Working With the Working Woman Part 17

The bleachery, through its Partners.h.i.+p Plan, ran a village club house on Main Street. The younger boys, allowing only for school hours, worked the piano player from morn till night. There was a gymnasium.

Suppers were given now and then. It was supposed to be for the use of the girls certain days, but they took little or no advantage of it.

Otherwise, and mostly, when the weather permitted, up and down the street folk sat on their front porches and rocked or went inside and played the victrola.

"Gawd! If I could shake the Falls!" many a girl sighed. Yet they had no concrete idea what they would shake it for. Just before I came the bleachery girls were called into meeting and it was explained to them that Bryn Mawr College was planning a two months' summer school for working girls. Its attractions and possibilities were laid forth in detail. It was explained that Va.s.sar College and a woman's club were making it possible for two bleachery girls to go, with all expenses paid. Out of 184 eligible girls four signed up as being interested.

One of those later withdrew her name. The two chosen were Bess and Margaret, as fine girls as ever went to any college. There was much excitement the Sat.u.r.day morning their telegrams came, announcing Bryn Mawr had pa.s.sed favorably upon their candidacy. Bess especially was beside herself. "Oh, it's what I've longed to have a chance to do all my life!" She had clutched a _New Republic_ under her arms for days containing an article about the summer school. Both Margaret and Bess had spent a couple of years at West Point during the war as servants, for a change. They had worked for the colonel's wife and loved it.

"Gee! the fun we had!"

Yet it was no time before Main Street characteristics came to the front.

Only four girls had so much as expressed an interest in the Bryn Mawr scheme. Within a week after the two girls received the telegrams, tongues got busy. Margaret looked ready to cry one afternoon.

"Hey! what's the matter?"

"My Gawd! This place makes you sick. Can't no one let a person get started enjoyin' themselves but what they do their best to spoil it for you!" Her hands were wrapping pillow case bundles like lightning, her head bent over her work. "Don't I know I ain't nothin' but a factory girl? Don't I know I probably won't ever be nothin' but one?

Can't a person take a chance to get off for two months and go to that college without everybody sayin' you're tryin' to be stuck up and get to be somethin' grand and think you won't be a factory girl no more? I don't see anything I'm gettin' out of this that's goin' to make me anything but just a factory girl still. I'm not comin' back and put on any airs. My Gawd! My Gawd! Why can't they leave you alone?"

I asked two of the Falls men I knew if their s.e.x would have acted the same as the girls, had it been two men going off for a two months'

treat. "You bet," they answered. "It's your darn small-town jealousy, and not just female at all."

Suppose, then, on top of all the drawbacks of small-town life, the girls had to work under big-city factory conditions? At least there was always the laughter, always the talk, always the visiting back and forth, at the bleachery.

My last day on the job witnessed a real event. Katie Martin was to be married in ten days. Therefore, she must have her tin shower at the bleachery. Certain traditions of that sort were unavoidable. At Christmas time the entire Department 10 was decorated from end to end until it was resplendent. Such merrymaking as went on, such presents as were exchanged! And when any girl, American or Italian, was to be married, the whole department gave her a tin shower.

Katie Martin inspected and folded sheets. She was to marry the brother of young Mrs. Annie Turner, who ticketed sheets. Annie saw to it that Katie did not get to work promptly that noon. When she did appear, all out of breath and combing back her hair (no one ever wore a hat to work), there on two lines above her table hung the "shower." The rest of us had been there fifteen minutes, undoing packages, giggling, commenting. Except old Mrs. Brown's present. It was her first experience at a tin shower and she came up to me in great distress.

"Can't you stop them girls undoin' all her packages? 'Tain't right.

She oughta undo her own. I jus' won't let 'em touch what I brought!"

Ever and again a girl would spy Mrs. Brown's contribution. "Hey!

Here's a package ain't undone." "No, no, don't you touch it! Ain't to be undone by anybody but her." Poor Mrs. Brown was upset enough for tears.

There were a few other packages not to be undone by anybody but her, because their contents were meant to, and did, cause peals of laughter to the audience and much embarra.s.sment to Katie. On the lines hung first an array of baby clothes, all diminutive size, marked, "For little Charlie." Such are the traditions. Also hung seven kitchen pans, a pail, an egg-beater and gem pans; a percolator, a double boiler and goodness knows what not. On the table stood six cake tins, more pots and pans, salt and pepper shakers, enough of kitchenware to start off two brides. Everybody was pleased and satisfied. Charlie, the groom-to-be, got a friend with a Ford to take the shower home.

The last night of all at the Falls I spent at my second Board of Operatives' meeting, held the first Friday night of each month. The Board of Operatives is intended to represent the interests of the workers in the bleachery. The Board is elected annually by secret ballot by and from the operatives in the eleven different departments of the mill. Margaret and Bess went, too, on request from above, that they might appear more intelligent should anyone ask at Bryn Mawr about the Partners.h.i.+p Plan. ("My land, what _would_ we tell them?"

they wailed.) The Board meetings are officially set down as open to all the operatives, only no one ever heard of anyone else ever attending. The two girls were "fussed" at the very idea of being present, and dressed in their best.

The president, elected representative from the starch room, called the meeting to order from his position at the head of the table in the Village Club House. Every member of the Board shaves and puts on his Sunday clothes, which includes a white collar, for the Board meeting.

It is no free show, either. They are handed out two dollars apiece for attending, at the end of the meeting, the same idea as if it were Wall Street. The secretary reads the minutes of the Board of Management.

("The Board of Management was set up by the Board of Directors in July, 1919, as a result of a request from the Board of Operatives for more than merely 'advisory' power which the Board of Operatives then enjoyed in reference to matters of mill management, wages, working conditions, etc. The Board of Management consists of six members, three of whom are the treasurer, the New York agent, and the local manager, and three of whom are elected by the Board of Operatives from their number.... The Board of Management is authorized to settle and adjust such matters of mill management as may arise....") The Company statement, up to March 31, 1921, was read. There followed a report from the Housing Committee-first a financial statement. Then it seemed somebody wanted to put somebody else out of a house, and there were many complications indeed arising therefrom, which took much discussion from everyone and bitter words. It looked as if it would have to be taken to court. The conclusion seemed to be that the Board felt that its executive secretary, chosen by the management, though paid out of the common funds, had exceeded his authority in making statements to tenants. We girls rather s.h.i.+vered at the acrimony of the discussion. Had they been lady board members having such a row, half of them would have been in tears. Next, old Mrs. Owens, who shook sheets behind me, wanted to buy a certain house on a certain avenue-company house, of course. Third, one Mr. Jones on Academy Street wants us to paper his kitchen-he will supply the paper. And there followed other items regarding paint for this tenant, new floor for that, should an old company boarding house be remodeled for a new club house or an apartment house; it was decided to postpone roofing a long row of old company houses, etc.

The operative from the folding and packing room was chairman of the Housing Committee, a strong union enthusiast. The representative from the mechanical department reported for the Recreation and Education Committee; all the night school cla.s.ses had closed, with appropriate final exercises, for the season: the children's playground would be ready for use July 1st. The man from the "gray" room and singe house reported for the Working Conditions Committee. Something about watchmen and a drinking fountain, and wheels and boxes in the starch room; was.h.i.+ng facilities for shovelers; benches and back stairs.

The Finance Committee reported a deficit on the mechanical and electrical smoker. Much discussion as to why a deficit and who ought to pay it, and what precedent were they setting, and all and all, but it was ordered paid-this time. Webster's bills were too high for papering and painting company houses. He was a good worker, his plaster and his paper stuck where they belonged, which hadn't been the rule before. But it was decided he was too costly even so, and they were going back to the company paperers-perhaps their work would stick better next time. A report from the Board of Directors was discussed and voted upon.... The minutes of the Board of Operatives were posted all through the mill. Did anyone read them? If so, or if not so, should the Board of Management minutes also be posted? It was voted to postpone posting such minutes, though they were open to any operative, as in the past.

Under Old Business was a long discussion on health benefits and old-age pensions. For some months now the bleachery has been concerned on the subject of old-age pensions. Health benefits have been in operation for some time. The question was, should they pay the second week for accident cases, until the state started its payments the third week?

Under New Business the resignation of the editors of _Bleachery Life_ was read and accepted. Acrimonious discussion as to the running of the _Bleachery Life_. Again we girls s.h.i.+vered. It was announced a certain rich man who recently died had left the Village Club House five hundred dollars-better write no letter of thanks until they got the money. Should the new handbook be printed by union labor at considerably greater expense, or by an open shop? Unanimously voted by union labor. More health-benefit discussions under New Business. It was voted to increase the Board of Management by two additional members-one operative, one from the employing side. Election then and there by a secret ballot. The operative from the "gray" room and singe house was elected over the man from the office force by two votes.

Some further housing discussions, and at 11.15 P.M. the meeting adjourned.

"Say, I'm for coming every time." Perhaps we three girls will have started the style of outside attendance at the meetings.

Whether a wider partic.i.p.ation of operatives, a deeper understanding of Industrial Democracy and the Partners.h.i.+p Plan, develops or not, certainly they are a long step on the way to some sort of permeation of interest. For the next morning early, my last morning, as I started work, I heard toothless old Mrs. Holley call over to aged Mrs. Owens, whose husband even these days is never sober: "Hi, Mrs. Owens, what do ye know habout hit! Hain't it grand we got out over five million five hundred thousand yards last month?"

"I say it's grand," grinned Mrs. Owens. "More 'n a million over what we done month before."

"Hi say-over fifteen million the last three months. Hi say we're some bleachery, that's what _hi_ say!"

VI

_No. 1470, "Pantry Girl"_

Perhaps, more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers, where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and was.h.i.+ng have not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the growth of such normal intercourse between the s.e.xes as leads to happy matrimony. No need to depend on dance halls or the Subway to pick up a "fella." No need for external administrations from wholesome social workers whose aim is to enable the working man or woman to see something of the opposite s.e.x.

Yet forever are there flies in ointments. Flossie was one of the salad girls in the main kitchen. Flossie was Irish, young, most of her teeth gone. Her sister had worked at our hotel two years earlier, then had sent for Flossie to come from Ireland. The sister was now married.

Innocently, interestedly, I asked, "To a man she knew here at the hotel?"

Flossie cast a withering eye upon me. "The good Lord save us! I should say not! And what decent girl would ever be marryin' the likes of a man who worked around a hotel? She couldn't do much worse! Just steer clear of hotel men, I'm tellin' ya. They're altogether too wise to be safe for any girl."

We were eating supper. The table of eight all nodded a.s.sent.

Too wise or not too wise-at least there is a-cordiality-a predisposition toward affection on the part of male hotel workers which tends to make one's outside male a.s.sociates seem fearfully formal, if not stiffly antagonistic. If one grows accustomed to being called "Sweetheart," "Darling" on first sight, ending in the evening by the time-clock man's greeting of, "Here comes my little bunch of love!"-is it not plain that outside in the cruel world such words as a mere "How-do-you-do" or "Good morning" seem cold indeed?

What happens when a girl works three years in this affectionate atmosphere and then marries a plumber who hollers merely "say" at her?

Behind the scenes in a hotel-what is it all about? To find that out I poked around till the employment-office entrance of one of New York's biggest and newest hotels was discovered. There had been no "ad." in the Sunday paper which would give a hint that any hotel needed additional help. We took our chances. Some twenty men waited in a little hallway, two women inside the little office. One of the women weighed at least two hundred and fifty, the other not a pound over ninety. Both could have been grandmothers, both wanted chamber work.

The employment man spied me.

"What do you want?"

"A job."

"What kind of a job?"

"Anything but bein' chambermaid."

"What experience have you had in hotel work?"

"None, but lots in private homes. I'd like a job around the kitchen some place."

"Ever try pantry work?"

"Not in a hotel, but lots in private families. I can do that swell!"

(What pantry work meant I hadn't the least idea-thought perhaps was.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and silverware.)