Yes, but not once was it a full hour. And didn't I know overtime
never counted unless it was at least a full hour?
No, he had never explained anything about that. I'd worked each night
until everything was done and I'd been told I could go.
Well, of course he didn't want to rob me. I really had nothing coming
to me. Each night I'd stayed on till about 6. But they would figure it
out and see what they could pay me. They figured. I waited. At length
majestically he handed out fifty-six cents.
* * * * *
The fat, older brother in the firm rode down in the elevator with
me--he who used to move silently around the factory about four times a
day, squinting out of his beady eyes, such light as shown there
bespeaking 100 per-cent possession. He held his fat thumbs in the
palms of his fat hands and benignly he was wont to survey his realm.
Mine! Mine! Mine! his every inch of being said. Nor could his
proportion of joy have been greater if he had six floors of his own to
survey, instead of one little claptrap back room. It did make him so
happy. He wore a kindly and never-changing expression, and he never
spoke.
Going down in the elevator, he edged over to my corner. He pinched my
arm, he pinched my cheeks. _Ach_, but he'd miss me bad. Nice girl, I
was.
Evidently he, too, had evolved a moral equivalent for a living wage.
Little kindly personal attentions were his share for anything not
adequately covered by twelve dollars and fifty-six cents.
V
_No. 536 Tickets Pillow Cases_
Ah, one should write of the bleachery _via_ the medium of poetry! If
the thought of the brassworks comes in one breath and the bleachery in
the next, the poetry must needs be set to music--the Song of the
Bleachery. What satisfaction there must be to an employer who grows
rich--or makes his income, whatever it may be--from a business where
so much light-heartedness is worked into the product! Let those who
prefer to sob over woman labor behind factory prison bars visit our
bleachery. Better still, let them work there. Here at least is one
spot where they can dry their tears. If the day ever dawns when the
conditions in that bleachery can be referred to as typical of American
industrial life, exist the agitator, the walking delegate, the closed
and open shop fight.
I can hear a bleachery operator grunting, "My Gawd! what's the woman
ravin' over? Is it _our_ bleachery she's goin' on about?" Most of the
workers in the bleachery know no other industrial experience. In that
community, so it seems, a child is born, attends school up to the
minimum required, or a bit beyond, and then goes to work in the
bleachery--though a few do find their way instead to the overall
factory, and still fewer to the shirtwaist factory. No other openings
exist at the Falls.
There is more or less talk nowadays about Industrial Democracy. Some
of us believe that the application of the democratic principle to
industry is the most promising solution to industrial unrest and
inefficiency. The only people who have written about the idea or
discussed it, so far, have been either theorizers or propagandists
from among the intellectuals, or enthused appliers of the principle,
more or less high up in the business end of the thing. What does
Industrial Democracy mean to the rank and file working under it? Is it
one of those splendid programs which look epoch-making in spirit, but
never permeates to those very people whom it is especially designed to
affect?
It was to find out what the workers themselves thought of Industrial
Democracy that I boarded a boat and journeyed seventy miles up the
Hudson to work in the bleachery, where, to the pride of those
responsible, functions the Partnership Plan.
What do the workers think of working under a scheme of Industrial
Democracy?
What do the citizens of the United States think of living under a
scheme of Political Democracy?
The average citizen does not think one way or the other about it three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Even voting days the rank and
file of us do not ponder overlong on democracy _versus_ autocracy.
Indeed, if it could be done silently, in the dead of night, and the
newspapers would promise not to say a word about it, perhaps we might
change to a benevolent autocracy, and if we could silence all orators,
as well as the press, what proportion of the population would be
vitally concerned in the transition? Sooner or later, of course,
alterations in the way of doing this and that would come about, the
spirit of the nation would change. But through it all--autocracy, if
it were benevolent, or democracy--there would be little conscious
concern on the part of the great majority. Always provided the press
and orators would keep quiet.
From my own experience, the same could be said of Industrial
Democracy. Autocracy, democracy, the rank and file of the workers,
especially the women workers, understand not, ponder not.
"Say," chuckled Mamie, "I could 'a' died laughin' once. A fella came
through here askin' everybody what we thought of the Partnership Plan.
My Gawd! when he got to me I jus' told him I didn't understand the
first thing about it. What ud he do but get out a little book and
write what I said down. Never again! Anybody asks me now what I think
of the Partnership Plan, and I keep my mouth shut, you bet."
Once an enthused visitor picked on me to ask what I thought of working
under the Partnership Plan. After he moved on the girls got the
giggles. "Say, these folks that come around here forever asking what
we think about the Partnership Plan! Say, what any of us knows about
that could be put in a nutshell."
And gray-haired Ella Jane, smartest of all, ten years folding pillow
cases, said: "I don't know anything about that Partnership Plan. All I
know is that we get our share of the profits and our bonuses, and I
can't imagine a nicer place to work. They do make you work for what
you get, though. But it's all white and aboveboard and you know
nobody's trying to put something over on you."
But the general spirit of the place? Could that be traced to anything
else but the special industrial scheme of things? One fact at least is
certain--the employing end is spared many a detail of management; the
shift in responsibility is educating many a worker to the problems of
capital. And production is going up.
* * * * *
Have you ever tried to find a spare bed in a town where there seems to
be not a spare bed to be had? I left my belongings in an ice cream
store and followed every clue, with a helpful hint from the one
policeman, or the drug store man, or a fat, soiled grandmother who
turned me down because they were already sleeping on top of one
another in her house. In between I dropped on a grassy hillside and
watched Our Bleachery baseball team play a Sunday afternoon game with
the Colored Giants. We won.
And then I took up the hunt again, finally being guided by the Lord to
the abode of the sisters Weston--two old maids, combined age one
hundred and forty-nine years, who took boarders. Only there were no
more to take. The Falls was becoming civilized. Improvements were
being installed in most of the houses. Boarders, which meant mainly
school-teachers, preferred a house with Improvements. The abode of the
sisters Weston had none. It was half a company house, with a pump in
the kitchen which drew up brown water of a distressing odor.
The sisters Weston had worked in the overall factory in their earlier
years, hours 7 to 6, wages five dollars a week, paid every five to six
weeks. Later they tried dressmaking; later still, boarders. I belonged
to the last stage of all--they no longer took boarders, they took a
boarder. Mr. Welsh from the electrical department in the bleachery,
whose wife was in Pennsylvania on a visit to her folks, being sickly
and run down, as seemed the wont of wives at the Falls, took his meals
at our boarding house, when he was awake for them. Every other week
Mr. Welsh worked night shift.
My belongings were installed in the room assigned me, and the younger
of the sisters Weston, seventy-three, sat stiffly but kindly in a
chair. "Now about the room rent...?" she faltered. Goodness! yes! My
relief at finding a place to sleep in after eleven turn-downs was so
great that I had completely neglected such a little matter as what the
room might cost me.
"What do you charge?" I asked.
"What do you feel you can pay? We want you should have some money left
each week after your board's paid. What do you make at the
bleachery?"
My conscience fidgeted within me a bit at that. "I'd rather you
charged me just what you think the room and board are worth to you,
not what you think I can pay."
"Well, we used to get eight dollars a week for room and board. It's
worth that."
It is cheaper to live than die in the Falls at that rate. Three hot
meals a day I got: breakfast, coffee, toast, two eggs, mush, later
fruit; dinner, often soup, always meat, potatoes, vegetables, coffee,
and a dessert; supper, what wasn't finished at dinner, and tea. Always
there was plenty of everything. Sometimes too much, if it were
home-canned goods which had stood too many years on the shelves, due
to lack of boarders to eat the same. But the sisters Weston meant the
best.
"How d'ya like the punkin pie?" the older, Miss Belle, would ask.
The pumpkin pie had seemed to taste a trifle strange, but we laid it
to the fact that it was some time since we had eaten pumpkin pie. "It
tastes all right."
"Now, there! Glad to hear you say it. Canned that punkin ourselves.
Put it up several years ago. Thought it smelled and looked a bit
spoiled, but I says, guess I'll cook it up; mebbe the heat 'n' all'll
turn it all right again. There's more in the kitchen!"
But it suddenly seemed as if I must get to work earlier that noon than
I had expected. "Can't ya even finish your pie? I declare I'm scared
that pie won't keep long."
Mr. Welsh got sick after the first couple of meals, but bore on
bravely, nor did the matter of turned string beans consciously worry
Mr. Welsh. The sisters themselves were always dying; their faithful
morning reports of the details of what they had been through the night
before left nothing to the imagination. "Guess I oughtn't ta 'a' et
four hot cakes for supper when I was so sick yesterday afternoon. I
sure was thinking I'd die in the night.... 'Liza, pass them baked
beans; we gotta git them et up."
* * * * *
At six o'clock in the morning the bleachery whistle blows three times
loud enough to shake the shingles on the roofs of the one-hundred-year-old
houses and the leaves on the more than one-hundred-year-old trees
about the Falls. Those women who have their breakfasts to get and
houses to straighten up before they leave for work--and there are a
number--must needs be about before then. Seven o'clock sees folks on
all roads leading to the bleachery gate. At 7.10 the last whistle
blows; at 7.15 the power is turned on, wheels revolve, work begins.
It must be realized that factory work, or any other kind of work, in a
small town is a different matter from work in a large city, if for no
other reason than the transportation problem. Say work in New York
City begins at 7.45. That means for many, if not most, of the workers,
an ordeal of half an hour's journey in the Subways or "L," shoving,
pushing, jamming, running to catch the shuttle; shoving, pushing,
jamming, running for the East Side Subway; shoving, pushing, jamming,
scurrying along hard pavements to the factory door; and at the end of
a day of eight or nine hours' work, all that to be done over again to
get home.
Instead, at the Falls, it meant a five minutes' leisurely--unless one
overslept--walk under old shade trees, through the glen along a path
lined with jack-in-the-pulpits, wild violets, moss--the same five
minutes' walk home at noon to a hot lunch, plenty of time in which to
eat it, a bit of visiting on the way back to the factory, and a
leisurely five minutes' walk home in the late afternoon. No one has
measured yet what crowded transportation takes out of a body in the
cities.
New York factories are used to new girls--they appear almost daily in
such jobs as I have worked in. At the Falls a strange person in town
is excitement enough, a strange girl at the bleachery practically an
unheard-of thing. New girls appear now and then to take the places of
those who get married or the old women who must some time or other
die. But not strange girls. Everyone in the bleachery grew up with
everyone else; as Ella Jane said, you know their mothers and their
grandmothers, too.
It so happened that a cataclysmic event had visited the Falls the week
before my appearance. A family had moved away, thereby detaching a
worker from the bleachery--the girl who ticketed pillow cases. The
Sunday I appeared in town, incidentally, seven babies were born. That
event--or those events--plus me, minus the family who moved away and
an old man who had died the week before, made the population of the
Falls 4,202. Roughly, half that number either worked at the bleachery
or depended on those who worked there. Who or what the other half
were, outside the little group of Main Street tradespeople, remained a
mystery. Of course, there were the ministers of the gospel and their
families--in the same generous overdose--apportioned to most small
towns. The actual number working in the bleachery was about six
hundred and twenty men and women.
Odd, the different lights in which you can see a small town. The
chances are that, instead of being a worker, I might have spent the
week end visiting some of the "_elite_" of the Falls. In that case we
should have motored sooner or later by the bleachery gate and past
numerous company houses. My host, with a wave of the hand, would have
dispatched the matter by remarking, "The town's main industry. The
poor devils live in these houses you see."
Instead, one day I found myself wandering along the street of the
well-to-do homes. What in the world...? Who all ever lived way up
here? Whatever business had they in our Falls? Did they have anyone to
talk to, anything to do? I laid the matter before Mamie O'Brien.
"Any rich folk living around here?"
"Guess so. Some swell estates round about--never see the people much."
"Are they stuck up?"
"Dunno--na. Saw one of 'em at the military funeral last week. She
wasn't dressed up a bit swell--just wore a plaid skirt. Didn't look
like anybody at all."
In other words, we were the town. It was the bleachery folk you saw on
the streets, in the shops, at the post office, at the movies. The
bleachery folk, or their kind, I saw at the three church services I
attended. If anyone had dared sympathize with us--called us "poor
devils"!
* * * * *
The first morning at the bleachery the foreman led me to the narrow
space in the middle of three large heavy tables placed "U" shape,
said, "Here's a girl to ticket," and left me. The foreman knew who I
was. Employment conditions at the bleachery were such that it was
necessary to make sure of a job by arranging matters ahead of time
with the manager. Also, on a previous occasion I had visited the
bleachery, made more or less of an investigation, and sat in on a
Board of Operatives' meeting. Therefore, I left off my earrings,
bought no Black Jack, did not feel constrained to say, "It ain't,"
though saw no reason why I too should not indulge in "My Gawd!" if I
felt like it. I find it one of the most contagious expressions in the
language. The girls did not seem to know who I was or what I was. Not
until the second day did the girl who stood next to me ask my name--a
formality gone through within the first five minutes in any New York
job. I answered Cornelia Parker. She got it Miss Parks, and formally
introduced me around the table--"Margaret, meet Miss Parks--Miss
White, Miss Parks." Also all very different from New York. About the
only questions asked by any girl were, "You're from New York?" and,
"Where did you work before you came here?" Some wondered if I wasn't
lonesome without my folks. I didn't have any folks. There was none of
the expressed curiosity of the New York worker as to my past, present,
and future. Not until the last few days did I feel forced to volunteer
now and then enough information so that they would get my name and me
more or less clear in their minds and never feel, after their
heart-warming cordiality, that I had tried "to put anything over on
them." Whether I was Miss Parks or Mrs. Parker, it made no difference
to them. It did to me, for I felt here at last I could keep up the
contacts I had made; and instead of walking off suddenly, leaving good
friends behind without a word, I could honestly say I was off to the
next job, promise everyone I'd write often and come again to the
Falls, and have everyone promise to write me and never come to New
York without letting me know. I can lie awake nights and imagine what
fun it is going to be getting back to the Falls some day and waiting
by the bridge down at the bleachery for the girls to come out at noon,
seeing them all again. Maybe Mrs. Halley will call out her, "Hi! look
'ose 'ere!"
* * * * *
At our bleachery, be it known, no goods were manufactured. We took
piece goods in the rough, mostly white, bleached, starched, and
finished it, and rolled or folded the finished stuff for market. In
Department 10, where most of the girls worked, the west end of the big
third floor, three grades of white goods were made into sheets and
pillow cases, ticketed, bundled, and boxed for shipping. Along the
entire end of the room next the windows stood the operating machines,
with rows of girls facing one another, all hemming sheets or making
pillow cases. There were some ten girls who stood at five heavy
tables, rapidly shaking out the hemmed sheets, inspecting them for
blemishes of any kind, folding them for the mangle, hundreds and
hundreds a day. At other tables workers took the ironed sheets,
ticketed them, tied them in bundles, wrapped and labeled and stacked
the bundles, whereupon they sooner or later were wheeled off to one
side and boxed. Four girls worked at the big mangle. Besides the
mangle, one girl spent her day hand-ironing such wrinkles as appeared
now and then after the mangle had done its work.
So much for sheets. There were three girls (the term "girl" is used
loosely, since numerous females in our department will never see fifty
again) who slipped pillow cases over standing frames which poked out
the corners. After they were mangled they were inspected and folded,
ticketed, bundled, and wrapped at our three U-shaped tables. Also
there, one or two girls spent part time slipping pieces of dark-blue
paper under the hemstitched part of the pillow cases and sheets, so
that the ultimate consumer might get the full glory of her purchase.
The first week Nancy, a young Italian girl (there were only two
nationalities in the Falls--Italians and Americans), and I ticketed
pillow cases. At the end of that time I had become efficient enough so
that I alone kept the bundler busy and Nancy was put on other work.
Ticketing means putting just the right amount of smelly paste on the
back of a label, slapping it swiftly just above the center of the hem.
There are hundreds of different labels, according to the size and
quality of the pillow cases and the store which retails them. My best
record was ticketing about six thousand seven hundred in one day. The
cases come folded three times lengthwise, three times across, sixty in
a bundle. As fast as I ticketed a bundle I shoved them across to the
"bundler," who placed six cases one way, six the other, tied the
bundle of twelve at each end with white tape, stacked them in layers
of three until the pile was as high as possible for safety, when it
was shoved across to the wrapper. How Margaret's fingers flew! She had
each dozen in its paper, tied and labeled, in the wink of an eye,
almost.
In our department there were three boys who raced up and down with
trucks; one other who wrapped the sheets when he did not have his arm
gayly around some girl; and the little man to pack the goods in their
shipping boxes and nail them up. There were two forewomen--pretty,
freckled-faced Tess and the masculine Winnie. Over all of us was
"Hap," the new boss elected by Department 10 as its representative on
the Board of Operatives. It is safe to say he will be re-elected as
long as death or promotion spare him. Hap is a distinct success. He
never seems to notice anybody or anything--in fact, most of the time
you wonder where in the world he is. But on Hap's shoulders rests the
output for our entire department. The previous "boss" was the kind who
felt he must have his nose in everything and his eye on everybody. The
month after Hap and his methods of letting folks alone came into
power, production jumped ahead.
But Hap spoke up when he felt the occasion warranted it. The mangle
girls started quitting at 11.30. They "got by" with it until the
matter came to Hap's notice. He lined the four of them up and, while
the whole room looked on with amused interest, he told them what was
what. After that they stayed till 12.
Another time a piece-rate girl allowed herself to be overpaid two
dollars and said nothing about it. Hap called her into the office.
"Didn't you get too much in your envelope this week?"
"I dunno. I 'ain't figured up yet."
"Don't you keep track of your own work?"
"Yes, but I 'ain't figured up yet."
"Bring me your card."
The girl reddened and produced a card with everything up to date and
two dollars below the amount in her pay envelope.
"You better take a week off," said Hap. But he repented later in the
afternoon and took it back, only he told her to be more careful.
It was the bundler who took me under her wing that first day--pretty
Mamie O'Brien--three generations in the Falls. There was no talk of
vamping, no discussions of beaus. Everyone told everything she had
done since Saturday noon.
"Hey, Margaret, didjagototha movies Saturday night?"
"Sure. Swell, wasn't it?"
"You said it. I 'ain't ever saw sweller...."
"I seen Edna's baby Sunday. Awful cute. Had on them pink shoes Amy
made it...."
"Say, ain't that awful about Mr. Tinney's grandchild over to
Welkville! Only lived three hours...."
"They're puttin' in the bathtub at Owenses'...."
"What dya know! After they got the bathroom all papered at Chases'
they found they'd made a mistake and it's all got to be ripped down.
Bathtub won't fit in." ("Improvements" were one of the leading topics
of conversation day in and day out at the Falls.)
"Ain't that new hat of Jess Tufts a fright? I 'ain't never saw her
look worse."
Back and forth it went--all the small gossip of the small town where
everyone knows everything about everyone else from start to finish. It
was all a bit too mild for Mamie, as I later learned--indeed, I began
to learn it that day. It was no time before Mamie was asking my
opinion on every detail of the Stillman case: Did I think Mrs. Stokes
would get her divorce? Did I consider somebody or other guilty of some
crime or other? Somebody gets the electric chair to-morrow? Wasn't it
the strangest thing that somebody's body hadn't been recovered yet?
Whatdyaknow about a father what'll strangle his own child? A man got
drowned after he'd been married only two days. And did I think Dempsey
or Carpentier would win the fight? "Gee! Wouldn't you give your hat to
see that fight?"
Meanwhile I was nearly drowning myself and the labels in paste, at the
same time trying to appear intelligent about a lot of things I
evidently was most uninformed about; working up an enthusiasm for the
Dempsey-Carpentier fight which would have led anyone to believe my
sole object in working was to accumulate enough cash to pay the price
of admission. And all this time I was feasting my eyes on fresh-faced
girls in summer wash dresses, mostly Americans, some Italians; no
rouge whatever; not a sign of a lipstick, except on one girl; little
or no powder; a large, airy, clean, white room, red-and-white striped
awnings at the windows; and wherever the eye looked hillsides solid
with green trees almost close enough to touch (the bleachery was built
down in a hollow beside a little river). Oh, it was too good to be
true, after New York!
Pretty gray-haired, pink-cheeked (real genuine pink-cheeked) Mrs. Hall
and I were talking about the bleachery on our way to work one morning.
Mrs. Hall had been a forelady in a New York private dressmaking
establishment. She had what is called "style and personality." Her
wages in New York had been thirty-five dollars a week, and she had
much variety and responsibility, which she loved. Circumstances
brought her to the Falls. She had never worked in a factory; the very
idea had appalled her, yet she must work. One day she went up to
Department 10 to see what it was all like. "Why," she said, "it took
my breath away! I felt as if I was in one of those lovely rooms where
they did Red Cross work during the war. Of course I get only a small
amount a week and it's the same thing over and over again, and after
what I was used to in New York that's hard. But it never seems like I
was in a factory, somehow."
Just so. There was never the least "factory atmosphere" about the
place. It used to make me think of a reception, the voice of the
machines for the music, with always, always the sound of much talk and
laughter above the whir. Sometimes--especially Mondays, with everyone
telling everyone else what she had done over the week end, and for
some reason or other Fridays, the talk was "enough to get you crazy,"
Margaret used to say. "Sure it makes my head swim." Nor was the
laughter the giggling kind, indulged in when the forelady was not
looking. It was the riotous variety, where at least one of a group
would "laugh till she most cried"; nor did it make the least
difference, whether the forelady was one foot or one hundred away.
Like as not the forelady was laughing with the rest. Only once did I
ever see authority exerted to curb merriment. On that occasion things
reached a climax. All those not directly concerned with the joke
became so curious as to what it was all about that one by one the
girls left their machines and gathered up one end of the room to laugh
with the rest, until production, it was apparent, was at a standstill.
Winnie went out and told Hap. Hap merely stepped inside the room, and
every girl did "sure get busy." It was the only time even Hap so much
as paid the least attention to what went on. All day there was talk,
all day laughter, all day visiting a bit here and there, back and
forth. Yet in the month of April production had reached the highest
point ever, and the month I was there was expected to surpass April.
It is significant that with all the fun, the standard of efficiency
and production in our bleachery was such that out of eighteen like
industries in the country, we were one of the only two running full
time. Thirteen were shut down altogether.
That first day I asked Mamie what time work began in the morning.
Mamie giggled. "I dunno. Say, Margaret, what time does work begin in
the morning?" "Seven-fifteen, I think." Under the Partnership Plan I
knew that each operative was allowed a week's vacation on full pay.
But every time late, after fifteen times, deducted so many minutes
from the vacation, just as any time off without sufficient cause meant
that much less vacation.
"Ever been late?" I asked Mamie.
More giggles. "Say, Margaret, she wants to know if I was ever late!"
To me: "Ninety-seven times last year--no vacation at all for mine. Ask
Margaret how many time she's been late."
Still more giggles. Margaret giggled, I giggled. Margaret had been
late one hundred eighteen times. Some of the girls were late
practically every day; they were like small boys who would not for the
world have anyone think they would try to do in school what was
expected of them. Yet there were several girls who were to come into
their full week off--the names and dates were posted on the bulletin
board; others were given five days, three days, down to a few whose
allotment out of a possible week was one-half day. But several of the
most boastful over their past irregular record, and who were receiving
no vacation at all, claimed they were going to be on time every day
this coming year--"Sure." This was the first year the vacation with
pay had been granted. I thought of Tessie at the candy factory--Tessie
who had been sent speedily home by the pop-eyed man at the door
because she was ten minutes late, due to taking her husband to the
hospital. Verily, there is no "factory atmosphere" about the
bleachery, compared with New York standards. The men, they say, take
the whole matter of punctuality and attendance more seriously than the
women.
The second day I began my diary with, "A bleachery job is no job at
all." That again was by contrast. Also, those first two days were the
only two, until the last week, that we did not work overtime at our
table. When orders pour in and the mangle works every hour and extra
folders are put on and the bundles of pillow cases pile up, then, no
matter with what speed you manage to slap on those labels, you never
seem to catch up. Night after night Nancy, Mamie, Margaret, and I
worked overtime. From 7.15 in the morning till 6 at night is a long
day. Then for sure and certain we did get tired, and indeed by the end
of a week of it we were well-nigh "tuckered out." But the more orders
that came in the more profits to be divided fifty-fifty between
Capital and Labor.
(The Handbook on the Partnership Plan reads: "Our profit sharing is a
50-50 proposition. The market wage of our industry is paid to Labor
and a minimum of 6% is paid to Capital. After these have been paid,
together with regular operating expenses, depreciation reserve, taxes,
etc., and after the Sinking Funds have been provided for by setting
aside 15% of the next profits for Labor and 15% for Capital, the
remaining net profits are divided 50% for Capital and 50% for the
operatives, and the latter sum divided in proportion to the amount of
each one's pay for the period.... A true partnership must jointly
provide for losses as well as for the sharing of profits.... These
Sinking Funds are intended to guarantee Capital its minimum return of
6% during periods when this shall not have been carried, and to
provide unemployment insurance for the operatives, paying half wages
when the company is unable to furnish employment.")
In the candy factory back in New York, Ida, the forelady, would holler
from the end of the room, "My Gawd! girls, work faster!" At the
bleachery, when extra effort was needed, the forelady passed a letter
around our table from a New York firm, saying their order must be
filled by the end of that week or they would feel justified in
canceling the same. Every girl read the letter and dug her toes in. No
one ever said, "You gotta work overtime to-night!" We just mutually
decided there was nothing else to do about it, so it was, "Let's work
overtime to-night again." It was time-and-a-half pay for overtime, to
be sure, but it would be safe to assert it was not alone for the time
and a half we worked. We felt we had to catch up on orders. A few
times only, some one by about four o'clock would call: "Oh, gee! I'm
dead; I've been workin' like a horse all day. I jus' can't work
overtime to-night." The chances were if one girl had been working like
a horse we all had. Such was the interrelation of jobs at our table.
Except, indeed, Italian Nancy. Whether it was because Nancy was young,
or not overstrong, or not on piece rates, or a mixture of the three,
Nancy never anguished herself working, either during the day or
overtime. One evening she spent practically the entire overtime hour,
at time and a half, washing and ironing a collar and cuffs for one of
the girls. Nor did any of our table think it at all amiss.
During the day Nancy was the main little visitor from our table. She
ambled around and brought back the news. If interesting enough from
any quarter, another of us would betake herself off for more details.
One day Nancy's young eyes were as big as saucers.
"Say, whatdyaknow! That Italian girl Minna, she's only fifteen and
she's got a gold ring on with a white stone in it and she says she's
engaged!" We sent Nancy back for more details. For verification she
brought back the engagement ring itself. "Whatdyaknow! Only fifteen!"
(Nancy herself was a year beyond that mature age.) "The man she's
goin' to marry is awful old, twenty-five! Whatdyaknow!" At a previous
time Nancy had regaled our table with an account of how, out of a
sense of duty to a fellow-countryman, she had announced to this same
Minna that she simply must take a bath. "Na," said Minna, "too early
yet." That was the end of May.
We were all, even I after the third day, on piecework at our table,
except Nancy. Most of the girls in Department 10 were on piecework.
There was one union in the bleachery; that was in another department
where mostly men were employed--the folders. They worked time rates.
With us, as soon as a girl's record warranted it, she was put on piece
rates. Nancy and most of those young girls were still, after one or
two years, on time rates--around eleven dollars a week they made.
There was one case of a girl who did little, day in and day out, but
her hair. She was the one girl who used a lipstick. They had taken her
off time rates and put her on piecework. She was a machine operator.
The last week I was there her earnings were a little over two dollars
for the week. She was incorrigible. Some of the machine operators made
around thirty dollars a week. The mangle girls earned around
twenty-five dollars. Old Mrs. Owens, standing up and inspecting
sheets at the table behind me, made from twenty dollars to twenty-five
dollars. (Mrs. Owens had inspected sheets for thirteen years. I asked
her if she ever felt she wanted to change and try something else. "No,
sir," said Mrs. Owens; "a rolling stone gathers no moss.") Mamie,
bundler, made around sixteen dollars; Margaret, at our table, went as
high once as twenty-five dollars, but she averaged around twenty
dollars. My own earnings were twelve dollars and fifty-three cents the
first week, fifteen dollars and twenty-three cents the second, eight
dollars and twenty-seven cents the third. All the earnings at our
table were low that last week--Margaret's were around twelve dollars.
For one thing, there was a holiday. No wonder employers groan over
holidays! The workers begin to slacken up about two days ahead and it
takes two days after the day off to recover. Then, too, we indulged in
too much nonsense that last week. We laughed more than we worked, and
paid for it. The next week Mamie and Margaret claimed they were going
to bring their dinners the whole week to work that noon hour and make
up for our evil days. But as gray-haired Ella Jane said, she laughed
so much that week she claimed she had a stomach ache. "We'll be a long
time dead, once we die. Why not laugh when you get a chance?"
Why not?--especially in a small town where it is well to take each
chance for fun and recreation as it comes--since goodness knows when
the next will show itself. Outside of the gayety during working
hours, there was little going on about the Falls. Movies--of course,
movies. Four times a week the same people, usually each entire family,
conscientiously change into their best garments and go to the movie
palace. The children and young people fill the first rows, the grown
folk bring up the rear. Four times a week young and old get fed on
society dramas, problem plays, bathing girl comedies. Next day it is
always:
"Sadie, did ya saw the show last night? Wasn't it swell where she
recognized her lover just before he got hung?"
Just once since movies were has the town been taken by storm, and that
was while I was there. It was "The Kid" that did it. Many that day at
the bleachery said they weren't going--didn't like Charlie
Chaplin--common and pie-slinging; cheap; always all of that.
Sweet-faced Mamie, who longs to go through Sing Sing some day--"That's
where they got the biggest criminals ever. Wonder if they let you see
the worst ones"--Mamie, who had thrilled to a trip through the insane
asylum; Mamie, who could discuss for hours the details of how a father
beat his child to death; Mamie, to whom a divorce was meat and a
suicide drink--Mamie wasn't going to see Charlie Chaplin. All that
pie-slinging stuff made her sick.
Usually a film shows but once at the Falls. "The Kid" ran Monday
matinee. Monday night the first time in history the movie palace was
filled and over two hundred turned away. Tuesday night it was shown
to a third full house. Everyone was converted.
As for dancing, once a week, Friday nights, there was a dance at the
"Academy." Time was when Friday night's dance was an event, and the
male contingent from the largest near-by city was wont to attend. But
it cost twenty-four cents to journey by trolley from the largest
near-by city to the Falls, fifty cents to attend the dance.
Unemployment at the largest near-by city meant that any dancing
indulged in by its citizens was at home, minus car fare. Also, the
music for dancing at the Falls was not favorably commented upon. So
sometimes there were six couples at the dance, once in a great while
twenty. The youths present were home talent, short on thrills for the
fair ones present.
Indeed, the problem of the Falls was the problem of every small
town--where in the world could an up-and-doing girl turn for a beau?
The only young men in the place were those married still younger and
anchored there, or the possessors of too little gumption to get out.
Those left hung over the rail at the end of the Main Street bridge and
eyed every female passer-by. It was insult heaped on boredom, from the
girls' point of view, that a Falls youth never so much as tipped his
hat when spoken to. "Paralysis of the arms is here widespread," Bess
put it. "You oughta see 'em in winter," Margaret giggled one Sunday
while four of us were walking the streets for diversion. "If you want
to know where the gallants of the Falls are in winter, look for a
sunny spot. They collect in patches of sun, like some kind of bugs or
animals."