"Ah, child," she said, "it's tha mother sickness. Don't you ever know
it? Back home in Trinidad are my mother, my father, my two little
boys. Oh, tha sickness to see them! But what is one to do when you
marry a poor man? He must come to this country to find work, and then,
after a while, I must come, too."
Behind Ida stood two other colored girls, and at the end press a white
girl who started the day after I did. She stayed only five days, and
left in disgust--told me she'd never seen such hard work. Beyond the
last press were the curtain frames and the large, round padded table
for ironing fancy table linen by hand. Then began the lunch tables.
Behind the row of presses by the windows stood the hand ironers who
did the fancy work. First came Ella, neat, old, gray-haired, fearfully
thin, wrinkled, with a dab of red rouge on each cheek. After all, one
really cannot be old if one dabs on rouge before coming to work all
day in a laundry. Ella had hand ironed all her life. She had been ten
years in her last job, but the place changed hands. She liked
ironing, she said. Ella never talked to anybody, even at lunch time.
Behind Ella ironed Anna Golden, black, who wore striped silk
stockings. She always had a bad cold. Most of the girls had colds most
of the time--from the steam, they said. Anna had spent two dollars on
medicine that week, which left her fourteen dollars. Anna was the one
person to use an electric iron. It had newly been installed. The
others heated their irons over gas flames. Every so often Miss Cross
would call out, "I smell gas!" So did everybody else. After Anna,
Lucile, blackest of all and a widow. And then--Mrs. Reilly.
Mrs. Reilly and Hattie were the characters of the sixth floor. Mrs.
Reilly was old and fat and Irish. She had stood up hand ironing so
long the part of her from the waist up seemed to have settled down
into her hips. Eleven years had Mrs. Reilly ironed in our laundry. She
was the one pieceworker in the building. In summer she could make from
twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, but she claimed she lost a great
part of it in winter. She said she was anxious to get on timework. One
afternoon I saw Mrs. Reilly iron just two things--the rest of the
while, nothing to do, she sat on an old stool with her eyes closed.
The first afternoon, Mrs. Reilly edged over to me on pretext of
ironing out a bit of something on my press.
"An' how are you makin' out?"
"All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get
tired?
"Shure, child, an' what good would it do for my feet to get tired when
they're all I got to stand on? An' did you ever try settin' nine hours
a day? Shure an' that would be the death of anybody.
Mrs. Reilly's indoor sport was marrying the sixth floor off. Poor
Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly.
She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated
Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second
marriage--or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she
was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a "sex complex it
was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy
marrying off herself, she called back: "The Lord be praised! And
didn't I get more than enough of the one man I had?"
At least twice a week Mrs. Reilly saw a ghost, and she would tell us
about it in the morning. She laughed then, and we all laughed, but you
could easily picture the poor old fearful soul meeting that inevitable
2 A.M. guest, quaking over it in her lonely bed. Once the ghost was
extra terrifying. "It may have been the banama sauce," admitted Mrs.
Reilly. And Mrs. Reilly's feet did hurt often. She used sometimes to
take off her worn shoes and try tying her feet up in cardboards.
The other workers on our floor were Mabel and Mary, two colored girls
who finished off slight rough edges in the press ironing and folded
everything; Edna, a Cuban girl who did handkerchiefs on the mangle;
Annie, the English girl, lately married to an American. She had an
inclosure of shelves to work in and there she did the final sorting
and wrapping of family wash. Annie was the most superior person on our
floor.
And Miss Cross. In face, form, neatness, and manners Miss Cross could
have held her own socially anywhere. But according to orthodox
standards Miss Cross's grammar was faulty. She had worked always in
our laundry, beginning as a hand ironer. She knew the days when hours
were longer than nine and pay lower than fourteen dollars a week. She
remembered when the family floor had to iron Saturdays until 10 and 11
at night, instead of getting off at 12.45, as we did now. They stood
it in those days; but how? As it was now, not a girl on our floor but
whose feet ached more or less by 4 or 4.30. Ordinarily we stopped at
5.30. Everyone knew how everyone else felt that last half hour. During
a week with any holiday the girls had to work till 6.15 every night,
and Saturday afternoon. They all said--we discussed it early one
morning--that in such weeks they could iron scarcely anything that
last hour, their feet burned so.
The candy factory was hard--one stood nine hours, but the work was
very light.
The brassworks was hard--one sat, but the foot exercise was wearying
and the seat fearfully uncomfortable.
Ironing was hardest--one stood all day and used the feet for hard
pressure besides. Yet I was sorry to leave the laundry!
Perhaps it was just as well for me that Lucia could not talk English.
She might have used it on me, and already the left ear was talked off
by Irma. Miss Cross stood for just so much conversation, according to
her mood. Even if she were feeling very spry, our sixth-floor talk
could become only so general and lively before Miss Cross would call:
"Girls! girls! not so much noise!" If it were late in the afternoon
that would quiet us for the day--no one had enough energy to start up
again.
The first half hour Irma confided in me that she had cravings.
"Cravings? Cravings for what?" I asked her.
"Cravings for papers."
It sounded a trifle goatlike.
"Papers?"
"Yes, papers. I want to read papers on the lecture platform."
Whereat I heard all Irma's spiritual longings--cravings. She began in
school to do papers. That was two years ago. Since then she has often
been asked to read the papers she wrote in school before church
audiences. Just last Sunday she read one at her church in New York,
and four people asked her afterward for copies.
What was it about?
It was about the True Woman. When she wrote it, she began, "Dear
Teacher, Pupils, and Friends." But when she read it in churches she
skipped the Teacher and Pupils and began: "Dear Friends, ... now we
are met together on this memorable occasion to consider the subject of
the True Woman. First we must ask" (here Irma bangs down on a helpless
nightshirt and dries it out well beyond its time into a nice bunch of
wrinkles) "What is woman? Woman was created by God because Dear
Friends God saw how lonely man was and how lonesome and so out of
man's ribs God created woman to be man's company and helpmate...."
"Irma!" Miss Cross's voice had an oft-repeated tone to it. She called
out from the table where she checked over each girl's work without so
much as turning her head. "You ironed only one leg of these pajamas!"
Irma shuffled over on her crooked high heels and returned with the
half-done pajamas. "That fo'-lady!" sighed Irma, "she sure gets on ma
nerves. She's always hollerin' at me 'bout somethin'. She never
hollers at the other girls that way--she just picks on me."
And Irma continued with the True Woman: "There's another thing the
True Woman should have and that's a good character...."
"Irma!" (slight impatience in Miss Cross's tone) "you ironed this
nightgown on the wrong side!"
Irma looked appealingly at me. "There she goes again. She makes me
downright nervous, that fo'-lady does."
Poor, persecuted Irma!
During that first morning Irma had to iron over at least six things.
Then they looked like distraction. I thought of the manager's
introductory speech to me--how after two weeks I might have to make
way for a more efficient person.
"How long you been here?" I asked Irma.
"Four months."
"What you makin'?"
"Thirteen a week."
"Ever get extra?"
"Na."
Suspicions concerning the manager.
Irma had three other papers. One was on Testing Time. What was Testing
Time? It might concern chemical tubes. It might be a bit of romance.
And she really meant Trysting Time. No, to everybody a time comes when
he or she must make a great decision. It was about that.
"Irma! you've got your foot in the middle of that white apron!"
Another paper was on Etee-quette (q pronounced).
"Irma! you creased one of these pajama legs down the middle! Do it
over."
I pondered much during my laundry days as to why they kept Irma. She
told me she first worked down on the shirt-and-collar floor and used
to do "one hundred and ten shirts an hour," but the boss got down on
her. It took her sometimes three-quarters of an hour to do one boy's
shirt on our floor, and then one half the time she had it to do over.
Her ironing was beyond all words fearful to behold (there must be an
Irma in every laundry). She was all-mannered slow. She forgot to tag
her work. She hung it over her horse so that cuffs and apron strings
were always on the floor. Often she was late. Sometimes Miss Cross
would grow desperate--but there Irma remained. Below, in that little
entryway, were girls waiting for jobs. Did they figure that on the
whole Irma wrecked fewer garments than the average new girl, or what?
And the manager had tried to scare me!
The noon bell rings--we dash for the lunch-room line. You can purchase
pies and soup and fruit, hash and stew, coffee and tea, cafeteria
style. There are only two women to serve--the girls from the lower
floors have to stand long in line. I do not know where to sit, and by
mistake evidently get at a wrong table. No one talks to me. I surely
feel I am not where I belong. The next day I get at another wrong
table. It is so very evident I am not wanted where I am. Rather
disconcerting. I sit and ponder. I had thought factory girls so much
more friendly to one another on short acquaintance than "cultured"
people. But it is merely that they are more natural. When they feel
friendly they show it with no reserves. When they do not feel friendly
they show that without reserve. Which is where the unnaturalness of
"cultured" folk sometimes helps.
It seems etee-quette at the laundry requires each girl sit at the
table where her floor sits. That second day I was at the
shirt-and-collar table, and they, I was afterward told, are
particularly exclusive. Indeed they are.
At 12.45 the second bell rings. Miss Cross calls out, "All right,
girls!" Clank, the presses begin again, and all afternoon I iron
gentlemen's underpinnings. During the course of my days in the laundry
I iron three sets round for every man in New York and thereby acquire
a domestic attitude toward the entire male sex in the radius sending
wash to our laundry. Nobody loves a fat man. But their underclothes do
fit more easily over the press.
I iron and I iron and I iron, and along about 4.30 the first afternoon
it occurs to my cynical soul to wonder what the women are doing with
themselves with the spare time which is theirs, because I am thumping
that press down eight hours and fifty minutes a day. Not that it is
any of my business.
Also along about five o'clock it irritates me to have to bother with
what seems to me futile work. I am perfectly willing to take great
pains with a white waistcoat--in one day I learn to make a work of art
of that. But why need one fuss over the back of a nightshirt? Will a
man sleep any better for a wrinkle more or less? Besides, so soon it
is all wrinkles.
The second day I iron soft work all morning--forever men's
underclothes, pajamas, and nightshirts. Later, when I am promoted to
starched work, I tend to grow antifeminist. Why can men live and move
and have their beings satisfactorily incased in soft garments, easy to
iron, comfortable to wear, and why must women have everything starched
and trying on the soul to do up? One minute you iron a soft
nightshirt; the next a nightgown starched like a board, and the worst
thing to get through with before it dries too much that ever appears
in a laundry.
After lunch I am promoted to hospital work. All afternoon I iron
doctors' and interns' white coats and trousers. It is more interesting
doing that. But a bit hard on the soul. For it makes you think of
sickness and suffering. Yet sickness and suffering white-coated men
relieve. It makes you think, too, of having babies--that being all you
know of hospitals personally. But on such an occasion you never
noticed if the doctor had on a white coat or not, and surely spent no
time pondering over who ironed it. Yet if a doctor wore a coat Irma
ironed I think the woman would note it even in the last anguished
moments of labor.
Irma did an officer's summer uniform once. I do wish I could have
heard him when he undid the package. While Irma was pounding down on
it she was discoursing to me how, besides papers, she had cravings for
poetry.
"You remember that last snowstorm? I sat at my window and I wrote:
"Oh, beautiful snow
When will you go?
Not until spring,
When the birds sing."
There were several other stanzas. And about then Miss Cross dumped a
bundle of damp clothes into Irma's box and said, "Iron these next and
do them decent!" I peered suspiciously into the box. It was my own
family laundry!
"Hey, Irma," I said, cannily, "leave me do this batch, eh?"
I might as well be paying myself for doing up my own wash, and it
would look considerably better than if Irma ironed it.
The third day my feet are not so weary, and while I iron I mull over
ideas on women in industry. After all, have not some of us with the
good of labor at heart been a bit too theoretical? Take the welfare
idea so scoffed at by many. After all, there is more to be said for
than against. Of course, provided--It is all very well to say labor
should be allowed to look after itself, and none of this paternalism.
Of course, the paternalism can be overdone and unwisely done. But, at
least where women workers are concerned, if we are going to wait till
they are able to do things for themselves we are going to wait,
perhaps, too long for the social good while we are airing our
theories. It is something like saying that children would be better
off and have more strength of character if they learned to look after
themselves. But you can start that theory too young and have the child
die on your hands, or turn into a gutter waif. The child needs entire
looking after up to a point where he can begin little by little to
look after himself. And after he has learned to dress himself it does
not necessarily mean he can select his own food, his hour of retiring,
his habits of cleanliness and hygiene.
I look about at the laundry workers and think: Suppose we decide
nothing shall be done for these girls until they demand it themselves
and then have charge of it themselves. In other words, suppose we let
welfare work and social legislation wait on organization. The people
who talk that way are often college professors or the upper crust of
labor. They have either had no touch or lost touch with the rank and
file of women workers. It is going to be years and years and years, if
ever, before women in this country organize by and large to a point
where they can become permanently effective. What organization demands
more than any other factor is, first, a sense of oppression; second,
surplus energy. Women have been used to getting more or less the tag
end of things for some thousands of years. Why expect them suddenly,
in a second of time, as it were, to rear up and say, "We'll not stand
for this and that"? If we are going to wait for working women to feel
oppressed enough to weld themselves together into a militant class
organization, capable of demanding certain conditions and getting
them, we shall wait many a long day. In the meantime, we are putting
off the very situation we hope for--when women, as well as men, shall
have reached the point where they can play a dignified part in the
industrial scheme of things--by sending them from work at night too
weary and run down to exert themselves for any social purpose. I say
that anything and everything which can be done to make women more
capable of responsibility should be done. But the quickest and sanest
way to bring that about is not to sit back and wait for factory women
to work out their own salvation. Too few of them have the intelligence
or gumption to have the least idea how to go about it, did it ever
occur to them that things might be radically improved. (And the pity
of it is that so often telling improvements could be made with so
little effort.)
Nor is it anything but feminist sentimentality, as far as I can see,
to argue against special legislation for women. What women can do
intellectually as compared with men I am in no position to state. To
argue that women can take a place on a physical equality with man is
simply not being honest. Without sentimentalizing over motherhood, it
seems allowable to point out the fact that women are potential
mothers, and this fact, with every detail of its complexities,
feminists or no to the contrary, is a distinct handicap to women's
playing a part in the industrial field on a par with man. And society
pays more dearly for a weary woman than for a tired man.
Therefore, why not lunch rooms, and attractive lunch rooms, and good
food, well cooked? Yes, it is good business, and besides it puts a
woman on a much more efficient level to herself and society. At our
tables the girls were talking about different lunch-room conditions
they had come across in their work. One girl told of a glass company
she had worked for that recently was forced to shut down. She dwelt
feelingly on the white lunch room and the good food, and especially
the paper napkins--the only place she had worked where they gave
napkins. She claimed there was not a girl who did not want to cry when
she had to quit that factory. "Everybody loved it," she said. I tried
to find out if she felt the management had been paying for the
polished brass rails, the good food, and the napkins out of the
workers' wages. "Not on your life!" she answered. She had been a file
clerk.
Take dental clinics in the factories. Four teeth on our floor were
extracted while I was at the laundry. For a couple of days each girl
moaned and groaned and made everybody near her miserable. Then she got
Miss Cross's permission to go to some quack dentist, and out came the
tooth. Irma had two out at one dollar each. It was going to cost her
forty dollars to get them back in. A person with his or her teeth in
good condition is a far better citizen than one suffering from the
toothache.
If I had my way I should like to see a rest room in every factory
where women are employed, and some time, however short, allowed in the
middle of the afternoon to make use of it.
Eight hours is long enough for any woman to do sustained physical
work, with no possibility for overtime.
Nor have we so much as touched on what it means to live on thirteen
dollars or fourteen dollars a week.
"But then you have taken away all the arguments for organization!"
Should organization be considered as an end in and of itself, or as
one possible means to an end?
Word was passed this morning that "company" was coming! The bustling
and the hustling and the dusting! Every girl had to clean her press
from top to bottom, and we swept the floor with lightning speed. Miss
Cross dashed to her little mirror and put powder on her nose. Hattie
tied a curtain around her head to look like a Red Cross nurse. Every
time the door opened we all got expectant palpitations. We were not
allowed to speak, yet ever and anon Hattie or Mrs. Reilly would let
out some timely remarks. Whereat we all got the giggles. Miss Cross
would almost hiss, "GIRLS!" whereat we subsided. It was nerve
wracking. And the company never came! They got as far as the third
floor and gave out. But it was not until afternoon that we knew
definitely that our agony was for naught.
Lucia's machine got out of order--steam escaped at a fearful rate.
While the mechanic was fixing it he discoursed to me on the laundry.
He had been there nine months--big, capable-looking six-footer. Out of
the corner of his mouth he informed me, "Once anybody comes to work
here they never leave!" It surely does seem as if they had no end of
people who had worked there years and years. Miss Cross says they used
to have more fun than nowadays, before so many colored girls were
employed. They gave parties and dances and everyone was chummy with
everyone else.
To-day, in the midst of hilarity and all unannounced, "company" did
appear. We subsided like a schoolroom when the teacher suddenly
re-enters. A batch of women, escorted by one of the management. He
gesticulated and explained. I could not catch his words, for the noise
of the presses, though goodness knows I craned my ears. They
investigated everything. Undoubtedly their guide dwelt eloquently on
the victrola in the lunch room; it plays every noon. On their way out
two of the young women stopped by my press. "Didn't this girl iron
that nightgown nicely?" one said to the other. I felt it obligatory to
give them the "once over."
The second the door was closed I dashed for Miss Cross. "Who were them
females?" I asked her.
Miss Cross grunted. "Them were Teachers College girls." She wrinkled
her nose. "They send 'em over here often. And let me tell _you_, I
never seen _one_ of 'em with any class _yet_.... They talk about
college girls--pooh! I never seen a college girl yet looked any
classier than us laundry girls. Most of 'em don't look _as_ classy.
Only difference is, if you mixed us all up, they're gettin' educated."
One of my erstwhile jobs at the University of California had been
piloting college girls around through factories in just that fashion.
I had to laugh in my sleeve as I suspected the same remarks may have
been passed on us after our departure!
* * * * *
We have much fun at our lunch table. A switchboard operator and file
clerk from the office eats with us. She and I "guy" each other a good
deal during the meal. Miss Cross wipes her eyes and sighs: "Gee!
Ain't it fun to laugh!" and Eleanor and I look pleased with ourselves.
In the paper this morning appeared a picture of one of New York's
leading society women "experiencing the life of the working girl first
hand." She was shown in a French bonnet, a bunch of orchids at her
waist, standing behind a perfumery counter. What our table did to Mrs.
X!
"These women," fusses Miss Cross, "who think they'll learn what it's
like to be a working girl, and stand behind a perfumery counter!
Somebody's always trying to find out what it's like to be a
worker--and then they get a lot of noteriety writin' articles about
it. All rot, I say. Pity, if they really want to know what workin's
like, they wouldn't try a laundry."
"She couldn't eat her breakfast in bed if she did that!" was my
cutting remark.
"Or quit at three," from Annie.
"Hisst!" I whisper, "I'm a lady in disguise!" And I quirk my little
finger as I drink my coffee and order Eleanor to peer without to see
if my limousine waits.
We discuss rich folk and society ladies, and no one envies or is
bitter. Miss Cross guesses some of them think they get as weary flying
around to their parties and trying on clothes as we do in the laundry.
I guess she is partly right.
Then we discuss what a bore it would be not to work. At our table sit
Miss Cross, Edna (Miss Cross calls her Edner), the Cuban girl, who
refused to eat with the colored girls; Annie, the English girl, who
had worked in a retail shoe shop in London; Mrs. Reilly, who is always
morose at lunch and never speaks, except one day when she and Miss
Cross nearly came to blows over religion. Each got purple in the face.
Then it came out that there was a feud between them--two years or more
it had lasted--and neither ever speaks to the other. (Yet Mrs. Reilly
gave one dollar, twice as much as the rest of us, toward Miss Cross's
Christmas present.) Then there are three girls from the office
downstairs. Everyone there had had some experience in being out of
work or not working. To each of them at such a time life has been a
wearisome thing. Each declared she would 'most rather work at any old
thing than stay home and do nothing.
Between the first and second bells after lunch the sixth-floor girls
foregather and sit on the ironing tables, swing our heels, and pass
the time of day. To-day I start casually singing, "Jesus Wants Me for
a Sunbeam." Everyone on our floor knows the song and there the whole
lot of us sit, swinging our heels, singing at the top of our lungs, "A
_sunbeam_, a _sunbeam_, Jesus wants me for a _sunbeam_," which is how
I got the name of "Sunbeam" on our floor. Except that Miss Cross, for
some reason of her own, usually called me "Constance."
I teach them "My Heart's a Little Bird Cage," and we add that to our
repertoire. Then we go on to "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly
Light," "Rock of Ages."
It appears we are a very religious lot on our floor. All the colored
girls are Baptists. Miss Cross is an ardent Presbyterian, Annie is an
Episcopalian, Edna and Mrs. Reilly are Catholics, but Edna knows all
the hymns we daily sing.
And, lo! before many days I am startled by hearing Lucia
sing--woebegone Lucia. She sings to no tune whatever and smiles at me,
"Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam." So she has learned one English
word in sixteen years. That is better in quality than German Tessie
did. She told me, at the candy factory, that the first thing she
learned in English was "son of a gun."
But as a matter of fact Lucia does know two other words. Once I ironed
a very starched nightgown. It was a very, very large and gathered
nightgown. I held it up and made Lucia look at it.
Lucia snickered. "Da big-a, da fat-a!" said Lucia.
Mrs. Reilly let out a squeal. "She's learnt English!" Mrs. Reilly
called down the line.
"And," I announce, "I'll teach her 'da small-a, da thin-a.'"
Thereafter I held up garments to which those adjectives might apply,
and tried to "learn" Lucia additional English. Lucia giggled and
giggled and waited every evening to walk down the six flights of
stairs with me, and three blocks until our ways parted. Each time I
patted her on the back when we started off and chortled: "Hey, Lucia,
da big-a, da fat-a!" Lucia would giggle again, and that is all we
would have to say. Except one night Lucia pointed to the moon and
said, "Luna." So I make the most of knowing that much Italian.
Oh yes, Lucia and I had one other thing in common. One day at the
laundry I found myself humming a Neapolitan love song, from a victrola
record we have. Lucia's face brightened. The rest of the afternoon I
hummed the tune and Lucia sang the words of that song, much to Mrs.
Reilly's delight, who informed the floor that now, for sure, Lucia was
in love again.
There was much singing on our floor. Irma used often to croon negro
religious songs, the kind parlor entertainers imitate. I loved to
listen to her. It was not my clothes she was ironing. Hattie, down the
line, mostly dwelt on "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam." Hattie had
straight, short hair that stood out all over her head, and a face like
a negro kewpie. She was up to mischief seven hours of the nine, nor
could Miss Cross often subdue her. Hattie had been on our floor four
years. One lively day Irma was singing with gusto "Abide With Me." For
some reason I had broken into the rather unfactory-like ballad of
"Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and Lucia was
caroling some Italian song lustily--all of us at one and the same
time. Finally Miss Cross called over, "For land's sakes, two of you
girls stop singing!" Since Irma and I were the only two of the three
to understand her, we made Christian martyrs of ourselves and let
Lucia have the floor.
Miss Cross was concerned once as to how I happened to know so many
hymns. Green earrings do not look particularly hymny. The fact was, I
had not thought of most of the hymns our sixth floor sang since I was
knee high. In those long ago days a religious grandmother took me once
to a Methodist summer camp meeting, at which time I resolved before my
Maker to join the Salvation Army and beat a tambourine. So when Miss
Cross asked me how I knew so many hymns, and the negro-revivalist
variety, I answered that I once near joined the Salvation Army. "You
don't say!" said the amazed Miss Cross.
One day Miss Cross and Jacobs, a Jew who bossed some department which
brought him often to our floor, to see, for instance, should they wash
more curtains or do furniture covers, had a great set-to on the
subject of religion. Jacobs was an iconoclast. Edna left her
handkerchiefs to join in. I eavesdropped visibly. Jacobs 'lowed there
was no hell. Whereat Miss Cross and Edna wanted to know the sense of
being good. Jacobs 'lowed there was no such thing as a soul. Miss
Cross and Edna fairly clutched each other.
"Then what is there that makes you happy or unhappy, if it ain't your
soul?" asked Miss Cross, clenchingly.
"Oh, hell!" grunted Jacobs, impatiently, after having just argued
there was no such place.
Jacobs uttered much heresy. Miss Cross and Edna perspired in anguish.
Then I openly joined the group.
Miss Cross turned to me. "I tell you how I feel about Christianity. If
a lot of these educated college professors and lawyers and people
like that, when they read all the books they do and are smart as they
are--if Christianity is good enough for them, it's good enough for
me!"
Jacobs was so disgusted that he left.
Whereat Edna freed her soul of all the things she wanted to say about
hell and punishment for sins. She went too far for Miss Cross. Edna
spoke of thieves and murderers and evildoers in general, and what they
ought to get in both this world and the next. Quite a group had
collected by this time.
Then Miss Cross turned to us all and said: "We're in no position to
pass judgment on people that do wrong. Look at us. Here we are, girls
what have everything. We got nice homes, enough to eat and wear, we
have 'most everything in the world we want. We don't know what it's
like to be tempted, 'cause we're so fortunate. An' I say we shouldn't
talk about people who go wrong."
That--in a laundry.
And only Edna seemed not to agree.
* * * * *
To-day at lunch the subject got around to matrimony. Eleanor said:
"Any girl can get married, if she wants to so bad she'll take any old
thing, but who wants to take any old thing?"
"Sure," I added, cockily. "Who wants to pick up with anyone they can
vamp in the Subway?"
Whereupon I get sat upon and the line of argument was interesting.
Thus it ran:
After all, why wasn't a man a girl vamped in the Subway the safest
kind? Where did working girls get a chance to meet men, anyhow? About
the only place was the dance hall, and goodness knows what kind of men
you did meet at a dance hall. They were apt to be the kind to make
questionable husbands; like as not they were "sports." But the Subway!
Now there you were more likely to pick up with the dependable kind.
Every girl at the table knew one or several married couples whose
romances had begun on the Subway, and "every one of 'em turned out
happy." One girl told of a man she could have vamped the Sunday before
in the Subway, but he was too sportily dressed and she got scared and
quit in the middle. The other girls all approved her conduct. Each
expressed deep suspicion of the "sporty" man. Each supported the
Subway romance.