The Woman Who Toils Part 8

The other members of the household were a fox terrier, a canary and "Wood"--Wood was a man over sixty. He and Mrs. Wood had the same devoted understanding that I have observed so often among the poor couples of the older generation. This good little woman occupied herself with the things that no longer satisfy. She took tender care of her husband, following him to the door with one hand on his shoulder and calling after him as he went on his way: "Good-by; take care of yourself." She had a few pets, her children were married and gone, she had a miniature patch of garden, a trust in the church guild--which took some time and attention for charitable works, and she did her own cooking and housework. "And," she explained to me in the course of our conversation at supper, "I never felt the need of joining these University Settlement Clubs to get into society." Wood and his wife were a good sort. Miss Ida was kind in her inquiries about my plans.

"Have you ever operated a power machine?" she asked.

"Yes," I responded--with what pride she little dreamed. "I've run an electric Singer."

"I guess I can get you a job, then, all right, at my place. It's piece-work; you get off at five, but you can make good money."

I thanked her, not adding that my Chicago career was to be a checkered one, and that I was determined to see how many things I could do that I had never done before.

But social life was beginning to wear on Miss Ida's intended. He took up his hat and swung along toward the door. I was struggling to extract with my fork the bones of a hard, fried fish. Mrs. Wood encouraged me in a motherly tone:

"Oh, my, don't be so formal; take your knife."

"Say," called a voice from the door, "say, come on, Ida, I'm waiting for you." And the blonde fiancee hurried away with an embarra.s.sed laugh to join her lover. She was refined and delicate, her ears were small, her hands white and slender, she spoke correctly with a nasal voice, and her teeth (as is not often the case among this cla.s.s, whose lownesses seem suddenly revealed when they open their mouths) were sound and clean.

The man's smooth face was all commonness and vulgarity.

"He's had appendicitis," Mrs. Wood explained when we were alone. "He's been out of work a long time. As soon as he goes to his job his side bursts out again where they operated on him. He ain't a bit strong."

"When are they going to be married?" I asked.

"Oh, dear me, they don't think of that yet; they're in no hurry."

"Will Miss Ida work after she's married?"

"No, indeed."

Did they not have their share of ideal then, these two young labourers who could wait indefinitely, fed by hope, in their sordid, miserable surroundings?

I returned to my tenement room; its one window opened over a narrow alley flanked on its opposite side by a second tenement, through whose shutters I could look and see repeated layers of squalid lodgings. The thermometer had climbed up into the eighties. The wail of a newly born baby came from the room under mine. The heat was stifling. Outdoors in the false, flickering day of the arc lights the crowd swarmed, on the curb, on the sidewalk, on the house steps. The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards. Shouts, calls, cries, moans, the sounds of old age and of infancy, of despair and of joy, mingled and became the anonymous murmur of a hot, human mult.i.tude.

The following morning I put ten cents in my pocket and started out to get a job before this sum should be used up. How huge the city seemed when I thought of the small s.p.a.ce I could cover on foot, looking for work! I walked toward the river, as the commercial activity expressed itself in that direction by fifteen-and twenty-story buildings and streams of velvet smoke. Blocks and blocks of tenements, with the same dirty people wallowing around them, answered my searching eyes in blank response. There was an occasional dingy sign offering board and lodging.

After I had made several futile inquiries at imposing offices on the river front I felt that it was a hopeless quest. I should never get work unknown, unskilled, already tired and discouraged. My collar was wilted in the fierce heat; my shabby felt sailor hat was no protection against the sun's rays; my hands were gloveless; and as I pa.s.sed the plate gla.s.s windows I could see the despondent droop of my skirt, the stray locks of hair that blew about free of comb or veil. A sign out: "Manglers wanted!" attracted my attention in the window of a large steam laundry.

I was not a "mangler," but I went in and asked to see the boss. "Ever done any mangling?" was his first question.

"No," I answered, "but I am sure I could learn." I put so much ardour into my response that the boss at once took an interest.

"We might give you a place as shaker; you could start in and work up."

"What do you pay?"

"Four dollars a week until you learn. Then you would work up to five, five and a half."

Better than nothing, was all I could think, but I can't live on four a week.

"How often do you pay?"

"Every Tuesday night."

This meant no money for ten days.

"If you think you'd like to try shaking come round Monday morning at seven o'clock."

Which I took as my dismissal until Monday.

At least I had a job, however poor, and strengthened by this thought I determined to find something better before Monday. The ten-cent piece lay an inviting fortune in my hand. I was to part with one-tenth of it in exchange for a morning newspaper. This investment seemed a reckless plunge, but "nothing venture, nothing have," my pioneer spirit prompted, and soon deep in the list of _Wanted, Females_, I felt repaid. Even in my dest.i.tute condition I had a choice in mind. If possible I wanted to work without machinery in a shop where the girls used their hands alone as power. Here seemed to be my heart's content--a short, concise advertis.e.m.e.nt, "Wanted, hand sewers." After a consultation with a policeman as to the whereabouts of my future employer, it became evident that I must part with another of my ten cents, as the hand sewers worked on the opposite side of the city from the neighbourhood whither I had strayed in my morning's wanderings. I took a car and alighted at a busy street in the fas.h.i.+onable shopping centre of Chicago. The number I looked for was over a steep flight of dirty wooden stairs. If there is such a thing as luck it was now to dwell a moment with one of the poorest. I pushed open a swinging door and let myself into the office of a clothing manufacturer.

The owner, Mr. F., got up from his desk and came toward me.

"I seen your advertis.e.m.e.nt in the morning paper."

"Yes," he answered in a kindly voice. "Are you a tailoress?"

"No, sir; I've never done much sewing except on a machine."

"Well, we have machines here."

"But," I almost interrupted, beginning to fear that my training at Perry was to limit all further experience to an electric Singer, "I'd rather work with my hands. I like the hand-work."

He looked at me and gave me an answer which exactly coincided with my theories. He said this, and it was just what I wanted him to say.

"If you do hand-work you'll have to use your mind. Lots of girls come in here with an idea they can let their thoughts wander; but you've got to pay strict attention. You can't do hand-work mechanically."

"All right, sir," I responded. "What do you pay?"

"I'll give you six dollars a week while you're learning." I could hardly control a movement of delight. Six dollars a week! A dollar a day for an apprentice!

"But"--my next question I made as dismal as possible--"when do you pay?"

"Generally not till the end of the second week," the kindly voice said; "but we could arrange to pay you at the end of the first if you needed the money."

"Shall I come in Monday?"

"Come in this afternoon at 12:30 if you're ready."

"I'm ready," I said, "but I ain't brought no lunch with me, and it's too late now to get home and back again."

The man put his hand in his pocket and laid down before me a fifty-cent piece, advanced on my pay.

"Take that," he said, with courtesy; "get yourself a lunch in the neighbourhood and come back at half-past twelve."

I went to the nearest restaurant. It was an immense bakery patronized by office girls and men, hard workers who came for their only free moment of the day into this eating-place. Everything that could be swallowed quickly was spread out on a long counter, behind which there were steaming tanks of tea, coffee and chocolate. The men took their food downstairs and the ladies climbed to the floor above. I watched them.

They were self-supporting women--independent; they could use their money as they liked. They came in groups--a rustling frou-frou announced silk underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, ma.s.ses of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g weighed down their broad-brimmed picture hats, fancy veils, kid gloves, silver side-bags, embroidered blouses and elaborate belt buckles completed the detail of their showy costumes, the whole worn with the air of a manikin. What did these busy women order for lunch? Tea and buns, ice-cream and buckwheat cakes, apple pie _a la mode_ and chocolate were the most serious menus. This nouris.h.i.+ng food they ate with great nicety and daintiness, talking the while about clothes. They were in a hurry, as all of them had some shopping to do before returning to work, and they each spent a prinking five minutes before the mirror, adjusting the trash with which they had bedecked themselves exteriorly while their poor hard-working systems went ungarnished and hungry within.

This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away.

It is in this cla.s.s that campaigns can be made, directly and indirectly, by preaching and by example. What sort of women are those who sacrifice all on the altar of luxury? It is a prost.i.tution to sell the body's health and strength for gewgaws. What harmony can there be between the elaborate get-up of these young women and the miserable homes where they live? The idolizing of material things is a religion nurtured by this cla.s.s of whom I speak. In their humble surroundings the love of self, the desire to possess things, the cherished need for luxuries, crowd out the feelings that make character. They are but one manifestation of the egoism of the unmarried American woman.

For what and for whom do they work?