferred it to changing around. Most of the girls took that
attitude. Up to date that is the most amazing thing I have learned
from my factory experiences--the difference between my attitude toward
a monotonous job, and the average worker's. In practically every case
the girl has actually preferred the monotonous job to one with any
variety. The muscles in my legs ached so I could almost have shed
tears. The day before I had finished at 5 tired out. That morning I
had wakened up tired--the only time in my life. I could hardly kick at
all the first half hour. There was a gnawing sort of pain between my
shoulders. Suppose I really had been on piecework and had to keep up
at that breaking rate, only to begin the next morning still more worn
out? My Gawd!
Most of the girls kick with the same leg all the time. I tried
changing off now and then. With the four-hole machine, using the left
leg meant sitting a little to the right side. Also I tried once using
my left hand to give the right a rest. Thus the boss observed me.
"Now see here, m'girl, why don't you do things the way you're taught?
That ain't the right way!"
He caught me at the wrong moment. I didn't care whether the earth
opened up and swallowed me.
"I know the right way of runnin' this machine good as you do," I
fairly glared at him. "I'm sick and tired of doin' it the right way,
and if I want to do it wrong awhile for a change I guess I can!"
"You ain't goin' to get ahead in this world if you don't do things
_right_, m'girl." And he left me to my fate.
At noon that day the girls got after me. "You're a fool to work the
way you do. You never took a drink all this mornin'--jus' sit there
kickin', kickin', kickin'. Where d'ya think ya goin' to land? In a
coffin, that's where. The boss won't thank ya for killin' yourself on
his old foot press, neither. You're jus' a fool, workin' like that."
And that's just what I decided. "Lay off now and then." Yes indeed, I
was going to lay off now and then.
"I see myself breakin' my neck for thirteen dollars a week," Bella
chipped in.
"You said it!" from all the others.
So I kicked over 16,000 times that day and let it go as my final swan
song. No more breaking records for me. My head thumped, thumped,
thumped all that night. After that I strolled up front for a drink and
a gossip or back to a corner of the wash room where two or three were
sure to be squatting on some old stairs, fussing over the universe.
When the boss was up on the other end of the floor, sometimes I just
sat at my machine and did nothing. It hurt something within my soul at
first, but my head and hands and legs and feet and neck and general
disposition felt considerably better.
Lunch times suited me exactly at the brassworks, making me feel I was
getting what I was after. Three of us used to gather around Irish
Minnie, put two stools lengthwise on the floor, and squat along the
sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her
figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little
sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they
unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present,
and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really
committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights
a week could a girl dance and work next day? Minnie was past her
dancing days. She'd been married 'most twenty years and was getting
fat and unformed-looking; shuffled about in a pair of old white tennis
shoes and a pink boudoir cap. (No one else wore a cap at the
brassworks.) Minnie had worked fifteen years at a power press, eleven
years at her last job. She was getting the generous stipend of
fourteen dollars a week (one dollar more than the rest of us). She had
earned as much as twenty-five dollars a week in her old job at the tin
can company, piecework. Everybody about the factory told her troubles
to Minnie, who immediately told them to everybody else. It made for a
certain community interest. One morning Minnie would tell me, as I
passed her machine, "Rosie 'n' Frank have had a fight." With that cue
it was easy to appear intelligent concerning future developments.
Frank was one of the machinists, an Italian. Rosie had let him make
certain advances--put his arm around her and all that--but she told us
one lunch time, "he'd taken advantage of her," so she just sassed him
back now. Bella announced Frank was honeying around her. "Well, watch
out," Rosie advised, with the air of Bella's greataunt.
As to dancing, Bella's chum in Detroit used to go to a dance every
single night and work all day. Sundays she'd go to a show and a dance.
Bella tried it one week and had to lay off three days of the next week
before she could get back to work. Lost her twenty-one dollars. No
more of that for Bella. Just once in a while was enough for her.
They did not talk about "vamping dopes" at the brassworks. Everyone
asked you if you were "keepin' company," and talked of fellas and
sweethearts and intended husbands. That was the scale. As before, all
the married ones invariably advised against matrimony. Irish Minnie
told us one lunch time that it was a bad job, this marrying business.
"Of course," she admitted, pulling on a piece of roast pork with her
teeth, "my husband ain't what you'd call a _bad_ man." That was as far
as Minnie cared to go.
Perhaps one reason why the brassworks employed so many crooked and
decrepit was as an efficiency measure. The few males who were whole
caused so many flutterings among the female hands that it seriously
interfered with production. Rosie's real cause for turning Frank down
was that she was after Good Lookin'. Good Lookin' would not have been
so good lookin' out along the avenue, but in the setting of our third
floor he was an Adonis. Rosie worked a power press. I would miss the
clank of her machine. There she would be up in the corner of the floor
where Good Lookin' worked. Good Lookin' would go for a drink. Rosie
would get thirsty that identical moment. They would carry on an
animated conversation, to be rudely broken into by a sight of the boss
meandering up their way. Rosie would make a dash for her machine, Good
Lookin' would saunter over to his.
* * * * *
From the start I had pestered the boss to be allowed on a power press,
for two reasons: one just because I wanted to--the same reason why a
small boy wants to work at machinery; secondly, I wanted to be able to
pose at the next job as an experienced power-press worker and sooner
or later get a high-power machine. One day the boss was watching me
at the foot press. "Y'know, m'girl, I think you really got
intelligence, blessed if I don't. I'm goin' to push you right ahead.
I'll make a machinist out of you yet, see if I don't. You stay right
on here and you'll be making big money yet." (Minnie--eleven years in
her last job--fourteen dollars a week now.) Anyway, one morning he
came up--and that morning foot presses of every description had lost
all fascination for me--and he said, "You still want a power press?"
"Bet your life I do!"
And he gave me a power press deserted that morning by one of the boys.
Life looked worth living again. All I had to do to work miracles was
press ever so lightly a pedal. The main point was to get my foot off
it as quick as I got it on, or there was trouble. I wasn't to get my
fingers here or there, or "I'd never play the piano in this life." If
the belt flew off I wasn't to grab it, or I'd land up at the ceiling.
For the rest, I merely clamped a round piece on the top of a nail-like
narrow straight piece--the part that turned the lamp wick up and down.
Hundreds and thousands of them I made. The monotony did not wear on me
there; it was mixed with no physical exertion. I could have stayed on
at the brassworks the rest of my life--perhaps.
One night I was waiting at a cold, windy corner on Fifth Avenue for a
bus. None came. A green Packard limousine whirled by. The chauffeur
waved and pointed up the Avenue. In a flash I thought, now if I really
were a factory girl I'd surely jump at a chance to ride in that green
Packard. Up half a block I ran, and climbed in the front seat, as was
expected of me. He was a very nice chauffeur. His mistress, "the old
lady," was at a party and he was killing time till 11.30. Would I like
to ride till then? No, I wanted to get home--had to be up too early
for joy riding. Why so early? The factory. And before I realized it
there I sat, the factory girl. Immediately he asked me to dinner any
night I said. Now I really thought it would be worth doing; no one
else I knew had been out to dine with a chauffeur. Where would he take
me? What would he talk about? But my nerve failed me. No, I didn't
think I'd go. I fussed about for some excuse. I was sort of new in New
York--out West, it was different. There you could pick up with
anybody, go any place. "Good Gawd! girl," said the chauffeur,
earnestly, "don't try that in New York; you'll get in awful trouble!"
All through Central Park he gave me advice about New York and the
pitfalls it contained for a Westerner. He'd be very careful about me
if I'd go out with him, any place I said, and he'd get me home early
as I said. But I didn't say. I'd have to think it over. He could
telephone to me. No, he couldn't. The lady I lived with was very
particular. Well, anyhow, stormy days he'd see to it he'd be down by
the factory and bring me home. Would I be dressed just the way I was
then? Just the way--green tam and all.
The next day while I thumped out lamp parts I tried to screw my
courage up to go out with that chauffeur. Finally I decided to put it
up to the girls. I meandered back to the wash room. There on the old
stairs sat Irish Minnie and Annie, fat and ultradignified. They were
discussing who the father of the child really was. I breezed in
casually.
"Vamped a chauffeur last night."
"Go-an."
"Sure. He asked me to ride home with him an' I did."
"Got in the machine with him?"
"Sure!"
"You _fool_! You young _fool_!"
Goodness! I was unprepared for such comment.
"What did he do to ya?"
"Nothin'. An' he wants me to go to dinner with him. What'll I say?"
Both pondered. "Sure," said Minnie, "I b'lieve in a girl gettin' all
that's comin' to her, but all I want to tell ya is, chauffeurs are a
bad lot--the worst, I tell ya."
"You said it!" nodded fat Annie, as if years of harrowing experience
lay behind her. "He was all right to ya the first time so as to lure
you out the next."
"But," says Minnie, "if ya go to dinner with him, don't you go near
his machine. Steer clear of machines. Eat all ya can off him, but
don't do no ridin'."
"You said it!" again Annie backed her up. Annie was a regular sack
slinger. She could have hurled two men off Brooklyn Bridge with one
hand. "If you was as big an' strong as me you c'u'd take 'most any
chance. I'd like to see a guy try to pull anythin' on me." I'd like to
see him, too.
"Some day"--Minnie wanted to drive her advice home by concrete
illustration--"some day a chauffeur'll hold a handkerchief under your
nose with somethin' on it. When ya come to, goodness knows where
you'll be."