attained a speed of some hundred and odd words a minute, the hardest
task was yet before me. This task was not in finding a position, but in
filling that position satisfactorily. My first position at ten dollars a
week I held only one day. I failed to read my notes. This was more
because of fright and of self-consciousness, however, than of
inefficiency. My next paid me only six dollars a week, but it was an
excellent training-school, and in it I learned self-confidence, perfect
accuracy, and rapidity. Although this position paid me two dollars less
than what I had been earning brewing tea and coffee and handing it over
the counter, and notwithstanding the fact that I knew of places where I
could go and earn ten dollars a week, I chose to remain where I was.
There was method in my madness, however, let me say. I had a considerate
and conscientious employer, and although I had a great deal of work, and
although it had to be done most punctiliously, he never allowed me to
work a moment overtime. He opened his office at nine in the morning, and
I was not expected before quarter after; he closed at four sharp. This
gave me an opportunity for further improving myself with a view to
eventually taking not a ten-dollar, but a twenty-dollar position. I went
back to night-school and took a three months' "speed course," and at the
same time continued to add to my general education and stock of
knowledge by a systematic reading of popular books of science and
economics. I became tremendously interested in myself as an economic
factor, and I became tremendously interested in other working girls from
a similar point of view. Of science and economics I knew nothing when I
started out to earn my living.
One day I answered an advertisement calling for the sort of stenographer
I now believed myself to be. It brought a response signed with the name
of a large religious publishing house. I got the position, beginning
with a salary of fifteen dollars a week, which was to be increased to
twenty dollars provided I could fill the position. That I should succeed
in doing so, there was evident doubt in my employers' minds, and no
wonder! For I was the fifth to attempt it.
My work consisted for the most part in taking dictation from the editor
of the periodical published weekly by the house--letters to
contributors, editorials, and special articles. Also, when it was found
that I had some intelligent, practical knowledge of grammar and
English--and here was where my studies of the preceding year bore
fruit--I was intrusted with the revision and correction of the least
important of the manuscripts, thus relieving the busy editors of one of
their most irksome tasks.
One day I had occasion to mention to the editor some of the strenuous
experiences I had undergone in my struggle to attain a decent living. He
was startled--not to say a little shocked--that a young woman of
apparently decent birth and upbringing should have formed such an
intimate acquaintance with the dark side of life. Inspired by his
sympathetic interest, I boldly interviewed the editor of a well-known
monthly magazine, with the result that I immediately prepared two papers
on certain of my experiences; and, to my surprise and delight, they were
accepted.
And, somehow, with the appearance of those two articles--the first
fruits of authorship--part of the horror and loathing of that unhappy
period of servitude fell away from me; the sordid suffering, the hurt to
pride, the ineffaceable scar on heart and soul I felt had not been in
vain. I can now look back upon the recent, still vivid past without a
shiver; for there is comfort in the thought that what I have undergone
is to be held up to others as a possible lesson and warning.
And now a word as to the verity of this narrative. Have I actually been
through all that I have described? Yes, and more; and in other cities
beside New York.
Yet for the sake of unity the order of things has been somewhat
changed; and no record is given of many weeks, and even months, when
life flowed uneventfully, if not smoothly, on.
"But," says the thoughtful reader, "do your sordid experiences of some
two or three years ago match conditions of to-day?" and I answer:
Generally speaking, they do; because lately I reinforced memory by
thorough investigation.
I went further than that: when it came to me to write this little
book--that is so absolutely a transcript from real life--I voluntarily
labored, a week here, a week there, at various trades allied to those
that previously had been my sole means of livelihood, and all the time
living consistently the life of the people with whom I was thus
temporarily associated.
There were, of course, many little points that when I was a worker in
earnest I had not eyes to see, but which my recent conscious study
brought out in proper perspective.
Yet it was as a working girl that I learned to know most of the
characters that people this book, and which give to it any value it may
possess.
For obvious reasons, I have been obliged to give fictitious names to
factories and shops in which I worked; and I have, in most cases,
substituted for the names of the streets where the factories were
located the names of streets of like character.
The physical conditions, the sordid wretchedness of factory and
workshop, of boarding-and lodging-house, I have not in any wise
overstated.
As to moral conditions, I have not been in every instance so
scrupulously truthful--that is, I have not told all the truth. For it is
a truth which only too often will not bear even the suggestion of
telling. Only in two or three instances--for example, in my account of
Henrietta Manners--have I ventured to hint definitely at anything
pertaining to the shame and iniquity underlying a discouragingly large
part of the work-girls' world. In my magazine articles I was obliged to
leave out all reference to this tabooed topic. The attitude of the
public, especially the American public, toward this subject is a curious
mixture of prudery and gallantry. It bridles at anything which impeaches
the traditional honor and chastity of the working girl. The chivalry of
American men--and my experience in workshop, store, and factory has
proved to me how genuine and deep-rooted that chivalry is--combined with
our inherent spirit of democracy, is responsible for the placing of the
work-girl, as a class, in a light as false and ridiculous as that in
which Don Quixote was wont to view the charms of his swineherd lady,
Dulcinea. In the main, our notions of the woman who toils do more credit
to our sentiments and to the impulses of our hearts than they do credit
to our heads or to any serious desires we may cherish for her welfare.
She has become, and is becoming more and more, the object of such an
amount of sentimentality on the part of philanthropists, sociological
investigators, labor agitators, and yellow journals--and a goodly share
of journalism that prides itself upon not being yellow--that the real
work-girl has been quite lost sight of. Her name suggests, according to
their imaginations, a proud, independent, self-reliant, efficient young
woman--a young woman who works for her living and is glad of it. One
hardly dares criticize her, unless, indeed, it be to lecture her for an
ever-increasing independence of her natural male protectors and an
alleged aversion to babies.
That we should cling so tenaciously to this ideal is to our honor and
glory. But fine words butter no parsnips; nor do our fine idealizations
serve to reduce the quota which the working-girl ranks contribute to
disreputable houses and vicious resorts. The factories, the workshops,
and to some extent the stores, of the kind that I have worked in at
least, are recruiting-grounds for the Tenderloin and the "red light"
districts. The Springers and the "Pearl Laundries" send annually a large
consignment of delinquents to their various and logical destinations. It
is rare indeed that one finds a female delinquent who has not been in
the beginning a working girl. For, sad and terrible though it be, the
truth is that the majority of "unfortunates," whether of the
specifically criminal or of the prostitute class, are what they are, not
because they are inherently vicious, but _because they were failures as
workers and as wage-earners_. They were failures as such, primarily, for
no other reason than that they did not like to work. And they did not
like to work, not because they are lazy--they are anything but lazy, as
a rule--but _because they did not know how to work_.
Few girls know how to work when they undertake the first job, whether
that job be making paper boxes, seaming corset-covers, or taking
shorthand dictation. Nor by the term, "knowing how to work," do I mean,
necessarily, lack of experience. One may have had no experience whatever
in any line of work, yet one may know _how_ to work--may understand the
general principles of intelligent labor. These general principles a girl
may learn equally well by means of a normal-school training or through
familiarity with, and participation in, the domestic labor of a
well-organized household. The working girl in a great city like New York
does not have the advantage of either form of training. Her education,
even at the best, is meager, and of housework she knows less than
nothing. If she is city-born, it is safe to assume that she has never
been taught how to sweep a room properly, nor how to cook the simplest
meal wholesomely, nor how to make a garment that she would be willing to
wear. She usually buys all her cheap finery at a cheap store, and such
style and taste as she displays is "ready made."
Not having learned to work, either at school or at home, she goes to the
factory, to the workshop, or to the store, crude, incompetent, and,
worst of all, with an instinctive antagonism toward her task. _She
cannot work, and she does not work. She is simply "worked."_ And there
is all the difference in the world between "working" and "being worked."
To work is a privilege and a boon to either man or woman, and, properly
regulated, it ought to be a pleasure. To be worked is degrading. To work
is dignified and ennobling, for to work means the exercise of the mental
quite as much as the physical self. But the average working girl puts
neither heart nor mind into her labor; she is merely a machine, though
the comparison is a libel upon the functions of first-class machinery.
The harsh truth is that, hard as the working girl is "worked," and
miserable as her remuneration is, she is usually paid quite as much as
she is worth.
For her incompetency she is not entirely to blame; rather is it a matter
of heredity and environment. Being a girl, it is not natural to her to
work systematically. The working woman is a new product; in this country
she is hardly three generations old. As yet she is as new to the idea of
what it really means to work as is the Afro-American citizen. The
comparison may not be flattering to our vanity, but, after a reading of
Booker Washington's various expositions of the industrial abilities of
the negro, I cannot but be convinced that the white working woman is in
a corresponding process of evolution, so far as her specific functions
for labor have been developed.
Conditions in the "Pearl," from the view-point of mere physical labor,
were the most brutal in all my experience; but, from what I can learn,
the "Pearl" is no worse than many other similar establishments. Young
women will work in such places only as a last resort, for young women
cannot work long under conditions so detrimental to bodily health. The
regular workers are old women--women like Mrs. Mooney and her cronies.
The steady workers at the "Pearl" were, with the exception of the
"queen," all old women. Every day saw the arrival of a new force of
young hands who were bound to "play out" at the end of three or four
days' apprenticeship, if not sooner. I played out completely: I didn't
walk a step for a week after I went home with Minnie Plympton that
Saturday night. Which was all in accord with Mrs. Mooney's prediction
the first day: "You won't last long, mind ye; you young uns never do. If
you ain't strong as an ox it gits in your back and off ye go to the
'orspital; and if you're not able to stand the drivin', and thinks
you're good-lookin', off you goes to the bad, sooner 'n stay here."
I would like to dwell for a moment upon the character and personality of
her whom I have more than once referred to as the "queen." The queen had
worked, I was told, for seven years in the laundry, and she was, as I
saw and knew her in those days, as fresh as the proverbial daisy. She
seemed the very embodiment of blithesome happiness. In the chapter
dealing with the laundry I had occasion to speak of her voluptuous
beauty. Her long years of hard labor--and she labored harder than any
one else there--seemed to have wrought no effect upon her handsome,
nerveless body. Her lovely eyes, her hair, her dazzling complexion and
perfect features, were all worthy the reputation of a stage beauty. She
was kind; in her rough, uncouth way, she was kind to everybody--so kind,
in fact, that she was generally popular, though envied as enjoying the
boss's favor. And, as may be imagined, her influence, during those seven
years, upon the underfed, underpaid, ignorant, unskilled green hands who
streamed into the "Pearl" every morning must have been endless for evil.
On the subject of morality I am constrained to express myself with
apparent diffidence, lest I be misinterpreted and charged with vilifying
the class to which I once belonged. And yet behind my diffidence of
expression I must confess to a very honest and uncompromising belief,
founded upon my own knowledge and observation, that the average working
girl is even more poorly equipped for right living and right thinking
than she is for intelligent industrial effort. One of the worst features
of my experience was being obliged to hear the obscene stories which
were exchanged at the work-table quite as a matter of course; and, if
not a reflection of vicious minds, this is at least indicative of loose
living and inherent vulgarity. The lewd joke, the abominable tale, is
the rule, I assert positively, and not the exception, among the lower
class of working girls with whom I toiled in those early months of my
apprenticeship. The flower-manufactory in Broadway was the one glorious
exception. I do not attempt to account for this exception to the general
rule, unless it be explainable upon the logical theory that the skill
necessary for the making of artificial flowers is found only in a vastly
superior class of girls. The flower-girls I met at Rosenberg's were,
without exception, wholesome-minded and pure-hearted. They knew how to
cook, as they had ample opportunity of proving at our luncheons and
dinners during those four busy, happy weeks. I never met factory-girls
in any other line of employment who knew how to make a cup of tea or
coffee that was fit to drink. The flower-girls gave every evidence of
having come from homes which, humble though many of them must have been,
were nevertheless well-ordered and clean. The girls I met in other
places seemed never to have lived in homes at all.
In the telling of the obscene story, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and
Protestant, were equally guilty.
That the responsibility for these conditions of moral as well as
physical wretchedness is fundamentally attributable to our present
socio-economic system is a fact that has been stated so often before,
and by writers who by right of specialized knowledge and scientific
training are so much better equipped to discuss social economics than I
may ever hope to be, that I need not repeat the axiom here. Nor would it
be any more becoming for me to enter into any discussion of the various
theories upon which the economists and the social reformers base their
various projects for the reconstruction of the present system.
Personally I have a strong prejudice in favor of the trades-union. I
believe that working women should awaken as quickly as possible to the
advantages to be derived from organization of the industries in which
they are employed. But I seem to be alone in my cherished desire. The
women and girls I have worked with in New York do not view the
trades-union as their more progressive and enlightened sisters of
Chicago and the West generally choose to regard it. Chicago alone shows
a roster of nearly forty thousand women and girls who are organized into
unions of their own, officered by themselves and with their own feminine
"walking delegates." I recently spent four weeks among these
trades-unions, numbering thirty-five distinct women's organizations, and
I found, everywhere I went, the same enthusiasm for, and the same
superior degree of intelligence regarding, the aim and object of the
organization idea.
As for the working women of New York, they have so far refused to
countenance the trades-union. New York has no woman's trades-union. A
small percentage of women workers belong to labor organizations, it is
true; but it is merely as auxiliaries to the men's unions, and where
they work at trades that have been thoroughly organized for the benefit
of the men workers. They belong to these unions always under protest,
not of their own volition; because they are obliged to do so in order to
be permitted to work at their trades in competition with men who are
organized.
For this reason, owing to the blindness of the workwoman to the benefits
to be derived from organization,--and because, moreover, it has not yet
been proved that the trades-union, carried to its logical conclusion, is
likely to be a panacea for the industrial woes of the sex which does
favor and support it--it seems to me rather idle to urge its wider
adoption under the protest of those most vitally concerned--the women
workers themselves. The idea of organized labor will have to grow among
the ranks of women workers just as the idea has grown into the
consciousness of her father and brother.
We have a great and crying need for two things--things which it is
entirely within the power of a broad-minded philanthropy to supply. The
most urgent of these needs is a very material and unpoetic one. We need
a well-regulated system of boarding-and lodging-houses where we can live
with decency upon the small wages we receive. We do not want any
so-called "working girls' homes"--God forgive the euphemism!--which,
while overcharging us for the miserable accommodations, at the same time
would put us in the attitude of charity dependants. What the working
girl needs is a cheap hotel or a system of hotels--for she needs a great
many of them--designed something after the Mills Hotels for working-men.
She also needs a system of well-regulated lodging-houses, such as are
scattered all over the city for the benefit of men. My experience of the
working girls' home in which I lived for many weeks, and from my
observation and inquiries regarding a number of similar "homes" which I
have since visited, justifies me in making a few suggestions regarding
the general plan and conduct of the ideal philanthropic scheme which I
have in mind.
First and most important, there must be no semblance of charity. Let the
working girls' hotel and the working girls' lodging-house be not only
self-supporting, but so built and conducted that they will pay a fair
rate of interest upon the money invested. Otherwise they would fail of
any truly philanthropic object.
As to their conduct as institutions there should be no rules, no
regulations which are not in full operation in the Waldorf-Astoria or
the Hotel St. Regis. The curse of all such attempts in the past has been
the insistence upon _coercive morality_. Make them not only
non-sectarian, but non-religious. There is no more need of conducting a
working girls' hotel or lodging-house in the name of God or under the
auspices of religious sentiment than there is necessity for advertising
the Martha Washington Hotel or any fashionable bachelor-apartment house
as being under divine guidance.
A clean room and three wholesomely cooked meals a day _can_ be furnished
to working girls at a price such as would make it possible for them to
live honestly on the small wage of the factory and store. We do not ask
for luxuries or dainties. We do not get them in the miserable, dark
warrens where we are now obliged to sleep, and we do not get them at the
unappetizing boarding-house tables where countless thousands of us find
sustenance. I do not know--I suppose nobody does know--how many working
girls in New York City live in lodging-and boarding-houses. But they are
legion, and very few of them are contented with that life.
The most important necessity of the model working woman's hotel or
lodging-house would be, not a luxurious table, not a dainty
sleeping-room, but a parlor! The number of young girls who go wrong in a
great city like this for want of the various necessities of a parlor
must make the angels in heaven weep. The houses where the poorly paid
girl lives have no accommodations for the entertainment of her male
friends. If the house is conducted with any respect for the conventions,
the girl lodger must meet her young man on the "stoop" or on the street
corner. As the courtship progresses, they must have recourse either to
the benches of the public parks, provided the weather be favorable, or
else to the light and warmth of the back room of a saloon. The average
cheap lodging-house is usually conducted, however, with but scant
regard for the conventions, and the girl usually is forced to adopt the
more convenient and, as it would seem to her, really more
self-respecting habit of receiving her company in her room. And either
one of these methods of courtship, it is evident, cannot but be in the
end demoralizing and degrading to thoughtless young people, however
innocent they may be of any deliberate wrong-doing. In the model
lodging-house there should be perfect liberty of conduct and action on
the part of guests--who will not be "inmates" in any sense of the word.
Such guests should have perfect liberty to go and come when they please
at any hour of the day or night; be permitted to see any person they
choose to have come, without question or challenge, so long as the
conventions of ordinary social life are complied with. Such an
institution, conducted upon such a plan and managed so that it would
make fair returns to its promoters, cannot fail to be welcomed; and
would be of inestimable benefit as an uplifting and regenerative force
with those for whom it is designed.
The other need is for a greater interest in the workwoman's welfare on
the part of the church, and an effort by that all-powerful institution
to bring about some adjustment of her social and economic difficulties.
I am old-fashioned enough to believe in the supreme efficacy of
organized religion in relation to womanhood, and all that pertains to
womanhood. I believe that, in our present state of social development,
the church can do more for the working girl than any of the proposed
measures based upon economic science or the purely ethical theory.
Working women as a class are certainly not ripe for the trades-union, as
I have already intimated; and the earnest people of the "settlements"
are able to reach but a small part of the great army of women marching
hopelessly on, ungeneraled, untrained, and, worst of all, uncaring.
Few are they who, like Tolstoi, can gracefully stoop to conquer; and
those who shall be ordained to revolutionize conditions will rise from
the ranks, even as did Booker T. Washington. This, of course, is the
ultimate object of settlement work: to prepare the leaven for the loaf.