remarked, with an effort toward affability, as we stepped before the
time-register, where I inserted my key for the first time. "All I got to
say is, don't get into no fights with the girls. When they say things to
you, don't talk back. It's them that just takes things as they come, and
lets bygones be bygones, that get the good checks at the end of the
week. Some of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be
that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows
of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up
the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into
the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and
the hum of innumerable voices, I was to meet my prospective forewoman.
"Miss Kinzer! Here's a lady wants to learn," shrilled the high nasal
voice. "Miss Kinzer! Where's Miss Kinzer? Oh, here you are!" as a young
woman emerged from behind a pile of pasteboard boxes. "I've a learner
for you, Miss Kinzer. She's a green girl, but she looks likely, and I
want you to give her a good chance. Better put her on table-work to
begin with." And with that injunction the little old maid hopped away,
leaving me to the scrutiny and cross-questioning of a rather pretty
woman of twenty-eight or thirty.
"Ever worked in a factory before?" she began, with lofty indifference,
as if it didn't matter whether I had or had not.
"No."
"Where did you work?"
"I never worked any place before."
"Oh-h!" There was a world of meaning, as I afterward discovered, in Miss
Kinzer's long-drawn-out "Oh-h!" In this instance she looked up quickly,
with an obvious display of interest, as if she had just unearthed a
remarkable specimen in one who had never worked at anything before.
"You're not used to work, then?" she remarked insinuatingly,
straightening up from the rude desk where she sat like the judge of a
police-court. She was now all attention.
"Well, not exactly that," I replied, nettled by her manner and, above
all, by her way of putting things. "I have worked before, but never at
factory-work."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
She now opened her book and inscribed my name therein.
"Where do you live?"
"Over in East Fourteenth Street," I replied mechanically, forgetting for
the moment the catastrophe that had rendered me more homeless than ever.
"Home?"
"No, I room." Then, reading only too quickly an unpleasant
interpretation in the uplifted eyebrows, a disagreeable curiosity
mirrored in the brown eyes beneath, I added hastily, "I have no home. My
folks are all dead."
What impression this bit of information made I was unable to determine
as I followed her slender, slightly bowed figure across the busy,
roaring workroom.
"Be careful you don't get hurt," she cried, as we threaded a narrow
passage in and out among the stamping, throbbing machinery, where, by
the light that filtered through the grimy windows, I got vague, confused
glimpses of girl-faces shining like stars out of this dark, fearful
chaos of revolving belts and wheels, and above the bedlam noises came
girlish laughter and song.
"Good morning, Carrie!" one quick-witted toiler sang out as she spied
the new girl in tow of the forewoman, and suddenly the whole room had
taken up the burden of the song.
"Don't mind them," my conductor remarked. "They don't mean nothing by
it--watch out there for your head!"
Safe through the outlying ramparts of machinery, we entered the domain
of the table-workers, and I was turned over to Phoebe, a tall girl in
tortoise ear-rings and curl-papers. Phoebe was assigned to "learn" me in
the trade of "finishing." Somewhat to my surprise, she assumed the task
joyfully, and helped me off with my coat and hat. From the loud-mouthed
tirades as to "Annie Kinzer's nerve," it became evident that the
assignment of the job of "learner" is one to cause heartburning
jealousies, and that Phoebe, either because of some special adaptability
or through favoritism, got the lion's share of novices.
"That's right, Phoebe; hog every new girl that comes along!" amiably
bawled a bright-faced, tidy young woman who answered to the name of Mrs.
Smith. Mrs. Smith worked briskly as she talked, and the burden of her
conversation appeared to be the heaping of this sort of good-natured
invective upon the head of her chum--or, as she termed it, her
"lady-friend," Phoebe. The amiability with which Mrs. Smith dealt out
her epithets was only equaled by the perfect good nature of her victim,
who replied to each and all of them with a musically intoned, "Hot air!"
"Hot A--i--r!" The clear tones of Phoebe's soprano set the echoes
ringing all over the great workroom. In and out among the aisles and
labyrinthine passages that wind through towering piles of boxes, from
the thundering machinery far over on the other side of the "loft" to the
dusky recess of the uttermost table, the musical cry reverberated.
"Hot a--i--r!" Every few minutes, all through the long, weary day,
Phoebe found occasion for sounding that magic call.
"The rest of the ladies get up their backs something awful," Phoebe
explained as she dragged a big green pasteboard box from beneath the
work-table. "They say she gives me more 'n my share of learners because
I'm easy to get on with, I guess, and don't play no tricks on them....
You have a right to put your things in here along with my lunch. Them
girls is like to do 'most anything to a new girl's duds if you wuz to
hang them in the coat-room. Them Ginneys 'll do 'most anything. Wuz you
down-stairs when Celie Polatta got into the fight with Rosie?"
"I just missed it," she sighed in reply to my affirmative. "I was born
unlucky."
"Hello, Phoebe! So you've hogged another!" a new voice called across the
table, and I put a question.
"Why do they all want to teach the new girl? I should think they'd be
glad to be rid of the trouble."
"You mean _learn_ her? Why, because the girl that learns the green hand
gets all her work checked on to her own card while she's learning how.
Never worked in a box-factory before?" I shook my head.
"I guessed as much. Well, box-making's a good trade. Have you an apron?"
As I had not, I was then ordered to "turn my skirt," in order that I
might receive the inevitable coat of glue and paste on its inner rather
than on its outer surface. I gently demurred against this very slovenly
expedient.
"All right; call it hot air if you want to. I s'pose you know it all,"
tossing her curl-papers with scorn. "You know better 'n me, of course.
Most learners do think they knows it all. Now looky here, I've been here
six years, and I've learned lots of green girls, and I never had one as
didn't think she hadn't ought to turn her skirt. The ladies I'm used to
working with likes to walk home looking decent and respectable, no
difference what they're like other times."
With the respectability of my ladyhood thus impeached, and lest I
infringe upon the cast-iron code of box-factory etiquette, there was
nothing to do but yield. I unhooked my skirt, dropped it to the floor,
and stepped out of it in a trice, anxious to do anything to win back the
good will of Phoebe. Instantly she brightened, and good humor once more
flashed over her grimy features.
"H-m! that's the stuff! There's one thing you hadn't ought to forget,
and mind, I'm speaking as one lady-friend to another when I tell you
these things--and that is, that you have a right to do as the other
girls in the factory or you'll never get 'long with them. If you don't
they'll get down on you, sure's pussy's a cat; and then they'll make it
hot for you with complaining to the forelady. And then she'll get down
on you after while too, and won't give you no good orders to work on;
and--well, it's just this way: a girl mustn't be odd."
Continuing her philosophy of success, Phoebe proceeded to initiate me
into the first process of my job, which consisted in pasting slippery,
sticky strips of muslin over the corners of the rough brown boxes that
were piled high about us in frail, tottering towers reaching to the
ceiling, which was trellised over with a network of electric wires and
steam-pipes. Two hundred and fifty of these boxes remained to be
finished on the particular order upon which Phoebe was working. Each
must be given eight muslin strips, four on the box and four on its
cover; two tapes, inserted with a hair-pin through awl-holes; two tissue
"flies," to tuck over the bonnet soon to nestle underneath; four pieces
of gay paper lace to please madame's eye when the lid is lifted; and
three labels, one on the bottom, one on the top, and one bearing the
name of a Fifth Avenue modiste on an escutcheon of gold and purple.
The job, as it progressed, entailed ceaseless shoving and shifting and
lifting. In order that we might not be walled in completely by our
cumbersome materials, every few minutes we bore tottering piles across
the floor to the "strippers."
These latter, who were small girls, covered the sides with glazed paper
on machines; and as fast as each box was thus covered it was tossed to
the "turner-in," a still smaller girl, who turned in the overlapping
edge of the strip, after which the box was ready to come back to the
table for the next process at our hands.
By ten o'clock, with Mrs. Smith's gay violet-boxes and our own
bonnet-boxes, we had built a snug bower all round our particular table.
Through its pasteboard walls the din and the songs came but faintly. My
mates' tongues flew as fast as their fingers. The talk was chiefly
devoted to clothes, Phoebe's social activities, and the evident
prosperity of Mrs. Smith's husband's folks, among whom it appeared she
had only recently appeared as "Jeff's" bride. Having exhausted the
Smiths, she again gave Phoebe the floor by asking:
"Are you going to-night?"
"Well, I should say! Don't I look it?"
To determine by Phoebe's appearance where she might be going were an
impossibility to the uninitiated, for her dress was an odd combination
of the extremes of wretchedness and luxury. A woefully torn and
much-soiled shirt-waist; a gorgeous gold watch worn on her breast like a
medal; a black taffeta skirt, which, under the glue-smeared apron,
emitted an unmistakable frou-frou; three Nethersole bracelets on her
wrist; and her feet incased in colossal shoes, broken and stringless.
The latter she explained to Mrs. Smith.
"I just swiped a pair of paw's and brought them along this morning, or
I'd be dished for getting into them high heels to-night. My corns and
bunions 'most killed me yesterday--they always do break out bad about
Easter. My pleasure club," she explained, turning to me--"my pleasure
club, 'The Moonlight Maids,' give a ball to-night." Which fact likewise
explained the curl-papers as well as the slattern shirt-waist, donned to
save the evening bodice worn to the factory that morning and now tucked
away in a big box under the table.
A whole side of our pretty violet-sprinkled bower caved in as a little
"turner-in" lurched against it in passing with a top-heavy column of
boxes. Through the opening daylight is visible once more, and from the
region of the machines is heard a chorus of voices singing "The Fatal
Wedding."
"Hot a--i--r!" Phoebe intones derisively. "It's a wonder Angelina
wouldn't get a new song. Them strippers sing that 'Fatal Wedding' week
in and week out."
We worked steadily, and as the hours dragged on I began to grow dead
tired. The awful noise and confusion, the terrific heat, the foul smell
of the glue, and the agony of breaking ankles and blistered hands seemed
almost unendurable.
At last the hour-hand stood at twelve, and suddenly, out of the
turmoil, a strange quiet fell over the great mill. The vibrations that
had shaken the whole structure to its very foundations now gradually
subsided; the wheels stayed their endless revolutions; the flying belts
now hung from the ceiling like long black ribbons. Out of the stillness
girl-voices and girl-laughter echoed weirdly, like a horn blown in a
dream, while sweeter and clearer than ever rang Phoebe's soprano "Hot
air!"
The girls lunched in groups of ten and twelve. Each clique had its
leader. By an unwritten law I was included among those who rallied
around Phoebe, most of whom she had "learned" at some time or other, as
she was now "learning" me. The luncheons were divested of their
newspaper wrappings and spread over the ends of tables, on discarded
box-lids held across the knees--in fact, any place convenience or
sociability dictated. Then followed a friendly exchange of pickles and
cake. A dark, swarthy girl, whom they called "Goldy" Courtleigh, was
generous in the distribution of the lukewarm contents of a broken-nosed
tea-pot, which was constantly replenished by application to the
hot-water faucet.
Although we had a half-hour, luncheon was swallowed quickly by most of
the girls, eager to steal away to a sequestered bower among the boxes,
there to lose themselves in paper-backed romance. A few of less literary
taste were content to nibble ice-cream sandwiches and gossip. Dress, the
inevitable masquerade ball, murders and fires, were favorite topics of
discussion,--the last always with lowered voices and deep-drawn
breathing. For fire is the box-maker's terror, the grim specter that
always haunts her, and with good reason does she always start at the
word.
"I'm always afraid," declared Phoebe, "and I always run to the window
and get ready to jump the minute I hear the alarm."
"I don't," mused Angelina; "I haven't sense enough to jump: I faint dead
away. There'd be no chance for me if a fire ever broke out here."
Once or twice there was mention of beaux and "steady fellows," but the
flesh-and-blood man of every-day life did not receive as much attention
in this lunch chat as did the heroes of the story-books.
While it was evident, of course, from scattered comments that box-makers
are constantly marrying, it was likewise apparent that they have not
sufficient imagination to invest their hard-working, sweat-grimed
sweethearts with any halo of romance.
Promptly at half-past twelve the awakening machinery called us back to
the workaday world. Story-books were tucked away, and their entranced
readers dragged themselves back to the machines and steaming paste-pots,
to dream and to talk as they worked, hot of their own fellows of last
night's masquerade, but of bankers and mill-owners who in fiction have
wooed and won and honorably wedded just such poor toilers as they
themselves.
VI
IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE
"Don't you never read no story-books?" Mrs. Smith asked, stirring the
paste-pot preparatory to the afternoon's work. She looked at me
curiously out of her shrewd, snapping dark eyes as she awaited my
answer. I was conscious that Mrs. Smith didn't like me for some reason
or other, and I was anxious to propitiate her. I was pretty certain she
thought me a boresome prig, and I determined I'd prove I wasn't. My
confession of an omnivorous appetite for all sorts of story-books had
the desired effect; and when I confessed further, that I liked best of
all a real, tender, sentimental love-story, she asked amiably:
"How do you like 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"
"I've never read that," I replied. "Is it good?"
"It's fine," interposed Phoebe; "but I like 'Woven on Fate's Loom'
better--don't you?" The last addressed to Mrs. Smith.
"No, I can't say as that's my impinion," returned our vis-a-vis, with a
judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping
paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a
good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story.
But I think 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is more int'resting, besides being
better wrote."
"And that's just what I don't like about it," retorted Phoebe, her
fingers traveling like lightning up and down the corners of the boxes.
"You like this hot-air talk, and I don't; and the way them fellows and
girls shoot hot-air at each other in that there 'Little Rosebud's
Lovers' is enough to beat the street-cars!"
"What is it about?" I asked with respectful interest, addressing the
question to Mrs. Smith, who gave promise of being a more serious
reviewer than the flippant Phoebe. Mrs. Smith took a bite of gingerbread
and began:
"It's about a fair, beautiful young girl by the name of Rosebud Arden.
Her pa was a judge, and they lived in a grand mansion in South Car'lina.
Little Rosebud--that's what everybody called her--had a stepsister Maud.
They was both beauties, only Maud didn't have a lovely disposition like
Little Rosebud. A Harvard gradjate by the name of Percy Fielding got
stuck on Little Rosebud for the wealth she was to get from her pa, and
she was terrible stuck on him. She was stuck on him for fair, though not
knowing he was a villain of the deepest dye. That's what the book called
him. He talked her into marrying him clandestinely. Maud and her mother
put up a job to get rid of Little Rosebud, so Maud could get all the
money. So they told lies to her pa, who loved her something awful; and
one night, when she came in after walking in the grand garden with her
husband, who nobody knew she was married to, she found herself locked
out. Then she went to the hotel where he was staying, and told him what
had happened; but he turned her down flat when he heard it, for he
didn't want nothing to do with her when she wasn't to get her pa's
money; and then--"
She stopped her cornering to inspect my work, which had not flagged an
instant. Mrs. Smith took another bite of gingerbread, and continued with
increasing animation:
"And then Little Rosebud turned away into the night with a low cry, just
as if a dagger had been punched into her heart and turned around slow.
She was only sixteen years old, and she had been brought up in luxury
and idolized by her father; and all of a sudden she found herself
homeless, with nowheres to sleep find no money to get a room at the
hotel, and scorned by the man that had sworn to protect her. Her pa had
cursed her, too, something awful, so that he burst a blood-vessel a
little while afterwards and died before morning. Only Little Rosebud
never found this out, for she took the midnight express and came up here
to New York, where her aunt lived, only she didn't know the
street-number."
"Where did she get the money to come to New York with?" interrupted the
practical Phoebe. "That's something I don't understand. If she didn't
have no money to hire a room at a hotel down in South Carolina for
overnight, I'd like to know where she got money for a railroad ticket."
"Well, that's just all you know about them swells," retorted Mrs. Smith.
"I suppose a rich man's daughter like that can travel around all over
the country on a pass. And saying she didn't have a pass, it's only a
story and not true anyway.
"She met a fellow on the train that night who was a villain for fair!"
she went on. "His name was Mr. Paul Howard, and he was a corker. Little
Rosebud, who was just as innocent as they make 'em, fell right into his
clutches. He was a terrible man; he wouldn't stop at nothing, but he
was a very elegant-looking gentleman that you'd take anywheres for a
banker or 'Piscopalian preacher. He tipped his hat to Little Rosebud,
and then she up and asked if he knew where her aunt, Mrs. Waldron,
lived. This was nuts for him, and he said yes, that Mrs. Waldron was a
particular lady-friend of his. When they got to New York he offered to
take Little Rosebud to her aunt's house. And as Little Rosebud hadn't no
money, she said yes, and the villain called a cab and they started for
Brooklyn, him laughing to himself all the time, thinking how easily she
was going to tumble into the trap he was getting fixed for her."
"Hot air!" murmured Phoebe.
"But while they were rattling over the Brooklyn Bridge, another man was
following them in another cab--a Wall-street broker with barrels of
cash. He was Raymond Leslie, and a real good man. He'd seen Rosebud get
into the cab with Paul Howard, who he knew for a villain for fair. They
had a terrible rumpus, but Raymond Leslie rescued her and took her to
her aunt's house. It turned out that he was the gentleman-friend of
Little Rosebud's cousin Ida, the very place they were going to. But,
riding along in the cab, he fell in love with Little Rosebud, and then
he was in a terrible pickle because he was promised to Ida. Little
Rosebud's relations lived real grand, and her aunt was real nice to her
until she saw she had hooked on to Ida's gentleman-friend; then they put
her to work in the kitchen and treated her terrible. Oh, I tell you she
had a time of it, for fair. Her aunt was awful proud and wicked, and
after while, when she found that Raymond Leslie was going to marry
Little Rosebud even if they did make a servant of her, she hired Paul
Howard to drug her and carry her off to an insane-asylum that he ran up
in Westchester County. It was in a lonesome place, and was full of girls
that he had loved only to grow tired of and cast off, and this was the
easiest way to get rid of them and keep them from spoiling his sport.
Once a girl was in love with Paul Howard, she loved him till death. He
just fascinated women like a snake does a bird, and he was hot stuff as
long as he lasted, but the minute he got tired of you he was a demon of
cruelty.
"He did everything he could, when he got Little Rosebud here, to get her
under his power. He tried his dirty best to poison her food, but Little
Rosebud was foxy and wouldn't touch a bite of anything, but just sat in
her cell and watched the broiled chicken and fried oysters, and all the
other good things they sent to tempt her, turn to a dark-purplish hue.
One night she escaped disguised in the turnkey's daughter's dress. Her
name was Dora Gray, and Paul Howard had blasted her life too, but she
worshiped him something awful, all the same-ee. Dora Gray gave Little
Rosebud a lovely dark-red rose that was soaked with deadly poison, so
that if you touched it to the lips of a person, the person would drop
dead. She told Little Rosebud to protect herself with it if they chased
her. But she didn't get a chance to see whether it would work or not,
for when she heard them coming back of her after while with the
bloodhounds barking, she dropped with terror down flat on her stummick.
She had suffered so much she couldn't stand anything more. The doctors
said she was dead when they picked her up, and they buried her and stuck
a little white slab on her grave, with 'Rosebud, aged sixteen' on it."
"Hot air!" from the irrepressible Phoebe.
I felt that courtesy required I should agree upon that point, and I did
so, conservatively, venturing to ask the name of the author.
Mrs. Smith mentioned the name of a well-known writer of trashy fiction
and added, "Didn't you never read none of her books?"
My negative surprised her. Then Phoebe asked:
"Did you ever read 'Daphne Vernon; or, A Coronet of Shame'?"
"No, I haven't read them, either," I replied.
"Oh, mama! Carry me out and let me die!" groaned Mrs. Smith, throwing
down her paste-brush and falling forward in mock agony upon the smeared
table.
"Water! Water!" gasped Phoebe, clutching wildly at her throat; "I'm
going to faint!"
"What's the matter? What did I say that wasn't right?" I cried, the
nature of their antics showing only too plainly that I had "put my foot
in it" in some unaccountable manner. But they paid no attention.
Mortified and utterly at sea, I watched their convulsed shoulders and
heard their smothered giggles. Then in a few minutes they straightened
up and resumed work with the utmost gravity of countenance and without a
word of explanation.
"What was it you was asking?" Phoebe inquired presently, with the most
innocent air possible.
"I said I hadn't read the books you mentioned," I replied, trying to
hide the chagrin and mortification I felt at being so ignominiously
laughed at.
"Eyether of them?" chirped Mrs. Smith, with a vicious wink.
"Eyether of them?" warbled Phoebe in her mocking-bird soprano.
It was my turn to drop the paste-brush now. Eye-ther! It must have
slipped from my tongue unconsciously. I could not remember having ever
pronounced the word like that before.
I didn't feel equal, then and there, to offering them any explanation or
apologies for the offense. So I simply answered:
"No; are they very good? are they as good as 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"
"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Smith, decisively and a little contemptuously;
"and it ain't two books, eye-ther; it's all in one--'Daphne Vernon; or,
A Coronet of Shame.'"
"Well, now I think it is," put in Phoebe. "Them stories with two-handled
names is nearly always good. I'll buy a book with a two-handled name
every time before I'll buy one that ain't. I was reading a good one last
night that I borrowed from Gladys Carringford. It had three handles to
its name, and they was all corkers."
"Why don't you spit 'em out?" suggested Mrs. Smith. "Tell us what it
was."