Working With the Working Woman Part 5

II

_286 On Bra.s.s_

Sweetness and Light.

So now appears the candy factory in retrospect.

Shall we stumble upon a job yet that will make bra.s.s seem as a haven of refuge? Allah forbid!

After all, factory work, more than anything so far, has brought out the fact that life from beginning to end is a matter of comparisons.

The factory girl, from my short experience, is not fussing over what her job looks like compared to tea at the Biltmore. She is comparing it with the last job or with home. And it is either slightly better or slightly worse than the last job or home. Any way round, nothing to get excited over. An outsider, soul-filled college graduate with a mission, investigates a factory and calls aloud to Heaven: "Can such things be? Why do women _stay_ in such a place?"

The factory girl, if she heard those anguished cries, would as like as not shrug her shoulders and remark: "Ugh! she sh'u'dda seen --'s factory where I worked a year ago." Or, "Gawd! what does she think a person's goin' to do-sit home all day and scrub the kitchen?"

And yet the fact remains that some things get too much on even a philosophical factory girl's nerves. Whereat she merely walks out-if she has gumption enough. The labor turnover, from the point of view of production and efficiency, can well be a vital industrial concern. To the factory girl, it saves her life, like as not. Praise be the labor turnover!

If it were not for that same turnover, I, like the soul-filled college graduate, might feel like calling aloud, not to Heaven, but to the President of the United States and Congress and the Church and Women's clubs: "Come quick and rescue females from the bra.s.sworks!" As it is, the females rescue themselves. If there's any concern it's "the boss he should worry." He must know how every night girls depart never to cross those portals again, so help them Gawd. Every morning a new handful is broken in, to stay there a week or two, if that long, and take to their heels. Praise be the labor turnover, as long as we have such bra.s.sworks.

Before eight o'clock of a cold Monday morning (thank goodness it was not raining, since we stood in s.h.i.+vering groups on the sidewalk) I answered the Sunday-morning "ad":

GIRLS AND WOMEN

between 16 and 36; learners and experienced a.s.semblers and foot-press operators on small bra.s.s parts; steady; half day Sat.u.r.day all year around; good pay and bonus. Apply Superintendent's office.

The first prospects were rather formidable-some fifty men and boys, no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance and we s.h.i.+vered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is wont under the circ.u.mstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess admitted she had never danced.

"What?" almost yelled the bride, "Never _danced_? Good Gawd! girl, you might as well be _dead_!"

"You said it!" I chimed in. "Might as well dig a hole in the ground and crawl in it."

"You said it!" and the husky bride and erstwhile (up to the week before) elevator operator at twenty-three dollars a week (she said) gave me a smart thump of understanding. "Girl, you never _danced_?

It's-it's the grandest thing in _life_!"

The plump Jewess looked a little out of things. "I know," she sighed, "they tell me it 'u'd make me thin, too, but my folks don't let me go out no place."

Whereat we changed to polis.h.i.+ng off profiteers and the high cost of living. The Jewish girl's brother knew we were headin' straight for civil war. "They'll be comin' right in folks' homes and killen 'em before a year's out. See if they don't." I asked her if she'd ever worked in a union shop. "Na, none of that stuff for me! Wouldn't go near a union." Both girls railed over the way people were losing their jobs. Anyhow, the bride was goin' to a dance that night, you jus' bet.

At last some one with a heart came out and told the girls we could step inside. By that time there were some ten of us, all ages and descriptions. What would a "typical" factory girl be like, I wonder.

Statistics prove she is young and unmarried more than otherwise, but each factory does seem to collect the motleyest crew of a little of everything-old, young, married, single, homely, stupid, bright, pretty, sickly, husky, fat, thin, and so on down the line. Certain it is that they who picture a French-heeled, fur-coated, dolled-up creature as the "typical factory girl" are far wide of the mark. The one characteristic which so far does seem pretty universal is that one and all, no matter what the age or looks, are perfectly willing to tell you everything they know on short acquaintance. At first I felt a hesitancy at asking questions about their personal lives, yet I so much wanted to know what they did and thought, what they hoped and dreamed about. It was early apparent that sooner or later everything would come out with scant encouragement, and no amount of questioning ever is taken amiss. They in turn ask me questions, and I lie until I hate myself.

The plump Jewess was the first interviewed. When she heard the pay she departed. The elevator bride and I were taken together, and together we agreed to everything-wages thirteen dollars a week, "with one dollar a week bonus" (the bonus, as was later discovered, had numerous strings to it. I never did get any). Work began at 7.45, half hour for lunch, ended at 5. The bride asked if the work was dangerous. "That's up to you. Goin' upstairs is dangerous if you don't watch where you put your feet. Eh?" We wanted to start right in-I had my ap.r.o.n under my arm-but to-morrow would be time. I got quite imploring about beginning on that day. No use.

The bride and I departed with pa.s.ses to get by with the next morning.

That was the last I saw of the bride-or any of that group, except one little frozen thing without a hat. She worked three days, and used to pull my ap.r.o.n every time she went by and grin.

The factory was 'way over on the East Side. It meant gettin' up in the dark and three Subways-West Side, the Shuttle, East Side which could be borne amicably in the morning, but after eight and three-quarter hours of foot-press work, going home with that 5-6 rush-that mob who shoved and elbowed and pushed and jammed-was difficult to bear with Christian spirit. Except that it really is funny. What idea of human nature must a Subway guard between the hours of 5 and 6 be possessed of?

At noon I used to open my lunch anxiously, expecting to see nothing but a doughy ma.s.s of crumpled rye bread and jam. Several times on the Subway the apple got shoved into my ribs over a period where it seemed as if either the apple or the ribs would have to give in. But by noon my hunger was such that any state of anything edible was as nectar and ambrosia.

I am thinking that even a hardened factory hand might remember her first day at the bra.s.sworks. Up three flights of stairs, through a part of the men's factory, over a narrow bridge to a back building, through two little bobbing doors, and there you were admitted to that sanctuary where, according to the man who hired you, steady work and advancement to a rosy future awaited one.

True, I had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as working experience went. But I have been through factories and factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen like the bra.s.sworks. First was the smell-the stale smell of gas and metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down to the bra.s.sworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness-a single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was working, but there were areas where there were no workers. Up the end of the floor, among the power presses, all belts and machines and whirring wheels, there were only three or four shaded lights. Windows lined both sides of the floor, but they had never been washed since the factory was built, surely. Anyhow, it was dark and rainy outside.

The walls once had been white, but were now black. Dim, dirty, uneven boxes containing bra.s.s parts filled the s.p.a.ces between the long tables where the foot presses stood. Third, the noise-the clump of the foot presses, the whirring of the pattern cutters-one sounded ever like a l.u.s.ty woodp.e.c.k.e.r with a metal beak pecking on metal; rollings and rumblings from the floor above; jarrings and shakings from below.

Two-thirds of the entire floor was filled with long tables holding the foot presses-tables which years ago were clean and new, tables which now were worn, stained, and uneven, and permanently dirty. On each side of each long table stood five black iron presses, but there seemed to be never more than one or two girls working at a side. Each press performed a different piece of work-cut wick holes, fitted or clamped parts together, shaped the cones, and what not, but with only two general types of operation so far as the foot part went. One type took a long, firm, forward swing on the pedal; the other a short, hard, downward "kick." With the end of the pressure the steel die cut through the thin bra.s.s cone, or completed whatever the job was. As the pedal and foot swung back to position the girl removed the bra.s.s part, dropping it in a large box at her right. She kept a small bin on the table at the left of the press filled with parts she was to work on.

Around the sides of the floor were the table workers-girls adjusting parts by hand, or soldering.

The other third of the floor was taken up with the machine presses, which mostly clicked away cutting patterns in the bra.s.s parts to hold the lamp chimney. In a far corner were the steaming, bleaching tubs where dull, grimy bra.s.s parts were immersed in several preparations, I don't know what, to emerge at last s.h.i.+ning like the noonday sun.

The cold little girl with no hat, a strange, somewhat unsociable, new person, and I stood there waiting one hour. Some one took our names.

The experienced feeling when they asked me where I had worked last and how long was I there, and why did I leave! At the end of an hour the forelady beckoned me-such a neat, sweet person as she was-and I took my initial whack at a foot press. If ever I do run an automobile the edge of first enjoyment is removed. A Rolls-Royce cannot make me feel any more pleased with life than the first ten minutes of that foot press. In ten minutes the job was all done and there I sat for an hour and a half waiting for another. Hard on a person with the foot-press fever. The times and times later I would gratefully have taken any part of that hour and a half to ease my weary soul!

Be it known, if I speak feelingly at times of the weariness of a foot press, that, though nothing as to size, I am a very husky person-perhaps the healthiest of the eight million women in industry!

It was a matter of paternal dismay that I arrived in the world female instead of male. What Providence had overlooked, mortal ability would do everything possible to make up for-so argued a disappointed father. From four years of age on I was taught to do everything a boy could or would do; from jumping off cars while they were moving to going up in a balloon. A good part of my life I have played tennis and basketball and hockey, and swum, and climbed mountains, and ridden horseback, and rowed, and fished. I do not know what it is to have an ache or a pain from one end of the year to the other. All of which is mentioned merely because if certain work taxes my strength, who seldom has known what it is to be weary, what can it do to the average factory worker, often without even a fighting physical chance from birth on?

The jobs on our third floor where the girls and women worked concerned themselves with lamps-the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind, city folks are apt to think. Yet goodness knows we seemed during even my sojourn to make more lamp parts than creation ever had used in the heyday of lamps.

Well, all but five per cent of farm women still use kerosene lamps, so the government tells us. Also fat Lizzie informed me, when I asked her who in the world could ever use just them lamp cones I made some one particular day, "Lor', child, they send them lamps all over the world!" She made a majestic sweep with both arms. "Some of 'em goes as far-as far-as _Philadelphia_!" Once we were working on a rush order for fifty thousand lamps of one certain kind. Curiosity got the better of me and I took occasion to see where the boxes were being addressed.

It was to a large mail-order house in Chicago.

The first noon whistle-work dropped-a rush for the washroom. Let no one think his hands ever were dirty until he labors at a foot press in a bra.s.sworks. Such sticky, grimy, oily, rough blackness never was-and the factory supplies no soap nor towels. You are expected to bring your own-which is all right the second day when you have found it out and come prepared.

The third floor had seemed dark and dismal enough during the morning; at noon all lights are turned off. Many of the workers went out for lunch, the rest got around in dismal corners, most of them singly, and ate by their machines, on the same hard seats they have been on since a quarter to 8. What a baccha.n.a.l festival of color and beauty now appeared the candy-factory whitewashed lunch room with the marble-topped tables! The airy sociability of it! I wandered about with my lunch in my hand, to see what I could see. Up amid the belts and power machines sat one of the girls who began that morning-not the cold, hatless one.

"You gonna stick it out?" she asked me.

"Sure. I guess it's all right."

"Oh gee! Ain't like no place I ever worked yet. Don't catch me standin' this long."

She did stand it four days. Minnie suggested then she stick it out till Christmas. "You'll need the money for Christmas y'know, an' you might not get the next job so easy now."

"d.a.m.n Christmas!" was all the new girl had to say to that.

"Sure now," said Irish Minnie, "an' she's takin her chances. It's an awful disgrace y'know, to be gettin' presents when y'ain't got none to give back. Ain't it, now? I'd never take no chances on a job so close to Christmas."

I talked to five girls that noon. None of them had been there longer than a week. None of them planned to stay.

All afternoon I worked the foot press at one job. My foot-press enthusiasm weakened-four thousand times I "kicked"-two thousand lamp-wick slots I make in the cones. Many of the first five hundred looked a bit sad and chewed at. The "boss" came by and saw that I was not one hundred per cent perfect. He gave me pointers and I did better. Each cone got placed over a slanted form just so; kick, and half the slot is made. Lift the cone up a wee bit, twist it round to an exact position, hold it in place, kick, and the other half is cut.

The kick must be a stout kick-bing! down hard, to make a clean job of it. The thing they gave you to sit on! A high, narrow, homemade-looking, wooden stool, the very hardest article of furniture under the blue canopy of heaven. Some of them had little, narrow, straight backs-just boards nailed on behind. All of them were top heavy and fell over if you got off without holding on. By 4.30 standing up at the candy job seemed one of the happiest thoughts on earth. What rosy good old days those were! Dear old candy factory! Happy girls back there bending over the chocolates!

Next sat Louisa, an Italian girl who stuttered, and I had to stop my press to hear her. She stopped hers to talk. She should worry. It's the worst job she ever saw, and for thirteen dollars a week why should she work? She talked to me, kicked a few times, got a drink, kicked, talked, stood up and stretched, kicked, talked, got another drink. She is married, has a baby a year old, another coming in three months. She will stay her week out, then she goes, you bet. Her husband was getting fifty dollars a week in a tailor job-no work now for t-t-t-two months. He does a little now and then in the b-b-barber business. Oh, but life was high while the going was good! She leaned way over and told me in a hushed, inspired tone, to leave me awestruck, "When we was m-m-married we t-t-took a h-h-h-honeymoon!" I gasped and wanted details. To West Virginia they'd gone for a month.

The fare alone, each way, had come to ten dollars apiece, and then they did no work for that month, but lived in a little hotel. Her husband was crazy of her, and she was of him now, but not when she was married. He's very good to her. After dinner every single night they go to a show.

"Every night?"

"Sure, every night, and Sundays two times."