with public school education, to learn machine ironing,
marking, and assorting linens; no experience necessary;
splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions;
hours 8 to 5.30; half day Saturday.
What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became
clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I
venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the
rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls
from the brassworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since
I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.
I was third in line. The manager himself interviewed us inside, since
the "Welfare Worker" was ill. What experience had I? I was experienced
in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the "family" floor--two
vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it
so hard as the brassworks--in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He
would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced,
instead of the usual twelve. At the end of two weeks, if I wasn't
earning more than fourteen dollars--it was a piecework system, with
fourteen dollars as a minimum--I'd have to go, and make room for some
one who could earn more than fourteen dollars.
I wonder if the Welfare Worker would have made the same speech. That
manager was a fraud. On our floor, at least, no one had ever been
known to earn more than her weekly minimum. He was a smart fraud. Only
I asked too many questions upstairs, he would have had me working like
a slave to hold my job.
By the time clock, where I was told to wait, stood the woman just
ahead of me in the line. She was the first really bitter soul I had
run across in factory work. Her husband had been let out of his job,
along with all workers in his plant, without notice. After January 1st
they might reopen, but at 1914 wages. There was one child in the
family. The father had hunted everywhere for work. For one week the
mother had searched. She had tried a shoe polish factory; they put her
on gluing labels. The smell of the glue made her terribly sick to her
stomach--for three days she was forced to stay in bed. Three times she
had tried this laundry. Each day, after keeping her waiting in line an
hour or so, they had told her to come back the next day. At last she
had gotten as far as the time clock. I saw her several times in the
evening line after that; she was doing "pretty well"--"shaking" on the
third floor. Her arms nearly dropped off by evening, but she sure was
glad of the thirteen dollars a week. Her husband had found nothing.
The third to join our time-clock ranks was a Porto-Rican. She could
speak no English at all. They put her at scrubbing floors for twelve
dollars a week. About 4 that afternoon she appeared on our floor, all
agitated. She needed a Spanish girl there to tell the boss she was
leaving. She was one exercised piece of temper when it finally
penetrated just what her job was.
"Family" occupied two-thirds of the sixth and top floor--the other
third was the "lunch room." Five flights to walk up every morning. But
at least there was the lunch room without a step up at noon. And it
was worth climbing five flights to have Miss Cross for a forelady.
Sooner or later I must run into a disagreeable forelady, for the
experience. To hear folks talk, plenty of that kind exist. Miss Cross
was glad I was to be on her floor. She told the manager and me she'd
noticed me that morning in line and just thought I'd made a good press
ironer. Was I Eyetalian?
She gave me the second press from the door, right in front of a
window, and a window open at the top. That was joy for me, but let no
one think the average factory girl consciously pines for fresh air.
Miss Cross ironed the lowers of a pair of pajamas to show me how it
was done, then the coat part. While she was instructing me in such
intricacies, she was deftly finding out all she could about my past,
present, and future--married or single, age, religion, and so on. And
I watched, fascinated, crumpled pajama legs, with one mighty press of
the foot, appear as perfect and flawless as on the Christmas morning
they were first removed from the holly-decorated box.
"Now you do it."
I took the coat part of a pair of pink pajamas, smoothed one arm a bit
by hand as I laid it out on the stationary side of the ironing press,
shaped somewhat like a large metal sleeve board. With both hands I
gripped the wooden bar on the upper part, all metal but the bar. With
one foot I put most of my weight on the large pedal. That locked the
hot metal part on the padded, heated, lower half with a bang. A press
on the release pedal, the top flew up--too jarringly, if you did not
keep hold of the bar with one hand. That ironed one side of one
sleeve. Turn the other side, press, release. Do the other sleeve on
two sides. Do the shoulders all around--about four presses and
releases to that. Another to one side of the front--two if it is for a
big fat man. One under the arm, two or three to the back, one under
the other arm, one or two to the other half of the front, one, two, or
three to the collar, depending on the style. About sixteen clanks
pressing down, sixteen releases flying up, to one gentleman's pajama
coat. I had the hang of it, and was left alone. Then I combined
ironing and seeing what was what. If a garment was very damp--and most
of them were--the press had to be locked several seconds before being
released, to dry it out. During those seconds one's eyes were free to
wander.
On my left, next the door, worked a colored girl with shell-rimmed
spectacles, very friendly, whose name was Irma. Of Irma later. On my
right was the most woebegone-looking soul, an Italian widow, Lucia, in
deep mourning--husband dead five weeks, with two daughters to support.
She could not speak a word of English, and in this country sixteen
years. All this I had from the forelady in between her finding out
everything there was to know about me. Bless my soul, if Lucia did not
perk up the second the forelady left, edge over, and direct a volume
of Italian at me. What won't green earrings do! Old Mrs. Reilly called
out, "Ach, the poor soul's found a body to talk to at last!" But,
alas! Lucia's hope was short lived. "What!" called Mrs. Reilly, "you
ain't Eyetalian? Well, you ought to be, now, because you look it, and
because there ought to be somebody here for Lucy to talk to!" Lucia
was diseased-looking and unkempt-looking and she ironed very badly.
Everyone tried to help her out. They instructed her with a flow of
English. When Lucia would but shake her head they used the same flow,
only much louder, several at once. Then Lucia would mumble to herself
for several minutes over her ironing. At times, late in the afternoon,
Miss Cross would grow discouraged.
"Don't you understand that when you iron a shirt you put the sleeves
over the puffer _first_?"
Lucia would shake her head and shrug her shoulders helplessly. Miss
Cross would repeat with vehemence. Then one girl would poke Lucia and
point to the puffer--"Puffer! puffer!" Another would hold up a shirt
and holler "Shirt! shirt!" and Lucia would nod vaguely. The next shirt
she did as all the others--puffer last, which mussed the ironed
part--until some one stopped her work and did a whole shirt for Lucia
correct, from beginning to end.
Next to Lucia stood Fanny, colored. She was a good-hearted, helpful,
young married thing, not over-cleanly and not overstrong. That first
morning she kept her eye on me and came to my rescue on a new article
of apparel every so often. Next to Fanny stood the three puffers for
anyone to use--oval-shaped, hot metal forms, for all gathers, whether
in sleeves, waists, skirts, or what not. Each girl had a large
egg-shaped puffer on her own table as well. Next to the puffers stood
the two sewing machines, where Spanish Sarah and colored Hattie darned
and mended.
At the side, behind the machines, stood Ida at her press. All the
presses were exactly alike. Ida was a joy to my eyes. At first glance
she appeared just a colored girl, but Ida was from Trinidad; her skin
was like velvet, her accent Spanish. As the room grew hot from the
presses and the steam, along about 4, and our feet began to burn and
grow weary, I would look at Ida. It was so easy to picture the exact
likes of her, not more than a generation or two ago, squatting under
a palm tree with a necklace of teeth, a ring through her nose, tropic
breezes playing on that velvet skin. (Please, I know naught of
Trinidad or its customs and am only guessing.) And here stood Ida,
thumping, thumping on the ironing press, nine hours, lacking ten
minutes, a day, on the sixth floor of a laundry in Harlem, that we in
Manhattan might be more civilized.