Читать книгу: «Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their Lives», страница 9

“I’m not good for much,” she said, “but I’m too good for that. There’s nothing you could promise would get you your will and there won’t be.”

Naturally, as the siege declared itself a hopeless one, the manager found it necessary to fill her place by some more competent hand. There was an interval of waiting in which she pawned almost the last article of clothing remaining that could be dispensed with, and then went into a bakery, where the hours were from seven A. M. to ten P. M., sometimes later. She was awkward at making change, but her gentle manners attracted customers, and the baker himself soon cast a favorable eye upon her, and speedily made the same proposition that had driven her from her last employment. The baker’s wife knew the symptoms, and on the same day discharged the girl.

“I don’t say it’s your fault,” she said, “but he’s started about you, and it’s for your own good I tell you to go. The best thing for you is to go back to your mother, or else take a place with some nice woman that’ll keep an eye to you. You’ll always be run after. I know your kind, that no man looks at without wanting to fool with ’em. You take my advice and go into a place.”

The chance came that night. The mistress of a cheap boarding-house in East Broadway, her patrons chiefly young clerks from Grand and Division Street stores, offered her home and eight dollars a month, and Lizzie, who by this time was frightened and discouraged, accepted on the instant. She was well accustomed to long hours, and she had never minded standing as many of the girls did, her apprenticeship in the mill having made it comparatively easy.

But the drudgery undergone here was beyond anything her life had ever known. Her day began at five and it never ended before eleven. She slept on an old mattress on the kitchen floor, and as her strength failed from the incessant labor, lost all power of protest and accepted each new demand as something against which there could be no revolt. There was abundance of coarse food and thus much advantage, but she had no knowledge that taught her how to make work easier, nor had her mistress any thought of training her. She was a dish-washing machine chiefly, and broke and chipped even the rough ware that formed the table furniture, till the exasperated mistress threatened to turn her off if another piece were destroyed. It was a case of hopeless inaptitude; and when in early spring she sickened, and the physician grudgingly called in declared it a case of typhus brought on by the conditions in which she had lived, she was sent at once to the hospital and left to such fate as might come.

A clean bed, rest, and attendance seemed a heaven to the girl when consciousness came back, and she shrank from any thought of going out again to the fight for existence.

“I don’t know what the matter is,” she said to the doctor as she mended, “but somehow I ain’t fit to make a living. I shall have to go back to the mill, but I said I never would do that.”

“You shall go to some training-school and be taught,” said the doctor, who had stood looking at her speculatively yet pitifully.

“Ah, but I couldn’t learn. Somehow things don’t stick to me. I’m not fit to earn a living.”

“You’re of the same stuff as a good many thousand of your kind,” the doctor said under his breath, and turned away with a sigh.

Lizzie went out convalescent, but still weak and uncertain, and took refuge with one of the bakery girls who had half of a dark bedroom in a tenement house near the Big Flat. She looked for work. She answered advertisements, and at last began upon the simplest form of necktie, and in her slow, bungling fashion began to earn again. But she had no strength. She sat at the window and looked over to the Big Flat and watched the swarm that came and went; five hundred people in it, they told her, and half of them drunk at once. It was certain that there were always men lying drunk in the hallways in the midst of ashes and filth that accumulated there almost unchecked. The saloon below was always full; the stale beer dives all along the street full also, above all, at night, when the flaunting street-walkers came out, and fiddles squeaked, and cheap pianos rattled, and songs and shouts were over-topped at moments by the shrieks of beaten women or the oaths and cries of a sudden fight. Slowly it was coming to the girl that this was all the life New York had for her; that if she failed to meet the demand employer after employer had made upon her, she would die in this hole, where neither joy nor hope had any place. Her clothes were in rags. She went hungry and cold, and had grown too stupefied with trouble to plan anything better. At last it was plain to her that death must be best. She said to herself that the river could never tell, and that there would be rest and no more cold or hunger, and it was to the river that she went at night as the Widow Maloney rose before her and said, —

“You’ll come home wid me, me dear, an’ no wurruds about it.”

Lizzie looked at her stupidly. “You’d better not stop me,” she said. “I’m no good. I can’t earn my living anywhere any more. I don’t know how. I’d better be out of the way.”

“Shure you’ll be enough out o’ the way whin you’re in the top o’ the Big Flat,” said Mrs. Maloney. “An’ once there we’ll see.”

Lizzie followed her without a word, but when the stairs were climbed and she sunk panting and ghastly on one of the three chairs, it was quite plain to the widow that more work had begun. That it will very soon end is also quite plain to whoever dares the terrors of the Big Flat, and climbs to the wretched room, which in spite of dirt and foulness within and without is a truer sanctuary than many a better place. The army of incompetents will very shortly be the less by one, but more recruits are in training and New York guarantees an unending supply.

“Shure if there’s naught they know how to do,” says the widow, “why should one be lookin’ to have thim do what they can’t. It’s one thing I’ve come to, what with seein’ the goings on all me life, but chiefly in the Big Flat, that if childers be not made to learn, whither they like it or not, somethin’ that’ll keep hands an’ head from mischief, there’s shmall use in laws an’ less in muddlin’ about ’em when they’re most done with livin’ at all, at all. But that’s a thing that’s beyond me or the likes o’ me, an’ I’m only wonderin’ a thrifle like an’ puttin’ the question to meself a bit, ‘What would you be doin’, Widdy Maloney, if the doin’ risted on you an’ no other?’”

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.
AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS

Why this army of women, many thousand strong, is standing behind counters, over-worked and underpaid, the average duration of life among them as a class lessening every year, is a question with which we can at present deal only indirectly. It is sufficient to state that the retail stores of wellnigh every order, though chiefly the dry-goods retail trade, have found their quickness and aptness to learn, the honesty and general faithfulness of women, and their cheapness essentials in their work; and that this combination of qualities – cheapness dominating all – has given them permanent place in the modern system of trade. A tour among many of the larger establishments confirmed the statement made by employers in smaller ones, the summary being given in the words of a manager of one of the largest retail houses to be found in the United States.

“We don’t want men,” he said. “We wouldn’t have them even if they came at the same price. Of course cheapness has something to do with it, and will have, but for my part give me a woman to deal with every time. Now there’s an illustration over at that hat-counter. We were short of hands to-day, and I had to send for three girls that had applied for places, but were green – didn’t know the business. It didn’t take them ten minutes to get the hang of doing things, and there they are, and you’d never know which was old and which was new hand. Of course they don’t know all about qualities and so on, but the head of the department looks out for that. No, give me women every time. I’ve been a manager thirteen years, and we never had but four dishonest girls, and we’ve had to discharge over forty boys in the same time. Boys smoke and lose at cards, and do a hundred things that women don’t, and they get worse instead of better. I go in for women.”

“How good is their chance of promotion?”

“We never lose sight of a woman that shows any business capacity, but of course that’s only as a rule in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets about the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here are public-school girls and live at home. You see that makes things pretty easy, for the family pool their earnings and they dress well and live well. We don’t take from the poorer class at all. These girls earn from four and a half to eight dollars a week. A few get ten dollars, and they’re not likely to do better than that. Forty dollars a month is a fortune to a woman. A man must have his little fling, you know. Women manage better.”

“If they are really worth so much to you, why can’t you give better pay? What chance has a girl to save anything, unless she lives at home?”

“We give as high pay as anybody, and we don’t give more because for every girl here there are a dozen waiting to take her place. As to saving, she doesn’t want to save. There isn’t a girl here that doesn’t expect to marry before long, and she puts what she makes on her back, because a fellow naturally goes for the best-looking and the best-dressed girl. That’s the woman question as I’ve figured it out, and you’ll find it the same everywhere.”

Practically he was right, for the report, though varying slightly, summed up as substantially the same. Descending a grade, it was found that even in the second and third rate stores the system of fines for any damage soon taught the girls carefulness, and that while a few were discharged for hopeless incompetency, the majority served faithfully and well.

“I dare say they’re put upon,” said the manager of one of the cheaper establishments. “They’re sassy enough, a good many of them, and some of the better ones suffer for their goings-on. But they ain’t a bad set – not half; and these women that come in complaining that they ain’t well-treated, nine times out of ten it’s their own airs that brought it on. It’s a shop-girl’s interest to behave herself and satisfy customers, and she’s more apt to do it than not, according to my experience.”

“They’d drive a man clean out of his mind,” said another. “The tricks of girls are beyond telling. If it wasn’t for fines there wouldn’t one in twenty be here on time, and the same way with a dozen other things. But they learn quick, and they turn in anywhere where they’re wanted. They make the best kind of clerks, after all.”

“Do you give them extra pay for over-hours during the busy season?”

“Not much! We keep them on, most of them, right through the dull one. Why shouldn’t they balance things for us when the busy time comes? Turn about’s fair play.”

A girl who had been sent into the office for some purpose shook her head slightly as she heard the words, and it was this girl who, a day or two later, gave her view of the situation. The talk went on in the pretty, home-like parlors of a small “Home” on the west side, where rules are few and the atmosphere of the place so cheery that while it is intended only for those out of work, it is constantly besieged with requests to enlarge its borders and make room for more. Half a dozen other girls were near: three from other stores, one from a shirt factory, one an artificial-flower-maker who had been a shop-girl.

“When I began,” said the first, “father was alive, and I used what I earned just for dressing myself. We were up at Morrisania, and I came down every day. I was in the worsted and fancy department at D – ’s, and I had such a good eye for matching and choosing that they seemed to think everything of me. But then father fell sick. He was a painter, and had painter’s colic awfully and at last paralysis. Then he died finally and left mother and me, and she’s in slow consumption and can’t do much. I earned seven dollars a week because I’d learned fancy work and did some things evenings for the store, and we should have got along very well. We’d had to move out a little farther, to the place mother was born in, because rent was cheaper and she could never stand the city. But this is the way it worked. I have to be at the store at eight o’clock. The train that leaves home at seven gets me to the store two minutes after eight, but though I’ve explained this to the manager he says I’ve got to be at the store at eight, and so, summer and winter, I have to take the train at half-past six and wait till doors are open. It’s the same way at night. The store closes at six, and if I could leave then I could catch an express train that would get me home at seven. The rules are that I must stop five minutes to help the girls cover up the goods, and that just hinders my getting the train till after seven, so that I am not home till eight.”

I looked at the girl more attentively. She was colorless and emaciated, and, when not excited by speaking, languid and heavy.

“Are you sure that you have explained the thing clearly so that the manager understands?” I asked.

“More than once,” the girl answered, “but he said I should be fined if I were not there at eight. Then I told him that the girls at my counter would be glad to cover up my goods, and if he would only let me go at six it would give me a little more time for mother. I sit up late anyway to do things she can’t, for we live in two rooms and I sew and do a good many things after I go home.”

Inquiry a day or two later showed that her story was true in every detail and also that she was a valuable assistant, one of the best among a hundred or so employed. The firm gives largely to charitable objects, and pays promptly, and at rates which, if low, are no lower than usual; but they continue to exact this seven minutes’ service from one whose faithfulness might seem to have earned exemption from a purely arbitrary rule – in such a case mere tyranny. The girl had offered to give up her lunch hour, but the manager refused; and she dared not speak again for fear of losing her place.

“After all, she’s better off than I am or lots of others,” said one who sat near her. “I’m down in the basement at M – ’s, and forty others like me, and about forty little girls. There’s gas and electric light both, but there isn’t a breath of air, and it’s so hot that after an hour or two your head feels baked and your eyes as if they would fall out. The dull season – that’s from spring to fall – lasts six months, and then we work nine and a half hours and Saturdays thirteen. The other six months we work eleven hours, and holiday time till ten and eleven. I’m strong. I’m an old hand and somehow stand things, but I’ve a cousin at the ribbon counter, the very best girl in the world, I do believe. She always makes the best of things, but this year it did seem as if the whole town was at that counter. They stood four and five deep. She was penned in with the other girls, a dozen or two, with drawers and cases behind and counter in front, and there she stood from eight in the morning till ten at night, with half an hour off for dinner and for supper. She could have got through even that, but you see there has to be steady passing in that narrow space, and she was knocked and pushed, first by one and then by another, till she was sore all over; and at last down she dropped right there, not fainting, but sort of gone, and the doctor says she’s most dead and can’t go back, he doesn’t know when. Down there in the basement the girls have to put on blue glasses, the glare is so dreadful, but they don’t like to have us. The only comfort is you’re with a lot and don’t feel lonesome. I can’t bear to do anything alone, no matter what it is.”

A girl with clear dark eyes and a face that might have been almost beautiful but for its haggard, worn-out expression, turned from the table where she had been writing and smiled as she looked at the last speaker.

“That is because you happen to be made that way,” she said. “I am always happier when I can be alone a good deal, but of course that’s never possible, or almost never. I shall want the first thousand years of my heaven quite to myself, just for pure rest and a chance to think.”

“I don’t know anything about heaven,” the last speaker said hastily, “but I’m sure I hope there’s purgatory at least for some of the people I’ve had to submit to. I think a woman manager is worse than a man. I’ve never had trouble anywhere and always stay right on, but I’ve wanted to knock some of the managers down, and it ought to have been done. Just take the new superintendent. We loved the old one, but this one came in when she died, and one of the first things she did was to discharge one of the old girls because she didn’t smile enough. Good reason why. She’d lost her mother the week before and wasn’t likely to feel much like smiling. And then she went inside the counters and pitched out all the old shoes the girls had there to make it easier to stand. It ’most kills you to stand all day in new shoes, but Miss T – pitched them all out and said she wasn’t going to have the store turned into an old-clothes shop.”

“Well, it’s better than lots of them, no matter what she does,” said another. “I was at H – ’s for six months, and there you have to ask a man for leave every time it is necessary to go upstairs, and half the time he would look and laugh with the other clerks. I’d rather be where there are all women. They’re hard on you sometimes, but they don’t use foul language and insult you when you can’t help yourself.”

This last complaint has proved for many stores a perfectly well-founded one. Wash-rooms and other conveniences have been for common use, and many sensitive and shrinking girls have brought on severe illnesses arising solely from dread of running this gantlet.

Here and there the conditions of this form of labor are of the best, but as a whole the saleswoman suffers not only from long-continued standing, but from bad air, ventilation having no place in the construction of the ordinary store. Separate dressing-rooms are a necessity, yet are only occasionally found, the system demanding that no outlay shall be made when it is possible to avoid it. Overheating and overcrowding, hastily eaten and improper food, are all causes of the weakness and anæmic condition so perceptible among shop and factory workers, these being divided into many classes. For a large proportion it can be said that they are tolerably educated, so far as our public-school system can be said to educate, and are hard-working, self-sacrificing, patient girls who have the American knack of dressing well on small outlay, and who have tastes and aspirations far beyond any means of gratifying them. For such girls the working-women’s guilds and the Friendly societies – these last of English origin – have proved of inestimable service, giving them the opportunities long denied. In such guilds many of them receive the first real training of eye and hand and mind, learn what they can best do, and often develop a practical ability for larger and better work. Even in the lowest order filling the cheaper stores there is always a proportion eager to learn. But here, as in all ordinary methods of learning, the market is overstocked, and even the best-trained girl may sometimes fail of employment. Now and then one turns toward household service, but the mass prefer any cut in wages and any form of privation to what they regard as almost a final degradation. A multitude of their views on this point are recorded and will in time find place.

In the mean time a minute examination of the causes that determine their choice and of the conditions surrounding it as a whole go to prove the justice of the conviction that penetrates the student of social problems. Again, the shop-girl as a class demonstrates the fact that not with her but with the class above her, through accident of birth or fortune, lies the real responsibility for the follies over which we make moan. The cheaper daily papers record in fullest detail the doings of that fashionable world toward which many a weak girl or woman looks with unspeakable longing; and the weekly “story papers” feed the flame with unending details of the rich marriage that lifted the poor girl into the luxury which stands to her empty mind as the sole thing to be desired in earth or heaven. She knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor. From her post behind the counter the shop-girl examines every detail of costume, every air and grace of these women whom she despises, even when longing most to be one of them. She imitates where she can, and her cheap shoe has its French heel, her neck its tin dog-collar. Gilt rings and bracelets and bangles, frizzes and bangs and cheap trimmings of every order, swallow up her earnings. The imitation is often more effective than the real, and the girl knows it. She aspires to a “manicure” set, to an opera-glass, to anything that will simulate the life daily more passionately desired; and it is small wonder that when sudden temptation comes and the door opens into that land where luxury is at least nearer, she falls an easy victim. The class in which she finally takes rank is seldom recruited from sources that would seem most fruitful. The sewing-woman, the average factory worker, is devitalized to such an extent that even ambition dies and the brain barely responds to even the allurements of the weekly story paper. It is the class but a grade removed, to whom no training has come from which strength or simplicity or any virtue of honest living could grow, that makes the army of women who have chosen degradation.

A woman, herself a worker, but large-brained and large-hearted beyond the common endowment, wrote recently of the dangers put in the way of the average shop or factory girl, imploring happy women living at ease to adopt simpler forms, or at least to ask what form of living went on below them. She wrote: —

“It may be urged that ignorant and inexperienced as these workers are, they see only the bubbles and the froth, the superficial glitter and exuberant overflow of passing styles and social pleasures, and miss much, if not all, of the earnestness, the virtue, the charity, and the refinement which may belong to those they imitate, but with whom they seldom come in contact. This is the very point and purpose of this paper, to remonstrate against the injustice done to the women of wealth and leisure by their own carelessness and indifference, and to urge them to come down to those who cannot come up to them, to study them with as keen an interest as they themselves are studied, – to know how that other half lives.”

“To know how that other half lives.” That is the demand made upon woman and man alike. Once at least put yourselves in the worker’s place, if it be but for half an hour, and think her thought and live her starved and dreary life. Then ask what work must be done to alter conditions, to kill false ideals, and vow that no day on earth shall pass that has not held some effort, in word or deed, to make true living more possible for every child of man. No mission, no guild, no sermon, has or can have power alone. Only in the determined effort of the individual, in individual understanding and renunciation forever of what has been selfish and mean and base, can humanity know redemption and walk at last side by side in that path where he who journeys alone finds no entrance, nor can win it till self has dropped away, and knowledge come that forever we are our brothers’ keepers.