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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Who Toils
+       Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls
+
+Author: Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2005 [EBook #15218]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WHO TOILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Alicia Williams and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. at www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the
+costume of the pickle factory]
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe
+factory]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
+
+_Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_
+
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+and
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+To Mark Twain
+
+In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in
+Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him
+kin with the whole world:--
+
+this book is inscribed by
+
+BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+
+_Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_
+
+
+     WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902.
+
+     _My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_:
+
+     _I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
+     your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most
+     melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is
+     fundamentally infinitely more important than any other
+     question in this country--that is, the question of race
+     suicide, complete or partial_.
+
+     _An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
+     "independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to
+     one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the
+     fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial
+     qualities without which there can be no strong races--the
+     qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of
+     scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to
+     work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to
+     be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside
+     of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
+     worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the
+     foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that
+     the only things really worth having in life are those the
+     acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man
+     or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout
+     life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from
+     home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy
+     children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the
+     sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the
+     beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is
+     brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman
+     who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as
+     to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to
+     dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the
+     race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
+     all healthy people_.
+
+     _Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one
+     quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
+     qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
+     brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
+     can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the
+     nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and
+     coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor
+     people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury
+     in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work
+     in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and
+     ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of
+     families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest
+     thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that
+     nation has cause to be alarmed about its future_.
+
+     _There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble
+     with the situation you set forth is one of character, and
+     therefore we can conquer it if we only will._
+
+     _Very sincerely yours,_
+
+     _THEODORE ROOSEVELT._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same
+title in _Everybody's Magazine_. Nearly a third of the volume has not
+been published in any form.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+       I.  Introductory                                              1
+
+      II.  In a Pittsburg Factory                                    7
+
+     III.  Perry, a New York Mill Town                              59
+
+      IV.  Making Clothing in Chicago                               99
+
+       V.  The Meaning of It All                                   155
+
+
+By MARIE VAN VORST
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+      VI.  Introductory                                            165
+
+     VII.  A Maker of Shoes at Lynn                                169
+
+    VIII.  The Southern Cotton Mills                               215
+             The Mill Village
+             The Mill
+
+      IX.  The Child in the Southern Mills                         275
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes,
+                                                         _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                            FACING PAGE
+
+"The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot
+  falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning,"                12
+
+"Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the
+  lives consumed, and vanishing again,"                             58
+
+"They trifle with love,"                                            70
+
+After Saturday night's shopping,                                    84
+
+Sunday evening at Silver Lake,                                      96
+
+"The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy
+  with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards,"       102
+
+In a Chicago theatrical costume factory,                           114
+
+Chicago types,                                                     128
+
+The rear of a Chicago tenement,                                    144
+
+A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory,          172
+
+One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper,"
+  an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week,                   172
+
+"Learning" a new hand,                                             184
+
+The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass.,               196
+
+"Fancy gumming,"                                                   210
+
+An all-round, experienced hand,                                    210
+
+"Mighty mill--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate,"  220
+
+"The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type,"         240
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of
+society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated
+as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper
+and the lower, the educated and the uneducated--and a further variety of
+opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come
+into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or
+elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for
+their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us
+recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral
+and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical
+development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help
+them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in
+every way.
+
+Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have
+two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material
+advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who
+consider the poor as objects of charity, to be treated sentimentally,
+or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics
+nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for
+the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope
+we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality
+upon earth.
+
+It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we
+must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with
+their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must
+discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their
+surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily
+effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived
+ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral,
+spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an
+undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its
+practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and
+to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out
+to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and
+sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help
+and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers
+which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as
+they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that
+occurred to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for
+the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I
+might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find
+out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with
+ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman
+is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined,
+
+    1st. By nature,
+     2d. By family life,
+     3d. By social laws;
+
+what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the
+woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new
+society as manifested by its working girls.
+
+After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away
+convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am
+hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the
+hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general
+help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their
+material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are
+condemned to slow death--mental, moral, physical death! If into their
+prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon
+should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
+
+
+In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon
+Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined
+by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in
+the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616
+inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to
+these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and
+clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a
+glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this
+Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to
+call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose
+despots are the employers--the multi-millionaire patrons--and whose
+serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an
+authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons,
+the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this
+difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a
+thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also,
+thousands of separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the
+pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are
+run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change.
+The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first
+and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays
+no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself
+over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied,
+and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to
+effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in
+Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their
+ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love
+of art, and of classic forms, the desire to embellish--all that was
+inspired by culture of the beautiful; the Renaissance in America is the
+rebirth of man's originality in the invention of the useful, the virgin
+power of man's wits as quickened in the crude struggle for life.
+Florence is _par excellence_ the place where we can study the Italian
+Renaissance; Pittsburg appealed to me as a most favourable spot to watch
+the American Renaissance, the enlivening of energies which give value to
+a man devoid of education, energies which in their daily exercise with
+experience generate a new force, a force that makes our country what it
+is, industrially and economically. So it was toward Pittsburg that I
+first directed my steps, but before leaving New York I assumed my
+disguise. In the Parisian clothes I am accustomed to wear I present the
+familiar outline of any woman of the world. With the aid of coarse
+woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a
+knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the
+ordinary type. I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the
+fortunate--I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate. I am
+to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of
+them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and
+sorrows.
+
+I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated
+as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the
+gateman says a respectful "To the right" or "To the left," and trusts to
+his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's
+hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: "Now
+you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for
+you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry--just put those three
+cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman
+is standing and he'll direct you to your train."
+
+This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a
+certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a
+class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later
+myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their
+manual training, ignorant on all subjects.
+
+My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to
+Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of
+miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy
+streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a
+frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the
+streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly
+like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic.
+Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues;
+occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning
+bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every
+three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The
+trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of
+the mills.
+
+I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar
+where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant
+scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce
+bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that
+passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed
+Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the
+pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his
+arm.
+
+[Illustration: "THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE
+SOOT FALLS SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING"]
+
+In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a
+common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred
+through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.
+
+At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I
+receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and
+I answer as best I can.
+
+"What is it you want?"
+
+"Board and work in a factory."
+
+"Have you ever worked in a factory?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Have you ever done any housework?"
+
+She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming
+prisoners and reasoning with the poor.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, I have done housework."
+
+"What did you make?"
+
+"Twelve dollars a month."
+
+"I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and
+fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Are you making anything now?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Can you afford to pay board?"
+
+"Yes, as I hope to get work at once."
+
+She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge
+for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population
+of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry
+written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of
+half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled
+close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three
+o'clock I find the waif boarding-house.
+
+The matron is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false
+hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive
+manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to
+direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make herself
+dreaded. In the distance I can hear a shrill, nasal orchestra of
+children's voices. I am cold and hungry. I have as yet no job. The
+noise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden
+impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter--to snap my
+fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate.
+Something within me calls _Courage_! I take a room at three dollars a
+week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with
+cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron
+tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman.
+
+I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life,
+but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt
+letters: "_Women Employees_."
+
+The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a
+gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and
+about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all
+surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a
+thousand. Each number means a workman--each tick of the clock a moment
+of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the
+window of the glass cage. It opens.
+
+"Do you need any girls?" I ask, trying not to show my emotion.
+
+"Ever worked in a factory?"
+
+"No, sir; but I'm very handy."
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Housework," I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself.
+
+"Well," he says, looking at me, "they need help up in the bottling
+department; but I don't know as it would pay you--they don't give more
+than sixty or seventy cents a day."
+
+"I am awfully anxious for work," I say. "Couldn't I begin and get
+raised, perhaps?"
+
+"Surely--there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You
+come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it,
+and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good
+workers."
+
+The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not
+come in vain. I have a place!
+
+When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had
+heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there
+are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform
+checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the
+babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the
+freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down
+into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order.
+Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs.
+
+"_Quit rocking_!" the false mother cries at them. "You make my head
+ache. Most of 'em have no parents," she explains to me. "None of 'em
+have homes."
+
+Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for,
+growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance;
+each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The
+matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated.
+The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This
+"Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His
+rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he
+reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't
+bring me no toys." And then with pride, "My mamma buys rice and tea and
+lots of things," and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, "My
+mamma comes in the street cars, only," sadly, "she don't never come."
+
+Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without.
+At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming
+to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and,
+gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the
+short outlines of their lives.
+
+"I've been to the hospital," says one, "and so's Lily. I drank a lot of
+washing soda and it made me sick."
+
+Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. "I had typhoy fever--I was in
+the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the
+lights--it was just evening--and a man came in and he took one of the
+babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the
+row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was
+something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing,
+and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white
+thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another time," Lily goes
+on, "there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was
+takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on
+chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle."
+
+Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only
+with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an
+understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic
+difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image
+the violent and brutal side of existence--the only one with which they
+are acquainted.
+
+At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open
+into a long room with a slanting roof. It serves as nursery and parlour.
+In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are
+seated with babies on their knees. They have the meek look of those who
+doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures
+of the overworked. Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt
+shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high
+foreheads. One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother's arms; one
+is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes
+through a scarlet mask. The corners of the room are filled with the
+drones--those who "work for a bite of grub." The cook, her washing done,
+has piled her aching bones in a heap; her drawn face waits like an
+indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue. Mary, the
+woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison's
+walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite
+of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her
+profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over
+them--dull and silent, they deaden her face. And Jennie, the charwoman,
+is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and
+withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is
+twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a
+mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a
+task.
+
+What could be hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be
+clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was
+impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was
+a total absence of beauty in everything--not a line of grace, not a
+pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to
+this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade
+the tenement. It was probable my comrades felt at no time the discomfort
+I did, but the harm done them is not the physical suffering their
+condition causes, but the moral and spiritual bondage in which it holds
+them. They are not a class of drones made differently from us. I saw
+nothing to indicate that they were not born with like _capacities_ to
+ours. As our bodies accustom themselves to luxury and cleanliness,
+theirs grow hardened to deprivation and filth. As our souls develop with
+the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal--an intellectual,
+esthetic and moral ideal--their souls diminish under the oppression of a
+constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they
+become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an
+argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as
+false. From all I saw I am convinced that, _given their relative
+preparation_ for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys
+are the same as ours in kind and in degree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy
+maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours
+until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal
+darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me
+as I went to bed: "If you want to wash," she said, "you'd better wash
+now; you can't have no water in your room, and there won't be nobody up
+when you leave in the morning." My evening bath is supplemented by a
+whisk of the sponge at five.
+
+Without it is black--a more intense black than night's beginning, when
+all is astir. The streets are silent, an occasional train whirls past,
+groups of men hurry hither and thither swinging their arms, rubbing
+their ears in the freezing air. Many of them have neither overcoats nor
+gloves. Now and then a woman sweeps along. Her skirts have the same
+swing as my own short ones; under her arm she carries a newspaper bundle
+whose meaning I have grown to know. My own contains a midday meal: two
+cold fried oysters, two dried preserve sandwiches, a pickle and an
+orange. My way lies across a bridge. In the first gray of dawn the river
+shows black under its burden of ice. Along its troubled banks
+innumerable chimneys send forth their hot activity, clouds of seething
+flames, waving arms of smoke and steam--a symbol of spent energy, of the
+lives consumed and vanishing again, the sparks that shine an instant
+against the dark sky and are spent forever.
+
+As I draw nearer the factory I move with a stream of fellow workers
+pouring toward the glass cage of the timekeeper. He greets me and starts
+me on my upward journey with a wish that I shall not get discouraged, a
+reminder that the earnest worker always makes a way for herself.
+
+"What will you do about your name?" "What will you do with your hair and
+your hands?" "How can you deceive people?" These are some of the
+questions I had been asked by my friends.
+
+Before any one had cared or needed to know my name it was morning of
+the second day, and my assumed name seemed by that time the only one I
+had ever had. As to hair and hands, a half-day's work suffices for their
+undoing. And my disguise is so successful I have deceived not only
+others but myself. I have become with desperate reality a factory girl,
+alone, inexperienced, friendless. I am making $4.20 a week and spending
+$3 of this for board alone, and I dread not being strong enough to keep
+my job. I climb endless stairs, am given a white cap and an apron, and
+my life as a factory girl begins. I become part of the ceaseless,
+unrelenting mechanism kept in motion by the poor.
+
+The factory I have chosen has been built contemporaneously with reforms
+and sanitary inspection. There are clean, well-aired rooms, hot and cold
+water with which to wash, places to put one's hat and coat, an
+obligatory uniform for regular employees, hygienic and moral advantages
+of all kinds, ample space for work without crowding.
+
+Side by side in rows of tens or twenties we stand before our tables
+waiting for the seven o'clock whistle to blow. In their white caps and
+blue frocks and aprons, the girls in my department, like any unfamiliar
+class, all look alike. My first task is an easy one; anybody could do
+it. On the stroke of seven my fingers fly. I place a lid of paper in a
+tin jar-top, over it a cork; this I press down with both hands, tossing
+the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite of myself I hurry; I cannot
+work fast enough--I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have
+finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle
+is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for
+sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling,
+washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment for
+the simple work assigned to me. One hour passes, two, three hours; I fit
+ten, twenty, fifty dozen caps, and still my energy keeps up.
+
+The forewoman is a pretty girl of twenty. Her restless eyes, her
+metallic voice are the messengers who would know all. I am afraid of
+her. I long to please her. I am sure she must be saying "_How well the
+new girl works_."
+
+Conversation is possible among those whose work has become mechanical.
+Twice I am sent to the storeroom for more caps. In these brief moments
+my companions volunteer a word of themselves.
+
+"I was out to a ball last night," the youngest one says. "I stayed so
+late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning."
+
+"That's nothing," another retorts. "There's hardly an evening we don't
+have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest."
+
+And on my second trip the pale creature with me says:
+
+"I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last Friday week. It's awful
+lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I
+miss her _dreadful_. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it."
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," the answer comes from a girl with short skirts.
+"You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month
+and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind."
+
+Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same
+heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with
+us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making
+duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks,
+blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in
+hearts heretofore light with youth.
+
+When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my
+job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle
+jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle
+blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a
+part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to
+life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites--news to tell. We herd
+down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in
+all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The ménu varies little: bread
+and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally a sausage, a bit of cheese or a
+piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The
+dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in
+dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and
+"sociables."
+
+At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to
+my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my
+thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a
+numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can
+they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled;
+bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and
+loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the
+monotony of it, the never-ending supply of work to be begun and
+finished, begun and finished, begun and finished! Now and then some one
+cuts a finger or runs a splinter under the flesh; once the mustard
+machine broke--and still the work goes on, on, on! New girls like
+myself, who had worked briskly in the morning, are beginning to loiter.
+Out of the washing-tins hands come up red and swollen, only to be
+plunged again into hot dirty water. Would the whistle never blow? Once I
+pause an instant, my head dazed and weary, my ears strained to bursting
+with the deafening noise. Quickly a voice whispers in my ear: "You'd
+better not stand there doin' nothin'. If _she_ catches you she'll give
+it to you."
+
+On! on! bundle of pains! For you this is one day's work in a thousand of
+peace and beauty. For those about you this is the whole of daylight,
+this is the winter dawn and twilight, this is the glorious summer noon,
+this is all day, this is every day, this is _life_. Rest is only a bit
+of a dream, snatched when the sleeper's aching body lets her close her
+eyes for a moment in oblivion.
+
+Out beyond the chimney tops the snowfields and the river turn from gray
+to pink, and still the work goes on. Each crate I lift grows heavier,
+each bottle weighs an added pound. Now and then some one lends a helping
+hand.
+
+"Tired, ain't you? This is your first day, ain't it?"
+
+The acid smell of vinegar and mustard penetrates everywhere. My ankles
+cry out pity. Oh! to sit down an instant!
+
+"Tidy up the table," some one tells me; "we're soon goin' home."
+
+Home! I think of the stifling fumes of fried food, the dim haze in the
+kitchen where my supper waits me; the children, the band of drifting
+workers, the shrill, complaining voice of the hired mother. This is
+home.
+
+I sweep and set to rights, limping, lurching along. At last the whistle
+blows! In a swarm we report; we put on our things and get away into the
+cool night air. I have stood ten hours; I have fitted 1,300 corks; I
+have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents.
+
+The impressions of my first day crowd pell-mell upon my mind. The sound
+of the machinery dins in my ears. I can hear the sharp, nasal voices of
+the forewoman and the girls shouting questions and answers.
+
+A sudden recollection comes to me of a Dahomayan family I had watched at
+work in their hut during the Paris Exhibition. There was a magic spell
+in their voices as they talked together; the sounds they made had the
+cadence of the wind in the trees, the running of water, the song of
+birds: they echoed unconsciously the caressing melodies of nature. My
+factory companions drew their vocal inspiration from the bedlam of
+civilization, the rasping and pounding of machinery, the din which they
+must out-din to be heard.
+
+For the two days following my first experience I am unable to resume
+work. Fatigue has swept through my blood like a fever. Every bone and
+joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories
+and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling
+house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company
+I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than
+where I am; at the broom factory they employ only men. I decide to
+continue with tin caps and pickle jars.
+
+My whole effort now is to find a respectable boarding-house. I start
+out, the thermometer near zero, the snow falling. I wander and ask,
+wander and ask. Up and down the black streets running parallel and at
+right angles with the factory I tap and ring at one after another of the
+two-story red-brick houses. More than half of them are empty, tenantless
+during the working hours. What hope is there for family life near the
+hearth which is abandoned at the factory's first call? The sociableness,
+the discipline, the division of responsibility make factory work a
+dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern
+conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls,
+impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery
+as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes:
+sport, college education, machinery--each is a factor in the gradual
+transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a
+collection of individuals with separate interests and aims outside the
+home.
+
+I pursue my search. It is the dinner hour. At last a narrow door opens,
+letting a puff of hot rank air blow upon me as I stand in the vestibule
+questioning: "Do you take boarders?"
+
+The woman who answers stands with a spoon in her hand, her eyes fixed
+upon a rear room where a stove, laden with frying-pans, glows and
+sputters.
+
+"Come in," she says, "and get warm."
+
+I walk into a front parlour with furniture that evidently serves
+domestic as well as social purposes. There is a profusion of white
+knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the
+fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the
+barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already
+I feel at home.
+
+"Want board, do you?" the woman asks. "Well, we ain't got no place;
+we're always right full up."
+
+My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on
+again.
+
+"I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want," the woman
+calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out.
+
+The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take
+"mealers" only, some only "roomers," some "only gentlemen." I begin to
+understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on
+account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to
+fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town
+the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply
+of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between
+city and country factory life that there is between university life in
+a capital and in a country town.
+
+A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to
+rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman.
+Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and
+beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist.
+
+"Do you take boarders?"
+
+"Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much
+trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room," she continues,
+opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her
+forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence
+the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring:
+
+"My husband was killed on the railroad last week. He lived three hours.
+They took him to the hospital--a boy come running down and told me. I
+went up as fast as I could, but it was too late; he never spoke again. I
+guess he didn't know what struck him; his head was all smashed. He was
+awful good to me--so easy-going. I ain't got my mind down to work yet.
+If you don't like this here room," she goes on listlessly, "maybe you
+could get suited across the way."
+
+Thompson Seton tells us in his book on wild animals that not one among
+them ever dies a natural death. As the opposite extreme of vital
+persistence we have the man whose life, in spite of acute disease, is
+prolonged against reason by science; and midway comes the labourer, who
+takes his chances unarmed by any understanding of physical law, whose
+only safeguards are his wits and his presence of mind. The violent
+death, the accidents, the illnesses to which he falls victim might be
+often warded off by proper knowledge. Nature is a zealous enemy;
+ignorance and inexperience keep a whole class defenseless.
+
+The next day is Saturday. I feel a fresh excitement at going back to my
+job; the factory draws me toward it magnetically. I long to be in the
+hum and whir of the busy workroom. Two days of leisure without resources
+or amusement make clear to me how the sociability of factory life, the
+freedom from personal demands, the escape from self can prove a
+distraction to those who have no mental occupation, no money to spend on
+diversion. It is easier to submit to factory government which commands
+five hundred girls with one law valid for all, than to undergo the
+arbitrary discipline of parental authority. I speed across the
+snow-covered courtyard. In a moment my cap and apron are on and I am
+sent to report to the head forewoman.
+
+"We thought you'd quit," she says. "Lots of girls come in here and quit
+after one day, especially Saturday. To-day is scrubbing day," she smiles
+at me. "Now we'll do right by you if you do right by us. What did the
+timekeeper say he'd give you?"
+
+"Sixty or seventy a day."
+
+"We'll give you seventy," she says. "Of course, we can judge girls a
+good deal by their looks, and we can see that you're above the average."
+
+She wears her cap close against her head. Her front hair is rolled up in
+crimping-pins. She has false teeth and is a widow. Her pale, parched
+face shows what a great share of life has been taken by daily
+over-effort repeated during years. As she talks she touches my arm in a
+kindly fashion and looks at me with blue eyes that float about under
+weary lids. "You are only at the beginning," they seem to say. "Your
+youth and vigour are at full tide, but drop by drop they will be sapped
+from you, to swell the great flood of human effort that supplies the
+world's material needs. You will gain in experience," the weary lids
+flutter at me, "but you will pay _with your life_ the living you make."
+
+There is no variety in my morning's work. Next to me is a bright, pretty
+girl jamming chopped pickles into bottles.
+
+"How long have you been here?" I ask, attracted by her capable
+appearance. She does her work easily and well.
+
+"About five months."
+
+"How much do you make?"
+
+"From 90 cents to $1.05. I'm doing piece-work," she explains. "I get
+seven-eighths of a cent for every dozen bottles I fill. I have to fill
+eight dozen to make seven cents. Downstairs in the corking-room you can
+make as high as $1.15 to $1.20. They won't let you make any more than
+that. Me and them two girls over there are the only ones in this room
+doing piece-work. I was here three weeks as a day-worker."
+
+"Do you live at home?" I ask.
+
+"Yes; I don't have to work. I don't pay no board. My father and my
+brothers supports me and my mother. But," and her eyes twinkle, "I
+couldn't have the clothes I do if I didn't work."
+
+"Do you spend your money all on yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I am amazed at the cheerfulness of my companions. They complain of
+fatigue, of cold, but never at any time is there a suggestion of
+ill-humour. Their suppressed animal spirits reassert themselves when the
+forewoman's back is turned. Companionship is the great stimulus. I am
+confident that without the social _entrain_, the encouragement of
+example, it would be impossible to obtain as much from each individual
+girl as is obtained from them in groups of tens, fifties, hundreds
+working together.
+
+When lunch is over we are set to scrubbing. Every table and stand, every
+inch of the factory floor must be scrubbed in the next four hours. The
+whistle on Saturday blows an hour earlier. Any girl who has not finished
+her work when the day is done, so that she can leave things in perfect
+order, is kept overtime, for which she is paid at the rate of six or
+seven cents an hour. A pail of hot water, a dirty rag and a
+scrubbing-brush are thrust into my hands. I touch them gingerly. I get a
+broom and for some time make sweeping a necessity, but the forewoman is
+watching me. I am afraid of her. There is no escape. I begin to scrub.
+My hands go into the brown, slimy water and come out brown and slimy. I
+slop the soap-suds around and move on to a fresh place. It appears there
+are a right and a wrong way of scrubbing. The forewoman is at my side.
+
+"Have you ever scrubbed before?" she asks sharply. This is humiliating.
+
+"Yes," I answer; "I have scrubbed ... oilcloth."
+
+The forewoman knows how to do everything. She drops down on her knees
+and, with her strong arms and short-thumbed, brutal hands, she shows me
+how to scrub.
+
+The grumbling is general. There is but one opinion among the girls: it
+is not right that they should be made to do this work. They all echo the
+same resentment, but their complaints are made in whispers; not one has
+the courage to openly rebel. What, I wonder to myself, do the men do on
+scrubbing day. I try to picture one of them on his hands and knees in a
+sea of brown mud. It is impossible. The next time I go for a supply of
+soft soap in a department where the men are working I take a look at the
+masculine interpretation of house cleaning. One man is playing a hose on
+the floor and the rest are rubbing the boards down with long-handled
+brooms and rubber mops.
+
+"You take it easy," I say to the boss.
+
+"I won't have no scrubbing in my place," he answers emphatically. "The
+first scrubbing day, they says to me 'Get down on your hands and knees,'
+and I says--'Just pay me my money, will you; I'm goin' home. What
+scrubbing can't be done with mops ain't going to be done by me.' The
+women wouldn't have to scrub, either, if they had enough spirit all of
+'em to say so."
+
+I determined to find out if possible, during my stay in the factory,
+what it is that clogs this mainspring of "spirit" in the women.
+
+I hear fragmentary conversations about fancy dress balls, valentine
+parties, church sociables, flirtations and clothes. Almost all of the
+girls wear shoes with patent leather and some or much cheap jewelry,
+brooches, bangles and rings. A few draw their corsets in; the majority
+are not laced. Here and there I see a new girl whose back is flat, whose
+chest is well developed. Among the older hands who have begun work early
+there is not a straight pair of shoulders. Much of the bottle washing
+and filling is done by children from twelve to fourteen years of age.
+On their slight, frail bodies toil weighs heavily; the delicate child
+form gives way to the iron hand of labour pressed too soon upon it.
+Backs bend earthward, chests recede, never to be sound again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a Sunday of rest I arrive somewhat ahead of time on Monday
+morning, which leaves me a few moments for conversation with a
+piece-worker who is pasting labels on mustard jars. She is fifteen.
+
+"Do you like your job?" I ask.
+
+"Yes, I do," she answers, pleased to tell her little history. "I began
+in a clothing shop. I only made $2.50 a week, but I didn't have to
+stand. I felt awful when papa made me quit. When I came in here, bein'
+on my feet tired me so I cried every night for two months. Now I've got
+used to it. I don't feel no more tired when I get home than I did when I
+started out." There are two sharp blue lines that drag themselves down
+from her eyes to her white cheeks.
+
+"Why, you know, at Christmas they give us two weeks," she goes on in the
+sociable tone of a woman whose hands are occupied. "I just didn't know
+what to do with myself."
+
+"Does your mother work?"
+
+"Oh, my, no. I don't have to work, only if I didn't I couldn't have the
+clothes I do. I save some of my money and spend the rest on myself. I
+make $6 to $7 a week."
+
+The girl next us volunteers a share in the conversation.
+
+"I bet you can't guess how old I am."
+
+I look at her. Her face and throat are wrinkled, her hands broad, and
+scrawny; she is tall and has short skirts. What shall be my clue? If I
+judge by pleasure, "unborn" would be my answer; if by effort, then "a
+thousand years."
+
+"Twenty," I hazard as a safe medium.
+
+"Fourteen," she laughs. "I don't like it at home, the kids bother me so.
+Mamma's people are well-to-do. I'm working for my own pleasure."
+
+"Indeed, I wish I was," says a new girl with a red waist. "We three
+girls supports mamma and runs the house. We have $13 rent to pay and a
+load of coal every month and groceries. It's no joke, I can tell you."
+
+The whistle blows; I go back to my monotonous task. The old aches begin
+again, first gently, then more and more sharply. The work itself is
+growing more mechanical. I can watch the girls around me. What is it
+that determines superiority in this class? Why was the girl filling
+pickle jars put on piece-work after three weeks, when others older than
+she are doing day-work at fifty and sixty cents after a year in the
+factory? What quality decides that four shall direct four hundred?
+Intelligence I put first; intelligence of any kind, from the natural
+penetration that needs no teaching to the common sense that every one
+relies upon. Judgment is not far behind in the list, and it is soon
+matured by experience. A strong will and a moral steadiness stand
+guardians over the other two. The little pickle girl is winning in the
+race by her intelligence. The forewomen have all four qualities,
+sometimes one, sometimes another predominating. Pretty Clara is smarter
+than Lottie. Lottie is more steady. Old Mrs. Minns' will has kept her at
+it until her judgment has become infallible and can command a good
+price. Annie is an evenly balanced mixture of all, and the five hundred
+who are working under the five lack these qualities somewhat, totally,
+or have them in useless proportions.
+
+Monday is a hard day. There is more complaining, more shirking, more
+gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to
+dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young
+man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the
+language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the
+abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other,
+but in all they say there is not a word of value--nothing that would
+interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the
+sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration
+of the French _ouvriere_. The Old World generations ago divided itself
+into classes; the lower class watched the upper and grew observant and
+appreciative, wise and discriminating, through the study of a master's
+will. Here in the land of freedom, where no class line is rigid, the
+precious chance is not to serve but to live for oneself; not to watch a
+superior, but to find out by experience. The ideal plays no part, stern
+realities alone count, and thus we have a progressive, practical,
+independent people, the expression of whose personality is interesting
+not through their words but by their deeds.
+
+When the Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the
+dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her
+temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain,
+the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at
+first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad
+English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to
+adopt the twang. No allusion is made to my pronunciation except by one
+girl, who says:
+
+"I knew you was from the East. My sister spent a year in Boston and when
+she come back she talked just like you do, but she lost it all again.
+I'd give anything if I could talk _aristocratic_."
+
+I am beginning to understand why the meager lunches of
+preserve-sandwiches and pickles more than satisfy the girls whom I was
+prepared to accuse of spending their money on gewgaws rather than on
+nourishment. It is fatigue that steals the appetite. I can hardly taste
+what I put in my mouth; the food sticks in my throat. The girls who
+complain most of being tired are the ones who roll up their newspaper
+bundles half full. They should be given an hour at noon. The first half
+of it should be spent in rest and recreation before a bite is touched.
+The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and
+pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I
+did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and
+sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste.
+
+So long as I remain in the bottling department there is little variety
+in my days. Rising at 5:30 every morning, I make my way through black
+streets to offer my sacrifice of energy on the altar of toil. All is
+done without a fresh incident. Accumulated weariness forces me to take a
+day off. When I return I am sent for in the corking-room. The forewoman
+lends me a blue gingham dress and tells me I am to do "piece"-work.
+There are three who work together at every corking-table. My two
+companions are a woman with goggles and a one-eyed boy. We are not a
+brilliant trio. The job consists in evening the vinegar in the bottles,
+driving the cork in, first with a machine, then with a hammer, letting
+out the air with a knife stuck under the cork, capping the corks,
+sealing the caps, counting and distributing the bottles. These
+operations are paid for at the rate of one-half a cent for the dozen
+bottles, which sum is divided among us. My two companions are earning a
+living, so I must work in dead earnest or take bread out of their
+mouths. At every blow of the hammer there is danger. Again and again
+bottles fly to pieces in my hand. The boy who runs the corking-machine
+smashes a glass to fragments.
+
+"Are you hurt?" I ask, my own fingers crimson stained.
+
+"That ain't nothin'," he answers. "Cuts is common; my hands is full of
+'em."
+
+The woman directs us; she is fussy and loses her head, the work
+accumulates, I am slow, the boy is clumsy. There is a stimulus
+unsuspected in working to get a job done. Before this I had worked to
+make the time pass. Then no one took account of how much I did; the
+factory clock had a weighted pendulum; now ambition outdoes physical
+strength. The hours and my purpose are running a race together. But,
+hurry as I may, as we do, when twelve blows its signal we have corked
+only 210 dozen bottles! This is no more than day-work at seventy cents.
+With an ache in every muscle, I redouble my energy after lunch. The girl
+with the goggles looks at me blindly and says:
+
+"Ain't it just awful hard work? You can make good money, but you've got
+to hustle."
+
+She is a forlorn specimen of humanity, ugly, old, dirty, condemned to
+the slow death of the overworked. I am a green hand. I make mistakes; I
+have no experience in the fierce sustained effort of the bread-winners.
+Over and over I turn to her, over and over she is obliged to correct me.
+During the ten hours we work side by side not one murmur of impatience
+escapes her. When she sees that I am getting discouraged she calls out
+across the deafening din, "That's all right; you can't expect to learn
+in a day; just keep on steady."
+
+As I go about distributing bottles to the labelers I notice a strange
+little elf, not more than twelve years old, hauling loaded crates; her
+face and chest are depressed, she is pale to blueness, her eyes have
+indigo circles, her pupils are unnaturally dilated, her brows
+contracted; she has the appearance of a cave-bred creature. She seems
+scarcely human. When the time for cleaning up arrives toward five my
+boss sends me for a bucket of water to wash up the floor. I go to the
+sink, turn on the cold water and with it the steam which takes the place
+of hot water. The valve slips; in an instant I am enveloped in a
+scalding cloud. Before it has cleared away the elf is by my side.
+
+"Did you hurt yourself?" she asks.
+
+Her inhuman form is the vehicle of a human heart, warm and tender. She
+lifts her wide-pupiled eyes to mine; her expression does not change from
+that of habitual scrutiny cast early in a rigid mould, but her voice
+carries sympathy from its purest source.
+
+There is more honour than courtesy in the code of etiquette. Commands
+are given curtly; the slightest injustice is resented; each man for
+himself in work, but in trouble all for the one who is suffering. No
+bruise or cut or burn is too familiar a sight to pass uncared for.
+
+It is their common sufferings, their common effort that unites them.
+
+When I have become expert in the corking art I am raised to a better
+table, with a bright boy, and a girl who is dignified and indifferent
+with the indifference of those who have had too much responsibility. She
+never hurries; the work slips easily through her fingers. She keeps a
+steady bearing over the morning's ups and downs. Under her load of
+trials there is something big in the steady way she sails.
+
+"Used to hard work?" she asks me.
+
+"Not much," I answer; "are you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I began at thirteen in a bakery. I had a place near the oven
+and the heat overcame me."
+
+Her shoulders are bowed, her chest is hollow.
+
+"Looking for a boarding place near the factory, I hear," she continues.
+
+"Yes. You live at home, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. There's four of us: mamma, papa, my sister and myself. Papa's
+blind."
+
+"Can't he work?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he creeps to his job every morning, and he's got so much
+experience he kind o' does things by instinct."
+
+"Does your mother work?"
+
+"Oh, my, no. My sister's an invalid. She hasn't been out o' the door for
+three years. She's got enlargement of the heart and consumption, too, I
+guess; she 'takes' hemorrhages. Sometimes she has twelve in one night.
+Every time she coughs the blood comes foaming out of her mouth. She
+can't lie down. I guess she'd die if she lay down, and she gets so tired
+sittin' up all night. She used to be a tailoress, but I guess her job
+didn't agree with her."
+
+"How many checks have we got," I ask toward the close of the day.
+
+"Thirteen," Ella answers.
+
+"An unlucky number," I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion.
+
+"Are you superstitious?" she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the
+pickle jars. "I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having
+presentiments, and they come true, too."
+
+Here is a mystic, I thought; so I continued:
+
+"And what about dreams?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "Dreams! I have the queerest of anybody!"
+
+I was all attention.
+
+"Why, last night," she drew near to me, and spoke slowly, "I dreamed
+that mamma was drunk, and that she was stealing chickens!"
+
+Such is the imagination of this weary worker.
+
+The whole problem in mechanical labour rests upon economy of force. The
+purpose of each, I learned by experience, was to accomplish as much as
+possible with one single stroke. In this respect the machine is superior
+to man, and man to woman. Sometimes I tried original ways of doing the
+work given me. I soon found in every case that the methods proposed by
+the forewoman were in the end those whereby I could do the greatest
+amount of work with the least effort. A mustard machine had recently
+been introduced to the factory. It replaced three girls; it filled as
+many bottles with a single stroke as the girls could fill with twelve.
+This machine and all the others used were run by boys or men; the girls
+had not strength enough to manipulate them methodically.
+
+The power of the machine, the physical force of the man were simplifying
+their tasks. While the boy was keeping steadily at one thing, perfecting
+himself, we, the women, were doing a variety of things, complicated and
+fussy, left to our lot because we had not physical force for the simpler
+but greater effort. The boy at the corking-table had soon become an
+expert; he was fourteen and he made from $1 to $1.20 a day. He worked
+ten hours at one job, whereas Ella and I had a dozen little jobs almost
+impossible to systematize: we hammered and cut and capped the corks and
+washed and wiped the bottles, sealed them, counted them, distributed
+them, kept the table washed up, the sink cleaned out, and once a day
+scrubbed up our own precincts. When I asked the boy if he was tired he
+laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more
+with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by _nature_ a more
+valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to
+abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had
+given us a handicap at the start.
+
+For a few days there is no vacancy at the corking-tables. I am sent back
+to the bottling department. The oppressive monotony is one day varied by
+a summons to the men's dining-room. I go eagerly, glad of any change. In
+the kitchen I find a girl with skin disease peeling potatoes, and a
+coloured man making soup in a wash-boiler. The girl gives me a stool to
+sit on, and a knife and a pan of potatoes. The dinner under preparation
+is for the men of the factory. There are two hundred of them. They are
+paid from $1.35 up to $3 a day. Their wages begin above the highest
+limit given to women. The dinner costs each man ten cents. The $20 paid
+in daily cover the expenses of the cook, two kitchen maids and the
+dinner, which consists of meat, bread and butter, vegetables and coffee,
+sometimes soup, sometimes dessert. If this can pay for two hundred
+there is no reason why for five cents a hot meal of some kind could not
+be given the women. They don't demand it, so they are left to make
+themselves ill on pickles and preserves.
+
+The coloured cook is full of song and verse. He quotes from the Bible
+freely, and gives us snatches of popular melodies.
+
+We have frequent calls from the elevator boy, who brings us ice and
+various provisions. Both men, I notice, take their work easily. During
+the morning a busy Irish woman comes hurrying into our precincts.
+
+"Say," she yells in a shrill voice, "my cauliflowers ain't here, are
+they? I ordered 'em early and they ain't came yet."
+
+Without properly waiting for an answer she hurries away again.
+
+The coloured cook turns to the elevator boy understandingly:
+
+"Just like a woman! Why, before I'd _make a fuss_ about cauliflowers or
+anything else!"
+
+About eleven the head forewoman stops in to eat a plate of rice and
+milk. While I am cutting bread for the two hundred I hear her say to the
+cook in a gossipy tone:
+
+"How do you like the new girl? She's here all alone."
+
+I am called away and do not hear the rest of the conversation. When I
+return the cook lectures me in this way:
+
+"Here alone, are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get along nicely and not kill
+yourself with work either. Just stick at it and they'll do right by you.
+Lots o' girls who's here alone gets to fooling around. Now I like
+everybody to have a good time, and I hope you'll have a good time, too,
+but you mustn't carry it too far."
+
+My mind went back as he said this to a conversation I had had the night
+before with a working-girl at my boarding-house.
+
+"Where is your home?" I asked.
+
+She had been doing general housework, but ill-health had obliged her to
+take a rest.
+
+She looked at me skeptically.
+
+"We don't have no homes," was her answer. "We just get up and get
+whenever they send us along."
+
+And almost as a sequel to this I thought of two sad cases that had come
+close to my notice as fellow boarders.
+
+I was sitting alone one night by the gas stove in the parlour. The
+matron had gone out and left me to "answer the door." The bell rang and
+I opened cautiously, for the wind was howling and driving the snow and
+sleet about on the winter air. A young girl came in; she was seeking a
+lodging. Her skirts and shoes were heavy with water. She took off her
+things slowly in a dazed manner. Her short, quick breathing showed how
+excited she was. When she spoke at last her voice sounded hollow, her
+eyes moved about restlessly. She stopped abruptly now and then and
+contracted her brows as though in an appeal for merciful tears; then she
+continued in the same broken, husky voice:
+
+"I suppose I'm not the only one in trouble. I've thought a thousand
+times over that I would kill myself. I suppose I loved him--but I _hate_
+him now."
+
+These two sentences, recurring, were the story's all.
+
+The impotence of rebellion, a sense of outrage at being abandoned, the
+instinctive appeal for protection as a right, the injustice of being
+left solely to bear the burden of responsibility which so long as it was
+pleasure had been shared--these were the thoughts and feelings breeding
+hatred.
+
+She had spent the day in a fruitless search for her lover. She had been
+to his boss and to his rooms. He had paid his debts and gone, nobody
+knew where. She was pretty, vain, homeless; alone to bear the
+responsibility she had not been alone to incur. She could not shirk it
+as the man had done. They had both disregarded the law. On whom were the
+consequences weighing more heavily? On the woman. She is the sufferer;
+she is the first to miss the law's protection. She is the weaker member
+whom, for the sake of the race, society protects. Nature has made her
+man's physical inferior; society is obliged to recognize this in the
+giving of a marriage law which beyond doubt is for the benefit of woman,
+since she can least afford to disregard it.
+
+Another evening when the matron was out I sat for a time with a young
+working woman and her baby. There is a comradeship among the poor that
+makes light of indiscreet questions. I felt only sympathy in asking:
+
+"Are you alone to bring up your child?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "I'll never go home with _him_."
+
+I looked at _him_: a wizened, four-months-old infant with a huge flat
+nose, and two dull black eyes fixed upon the gas jet. The girl had the
+grace of a forest-born creature; she moved with the mysterious strength
+and suppleness of a tree's branch. She was proud; she felt herself
+disgraced. For four months she had not left the house. I talked on,
+proposing different things.
+
+"I don't know what to do," she said. "I can't never go home with _him_,
+and if I went home without him I'd never be the same. I don't know what
+I'd do if anything happened to _him_." Her head bowed over the child;
+she held him close to her breast.
+
+But to return to the coloured cook and my day in the kitchen. I had
+ample opportunity to compare domestic service with factory work. We set
+the table for two hundred, and do a thousand miserable slavish tasks
+that must be begun again the following day. At twelve the two hundred
+troop in, toil-worn and begrimed. They pass like locusts, leaving us
+sixteen hundred dirty dishes to wash up and wipe. This takes us four
+hours, and when we have finished the work stands ready to be done over
+the next morning with peculiar monotony. In the factory there is
+stimulus in feeling that the material which passes through one's hands
+will never be seen or heard of again.
+
+On Saturday the owner of the factory comes at lunch time with several
+friends and talks to us with an amazing _camaraderie_. He is kindly,
+humourous and tactful. One or two missionaries speak after him, but
+their conversation is too abstract for us. We want something dramatic,
+imaginative, to hold our attention, or something wholly natural. Tell us
+about the bees, the beavers or the toilers of the sea. The longing for
+flowers has often come to me as I work, and a rose seems of all things
+the most desirable. In my present condition I do not hark back to
+civilized wants, but repeatedly my mind travels toward the country
+places I have seen in the fields and forests. If I had a holiday I would
+spend it seeing not what man but what God has made. These are the things
+to be remembered in addressing or trying to amuse or instruct girls who
+are no more prepared than I felt myself to be for any preconceived ideal
+of art or ethics. The omnipresence of dirt and ugliness, of machines and
+"stock," leave the mind in a state of lassitude which should be roused
+by something natural. As an initial remedy for the ills I voluntarily
+assumed I would propose amusement. Of all the people who spoke to us
+that Saturday, we liked best the one who made us laugh. It was a relief
+to hear something funny. In working as an outsider in a factory girls'
+club I had always held that nothing was so important as to give the poor
+something beautiful to look at and think about--a photograph or copy of
+some _chef d'oeuvre_, an _objet d'art_, lessons in literature and art
+which would uplift their souls from the dreariness of their
+surroundings. Three weeks as a factory girl had changed my beliefs. If
+the young society women who sacrifice one evening every week to talk to
+the poor in the slums about Shakespeare and Italian art would instead
+offer diversion first--a play, a farce, a humourous recitation--they
+would make much more rapid progress in winning the confidence of those
+whom they want to help. The working woman who has had a good laugh is
+more ready to tell what she needs and feels and fears than the woman who
+has been forced to listen silently to an abstract lesson. In society
+when we wish to make friends with people we begin by entertaining them.
+It should be the same way with the poor. Next to amusement as a means
+of giving temporary relief and bringing about relations which will be
+helpful to all, I put instruction, in the form of narrative, about the
+people of other countries, our fellow man, how he lives and works; and,
+third, under this same head, primitive lessons about animals and plants,
+the industries of the bees, the habits of ants, the natural phenomena
+which require no reasoning power to understand and which open the
+thoughts upon a delightful unknown vista.
+
+My first experience is drawing to its close. I have surmounted the
+discomforts of insufficient food, of dirt, a bed without sheets, the
+strain of hard manual labour. I have confined my observations to life
+and conditions in the factory. Owing, as I have before explained, to the
+absorption of factory life into city life in a place as large as
+Pittsburg, it seemed to me more profitable to centre my attention on the
+girl within the factory, leaving for a small town the study of her in
+her family and social life. I have pointed out as they appeared to me
+woman's relative force as a worker and its effects upon her economic
+advancement. I have touched upon two cases which illustrate her relative
+dependence on the law. She appeared to me not as the equal of man either
+physically or legally. It remained to study her socially. In the factory
+where I worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days. The
+women's highest wages were lower than the man's lowest. Both were
+working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial
+work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were
+properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and
+pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a
+single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw
+myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at
+the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying
+conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of
+labourers taking part in the competition. In the masculine category I
+met but one class of competitor: the bread-winner. In the feminine
+category I found a variety of classes: the bread-winner, the
+semi-bread-winner, the woman who works for luxuries. This inevitably
+drags the wage level. The self-supporting girl is in competition with
+the child, with the girl who lives at home and makes a small
+contribution to the household expenses, and with the girl who is
+supported and who spends all her money on her clothes. It is this
+division of purpose which takes the "spirit" out of them as a class.
+There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is
+not equally vital to them all. It is not only nature and the law which
+demand protection for women, but society as well. In every case of the
+number I investigated, if there were sons, daughters or a husband in the
+family, the mother was not allowed to work. She was wholly protected. In
+the families where the father and brothers were making enough for bread
+and butter, the daughters were protected partially or entirely. There is
+no law which regulates this social protection: it is voluntary, and it
+would seem to indicate that civilized woman is meant to be an economic
+dependent. Yet, on the other hand, what is the new force which impels
+girls from their homes into the factories to work when they do not
+actually need the money paid them for their effort and sacrifice? Is it
+a move toward some far distant civilization when women shall have become
+man's physical equal, a "free, economic, social factor, making possible
+the full social combination of individuals in collective industry"? This
+is a matter for speculation only. What occurred to me as a possible
+remedy both for the oppression of the woman bread-winner and also as a
+betterment for the girl who wants to work though she does not need the
+money, was this: the establishment of schools where the esthetic
+branches of industrial art might be taught to the girls who by their
+material independence could give some leisure to acquiring a profession
+useful to themselves and to society in general. The whole country would
+be benefited by the opening of such schools as the Empress of Russia has
+patronized for the maintenance of the "petites industries," or those
+which Queen Margherita has established for the revival of lace-making in
+Italy. If there was such a counter-attraction to machine labour, the
+bread-winner would have a freer field and the non-bread-winner might
+still work for luxury and at the same time better herself morally,
+mentally and esthetically. She could aid in forming an intermediate
+class of labourers which as yet does not exist in America: the
+hand-workers, the _main d'oeuvre_ who produce the luxurious objects of
+industrial art for which we are obliged to send to Europe when we wish
+to beautify our homes.
+
+The American people are lively, intelligent, capable of learning
+anything. The schools of which I speak, founded, not for the
+manufacturing of the useful but of the beautiful, could be started
+informally as classes and by individual effort. Such labour would be
+paid more than the mechanical factory work; the immense importation from
+abroad of objects of industrial art sufficiently proves the demand for
+them in this country; there would be no material disadvantage for the
+girl who gave up her job in a pickle factory. Her faculties would be
+well employed, and she could, without leaving her home, do work which
+would be of esthetic and, indirectly, of moral value.
+
+I was discouraged at first to see how difficult it was to help the
+working girls as individuals and how still more difficult to help them
+as a class. There is perhaps no surer way of doing this than by giving
+opportunities to those who have a purpose and a will. No amount of
+openings will help the girl who has not both of these. I watched many
+girls with intelligence and energy who were unable to develop for the
+lack of a chance a start in the right direction. Aside from the few
+remedies I have been able to suggest, I would like to make an appeal for
+persistent sympathy in behalf of those whose misery I have shared. Until
+some marvelous advancement has been made toward the reign of justice
+upon earth, every man, woman and child should have constantly in his
+heart the sufferings of the poorest.
+
+On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the
+streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental
+food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of
+labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a
+Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the
+cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has
+produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass,
+they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their
+bargains cheap; from us, the coöperators who enable them to have the
+luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the
+monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd
+to our work in the winter dawn; think of us as we bend over our task
+all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we
+resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of
+us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand
+protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your
+material demands; think of us--be merciful.
+
+[Illustration: "WAVING ARMS OF SMOKE AND STEAM, A SYMBOL OF SPENT
+ENERGY, OF THE LIVES CONSUMED, AND VANISHING AGAIN"
+
+Factories on the Alleghany River at the 16th Street bridge, just below
+the pickle works]
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN
+
+
+No place in America could have afforded better than Pittsburg a chance
+to study the factory life of American girls, the stimulus of a new
+country upon the labourers of old races, the fervour and energy of a
+people animated by hope and stirred to activity by the boundless
+opportunities for making money. It is the labourers' city _par
+excellence_; and in my preceding chapters I have tried to give a clear
+picture of factory life between the hours of seven and six, of the
+economic conditions, of the natural social and legal equipment of woman
+as a working entity, of her physical, moral and esthetic development.
+
+Now, since the time ticked out between the morning summoning whistle to
+that which gives release at night is not half the day, and only
+two-thirds of the working hours, my second purpose has been to find a
+place where the factory girl's own life could best be studied: her
+domestic, religious and sentimental life.
+
+Somewhere in the western part of New York State, one of my comrades at
+the pickle works had told me, there was a town whose population was
+chiefly composed of mill-hands. The name of the place was Perry, and I
+decided upon it as offering the typical American civilization among the
+working classes. New England is too free of grafts to give more than a
+single aspect; Pittsburg is an international bazaar; but the foundations
+of Perry are laid with bricks from all parts of the world, held together
+by a strong American cement.
+
+Ignorant of Perry further than as it exists, a black spot on a branch of
+a small road near Buffalo, I set out from New York toward my destination
+on the Empire State Express. There was barely time to descend with my
+baggage at Rochester before the engine had started onward again,
+trailing behind it with world-renowned rapidity its freight of travelers
+who, for a few hours under the car's roof, are united by no other common
+interest than that of journeying quickly from one spot to another, where
+they disperse never to meet again. My Perry train had an altogether
+different character. I was late for it, but the brakeman saw me coming
+and waved to the engineer not to start until my trunk was checked and
+safely boarded like myself. Then we bumped our way through meadows
+quickened to life by the soft spring air; we halted at crossroads to
+pick up stray travelers and shoppers; we unloaded plowing machines and
+shipped crates of live fowl; we waited at wayside stations with
+high-sounding names for family parties whose unpunctuality was
+indulgently considered by the occupants of the train.
+
+My companions, chiefly women, were of the homely American type whose New
+England drawl has been modified by a mingling of foreign accents. They
+took advantage of this time for "visiting" with neighbours whom the
+winter snows and illnesses had rendered inaccessible. Their inquiries
+for each other were all kindliness and sympathy, and the peaceful,
+tolerant, uneventful way in which we journeyed from Rochester to Perry
+was a symbol of the way in which these good people had journeyed across
+life. Perry, the terminus of the line, was a frame station lodged on
+stilts in a sea of surrounding mud. When the engine had come to a
+standstill and ceased to pant, when the last truck had been unloaded,
+the baggage room closed, there were no noises to be heard except those
+that came from a neighbouring country upon whose peace the small town
+had not far encroached; the splash of a horse and buggy through the mud,
+a monotonous voice mingling with the steady tick of the telegraph
+machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible
+stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the
+earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the
+railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a
+man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools,
+rakes and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in
+resuming my toil-worn clothes had led me to make certain modifications
+which I feared in so small a town as Perry might relegate me to the
+class I had voluntarily abandoned. The man in rubber boots looked me
+over as I approached, bag in hand, and to my salutation he replied:
+
+"Going down to the mill, I suppose. There's lots o' ladies comes in the
+train every day now."
+
+He was the perfection of tact; he placed me in one sentence as a
+mill-hand and a lady.
+
+"I'll take you down as far as Main Street," he volunteered, giving me at
+once a feeling of kindly interest which "city folks" have not time to
+show.
+
+We found our way by improvised crossings through broad, soft beds of
+mud. Among the branches of the sap-fed trees which lined the unpaved
+streets transparent balls of glass were suspended, from which, as
+twilight deepened, a brilliant artificial light shot its rays, the
+perfection of modern invention, over the primitive, unfinished little
+town of Perry, which was all contrast and energy, crudity and progress.
+
+"There's a lot of the girls left the mill yesterday," my companion
+volunteered. "They cut the wages, and some of the oldest hands got right
+out. There's more than a thousand of 'em on the pay-roll, but I guess
+you can make good money if you're ready to work."
+
+We had reached Main Street, which, owing to the absence of a trolley,
+had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out
+into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame
+stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My
+guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of
+mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with
+their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some
+ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the Perry population.
+
+"Follow the boardwalk!" was the simple command I received. "Keep right
+along until you come to the mill."
+
+I presently fell in with a drayman, who was calling alternately to his
+horse as it sucked in and out of the mud and to a woman on the plank
+walk. She had on a hat with velvet and ostrich plumes, a black frock, a
+side bag with a lace handkerchief. She was not young and she wore
+spectacles; but there was something nervous about her step, a slight
+tremolo as she responded to the drayman, which suggested an adventure or
+the hope of it. The boardwalk, leading inevitably to the mill, announced
+our common purpose and saved us an introduction.
+
+"Going down to get work?" was the question we simultaneously asked of
+each other. My companion, all eagerness, shook out the lace
+handkerchief in her side bag and explained:
+
+"I don't have to work; my folks keep a hotel; but I always heard so much
+about Perry I thought I'd like to come up, and," she sighed, with a
+flirt of the lace handkerchief and a contented glance around at the rows
+of white frame houses, "I'm up now."
+
+"Want board?" the drayman called to me. "You kin count on me for a good
+place. There's Doctor Meadows, now; he's got a nice home and he just
+wants two boarders."
+
+The middle-aged woman with the glasses glanced up quickly.
+
+"Doctor Meadows of Tittihute?" she asked. "I wont go there; he's too
+strict. He's a Methodist minister. You couldn't have any fun at all."
+
+I followed suit, denouncing Doctor Killjoy as she had, hoping that her
+nervous, frisky step would lead me toward the adventure she was
+evidently seeking.
+
+"Well," the drayman responded indulgently, "I guess Mr. Norse will know
+the best place for you folks."
+
+We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was
+but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot,
+the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill
+revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. Tall, lank and
+meager, with a wrinkled face and a furtive mustache, Mr. Norse made his
+rounds with a list of complaints and comments in one hand, a pencil in
+the other and a black cap on his head which tipped, indulgent, attentive
+to hear and overhear. His manner was professional. He looked at us,
+placed us, told us to return at one o'clock, recommended a
+boarding-house, and, on his way to some other case, sent a small boy to
+accompany us on future stretches of boardwalk to our lodgings. The
+street we followed ended in a rolling hillside, and beyond was the
+mysterious blue that holds something of the infinite in its mingling of
+clouds and shadows. The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the
+sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings.
+The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves
+into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door
+and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all
+folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built
+without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a
+large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and
+ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock
+with a rusty bell marked the hour from a shelf on the wall, and out of
+the kitchen, seen in vista, came a spluttering sound of frying food. Our
+hostess took us into the parlour. Several family pictures of stony-eyed
+women and men with chin beards, and a life-sized Frances Willard in
+chromo, looked down at our ensuing interview.
+
+Board, lodging, heat and light we could have at $2.75 a week. Before the
+husky clock had struck twelve, I was installed in a small room with the
+middle-aged woman from Batavia and a second unknown roommate.
+
+Now what, I asked myself, is the mill's attraction and what is the power
+of this small town? Its population is 3,346. Of these, 1,000 work in the
+knitting-mill, 200 more in a cutlery factory and 300 in various flour,
+butter, barrel, planing mills and salt blocks. Half the inhabitants are
+young hands. Not one in a hundred has a home in Perry; they have come
+from all western parts of the State to work. There are scarcely any
+children, few married couples and almost no old people. It is a town of
+youthful contemporaries, stung with the American's ambition for
+independence and adventure, charmed by the gaiety of being boys and
+girls together, with an ever possible touch of romance which makes the
+hardest work seem easy. Within the four board walls of each house, whose
+type is repeated up and down Perry streets, there is a group of factory
+employees boarding and working at the mill. Their names suggest a
+foreign parentage, but for several generations they have mingled their
+diverse energies in a common effort which makes Americans of them.
+
+As I lived for several weeks among a group of this kind, who were
+fairly representative, I shall try to give, through a description of
+their life and conversation, their personalities and characteristics,
+their occupations out of working hours, a general idea of these unknown
+toilers, who are so amazingly like their more fortunate sisters that I
+became convinced the difference is only superficial--not one of kind but
+merely of variety. The Perry factory girl is separated from the New York
+society girl, not by a few generations, but by a few years of culture
+and training. In America, where tradition and family play an unimportant
+part, the great educator is the spending of money. It is through the
+purchase of possessions that the Americans develop their taste, declare
+themselves, and show their inherent capacity for culture. Give to the
+Perry mill-hands a free chance for growth, transplant them, care for
+them, and they will readily show how slight and how merely a thing of
+culture the difference is between the wild rose and the American beauty.
+
+What were my first impressions of the hands who returned at noon under
+the roof which had extended unquestioning its hospitality? Were they a
+band of slaves, victims to toil and deprivation? Were they making the
+pitiful exchange of their total vitality for insufficient nourishment?
+Did life mean to them merely the diminishing of their forces?
+
+On the contrary, they entered gay, laughing young, a youth guarded
+intact by freedom and hope. What were the subjects of conversation
+pursued at dinner? Love, labour, the price paid for it, the advantages
+of town over country life, the neighbour and her conduct. What was the
+appearance of my companions? There was nothing in it to shock good
+taste. Their hands and feet were somewhat broadened by work, their skins
+were imperfect for the lack of proper food, their dresses were of coarse
+material; but in small things the differences were superficial only. Was
+it, then, in big things that the divergence began which places them as a
+lower class? Was it money alone that kept them from the places of
+authority? What were their ambitions, their perplexities? What part does
+self-respect play? How well satisfied are they, or how restless? What
+can we learn from them? What can we teach them?
+
+We ate our dinner of boiled meat and custard pie and all started back in
+good time for a one o'clock beginning at the mill. For the space of
+several hundred feet its expressionless red brick walls lined the
+street, implacable, silent. Within all hummed to the collective activity
+of a throng, each working with all his force for a common end. Machines
+roared and pounded; a fine dust filled the air--a cloud of lint sent
+forth from the friction of thousands of busy hands in perpetual contact
+with the shapeless anonymous garments they were fashioning. There were,
+on their way between the cutting-and the finishing-rooms, 7,000 dozen
+shirts. They were to pass by innumerable hands; they were to be held and
+touched by innumerable individuals; they were to be begun and finished
+by innumerable human beings with distinct tastes and likings, abilities
+and failings; and when the 7,000 dozen shirts were complete they were to
+look alike, and they were to look as though made by a machine; they were
+to show no trace whatever of the men and the women who had made them.
+Here we were, 1,000 souls hurrying from morning until night, working
+from seven until six, with as little personality as we could, with the
+effort to produce, through an action purely mechanical, results as
+nearly as possible identical one to the other, and all to the machine
+itself.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY TRIFLE WITH LOVE"]
+
+What could be the result upon the mind and health of this frantic
+mechanical activity devoid of thought? It was this for which I sought an
+answer; it is for this I propose a remedy.
+
+At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr.
+Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make
+money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in
+mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could
+make; I was offered the favourite work in the mill--shirt finishing, at
+thirty cents a day and all I could make; and when I shook my head to see
+how far I could exploit my indifference and said, "Thirty cents is too
+little," Mr. Norse's answer was: "Well, I suppose you, like the rest of
+us, are trying to earn a living. I will guarantee you seventy-five cents
+a day for the first two weeks, and all you can make over it is yours."
+My apprenticeship began under the guidance of an "old girl" who had been
+five years in the mill. A dozen at a time the woolen shirts were brought
+to us, complete all but the adding of the linen strips in front where
+the buttons and buttonholes are stitched. The price of this operation is
+paid for the dozen shirts five, five and a half and six cents, according
+to the complexity of the finish. My instructress had done as many as
+forty dozen in one day; she averaged $1.75 a day all the year around.
+While she was teaching me the factory paid her at the rate of ten cents
+an hour.
+
+A touch of the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A
+second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt
+standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was
+not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I
+sewed frantically into the middle of shirts. I watched my needle,
+impotent as it flew up and down, and when by chance I made a straight
+seam I brought it to so sudden a stop that the thread raveled back
+before my weary eyes. When my back and fingers ached so that I could no
+longer bend over the work, I watched my comrades with amazement. The
+machine was not a wild animal in their hands, but an instrument that
+responded with niceness to their guidance. Above the incessant roar and
+burring din they called gaily to each other, gossiping, chatting,
+telling stories. What did they talk about? Everything, except domestic
+cares. The management of an interior, housekeeping, cooking were things
+I never once heard mentioned. What were the favourite topics, those
+returned to most frequently and with surest interest? Dress and men. Two
+girls in the seaming-room had got into a quarrel that day over a packer,
+a fine looking, broad-shouldered fellow who had touched the hearts of
+both and awakened in each an emotion she claimed the right to defend.
+The quarrel began lightly with an exchange of unpleasant comment; it
+soon took the proportions of a dispute which could not give itself the
+desired vent in words alone. The boss was called in. He made no attempt
+to control what lay beyond his power, but applying factory legislation
+to the case, he ordered the two Amazons to "register out" until the
+squabble was settled, as the factory did not propose to pay its hands
+for the time spent in fights. So the two girls "rang out" past the
+timekeeper and took an hour in the open air, hand to hand, fist to fist,
+which, as it happens to man, had its calming effect.
+
+We stitched our way industriously over the 7,000 dozen. Except for the
+moments when some girl called a message or shouted a conversation,
+there was nothing to occupy the mind but the vibrating, pulsing,
+pounding of the machinery. The body was shaken with it; the ears
+strained.
+
+The little girl opposite me was a new hand. Her rosy cheeks and straight
+shoulders announced this fact. She had been five months in the mill; the
+other girls around her had been there two years, five years, nine years.
+There were 150 of us at the long, narrow tables which filled the room.
+By the windows the light and air were fairly good. At the centre tables
+the atmosphere was stagnant, the shadows came too soon. The wood's edge
+ran within a few yards of the factory windows. Between it and us lay the
+stream, the water force, the power that had called men to Perry. There,
+as everywhere in America, for an individual as for a place, the
+attraction was industrial possibilities. As Niagara has become more an
+industrial than a picturesque landscape, so Perry, in spite of its
+serene and beautiful surroundings, is a shrine to mechanical force in
+whose temple, the tall-chimneyed mill, a human sacrifice is made to the
+worshipers of gain.
+
+My _vis-à-vis_ was talkative. "Say," she said to her neighbour, "Jim
+Weston is the worst flirt I ever seen."
+
+"Who's Jim Weston?" the other responded, diving into the box by her side
+for a handful of gray woolen shirts.
+
+"Why, he's the one who made my teeth--he made teeth for all of us up
+home," and her smile reveals the handiwork of Weston.
+
+"If I had false teeth," is the comment made upon this, "I wouldn't tell
+anybody."
+
+"I thought some," continues the implacable new girl, unruffled, "of
+having a gold filling put in one of my front teeth. I think gold
+fillings are so pretty," she concludes, looking toward me for a
+response.
+
+This primitive love of ornament I found manifest in the same
+medico-barbaric fancy for wearing eye-glasses. The nicety of certain
+operations in the mill, performed not always in the brightest of lights,
+is a fatal strain upon the eyes. There are no oculists in Perry, but a
+Buffalo member of the profession makes a monthly visit to treat a new
+harvest of patients. Their daily effort toward the monthly finishing of
+40,000 garments permanently diminishes their powers of vision. Every
+thirty days a new set of girls appears with glasses. They wear them as
+they would an ornament of some kind, a necklace, bracelet or a hoop
+through the nose.
+
+When the six o'clock whistle blew on the first night I had finished only
+two dozen shirts. "You've got a good job," my teacher said, as we came
+out together in the cool evening air. "You seem to be taking to it."
+They size a girl up the minute she comes in. If she has quick motions
+she'll get on all right. "I guess you'll make a good finisher."
+
+Once more we assembled to eat and chat and relax. After a moment by the
+kitchen pump we took our places at table. Our hostess waited upon us.
+"It takes some grit," she explained, "and more grace to keep boarders."
+Except on Sundays, when all men might be considered equals in the sight
+of the Lord, she and her husband did not eat until we had finished. She
+passed the dishes of our frugal evening meal--potatoes, bread and butter
+and cake--and as we served ourselves she held her head in the opposite
+direction, as if to say, "I'm not looking; take the biggest piece."
+
+It was with my roommates I became the soonest acquainted. The butcher's
+widow from Batavia was a grumbler. "How do you like your job?" I asked
+her as we fumbled about in the dim light of our low-roofed room.
+
+"Oh, Lordy," was the answer, "I didn't think it would be like this. I'd
+rather do housework any day. I bet you won't stay two weeks." She was
+ugly and stupid. She had been married young to a butcher. Left alone to
+battle with the world, she might have shaken out some of her dullness,
+but the butcher for many years had stood between her and reality,
+casting a still deeper shadow on her ignorance. She had the monotony of
+an old child, one who questions constantly but who has passed the age
+when learning is possible. The butcher's death had opened new
+possibilities. After a period of respectful mourning, she had set out,
+against the wishes of her family, with a vague, romantic hope that was
+expressed not so much in words as in a certain picture hat trimmed with
+violet chiffon and carried carefully in a bandbox by itself, a new,
+crisp sateen petticoat, and a golf skirt she had sat up until one
+o'clock to finish the night before she left home. It was inevitable that
+the butcher's widow should be disappointed. There was too much grim
+reality in ten-hour days spent over a machine in the stifling mill room
+to feed a sentimentalist whose thirty odd years were no accomplice to
+romance. She grumbled and complained. Secret dissatisfaction preyed upon
+her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily
+and with no _arrière pensée_. At the end of the first week the picture
+hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen
+petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like
+the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant
+sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had
+gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more
+than sixty cents a day. She left us and went back to do housework in
+Batavia.
+
+My other roommate was of the Madonna type. In our class she would have
+been called an invalid. Her hands trembled, she was constantly in pain,
+and her nerves were rebellious without frequent doses of bromide. We
+found her one night lying in a heap on the bed, her moans having called
+us to her aid. It was the pain in her back that never stopped, the ache
+between her shoulders, the din of the machines in her ears, the
+vibration, the strain of incessant hours upon her tired nerves. We fixed
+her up as best we could, and the next day at quarter before seven she
+was, like the rest of us, bending over her machine again. She had been a
+school-teacher, after passing the necessary examination at the Geneseo
+Normal School. She could not say why school-teaching was uncongenial to
+her, except that the children "made her nervous" and she wanted to try
+factory work. Her father was a cheese manufacturer up in the Genesee
+Valley. She might have lived quietly at home, but she disliked to be a
+dependent. She was of the mystic, sentimental type. She had a broad
+forehead, straight auburn hair, a clear-cut mouth, whose sharp curves
+gave it sweetness. Though her large frame indicated clearly an
+Anglo-Saxon lineage, there was nothing of the sport about her. She had
+never learned to skate or swim, but she could sit and watch the hills
+all day long. Her clothes had an esthetic touch. Mingled with her
+nervous determination there was a sentimental yearning. She was an
+idealist, impelled by some controlling emotion which was the mainspring
+of her life.
+
+Little by little we became friends. Our common weariness brought us
+often together after supper in a listless, confidential mood before the
+parlour stove. We let the conversation drift inevitably toward the
+strong current that was marking her with a touch of melancholy, like all
+those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror,
+reflecting visions that have no place in reality. We talked about
+blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man's name;
+and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form. Her
+voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related
+the story. It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like
+herself. Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning. She slipped a
+gold locket from a chain on her throat. It framed her hero's picture,
+the source of her courage, the embodiment of her heroic energy: a man of
+thirty, who had failed at everything; good-looking, refined, a personage
+in real life who resembled the inhabitants of her enchanted mirror. In
+the story she told there were stars and twilight, summer evenings,
+walks, talks, hopes and vague projects. Any practical questions I felt
+ready to ask would have sounded coarse. The little school-teacher with
+shattered nerves embodied a hope that was more to her than meat and
+drink and money. She was of those who do not live by bread alone.
+
+Among the working population of Perry there are all manner of American
+characteristics manifest. In a country where conditions change with
+such rapidity that each generation is a revelation to the one which
+preceded it, it is inevitable that the family and the State should be
+secondary to the individual. We live with our own generation, with our
+contemporaries. We substitute experience for tradition. Each generation
+lives for itself during its prime. As soon as its powers begin to
+decline it makes way with resignation for the next: "We have had our
+day; now you can have yours." Thus in the important decisions of life,
+the choosing of a career, matrimony or the like, the average American is
+much more influenced by his contemporaries than by his elders, much more
+stimulated or determined by the friends of his own age than by the older
+members of his family. This detaching of generations through the
+evolution of conditions is inevitable in a new civilization; it is part
+of the country's freedom. It adds fervour and zest and originality to
+the effort of each. But it means a youth without the peace of
+protection; an old age without the harvest of consolation. The man in
+such a battle as life becomes under these circumstances is better
+equipped than the woman, whose nature disarms her for the struggle. The
+American woman is restless, dissatisfied. Society, whether among the
+highest or lowest classes, has driven her toward a destiny that is not
+normal. The factories are full of old maids; the colleges are full of
+old maids; the ballrooms in the worldly centres are full of old maids.
+For natural obligations are substituted the fictitious duties of clubs,
+meetings, committees, organizations, professions, a thousand unwomanly
+occupations.
+
+I cannot attempt to touch here upon the classes who have not a direct
+bearing on our subject, but the analogy is striking between them and
+the factory elements of which I wish to speak. I cannot dwell upon
+details that, while full of interest, are yet somewhat aside from the
+present point, but I want to state a fact, the origin of whose ugly
+consequences is in all classes and therefore concerns every living
+American woman. Among the American born women of this country the
+sterility is greater, the fecundity less than those of any other
+nation in the world, unless it be France, whose anxiety regarding her
+depopulation we would share in full measure were it not for the
+foreign immigration to the United States, which counteracts the
+degeneracy of the American.[1] The original causes for this increasing
+sterility are moral and not physical. When this is known, does not the
+philosophy of the American working woman become a subject of vital
+interest? Among the enemies to fecundity and a natural destiny there
+are two which act as potently in the lower as in the upper classes:
+the triumph of individualism, the love of luxury. America is not a
+democracy, the unity of effort between the man and the woman does not
+exist. Men were too long in a majority. Women have become autocrats or
+rivals. A phrase which I heard often repeated at the factory speaks by
+itself for a condition: "She must be married, because she don't work."
+And another phrase pronounced repeatedly by the younger girls: "I
+don't have to work; my father gives me all the money I need, but not
+all the money I _want_. I like to be independent and spend my money as
+I please."
+
+  [Footnote 1: George Engelman, M.D., "The Increasing Sterility of
+  American Women," from the Journal of the American Medical
+  Association, October 5, 1901.]
+
+What are the conclusions to be drawn? The American-born girl is an
+egoist. Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of
+mill drudgery) is for herself. She works for luxury until the day when a
+proper husband presents himself. Then, she stops working and lets him
+toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall not be diminished by
+increasing family demands.
+
+In those cases where the woman continues to work after marriage, she
+chooses invariably a kind of occupation which is inconsistent with
+child-bearing. She returns to the mill with her husband. There were a
+number of married couples at the knitting factory at Perry. They
+boarded, like the rest of us. I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby
+while I was in the town.
+
+I can think of no better way to present this love of luxury, this
+triumph of individualism, this passion for independence than to
+continue my account of the daily life at Perry.
+
+On Saturday night we drew our pay and got out at half-past four. This
+extra hour and a half was not given to us; we had saved it up by
+beginning each day at fifteen minutes before seven. In reality we worked
+ten and a quarter hours five days in the week in order to work eight and
+a half on the sixth.
+
+By five o'clock on Saturdays the village street was animated with
+shoppers--the stores were crowded. At supper each girl had a collection
+of purchases to show: stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons,
+elaborate hairpins. Many of them, when their board was paid, had less
+than a dollar left of the five or six it had taken them a week to earn.
+
+"I am not working to save," was the claim of one girl for all. "I'm
+working for pleasure."
+
+This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing
+to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better
+food. I watched her as she put her things into the trunk. She had a
+quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy
+hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was
+full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great
+excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially
+hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for
+a confidence.
+
+"You got a letter to-night, didn't you?" I asked innocently. "Was it
+the one you wanted?"
+
+"My, yes," she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths
+of her trunk. "It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been
+going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I
+went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make
+twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as
+he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's
+what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he
+owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano
+this fall."
+
+"Well, of course," I said eagerly, "you will accept him?"
+
+She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised.
+
+"No, my! no," she answered, shaking her head. "I don't want to be
+married."
+
+"But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and
+you have already been 'going with him' three years."
+
+"Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is
+time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am.
+He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it
+would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I
+left, but he let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I
+got my independence."
+
+What part did the love of humanity play in this young egoist's heart?
+She was living, as she had so well explained it, "not to save, but to
+give herself pleasure"; not to spare others, but to exercise her will in
+spite of them. Tenderness, reverence, gratitude, protection are the
+feelings which one generation awakens for another. Among the thousand
+contemporaries at Perry, from the sameness of their ambitions, there was
+inevitable rivalry and selfishness. The closer the age and capacity the
+keener the struggle.
+
+[Illustration: AFTER SATURDAY NIGHT'S SHOPPING]
+
+There are seven churches in Perry of seven different denominations. In
+this small town of 3,000 inhabitants there are seven different forms of
+worship. The church plays an important part in the social life of the
+mill hands. There are gatherings of all sorts from one Sunday to
+another, and on Sunday there are almost continuous services. There are
+frequent conversions. When the Presbyterian form fails they "try" the
+Baptist. There is no moral instruction; it is all purely religious; and
+they join one church or another more as they would a social club than an
+ordained religious organization.
+
+Friday was "social" night at the church. Sometimes there was a "poverty"
+social, when every one put on shabby clothes, and any one who wore a
+correct garment of any sort was fined for the benefit of the church.
+Pound socials were another variety of diversion, where all the
+attendants were weighed on arriving and charged a cent admission for
+every pound of avoirdupois.
+
+The most popular socials, however, were box socials, and it was to one
+of these I decided to go with two girls boarding in the house. Each of
+us packed a box with lunch as good as we could afford--eggs, sandwiches,
+cakes, pickles, oranges--and arrived with these, we proceeded to the
+vestry-room, where we found an improvised auctioneer's table and a pile
+of boxes like our own, which were marked and presently put up for sale.
+The youths of the party bid cautiously or recklessly, according as their
+inward conviction told them that the box was packed by friend or foe.
+
+My box, which, like the rest, had supper for two, was bid in by a tall,
+nice-looking mill hand, and we installed ourselves in a corner to eat
+and talk. He was full of reminiscence and had had a checkered career.
+His first experience had been at night work in a paper mill. He worked
+eleven hours a night one week, thirteen hours a night the next week, in
+and out of doors, drenched to the skin. He had lost twenty-five pounds
+in less than a year, and his face was a mere mask drawn over the
+irregular bones of the skull.
+
+"I always like whatever I am doing," he responded at my protestation of
+sympathy. "I think that's the only way to be. I never had much appetite
+at night. They packed me an elegant pail, but somehow all cold food
+didn't relish much. I never did like a pail.... How would you like to
+take a dead man's place?" he asked, looking at me grimly.
+
+I begged him to explain.
+
+"One of my best friends," he began, "was working alongside of me, and I
+guess he got dizzy or something, for he leaned up against the big belt
+that ran all the machinery and he was lifted right up in the air and
+tore to pieces before he ever knew what struck him. The boss came in and
+seen it, and the second question he asked, he says, 'Say, is the
+machinery running all right?' It wasn't ten minutes before there was
+another man in there doing the dead man's work."
+
+I began to undo the lunch-box, feeling very little inclined to eat. We
+divided the contents, and my friend, seeing perhaps that I was
+depressed, told me about the "shows" he had been to in his wanderings.
+
+"Now, I don't care as much for comedy as some folks," he explained. "I
+like 'Puddin' Head Wilson' first rate, but the finest thing I ever seen
+was two of Shakespeare's: 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Julius Cæsar.'
+If you ever get a chance I advise you to go and hear them; they're
+great."
+
+I responded cordially, and when we had exhausted Shakespeare I asked
+him how he liked Perry people.
+
+"Oh, first rate," he said. "I've been here only a month, but I think
+there's too much formality. It seems to me that when you work alongside
+of a girl day after day you might speak to her without an introduction,
+but they won't let you here. I never seen such a formal place."
+
+I said very little. The boy talked on of his life and experiences. His
+English was good except for certain grammatical errors. His words were
+well chosen. There was between him and the fortunate boys of a superior
+class only a few years of training.
+
+The box social was the beginning of a round of gaieties. The following
+night I went with my box-social friend to a ball. Neither of us danced,
+but we arrived early and took good places for looking on. The barren
+hall was dimly lighted. In the corner there was a stove; at one end a
+stage. An old man with a chin beard was scattering sand over the floor
+with a springtime gesture of seed sowing. He had his hat on and his coat
+collar turned up, as though to indicate that the party had not begun. By
+and by the stage curtain rolled up and the musicians came out and
+unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the
+Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs
+and asked for _sol la_ from an esthetic young lady pianist, with whom
+they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made
+an official _entrée_ from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part
+of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the
+first two-step struck up there were eight or ten couples on the floor.
+They held on to each other closely, with no outstretched arms as is the
+usual form, and they revolved very slowly around and around the room.
+The young men had smooth faces, patent leather boots, very smart cravats
+and a sheepish, self-conscious look. The girls had elaborate
+constructions in frizzed hair, with bows and tulle; black trailing
+skirts with coloured ruffled under-petticoats, light-coloured blouses
+and fancy belts. They seemed to be having a very good time.
+
+On the way home we passed a brightly lighted grocery shop. My friend
+looked in with interest. "Goodness," he said, "but those Saratoga chips
+look good. Now, what would you order," he went on, "if you could have
+anything you liked?" We began to compose a ménu with oysters and chicken
+and all the things we never saw, but it was not long before my friend
+cried "Mercy! Oh, stop; I can't stand it. It makes me too hungry."
+
+The moon had gone under a cloud. The wooden sidewalks were rough and
+irregular, and as we walked along toward home I tripped once or twice.
+Presently I felt a strong arm put through mine, with this assurance:
+"Now if you fall we'll both fall together."
+
+After four or five days' experience with a machine I began to work with
+more ease and with less pain between my shoulders. The girls were kind
+and sympathetic, stopping to help and encourage the "new girl." One of
+the shirt finishers, who had not been long in the mill herself, came
+across from her table one day when I was hard at work with a pain like a
+sword stab in my back.
+
+"I know how you ache," she said. "It just makes me feel like crying when
+I see how you keep at it and I can guess how tired you are."
+
+Nothing was so fatiguing as the noise. In certain places near the eyelet
+and buttonhole machines it was impossible to make one's neighbour hear
+without shouting. My teacher, whose nerves, I took it, were less
+sensitive than mine, expressed her sensations in this way:
+
+"It's just terrible sitting here all day alone, worrying and thinking
+all by yourself and hustling from morning until night. Lots of the girls
+have nervous prostration. My sister had it and I guess I'm getting it. I
+hear the noise all night. Quite a few have consumption, too, from the
+dust and the lint."
+
+The butcher's widow, the school-teacher and I started in at about the
+same time. At the end of two weeks the butcher's widow had long been
+gone. The school-teacher had averaged seventy-nine cents a day and I
+had averaged eighty-nine. My best day I finished sixteen dozen shirts
+and netted $1.11. My board and washing cost me three dollars, so that
+from the first I had a living insured.
+
+There was one negress in the factory. She worked in a corner quite by
+herself and attended to menial jobs, such as sweeping and picking up
+scraps. A great many of the girls and boys took correspondence courses
+in stenography, drawing, bookkeeping, illustrating, etc., etc. The
+purely mechanical work of the mill does not satisfy them. They are
+restless and ambitious, exactly the material with which to form schools
+of industrial art, the class of hand-workers of whom I have already
+spoken.
+
+One of the girls who worked beside us as usual in the morning, left a
+note on her machine at noon one day to say that she would never be back.
+She was going up to the lake to drown herself, and we needn't look for
+her. Some one was sent in search. She was found sitting at the lake's
+edge, weeping. She did not speak. We all talked about it in our leisure
+moments, but the work was not interrupted. There were various
+explanations: she was out of her mind; she was discouraged with her
+work; she was nervous. No one suggested that an unfortunate love affair
+be the cause of her desperate act. There was not a word breathed against
+her reputation. I would have felt impure in proposing what to me seemed
+most probable.
+
+The mill owners exert, as far as possible, an influence over the moral
+tone of their employees, assuming the right to judge their conduct both
+in and out of the factory and to treat them as they see fit. The average
+girls are self-respecting. They trifle with love. The attraction they
+wish to exert is ever present in their minds and in their conversation.
+The sacrifices they make for clothes are the first in importance. They
+have superstitions of all kinds: to sneeze on Saturday means the arrival
+of a beau on Sunday; a big or little tea leaf means a tall or a short
+caller, and so on. There is a book of dreams kept on one table in the
+mill, and the girls consult it to find the interpretation of their
+nocturnal reveries. They are fanciful, sentimental, cold, passionless.
+The accepted honesty of married life makes them slow to discard the
+liberty they love, to dismiss the suitors who would attend their wedding
+as one would a funeral.
+
+There is, of course, another category of girl, who goes brutally into
+passionate pleasures, follows the shows, drinks and knocks about town
+with the boys. She is known as a "bum," has sacrificed name and
+reputation and cannot remain in the mill.
+
+We discussed one night the suitable age for a girl to become mistress of
+herself. The boy of the household maintained that at eighteen a girl
+could marry, but that she must be twenty-one before she could have her
+own way. All the girls insisted that they could and did boss themselves
+and had even before they were eighteen.
+
+Two chums who boarded in my house gave a charming illustration of the
+carelessness and the extravagance, the independence and love of it which
+characterizes feminine America. One of these was a _deracinee_, a child
+with a foreign touch in her twang; a legend of other climes in the
+dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in
+her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a _mondaine_. She had the social
+gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the _glissey mortel
+n'appuyez jamais_ attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an
+adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has
+mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days of Esther.
+
+When the other girls waited feverishly for love letters, she was opening
+a pile of invitations to socials and theatre parties. Discreet and
+condescending, she received more than she gave.
+
+As soon as the posters were out for a Tuesday performance of "Faust,"
+preparations began in the household to attend. Saturday shopping and
+supper were hurried through and by six o'clock Lorraine was at the
+sewing machine tucking chiffon for hats and bodices. After ten hours'
+work in the mill, she began again, eager to use the last of the spring
+twilight, prolonged by a quarter moon. There was a sudden, belated gust
+of snow; in the blue mist each white frame house glowed with a warm,
+pink light from its parlour stove. Lorraine's fingers flew. A hat took
+form and grew from a heap of stuff into a Parisian creation; a bolero
+was cut and tucked and fitted; a skirt was ripped and stitched and
+pressed; a shirt-waist was started and finished. For two nights the
+girls worked until twelve o'clock so that when the "show" came they
+might have something new to wear that nobody had seen. This must have
+been the unanimous intention of the Perry populace, for the peanut
+gallery was a bower of fashion. Styles, which I had thought were new in
+Paris, were familiarly worn in Perry by the mill hands. White kid gloves
+were _en regle_. The play was "Faust." All allusions to the triumph of
+religion over the devil; all insinuations on the part of Mephistopheles
+in regard to the enviable escape of Martha's husband and of husbands in
+general, from prating women in general; all invocations of virtue and
+moral triumph, were greeted with bursts of applause. Between the acts
+there was music, and the ushers distributed showers of printed
+advertisements, which the audience fell at once to reading as though
+they had nothing to talk about.
+
+I heard only one hearty comment about the play: "That devil," said
+Lorraine, as we walked home together, "was a corker!"
+
+I have left until the last the two friends who held a place apart in
+the household: the farmer and his wife, the old people of another
+generation with whom we boarded. They had begun life together forty
+years ago. They lived on neighbouring farms. There was dissension
+between the families such as we read of in "Pyramus and Thisbe," "Romeo
+and Juliet." The young people contrived a means of corresponding. An old
+coat that hung in the barn, where nobody saw it, served as post-office.
+Truman pleaded his cause ardently and won his Louisa. They fixed a day
+for the elopement. A fierce snowstorm piled high its drifts of white,
+but all the afternoon long the little bride played about, burrowing a
+path from the garden to her bedroom window, and when night came and
+brought her mounted hero with it, she climbed up on to the saddle by his
+side and rode away to happiness, leaving ill nature and quarrels far
+behind. Side by side, as on the night of their wedding ride, they had
+traversed forty years together. Ill health had broken up their farm
+home. When Truman could no longer work they came in to Perry to take
+boarders, having no children. The old man never spoke. He did chores
+about the house, made the fire mornings, attended to the parlour stove;
+he went about his work and no one ever addressed a word to him; he
+seemed to have no more live contact with the youth about him than
+driftwood has with the tree's new shoots. He had lived his life on a
+farm; he was a land captain; he knew the earth's secrets as a ship's
+captain knows the sea's. He paced the mild wooden pavements of Perry,
+booted, and capped for storm and wind, deep snow and all the inimical
+elements a pioneer might meet with. His new false teeth seemed to shine
+from his shaggy gray beard as a symbol of this new town experience in a
+rough natural existence, out of keeping, ill assorted. Tempted to know
+what his silence hid, I spent an hour with him by the kitchen stove one
+Sunday afternoon. His memory went easily back to the days when there
+were no railroads, no telegraphs, no mills. He was of a speculative turn
+of mind:
+
+"I don't see," he said, "what makes men so crazy after gold. They're
+getting worse all the time. Gold ain't got no real value. You take all
+the gold out of the world and it wouldn't make no difference whatever.
+You can't even make a tool to get a living with, out of gold; but just
+do away with the iron, and where would you be?" And again, he
+volunteered:
+
+"I think Mr. Carnegie would have done a deal nobler if he had paid his
+men a little more straight along. He wouldn't have had such a name for
+himself. But don't you believe it would have been better to have paid
+those men more for the work they were doing day by day than it is now to
+give pensions to their families? I know what I think about the matter."
+
+[Illustration: SUNDAY EVENING AT SILVER LAKE
+
+The mill girls' excursion resort. A special train and 'busses run on
+Sundays, and "everybody" goes.]
+
+I asked him how he liked city life.
+
+"Give me a farm every time," was his answer. "Once you've seen a town
+you know it all. It's the same over and over again. But the country's
+changing every day in the year. It's a terrible thing, being sick," he
+went on. "It seems sometimes as though the pain would tear me to pieces
+when I walk across the floor. I wasn't no good on the farm any more, so
+my wife took a notion we better come in town and take boarders."
+
+Thus it was with this happily balanced couple; as his side grew heavier
+she took on more ballast and swung even with him. She had the quick
+adaptability common to American women. During the years of farm life
+religious meetings and a few neighbours had kept her in touch with the
+outside world. The church and the kitchen were what she had on the farm;
+the church and the kitchen were what she had in town; family life
+supplemented by boarders, a social existence kept alive by a few
+faithful neighbours. She had retained her activity and sympathy because
+she was intelligent, because she lived with the _young_. The man could
+not make himself one of another generation, so he lived alone. He had
+lost his companions, the "cow kind and the sheep kind"; he had lost
+control over the earth that belonged to him; he was disused; he
+suffered; he pined. But as they sat together side by side at table, his
+look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back
+over a long vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to
+those about--years that had glorified confidence in this life as it
+passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO
+
+
+On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House,
+asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I
+intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go
+before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was
+pinned in a black silk bag.
+
+It was the first day of May. A hot wind blew eddies of dust up and down
+the electric car tracks; the streets were alive with children; a group
+swarmed in front of each doorstep, too large to fit into the house
+behind it. Down the long, regular avenues that stretched right and left
+there was a broken line of tenements topped by telegraph wires and
+bathed in a soft cloud of black soot falling from a chimney in the
+neighbourhood. The sidewalks were a patchwork of dirt, broken
+paving-stones and wooden boards. The sunshine was hot and gloomy. There
+were no names on the corner lamps and the house numbers were dull and
+needed repainting. It was already late in the afternoon: I had but an
+hour or two before dark to find a lodging. The miserable, overcrowded
+tenement houses repelled me, yet I dreaded that there should not be room
+among them for one more bread-winner to lodge. I hailed a cluster of
+children in the gutter:
+
+"Say," I said, "do you know where Mrs. Hicks lives to?"
+
+They crowded around, eager. The tallest boy, with curly red hair and
+freckles, pointed out Mrs. Hicks' residence, the upper windows of a
+brick flat that faced the world like a prison wall. After I had rung and
+waited for the responding click from above, a cross-eyed Italian woman
+with a baby in her arms motioned to me from the step where she was
+sitting that I must go down a side alley to find Mrs. Hicks. Out of a
+promiscuous heap of filth, a broken-down staircase led upward to a row
+of green blinds and a screen door. Somebody's housekeeping was scattered
+around in torn bits of linen and tomato cans.
+
+The screen door opened to my knock and the Hicks family gushed at
+me--ever so many children of all ages and an immense mother in an
+under-waist and petticoat. The interior was neat; the wooden floors were
+scrubbed spotless. I congratulated myself. Mrs. Hicks clucked to the
+family group, smiled at me, and said:
+
+"I never took a boarder in my life. I ain't got room enough for my own
+young ones, let alone strangers."
+
+[Illustration: "THE BREATH OF THE BLACK, SWEET NIGHT REACHED THEM,
+FETID, HEAVY WITH THE ODOUR OF DEATH AS IT BLEW ACROSS THE STOCKYARDS"]
+
+There were two more names on my list. I proceded to the nearest and
+found an Irish lady living in basement rooms ornamented with green
+crochet work, crayon portraits, red plaid table-cloths and chromo
+picture cards.
+
+She had rheumatism in her "limbs" and moved with difficulty. She was
+glad to talk the matter over, though she had from the first no intention
+of taking me. From my then point of view nothing seemed so desirable as
+a cot in Mrs. Flannagan's front parlour. I even offered in my eagerness
+to sleep on the horsehair sofa. Womanlike, she gave twenty little
+reasons for not taking me before she gave the one big reason, which was
+this:
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind having you myself, but
+I've got three sons, and you know _boys is queer_."
+
+It was late, the sun had set and only the twilight remained for my
+search before night would be upon me and I would be driven to some
+charity refuge.
+
+I had one more name, and climbed to find its owner in a tenement flat.
+She was a German woman with a clubfoot. Two half-naked children
+incrusted with dirt were playing on the floor. They waddled toward me as
+I asked what my chances were for finding a room and board. The mother
+struck first one, then the other, of her offspring, and they fell into
+two little heaps, both wailing. From a hole back of the kitchen came the
+sympathetic response of a half-starved shaggy dog. He howled and the
+babes wailed while we visited the dusky apartment. There was one room
+rented to a day lodger who worked nights, and one room without a window
+where the German family slept. She proposed that I share the bed with
+her that night until she could get an extra cot. Her husband and the
+children could sleep on the parlour lounge. She was hideous and dirty.
+Her loose lips and half-toothless mouth were the slipshod note of an
+entire existence. There was a very dressy bonnet with feathers hanging
+on a peg in the bedroom, and two gala costumes belonging to the tearful
+twins.
+
+"I'll come back in an hour, thank you," I said. "Don't expect me if I am
+not here in an hour," and I fled down the stairs. Before the hour was up
+I had found, through the guidance of the Irish lady with rheumatism, a
+clean room in one street and board in another. This was inconvenient,
+but safe and comparatively healthy.
+
+My meals were thirty-five cents a day, payable at the end of the week;
+my room was $1.25 a week, total $3.70 a week.
+
+My first introduction to Chicago tenement life was supper at Mrs.
+Wood's.
+
+I could hear the meal sputtering on the kitchen stove as I opened the
+Wood front door.
+
+Mrs. Wood, combining duties as cook and hostess, called to me to make
+myself at home in the front parlour. I seated myself on the sofa, which
+exuded the familiar acrid odour of the poor. Opposite me there was a
+door half open leading into a room where a lamp was lighted. I could see
+a young girl and a man talking together. He was sitting and had his hat
+on. She had a halo of blond hair, through which the lamplight was
+shining, and she stood near the man, who seemed to be teasing her. Their
+conversation was low, but there was a familiar cry now and then, half
+vulgar, half affectionate.
+
+When we had taken our places at the table, Mrs. Wood presented us.
+
+"This is Miss Ida," she said, pointing to the blonde girl; "she's been
+boarding over a year with me, and this," turning to the young man who
+sat near by with one arm hanging listlessly over the back of a chair,
+"this is Miss Ida's intended."
+
+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 fiancée hurried away with an embarrassed 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 class, 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 multitude.
+
+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 space 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 passed the plate glass
+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 destitute 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
+advertisement, "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 fashionable 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 advertisement 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, masses of trimming 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 ménus. This nourishing 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 class 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 prostitution 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 class 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?
+
+Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some
+member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty
+members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is
+secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward a ruinous
+goal. They scorn the hand-workers; they feel themselves a _noblesse_ by
+comparison. They are the American snobs whose coat of arms marks not a
+well-remembered family but prospective luxuries.... Married, they bring
+as a portion thriftless tastes, to satisfy which more than one business
+man has wrecked his career. They work like men; why should they not live
+as men do, with similar responsibilities? What should we think of a
+class of masculine clerks and employees who spent all their money on
+clothes?
+
+The boss was busy when I got back to the clothing establishment. From
+the bench where I waited for orders I could take an inventory of the
+shop's productions. Arrayed in rows behind glass cases there were all
+manner of uniforms: serious uniforms going to the colonies to be shot to
+pieces, militia uniforms that would hear their loudest heart-beats under
+a fair head; drum-majors' hats that would never get farther than the
+peaceful lawn of a military post; fireman's hats; the dark-blue coat of
+a lonely lighthouse guardian; the undignified short jacket of a
+"buttons." All that meant parade and glory, the uniforms that make men
+identical by making each proud of himself for his brass buttons and gold
+lace. Even in the heavy atmosphere of the shop's rear, though they
+appeared somewhat dingy and tarnished, they had their undeniable charm,
+and I thought with pity of the hands that had to sew on plain serge
+suits.
+
+[Illustration: IN A CHICAGO THEATRICAL COSTUME FACTORY]
+
+As soon as the boss saw me, the generous Mr. F. who advanced me the
+fifty cents smiled at the skeptical Mr. F. who had never expected to see
+me again. One self said to the other: "I told you so!" and all the
+kindly lines in the man's face showed that he had looked for the best
+even in his inferiors and that he had found mankind worth trusting. He
+was the most generous employer I met with anywhere; I also took him to
+be the least businesslike. But, as though quickly to establish the law
+of averages, his head forewoman counterbalanced all his mercies by her
+ferocious crossness. She terrorized everybody, even Mr. F. It was to
+her, I concluded, that we owed our $6 a week. No girl would stay for
+less; it was an atelier chiefly of foreign employees; the proud American
+spirit would not stand the lash of Frances' tongue. She had been ten
+years in the place whose mad confusion was order to her. Mr. F. did not
+dare to send her away; he preferred keeping a perpetual advertisement in
+the papers and changing hands every few days.
+
+The workroom on our floor was fifty or sixty feet long, with windows on
+the street at one end and on a court at the other. The middle of the
+room was lighted by gas. The air was foul and the dirt lay in heaps at
+every corner and was piled up under the centre tables. It was less like
+a workshop than an old attic. There was the long-accumulated disorder of
+hasty preparation for the vanities of life. It had not at all the aspect
+of a factory which makes a steady provision of practical things. There
+were odds and ends of fancy costumes hanging about--swords, crowns,
+belts and badges. Under the sewing machines' swift needles flew the
+scarlet coats of a regiment; gold and silver braid lay unfurled on the
+table; the hand-workers bent over an armful of khaki; a row of young
+girls were fitting military caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the
+ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and
+epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst
+of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks
+bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite,
+a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl
+counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a
+sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is very handsome with dark eyes
+and fine features, and he has the "average figure," so that he serves as
+manikin for the atelier; and I find him alternately a workman in
+overalls and a Turkish magnate with turban and flowing robes. It is into
+this atmosphere of toil and unreality that I am initiated as a hand
+sewer. Something of the dramatic and theatrical possesses the very
+managers themselves. Below, a regiment waits impatient for new brass
+buttons; we sew against time and break all our promises. Messengers
+arrive every few minutes with fresh reports of rising ire on the part of
+disappointed customers. Down the stairs pell-mell comes an elderly
+partner of the firm with a gold-and-purple crown on his head and after
+him follows the kindly Mr. F. in an usher's jacket. "If you don't start
+now," he calls, "that order'll be left on our hands."
+
+Amid such confusion the regular rhythm of the needle as it carries its
+train of thread across the yards of coloured cloth is peaceful,
+consoling. I have on one side of me a tailor who speaks only Polish, on
+the other side a seamstress who speaks only German. Across the frontier
+I thus become they communicate with signs, and I get my share of work
+planned out by each. Every woman in the place is cross except the girl
+next to me. She has only just come in and the poison of the forewoman
+has not yet stung her into ill nature. She is, like all the foreigners,
+neatly, soberly dressed in a sensible frock of good durable material.
+The few Americans in the shop have on elaborate shirt-waists in
+light-coloured silks with fancy ribbon collars. We are well paid, there
+is no doubt of it. We begin work at 8 A.M. and have a generous half-hour
+at noon. Most of the girls are Germans and Poles, and they have all
+received training as tailoresses in their native countries. To the sharp
+onslaught of Frances' tongue they make no response except in dogged
+silent obedience, whereas the dressy Americans with their proper spirit
+of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command.
+Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears.
+Frances is ubiquitous. She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse,
+she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F.,
+and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little
+Polish girl, in tears. This latter comes to me, her face wrought with
+emotion. She was receiving nine dollars a week; it is her first place in
+America. This sudden dismissal, its injustice, requires an explanation.
+She cannot speak a word of English and asks me to put my poor German at
+her service as interpreter.
+
+Mr. F. is clearly a man who advocates everything for peace, and as there
+is for him no peace when Frances is not satisfied, we gain little by our
+appeal to him except a promise that he will attend later to the troubles
+of the Polish girl. But later, as earlier, Frances triumphs, and I soon
+bid good-by to my seatmate and watch her tear-stained face disappear
+down the dingy hallway. She was a skilled tailoress, but she could not
+cut out men's garments, so Frances dismissed her. I wonder when my turn
+will come, for I am a green hand and yet determined to keep the American
+spirit. For the sake of justice I will not be downed by Frances.
+
+It is hard to make friends with the girls; we dare not converse lest a
+fresh insult be hurled at us. For every mistake I receive a loud, severe
+correction. When night comes I am exhausted. The work is easy, yet the
+moral atmosphere is more wearing than the noise of many machines. My job
+is often changed during the week. I do everything as a greenhorn, but I
+work hard and pay attention, so that there is no excuse to dismiss me.
+
+"I am only staying here between jobs," the girl next me volunteers at
+lunch. "My regular place burnt out. You couldn't get _me_ to work under
+_her_. I wouldn't stand it even if they do pay well." She is an
+American.
+
+"You're lucky to be so independent," says a German woman whose dull
+silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature. "I'm glad enough to get the
+money. I was up this morning at five, working. There's myself and my
+mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make. My husband is
+sick. He's in Arizona."
+
+"What were you doing at five?" I asked.
+
+"I have a trade," she answers. "I work on hair goods. It don't bring me
+much, but I get in a few hours night and morning and it helps some.
+There's so much to pay."
+
+She was young, but youth is no lover of discomfort. Hardships had chased
+every vestige of _jeunesse_ from her high, wrinkled brow and tired brown
+eyes. Like a mirror held against despair her face reflected no ray of
+hope. She was not rebellious, but all she knew of life was written there
+in lines whose sadness a smile now and again intensified.
+
+Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and
+tobacco smoke. The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the
+tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe. Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at
+my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across the city, held
+tightly under my arm, become, before eating, a block of food, a
+composite meal in which I can distinguish original bits of ham sandwich
+and apple pie. The work, however, does not seem hard to me. I sew on
+buttons, rip trousers, baste coat sleeves--I do all sorts of odd jobs
+from eight until six, without feeling, in spite of the bad air, any
+great physical fatigue which ten minutes' brisk walk does not shake off.
+But never have the hours dragged so; the moral weariness in the midst of
+continual scolding and abuse are unbearable. Each night I come to a firm
+decision to leave the following day, but weakly I return, sure of my
+dollar and dreading to face again the giant city in search of work.
+About four one afternoon, well on in the week, Frances brings me a pair
+of military trousers; the stripes of cloth at the side seam are to be
+ripped off. I go to work cheerfully cutting the threads and slipping one
+piece of cloth from the other.
+
+Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy
+way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way
+that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you
+tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her
+way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below,
+which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first
+on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift first the
+upper, then the under thread. I begin by cutting a long hole in the
+trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it. She has frightened me
+into dishonesty. Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to
+turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other
+stitch. While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every
+moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers. I killed it. It
+was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table. Then I put down
+the trousers and drew away my chair. It was useless saying anything to
+the girl next me. She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word;
+but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances'
+husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do.
+
+"There's bedbugs in them clothes," I said. "I won't work on 'em. No,
+sir, not if she sends me away this very minute."
+
+In a great hurry Frances passed me twice. She called out angrily both
+times without waiting for an answer:
+
+"Why don't you finish them pants?"
+
+Frances was a German. She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes,
+which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair. She had no lips
+whatever. Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade. Her
+eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and
+nasal.
+
+On her third round she faced me with the same question:
+
+"Why don't you finish them pants?"
+
+"Because," I answered this time, "there's bedbugs in 'em and I ain't
+goin' to touch 'em!"
+
+"Oh! my!" she taunted me, in a sneering voice, "that's dreadful, ain't
+it? Bedbugs! Why, you need only just look on the floor to see 'em
+running around anywhere!"
+
+I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed
+to me.
+
+"Mike!" she called to the presser in the corner, "will you have this
+_young lady's_ card made out."
+
+She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I
+joined a group of girls who were sewing badges.
+
+We had made up all description of political badges--badges for the
+court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of
+coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying
+men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with
+black-and-silver "in memoriam" badges, to be worn as a last tribute to
+some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to the grave under
+the emblem that had united them.
+
+We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living. At six the
+power was turned off, the machine hands went home, there was still an
+unfinished heap of black badges.
+
+I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for
+dressing-room. Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice:
+
+"You darsn't leave till you've finished them badges."
+
+How could I feel the slavery they felt? My nerves were sensitive; I was
+unaccustomed to their familiar hardships. But on the other hand, my
+prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to
+rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money
+lined. They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as
+physical fatigue. There was nothing between them and starvation except
+the success of their daily effort. What opposition could the German
+woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited
+to be fed beside her own?
+
+With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy
+windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing
+darkness, I started down the stairs. A hand was laid on my arm, and I
+looked up and saw Mike's broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward
+me.
+
+"I suppose you understand," he said, "that there'll be no more work for
+you."
+
+"Yes," I answered, "I understand," and we exchanged a glance that meant
+we both agreed it was Frances' fault.
+
+In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had
+advanced me. He seemed surprised at this.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, in his gentle voice, "that we couldn't arrange
+things."
+
+"I'm sorry, too," I said. But I dared not add a word against Frances.
+She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see
+her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me. I remembered a remark the
+German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl: "People
+ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living."
+
+At the end of this somewhat agitating day I returned to my tenement
+lodgings as to a haven of rest. There was one other lodger besides
+myself: she was studying music on borrowed money at four dollars a
+lesson. Obviously she was a victim to luxury in the same degree as the
+young women with whom I had lunched at the bakery. Nothing that a rich
+society girl might have had been left out of her wardrobe, and borrowed
+money seemed as good as any for making a splurge.
+
+Miss Arnold was something of a snob, intellectual and otherwise. It was
+evident from my wretched clothes and poor grammar that I was not
+accustomed to ladies of her type, but, far from sparing me, she
+humiliated me with all sorts of questions.
+
+"I'm tired of taffeta jackets, aren't you?" she would ask, apropos of my
+flimsy ulster. "I had taffeta last year, with velvet and satin this
+winter; but I don't know what I'll get yet this summer."
+
+After supper, on my return, I found her sitting in the parlour with Mrs.
+Brown. They never lighted the gas, as there was an electric lamp which
+sent its rays aslant the street and repeated the pattern of the window
+curtains all over Mrs. Brown's face and hands.
+
+Drawn up on one end of the horsehair sofa, Miss Arnold, in a purple
+velvet blouse, chatted to Mrs. Brown and me.
+
+"I'm from Jacksonville," she volunteered, patting her masses of curly
+hair. "Do you know anybody from Jacksonville? It's an elegant town, so
+much wealth, so many retired farmers, and it's such an educational
+centre. Do you like reading?" she asked me.
+
+"I don't get time," is my response.
+
+"Oh, my!" she rattles on. "I'm crazy about reading. I do love blank
+verse--it makes the language so choice, like in Shakespeare."
+
+Mrs. Brown and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat,
+remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss
+Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background
+for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the
+world on the tenement horsehair sofa.
+
+"In case you don't like your work," she Lady Bountifuls me, "I can get
+you a stylish place as maid with some society people just out of
+Chicago--friends of mine, an elegant family."
+
+"I don't care to live out," I respond, thanking her. "I like my Sundays
+and my evenings off."
+
+Mrs. Brown pricks up her ears at this, and I notice that thereafter she
+keeps close inquiry as to how my Sundays and evenings are spent.
+
+But the bell rings. Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the
+piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone,
+begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource
+among the poor. If she had had any infirmity--a wooden leg or a glass
+eye--she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had
+been spared intact she chose second best.
+
+"I've had lots of shocks," she said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky
+rocking-chair. The light from over the way flickered and gleamed. Mrs.
+Brown's broad, yellow face and gray hair were now brilliant, now somber,
+as she rocked in and out of the silver rays. Her voice was a metallic
+whine, and when she laughed against her regular, even, false teeth there
+was a sound like the mechanical yelp of a toy cat. Married at sixteen,
+her whole life had been Brown on earth below and God in His heaven
+above. Childless, she and Brown had spent over fifty years together. It
+was natural in the matter of shocks the first she should tell me about
+was Brown's death. The story began with "a breakfast one Sunday morning
+at nine o'clock.... Brown always made the fire, raked down the ashes,
+set the coffee to boil, and when the toast and eggs were ready he called
+me. And that wasn't one morning, mind you--it was every morning for
+fifty years. But this particular morning I noticed him speaking strange;
+his tongue was kind o' thick. He didn't hardly eat nothing, and as soon
+as I'd done he got up and carried the ashes downstairs to dump 'em. When
+he come up he seemed dizzy. I says to him, 'Don't you feel good?' but he
+didn't seem able to answer. He made like he was going to undress. He put
+his hand in his pocket for his watch, and he put it in again for his
+pocketbook; but the second time it stayed in--he couldn't move it no
+more; it was dead and cold when I touched it. He leaned up against the
+wall, and I tried to get him over on to the sofa. When I looked into his
+eyes I see that he was gone. He couldn't stand, but I held on to him
+with all my force; I didn't let his head strike as he went down. _When
+he fell we fell together_." Her voice was choked; even now after three
+years as she told the story she could not believe it herself.
+
+Presently when she is calm again she continues the recital of her
+shocks--three times struck by lightning and once run over. Her simple
+descriptions are straightforward and dramatic. As she talks the wind
+blows against the windows, the shutters rattle and an ugly white china
+knob, against which the curtains are draped, falls to the floor.
+Tenderly, amazed, she picks it up and looks at it.
+
+"Brown put that up," she says; "there hasn't no hand touched it since
+his'n."
+
+Proprietor of this house in which she lives, Mrs. Brown is fairly well
+off. She rents one floor to an Italian family, one to some labourers,
+and one to an Irishman and his wife who get drunk from time to time and
+rouse us in the night with tumult and scuffling. She has a way of
+disappearing for a week or more and returning without giving any account
+of herself. Relations are strained, and Mrs. Brown in speaking of her
+says:
+
+"I don't care what trouble I was in, I wouldn't call in that Irish
+woman. I don't have anything to do with her. I'd rather get the Dago
+next door." And hereafter follows a mild tirade against the
+Italians--the same sentiments I have heard expressed before in the
+labouring centres.
+
+[Illustration: CHICAGO TYPES]
+
+"They're kind folks and good neighbours," Mrs. Brown explains, "but
+they're different from us. They eat what the rest of us throw away, and
+there's no work they won't do. They're putting money aside fast; most of
+'em owns their own houses; but since they've moved into this
+neighbourhood the price of property's gone down. I don't have nothing to
+do with 'em. We don't any of us. They're not like us; they're
+different."
+
+Without letting a day elapse I started early the following morning in
+search of a new job. The paper was full of advertisements, but there was
+some stipulation in each which narrowed my possibilities of getting a
+place, as I was an unskilled hand. There was, however, one simple "Girls
+wanted!" which I answered, prepared for anything but an electric sewing
+machine.
+
+The address took me to a more fashionable side of the city, near the
+lake; a wide expanse of pale, shimmering water, it lay a refreshing
+horizon for eyes long used to poverty's quarters. Like a sea, it rolled
+white-capped waves toward the shore from its far-away emerald surface
+where sail-freighted barks traveled at the wind's will. Free from man's
+disfiguring touch, pure, immaculate, it appeared bridelike through a
+veil of morning mist. And at its very brink are the turmoil and
+confusion of America's giant industries. In less than an hour I am
+receiving wages from a large picture frame company in East Lake Street.
+Once more I have made the observation that men are more agreeable bosses
+than women. The woman, when she is not exceptionally disagreeable, like
+Frances, is always annoying. She bothers and nags; things must be done
+her way; she enjoys the legitimate minding of other people's business.
+Aiming at results only, the masculine mind is more tranquil. Provided
+you get your work done, the man boss doesn't care what methods you take
+in doing it. For the woman boss, whether you get your work done or not,
+you must do it her way. The overseer at J.'s picture frame manufactory
+is courteous, friendly, considerate. I have a feeling that he wishes me
+to coöperate with him, not to be terrorized and driven to death by him.
+My spirits rise at once, my ambition is stimulated, and I desire his
+approval. The work is all done by the piece, he explains to me, telling
+me the different prices. The girls work generally in teams of three,
+dividing profits. Nothing could be more modern, more middle-class, more
+popular, more philistine than the production of J.'s workrooms. They are
+the cheap imitations fed to a public hungry for luxury or the semblance
+of it. Nothing is genuine in the entire shop. Water colours are imitated
+in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are
+imitated in applications of pressed brass. Great works of art are
+belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest
+pocket. Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every
+size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby's crib
+in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the
+piano in the front parlour. The range of subjects covers a familiar
+list of comedies or tragedies--the partings before war, the interior
+behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the
+chocolate girl, the skipper and his daughter, etc., etc.
+
+My job is easy, but slow. With a hammer and tacks I fasten four tin
+mouldings to the four corners of a gilt picture frame. Twenty-five cents
+for a hundred is the pay given me, and it takes me half a day to do this
+many; but my comrades don't allow me to get discouraged.
+
+"You're doing well," a red-haired _vis-a-vis_ calls to me across the
+table. And the foreman, who comes often to see how I am getting along,
+tells me that the next day we are to begin team-work, which pays much
+better.
+
+The hours are ten a day: from seven until five thirty, with twenty-five
+minutes at noon instead of half an hour. The extra five minutes a day
+mount up to thirty minutes a week and let us off at five on Saturdays.
+
+The conversation around me leads me to suppose that my companions are
+not downtrodden in any way, nor that they intend letting work interfere
+with happiness. They have in their favour the most blessed of all
+gifts--youth. The tragic faces one meets with are of the women
+breadwinners whose burdens are overwhelming and of the children in whom
+physical fatigue arrests development and all possibility of pleasure.
+My present team-mates and those along the rest of the room are Americans
+between fourteen and twenty-four years of age, full of unconscious hope
+for the future, which is natural in healthy, well-fed youth, taking
+their work cheerily as a self-imposed task in exchange for which they
+can have more clothes and more diversions during their leisure hours.
+
+The profitable job given us on the following day is monotonous and
+dirty, but we net $1.05 each. There is a mechanical roller which passes
+before us, carrying at irregular intervals a large sheet of coloured
+paper covered with glue. My _vis-à-vis_ and I lay the palms of our right
+hands on to the glue surface and lift the sheet of paper to its place on
+the table before us, over a stiff square of bristol board. The boss of
+the team fixes the two sheets together with a brush which she
+manipulates skilfully. We are making in this way the stiff backs which
+hold the pictures into their frames. When we have fallen into the proper
+swing we finish one hundred sheets every forty-five minutes. We could
+work more rapidly, but the sheets are furnished to us at this rate, and
+it is so comfortable that conversation is not interrupted. The subjects
+are the same as elsewhere--dress, young men, entertainments. The girls
+have "beaux" and "steady beaux." The expression, "Who is she going
+with?" means who is her steady beau. "I've got Jim Smith _now_, but I
+don't know whether I'll keep him," means that Jim Smith is on trial as
+a beau and may become a "steady." They go to Sunday night subscription
+dances and arrive Monday morning looking years older than on Saturday,
+after having danced until early morning. "There's nothing so smart for a
+ball," the mundane of my team tells us, "as a black skirt and white silk
+waist."
+
+About ten in the morning most of us eat a pickle or a bit of cocoanut
+cake or some titbit from the lunch parcel which is opened seriously at
+twelve.
+
+The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and
+not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and
+cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.
+
+The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having
+no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return
+to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the
+resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural
+condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There
+are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run
+presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my
+self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a
+situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find
+policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.
+Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes
+compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not
+nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom
+I speak often call me "dear" in answering.
+
+Under the trellis of the elevated road the "cables" clang their way.
+Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge
+over the rough pavements. The sidewalks are crowded with people who are
+dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business
+type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which
+line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke.
+The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address
+given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by
+the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles,
+followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses'
+hoofs have died away. Excitement for a moment supersedes business. The
+fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed
+against policemen's arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which
+sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the
+perpetual veil of soot.
+
+I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in
+print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger.
+Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days. The numbers correspond. But
+there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies. The
+employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and promises
+to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand. Another boss
+printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the
+following Monday at three dollars a week. A kindly forelady in a large
+printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants
+only trained workers. "I'm real sorry," she says. "You're from the East,
+aren't you? I notice you speak with an accent."
+
+By this time it is after three in the afternoon; my chances are
+diminishing as the day goes on and others apply before me. There is one
+more possibility at a box and label company which has advertised for a
+girl to feed a Gordon press. I have never heard of a Gordon press, but I
+make up my mind not to leave the label company without the promise of a
+job for the very next day. The stairway is dingy and irregular. My
+spirits are not buoyant as I open a swinging door and enter a room with
+a cage in the middle, where a lady cashier, dressed in a red silk waist,
+sits on a high stool overlooking the office. Three portly men, fat, well
+nourished, evidently of one family, are installed behind yellow ash
+desks, each with a lady typewriter at his right hand. I go timidly up to
+the fattest of the three. He is in shirt sleeves, evidently feeling the
+heat painfully. He pretends to be very busy and hardly looks up when I
+say:
+
+"I seen your ad. in the paper this morning."
+
+"You're rather late," is his answer. "I've got two girls engaged
+already."
+
+"Too late!" I say with an intonation which interrupts his work for a
+minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from
+tragedy to a good-humoured smile, I ask:
+
+"Say, are you sure those girls'll come? You can't always count on us,
+you know."
+
+He laughs at this. "Have you ever run a Gordon press?"
+
+"No, sir; but I'm awful handy."
+
+"Where have you been working?"
+
+"At J.'s in Lake Street."
+
+"What did you make?"
+
+"A dollar a day."
+
+"Well, you come in to-morrow about eleven and I'll tell you then whether
+I can give you anything to do."
+
+"Can't you be sure now?"
+
+Truly disappointed, my voice expresses the eagerness I feel.
+
+"Well," the fat man says indulgently, "you come in to-morrow morning at
+eight and I'll give you a job."
+
+The following day I begin my last and by far my most trying
+apprenticeship.
+
+The noise of a single press is deafening. In the room where I work
+there are ten presses on my row, eight back of us and four printing
+machines back of them. On one side of the room only are there windows.
+The air is heavy with the sweet, stifling smell of printer's ink and
+cheap paper. A fine rain of bronze dust sifts itself into the hair and
+clothes of the girls at our end of the room, where they are bronzing
+coloured advertisements. The work is all done standing; the hours are
+from seven until six, with half an hour at noon, and holiday at one
+thirty on Saturdays. It is to _feed_ a machine that I am paid three
+dollars a week. The expression is admirably chosen. The machine's iron
+jaws yawn for food; they devour all I give, and when by chance I am slow
+they snap hungrily at my hand and would crush my fingers did I not
+snatch them away, feeling the first cold clutch. It is nervous work.
+Each leaf to be printed must be handled twice; 5,000 circulars or
+bill-heads mean 10,000 gestures for the printer, and this is an
+afternoon's work.
+
+Into the square marked out for it by steel guards the paper must be
+slipped with the right hand, while the machine is open; with the left
+hand the printed paper must be pulled out and a second fitted in its
+place before the machine closes again. What a master to serve is this
+noisy iron mechanism animated by steam! It gives not a moment's respite
+to the worker, whose thoughts must never wander from her task. The
+girls are pale. Their complexions without exception are bad.
+
+We are bossed by men. My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious,
+he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me. There
+is some complaining _sotto voce_ of the other boss, who, it appears, is
+a hard taskmaster. Both are very young, both chew tobacco and
+expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor.
+While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of
+ill-repute. He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more
+accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings. He is
+communicative.
+
+"Do you like your job?" he asks.
+
+"Yes, first rate."
+
+"They don't pay enough. I give notice last week and got a raise. I guess
+I'll stay on here until about August."
+
+"Then where are you going?"
+
+"Going home," he answers. "I've been away from home for seven years. I
+run away when I was thirteen and I've been knocking around ever since,
+takin' care of myself, makin' a livin' one way or another. My folks
+lives in California. I've been from coast to coast--and I tell you I'll
+be mighty glad to get back."
+
+"Ever been sick?"
+
+"Yes, twice. It's no fun. No matter how much licking a boy gets he
+ought never to leave home. The first year or so you don't mind it so
+much, but when you've been among strangers two years, three years, all
+alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own
+folks."
+
+"Are you saving up?" I ask.
+
+He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice.
+
+"I'll be able to leave here in August," he explains, when he has
+finished spitting, "for Omaha. In three months I can save up enough to
+get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to
+San Francisco. I tell you," he adds, returning to his work, "a person
+ought never to leave home." He had nine months of work and privation
+before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years.
+With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at
+the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full
+speed homeward toward those we love! Nine months, two hundred and
+seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait. He was manly. He had the
+spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men
+extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another
+for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy's life. He had
+not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound.
+His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle
+where he worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a
+nonentity--a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without
+individual brilliancy, added to the general luster.
+
+The first day I had a touch of pride in getting easily ahead of the new
+girl who started in when I did. From my machine I could see only the
+back of her head; it was shaking disapproval at every stroke she made
+and had to make over again. She had a mass of untidy hair and a slouchy
+skirt that slipped out from her belt in the back. If not actually
+stupid, she was slow, and the foreman and the girl who took turns
+teaching her exchanged glances, meaning that they were exhausting their
+patience and would readily give up the job. I was pleased at being
+included in these glances, and had a miserable moment of vanity at lunch
+time when the old girls, the habitués, came after me to eat with them.
+The girl with the untidy hair and the long skirt sat quite by her self.
+Without unfolding her newspaper bundle, she took bites of things from
+it, as though she were a little ashamed of her lunch. My moment of
+vanity had passed. I went over to her, not knowing whether her
+appearance meant a slipshod nature or extreme poverty. As we were both
+new girls, there was no indiscretion in my direct question:
+
+"Like your job?"
+
+I could not understand what she answered, so I continued: "Ever worked
+before?"
+
+She opened her hands and held them out to me. In the palm of one there
+was a long scar that ran from wrist to forefinger. Two nails had been
+worn off below the quick and were cracked through the middle. The whole
+was gloved in an iron callous, streaked with black.
+
+"Does that look like work?" was her response. It was almost impossible
+to hear what she said. Without a palate, she forced the words from her
+mouth in a strange monotone. She was one of nature's monstrous failures.
+Her coarse, opaque skin covered a low forehead and broad, boneless nose;
+her teeth were crumbling with disease, and into her full lower lip some
+sharp tool had driven a double scar. She kept her hand over her mouth
+when she talked, and except for this movement of self-consciousness her
+whole attitude was one of resignation and humility. Her eyes in their
+dismal surroundings lay like clear pools in a swamp's midst reflecting
+blue sky.
+
+"What was you doing to get your hands like that?" I asked.
+
+"Tipping shoe-laces. I had to quit, 'cause they cut the pay down. I
+could do twenty-two gross in a day, working until eight o'clock, and I
+didn't care how hard I worked so long as I got good pay--$9 a week. But
+the employer'd been a workman himself, and they're the worst kind. He
+cut me down to $4 a week, so I quit."
+
+"Do you live home?"
+
+"Yes. I give all I make to my mother, and she gives me my clothes and
+board. Almost anywhere I can make $7 a week, and I feel when I earn that
+much like I was doing right. But it's hard to work and make nothing. I'm
+slow to learn," she smiled at me, covering her mouth with her hand, "but
+I'll get on to it by and by and go as fast as any one; only I'm not very
+strong."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Heart disease for one thing, and then I'm so nervous. It's kind of hard
+to have to work when you're not able. To-day I can hardly stand, my
+head's aching so. They make the poor work for just as little as they
+can, don't they? It's not the work I mind, but if I can't give in my
+seven a week at home I get to worrying."
+
+Now and then as she talked in her inarticulate pitiful voice the tears
+added luster to her eyes as her emotions welled up within her.
+
+The machines began to roar and vibrate again. The noon recess was over.
+She went back to her job. Her broad, heavy hands began once more to
+serve a company on whose moderate remuneration she depended for her
+daily bread. Her silhouette against the window where she stood was no
+longer an object for my vain eyes to look upon with a sense of
+superiority. I could hear the melancholy intonation of her voice,
+pronouncing words of courage over her disfigured underlip. She was one
+of nature's failures--one of God's triumphs.
+
+Saturday night my fellow lodger, Miss Arnold, and I made an expedition
+to the spring opening of a large dry-goods shop in the neighbourhood of
+Mrs. Brown's. I felt rather humble in my toil-worn clothes to accompany
+the young woman, who had an appearance of prosperity which borrowed
+money alone can give. But she encouraged me, and we started together for
+the principal street of the quarter whose history was told in its
+show-case windows. Pawnshops and undertakers, bakeries and soda-water
+fountains were ranged side by side on this highway, as the necessity for
+them is ranged with incongruous proximity in the existence of those who
+live pell-mell in moral and material disorder after the manner of the
+poor. There was even a wedding coach in the back of the corner
+undertaker's establishment, and in the front window a coffin, small and
+white, as though death itself were more attractive in the young, as
+though the little people of the quarter were nearer Heaven and more
+suggestive of angels than their life-worn elders. The spotless tiny
+coffin with its fringe and satin tufting had its share of the ideal,
+mysterious, unused and costly; in the same store with the wedding coach,
+it suggested festivity: a reunion to celebrate with tears a small
+pilgrim's right to sleep at last undisturbed.
+
+The silver rays of the street lamps mingled with the yellow light of
+the shop windows, and on the sidewalk there was a cosmopolitan public.
+Groups of Italian women crooned to each other in their soft voices over
+the bargains for babies displayed at the spring opening; factory girls
+compared notes, chattered, calculated, tried to resist, and ended by an
+extravagant choice; the German women looked and priced and bought
+nothing; the Hungarians had evidently spent their money on arriving.
+From the store window wax figures of the ideal woman, clad in latest
+Parisian garb, with golden hair and blue eyes, gazed down benignly into
+the faces uplifted with envy and admiration. Did she not plainly say to
+them "For $17 you can look as I do"?
+
+The store was apparently flourishing, and except for such few useful
+articles as stockings and shirts it was stocked with trash. Patronized
+entirely by labouring men and women, it was an indication to their
+needs. Here, for example, was a stand hung with silk dress skirts,
+trimmed with lace and velvet. They were made after models of expensive
+dress-makers and were attempts at the sort of thing a Mme. de Rothschild
+might wear at the Grand Prix de Paris.
+
+Varying from $11 to $20, there was not one of the skirts made of
+material sufficiently solid to wear for more than a few Sunday outings.
+On another counter there were hats with extravagant garlands of flowers,
+exaggerated bows and plumes, wraps with ruffles of lace and long
+pendant bows; silk boleros; a choice of things never meant to be
+imitated in cheap quality.
+
+[Illustration: THE REAR OF A CHICAGO TENEMENT]
+
+I watched the customers trying on. Possessed of grace and charm in their
+native costumes, hatless, with gay-coloured shawls on their shoulders,
+the Italian women, as soon as they donned the tawdry garb of the
+luxury-loving labourer, were common like the rest. In becoming
+prosperous Americans, animated by the desire for material possession
+which is the strength and the weakness of our countrymen, they lost the
+character that pleases us, the beauty we must go abroad to find.
+
+Miss Arnold priced everything, compared quality and make with
+Jacksonville productions, and decided to buy nothing, but in refusing to
+buy she had an air of opulence and taste hard to please which surpassed
+the effect any purchase could have made.
+
+Sunday morning Mrs. Brown asked me to join her and Miss Arnold for
+breakfast They were both in slippers and dressing-gowns. We boiled the
+coffee and set the table with doughnuts and sweet cakes, which Miss
+Arnold kept in a paper bag in her room.
+
+"I hardly ever eat, except between meals," she explained. "A nibble of
+cake or candy is as much as I can manage, my digestion is so poor."
+
+"Ever since Brown died," the widow responded, "I've had my meals just
+the same as though he were here. All I want," she went on, as we seated
+ourselves and exchanged courtesies in passing the bread and butter,
+"all I want is somebody to be kind to me. I've got a young niece that
+I've tried to have with me. I wrote to her and says: 'Your auntie's
+heart's just crying out for you!' And I told her I'd leave her all I've
+got. But she said she didn't feel like she could come."
+
+As soon as breakfast is over the mundane member of the household starts
+off on a day's round of visits. When the screen door has shut upon her
+slender silhouette, Mrs. Brown settles down for a chat. She takes out
+the brush and comb, unbraids her silver locks and arranges them while
+she talks.
+
+"Miss Arnold's always on the go; she's awful nervous. These society
+people aren't happy. Life's not all pleasure for them. You can be sure
+they have their ups and downs like the rest of us."
+
+"I guess that's likely," is my response.
+
+"They don't tell the truth always, in the first place. They say there's
+got to be deceit in society, and that these stylish people pretend all
+sorts of things. Well, then, all I say is," and she pricks the comb into
+the brush with emphasis, "all I say is, you better keep out of society."
+
+She had twisted her gray braids into a coil at the back of her head, and
+dish-washing is now the order of the day. As we splash and wipe, Mrs.
+Brown looks at me rather closely. She is getting ready to speak. I can
+feel this by a preliminary rattle of her teeth.
+
+"You're a new girl here," she begins; "you ain't been long in Chicago. I
+just thought I'd tell you about a girl who was workin' here in the
+General Electric factory. She was sixteen--a real nice-lookin' girl from
+the South. She left her mother and come up here alone. It wasn't long
+before she got to foolin' round with one of the young men over to the
+factory. They were both young; they didn't mean no harm; but one day she
+come an' told me, cryin' like anythin', that she was in trouble, and her
+young man had slipped off up to Michigan."
+
+Here Mrs. Brown stopped to see if I was interested, and as I responded
+with a heartfelt "Oh, my!" she went on:
+
+"Well, you ought to have seen that girl's sufferin', her loneliness for
+her mother. I'd come in her room sometimes at midnight--the very room
+you have now--and find her on the floor, weepin' her heart out. I want
+to tell you never to get discouraged. Just you listen to what happened.
+The gentleman from the factory got a sheriff and they started up north
+after the young man, determined to get him by force if they couldn't by
+kindness. Well, they found him and they brought him back; he was willin'
+to come, and they got everythin' fixed up for the weddin' without
+tellin' her a thing about it, and one day she was sittin' right there,"
+she pointed to the rocking chair in the front parlour window, "when he
+come in. He was carryin' a big bunch of cream roses, tied with long
+white ribbons. He offered 'em to her, but she wouldn't look at them nor
+at him. After awhile they went together into her room and talked for
+half an hour, and when they come back she had consented to marry him. He
+was real kind. He kept askin' me if she had cried much and thankin' me
+for takin' care of her. They were married, and when the weddin' was over
+she didn't want to stay with him. She said she wanted her mother, but we
+talked to her and told her what was right, and things was fixed up
+between them."
+
+She had taken down from its hook in the corner sunlight the canary bird
+and his cage. She put them on the table and prepared to give the bird
+his bath and fresh seed.
+
+"You see," she said, drawing up a chair, "that's what good employers
+will do for you. If you're working in a good place they'll do right by
+you, and it don't pay to get down-hearted."
+
+I thanked her and showed the interest I truly felt in the story.
+Evidently I must account for my Sundays! It was with the bird now that
+Mrs. Brown continued her conversation. He was a Rip Van Winkle in
+plumage. His claws trailed over the sand of the cage. Except when Mrs.
+Brown had a lodger or two with her, the bird was the only living thing
+in her part of the tenement.
+
+"I've had him twenty-five years," she said to me. "Brown give him to
+me. I guess I'd miss him if he died." And presently she repeated again:
+"I don't believe I even know how much I'd miss him."
+
+On the last evening of my tenement residence I was sitting in a
+restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose
+Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and
+irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper
+earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew
+must be open, as I felt a cold wind. The lake brought capricious changes
+of the temperature: the thermometer had fallen the night before from
+seventy to thirty. I turned to see who the newcomer might be. The sight
+of him set my heart beating faster. The restaurant keeper was
+questioning the man to find out who he was.... He was evidently
+nobody--a fragment of anonymous humanity lashed into _debris_ upon the
+edge of a city's vortex; a remnant of flesh and bones for human
+appetites to feed on; a battleground of disease and vice; a beggar
+animated by instinct to get from others what he could no longer earn for
+himself; the type _par excellence_ who has worn out charity
+organizations; the poor wreck of a soul that would create pity if there
+were none of it left in the world. He was asking for food. The
+proprietor gave him the address of a free lodging-house and turned him
+away. He pulled his cap over his head; the door opened and closed,
+letting in a fresh gale of icy air. The man was gone. I turned back to
+my supper. Scientific philanthropists would have means of proving that
+such men are alone to blame for their condition; that this one was in
+all probability a drunkard, and that it would be useless, worse than
+useless, to help him. But he was cold and hungry and penniless, and I
+knew it. I went as swiftly as I could to overtake him. He had not
+traveled far, lurching along at a snail's pace, and he was startled when
+I came up to him. One of his legs was longer than the other; it had been
+crushed in an accident. They were not pairs, his legs, and neither were
+his eyes pairs; one was big and blind, with a fixed pupil, and the other
+showed all his feelings. Across his nose there was a scar, a heavy scar,
+pale like the rest of his face. He was small and had sandy hair. The
+directors of charity bureaus could have detected perhaps a faint
+resemblance to the odour of liquor as he breathed a halo of frosty air
+over his scraggly red beard.
+
+Through the weather-beaten coat pinned over it his bare chest was
+visible.
+
+"It's a cold night!" I began. "Are you out of a job?"
+
+With his wistful eye he gave me a kind glance.
+
+"I've been sick. There's a sharp pain right in through here." He showed
+me a spot under his arm. "They thought at the hospital that I 'ad
+consumption. But," his face brightened, "I haven't got it." He showed in
+his smile the life-warrant that kept him from suicide. _He wanted to
+live._
+
+"Where did you sleep last night?" I asked. "It was a cold night."
+
+"To tell you the truth," he responded in his strong Scotch accent, "I
+slept in a wagon."
+
+I proposed that we do some shopping together; he looked at me gratefully
+and limped along to a cheap clothing store, kept by an Italian. The
+warmth within was agreeable; there was a display of garments hung across
+the ceiling under the gas-light. My companion waited, leaning against
+the glass counter, while I priced the flannel shirts. To be sure, my own
+costume promised little bounty. The price of the shirt was seventy-five
+cents, and as soon as he heard this the poor man said:
+
+"Oh, you mustn't spend as much as that."
+
+Looking first at the pauper, then at me, the Italian leaned over and
+whispered to me, "I think I understand. You can have the shirt for
+sixty, and I'll put in a pair of socks, too."
+
+Thus we had become a fraternity; all were poor, the stronger woe helping
+the weaker.... When his toilet was complete the poor man looked half a
+head taller.
+
+"Shall I wrap up your old cap for you?" the salesman asked, and the
+other laughed a broken, long-disused laugh.
+
+"I guess I won't need it any more," he said, turning to me.
+
+His face had changed like the children's valentines that grow at a touch
+from a blank card to a glimpse of paradise.
+
+Once in the street again we shook hands. I was going back to my supper.
+He was going, the charity directors would say, to pawn his shirt and
+coat.
+
+The man had evidently not more than a few months to live; I was leaving
+Chicago the following day. We would undoubtedly never meet again.
+
+As his bony hand lay in mine, his eyes looked straight at me. "Thank
+you," he said, and his last words were these:
+
+"I'll stand by you."
+
+It was a pledge of fraternity at parting. There was no material
+substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any
+generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron
+of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who
+are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no
+scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity;
+of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases;
+of those whose charity is tolerant and maternal, patient with the
+helpless, prepared for disappointments; not looking for results, ever
+ready to begin again, so long as the paradox of suffering and inability
+are linked together in humanity.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+
+
+Before concluding the recital of my experiences as a working girl, I
+want to sum up the general conclusions at which I arrived and to trace
+in a few words the history of my impressions. What, first of all, was my
+purpose in going to live and work among the American factory hands? It
+was not to gratify simple curiosity; it was not to get material for a
+novel; it was not to pave the way for new philanthropic associations; it
+was not to obtain crude data, such as fill the reports of labour
+commissioners. My purpose was to _help_ the working girl--to help her
+mentally, morally, physically. I considered this purpose visionary and
+unpractical, I considered it pretentious even, and I cannot say that I
+had any hope of accomplishing it. What did I mean by _help_? Did I mean
+a superficial remedy, a palliative? A variety of such remedies occurred
+to me as I worked, and I have offered them gladly for the possible aid
+of charitable people who have time and money to carry temporary relief
+to the poor. It was not relief of this kind that I meant by _help_. I
+meant an _amelioration in natural conditions_. I was not hopeful of
+discovering any plan to bring about this amelioration, because I
+believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the
+working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to
+resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the
+test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a
+sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked,
+that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and
+that they can therefore be corrected. It is with hope for the material
+betterment of the breadwinning woman, for the moral advancement of the
+semi-breadwinner and the esthetic improvement of the country, that I
+submit what seems a rational plan.
+
+For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my
+companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to
+dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death. My own physical
+sufferings were acute. My heart was torn with pity. I revolted against a
+society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and
+bodies. Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on
+human lives. To every new impression I responded with indiscriminate
+compassion. It is impossible for the imagination to sustain for more
+than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like
+myself is obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells,
+the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw
+mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling.
+The mind cannot grasp what it means to be frantic with pain in the
+shoulders and back before nine in the morning, and to watch the clock
+creep around to six before one has a right to drop into the chair that
+has stood near one all day long. Yet it is not until the system has
+become at least in a great measure used to such physical effort that one
+can judge without bias. When I had grown so accustomed to the work that
+I was equal to a long walk after ten hours in the factory; when I had
+become so saturated with the tenement smell that I no longer noticed it;
+when any bed seemed good enough for the healthy sleep of a working girl,
+and any food good enough to satisfy a hungry stomach, then and then only
+I began to see that in the great unknown class there were a multitude of
+classes which, aside from the ugliness of their esthetic surroundings
+and the intellectual inactivity which the nature of their occupation
+imposes, are not all to be pitied: they are a collection of human
+individuals with like capacities to our own. The surroundings into which
+they are born furnish little chance for them to develop their minds and
+their tastes, but their souls suffer nothing from working in squalour
+and sordidness. Certain acts of impulsive generosity, of disinterested
+kindness, of tender sacrifice, of loyalty and fortitude shone out in
+the poverty-stricken wretches I met on my way, as the sun shines
+glorious in iridescence on the rubbish heap that goes to fertilize some
+rich man's fields.
+
+My observations were confined chiefly to the women. Two things, however,
+regarding the men I noticed as fixed rules. They were all breadwinners;
+they worked because they needed the money to live; they supported
+entirely the woman, wife or mother, of the household who did not work.
+In many cases they contributed to the support of even the wage-earning
+females of the family: the woman who does not work when she does not
+need to work is provided for.
+
+The women were divided into two general classes: Those who worked
+because they needed to earn their living, and those who came to the
+factories to be more independent than at home, to exercise their
+coquetry and amuse themselves, to make pin money for luxuries. The men
+formed a united class. They had a purpose in common. The women were in a
+class with boys and with children. They had nothing in common but their
+physical inferiority to man. The children were working from necessity,
+the boys were working from necessity; the only industrial unit
+complicating the problem were the girls who worked without being obliged
+to--the girls who had "all the money they needed, but not all the money
+they wanted." To them the question of wages was not vital. They could
+afford to accept what the breadwinner found insufficient. They were
+better fed, better equipped than the self-supporting hand; they were
+independent about staying away from the factory when they were tired or
+ill, and they alone determined the reputation for irregularity in which
+the breadwinners were included.
+
+Here, then, it seemed to me, was the first chance to offer help.
+
+The self-supporting woman should be in competition only with other
+self-supporting industrial units. The problem for her class will settle
+itself, according to just and natural laws, when the purpose of this
+class is equally vital to all concerned. Relief, it seemed to me, could
+be brought to the breadwinner by separating from her the girl who works
+for luxuries.
+
+How could this be done?
+
+There is, I believe, a way in which it can be accomplished naturally.
+The non-self-supporting girls must be attracted into some field of work
+which requires instruction and an especial training, which pays them as
+well while calling into play higher faculties than the brutalizing
+machine labour. This field of work is industrial art: lace-making,
+hand-weaving, the fabrication of tissues and embroideries,
+gold-smithery, bookbinding, rug-weaving, woodcarving and inlaying, all
+the branches of industrial art which could be executed by woman in her
+home, all the manual labour which does not require physical strength,
+which would not place the woman, therefore, as an inferior in
+competition with man, but would call forth her taste and skill, her
+training and individuality, at the same time being consistent with her
+destiny as a woman.
+
+The American factory girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for
+knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world,
+to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for
+forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There
+is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give
+their time and their money to lifting the non-breadwinners from the
+slavish, brutalizing machines at which they work, ignorant of anything
+better, and placing them by education, by cultivation, in positions of
+comparative freedom--freedom of thought, taste and personality.
+
+Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston
+and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed.
+Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it
+is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient
+merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted.
+There is not a factory which would not furnish some material. The
+recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual
+advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages
+would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art
+School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in
+proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast
+as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of
+hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a
+plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions.
+
+Who will act as mediator?
+
+I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to
+help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and
+the girl who works for luxuries.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+    INTRODUCTORY
+
+    VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+    VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+    IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its
+brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism
+have always had much to say in praise of the "beauty of toil." Carlyle
+has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When
+one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from
+ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal
+holidays as the sole respite--to find at the month's end that the only
+possible economics are pleasures--one is at least better fitted to
+comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of
+the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason
+of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside
+for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and
+bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was
+possible, to live as she lived, work as she worked. In thus approaching
+her I believed that I could share her ambitions, her pleasures, her
+privations.
+
+Working by her side day after day, I hoped to be a mirror that should
+reflect the woman who toils, and later, when once again in my proper
+sphere of life, to be her expositor in an humble way--to be a mouthpiece
+for her to those who know little of the realities of everlasting labour.
+
+I have in the following pages attempted to solve no problem--I have
+advanced no sociologic schemes. Conclusions must be drawn by those who
+read the simple, faithful description of the woman who toils as I saw
+her, as I worked beside her, grew to understand in a measure her point
+of view and to sympathize with her struggle.
+
+    MARIE VAN VORST.
+    Riverdale-on-Hudson,
+    1902.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+
+"Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace
+to the public safety."--Roosevelt.
+
+Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it
+which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The
+workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot,
+the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of
+the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is _the
+labourer's head_ upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the
+vortex of the crowd.
+
+_That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace
+society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass._
+
+Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the
+Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample
+provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish
+employment of new machinery--tells on the great manufacturing world.
+
+Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery
+or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be
+given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical
+culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is
+securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers'
+souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned
+out at cheaper cost.
+
+The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made
+their demands for shorter hours and better pay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LYNN
+
+Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a
+dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the
+self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the
+daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour
+bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue
+noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to
+me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air.
+
+I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class
+whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out
+necessities and luxuries for the market.
+
+[Illustration: A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY--At work in a Lynn shoe
+factory]
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY: A very expert "vamper,"
+an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week]
+
+The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows:
+
+    Hat                 $  40
+    Sealskin coat         200
+    Black cloth dress     150
+    Silk underskirt        25
+    Kid gloves              2
+    Underwear              30
+                         ----
+                        $ 447
+
+The clothes I put on were as follows:
+
+    Small felt hat      $ .25
+    Woolen gloves         .25
+    Flannel shirt-waist  1.95
+    Gray serge coat      3.00
+    Black skirt          2.00
+    Underwear            1.00
+    Tippet               1.00
+                         ----
+                        $9.45
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in
+a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to
+back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get
+nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my
+speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The
+route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet thick
+covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter
+scene the sun shone brilliantly.
+
+No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former
+personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had
+discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto
+pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder
+to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.
+
+Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in
+the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the
+streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to
+this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course,
+and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church
+stamping the place New England.
+
+Lynn is made up of factories--great masses of ugliness, red brick,
+many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this
+town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in
+our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there
+are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is
+70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.
+
+The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a
+directory and found the address of the Young Women's Christian
+Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal
+streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once
+displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout
+my first experience--qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality
+and human interest.
+
+"I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the
+night."
+
+I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple
+decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing
+less in the older woman's face.
+
+"Work in the shops?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own
+way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy.
+
+She said earnestly: "You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't
+know about, child."
+
+She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper.
+
+"Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here.
+I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town
+just _anywheres_! You might get into trouble."
+
+She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or
+directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question,
+receive some information; and thus in marvelous friendliness she turned
+and outstretched her hand--I was a stranger and this was her welcome.
+
+I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I
+myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I
+intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or
+any aid.
+
+Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden
+tenement set back from the road.
+
+"Furnished Room to Rent," read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced
+woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said:
+
+"Ve only got a 'sheep' room."
+
+At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a
+_cheap_ room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That
+was the kind of people she received.
+
+I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was
+French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from
+Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our
+understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always.
+
+My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean,
+agreeable room.
+
+Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She
+would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the "young ladies"
+who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her furniture by
+slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to
+complain of me--I would take care.
+
+The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of
+course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first
+floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I
+made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame
+Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging
+manners.
+
+"Mademoiselle Ballard has work?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here
+three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!"
+
+Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have
+slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn!
+My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods,
+weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated.
+
+The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of
+the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks,
+frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but
+stopped finally before a humbler shop--where a sign swung at the door:
+"Hands Wanted." I went in here and opened a door on the third floor
+into a small office.
+
+I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
+twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
+I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
+revolving desk-chair.
+
+"I want work. Got any?"
+
+"Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?"
+
+(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)
+
+"Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest."
+
+"Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?"
+
+"It's gluein' suspender straps."
+
+"Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!"
+
+He smiled, indulgent of this whim.
+
+"They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.)
+
+"Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!"
+
+"Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
+back."
+
+He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
+suspender straps, tempting me with them.
+
+"What you ever done?"
+
+"Nothing. I'm green!"
+
+"That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?"
+
+"Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all."
+
+"Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
+four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
+no time." ...
+
+Preston's!
+
+That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
+way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
+half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!
+
+I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
+outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
+neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my
+judgment.
+
+A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
+help:
+
+"But I am green; I can't do office work."
+
+Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
+me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--"
+
+He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
+disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
+refusing applicants for work.
+
+"Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm
+getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings."
+
+"You'll give me a chance, then?"
+
+"Yes, I will!"
+
+It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
+houseless.
+
+With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before
+nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets
+filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I
+wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for
+sauce, ate a good meal.
+
+Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time
+the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my
+goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading:
+
+"_Wanted, Vampers_."
+
+A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand
+for work was greeted at the office this time with--"Any signs out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer
+nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor."
+
+Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes
+were were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within
+a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an
+elevator--a freight elevator; there are no others, of course. This
+lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook
+and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety
+doors"--continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to
+receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the
+shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping
+inadvertently to sudden death.
+
+I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was
+in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation
+and the noise was startling and deafening.
+
+I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for
+the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the
+employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to
+attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect
+aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.
+
+Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account
+book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me
+something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.
+
+"Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green."
+
+She didn't even look at me, but called--shrieked, rather--above the
+machine din to her colleagues:
+
+"Got anything for a green hand?"
+
+The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got
+from any one in authority in Parsons'.
+
+"Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"I'll have you learned _pressin'_; we need a _presser_. Go take your
+things off, then get right down over there."
+
+I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and
+coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty
+floor.
+
+Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two
+hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I
+went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained.
+I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman.
+
+On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me,
+although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who
+demanded her time and patience. She was to "learn me pressin'," and she
+did.
+
+Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a
+pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The
+branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows:
+
+Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps,
+vamps, etc. Dipping my brush in the glue, I gummed all the extreme
+outer edges. When the "case" had been gummed, the first bits were dry,
+then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine
+little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled
+hem flattened with the hammer--this is "pressing." The case goes from
+presser to the seaming machine.
+
+The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it
+should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All
+this means double work later. "_Twict the work_!" my teacher remarks.
+Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the
+uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from
+time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I
+have mastered the method--skill and rapidity can be mine only after many
+days; but I worked alone, unaided.
+
+As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating
+rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the
+hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was
+kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only
+the beginning!
+
+Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to
+me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a
+greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my
+vamps with the ill-smelling glue.
+
+"This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked
+they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady
+said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's
+long's you have.'"
+
+I asked, "What would you rather do than this?"
+
+She didn't seem to know.
+
+"I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you--I bet you!"
+
+(I didn't--but not quite for her reason.)
+
+As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told
+Maggie McGowan I was going home.
+
+"Tired already?" There was still an hour to dark.
+
+As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment
+spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes--three
+dozen pairs.
+
+"I guess I'll have to put it on my card," she soliloquized, "'cause I
+learned you."
+
+"Do--do----"
+
+"It's only about seven cents, anyway."
+
+"Three hours' work and that's all I've made?"[2]
+
+  [Footnote 2: An expert presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day.
+  This is rare and maximum.]
+
+She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of
+gain and wealth.
+
+"Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?"
+
+[Illustration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND
+
+Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl,
+and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at
+the same work]
+
+"Ten years."
+
+"And you make?"
+
+"Well, I don't want to discourage you." ...
+
+(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was
+her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)
+
+"... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve
+dollars a week."
+
+"Then I will make four!"
+
+(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of
+ignorance!)
+
+"_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do
+housework!"
+
+It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of
+women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a
+day labour.
+
+"Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?"
+
+"I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook
+breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here.
+When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!"
+
+My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate,
+as she, generous creature, took it to be.
+
+"After you've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I
+do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me."
+
+Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!
+
+Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs
+climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were
+tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat
+in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating
+spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of
+which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming,
+singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000
+paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one
+piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my
+tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from
+my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends
+had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in
+Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as
+they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure
+class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and
+beauty from a woman's hands.
+
+Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to
+her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are
+twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I
+never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they
+used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're
+awful! I do love a nice hand."
+
+The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh
+air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils,
+sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3]
+
+  [Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate
+  the shop.]
+
+Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as
+cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a
+shift at a toilet.
+
+Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the
+table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper
+table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she
+waited upon her nine guests.
+
+No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst
+of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness of
+welcome.
+
+My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew.
+
+"Miss Ballard!" The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced
+me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women
+besides myself and four men.
+
+"I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange," said my hostess in her
+pretty Canadian _patois_. "I want her to be at home here."
+
+I sat down.
+
+"Oh, she'll be at home all right!" A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette
+from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling
+good-fellowship.
+
+"Come to work in the shops?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ever been to Lynn before?"
+
+"No; live in Paris--stranger."
+
+"My, but that's hard--all alone here! Got a job?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And I explained to the attentive interest of all.
+
+From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or passed to me
+the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every
+shred of appetite, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's
+stifling heat would have dulled hunger.
+
+Let it go! I was far too interested to eat.
+
+The table was crowded with all manner of substances passing for
+food--cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten
+at one time and at will; the drink was tea.
+
+At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pass anywhere for a business
+man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a
+bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika
+and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle
+Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed),
+then Maurice.
+
+Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless
+questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent.
+Their attitude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which
+qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who
+suffer privation, who labour.
+
+Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and
+Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in
+good English and mediocre French.
+
+"It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most
+has to get spoken of weeks in advance--introduced by friends, too!"
+
+Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The
+landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak
+for you to our foreladies."
+
+Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as
+though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my
+shoulder.
+
+"Yes, _mon enfant_, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange
+place. _Ici nous sommes toute une famille_".
+
+"All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a
+stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who,
+one day by chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your
+side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your
+clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge
+form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face,
+brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.
+
+Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her
+guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an
+hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social
+climber's ladder.
+
+Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the _truffle_
+buried in _pate de foie gras_; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies
+and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a _canard a
+la presse_ throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no
+labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding
+bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry,
+eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.
+
+Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so.
+
+The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige.
+
+"But mademoiselle eats nothing--a bird's appetite." And here was
+displayed the first hint of vulgarity we are taught to look for in the
+other class.
+
+She put her hands about my arms. "_Tiens! un bras tout de meme!_" and
+she looked at Maurice, the young man on my right.
+
+"_Maurice c'est toi qui devrait t'informer des bras d'mademoiselle."_
+
+("Maurice, it is you who should inform yourself of mademoiselle's
+arms.")
+
+Maurice laughed with appreciation, as did the others. He was the sole
+American at table; out of courtesy for him we talked English from time
+to time, although he assured us he understood all we said in "the
+jargon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Maurice a master pen could do justice; none other. His _type_ is seen
+stealing around corners in London's Whitechapel and in the lowest
+quarters of New York: a lounger, indolent, usually drunk. Maurice was
+the type, with the qualities absent. Tall, lank, loosely hung together,
+made for muscular effort, he wore a dark flannel shirt, thick with
+grease and oil stains, redolent with tobacco, a checked waistcoat, no
+collar or cravat. From the collarless circle of his shirt rose his
+strong young neck and bullet head; his forehead was heavy and square
+below the heavy brows; his black eyes shone deep sunken in their
+caverns.
+
+His black hair, stiff as a brush, came low on his forehead; his mouth
+was large and sensual, his teeth brilliant. But his hands! never to be
+forgotten! Scrubbed till flesh might well have parted from the bones!
+clean, even if black and mutilated with toil; fingers forever darkened;
+stained ingrained ridges rising around the nails, hard and ink-black as
+leather. Maurice was Labour--its Symbol--its Epitome.
+
+At the landlady's remark he had blushed and addressed me frankly:
+
+"Say, I work to de 'Lights.'"
+
+(Lights! Can such a word be expressive of the factory which has daily
+blackened and scarred and dulled this human instrument?)
+
+"To the 'Lights,' and it ain't no _cinch_, I can tell you! I got to keep
+movin'. Every minute I'm late I get docked for wages--it's a day's work
+to the 'Lights.' When _she_ calls me at six--why, I don't turn over and
+snooze another! I just turn right out. I walk two miles to my shop--and
+every man in his place at 6:45! Don't you forgit it!"
+
+He cleaned his plate of food.
+
+"I jest keep movin' all de time."
+
+He wiped his mouth--rose unceremoniously, put on his pot-like derby
+ajaunt, lit a vile cigar, slipped into a miserable old coat, and was
+gone, the odour of his weed blending its new smell with kitchen fumes.
+
+He is one of the absolutely real creatures I have ever seen. Of his
+likeness types of crime are drawn. Maurice--blade keen-edged, hidden in
+its battered sheath, its ugly case--terrible yet attractive specimen of
+strength and endurance--Youth and Manhood in you are bound to labour as
+on the rack, and in the ordeal you keep (as does the mass of humanity)
+Silence!
+
+Eat by this man's side, heap his plate with coarse victuals, feel the
+touch of his flannel sleeve against your own flannel blouse, see his
+look of brotherhood as he says:
+
+"Say, if de job dey give you is too hard, why, I guess I kin get yer in
+to the 'Lights'!"
+
+These are sensations facts alone can give.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner we sit all together in the parlour, the general
+living-room: carpet-covered sofa, big table, few chairs--that's all. We
+talk an hour--and on what? We discuss Bernhardt, the divine Sarah. "Good
+shows don't come to Lynn much; it don't pay them. You can't get more
+than fifty cents a seat. Now Bernhardt don't like to act for fifty-cent
+houses! But the theatres are crowded if ever there's a good show. We get
+tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House." Maude Adams was a
+favourite. Réjane had been seen. Of course, the vital American
+interest--money--is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The
+packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read,
+discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the
+pleasure it would be to travel and see the world.
+
+At nine, friendly handshaking. "Good-night. You're tired. You'll like
+it all right to the shops, see if you don't! You'll make money, too. The
+forelady must a-seen that you were ambitious. Why, to my shop when a new
+hand applies for a job the foreman asks: 'What does he look like?
+Ambitious lookin'? Well, then--there's room."
+
+Ambitious to make shoes! To grind out all you can above the average five
+dollars a week, all you may by conscientious, unflagging work during 224
+hours out of a month.
+
+Good-night to the working world! Landlady and friendly co-labourers.
+
+"_Il ne faut pas vous gener, mademoiselle; nous sommes toute une
+famille_."
+
+Upstairs in my room the excitement died quite out of me. I lay wakeful
+in the hard, sheetless bed. It was cold, my window-pane freezing
+rapidly. I could not sleep. On either side, through the thin walls of
+the house, I could hear my neighbours settling to repose. Maurice's room
+was next to mine. He whistled a short snatch of a topical song as he
+undressed. On the other side slept the landlady's children; opposite,
+the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's
+song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed
+silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted
+to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete.
+
+Before six the next morning--black as night--the call: "Mau--rice!
+Mau--_rice_!" rang through the hall. Summons to us all, given through
+him on whom the exigencies of life fell the heaviest. Maurice worked by
+day system--the rest of us were freed men and women by comparison.
+
+The night before, timid and reluctant to descend the two flights of
+pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought
+up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be
+if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by
+pitcher. A little water nearly frozen was at hand for my toilet. By six
+I was dressed and my bed made; by 6:15 in the kitchen, dense with smoke
+from the frying breakfast. Through the haze the figures of my friends
+declared themselves. Codfish balls, bread and butter and coffee formed
+the repast.
+
+Maurice is the first to finish, standing a moment to light his pipe, his
+hat acock; then he is gone. The sisters wash at the sink, Mika combing
+her mass of frowzy dark hair, talking meanwhile. The sisters' toilet,
+summary and limited, is frankly displayed.
+
+At my right the bride consumes five enormous fish balls, as well as much
+bread. Her husband, a young, handsome, gentle creature, eats sparingly.
+His hand is strapped up at the wrist.
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Strained tendons. Doctor says they'd be all right if I could just hold
+up a little. They don't get no chance to rest."
+
+"But why not 'hold up' awhile?" He regards me sympathetically as one who
+says to an equal, a fellow: "You know why!--for the same reason that you
+yourself will work sick or well."
+
+"_On fait ce que l'on peut_!"
+
+("One does one's best!")
+
+When the young couple had left the room our landlady said:
+
+"The little woman eats well, doesn't she! She needs no tonic! All day
+long she sits in my parlour and rocks--and rocks."
+
+"She does nothing?"
+
+Madame shrugged.
+
+"But yes! She reads novels!"
+
+It was half-past six when I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is
+slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still
+half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring to life.
+
+I become, after a block or two, one of a hurrying throng of labour-bound
+fellows--dark forms appear from streets and avenues, going in divers
+directions toward their homes. Homes? Where one passes most of one's
+life, is it not _Home_?
+
+These figures to-day bend head and shoulders against the wind as it
+blows neck-coverings about, forces bare hands into coat pockets.
+
+By the time the town has been traversed, railroad track crossed, and
+Parsons' in sight, day has nearly broken. Pink clouds float over factory
+roofs in a sky growing bluer, flushing to day.
+
+[Illustration: THE WINDOW SIDE OF MISS K.'s PARLOUR AT LYNN, MASS]
+
+From now on the day is shut out for those who here and there enter the
+red-brick factories. An hour at noon? Of course, this magnificent hour
+is theirs! Time to eat, time to feed the human machine. One hour in
+which to stretch limbs, to pull to upright posture the bent body.
+Meanwhile daylight progresses from glowing beauty to high noon, and
+there the acme of brilliance seems to pause, as freed humanity stares
+half-blinded at God's midday rest.
+
+All the remaining hours of daylight are for the leisure world. Not till
+night claims Lynn shall the factory girl be free.
+
+Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side
+those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in
+a cheery tone.
+
+"Working here? Got it good?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"That's all right. Good-day."
+
+Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new
+class!
+
+On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long,
+low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign
+to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not fully found the
+workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but
+was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me--hard ordeal
+for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun
+my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the
+seats beyond me and on either side were filled.
+
+Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks
+like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of good-fellowship--coin
+freely passed from workwoman to workwoman.
+
+This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush
+dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was
+massed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like
+lightning.
+
+"Do you like your job?" I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to
+all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but
+made no direct reply. "I used to have what you're doing; it's awful.
+That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got _this_."
+She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only.
+
+"But don't you smell it from here?"
+
+"Not so bad; this here" (pointing to her black fluid) "smells stronger;
+it _drownds_ it.
+
+"I make my wages clear," she announced to me a few minutes later.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward.
+I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't
+cost me anything!"
+
+So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running,
+waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and
+not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end!
+
+"I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down
+East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side."
+
+My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes
+(thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room
+grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie,
+loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the
+like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and
+at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because
+one had been three hours at work.
+
+A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an
+apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a
+prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her
+half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.
+
+"Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!"
+
+My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded
+her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very
+indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make
+shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.
+It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said.
+
+"Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking
+down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops."
+
+Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing."
+
+The other laughed sweetly.
+
+"Well, I jest have to sing."
+
+"You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.
+
+"You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me
+alone, she whispered:
+
+"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.
+
+"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through
+the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_
+soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"
+
+Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure
+gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads
+at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed
+shoulders! on the flying hands!
+
+At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to
+thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I
+went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I
+had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and
+cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that
+which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.
+
+The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired
+out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and
+folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to
+continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue
+(oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it
+seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's
+this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you
+wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."
+
+Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory,
+shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the
+horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.
+
+Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.
+
+Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions
+she was courtesy itself.
+
+"Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from?
+Paris!"
+
+My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's
+a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?"
+
+She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's
+like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is
+like!"
+
+The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of
+satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast
+narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of
+the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the
+afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over
+her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five
+cents to-day."
+
+Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune
+never to work in a shoe-shop."
+
+"_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!"
+
+Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd
+jump into the river!"
+
+She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.
+
+"Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a
+lot!"
+
+"I am sick of the shoe-shops."
+
+"How long have you been at this work?"
+
+"Ten years. When you have worked ten years in Lynn you will be sick of
+the shops."
+
+I was sick of the shops, and I had not worked ten years. And for my
+hard-toiling future, such as she imagined that it would be, I could see
+that she pitied me. Once, supposing that since I am so green and so
+ill-clad, and so evidently bent on learning my trade the best I knew,
+she asked me in a voice quick with sisterhood:
+
+"Say, are you hungry?"
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+"You'll be all right! No American girl need to starve in America."
+
+In the shops the odours are more easily endured than is the noise. All
+conversation is shrieked out, and all the vision that one has as one
+lifts one's eyes from time to time is a sky seen through dirty
+window-panes, distant chimney-pots, and the roof-lines of like houses of
+toil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I gathered this from our interrupted talk that flowed unceasingly
+despite the noise of our hammers and the noise of the general room.
+
+They worked at a trade uncongenial. Not one had a good word to say for
+shop-labour there, despite its advantages, in this progressive land of
+generous pay. Each woman in a narrow, touching degree was a dreamer.
+Housework! too servile; but then, compared to shopwork it was leisure.
+
+By four the gas was lit here and there where burners were available.
+Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in
+semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became
+mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and
+blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the gas jets in misty circles.
+
+Unaltered alone was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the
+machinery, the long soughing of the power-engine.
+
+Here and there a woman stops to rest a second, her head sunk in her
+hand; or she rises, stretches limbs and body. A man wanders in from the
+next room, a pipe in his mouth, or a bad cigar, and pausing by one of
+the pale operators, whose space of rest is done, he flings down in front
+of her a new pile of piece-work from the cutting machines.
+
+We are up five flights of stairs. There are at least two hundred girls.
+Machine oil, rags, refuse, cover the floor--such _dèbris_ as only awaits
+a spark from a lighted match or cigar to burst into flames. Despite laws
+and regulations the building is not fire-proof. There is no fire-escape.
+A cry of fire, and great Heaven! what escape for two hundred of us from
+this mountain height, level with roofs of the distant town!
+
+Thus these women, shapes mysterious in gaslight and twilight, labour:
+life is at stake; health, youth, vigour, supply little more than bread.
+I rise; my bruised limbs, at first numb, then aching, stir for the first
+time after five hours of steady work. The pile of shoes before me is
+feeble evidence of the last hours' painful effort.
+
+I get into my clothes--skirt, jacket and hat, all impregnated now with
+factory and tenement odours, and stumble downstairs and out into the
+street. I have earned fifty cents to-day--but then, I am green!
+
+When once more in the cool, fresh air, released, I draw in a long and
+grateful breath.
+
+Lynn on this winter night is a snow-bound, midwinter village. In the
+heavens is the moon's ghost, a mist-shrouded, far-away disk. But it is
+the Christmas moon, shining on the sleeping thousands in the town, where
+night alone is free. The giant factories are silent, the machines at
+last quiet, the long workrooms moon-invaded. Labour is holy, but serfdom
+is accursed, and toil which demands that every hour of daylight should
+be spent in the race for existence--all of the daylight--is kin to
+slavery! There is no time for mental or physical upright-standing, no
+time for pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day I decided to consider myself dismissed from Parsons'. They had
+taught me all they could, unless I changed my trade, in that shop; I
+wished to learn a new one in another. Therefore, one morning I applied
+at another factory, again one of the largest in Lynn. The sign read:
+
+"_Cleaner Wanted_!"
+
+"Cleaner" sounded easy to learn. My experience this time was with a
+foreman instead of a forelady. The workroom I sought was on the second
+floor, a room filled with men, all of them standing. Far down the room's
+centre I saw the single figure of a woman at her job. By her side I was
+soon to be, and we two the sole women on the second floor.
+
+The foreman was distinctly a personage. Small, kind, alive, he wore a
+straw hat and eye-glasses. He had decided in a moment that my short
+application for "something to do" was not to be gainsaid.
+
+"Ever worked before?"
+
+This time I had a branch of a trade at my fingers' ends.
+
+"Yes, sir; presser."
+
+I was proud of my trade.
+
+I did not even know, as I do now, that "cleaning" is the filthiest job
+the trade possesses. It is in bad repute and difficult to secure a woman
+to do the unpleasant work.
+
+"You come with me," he said cheerfully; "I'll teach you."
+
+The forelady at Parsons' did not know whether I worked well or not. She
+never came to see. The foreman in Marches' taught me himself.
+
+Two high desks, like old-time school desks, rose in the workshop's
+centre. Behind one of these I stood, whilst the foreman in front of me
+instructed my ignorance. The room was filled with high crates rolled
+hither and thither on casters. These crates contained anywhere from
+thirty-two to fifty pairs of boots. The cases are moved from operator to
+operator as each man selects the shoes to apply to them the especial
+branch of his trade. From the crate of boots rolled to my side I took
+four boots and placed them on the desk before me. With the heel of one
+pressed against my breast, I dipped my forefinger in a glass of hot soap
+and water, water which soon became black as ink. I passed my wet, soapy
+finger all around the boot's edges, from toe to heel. This loosened, in
+the space between the sole and vamp, the sticky dye substance on the
+leather and particles so-called "dirt." Then with a bit of wood covered
+with Turkish toweling I scraped the shoe between the sole and vamp and
+with a third cloth polished and rubbed the boot clean. In an hour's time
+I did one-third as well as my companion. I cleaned a case in an hour,
+whilst she cleaned three.
+
+When my employer had left me I observed the woman at my side: an untidy,
+degraded-looking creature, long past youth. Her hands beggared
+description; their covering resembled skin not at all, but a dark-blue
+substance, leatherlike, bruised, ingrained, indigo-hued. Her nails
+looked as though they had been beaten severely. One of her thumbs was
+bandaged.
+
+"I lost one nail; rotted off."
+
+"Horrible! How, pray?"
+
+"That there water: it's poison from the shoe-dye."
+
+Swiftly my hands were changing to a faint likeness of my companion's.
+
+"Don't tell him," she said, "that I told you that. He'll be mad; he'll
+think I am discouraging you. But you'll lose your forefinger nail, all
+right!" Then she gave a little laugh as she turned her boot around to
+polish it.
+
+"Once I tried to clean my hands up. Lord! it's no good! I scrub 'em with
+a scrubbin'-brush on Sundays."
+
+"How long have you been at this job?"
+
+"Ten months."
+
+They called her "Bobby"; the men from their machines nodded to her now
+and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was
+ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in
+earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from
+us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood.
+I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet
+was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the
+morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to
+"Bobby." He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his
+job she said to me:
+
+"Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor?
+You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend."
+
+"Did that man come over to tell you this?"
+
+"Yes. He said it made you tired."
+
+From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man,
+bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the
+cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole
+he held to the flying wheel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is
+scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against
+forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen
+sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks.
+
+"Bobby" was not talkative or communicative simply because she had
+nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question
+to me during the time I worked by her side: "Do you like your job?" and
+although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too
+exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She
+took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. Every now and then
+she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day
+was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents.
+During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of
+shoes.
+
+In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work.
+Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial "B" on the tag and
+rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into
+his active charge.
+
+The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He
+was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far
+personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say?
+
+"You've been a presser long at the shoe-shops?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold
+the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right."
+
+"Thank you; perhaps I won't, though."
+
+"Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself," he said; "I know how that
+is."
+
+On his next visit he asked me: "Where you goin'; to when you get out of
+here to-night?"
+
+I told him that I was all right--that I had a place to stay.
+
+"If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me."
+
+[Illustration: "FANCY GUMMING."
+
+Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her husband also works in a factory, and
+between them they have made enough to build a pretty little cottage]
+
+[Illustration: AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND.
+
+Mrs. F., who has worked in the factory more than twenty years, once as
+a forewoman, now earns only $5 or $6 a week]
+
+I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity.
+
+"Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose
+I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes
+you a livin'."
+
+When the foreman had left me I turned to look at "Bobby." She was in the
+act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water.
+
+"You're not going to drink that!" I gasped, horrified. "Where did you
+get it?"
+
+"Oh, I drawed it awhile ago," she said.
+
+It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for
+a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew
+the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so
+limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an
+American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight
+years old, and her brain was stunted.
+
+At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down
+once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made
+the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than
+one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands
+were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen
+and men.
+
+Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage in a vessel. The top
+floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained
+blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that
+eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been
+impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and
+ate, in spite of the inconveniences, ravenously, and paid for my dinner
+fifteen cents. Most of my neighbours took one course, stew or soup. I
+rose half-satisfied, dizzy from the fumes and the bad air. I am safe in
+saying that I never smelled anything like to Weyman's, and I hope never
+to again. Never again shall I hear food and drink discussed by the
+_gourmet_--discuss, indeed, with him over his repast--but there shall
+rise before me Weyman's restaurant, low-ceiled, foul, crowded to
+overflowing. I shall see the diners bend edged appetites to the
+unpalatable food. These Weyman patrons, mark well, are the rich ones,
+the swells of labour--able to squander fifteen to twenty cents on their
+stew and tea. There are dozens, you remember, still in the unaired
+fourth and fifth stories--at "lunching" over their sandwiches. Far
+more vivid, more poignant even must be to me the vision of "Bobby." I
+shall see her eat her filthy sandwich with her blackened hands, see her
+stoop to blow the scum of deadly matter from her typhoid-breeding glass.
+
+In Lynn, unless she boards at home, a girl's living costs her at best
+$3.75 a week. If she be of the average[4] her month's earnings are
+$32. Reduce this by general expenses and living and her surplus is
+$16, to earn which she has toiled 224 hours. You will recall that
+there are, out of the 22,000 operatives in Massachusetts, 5,000 who
+make under $5 a week. I leave the reader to compute from this the
+luxuries and possible pleasures consistent with this income.
+
+  [Footnote 4: Lynn's average wages are $8 per week.]
+
+A word for the swells of the trade, for swells exist. One of my
+companions at 28 Viger Street made $14 a week. Her expenses were $4; she
+therefore had at her disposition about $40 a month. She had no
+family--_every cent of her surplus she spent on her clothes_.
+
+"I like to look down and see myself dressed nice," she said; "it makes
+me feel good. I don't like myself in poor clothes."
+
+She _was_ well-dressed--her furs good, her hat charming. We walked to
+work side by side, she the lady of us. Of course she belongs to the
+Union. Her possible illness is provided for; her death will bring $100
+to a distant cousin. She is only tired out, thin, undeveloped, pale,
+that's all. She is almost a capitalist, and extremely well dressed.
+
+Poor attire, if I can judge by the reception I met with in Lynn,
+influences only those who by reason of birth, breeding and education
+should be above such things. In Viger Street I was more simply clad
+than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness.
+
+Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a
+spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement
+lodging Mika took my hand at the door.
+
+"Good-by." Her eyes actually filled. "I'm awful sorry you're going. If
+the world don't treat you good come back to us."
+
+I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on
+whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect--the spoiled creature of the
+traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New
+York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in
+time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched
+my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and
+waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the
+favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the
+cleaner from Marches'.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+THE MILL VILLAGE
+
+
+Columbia, South Carolina, of course is conscious that there are mills
+without its city precincts. It is proud of the manufacture that gives
+the city precedence and commercial value all over the world. The trolley
+runs to the mills empty, as a rule, after the union depot is passed.
+
+Frankly, what is there to be seen in these dusty suburbs? Entry to the
+mills themselves is difficult, if not absolutely impossible. And that
+which forms the background for the vast buildings, the Mill Village, is
+a section to be shunned like the plague. Plague is not too strong a word
+to apply to the pest-ridden, epidemic-filled, filthy settlement where in
+this part of the country the mill-hand lives, moves and has his being,
+horrible honeycomb of lives, shocking morals and decency.
+
+Around Columbia there lie five mills and their respective
+settlements--Excelsior, the Granton, Calcutta, the Richland and the
+Capital City. Each of these mills boasts its own so-called town. When
+these people are free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday they are too
+exhausted to do anything but turn into their hovels to sleep. At most on
+Saturday afternoons or Sundays they board a trolley and betake
+themselves to a distant park which, in the picturesque descriptions of
+Columbia, reads like an Arcadia and is in reality desolation.
+
+The mill-hands are not from the direct section of Columbia. They are
+strangers brought in from "the hills" by the agents of the company, who
+go hither and thither through the different parts of the country
+describing to the poor whites and the hill dwellers work in the mills as
+a way to riches and success. Filled with dreams of gain and possessions,
+with hopes of decent housing and schooling for their children, they
+leave their distant communities and troop to the mills. These immigrants
+are picturesque, touching to see. They come with all they own in the
+world on their backs or in their hands; penniless; burrs and twigs often
+in the hair of the young girls. They are hatless, barefooted, ignorant;
+innocent for the most part--and hopeful! What the condition of these
+labourers is after they have tested the promises of the manufacturer and
+found them empty bubbles can only be understood and imagined when one
+has seen their life, lived among them, worked by their side, and
+comprehended the tragedy of this population--a floating population,
+going from Granton to Excelsior, from Excelsior to Richland, hither and
+thither, seeking--seeking better conditions. They have no affiliation
+with the people of the town; they are looked down upon as scum: and in
+good sooth, for good reason, scum they are!
+
+It is spring, warm, gracious. This part of the world seems to be
+well-nigh treeless! There is no generous foliage, but wherever there are
+branches to bear it the first green has started out, delicate, tender
+and beautiful.
+
+In my simple work garb I leave Columbia and take a trolley to the mill
+district. I have chosen Excelsior as best for my purpose. Its reputation
+is most at stake; its prospectus dazzling; its annals effective. If such
+things are done in Gath...!
+
+I cannot say with what timidity I descend from the tram in this strange
+country, foreign to my Northern habitation and filled with classes whose
+likeness I have never seen and around which the Southern Negro makes a
+tad and gloomy background.
+
+Before the trolley has arrived at the corporation stores Excelsior has
+spoken--roared, clicked forth so vibrantly, so loudly, I am prepared to
+feel the earth shake. This is the largest mill in the world and looks
+it! A model, too, in point of view of architecture. I have read in the
+prospectus that it represents $1,750,000 capital, possesses 104,000
+spindles, employs 1,200 hands, and can, with crowding, employ 3,000.
+Surely it will have place for one more, then! I am impressed with its
+grandeur as it rises, red-bricked, with proud, straight towers toward
+its centre--impressed and frightened by its insistent call as it rattles
+and hums to me across the one-sixteenth of a mile of arid sand track. At
+one side Christianity and doctrine have constructed a church: a second
+one is building. On the other side, at a little distance, lies Granton,
+second largest mill. All this I take in as I make my way Excelsiorward.
+Between me and the vast mill itself there is not a soul. A thick, sandy
+road winds to the right; in the distance I can see a black trestle over
+which the freight cars take the cotton manufactures to the distant
+railroad and ship them to all parts of the world. Beyond the trestle are
+visible the first shanties of the mill town.
+
+Work first and lodgings afterward are my goals. At the door of Excelsior
+I am more than overwhelmed by its magnificence and its loud voice that
+makes itself so far-reachingly heard. There is no entry for me at the
+front of the mill, and I toil around to the side; not a creature to be
+seen. I venture upon the landing and make my way along a line of freight
+cars--between the track and the mill.
+
+A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar
+follows him! He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern
+courtesy not yet extinct. I hasten to ask for work.
+
+[Illustration: "MIGHTY MILL--PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL
+MAGNATE"
+
+"Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed;
+breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot"]
+
+"Well, thar's jest plenty of work, I reckon! Go in that do'; the
+overseer will tell you."
+
+Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in
+dimensions. Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and
+are piled in the centre. Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them,
+outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes
+of the black Negro of true Southern blood. I have been told there is no
+Negro labour in the mills. I take advantage of my guide's kind face to
+ask him if he knows where I can lodge.
+
+"Hed the measles? Well, my gyrl got 'em. Thar's a powerful sight of
+measles hyar. I'd take you-all to bo'd at my house ef you ain't 'fraid
+of measles. Thar's the hotel." (He points to what at the North would be
+known as a brick shanty.) "A gyrl can bo'd thar for $2.25 a week. You
+won't make that at first."
+
+With extreme kindness he leads me into the roaring mill past picturesque
+black men and cotton bales: we reach the "weave-room." I am told that
+carpet factories are celebrated for their uproar, but the weave-looms of
+a cotton mill to those who know them need no description! This is chaos
+before order was conceived: more weird in that, despite the din and
+thunder, everything is so orderly, so perfectly carried forth by the
+machinery. Here the cotton cloth is woven. Excelsior is so vast that
+from one end to the other of a room one cannot distinguish a friend. I
+decide instantly that the weave-room shall not be my destination! An
+overseer comes up to me. He talks with me politely and kindly--that is,
+as well as he can, he talks! It is almost impossible to hear what he
+says. He asks me simple and few questions and engages me promptly to
+work that "_evening_" as the Southerner calls the hours after midday.
+
+"You can see all the work and choose a sitting or a standing job." This
+is an improvement on Pittsburg and Lynn.
+
+I have been told there is always work in the mills for the worker.
+
+It is not strange that every inducement consistent with corporation
+rules should be made to entice the labouring girl! The difficulty is
+that no effort is made to keep her! The ease with which, in all these
+experiences, work has been obtained, goes definitely to prove that there
+is a demand everywhere for labourers.
+
+_Organize labour, therefore, so well that the work-woman who obtains her
+task may be able to continue it and keep her health and her
+self-respect_.
+
+With Excelsior as my future workshop I leave the mill to seek lodging in
+the mill village.
+
+The houses built by the corporation for the hands are some five or six
+minutes' walk, not more, from the palace-like structure of the mill
+proper. To reach them I plod through a roadway ankle-deep in red clay
+dust. The sun is bright and the air heavy, lifeless and dull; the scene
+before me is desolate, meager and poverty-stricken in the extreme.
+
+The mill houses are all built exactly alike. Painted in sickly greens
+and yellows, they rise on stilt-like elevations above the malarial soil.
+Here the architect has catered to the different families, different
+individual tastes in one point of view alone, regarding the number of
+rooms: They are known as "four-or six-room cottages." In one of the
+first cottages to the right a wholesome sight--the single wholesome
+sight I see during my experience--meets my eye. Human kindness has
+transformed one of the houses into a kindergarten--"Kindergarten" is
+over the door. A pretty Southern girl, a lady, stands surrounded by her
+little flock. The handful of half a dozen emancipated children who are
+not in the mills is refreshing to see. There are very few; the
+kindergarten flags for lack of little scholars.
+
+I accost her. "Can you tell me any decent place to board?" She is sorry,
+regards me kindly with the expression I have grown to know--the look the
+eyes adopt when a person of one class addresses her sister in a lower
+range.
+
+"I am a stranger come out to work in the mills."
+
+But the young lady takes little interest in me. Children are her care.
+They surround her, clinging, laughing, calling--little birds fed so
+gently by the womanly hand. She turns from the working-woman to them,
+but not before indicating a shanty opposite:
+
+"Mrs. Green lives there in that four-room cottage. She is a good woman."
+
+Through the door's crack I interview Mrs. Green, a pallid, sickly
+creature, gowned, as are most of the women, in a calico garment made all
+in one piece. She permits me to enter the room which forms (as do all
+the front rooms in a mill cottage) bedroom and general living-room.
+
+Here is confusion incarnate--and filthy disorder. The tumbled, dirty bed
+fills up one-half the room. In it is a little child, shaking with
+chills. On the bare floor are bits of food, old vegetables, rags, dirty
+utensils of all sorts of domestic description. The house has a sickening
+odour. The woman tells me she is too ill to keep tidy--too ill to keep
+boarders. We do not strike a bargain. "I am only here four months," she
+said. "Sick ever since I come, and my little girl has fevernaygu."
+
+I wander forth and a child directs me to a six-room cottage, "a real
+bo'din'-house." I attack it and thus discover the dwelling where I make
+my home in Excelsior.
+
+From the front room of this dwelling a kitchen opens. Within its shadow
+I see a Negro washing dishes. A tall woman, taller than most men,
+angular, white-haired, her face seared by toil and stricken with age,
+greets me: she is the landlady. At her skirts, catching them and staring
+at a stranger, wanders a very young child--a blue-eyed, clean little
+being; a great relief, in point of fact, to the general filth hitherto
+presented me. The room beyond me is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude.
+
+"Mrs. Jones?"
+
+"Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house."
+
+The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has "jest ben com'in' Letty's
+hair." Letty smiles delightedly.
+
+"This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick
+thing." Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the
+stranger's child. "And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She
+don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her."
+
+"Can I find lodging here?"
+
+She looks at me. "Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of
+gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you
+can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there,
+too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard
+on her; she's ben sick fo' days."
+
+I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at
+noon.
+
+"Stranger hyar, I reckon?"
+
+"Yes; from Massachusetts. A shoe-hand."
+
+She shakes her head: "You wont like the mills."
+
+She draws Letty between her old stiff knees, seats herself on a
+straight chair, and combs the child's hair on either side its pathetic,
+gentle little face. So I leave her for the present to return to Columbia
+and fetch back with me my bundle of clothes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I return at noon it is dinner time. I enter and am introduced, with
+positive grace and courtesy, by my dear old landlady to her son-in-law,
+"Tommy Jones," a widower, a man in decent store clothes and a Derby hat
+surrounded by a majestic crape sash. He is nonchalantly loading a large
+revolver, and thrusts it in his trousers pocket: "Always carry it," he
+explains; "comes handy!" Then I am presented to the gentlemen boarders.
+I beg to go upstairs, with my bundles, and I see for the first time my
+dwelling part of this shanty.
+
+A ladderlike stair leading directly from the kitchen takes me into the
+loft. Heavens! the sight of that sleeping apartment! There are three
+beds in it, sagging beds, covered by calico comforters. The floor is
+bare; the walls are bare. I have grown to know that "Jones'" is the
+cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it
+lacks perfection. Around the bare walls hang the garments of the other
+women who share the room with me. What humble and pathetic decorations!
+poor, miserable clothes--a shawl or two, a coat or two, a cotton
+wrapper, a hat; and on one nail the miniature clothes of Letty--a
+little night-dress and a tiny blue cotton dress. I put my bundle down by
+the side of my bed which I am to share with another woman, and descend,
+for Mrs. Jones' voice summons me to the midday meal.
+
+The nourishment provided for these thirteen-hour-a-day labourers is as
+follows: On a tin saucepan there was a little salt pork and on another
+dish a pile of grease-swimming spinach. A ragged Negro hovered over
+these articles of diet; the room was full of the smell of frying. After
+the excitement of my search for work, and the success, if success it can
+be called that so far had met me, I could not eat; I did not even sit
+down. I made my excuse. I said that I had had something to eat in
+Columbia, and started out to the mill.
+
+By the time the mill-hand has reached his home a good fifteen minutes
+out of the three-quarters of an hour recreation is gone: his food is
+quickly bolted, and by the time I have reached the little brick hotel
+pointed out to me that morning and descended to its cellar restaurant,
+forced myself to drink a cup of sassafras tea, and mounted again into
+the air, the troop of workers is on the march millward. I join them.
+
+Although the student of philanthropy and the statistician would find
+difficulty in forcing the countersign of the manufactories, the worker
+may go everywhere.
+
+I do not see my friend of the morning, the overseer, in the
+"weave-room"; indeed, there is no one to direct me; but I discover,
+after climbing the stairs, a room of flying spools and more subdued
+machinery, and it appears that the spool-room is this man's especial
+charge. He consigns to me a standing job. A set of revolving spools is
+designated, and he secures a pretty young girl of about sixteen, who
+comes cheerfully forward and consents to "learn" me.
+
+Spooling is not disagreeable, and the room is the quietest part of the
+mill--noisy enough, but calm compared to the others. In Excelsior this
+room is, of course, enormous, light and well ventilated, although the
+temperature, on account of some quality of the yarn, is kept at a point
+of humidity far from wholesome.
+
+"Spooling" is hard on the left arm and the side. Heart disease is a
+frequent complaint amongst the older spoolers. It is not dirty compared
+to shoe-making, and whereas one stands to "spool," when one is not
+waiting for yarn it is constant movement up and down the line. The fact
+that there are more children than young girls, more young girls than
+women, proves the simplicity of this task. The cotton comes from the
+spinning-room to the spool-room, and as the girl stands before her
+"side," as it is called, she sees on a raised ledge, whirling in rapid
+vibration, some one hundred huge spools full of yarn; whilst below her,
+each in its little case, lies a second bobbin of yarn wound like a
+distaff.
+
+Her task controls machinery in constant motion, that never stops except
+in case of accident.
+
+With one finger of her right hand she detaches the yarn from the distaff
+that lies inert in the little iron rut before her. With her left hand
+she seizes the revolving circle of the large spool's top in front of
+her, holding this spool steady, overcoming the machinery for the moment
+not as strong as her grasp. This demands a certain effort. Still
+controlling the agitated spool with her left hand, she detaches the end
+of yarn with the same hand from the spool, and by means of a patent
+knotter harnessed around her palm she joins together the two loosened
+ends, one from the little distaff and one from this large spool, so that
+the two objects are set whirling in unison and the spool receives all
+the yarn from the distaff. Up and down this line the spooler must walk
+all day long, replenishing the iron grooves with fresh yarn and
+reknitting broken strands. This is all that there is of "spooling." It
+demands alertness, quickness and a certain amount of strength from the
+left arm, and that is all! To conceive of a woman of intelligence
+pursuing this task from the age of eight years to twenty-two on down
+through incredible hours is not salutary. You will say to me, that if
+she demands nothing more she is fit for nothing more. I cannot think it.
+
+The little girl who teaches me spooling is fresh and cheerful and
+jolly; I grant her all this. She lives at home. I am told by my
+subsequent friends that she thinks herself better than anybody. This
+pride and ambition has at least elevated her to neat clothes and a
+sprightliness of manner that is refreshing. She does not hesitate to
+evince her superiority by making sport of me. She takes no pains to
+teach me well. Instead of giving me the patent knotter, which would have
+simplified my job enormously, she teaches me what she expresses "the
+old-fashioned way"--knotting the yarn with the fingers. I have mastered
+this slow process by the time that the overseer discovers her trick and
+brings me the harness for my left hand. She is full of curiosity about
+me, asking me every sort of question, to which I give the best answers
+that I can. By and by she slips away from me. I turn to find her; she
+has vanished, leaving me under the care of a truly kind, sad little
+creature in a wrapper dress. This little Maggie has a heart of gold.
+
+"Don't you-all fret," she consoles. "That's like Jeannie: she's so
+_mean_. When you git to be a remarkable fine spooler she'll want you on
+her side, you bet."
+
+She assists my awkwardness gently.
+
+"I'll learn you all right. You-all kin stan' hyar by me all day. Jeannie
+clean fergits she was a greenhorn herself onct; we all wuz. Whar you
+come from?"
+
+"Lynn, Massachusetts."
+
+"Did you-all git _worried_ with the train? I only bin onto it onct, and
+it worried me for days!"
+
+She tells me her simple annals with no question:
+
+"My paw he married ag'in, and me stepmother peard like she didn't care
+for me; so one day I sez to paw, 'I'm goin' to work in the mills'--an' I
+lef home all alone and come here." After a little--"When I sayd good-by
+to my father peard like _he_ didn't care neither. I'm all alone here. I
+bo'ds with that girl's mother."
+
+I wore that day in the mill a blue-checked apron. So did Maggie, but
+mine was from Wanamaker's in New York, and had, I suppose, a certain
+style, for the child said:
+
+"I suttenly dew think that yere's a awful pretty apron: where'd you git
+it?"
+
+"Where I came from," I answered, and, I am sorry to say, it sounded
+brusque. For the little thing blushed, fearful lest she had been
+indiscreet....(Oh, I assure you the qualities of good breeding are
+there! Some of my factory and mill friends can teach the set in which I
+move lessons salutary!)
+
+"I didn't mean jest 'xactly wherebouts," she murmurs; "I only meant it
+warn't from these parts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the afternoon the gay Jeannie returns and presents to me a tin
+box. It is filled with a black powder. "Want some?" Well, what is it?
+She greets my ignorance with shrieks of laughter. In a trice half a
+dozen girls have left their spooling and cluster around me.
+
+"She ain't never _seen_ it!" and the little creature fills her mouth
+with the powder which she keeps under her tongue. "It is _snuff_!"
+
+They all take it, old and young, even the smallest children. Their
+mouths are brown with it; their teeth are black with it. They take it
+and smell it and carry it about under their tongues all day in a black
+wad, spitting it all over the floor. Others "dip," going about with the
+long sticks in their mouths. The air of the room is white with cotton,
+although the spool-room is perhaps the freest. These little particles
+are breathed into the nose, drawn into the lungs. Lung disease and
+pneumonia--consumption--are the constant, never-absent scourge of the
+mill village. The girls expectorate to such an extent that the floor is
+nauseous with it; the little girls practise spitting and are adepts at
+it.
+
+Over there is a woman of sixty, spooling; behind the next side is a
+child, not younger than eight, possibly, but so small that she has to
+stand on a box to reach her side. Only the very young girls show any
+trace of buoyancy; the older ones have accepted with more or less
+complaint the limitation of their horizons. They are drawn from the hill
+district with traditions no better than the loneliness, desertion and
+inexperience of the fever-stricken mountains back of them. They are
+illiterate, degraded; the mill has been their widest experience; and all
+their tutelage is the intercourse of girl to girl during the day and in
+the evenings the few moments before they go to bed in the mill-houses,
+where they either live at home with parents and brothers all working
+like themselves, or else they are fugitive lodgers in a boarding-house
+or a hotel, where their morals are in jeopardy constantly. As soon as a
+girl passes the age, let us say of seventeen or eighteen, there is no
+hesitation in her reply when you ask her: "Do you like the mills?"
+Without exception the answer is, "I _hate them_."
+
+Absorbed with the novelty of learning my trade, the time goes swiftly.
+Yet even the interest and excitement does not prevent fatigue, and from
+12:45 to 6:45 seems interminable! Even when the whistle blows we are not
+all free--Excelsior is behindhand with her production, and those whom
+extra pay can beguile stay on. Maggie, my little teacher, walks with me
+toward our divided destinations, her quasi-home and mine.
+
+Neither in the mill nor the shoe-shops did I take precaution to change
+my way of speaking--and not once had it been commented upon. To-day
+Maggie says to me:
+
+"I reckon you-all is 'Piscopal?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, you-all _talks_ 'Piscopal."
+
+So much for a tribute to the culture of the church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jones' supper is ready, spread on a bare board running the length of
+the room--a bare board supported by saw-horses; the seats are boards
+again, a little lower in height. They sag in the middle threateningly.
+One plate is piled high with fish--bones, skin and flesh all together in
+one odourous mass. Salt pork graces another platter and hominy another.
+I am alone in the supper room. The guests, landlord and landlady are all
+absent. Some one, as he rushes by me, gives me the reason for the
+desertion:
+
+"They've all gone to see the fight; all the white fellers is after a
+nigger."
+
+Through the window I can see the fleeing forms of the settlers--women,
+sunbonnets in hand, the men hatless. It appears that all the world has
+turned out to see what lawless excitement may be in store. The whirling
+dust and sand in the distance denote the group formed by the Negro and
+his pursuers. This, standing on the little porch of my lodging-house, I
+see and am glad to find that the chase is fruitless. The black man,
+tortured to distraction, dared at length to rebel, and from the moment
+that he showed spirit his life was not worth a farthing, but his legs
+were, and he got clear of Excelsior. The lodgers troop back. Molly, my
+landlady's niece, breathing and panting, disheveled, leads the
+procession and is voluble over the affair.
+
+"They-all pester a po'r nigger's life out 'er him, ye'es, they dew so!
+Ef a nigger wants ter show his manners to me, why, I show mine to him,"
+she said generously, "and ef he's a mannerly nigger, why, I ain't got
+nothin' ag'in him; no, sir, I suttenly ain't!"
+
+It is difficult to conceive how broad and philanthropic, how generous
+and unusual this poor mill girl's standpoint is contrasted with the
+sentiment of the people with which she moves.
+
+I slip into my seat at the table in the centre of the sagging board and
+find Molly beside me, the girl from Excelsior with the pretty hair on
+the other side. The host, Mr. Jones, honours the head of the table, and
+"grandmaw" waits upon us. Opposite are the three men operatives,
+flannel-shirted and dirty. The men are silent for the most part, and
+bend over their food, devouring the unpalatable stuff before them. I
+feel convinced that if they were not so terribly hungry they could not
+eat it. Jones discourses affably on the mill question, advising me to
+learn "speeding," as it pays better and is the only advanced work in the
+mill.
+
+Molly, my elbow-companion, seems to take up the whole broad seat, she is
+so big and so pervading; and her close proximity--unwashed, heavy with
+perspiration as she is, is not conducive to appetite. She is full of
+news and chatter and becomes the leading spirit of the meal.
+
+"I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill
+to-day."
+
+She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who
+pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear.
+
+"Amanda Wilcox she dun tol' Ida Jacobs that she'd _do her_ at noon,
+and Ida she sarst her back. It was all about a _sport_[5]--Bill James.
+He's been spo'tin' Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I reckon, and Amanda
+got crazy over it and 'clared she'd spile her game. And she tol' Ida
+Jacobs a lie about Bill--sayd he' been spo'tin' her down to the Park
+on Sunday.
+
+  [Footnote 5: A beau.]
+
+"Well, sir, the whole spinnin'-room was out to see what they-all'd do at
+noon, and they jest resh'd for each other like's they was crazy; and one
+man he got between 'em and sayd, 'Now the gyrl what spits over my hand
+first can begin the fight.'
+
+"They both them spit right, into each other's faces, they did so; and
+arter that yer couldn't get them apart. Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the
+ha'r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist. They was
+suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn't just parted them; it
+took three men to part 'em."
+
+Her story was much appreciated.
+
+"Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was. She can't git back
+to work fer days."
+
+The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill.
+
+After supper the men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to
+the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a
+comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her. She made a lap, a
+generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty. Mrs. White
+had disappeared.
+
+"You-all come here to me, Letty." She held out her large dirty hands to
+the blue-eyed waif. In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and
+ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in
+search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a
+moment motionless and on the verge of tears.
+
+"You-all come to Molly and go By-O."
+
+There was some magic in that word that at long past eight charmed the
+eighteen-months'-old baby. She toddled across the floor to the
+mill-girl, who lifted her tenderly into her ample lap. The big, awkward
+girl, scarcely more than a child herself, uncouth, untutored, suddenly
+gained a dignity and a grace maternal--not too much to say it, she had
+charm.
+
+Letty leaned her head against Molly's breast and smiled contentedly,
+whilst the mill-girl rocked softly to and fro.
+
+"Shall Molly sing By-O?"
+
+She should. The little face, lifted, declared its request.
+
+"Letty must sing, too," murmured the young girl. "Sing By-O! We'll all
+sing it together."
+
+Letty covered her eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two
+words sweetly, "By-O! By-O!" and Molly joined her. Thus they rocked and
+hummed, a picture infinitely touching to see.
+
+One of these two would soon be an unclaimed foundling when the unknown
+woman had faded out of existence. The other--who can say how to her
+maternity would come!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the room where we sit Jones' wife died a few weeks before, victim to
+pneumonia that all winter has scourged the town--"the ketchin'
+kind"--that is the way it has been caught, and fatally by many.[6]
+
+  [Footnote 6: There are no statistics, they tell me, kept of
+  births, marriages or deaths in this State; it is less surprising
+  that the mill village has none.]
+
+In one corner stands a sewing machine, in another an organ--luxuries: in
+these cases, objects of art. They are bought on the installment plan,
+and some of these girls pay as high as $100 for the organ in monthly
+payments of $4 at a time. The mill-girl is too busy to use the machine
+and too ignorant to play the organ.
+
+Jones is a courteous host. His lodgers occupy the comfortable seats,
+whilst he perches himself on the edge of a straight high-backed chair
+and converses with us, not lighting his pipe until urged, then
+deprecatingly smoking in little smothered puffs. I feel convinced that
+Jones thinks that Massachusetts shoe-hands are a grade higher in the
+social scale than South Carolina mill-girls! Because, after being
+witness more than once to my morning and evening ablutions on the back
+steps, he said:
+
+"Now, I am goin' to dew the right thing by you-all; I'm goin' to fix up
+a wash-stand in that there loft." This is a triumph over the lax,
+uncleanly shiftlessness of the Southern settlement. Again:
+
+"You-all must of had good food whar you come from: your skin shows it;
+'tain't much like hyar-'bouts. Why, I'd know a mill-hand anywhere, if I
+met her at the North Pole--salla, pale, sickly."
+
+I might have added for him, deathlike, ... skeleton ... _doomed_. But I
+listen, rocking in the best chair, whilst Mrs. White glides in from the
+kitchen and, unobserved, takes her place on a little low chair by the
+sewing machine behind Jones. Her baby rocks contentedly in Molly's arms.
+
+Jones continues: "I worked in the mill fifteen years. I have done a
+little of all jobs, I reckon, and I ain't got no use for mill-work. If
+they'd pay me fifty cents a side to run the 'speeders' I'd _go_ in fer
+an hour or two now and then. Why, I sell sewing machines and organs to
+the mill-hands all over the country. I make $60 a month, and _I touch
+all my money_," he said significantly. "It's the way to do. A man don't
+feel no dignity unless he does handle his own money, if it's ten cents
+or ten dollars." He then explains the corporation's methods of paying
+its slaves. Some of the hands never touch their money from month's end
+to month's end. Once in two weeks is pay-day. A woman has then worked
+122 hours. The corporation furnishes her house. There is the rent to be
+paid; there are also the corporation stores from which she has been
+getting her food and coal and what gewgaws the cheap stuff on sale may
+tempt her to purchase. There is a book of coupons issued by the mill
+owners which are as good as gold. It is good at the stores, good for the
+rent, and her time is served out in pay for this representative
+currency. This is of course not obligatory, but many of the operatives
+avail themselves or bind themselves by it. When the people are ill,
+Jones says, they are docked for wages. When, for indisposition or
+fatigue, they knock a day off, there is a man, hired especially for this
+purpose, who rides from house to house to find out what is the matter
+with them, to urge them to rise, and if they are not literally too sick
+to move, they are hounded out of their beds and back to their looms.
+
+Jones himself, mark you, is emancipated! He has set himself free; but he
+is still a too-evident although a very innocent partisan of the
+corporation.
+
+[Illustration: "THE SOUTHERN MILL HAND'S FACE IS UNIQUE, A FEARFUL
+TYPE"]
+
+"I think," he says, "that the mill-hand is _meaner_ to the corporation
+than the corporation is to the mill-hand."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, they would strike for shorter hours and better pay."
+
+Unconsciously with one word he condemns his own cause.
+
+"What's the use of these hyar mill-hands tryin' to fight corporations?
+Why, Excelsior is the biggest mill under one roof in the world; its
+capital is over a million; it has 24,500 spindles. The men that run
+these mills have got all their stuff paid for; they've got piles of
+money. What do they care for a few penniless lot of strikers? They can
+shut down and not feel it. Why, these hyar people might just as well
+fight against a stone wall."
+
+The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which
+they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a
+mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has
+fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He
+perforce _will_ speak well. I do not blame him.
+
+He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He
+wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and
+washed.
+
+"Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill.
+Any of 'em would be jealous of you-all." Then he warns, again forced
+to plead for another side: "You-all won't come out as you go in, I
+tell you! You're the picture of health. Why," he continues, a little
+later, "you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why,
+in the summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall
+they've got down to ---- and dance there till four o'clock--come home
+just in time to get into the mills at 5:45." Which fact convinces me
+of nothing but that the women are still, despite their condition and
+their white slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human
+beings (Thank God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) _not yet
+crushed to the dumb endurance of beasts_.
+
+Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my
+loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me.
+Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the
+lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark,
+suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In
+the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is
+warm and stifling.
+
+Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try
+to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on
+the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too
+profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into
+sight. Sheepishly she comes across the room to me--sits down on the
+nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose
+colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and
+perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any kind around her
+neck and waist, but her headdress is a tribute to feminine vanity!
+Compactly screwed curl papers, dozens of them, accentuate the hard,
+unlovely lines of her face and brow. Her features are coarse, heavy and
+square, but her eyes are clear, frank and kind. She has an appealing,
+friendly expression; Molly is a distinctly whole-souled, nice creature.
+One elbow sinks in the bed and she cradles her crimped head in her
+large, dirty hand.
+
+"My, ef I could write as fast as you-all I'd write some letters, I
+reckon. Ust ter write; like it good enough, tew; but I ain't wrote in
+months. I was thinkin' th' other day ef I didn't take out the _pencile_
+I'd dun forgit how to spell."
+
+Without the window through which she gazes is seen the pale night sky
+and in the heavens hangs the thread of a moon. Its light is unavailing
+alongside of the artificial moon--an enormous electric light. This lifts
+its brilliant, dazzling circumference high in the centre of the mill
+street. I have but to move a trifle aside from the window coping's
+shelter to receive a blinding blaze. But Molly has been subtle enough to
+discover the natural beauty of the night. She sees, curiously enough,
+past this modern illumination: the young moon has charm for her. "Ain't
+it a pretty night?" she asks me. Its beauty has not much chance to
+enhance this room and the crude forms, but it has awakened something
+akin to sentiment in the breast of this young savage.
+
+"I don't guess ever any one gets tired of hearing _sweet music_[7], does
+you-all?"
+
+  [Footnote 7: The Southern term for stringed instruments.]
+
+"What is the nicest music you have ever heard, Molly?"
+
+"Why, a gui-taar an' a mandolin. It's so sweet! I could sit for hours
+an' hyar 'em pick." Her curlpaper head wags in enthusiasm.
+
+"Up to the hills, from whar I cum, I ust ter hyar 'em a serenadin' of
+some gyrl an' I ust ter set up in bed and lis'en tel it died out; it
+warn't for _me_, tho'!"
+
+"Didn't they ever serenade you?"
+
+"No, _ma'am_; I don't pay no 'tention to spo'tin'."
+
+Without, the moon's slender thread holds in a silvery circle the
+half-defined misty ball that shall soon be full moon. Thank heavens I
+shall not see this golden globe form, wane, decline in this town,
+forgotten of gods and men! But the woman at my side must see it mark its
+seasons; she is inscrutably part of the colony devoted to unending toil!
+Here all she has brought of strong youth shall fade and perish; womanly
+sentiment be crushed; die out in sterility; or worse, coarsen to the
+animal like to those whose companion she is forced to be.
+
+"I live to the Rockies, an' Uncle Tom he come up after me and carried
+me down hyar. My auntie died two weeks ago in the livin'-room; she had
+catchin' pneumonia. I tuk care of her all through her sickness, did
+every mite for her, and there was bo'ders, tew--I guess half a dozen of
+'em--and I cooked and washed and everything for 'em all. When she died I
+went to work in the mill. Say, I reckon you-all didn't see my new hat?"
+It was fetched, done up with care in paper. She displayed it, a white
+straw round hat, covered with roses. At praise of it and admiration the
+girl flushed with pleasure.
+
+"My, you _dew_ like it? Why, I didn't think it _pretty, much_. Uncle Tom
+dun buy it for me."
+
+She gives all her wages to Uncle Tom, who in turn brings her from time
+to time such stimulus to labour as some pretty feminine thing like this.
+_This_ shall crown Molly's hair freed from the crimpers when the one day
+of the week, Sunday, comes! Not from Sunday till Sunday again are those
+hair crimpers unloosed.
+
+Despite Uncle Tom's opposition to mill work for women, despite his
+cognizance of the unhealthfulness of the mills, he knew a thing or two
+when he put his strapping innocent niece to work thirteen hours a day
+and pocketed himself the spoils.
+
+"I can't go to bade awful early, because I don't sleep ef I do; I'm too
+tired to sleep. When I feel real sick I tries to stay home a day, and
+then the overseer he rides around and _worries_ me to git up. I declare
+ef I wouldn't near as soon git up as to be roused up. They don't give
+you no peace, rousing you out of bed when you can scarcely stand. I
+suttenly dew feel bade to-night; I suttenly can't scarcely get to bed!"
+
+Here into our discourse, mounting the stairs, comes the pale mother and
+her little child. This ghost of a woman, wedding-ringless, who called
+herself Mrs. White, could scarcely crawl to her bed. She was whiter than
+the moon and as slender. Molly's bed is close to mine. The night toilet
+of this girl consisted of her divesting herself of her shoes, stockings
+and her cotton wrapper, then in all the other garments she wore during
+the day she turned herself into bed, nightgownless, unwashed.
+
+Mrs. White undressed her child, giving it very good care. It was a tiny
+creature, small-boned and meager. Every time I looked over at it it
+smiled appealingly, touchingly. Finally when she went downstairs to the
+pump to get a drink of water for it, I went over and in her absence
+stroked the little hand and arm: such a small hand and such an
+infinitesimal arm! Unused to attention and the touch, but not in the
+least frightened, Letty extended her miniature member and looked up at
+me in marvel. Mrs. White on her return made herself ready for the night.
+She said in her frail voice: "Letty's a powerful hand for vegetubbles,
+and she eats everything."
+
+Memory of the ham and the putrid fish I had seen this
+eighteen-months-old child devour not an hour ago came to my mind.
+
+Mrs. White let down her hair--a nonchalance that Molly had not been
+guilty of. This woman's hair was no more than a wisp. It stood out thin,
+wiry, almost invisible in the semilight. This was the extent of her
+toilet. She slipped out of her shoes, but she did not even take off her
+dress. Then she turned in by her child. She was very ill; it was plain
+to be seen. Death was fast upon this woman's track; it should clutch her
+inevitably within the next few weeks at most, if that emaciated body had
+resistance for so long. Her languor was slow and indicative, her gray,
+ashen face like death itself.
+
+"Lie still, Letty," she whispers to the baby; "don't touch mother--she
+can't stand it to-night."
+
+My mattress was straw and billowy, the bed sheetless, and under the
+weight of the cotton comforter I tried to compose myself. There were
+five of us in the little loft. My bedfellow was peaceful and lay still,
+too tired to do anything else. In front of me was the open window,
+through which shone the electric light, blatant and insistent; behind
+this, the clock of Excelsior--brightly lit and incandescent--glared in
+upon us, giant hands going round, seeming to threaten the hour of dawn
+and frightening sleep and mocking, bugbearing the short hours which the
+working-woman might claim for repose.
+
+It was well on to nine o 'clock and the mills were working overtime.
+Molly turned restlessly on her bed and murmured, "I suttenly dew feel
+bad to-night." A little later I heard her say over to herself: "My, I
+forgot to say my prayers." She was the sole member of the loft to whom
+sleep came; it came to her soon. I lay sleepless, watching the clock of
+Excelsior. The ladder staircase openly led to the kitchen: there was no
+door, no privacy possible to our quarters, and the house was full of
+men.
+
+A little later Letty cries: "A drink, a drink!" and the tone of the
+mother, who replies, is full of patience, but fuller still of suffering.
+
+"Hush, Letty, hush! Mother's too sick to get it." But the child
+continues to fret and plead. Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches
+out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water
+which has brought death to so many in the mill village. The child drinks
+it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself
+staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all
+through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing
+momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable--she rises to be
+violently sick over and over again. It seems an indefinite number of
+times to one who lies awake listening, and must seem unceasing to the
+poor wretch who returns to her bed only to rise again.
+
+She groans and suffers and bites her exclamations short. Twice she goes
+to the window and by the light of the electric lamp pours laudanum into
+a glass and takes it to still her pain and her need.
+
+The odours become so nauseous that I am fain to cover my face and head.
+The child fed on salt ham and pork is restless and thirsty all night and
+begs for water at short intervals. At last the demand is too much for
+the poor agonized mother--she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to
+which one feels her gentleness must be forced. "Hark! The cat will get
+you, Letty! See that cat?" And the feline horror in nameless form,
+evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, who
+murmurs, sobs and subsides.
+
+What spirit deeper than her character has hitherto displayed stirs the
+mill-girl in the bed next to me? Possibly the tragedy in the other bed;
+possibly the tragedy of her own youth. At all events, whatever burden is
+on her, her cross is heavy! She murmurs in her dreams, in a voice more
+mature, more serious than any tone of hers has indicated:
+
+"Oh, my God!"
+
+It is a strange cry--call--appeal. It rings solemn to me as I lie and
+watch and pity. Hours of night which should be to the labourer peaceful,
+full of repose after the day, drag along from nine o'clock, when we
+went to bed, till three. At three Mrs. White falls into a doze. I envy
+her. Over me the vermin have run riot; I have killed them on my neck and
+my arms. When it seemed that flesh and blood must succumb, and sleep,
+through sheer pity, take hold of us, a stirring begins in the kitchen
+below which in its proximity seems a part of the very room we occupy.
+The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire. At a
+quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly
+smoke has ascended the stairway to us. This smoke is thick with
+odours--the odour of bad grease and bad meat. Its cloud conceals the
+beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the
+window. It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates
+itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall. So permeating is it
+that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me
+all day. I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap
+of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. _I know what they
+are_, for I have seen them the night before--great crimson bits of flesh
+torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as
+he crouched by the kitchen table.
+
+This preparation continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time
+to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior
+rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever might be lucky
+enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. "Molly!" The girl murmurs
+and turns. "Come, you-all git up; you take so powerful long to dress
+yo'self!" Long to dress! It is difficult to see how that would be
+possible. She rises reluctantly, yawning, sighing; lifts her scarcely
+rested body, puts on her stockings and her shoes and the dirty wrapper.
+Her hair is untouched, her face unwashed, but she is ready for the day!
+Mrs. White has actually fallen asleep, the small roll, her baby, curled
+up close to her back.
+
+Molly's summons is mine as well. I am a mill-hand with her. I rise and
+repeat my ablutions of the evening before. Unhooking the tin basin,
+possessing myself of a bit of soap on the kitchen stairs, I wash my face
+and hands. Although the water is dipped from the pail on which a scum
+has formed, still it is so much more cool, refreshing and stimulating
+than anything that has come in contact with me for hours that it is a
+positive pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MILL
+
+By this time the morning has found us all, and unlovely it seems as
+regarded from this shanty environment. At 4:50 Excelsior has shrieked
+every settler awake. At half-past five we have breakfasted and I pass
+out of the house, one of the half-dozen who seek the mill from our
+doors.
+
+We fall in with the slowly moving, straggling file, receiving additions
+from each tenement as we pass.
+
+Beside me walks a boy of fourteen in brown earth-coloured clothes. He is
+so thin that his bones threaten to pierce his vestments. He has a
+slender visage of the frailness I have learned to know and distinguish:
+it represents the pure American type of people known as "poor white
+trash," and with whose blood has been scarcely any admixture of foreign
+element. A painter would call his fine, sensitive face beautiful: it is
+the face of a martyr. His hat of brown felt slouches over bright red
+hair; one cuffless hand, lank and long, hangs down inert, the other
+sleeve falls loose; he is one-armed. His attitude and gait express his
+defrauded existence. Cotton clings to his clothes; his shoes, nearly
+falling off his feet, are red with clay stains. I greet him; he is shy
+and surprised, but returns the salutation and keeps step with me. He is
+"from the hills," an orphan, perfectly friendless. He boards with a lot
+of men; evidently their companionship has not been any solace to him,
+for, as he is alone this day, I see him always alone.
+
+He works from 5:45 to 6:45, with three-quarters of an hour at noon, and
+has his Saturday afternoons and his Sundays free. He is destitute of the
+quality we call joy and has never known comfort. He makes fifty cents a
+day; he has no education, no way of getting an education; he is almost
+a man, crippled and condemned. At my exclamation when he tells me the
+sum of his wages he looks up at me; a faint likeness to a smile comes
+about his thin lips: "_It keeps me in existence_!" he says in a slow
+drawl. He used just those words.
+
+At the different doors of the mill we part. He is not unconscious of my
+fellowship with him, that I feel and know. A kindling light has come
+across his face. "Good luck to you!" I bid him, and he lifts his head
+and his bowed shoulders and with something like warmth replies, "I hope
+you-all will have good luck, tew."
+
+As we come into the spooling-room from the hot air without the mill
+seems cold. I go over to a green box destined for the refuse of the
+floors and sit down, waiting for work. On this day I am to have my own
+"side"--I am a full-fledged spooler. Excelsior has gotten us all out of
+our beds before actual daylight, but that does not mean we are to have a
+chance to begin our money-making piece-work job at once! "Thar ain't
+likely to be no yarn for an hour to-day," Maggie tells me. She is no
+less dirty than yesterday, or less smelly, but also she is no less kind.
+
+"I reckon you-all are goin' to make a remarkable spooler," she cheers me
+on. "You'll get tired out at first, but then I gets tired, tew, right
+along, only it ain't the same _kind_--it's not so _sharp_." Her
+distinction is clever.
+
+Across the room at one of the "drawing-in frames" I see the figure of
+an unusally pretty girl with curly dark hair. She bends to her job in
+front of the frame she runs; it has the effect of tapestry, of that
+work with which women of another--oh, of _quite_ another class--amuse
+their leisure, with which they kill their time. "Drawing-in,"[8]
+although a sitting job, is considered to be a back-breaker. The girls
+are ambitious at this work; they make good wages. They sit close to
+their frames, bent over, for twelve hours out of the day. This girl
+whom I see across the floor of the Excelsior is an object to rest the
+eyes upon; she is a beauty. There is not much beauty of any kind or
+description in sight. Maggie has noticed her esthetic effect. "You-all
+seen that girl; she's suttenly prob'ly am _peart_."
+
+  [Footnote 8: A good drawer-in makes $1.25 a day.]
+
+She is a new hand from a distance. This is her first day. What miserable
+chance has brought her here? If she stays the mill will claim her body
+and soul. The overseer has marked her out; he hovers in the part of the
+room where she works. She has colour and her difference to her pale
+companions is marked. Excelsior will not leave those roses unwithered. I
+can foretell the change as yellow unhealthfulness creeps upon her cheeks
+and the red forever goes. There are no red cheeks here, not one. She has
+chosen a sitting-down job thinking it easier. I saw her lean back, put
+her hands around her waist and rest, or try to, after she has bent four
+hours over her close task. I go over to her.
+
+"They say it's awful hard on the eyes, but they tell me, too, that I'll
+be a remarkable fine hand."
+
+I saw her apply for work, and saw, too, the man's face as he looked at
+her when she asked: "Got any work?"
+
+"We've got plenty of work for a good-looking woman like you," he said
+with significance, and took pains to place her within his sight.
+
+The yarn has come in, and I return to my part of the mill; Maggie flies
+to her spools and leaves me to seek my distant place far away from her.
+I set my work in order; whilst my back is turned some girl possesses
+herself of my hand-harness. Mine was a new one, and the one she leaves
+for me is broken. This delays, naturally, and the overseer, after
+proving to his satisfaction that I am hampered, gets me a new one and I
+set to work.
+
+Many of the older hands come without breakfast, and a little later tin
+pails or paper parcels appear. These operatives crouch down in a Turkish
+fashion at the machines' sides and take a hasty mouthful of their
+unwholesome, unpleasant-looking food, eating with their fingers more
+like animals than human beings. By eight the full steam power is on, to
+judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one
+of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to
+approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands
+that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the
+byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The
+tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed.
+There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you can tell it by the scowls
+and the low, insulting words as an enemy passes. To protect the hair
+from the flying pieces of cotton the more particular women, and
+oftentimes children as well, wear felt hats pulled down well over the
+eyes. The cotton, indeed, thistledown-like, flies without cessation
+through the air--spins off from the spools; it rises and floats, falling
+on the garments and in the hair, entering the nostrils and throat and
+lungs. I repeat, the expectoration, the coughing and the throat-cleaning
+is constant. Over there two girls have taken advantage of a wait for
+yarn to go to sleep on the floor; their heads are pillowed on each
+others' shoulders; they rest against a cotton bale. Maggie wanders over
+to me to see "how you-all is gettin' on." "Tired?" "Well, I reckon I am.
+Thank God we get out in a little while now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon I went up to the loft to rest a few moments before going
+to the mill. Mrs. White was sitting on her bed, a slender figure in the
+blue-checked wrapper she always wore. Her head was close to the window,
+her silhouette in the light, pale and slender. "I wa'n't sick when I
+come hyar, but them mills! They's suttinly tew hyard on a woman!
+Weave-room killed me, I guess. I couldn't hyar at all when I come out
+and scarcely could stan' on ma feet when I got home. Tew tyred to eat,
+tew; and the water hyar is regularly pisen; hev you-all seen it? It's
+all colours. Doctor done come to see me; ain't helpin' me any; 'pears
+like he-all ain't goin' to come no mo'!"
+
+"If you have a husband, why don't you go to him and let him care for
+you?"
+
+She was silent, turning her wedding-ringless hand over and over on her
+lap: the flies came buzzing in around us, and in the near distance
+Excelsior buzzed, the loudest, most insistent creature on this part of
+the earth.
+
+"Seems like a woman ought to help a man--some," she murmured. Downstairs
+Mrs. Jones sums her up in a few words.
+
+"She-all suttinly ain't no _'Mrs'_ in the world! Calls herself
+_'White.'_" (The intonation is not to be mistaken.) "Pore thing's
+dyin'--knows it, tew! Come hyar to die, I reckon. She'll die right up
+thar in that baed, tew. Doctor don't come no mo'. Know she cayn't pay
+him nothin'. You-all come hyar to grandmaw, Letty!"
+
+The child around whom the threads of existence are weaving fabric more
+intricate than any woof or warp of the great mills goes confidingly to
+the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she
+speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen
+save Tolstoi's could do justice. Mine can do no more than display them
+by faithfully transcribing their simple dialect-speech.
+
+"I am sixty-four years old, an' played out. Worked too hyard. Worked
+every day since I was a child, and when I wasn't workin' had the fevar.
+Come from the hills las' month. When his wife dyde, the son he come an'
+fetched me cross the river to help him."
+
+How has she lived so long and so well, with life "so hyard on her"?
+
+"I loved my husban', yes, ma'am, I regularly loved him; reckon no woman
+didn't ever love a man mo', and he loved me, tew, jest ez much. Seems
+tho' God couldn't bayr to see us-all so happy--couldn't las'; he dyde."
+
+Mrs. Jones' figure is a case of bones covered with a brown
+substance--you could scarcely call it skin; a weather-beaten, tanned
+hide; nothing more. This human statue, ever responsive to the eternal
+moulding, year after year has been worked upon by the titan instrument,
+Labour: struggle, disease, want. But this hill woman has known love. It
+has transfigured her, illumined her. This poor deformed body is a torch
+only for an immortal flame. I know now why it seems good to be near her,
+why her eyes are inspired.... I rise to leave her and she comes forward
+to me, puts out her hand first, then puts both thin, old arms about me
+and kisses me.
+
+In speaking of the settlement, it borders on the humourous to use the
+word sanitation. In the mill district, as far as my observation reached,
+there is none. Refuse not too vile for the public eye is thrown into the
+middle of the streets in front of the houses. The general drainage is
+performed by emptying pans and basins and receptacles into the
+backyards, so that as one stands at the back steps of one's own door one
+breathes and respires the filth of half a dozen shanties. Decaying
+vegetables, rags, dirt of all kinds are the flowers of these people, the
+decorations of their miserable garden patches. To walk through Granton
+(which the prospectus tells us is well drained) is to evoke nausea; to
+_inhabit_ Granton is an ordeal which even necessity cannot rob of its
+severity.
+
+These settlers, habitants of dwellings built by finance solely for the
+purpose of renting, are celebrated for their immorals--"a rough, lying,
+bad lot." "Oh, the mill-hands!" ... Sufficient, expressive designation.
+Nevertheless, these people, simple, direct and innocent, display
+qualities that we have been taught are enviable--a lack of curiosity,
+for the most part, in the affairs of others, a warm Southern courtesy,
+a human kindliness. I found these people degraded because of their
+habits and not of their tendencies, which statement I can justify;
+whatever may be their natural instincts, born, nurtured in their
+unlovely environment, they have no choice but to fall into the usages of
+poverty and degradation. They have seen nothing with which to compare
+their existences; they have no time, no means to be clean, and no
+stimulus to be decent.
+
+A job at Granton was no more difficult to secure than was "spoolin'" at
+the other mill. I applied one Saturday noon, when Granton was silent and
+the operatives within their doors asleep, for the most part, leaving the
+village as deserted as it is on a workday. A like desolation pervades
+the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a
+shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad,
+pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with
+which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors--cotton that
+resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent
+regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time
+in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the
+loneliness, the lawlessness of the place, the risk and boldness of my
+venture.
+
+By this I was most thoroughly a mill-girl in appearance, at least; my
+clothes were white with cotton, my hair far from tidy; fatigue and
+listlessness unassumed were in my attitude. I had not heard the Southern
+dialect for so long not to be able to fall into it with little effort. I
+told him I had been a "spooler" and did not like it--"wanted to spin."
+He listened silently, regarding me with interest and with what I
+trembled to fear was disbelief. I desperately pushed back my sunbonnet
+and in Southern drawl begged for work.
+
+"Spinnin'?" he asked. "What do you want to spin for?"
+
+He was a Yankee, his accent sharp and keen. How clean and decent and
+capable he appeared, the dark mill back of him; shantytown, vile, dirty,
+downtrodden, beside him!
+
+I told him that I was tired of spooling and knew I could make more by
+something else.
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets. "To-night is Saturday; alone
+here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where you going to stay in Granton?"
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+"Don't learn spinnin'," he said decidedly. "I am head of the
+_speedin'-room_. I'll give you a job in my room on Monday morning."
+
+My relief was immense. His subsequent questions I parried, thanked him,
+and withdrew to keep secret from Excelsior that I had deserted for
+Granton.
+
+Although these mills are within three hundred feet of each other, the
+villagers do not associate. The workings of Granton are unknown to
+Excelsior and vice versa.
+
+The speeding-room in Granton is second only in noise to the weave-room.
+Conversation must be entrancing and vital to be pursued here! The
+speeder has under her care as many machines as her skill can control.
+
+My teacher, Bessie, ran four sides, seventy-six speeders on a side, her
+work being regulated by a crank that marked the vibrations. To the lay
+mind the terms of the speeding-room can mean nothing. This girl made
+from $1.30 to $1.50 a day. She controlled in all 704 speeders; these she
+had to replenish and keep running, and to clean all the machinery gear
+with her own hands; to oil the steel, even to bend and clean under the
+lower shelf and come into contact with the most dangerous parts of the
+mechanism. The girl at the speeder next to me had just had her hand
+mashed to a jelly. The speeder watches her ropers run out; these stand
+at the top and back of the line. The ropers are refilled and their ends
+attached to the flying speeders by a quick motion. The yarn from the
+ropers is wound off on to the speeders. When the speeders are full of
+yarn they are detached from the nest of steel in which they whirl and
+are thrown into a hand-car which is pushed about the room by the girls
+themselves. Speeding is excessively dirty work and greasy; the oiling
+and cleaning is only fit for a man to do.
+
+The girl who teaches me has been at her work for ten years; she entered
+the factory at eight. She was tall, raw-boned, an expert, deft and
+capable, and, as far as I could judge in our acquaintance, thoroughly
+respectable.
+
+There are long waits in this department of the cotton-spinning life. On
+tall green stools we sit at the end of our sides during the time it
+takes for one well-filled roper to spin itself out; we talk, or rather
+contrive to make ourselves heard. She has a sweet, gentle face; she is
+courtesy and kindness itself.
+
+"What do you think about all day?"
+
+"Why, I couldn't even begin to tell all my thoughts."
+
+"Tell me some."
+
+"Why, I think about books, I reckon. Do you-all like readin'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't nuthin' I like so good when I ain't tyrd."
+
+"Are you often tired?" And this question surprises her. She looks up at
+me and smiles. "Why, I'm _always_ tyrd! I read novels for the most part;
+like to read love stories and about fo'ran travel."
+
+(For one short moment please consider: This hemmed-in life, this limited
+existence, encompassed on all sides by the warfare and battle and din of
+maddening sounds, vibrations around her during twelve hours of the day,
+vibrations which, mean that her food is being gained by each pulse of
+the engine and its ratio marked off by the disk at her side. Before her
+the scene is unchanged day after day, month after month, year after
+year. It is not an experience to this woman who works beside me so
+patiently; it is her life. The forms she sees are warped and scarred;
+the intellects with which she comes in contact are dulled and
+undeveloped. All they know is toil, all they know of gain is a
+fluctuation in a wage that ranges from cents to a dollar and cents
+again, never touching a two-dollar mark. The children who, barefooted,
+filthy, brush past her, sweeping the cotton from the infected floors,
+these are the only forms of childhood she has ever seen. The dirty women
+around her, low-browed, sensual, are the forms of womanhood that she
+knows; and the men? If she does not feed the passion of the overseer,
+she may find some mill-hand who will contract a "mill marriage" with
+this daughter of the loom, a marriage little binding to him and which
+will give her children to give in time to the mill. This is the realism
+of her love story: She reads books that you, too, may have read; she
+dares to dream of scenes, to picture them--scenes that you have sought
+and wearied of. A tithe of our satiety would mean her banquet, her
+salvation!... Her happiness? _That_ question who can answer for her or
+for you?)
+
+She continues: "I'm very fond of fo'ran travel, only I ain't never had
+much occasion for it."
+
+This pathos and humour keep me silent. A few ropers have run out; she
+rises. I rise, too, to replace, to attach, and set the exhausted line
+taut and complete again.
+
+Ten years! Ten years! All her girlhood and youth has been given to
+keeping ropers supplied with fresh yarn and speeders a-whirling. During
+this travail she has kept a serenity of expression, a depth of sweetness
+at which I marvel. Her voice is peculiarly soft and, coupled with the
+dialect drawl, is pleasant to hear.
+
+"I hate the mills!" she says simply.
+
+"What would you be if you could choose?" I venture to ask. She has no
+hesitation in answering.
+
+"I'd love to be a trained nurse." Then, turn about is fair play in her
+mind, I suppose, for she asks:
+
+"What would _you-all_ be?"
+
+And ashamed not to well repay her truthfulness I frankly respond: "I'd
+like to write a book."
+
+"I _dee_-clare." She stares at me. "Why, you-all _is_ ambitious. Did you
+ever write anything?"
+
+"A letter or two."
+
+She is interested and kindles, leaning forward. "I suttenly ain't so
+high in my ambitions," she says appreciatively. "Wish you'd write a love
+story for me to read," and she ponders over the idea, her eyes on my
+snowy flying speeders.
+
+"Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin's on writin' hyar? Ef you don't
+mind anybody's messin' with your things, bring your scrappin's to me an'
+I'll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not," she whispered to me
+encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills
+than a loud sound.
+
+I thanked her and said: "Do you think that you'd know?"
+
+"Well, I guess I would!" she said confidently. "I ain't read all my life
+sense I was eight years old not to know good writin' from bad. Can
+you-all sing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Play sweet music?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I jest love it." She enthuses. "Every Saturday afternoon I take of a
+music teacher on the gee-tar. It costs me a quarter."
+
+I could see the scene: a shanty room, the tall, awkward figure bending
+over her instrument; the type that the teacher made, the ambition, the
+eagerness--all of which qualities we are so willing to deny to the
+slaves of toil.
+
+"They ain't much flowers here in Granton," she said again. "'Tain't no
+use to try to have even a few geraneums; it's so dry; ain't no yards nor
+gardens, nuther."
+
+Musing on this desolation as she walks up and down the line, she says:
+"I dew love flowers, don't you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over and over again I am asked by those whose wish I suppose is to prove
+to themselves and their consciences that the working-girl is not so
+actively wretched, her outcry is not so audible that we are forced to
+respond:
+
+"The working people are happy? The factory girls are happy, are they
+not? Don't you find them so?"
+
+Is it a satisfaction to the leisure class, to the capitalist and
+employer, to feel that a woman poorly housed, ill-fed, in imminent moral
+danger, every temptation rampant over barriers down, overworked,
+overstrained by labour varying from ten to thirteen hours a day, by
+all-night labour, and destruction of body and soul, _is happy_?
+
+Do you _wish_ her to be so? Is the existence _ideal_?
+
+I can speak only for the shoe manufacturing girl of Lynn and for the
+Southern mill-hand.
+
+I thank Heaven that I can say truthfully, that of all who came under my
+observation, not one who was of age to reflect was happy. I repeat, the
+working-woman is brave and courageous, but the most sane and hopeful
+indication for the future of the factory girl and the mill-hand is that
+she rebels, dreams of something better, and will in the fullness of time
+stretch toward it. They have no time to think, even if they knew how.
+All that remains for them in the few miserable hours of relief from
+labour and confinement and noise is to seek what pastime they may find
+under their hand. We have never realized, they have never known, that
+their great need--given the work that is wrung from them and the
+degradation in which they are forced to live--is a craving for amusement
+and relaxation. Amusements for this class are not provided; they _can_
+laugh, they rarely do. The thing that they seek--let me repeat: I
+cannot repeat it too often--in the minimum of time that remains to them,
+is distraction. They do not want to read; they do not want to study;
+they are too tired to concentrate. How can you expect it? I heard a
+manufacturer say: "We gave our mill-hands everything that we could to
+elevate them--a natatorium, a reading library--and these halls fell into
+disuse." I ask him now, through these pages, the questions which I did
+not put to him then as I listened in silence to his complaint. He said
+he thought too much was done for the mill-hands. What time would he
+suggest that they should spend in the reading-room, even if they have
+learned to read? They rise at four; at a quarter before six they are at
+work. The day in winter is not born when they start their tasks; the
+night has fallen long before they cease. In summer they are worked long
+into their evenings. They tell me that they are too tired to eat; that
+all they want to do is to turn their aching bones on to their miserable
+mattresses and sleep until they are cried and shrieked awake by the mill
+summons. Therefore they solve their own questions. Nothing is provided
+for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is
+within their reach--animal enjoyment, human intercourse and
+companionship. They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let
+us believe, more excuse.
+
+The mill marriage is a farce, and yet they choose to call their unions
+now and again a marriage. Many a woman has been a wife several times in
+the same town, in the same house. The bond-tying is a form, and, of
+course, mostly ignored. The settlements swarm with illegitimate
+children. Next to me work two young girls, both under seventeen, both
+ringless and with child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let me picture the Foster household, where I used to call Saturday
+evenings.
+
+Mrs. Foster herself, dirty, slipshod, a frowzy mass, hugs her fireside.
+Although the day is warm, she kindled a fire to stimulate the thin, poor
+blood exhausted by disease and fevers. Two flatirons lie in a dirty heap
+on the floor. As usual, the room is a nest of filth and untidiness.
+
+Mrs. Foster is half paralyzed, but her tongue is free. She talks
+fluently in her soft Southern drawl, more Negro than white as to speech
+and tone. Up to her sidles a dirty, pretty little boy of four.
+
+"This yere is too little to go to the mill, but he's wild to go; yes,
+ser, he is so. Las' night he come to me en say, 'Auntie, you-all wake me
+up at fo' 'clock sure; I got ter go ter the mill.'"
+
+Here the little blond child, whose mouth is set on a pewter spoon
+dripping over with hominy, grins appreciatively. He throws back his
+white and delicate little face, and his aunt, drawing him close to her,
+caresses him and continues: "Yes, ma'am, to-day he dun wake up after
+they-all had gone and he sayd, 'My goodness, I dun oversleep mase'f!' He
+sha'n't go to the mill," she frowned, "not ef we can help it. Why, I
+don't never let him outen my sight; 'fraid lest those awful mill
+children would git at him."
+
+Thus she sheltered him with what care she knew--care that unfortunately
+_could not go far enough back to protect him_! His mother came in at the
+noon hour, as we sat there rocking and chatting. She was a straight,
+slender creature, not without grace in her shirt-waist and her
+low-pulled felt hat that shadowed her sullen face. She was very young,
+not more than twenty-two, and her history indicative and tragic. With a
+word only and a nod she passes us; she has now too many vital things and
+incidents in her own career to be curious regarding a strange mill-hand.
+She goes with her comrade--and cousin--Mamie, into the kitchen to
+devour in as short a time as possible the noon dinner, served by the
+grandmother: cabbage and hominy. "They don't have time 'nough to eat,"
+the aunt says; "no sooner then they-all come in and bolt their dinner
+then it is time to go back." Her child has followed her. Minnie was
+married at thirteen; in less than a year she was a grass widow. "My
+goodness, there's lots of grass widows!" my frowsled hostess nods. "Why,
+in one weave-room hyar there ain't a gyrl but what's left by her
+husband. One day a new gyrl come for to run a loom and they yells out at
+her, 'Is you-all a grass widow? Yer can't come in hyar ef you ain't.'"
+
+But it was after her grass widowhood that Minnie's tragedy began. The
+mill was her ruin. So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go,
+_does not_ go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put
+there to run these women's work. The overseer was father of her child,
+and when she tried to force from him recognition and aid he threw over
+his position and left Columbia and this behind him. This, one instance
+under my own eyes observed. There are many.
+
+"Mamie works all night" (she spoke of the other girl)--"makes more
+money. My, but she hates the mills! Says she ain't ever known a restful
+minute sence she left the hills."
+
+My hostess has drawn the same conclusion from my Northern appearance
+that the Joneses drew.
+
+"You-all must eat good where you come from! you look so healthy.' Do
+you-all know the Banks girl over to Calcutta?"
+
+"No."
+
+"They give her nine months." (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round
+here.) "Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts
+like a man. She drew her knife on a man last week--cut his face all up
+and into his side through his lung. Tried to pass as she was his wife,
+but when they had her up, ma'am, they proved she had been three men's
+wives and he four gyrl's husbands. He liked to died of the cut. They've
+given her nine months, but he ain't the only man that bears her marks.
+Over to Calcutta it's the knife and the gun at a wink. This yere was an
+awful pretty gyrl. My Min seed her peekin' out from behind the loom in
+the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said: 'Who's that yere pretty
+boy peekin' at me?' And that gyrl told Min that she couldn't help knife
+the men, they all worried on her so! 'Won't never leave me alone; I jest
+have to draw on 'em; there ain't no other way.'"...
+
+For the annals of morality and decency do not take up this faithful
+account and picture the cotton-mill village. You will not find it in
+these scenes drawn from the life as it is at this hour, as it is
+portrayed by the words that the very people themselves will pour into
+your ears. Under the walls of Calcutta Negroes are engaged in laying
+prospective flower beds, so that the thirteen-hour workers may look out
+from time to time and see the forms of flowers. On the other side rise
+some twenty shanties. These houses of Calcutta village are very small,
+built from the roughest unpainted boards. Here it is, in this little
+settlement, that the knife comes flashing out at a word--that the women
+shoot as well as men, and perhaps more quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Richmond aint so bad as the other!" I can hear Mrs. Foster drawl out
+this recommendation to us. "They ain't so much chills here. We dun move
+up from town first; had to--too high rents for we-all; now we dun stay
+hyar. Why, some of the gyrls and boys works to Granton and bo'ds hyar;
+seems like it's mo' healthy."
+
+Moving, ambulant population! tramping from hill to hill, from sand-heap
+to sand-heap to escape the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling,
+bitter existence--pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the
+sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter
+what the burden's weight must be, _one must live_! It takes a great
+deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of
+interest. At what should they rejoice?
+
+I have made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an
+absolute lack of every form or sight that might inspire or cause a soul
+to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from
+labour. There should be a complete readjustment of this system. I have
+been interested in reading in the New York _Sun_ of April 20th of the
+visit of the bishops to the model factories in Ohio. I am constrained to
+wish that bishops and clergy and philanthropists and millionaires and
+capitalists might visit in bodies and separately the mills of South
+Carolina and their tenement population. It is difficult to know just
+what the ideas are of the people who have constructed these dwellings.
+They tell us in this same prospectus, which I have read with interest
+after my personal experience, that these villages are "_picturesque_."
+This is the only reference I find to the people and their conditions. I
+have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without
+prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern
+country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's
+existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot
+but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to
+destruction before the scales swing even.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD IN SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+In the week before I left for the South I dined in ---- with a very
+charming woman and her husband. Before a table exquisite in its
+appointments, laden with the best the market could offer and good taste
+display, sat the mistress, a graceful, intelligent young woman, full of
+philanthropic, charitable interests, and one whom I know to be devoted
+to the care and benefiting of little children in her city. During the
+meal I said to her casually:
+
+"Do you know that in your mills in South Carolina to-night, as we sit
+here, little children are working at the looms and frames--little
+children, some of them not more than six years old?"
+
+She said, in astonishment, "I don't know it; and I can't believe it."
+
+I told her I should soon see just how true the reports were, and when I
+returned to New York I would tell her the facts. She is not alone in her
+ignorance. Not one person, man or woman, to whom I told the facts of the
+cases I observed "_dreamed that children worked in any mills in the
+United States_!" After my experience amongst the working class, I am
+safe in saying that I consider their grievances to be the outcome of the
+ignorance and greed of the manufacturer abetted, aided and made possible
+by the ignorance and poverty of the labourer.
+
+There is nothing more conscience-silencing than to accuse the writers of
+the different articles on child-labour of sentimentality. The comfort in
+which we live makes it easy to eliminate thoughts that torture us to
+action in the cause of others. I will be delighted to meet an accusation
+of sentimentality and exaggeration by any man or woman who has gone to a
+Southern mill as an operative and worked side by side with the children,
+lived with them in their homes. It is defamation to use the word "home"
+in connection with the unwholesome shanty in the pest-ridden district
+where the remnant of the children's lives not lived in the mill is
+passed. This handful of unpainted huts, raised on stilts from the soil,
+fever-ridden and malarious; this blank, ugly line of sun-blistered
+shanties, along a road, yellow-sand deep, is a mill village. The word
+_village_ has a cheerful sound. It summons a country scene, with the
+charms of home, however simple and unpretentious. There is nothing to
+charm or please in the villages I have already, in these pages, drawn
+for you to see and which with veritable sick reluctance I summon again
+before your eyes. Every house is like unto its neighbour--a shelter put
+up rapidly and filled to the best advantage.
+
+There is not a garden within miles, not a flower, scarcely a tree. Arid,
+desolate, beautyless, the pale sand of the State of South Carolina
+nurtures as best it can a stray tree or shrub--no more. At the foot of
+the shanties' black line rises the cotton mill. New, enormous, sanitary
+(!!). Its capital runs into millions; its prospectuses are pompous; its
+pay-roll mysterious. You will not be able to say how many of the fifteen
+hundred odd hands at work in this mill are adults, how many children. In
+the State of South Carolina there are statistics of neither births,
+marriages nor deaths. What can you expect of a mill village!
+
+At 5:45 we have breakfasted--the twelve of us who live in one small
+shanty, where we have slept, all five of us in one room, men to the
+right of the kitchen, women and children on the left. To leave the
+pestilence of foul air, the stench of that dwelling, is blessed, even if
+the stroke that summons is the mill whistle.
+
+As we troop to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like
+town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and
+infirmity--but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy
+its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel
+between its merciless jaws is the little child.
+
+So long as I am part of its food and triumph I will study the mill.
+
+Leaving the line of flashing, whirling spools, I lean against the green
+box full of cotton refuse and regard the giant room.
+
+It is a wonderful sight. The mill itself, a model of careful,
+well-considered building, has every facility for the best and most
+advantageous manufacture of textiles. The fine frames of the intricate
+"warping," the well-placed frames of the "drawing-in" all along the
+window sides of the rooms; then lines upon lines of spool frames. Great
+piles of stuff lie here and there in the room. It is early--"all the
+yarn ain't come yet." Two children whose work has not been apportioned
+lie asleep against a cotton bale. The terrible noise, the grinding,
+whirling, pounding, the gigantic burr renders other senses keen. By my
+side works a little girl of eight. Her brutal face, already bespeaking
+knowledge of things childhood should ignore, is surrounded by a forest
+of yellow hair. She goes doggedly at her spools, grasping them sullenly.
+She walks well on her bare, filthy feet. Her hands and arms are no
+longer flesh colour, but resemble weather-roughened hide, ingrained with
+dirt. Around the tangle of her hair cotton threads and bits of lint make
+a sort of aureole. (Her nimbus of labour, if you will!) There is nothing
+saint-like in that face, nor in the loose-lipped mouth, whence exudes a
+black stain of snuff as between her lips she turns the root she chews.
+
+"She's a mean girl," my little companion says; "we-all don't hev nothin'
+to say to her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Her maw hunts her to the mill; she don't want to go--no, sir--so she's
+mad most the time."
+
+Thus she sets her dogged resistance in scowling black looks, in quick,
+frantic gestures and motions against the machinery that claims her
+impotent childhood. The nimbus around her furze of hair remains; there
+are other heads than saints--there are martyrs! Let the child wear her
+crown.
+
+Through the looms I catch sight of Upton's, my landlord's, little
+child. She is seven; so small that they have a box for her to stand
+upon. She is a pretty, frail, little thing, a spooler--"a good
+spooler, tew!" Through the frames on the other side I can only see her
+fingers as they clutch at the flying spools; her head is not high
+enough, even with the box, to be visible. Her hands are fairy hands,
+fine-boned, well-made, only they are so thin and dirty, and her
+nails--claws; she would do well to have them cut. A nail can be torn
+from the finger, _is_ torn from the finger frequently,[9] by this
+flying spool. I go over to Upton's little girl. Her spindles are not
+thinner nor her spools whiter.
+
+  [Footnote 9: In Huntsville, Alabama, a child of eight lost her
+  index and middle fingers of the right hand in January, 1902. One
+  doctor told me that he had amputated the fingers of more than a
+  hundred babies. A merchant told me he had _frequently_ seen
+  children whose hands had been cut off by the
+  machinery.--_American Federationist_.]
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Ten."
+
+She looks six. It is impossible to know if what she says is true. The
+children are commanded both by parents and bosses to advance their ages
+when asked.
+
+"Tired?"
+
+She nods, without stopping. She is a "remarkable fine hand." She makes
+forty cents a day. See the value of this labour to the
+manufacturer--cheap, yet skilled; to the parent it represents $2.40 per
+week.
+
+I must not think that as I work beside them I will gain their
+confidence! They have no time to talk. Indeed, conversation is not well
+looked upon by the bosses, and I soon see that unless I want to entail a
+sharp reproof for myself and them I must stick to my "side." And at noon
+I have no heart to take their leisure. At twelve o'clock, Minnie, a
+little spooler, scarcely higher than her spools, lifts her hands above
+her head and exclaims: _"Thank God, there's the whistle!"_ I watched
+them disperse: some run like mad, always bareheaded, to fetch the
+dinner-pail for mother or father who work in the mill and who choose to
+spend these little legs and spare their own. It takes ten minutes to go,
+ten to return, and the little labourer has ten to devote to its own
+food, which, half the time, he is too exhausted to eat.
+
+I watch the children crouch on the floor by the frames; some fall asleep
+between the mouthfuls of food, and so lie asleep with food in their
+mouths until the overseer rouses them to their tasks again. Here and
+there totters a little child just learning to walk; it runs and crawls
+the length of the mill. Mothers who have no one with whom to leave their
+babies bring them to the workshop, and their lives begin, continue and
+end in the horrible pandemonium.
+
+One little boy passes by with his broom; he is whistling. I look up at
+the cheery sound that pierces fresh but faint and natural above the
+machines' noise. His eyes are bright; his good spirits surprise me: here
+is an argument for my comfortable friends who wish to prove that the
+children "are happy!" I stop him.
+
+"You seem very jolly!"
+
+He grins.
+
+"How long have you been working?"
+
+"Two or three days."
+
+The gay creature has just _begun_ his servitude and brings into the
+dreary monotony a flash of the spirit which should fill childhood.
+
+I think it will be granted that it takes a great deal to discourage and
+dishearten a child. The hopefulness of the mill communities lies in just
+those elements that overwork in the adult and that child labour will
+ultimately destroy. When hope is gone in the adult he must wreak some
+vengeance on the bitter fate that has robbed him. There is no more
+tragic thing than the hopeless child. The adult who grows hopeless can
+affiliate with the malcontents and find in the insanity of anarchy what
+he calls revenge.
+
+It seems folly to insult the common sense of the public by asking them
+whether they think that thirteen hours a day, with a half to
+three-quarters of an hour for recreation at noon, or the same amount of
+night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with
+unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a
+pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of
+hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ...
+whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women
+whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good
+for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive development, to the
+making of decent manhood or womanhood? What kind of citizen can this
+child--if he is fit enough in the economic struggle of the world to
+survive--turn out to be? Not citizens at all: creatures scarcely fit to
+be called human beings.
+
+I asked the little girl who teaches me to spool who the man is whom I
+have seen riding around on horseback through the town.
+
+"Why, he goes roun' rousin' up the hands who ain't in their places.
+Sometimes he takes the children outen thayre bades an' brings 'em back
+to the mill."
+
+And if the child can stand, it spins and spools until it drops, till
+constitution rebels, and death, the only friend it has ever known, sets
+it free.
+
+Besides being spinners and spoolers, and occasionally weavers even, the
+children sweep the cotton-strewed floors. Scarcely has the miserable
+little object, ragged and odourous, passed me with his long broom, which
+he drags half-heartedly along, than the space he has swept up is
+cotton-strewn again. It settles with discouraging rapidity; it has also
+settled on the child's hair and clothes, and his eyelashes, and this
+atmosphere he breathes and fairly eats, until his lungs become diseased.
+Pneumonia--fatal in nearly all cases here--and lung fever had been a
+pestilence, "a regular plague," before I came. There were four cases in
+the village where I, lived, and fever and ague, malaria and grippe did
+their parts.
+
+"Why, thar ain't never a haouse but's got somebody sick," my little
+teacher informed me in her soft Southern dialect. "I suttinly never did
+see a place like this for dyin' in winter time. I reckon et's funerals
+every day."
+
+Here is a little child, not more than seven years old. The land is a hot
+enough country, we will concede, but not a savage South Sea Island! She
+has on one garment, if a tattered sacking dress can so be termed. Her
+bones are nearly through her skin, but her stomach is an unhealthy
+pouch, abnormal. _She has dropsy._ She works in _a new mill_--in one of
+the largest mills in South Carolina. Here is a slender little boy--a
+birch rod (good old simile) is not more slender, but the birch has the
+advantage: it is elastic--it bends, has youth in it. This boy looks
+ninety. He is a dwarf; twelve years old, he appears seven, no more. He
+sweeps the cotton off the floor of "the baby mill." (How tenderly and
+proudly the owners speak of their brick and mortar.) He sweeps the
+cotton and lint from the mill aisles from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. without a
+break in the night's routine. He stops of his own accord, however, to
+cough and expectorate--he has advanced tuberculosis.
+
+At night the shanties receive us. On a pine board is spread our
+food--can you call it nourishment? The hominy and molasses is the best
+part; salt pork and ham are the strong victuals.
+
+It is eight o'clock when the children reach their homes--later if the
+mill work is behindhand and they are kept over hours. They are usually
+beyond speech. They fall asleep at the table, on the stairs; they are
+carried to bed and there laid down as they are, unwashed, undressed; and
+the inanimate bundles of rags so lie until the mill summons them with
+its imperious cry before sunrise, while they are still in stupid sleep:
+
+"What do you do on Sundays?" I asked one little girl.
+
+"Why, thare ain't nothing much to dew. I go to the park sometimes."
+
+This park is at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia. Picture
+it! A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby
+undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be
+conceived. On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to
+so spend the day. On Sundays the mill shanties are full of sleepers.
+
+The park has a limited number of devotees. Through the beautyless paths
+and walks the figures pass like shadows. There come three mill girls arm
+in arm; their curl papers, screwed tight all the week, are out on
+Sunday, in greasy, abundant curls. Sunday clothes are displayed in all
+their superbness. Three or four young men, town fellows, follow them;
+they are all strangers, but they will go home arm in arm.
+
+Several little children, who have no clothes but those, they wear, cling
+close to the side of a gaunt, pale-faced man, who carries in his arms
+the youngest. The little girl has become a weight to be carried on
+Sundays; she has worked six days of the week--shall she not rest on the
+seventh? She shall; she claims this, and lies inert on the man's arm,
+her face already seared with the scars of toil.
+
+I ran such risk taking pictures that I relinquished the task, and it was
+only the last day at the mill, while still in my working clothes with a
+camera concealed in my pocket, that I contrived to get a picture or two.
+I ventured to ask two little boys who swept the mill to stand for their
+pictures.
+
+"I don't kyar to," the older one said. I explained that it would not
+hurt them, as I thought he was afraid; but his little companion
+vouchsafed: "We-all ain't got no nickel." When they understood it was a
+free picture they were as delighted as possible and posed with alacrity,
+making touching apologies for their greasy, dirty condition.
+
+When I asked one of them if he was ever clean, he said: "On Sunday I
+wash my hands."
+
+It was noon, on the day I chose to leave ----, turning my back on the
+mill that had allured me to its doors and labour. In South Carolina
+early April is torrid, flies and mosquitoes are rampant. What must this
+settlement be in midsummer heat? There is no colour in the Southern
+scene; the clothes of the mill-hands, the houses, the soil are of one
+tone--and, more strange, there is not one line of red, one dash of life,
+in the faces of the hundreds of women and children that pass me on their
+way back to work.
+
+Under the existing circumstances they have no outlook, these people, no
+hope; their appearance expresses accurately the changeless routine of an
+existence devoted to eternal ignorance, eternal toil.
+
+From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing,
+inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate
+and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the
+cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this
+Southern mill justly famous.
+
+The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill
+claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little
+things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy,
+frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their
+sleeves; they are barefooted, bareheaded. With these little figures the
+elements wanton; they can never know the fullness of summer or the
+proper maturity of autumn. Suns have burned them, rains have fallen upon
+them, as unprotected through storms they go to their work. The winter
+winds have penetrated the tatters with blades like knives; gray and
+dusty and earth-coloured the line passes. These are children? No, they
+are wraiths of childhood--they are effigies of youth! What can Hope work
+in this down-trodden soil for any future harvest? They can curse and
+swear; they chew tobacco and take snuff. When they speak at all their
+voices are feeble; ears long dulled by the thunder of the mill are no
+longer keen to sound; their speech is low and scarcely audible. Over
+sallow cheeks where the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you
+suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood.
+As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue
+settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to
+elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark
+the distinctive visages of these children of labour.
+
+At certain seasons of the year they actually die off like flies. They
+fall subject, not to children's diseases exactly--nothing really natural
+seems to come into the course of these little existences--they fall a
+prey to the maladies that are the outcomes of their conditions. They are
+always half-clad in the winter time; their clothes differ nothing at all
+from their summer clothes; they have no overcoats or coats; many of them
+go barefoot all winter long. They come out from the hot mills into cold,
+raw winds and fall an easy prey to pneumonia, scourge of the mill-town.
+Their general health is bad all the year round; their skins and
+complexions have taken the tone of the sandy soil of the Southern
+country in which they are bred and in which their martyrdom is
+accomplished. I never saw a rosy cheek nor a clear skin: these are the
+parchment editions of childhood on which Tragedy is written indelibly.
+You can there read the eternal condemnation of those who have employed
+them for the sake of gain.
+
+It is a melancholy satisfaction to believe that mill labour will kill
+off little spinners and spoolers. Unfortunately, this is not entirely
+true. There are constitutions that survive all the horrors of existence.
+I have worked both in Massachusetts and the South beside women who
+entered the mill service at eight years of age. One of these was still
+in her girlhood when I knew her. She was very strong, very good and
+still had some illusions left. I do not know what it goes to prove, when
+I say that at twenty, in spite of twelve years of labour, she still
+dreamed, still hoped, still longed and prayed _for something that was
+not a mill_. If this means content in servitude, if this means that the
+poor white trash are born slaves, or if, on the contrary, it means that
+there is something inherent in a woman that will carry her past suicide
+and past idiocy and degradation, all of which is around her, I think it
+argues well for the working women.
+
+The other woman was forty. She had no illusions left--please remember
+she had worked since eight; she had reached, if you like, the idiot
+stage. She had nothing to offer during all the time I knew her but a few
+sentences directly in connection with her toil.
+
+It is useless to advance the plea that spooling is not difficult. No
+child (we will cancel under twelve!) should work at all. No human
+creature should work thirteen hours a day. No baby of six, seven or
+eight should be seen in the mills.
+
+It is also useless to say that these children tell you that they "like
+the mill." They are beaten by their parents if they do not tell you
+this, and, granted that they do not like their servitude, when was it
+thought expedient that a child should direct its existence? If they do
+not pass the early years of their lives in study, when should they
+learn? At what period of their lives should the children of the Southern
+mill-hand be educated? Long before they reach their teens their habits
+are formed--ignorance is ingrained; indeed, after a few years they are
+so vitally reduced that if you will you cannot teach them. Are these
+little American children, then, to have no books but labour? No
+recreation? To be crushed out of life to satisfy the ignorance and greed
+of their parents, the greed of the manufacturers? Whatever else we are,
+we are financiers _per se_. The fact that to-day, as for years past,
+Southern cotton mills are employing the labour of children under tender
+age--employing an army of them to the number of twenty thousand under
+twelve--can only be explained by a frank admittal that infantile labour
+has been considered advantageous to the cause of gain.
+
+This gain, apparent by the facts that a mill can be run for thousands
+of dollars less in the South than a like mill can be run in the North,
+and its net surplus profits be the same as those of the Northern
+manufactory, is one by which one generation alone will profit. The
+attractiveness of the figures is fallacious. What I imply is
+self-evident. The infant population (its numbers give it a right to this
+dignity of term) whose cheap toil feeds the mills is doomed. I mean to
+say that the rank and file of humanity are daily weeded out; that
+thousands of possibly strong, healthy, mature labouring men and women
+are being disease-stricken, hounded out of life; the cotton mill child
+cannot develop to the strong normal adult working-man and woman. The
+fiber exhausted in the young body cannot be recreated. Early death
+carries hundreds out of life, disease rots the remainder, and the dulled
+maturity attained by a creature whose life has been passed in this
+labour is not fit to propagate the species.
+
+The excessively low wages paid these little mill-hands keep under, of
+necessity, the wage paid the grown labourer. It is a crying pity that
+children are equal to the task imposed upon them. It is a crying pity
+that machines (since they have appeared, with their extended,
+all-absorbing power) should not do all! Particularly in the Southern
+States do they evince, at a fatal point, their limit, display their
+inadequacy. When babies can be employed successfully for thirteen hours
+out of the twenty-four at all machines with men and women; when infants
+feeds mechanism with labour that has not one elevating, humanizing
+effect upon them physically or mentally, it places human intelligence
+below par and cheapens and distorts the nobler forms of toil. Not only
+is it "no disgrace to work," but on the contrary it is a splendid thing
+to be able to labour, and those who gain their bread by the sweat of
+their brow are not the servants of mankind in the sense of the term, but
+the patriarchs and controllers of the world's march and the most subtle
+signs of the times. But there are distinctly fitnesses of labour, and
+the proper presentation to the working-man and woman and child is a
+consideration.
+
+No one to-day would be likely for an instant to concede that to replace
+the treadmill horse with a child (a thing often seen and practised in
+times past) would be an advantage. And yet the march of the child up and
+down before its spooling frame is more suggestive of an animal--of the
+dog hitched to the Belgian milk cart; of the horse on the
+mill-tread--than another analogy.
+
+Contrast this pallid automaton with the children of the poor in a New
+York kindergarten, where the six-or seven-year-old child of the German,
+the Hungarian, the Polish emigrant, may have its imagination stimulated,
+its creative and individual faculties employed as it is taught to _make
+things_--construct, combine, weave, sew, mould. Every power latent is
+cajoled to expression, every talent encouraged. Thus work in its first
+form is rendered attractive, and youth and individuality are encouraged.
+In the South of this American country whose signet is individualism,
+whose strength (despite our motto, "United we stand") is in the
+individual freedom and vast play of original thought, here in the South
+our purest born, the most unmixed blood of us, is being converted into
+machines of labour when the forms of little children are bound in youth
+to the spindle and loom.
+
+In a certain mill in Alabama there are seventy-five child-labourers who
+work twelve hours out of the twenty-four; they have a half-hour at noon
+for luncheon. There is a night school in connection with this mill
+corporation. Fancy it, a night school for the day-long child labourer!
+Fifty out of seventy-five troop to it. Although they are so tired they
+cannot keep awake on the benches, and the littlest of them falls asleep
+over its letters, although they weep with fatigue, they are eager to
+learn! Is there a more conclusive testimony to the quality of the
+material that is being lost to the States and the country by the
+martyrdom of intelligent children?
+
+One hears two points of view expressed on this subject. The capitalist
+advances that the greed of the parents forces the children into the
+mills; the people themselves tell you that unless they are willing to
+let their available children work, their own lives are made impossible
+by the overseers. A widow who has children stands a fair chance of
+having her rent free; if she refuses this tithe of flesh and blood she
+is too often thrust into the street. So I am told. Now, which of these
+facts is the truth? It seems to be clearly too much left to the decision
+of private enterprise or parental incapability. The Legislature is the
+only school in which to decide the question. During my stay in South
+Carolina I never heard one woman advocate the mills for children. One
+mother, holding to her breast her illegitimate child, her face dark with
+dislike, said: "_Them mills!_ I would not let _my_ little boy work in
+'em! No, sir! He would go over my dead body." Another woman said: "_My_
+little girl work? No, ma'am; she goes to school!" and the child came in
+even as she spoke--let me say the only cheerful specimen of childhood,
+with the exception of the few little creatures in the kindergarten, that
+I saw in the mill district.
+
+South Carolina has become very haughty on this topic and has reached a
+point when she tells us she is to cure the sore in her own body without
+aid or interference. At a late session of the Legislature the bill for
+the restriction of child labour--we must call it this, since it
+legislates only for the child under ten--this bill was defeated by only
+two dissenting voices. A humane gentleman who laid claim to one of
+these voices was heard to ejaculate as the bill failed to pass: "Thank
+God!" Just why, it is not easy to understand.
+
+When I was so arrogant as to say to the editor of _The State_, the
+leading paper in South Carolina, that I hoped my article might aid the
+cause, I made an error clearly, for he replied:
+
+"We need no aid. The people of South Carolina are aroused to the horror
+and will cure it themselves."
+
+Georgia is not roused to the horror; Alabama is stirring actively; but
+the Northerners who own these mills--the capitalists, the manufacturers,
+the men who are building up a reputation for the wealth of South
+Carolina and Alabama mills, are the least aroused of all. We must
+believe that many directors of these mills are ignorant of the state of
+affairs, and that those who are enlightened willingly blind their eyes.
+
+The mill prospectuses are humourous when read by the investigator. We
+are told "labour-unions cut no figure here!"
+
+Go at night through the mills with the head of the Labour Federation and
+with the instigator of the first strikes in this district--with men who
+are the brain and fiber of the labour organization, and see the friendly
+looks flash forth, see the understanding with which they are greeted all
+through certain mills. Consider that not 200 miles away at the moment
+are 22,000 labourers on strike. Then greet these statements with a
+smile!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On my return to the North I made an especial effort to see my New
+England friend. We lunched together this time, and at the end of the
+meal her three little children fluttered in to say a friendly word. I
+looked at them, jealous for their little defrauded fellows, whose
+twelve-hour daily labour served to purchase these exquisite clothes and
+to heap with dainties the table before us. But I was nevertheless
+rejoiced to see once again the forms of real childhood for whom air and
+freedom and wealth were doing blessed tasks. When we were alone I drew
+for my friend as well as I could pictures of what I had seen. She leaned
+forward, took a brandied cherry from the dish in front of her, ate it
+delicately and dipped her fingers in the finger-bowl; then she said:
+
+"Dear friend, I am going to surprise you very much."
+
+I waited, and felt that it would be difficult to surprise me with a tale
+of a Southern mill.
+
+"Those little children--_love the mill!_ They _like_ to work. It's a
+great deal better for them to be employed than for them to run the
+streets!"
+
+She smiled over her argument, and I waited.
+
+"Do you know," she continued, "that I believe they are really very
+happy."
+
+She had well presented her argument. She had said she would surprise
+me--and she did.
+
+"You will not feel it a breach of affection and hospitality if I print
+what you say?" I asked her. "It's only fair that the capitalist's view
+should be given here and there first hand. You own one-half the mill
+in ----, Carolina?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What do you think of a model mill with only nine hours a day labour,
+holidays and all nights free, schools, where education is enforced by
+the State; reading-rooms open as well as churches--amusement halls,
+music, recreation and pleasure, as well as education and religion?"
+
+"I think," she said keenly, "that united, concentrated action on the
+part of the cotton mill owners might make such a thing feasible; for us
+to try it alone would mean ruin."
+
+"Not ruin," I amended; "a reduction of income."
+
+"Ruin," she said, firing. "We couldn't compete. To compete," she said
+with the conviction of an intelligent, well-informed manufacturer, "I
+must have my sixty-six hours a week!"
+
+The spirit of discontent is always abroad when false conditions exist.
+Its restless presence is controlled by one spirit alone--humanity--when
+reasonably are weighed and justly decided the questions of balance
+between Capital and Labour.
+
+We must believe that there is no unsolvable problem before us in
+considering the presence of the child in the Southern mills.
+
+There is nothing in the essence of the subject to discourage the social
+economist. The question should not be left to the decision of the
+private citizen. This stuff is worth saving. There is the making in
+these children of first-class citizens. I quote from the illustrated
+supplement of the South Carolina _State_ that you may see what the mill
+manufacturers think of the quality of the "poor white trash":
+
+     "The operatives in the South Carolina mills are the common
+     people--the bone and sinew who have left the fields to the
+     Negroes. They are industrious, intelligent, frugal, and have
+     the native instincts of honesty and integrity and of fidelity
+     which are essential to good citizenship."
+
+If such things are true of the mill-hands of South Carolina, it is worth
+while to save their children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Henceforth, to my vision across the face of the modern history of labour
+and manufacture will eternally defile the gray, colourless column of the
+Southern mill-hands: an earth-hued line of humanity--a stream that
+divides not.
+
+Here there are no stragglers. At noon and night the pace is quick,
+eager. Steady as a prison gang, it goes to food, rest and freedom. But
+this alacrity is absent in the morning. On the hem of night, the fringe
+of day, the march is slow and lifeless. Many of the heads are bent and
+downcast; some of the faces peer forward, and sallow masks of human
+countenances lift, with a look set beyond the mill--toward who can say
+what vain horizon! The Stream wanders slowly toward the Houses of
+Labour, although whipped by invisible scourge of Need. Without this
+incentive and spur, think you it would pursue a direction toward
+_thirteen hours of toil_, shut from air and sunlight and day, taking in
+its rank the women, the young girl and the little child?
+
+The tone of the garments is somber and gray, blending with the gray of
+the dawn; or red, blending with the earth stains of the peculiar
+Southern soil; or claylike and pale yellow. Many of the faces are
+pallid, some are tense, most of them are indifferent, dulled by toil and
+yet not all unintelligent. Those who are familiar with the healthy type
+of the decent workmen of the West and East must draw their distinctions
+as they consider this peculiar, unfamiliar class. The Southern
+mill-hand's face is unique--a fearful type, whose perusal is not
+pleasant or cheerful to the character-reader, to the lover of humanity
+or to the prophet of the future. Thus they defile: men with felt hats
+drawn over their brows; women, sunbonneted or hatless; children
+barefoot, bareheaded, ragged, unwashed. Unwashed these labourers have
+gone to bed; unwashed they have arisen. To their garments cling the bits
+of cotton, the threads of cotton, the strands of roping, badges of
+their trade, brand of their especial toil. As they pass over the red
+clay, over the pale yellow sand, the earth seems to claim them as part
+of her unchanging phase; cursed by the mandate primeval--"by the sweat
+of thy brow"--Earth-Born!
+
+In the early morning the giant mill swallows its victims, engorges
+itself with entering humanity; then it grows active, stirring its
+ponderous might to life, movement and sound. Hear it roar, shudder,
+shattering the stillness for half a mile! It is full now of flesh and
+blood, of human life and brain and fiber: it is content! Triumphantly
+during the long, long hours it devours the tithe of body and soul.
+
+Behind lies the deserted, accursed village, destitute of life during the
+hours of day, condemned to the care of a few women, the old, the
+bedridden and the sick--of which last there are plenty.
+
+Mighty Mills--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate; charnel
+houses, devastators, destructors of homes and all that mankind calls
+hallowed; breeders of strife, of strike, of immorality, of sedition and
+riot--buildings tremendous--you give your immutable faces,
+myriads-windowed, to the dust-heaps, to the wind-swept plains of sand.
+When South Carolina shall have taken from you (as its honour and wisdom
+and citizenship is bound to do) the youngest of the children, do you
+think that you shall inevitably continue to devour what remains? There
+is too much resistance yet left in the mass of human beings. Youth will
+then rebel at a servitude beginning _at ten years of age_: and the women
+will lift their arms above their heads one day in desperate gesture of
+appeal and cry out--not for the millionaire's surplus; not a tirade
+anarchistic against capital.... What is this woman of the hills and
+woman of the mills that she should so demand? She will call for hours
+short enough to permit her to bear her children; for requital
+commensurate with the exigence of progressive civilization; for wages
+equal to her faithful toil.
+
+This is not too fantastic a demand or too ideal a state to be divinely
+hoped for, believed in and brought to pass.[10]
+
+  [Footnote 10: Of the 21,000,000 spindles in the United States, the
+  South has 6,000,000. $35,381,000 of Carolina's wealth is in
+  cotton mills.
+
+  NOTE. I have seen, in Aragon, Georgia, hope for the future of the
+  mill-hands. The Aragon Cotton Mills are an improvement on the
+  South Carolina Mills and are under the direct supervision of an
+  owner whose sole God is not gain. Mr. Walcott is an agitator of
+  the nine-hours-a-day movement; he is opposed to Child Labour, and
+  in all his relations with his hands he is humane and kindly. I
+  look to the time when Aragon shall set a perfect pattern of what
+  a mill-town should be. It is already quite the best I have seen.
+  Its healthfulness is far above the average, and its situation
+  most fortunate.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not inapt here is the pagan idea of _Nous_, moving upon chaos, stirring
+the stagnant, unresponsive forces into motion; agitating these forces
+into action; the individual elements separate and go forth, each one on
+its definitely inspired mission. Some inevitable hour shall see the
+universal agitation of the vast body known as the "labouring class." For
+the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so
+ignorant and so down-pressed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
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+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Woman Who Toils By Mrs. John Van Horst and Miss Marie Van Horst
+</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Who Toils
+       Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls
+
+Author: Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2005 [EBook #15218]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WHO TOILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Alicia Williams and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. at www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='001.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/001-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/001-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The Authors" />
+</a>
+<center>MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS &quot;ESTHER KELLY&quot;<br />
+Wearing the costume of the pickle factory</center>
+<a href="images/001-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/001-2_th.jpg"
+alt="The Authors" />
+</a>
+<center>MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS &quot;BELL BALLARD&quot;<br />
+At work in a shoe factory</center></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h1>THE WOMAN WHO TOILS</h1><!-- Page 2 -->
+
+<center><i>Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen<br />
+as Factory Girls</i></center>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MRS. JOHN VAN VORST and<br />
+
+MARIE VAN VORST</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<center><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></center>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<center>NEW YORK:<br />
+
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+
+1903</center>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<!-- Page 4 -->
+<br />
+<br />
+<b>DEDICATION</b>
+<br />
+<br />
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td align="center"><b>To Mark Twain</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="justify">In loving tribute to his genius, and<br />
+to his human sympathy, which in<br />
+Pathos and Seriousness, as well as<br />
+in Mirth and Humour, have made<br />
+him kin with the whole world:&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">this book is inscribed by</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><b>BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST.</b></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td align="center"><b>PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+<p><i>My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst</i>:</p>
+
+<p><i>I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
+     your article, &quot;The Woman Who Toils.&quot; But to me there is a most
+     melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is
+     fundamentally infinitely more important than any other
+     question in this country&mdash;that is, the question of race
+     suicide, complete or partial</i>.</p>
+
+<p>     <i>An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
+     &quot;independent&quot;&mdash;that is, to live one's life purely according to
+     one's own desires&mdash;are in no sense substitutes for the
+     fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial
+     qualities without which there can be no strong races&mdash;the
+     qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of
+     scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to
+     work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to
+     be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside
+     of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
+     worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the
+     foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that
+     the only things really worth having <!-- Page 7 -->in life are those the
+     acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man
+     or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout
+     life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from
+     home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy
+     children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy&mdash;the
+     sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the
+     beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is
+     brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman
+     who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as
+     to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to
+     dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the
+     race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
+     all healthy people</i>.</p>
+
+<p>     <i>Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one
+     quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
+     qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
+     brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
+     can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the
+     nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and
+     coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor
+     people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury
+     in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work
+     in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and
+     ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of
+     families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest
+     thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that
+     nation has cause to be alarmed about its future</i>.</p>
+
+<p>  <i>There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble
+     with the situation you set forth is one of character, and
+     therefore we can conquer it if we only will.</i></p>
+
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Very sincerely yours,</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>THEODORE ROOSEVELT.</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<center><b>PREFATORY NOTE</b></center>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same
+title in <i>Everybody's Magazine</i>. Nearly a third of the volume has not
+been published in any form.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="2">
+<tr><td colspan="3" align="center">By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">Chapter</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Page</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_I'>Introductory</a></td><td>1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_II'>In a Pittsburg Factory</a></td><td>7</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_III'>Perry, A New York Mill Town</a></td><td>59</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_IV'>Making Clothing in Chicago</a></td><td>99</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_V'>The Meaning of It All </a></td><td>155</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" align="center">By MARIE VAN VORST</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">Chapter</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Page</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_VI'>Introductory</a></td><td>165</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_VII'>A Maker of Shoes at Lynn</a></td><td>169</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII'>The Southern Cotton Mills</a></td><td>215</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII'>The Mill Village</a></td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href='#THE_MILL'>The Mill</a></td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td><a href='#CHAPTER_IX'>The Child in the Southern Mills</a></td><td>275</td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS'></a>
+<h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+<ul>
+
+<li><a href='#001.jpg'>Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#012.jpg'>&quot;The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls
+softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning&quot;</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#058.jpg'>&quot;Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the lives
+consumed, and vanishing again&quot;</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#070.jpg'>&quot;They trifle with love&quot;</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#084.jpg'>After Saturday night's shopping</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#096.jpg'>Sunday evening at Silver Lake</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#102.jpg'>&quot;The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with
+the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards&quot;</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#114.jpg'>In a Chicago theatrical costume factory</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#128.jpg'>Chicago types</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#144.jpg'>The rear of a Chicago tenement</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#172.jpg'>A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory,
+<i>and</i> One of the swells of the factory: a very expert &quot;vamper,&quot; an Irish
+girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#184.jpg'>&quot;Learning&quot; a new hand</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#196.jpg'>The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass.</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#210.jpg'>&quot;Fancy gumming,&quot; <i>and</i> An all-round, experienced hand</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#220.jpg'>&quot;Mighty mill&mdash;pride of the architect and the commercial magnate&quot;</a></li>
+
+<li><a href='#240.jpg'>&quot;The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type&quot;</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_I'></a>
+<h2>THE WOMAN WHO TOILS</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<center>CHAPTER I&mdash;INTRODUCTORY</center>
+<br />
+<center>BY</center>
+<br />
+<center>MRS. JOHN VAN VORST</center>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<center>INTRODUCTORY</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of
+society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated
+as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper
+and the lower, the educated and the uneducated&mdash;and a further variety of
+opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come
+into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or
+elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for
+their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us
+recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral
+and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical
+development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help
+them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in
+every way.</p>
+
+<p>Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have
+two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material
+advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who
+consider the poor as objects of charity, <!-- Page 19 -->to be treated sentimentally,
+or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics
+nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for
+the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope
+we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality
+upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we
+must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with
+their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must
+discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their
+surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily
+effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived
+ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral,
+spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an
+undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its
+practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and
+to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out
+to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and
+sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help
+and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers
+which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as
+they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that
+occurred <!-- Page 20 -->to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for
+the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I
+might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find
+out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with
+ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman
+is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined,</p>
+
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td align="right">1st.</td><td>By nature,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2d.</td><td>By family life,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3d.</td><td>By social laws;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the
+woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new
+society as manifested by its working girls.</p>
+
+<p>After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away
+convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am
+hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the
+hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general
+help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their
+material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are
+condemned to slow death&mdash;mental, moral, physical death! If into their
+prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon
+should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain. </p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_II'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<center>IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>
+
+In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon
+Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined
+by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in
+the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616
+inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to
+these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and
+clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a
+glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this
+Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to
+call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose
+despots are the employers&mdash;the multi-millionaire patrons&mdash;and whose
+serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an
+authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons,
+the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this
+difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a
+thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also,
+thousands of <!-- Page 25 -->separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the
+pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are
+run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change.
+The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first
+and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays
+no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself
+over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied,
+and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to
+effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in
+Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their
+ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love
+of art, and of classic forms, the desire to embellish&mdash;all that was
+inspired by culture of the beautiful; the Renaissance in America is the
+rebirth of man's originality in the invention of the useful, the virgin
+power of man's wits as quickened in the crude struggle for life.
+Florence is <i>par excellence</i> the place where we can study the Italian
+Renaissance; Pittsburg appealed to me as a most favourable spot to watch
+the American Renaissance, the enlivening of energies which give value to
+a man devoid of education, energies which in their daily exercise with
+experience generate a new force, a force that makes our country what it
+is, industrially and economically. So it was toward Pittsburg that I
+first directed my <!-- Page 26 -->steps, but before leaving New York I assumed my
+disguise. In the Parisian clothes I am accustomed to wear I present the
+familiar outline of any woman of the world. With the aid of coarse
+woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a
+knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the
+ordinary type. I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the
+fortunate&mdash;I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate. I am
+to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of
+them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and
+sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated
+as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the
+gateman says a respectful &quot;To the right&quot; or &quot;To the left,&quot; and trusts to
+his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's
+hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: &quot;Now
+you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for
+you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry&mdash;just put those three
+cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman
+is standing and he'll direct you to your train.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a
+certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a
+class which, <!-- Page 27 -->as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later
+myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their
+manual training, ignorant on all subjects.</p>
+
+<p>My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to
+Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of
+miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy
+streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a
+frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the
+streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly
+like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic.
+Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues;
+occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning
+bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every
+three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The
+trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of
+the mills.</p>
+
+<p>I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar
+where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant
+scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce
+bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that
+passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed
+Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped <!-- Page 29 --><!-- Page 28 -->Hungarian, the
+pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his
+arm.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='012.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/012-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/012-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The Streets Are Covered With Snow, And Over The Snow The Soot Falls
+Softly Like A Mantle Of Perpetual Mourning" />
+</a>
+
+<center>
+
+&quot;THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE SOOT FALLS
+SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING&quot;
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a
+common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred
+through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I
+receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and
+I answer as best I can.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it you want?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Board and work in a factory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever worked in a factory?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, ma'am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever done any housework?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming
+prisoners and reasoning with the poor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, ma'am, I have done housework.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you make?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twelve dollars a month.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and
+fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, ma'am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you making anything now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, ma'am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you afford to pay board?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, as I hope to get work at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge
+for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population
+of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry
+written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of
+half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled
+close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three
+o'clock I find the waif boarding-house.</p>
+
+<p>The matron is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false
+hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive
+manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to
+direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make herself
+dreaded. In the distance I can hear a shrill, nasal orchestra of
+children's voices. I am cold and hungry. I have as yet no job. The
+noise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden
+impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter&mdash;to snap my
+fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate.
+Something within me calls <i>Courage</i>! I take a room at three dollars a
+week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with
+cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron
+tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 31 -->I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life,
+but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt
+letters: &quot;<i>Women Employees</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a
+gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and
+about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all
+surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a
+thousand. Each number means a workman&mdash;each tick of the clock a moment
+of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the
+window of the glass cage. It opens.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you need any girls?&quot; I ask, trying not to show my emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever worked in a factory?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir; but I'm very handy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What have you done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Housework,&quot; I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he says, looking at me, &quot;they need help up in the bottling
+department; but I don't know as it would pay you&mdash;they don't give more
+than sixty or seventy cents a day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am awfully anxious for work,&quot; I say. &quot;Couldn't I begin and get
+raised, perhaps?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely&mdash;there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You
+come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it,
+<!-- Page 32 -->and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good
+workers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not
+come in vain. I have a place!</p>
+
+<p>When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had
+heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there
+are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform
+checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the
+babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the
+freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down
+into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order.
+Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Quit rocking</i>!&quot; the false mother cries at them. &quot;You make my head
+ache. Most of 'em have no parents,&quot; she explains to me. &quot;None of 'em
+have homes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for,
+growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance;
+each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The
+matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated.
+The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This
+&quot;Dewey&quot; complains in a plain<!-- Page 33 -->tive voice of a too long absent mother. His
+rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he
+reiterates the refrain: &quot;My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't
+bring me no toys.&quot; And then with pride, &quot;My mamma buys rice and tea and
+lots of things,&quot; and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, &quot;My
+mamma comes in the street cars, only,&quot; sadly, &quot;she don't never come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without.
+At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming
+to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and,
+gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the
+short outlines of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been to the hospital,&quot; says one, &quot;and so's Lily. I drank a lot of
+washing soda and it made me sick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. &quot;I had typhoy fever&mdash;I was in
+the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the
+lights&mdash;it was just evening&mdash;and a man came in and he took one of the
+babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the
+row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was
+something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing,
+and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white
+thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another <!-- Page 34 -->time,&quot; Lily goes
+on, &quot;there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was
+takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on
+chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only
+with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an
+understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic
+difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image
+the violent and brutal side of existence&mdash;the only one with which they
+are acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open
+into a long room with a slanting roof. It serves as nursery and parlour.
+In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are
+seated with babies on their knees. They have the meek look of those who
+doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures
+of the overworked. Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt
+shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high
+foreheads. One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother's arms; one
+is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes
+through a scarlet mask. The corners of the room are filled with the
+drones&mdash;those who &quot;work for a bite of grub.&quot; The cook, her washing done,
+has piled her aching bones in a heap; <!-- Page 35 -->her drawn face waits like an
+indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue. Mary, the
+woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison's
+walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite
+of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her
+profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over
+them&mdash;dull and silent, they deaden her face. And Jennie, the charwoman,
+is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and
+withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is
+twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a
+mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a
+task.</p>
+
+<p>What could be hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be
+clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was
+impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was
+a total absence of beauty in everything&mdash;not a line of grace, not a
+pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to
+this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade
+the tenement. It was probable my comrades felt at no time the discomfort
+I did, but the harm done them is not the physical suffering their
+condition causes, but the moral and spiritual bondage in which it holds
+them. They are not a class of drones made differently <!-- Page 36 -->from us. I saw
+nothing to indicate that they were not born with like <i>capacities</i> to
+ours. As our bodies accustom themselves to luxury and cleanliness,
+theirs grow hardened to deprivation and filth. As our souls develop with
+the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal&mdash;an intellectual,
+esthetic and moral ideal&mdash;their souls diminish under the oppression of a
+constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they
+become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an
+argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as
+false. From all I saw I am convinced that, <i>given their relative
+preparation</i> for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys
+are the same as ours in kind and in degree.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy
+maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours
+until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal
+darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me
+as I went to bed: &quot;If you want to wash,&quot; she said, &quot;you'd better wash
+now; you can't have no water in your room, and there won't be nobody up
+when you leave in the morning.&quot; My evening bath is supplemented by a
+whisk of the sponge at five.</p>
+
+<p>Without it is black&mdash;a more intense black than night's beginning, when
+all is astir. The streets are <!-- Page 37 -->silent, an occasional train whirls past,
+groups of men hurry hither and thither swinging their arms, rubbing
+their ears in the freezing air. Many of them have neither overcoats nor
+gloves. Now and then a woman sweeps along. Her skirts have the same
+swing as my own short ones; under her arm she carries a newspaper bundle
+whose meaning I have grown to know. My own contains a midday meal: two
+cold fried oysters, two dried preserve sandwiches, a pickle and an
+orange. My way lies across a bridge. In the first gray of dawn the river
+shows black under its burden of ice. Along its troubled banks
+innumerable chimneys send forth their hot activity, clouds of seething
+flames, waving arms of smoke and steam&mdash;a symbol of spent energy, of the
+lives consumed and vanishing again, the sparks that shine an instant
+against the dark sky and are spent forever.</p>
+
+<p>As I draw nearer the factory I move with a stream of fellow workers
+pouring toward the glass cage of the timekeeper. He greets me and starts
+me on my upward journey with a wish that I shall not get discouraged, a
+reminder that the earnest worker always makes a way for herself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What will you do about your name?&quot; &quot;What will you do with your hair and
+your hands?&quot; &quot;How can you deceive people?&quot; These are some of the
+questions I had been asked by my friends.</p>
+
+<p>Before any one had cared or needed to know my <!-- Page 38 -->name it was morning of
+the second day, and my assumed name seemed by that time the only one I
+had ever had. As to hair and hands, a half-day's work suffices for their
+undoing. And my disguise is so successful I have deceived not only
+others but myself. I have become with desperate reality a factory girl,
+alone, inexperienced, friendless. I am making $4.20 a week and spending
+$3 of this for board alone, and I dread not being strong enough to keep
+my job. I climb endless stairs, am given a white cap and an apron, and
+my life as a factory girl begins. I become part of the ceaseless,
+unrelenting mechanism kept in motion by the poor.</p>
+
+<p>The factory I have chosen has been built contemporaneously with reforms
+and sanitary inspection. There are clean, well-aired rooms, hot and cold
+water with which to wash, places to put one's hat and coat, an
+obligatory uniform for regular employees, hygienic and moral advantages
+of all kinds, ample space for work without crowding.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side in rows of tens or twenties we stand before our tables
+waiting for the seven o'clock whistle to blow. In their white caps and
+blue frocks and aprons, the girls in my department, like any unfamiliar
+class, all look alike. My first task is an easy one; anybody could do
+it. On the stroke of seven my fingers fly. I place a lid of paper in a
+tin jar-top, over it a cork; this I press down with both hands, tossing
+the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite <!-- Page 39 -->of myself I hurry; I cannot
+work fast enough&mdash;I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have
+finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle
+is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for
+sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling,
+washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment for
+the simple work assigned to me. One hour passes, two, three hours; I fit
+ten, twenty, fifty dozen caps, and still my energy keeps up.</p>
+
+<p>The forewoman is a pretty girl of twenty. Her restless eyes, her
+metallic voice are the messengers who would know all. I am afraid of
+her. I long to please her. I am sure she must be saying &quot;<i>How well the
+new girl works</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Conversation is possible among those whose work has become mechanical.
+Twice I am sent to the storeroom for more caps. In these brief moments
+my companions volunteer a word of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was out to a ball last night,&quot; the youngest one says. &quot;I stayed so
+late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's nothing,&quot; another retorts. &quot;There's hardly an evening we don't
+have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And on my second trip the pale creature with me says:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last <!-- Page 40 -->Friday week. It's awful
+lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I
+miss her <i>dreadful</i>. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, you won't,&quot; the answer comes from a girl with short skirts.
+&quot;You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month
+and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same
+heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with
+us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making
+duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks,
+blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in
+hearts heretofore light with youth.</p>
+
+<p>When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my
+job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle
+jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle
+blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a
+part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to
+life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites&mdash;news to tell. We herd
+down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in
+all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The m&eacute;nu varies little: bread
+and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally <!-- Page 41 -->a sausage, a bit of cheese or a
+piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The
+dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in
+dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and
+&quot;sociables.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to
+my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my
+thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a
+numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can
+they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled;
+bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and
+loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the
+monotony of it, the never-ending supply of work to be begun and
+finished, begun and finished, begun and finished! Now and then some one
+cuts a finger or runs a splinter under the flesh; once the mustard
+machine broke&mdash;and still the work goes on, on, on! New girls like
+myself, who had worked briskly in the morning, are beginning to loiter.
+Out of the washing-tins hands come up red and swollen, only to be
+plunged again into hot dirty water. Would the whistle never blow? Once I
+pause an instant, my head dazed and weary, my ears strained to bursting
+with the deafening noise. Quickly a voice whispers in my ear: &quot;You'd
+better not stand there doin' nothin'. If <i>she</i> catches you she'll give
+it to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On! on! bundle of pains! For you this is one day's work in a thousand of
+peace and beauty. For those about you this is the whole of daylight,
+this is the winter dawn and twilight, this is the glorious summer noon,
+this is all day, this is every day, this is <i>life</i>. Rest is only a bit
+of a dream, snatched when the sleeper's aching body lets her close her
+eyes for a moment in oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Out beyond the chimney tops the snowfields and the river turn from gray
+to pink, and still the work goes on. Each crate I lift grows heavier,
+each bottle weighs an added pound. Now and then some one lends a helping
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tired, ain't you? This is your first day, ain't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The acid smell of vinegar and mustard penetrates everywhere. My ankles
+cry out pity. Oh! to sit down an instant!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tidy up the table,&quot; some one tells me; &quot;we're soon goin' home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Home! I think of the stifling fumes of fried food, the dim haze in the
+kitchen where my supper waits me; the children, the band of drifting
+workers, the shrill, complaining voice of the hired mother. This is
+home.</p>
+
+<p>I sweep and set to rights, limping, lurching along. At last the whistle
+blows! In a swarm we report; <!-- Page 43 -->we put on our things and get away into the
+cool night air. I have stood ten hours; I have fitted 1,300 corks; I
+have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents.</p>
+
+<p>The impressions of my first day crowd pell-mell upon my mind. The sound
+of the machinery dins in my ears. I can hear the sharp, nasal voices of
+the forewoman and the girls shouting questions and answers.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden recollection comes to me of a Dahomayan family I had watched at
+work in their hut during the Paris Exhibition. There was a magic spell
+in their voices as they talked together; the sounds they made had the
+cadence of the wind in the trees, the running of water, the song of
+birds: they echoed unconsciously the caressing melodies of nature. My
+factory companions drew their vocal inspiration from the bedlam of
+civilization, the rasping and pounding of machinery, the din which they
+must out-din to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>For the two days following my first experience I am unable to resume
+work. Fatigue has swept through my blood like a fever. Every bone and
+joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories
+and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling
+house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company
+I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than
+where I am; at the broom <!-- Page 44 -->factory they employ only men. I decide to
+continue with tin caps and pickle jars.</p>
+
+<p>My whole effort now is to find a respectable boarding-house. I start
+out, the thermometer near zero, the snow falling. I wander and ask,
+wander and ask. Up and down the black streets running parallel and at
+right angles with the factory I tap and ring at one after another of the
+two-story red-brick houses. More than half of them are empty, tenantless
+during the working hours. What hope is there for family life near the
+hearth which is abandoned at the factory's first call? The sociableness,
+the discipline, the division of responsibility make factory work a
+dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern
+conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls,
+impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery
+as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes:
+sport, college education, machinery&mdash;each is a factor in the gradual
+transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a
+collection of individuals with separate interests and aims outside the
+home.</p>
+
+<p>I pursue my search. It is the dinner hour. At last a narrow door opens,
+letting a puff of hot rank air blow upon me as I stand in the vestibule
+questioning: &quot;Do you take boarders?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman who answers stands with a spoon in her hand, her eyes fixed
+upon a rear room <!-- Page 45 -->where a stove, laden with frying-pans, glows and
+sputters.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come in,&quot; she says, &quot;and get warm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I walk into a front parlour with furniture that evidently serves
+domestic as well as social purposes. There is a profusion of white
+knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the
+fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the
+barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already
+I feel at home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Want board, do you?&quot; the woman asks. &quot;Well, we ain't got no place;
+we're always right full up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want,&quot; the woman
+calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out.</p>
+
+<p>The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take
+&quot;mealers&quot; only, some only &quot;roomers,&quot; some &quot;only gentlemen.&quot; I begin to
+understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on
+account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to
+fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town
+the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply
+of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between
+city and <!-- Page 46 -->country factory life that there is between university life in
+a capital and in a country town.</p>
+
+<p>A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to
+rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman.
+Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and
+beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you take boarders?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much
+trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room,&quot; she continues,
+opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her
+forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence
+the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My husband was killed on the railroad last week. He lived three hours.
+They took him to the hospital&mdash;a boy come running down and told me. I
+went up as fast as I could, but it was too late; he never spoke again. I
+guess he didn't know what struck him; his head was all smashed. He was
+awful good to me&mdash;so easy-going. I ain't got my mind down to work yet.
+If you don't like this here room,&quot; she goes on listlessly, &quot;maybe you
+could get suited across the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson Seton tells us in his book on wild animals that not one among
+them ever dies a natural death. As the opposite extreme of vital
+persistence <!-- Page 47 -->we have the man whose life, in spite of acute disease, is
+prolonged against reason by science; and midway comes the labourer, who
+takes his chances unarmed by any understanding of physical law, whose
+only safeguards are his wits and his presence of mind. The violent
+death, the accidents, the illnesses to which he falls victim might be
+often warded off by proper knowledge. Nature is a zealous enemy;
+ignorance and inexperience keep a whole class defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>The next day is Saturday. I feel a fresh excitement at going back to my
+job; the factory draws me toward it magnetically. I long to be in the
+hum and whir of the busy workroom. Two days of leisure without resources
+or amusement make clear to me how the sociability of factory life, the
+freedom from personal demands, the escape from self can prove a
+distraction to those who have no mental occupation, no money to spend on
+diversion. It is easier to submit to factory government which commands
+five hundred girls with one law valid for all, than to undergo the
+arbitrary discipline of parental authority. I speed across the
+snow-covered courtyard. In a moment my cap and apron are on and I am
+sent to report to the head forewoman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We thought you'd quit,&quot; she says. &quot;Lots of girls come in here and quit
+after one day, especially Saturday. To-day is scrubbing day,&quot; she smiles
+at me. &quot;Now we'll do right by you if you do <!-- Page 48 -->right by us. What did the
+timekeeper say he'd give you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sixty or seventy a day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll give you seventy,&quot; she says. &quot;Of course, we can judge girls a
+good deal by their looks, and we can see that you're above the average.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She wears her cap close against her head. Her front hair is rolled up in
+crimping-pins. She has false teeth and is a widow. Her pale, parched
+face shows what a great share of life has been taken by daily
+over-effort repeated during years. As she talks she touches my arm in a
+kindly fashion and looks at me with blue eyes that float about under
+weary lids. &quot;You are only at the beginning,&quot; they seem to say. &quot;Your
+youth and vigour are at full tide, but drop by drop they will be sapped
+from you, to swell the great flood of human effort that supplies the
+world's material needs. You will gain in experience,&quot; the weary lids
+flutter at me, &quot;but you will pay <i>with your life</i> the living you make.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is no variety in my morning's work. Next to me is a bright, pretty
+girl jamming chopped pickles into bottles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been here?&quot; I ask, attracted by her capable
+appearance. She does her work easily and well.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About five months.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How much do you make?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From 90 cents to $1.05. I'm doing piece-work,&quot; <!-- Page 49 -->she explains. &quot;I get
+seven-eighths of a cent for every dozen bottles I fill. I have to fill
+eight dozen to make seven cents. Downstairs in the corking-room you can
+make as high as $1.15 to $1.20. They won't let you make any more than
+that. Me and them two girls over there are the only ones in this room
+doing piece-work. I was here three weeks as a day-worker.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you live at home?&quot; I ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I don't have to work. I don't pay no board. My father and my
+brothers supports me and my mother. But,&quot; and her eyes twinkle, &quot;I
+couldn't have the clothes I do if I didn't work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you spend your money all on yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I am amazed at the cheerfulness of my companions. They complain of
+fatigue, of cold, but never at any time is there a suggestion of
+ill-humour. Their suppressed animal spirits reassert themselves when the
+forewoman's back is turned. Companionship is the great stimulus. I am
+confident that without the social <i>entrain</i>, the encouragement of
+example, it would be impossible to obtain as much from each individual
+girl as is obtained from them in groups of tens, fifties, hundreds
+working together.</p>
+
+<p>When lunch is over we are set to scrubbing. Every table and stand, every
+inch of the factory floor must be scrubbed in the next four hours. The
+whistle on Saturday blows an hour earlier. Any girl who has not finished
+her work when the day is <!-- Page 50 -->done, so that she can leave things in perfect
+order, is kept overtime, for which she is paid at the rate of six or
+seven cents an hour. A pail of hot water, a dirty rag and a
+scrubbing-brush are thrust into my hands. I touch them gingerly. I get a
+broom and for some time make sweeping a necessity, but the forewoman is
+watching me. I am afraid of her. There is no escape. I begin to scrub.
+My hands go into the brown, slimy water and come out brown and slimy. I
+slop the soap-suds around and move on to a fresh place. It appears there
+are a right and a wrong way of scrubbing. The forewoman is at my side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever scrubbed before?&quot; she asks sharply. This is humiliating.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answer; &quot;I have scrubbed ... oilcloth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The forewoman knows how to do everything. She drops down on her knees
+and, with her strong arms and short-thumbed, brutal hands, she shows me
+how to scrub.</p>
+
+<p>The grumbling is general. There is but one opinion among the girls: it
+is not right that they should be made to do this work. They all echo the
+same resentment, but their complaints are made in whispers; not one has
+the courage to openly rebel. What, I wonder to myself, do the men do on
+scrubbing day. I try to picture one of them on his hands and knees in a
+sea of brown mud. It is impossible. <!-- Page 51 -->The next time I go for a supply of
+soft soap in a department where the men are working I take a look at the
+masculine interpretation of house cleaning. One man is playing a hose on
+the floor and the rest are rubbing the boards down with long-handled
+brooms and rubber mops.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You take it easy,&quot; I say to the boss.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I won't have no scrubbing in my place,&quot; he answers emphatically. &quot;The
+first scrubbing day, they says to me 'Get down on your hands and knees,'
+and I says&mdash;'Just pay me my money, will you; I'm goin' home. What
+scrubbing can't be done with mops ain't going to be done by me.' The
+women wouldn't have to scrub, either, if they had enough spirit all of
+'em to say so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I determined to find out if possible, during my stay in the factory,
+what it is that clogs this mainspring of &quot;spirit&quot; in the women.</p>
+
+<p>I hear fragmentary conversations about fancy dress balls, valentine
+parties, church sociables, flirtations and clothes. Almost all of the
+girls wear shoes with patent leather and some or much cheap jewelry,
+brooches, bangles and rings. A few draw their corsets in; the majority
+are not laced. Here and there I see a new girl whose back is flat, whose
+chest is well developed. Among the older hands who have begun work early
+there is not a straight pair of shoulders. Much of the bottle washing
+and filling is done by children from twelve to fourteen <!-- Page 52 -->years of age.
+On their slight, frail bodies toil weighs heavily; the delicate child
+form gives way to the iron hand of labour pressed too soon upon it.
+Backs bend earthward, chests recede, never to be sound again.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>After a Sunday of rest I arrive somewhat ahead of time on Monday
+morning, which leaves me a few moments for conversation with a
+piece-worker who is pasting labels on mustard jars. She is fifteen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like your job?&quot; I ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do,&quot; she answers, pleased to tell her little history. &quot;I began
+in a clothing shop. I only made $2.50 a week, but I didn't have to
+stand. I felt awful when papa made me quit. When I came in here, bein'
+on my feet tired me so I cried every night for two months. Now I've got
+used to it. I don't feel no more tired when I get home than I did when I
+started out.&quot; There are two sharp blue lines that drag themselves down
+from her eyes to her white cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you know, at Christmas they give us two weeks,&quot; she goes on in the
+sociable tone of a woman whose hands are occupied. &quot;I just didn't know
+what to do with myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your mother work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my, no. I don't have to work, only if I didn't I couldn't have the
+clothes I do. I save <!-- Page 53 -->some of my money and spend the rest on myself. I
+make $6 to $7 a week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl next us volunteers a share in the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I bet you can't guess how old I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I look at her. Her face and throat are wrinkled, her hands broad, and
+scrawny; she is tall and has short skirts. What shall be my clue? If I
+judge by pleasure, &quot;unborn&quot; would be my answer; if by effort, then &quot;a
+thousand years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twenty,&quot; I hazard as a safe medium.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fourteen,&quot; she laughs. &quot;I don't like it at home, the kids bother me so.
+Mamma's people are well-to-do. I'm working for my own pleasure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, I wish I was,&quot; says a new girl with a red waist. &quot;We three
+girls supports mamma and runs the house. We have $13 rent to pay and a
+load of coal every month and groceries. It's no joke, I can tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The whistle blows; I go back to my monotonous task. The old aches begin
+again, first gently, then more and more sharply. The work itself is
+growing more mechanical. I can watch the girls around me. What is it
+that determines superiority in this class? Why was the girl filling
+pickle jars put on piece-work after three weeks, when others older than
+she are doing day-work at fifty and sixty cents after a year in the
+factory? What quality decides that four shall direct four hundred?
+Intelligence I put first; <!-- Page 54 -->intelligence of any kind, from the natural
+penetration that needs no teaching to the common sense that every one
+relies upon. Judgment is not far behind in the list, and it is soon
+matured by experience. A strong will and a moral steadiness stand
+guardians over the other two. The little pickle girl is winning in the
+race by her intelligence. The forewomen have all four qualities,
+sometimes one, sometimes another predominating. Pretty Clara is smarter
+than Lottie. Lottie is more steady. Old Mrs. Minns' will has kept her at
+it until her judgment has become infallible and can command a good
+price. Annie is an evenly balanced mixture of all, and the five hundred
+who are working under the five lack these qualities somewhat, totally,
+or have them in useless proportions.</p>
+
+<p>Monday is a hard day. There is more complaining, more shirking, more
+gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to
+dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young
+man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the
+language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the
+abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other,
+but in all they say there is not a word of value&mdash;nothing that would
+interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the
+sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration
+of the French <i>ouvriere</i>. The Old <!-- Page 55 -->World generations ago divided itself
+into classes; the lower class watched the upper and grew observant and
+appreciative, wise and discriminating, through the study of a master's
+will. Here in the land of freedom, where no class line is rigid, the
+precious chance is not to serve but to live for oneself; not to watch a
+superior, but to find out by experience. The ideal plays no part, stern
+realities alone count, and thus we have a progressive, practical,
+independent people, the expression of whose personality is interesting
+not through their words but by their deeds.</p>
+
+<p>When the Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the
+dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her
+temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain,
+the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at
+first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad
+English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to
+adopt the twang. No allusion is made to my pronunciation except by one
+girl, who says:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew you was from the East. My sister spent a year in Boston and when
+she come back she talked just like you do, but she lost it all again.
+I'd give anything if I could talk <i>aristocratic</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I am beginning to understand why the meager lunches of
+preserve-sandwiches and pickles more than satisfy the girls whom I was
+prepared to <!-- Page 56 -->accuse of spending their money on gewgaws rather than on
+nourishment. It is fatigue that steals the appetite. I can hardly taste
+what I put in my mouth; the food sticks in my throat. The girls who
+complain most of being tired are the ones who roll up their newspaper
+bundles half full. They should be given an hour at noon. The first half
+of it should be spent in rest and recreation before a bite is touched.
+The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and
+pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I
+did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and
+sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste.</p>
+
+<p>So long as I remain in the bottling department there is little variety
+in my days. Rising at 5:30 every morning, I make my way through black
+streets to offer my sacrifice of energy on the altar of toil. All is
+done without a fresh incident. Accumulated weariness forces me to take a
+day off. When I return I am sent for in the corking-room. The forewoman
+lends me a blue gingham dress and tells me I am to do &quot;piece&quot;-work.
+There are three who work together at every corking-table. My two
+companions are a woman with goggles and a one-eyed boy. We are not a
+brilliant trio. The job consists in evening the vinegar in the bottles,
+driving the cork in, first with a machine, then with a hammer, letting
+out the air with a knife stuck under the <!-- Page 57 -->cork, capping the corks,
+sealing the caps, counting and distributing the bottles. These
+operations are paid for at the rate of one-half a cent for the dozen
+bottles, which sum is divided among us. My two companions are earning a
+living, so I must work in dead earnest or take bread out of their
+mouths. At every blow of the hammer there is danger. Again and again
+bottles fly to pieces in my hand. The boy who runs the corking-machine
+smashes a glass to fragments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you hurt?&quot; I ask, my own fingers crimson stained.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That ain't nothin',&quot; he answers. &quot;Cuts is common; my hands is full of
+'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman directs us; she is fussy and loses her head, the work
+accumulates, I am slow, the boy is clumsy. There is a stimulus
+unsuspected in working to get a job done. Before this I had worked to
+make the time pass. Then no one took account of how much I did; the
+factory clock had a weighted pendulum; now ambition outdoes physical
+strength. The hours and my purpose are running a race together. But,
+hurry as I may, as we do, when twelve blows its signal we have corked
+only 210 dozen bottles! This is no more than day-work at seventy cents.
+With an ache in every muscle, I redouble my energy after lunch. The girl
+with the goggles looks at me blindly and says:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't it just awful hard work? You can make good money, but you've got
+to hustle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 58 -->She is a forlorn specimen of humanity, ugly, old, dirty, condemned to
+the slow death of the overworked. I am a green hand. I make mistakes; I
+have no experience in the fierce sustained effort of the bread-winners.
+Over and over I turn to her, over and over she is obliged to correct me.
+During the ten hours we work side by side not one murmur of impatience
+escapes her. When she sees that I am getting discouraged she calls out
+across the deafening din, &quot;That's all right; you can't expect to learn
+in a day; just keep on steady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I go about distributing bottles to the labelers I notice a strange
+little elf, not more than twelve years old, hauling loaded crates; her
+face and chest are depressed, she is pale to blueness, her eyes have
+indigo circles, her pupils are unnaturally dilated, her brows
+contracted; she has the appearance of a cave-bred creature. She seems
+scarcely human. When the time for cleaning up arrives toward five my
+boss sends me for a bucket of water to wash up the floor. I go to the
+sink, turn on the cold water and with it the steam which takes the place
+of hot water. The valve slips; in an instant I am enveloped in a
+scalding cloud. Before it has cleared away the elf is by my side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you hurt yourself?&quot; she asks.</p>
+
+<p>Her inhuman form is the vehicle of a human heart, warm and tender. She
+lifts her wide-pupiled eyes to mine; her expression does not change from
+<!-- Page 59 -->that of habitual scrutiny cast early in a rigid mould, but her voice
+carries sympathy from its purest source.</p>
+
+<p>There is more honour than courtesy in the code of etiquette. Commands
+are given curtly; the slightest injustice is resented; each man for
+himself in work, but in trouble all for the one who is suffering. No
+bruise or cut or burn is too familiar a sight to pass uncared for.</p>
+
+<p>It is their common sufferings, their common effort that unites them.</p>
+
+<p>When I have become expert in the corking art I am raised to a better
+table, with a bright boy, and a girl who is dignified and indifferent
+with the indifference of those who have had too much responsibility. She
+never hurries; the work slips easily through her fingers. She keeps a
+steady bearing over the morning's ups and downs. Under her load of
+trials there is something big in the steady way she sails.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Used to hard work?&quot; she asks me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not much,&quot; I answer; &quot;are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes. I began at thirteen in a bakery. I had a place near the oven
+and the heat overcame me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her shoulders are bowed, her chest is hollow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Looking for a boarding place near the factory, I hear,&quot; she continues.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. You live at home, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. There's four of us: mamma, papa, my sister and myself. Papa's
+blind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't he work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, he creeps to his job every morning, and he's got so much
+experience he kind o' does things by instinct.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your mother work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my, no. My sister's an invalid. She hasn't been out o' the door for
+three years. She's got enlargement of the heart and consumption, too, I
+guess; she 'takes' hemorrhages. Sometimes she has twelve in one night.
+Every time she coughs the blood comes foaming out of her mouth. She
+can't lie down. I guess she'd die if she lay down, and she gets so tired
+sittin' up all night. She used to be a tailoress, but I guess her job
+didn't agree with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many checks have we got,&quot; I ask toward the close of the day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thirteen,&quot; Ella answers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An unlucky number,&quot; I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you superstitious?&quot; she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the
+pickle jars. &quot;I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having
+presentiments, and they come true, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is a mystic, I thought; so I continued:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what about dreams?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; she cried. &quot;Dreams! I have the queerest of anybody!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was all attention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, last night,&quot; she drew near to me, and spoke <!-- Page 61 -->slowly, &quot;I dreamed
+that mamma was drunk, and that she was stealing chickens!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such is the imagination of this weary worker.</p>
+
+<p>The whole problem in mechanical labour rests upon economy of force. The
+purpose of each, I learned by experience, was to accomplish as much as
+possible with one single stroke. In this respect the machine is superior
+to man, and man to woman. Sometimes I tried original ways of doing the
+work given me. I soon found in every case that the methods proposed by
+the forewoman were in the end those whereby I could do the greatest
+amount of work with the least effort. A mustard machine had recently
+been introduced to the factory. It replaced three girls; it filled as
+many bottles with a single stroke as the girls could fill with twelve.
+This machine and all the others used were run by boys or men; the girls
+had not strength enough to manipulate them methodically.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the machine, the physical force of the man were simplifying
+their tasks. While the boy was keeping steadily at one thing, perfecting
+himself, we, the women, were doing a variety of things, complicated and
+fussy, left to our lot because we had not physical force for the simpler
+but greater effort. The boy at the corking-table had soon become an
+expert; he was fourteen and he made from $1 to $1.20 a day. He worked
+ten hours at one job, whereas Ella and I had a dozen little jobs <!-- Page 62 -->almost
+impossible to systematize: we hammered and cut and capped the corks and
+washed and wiped the bottles, sealed them, counted them, distributed
+them, kept the table washed up, the sink cleaned out, and once a day
+scrubbed up our own precincts. When I asked the boy if he was tired he
+laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more
+with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by <i>nature</i> a more
+valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to
+abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had
+given us a handicap at the start.</p>
+
+<p>For a few days there is no vacancy at the corking-tables. I am sent back
+to the bottling department. The oppressive monotony is one day varied by
+a summons to the men's dining-room. I go eagerly, glad of any change. In
+the kitchen I find a girl with skin disease peeling potatoes, and a
+coloured man making soup in a wash-boiler. The girl gives me a stool to
+sit on, and a knife and a pan of potatoes. The dinner under preparation
+is for the men of the factory. There are two hundred of them. They are
+paid from $1.35 up to $3 a day. Their wages begin above the highest
+limit given to women. The dinner costs each man ten cents. The $20 paid
+in daily cover the expenses of the cook, two kitchen maids and the
+dinner, which consists of meat, bread and butter, vegetables and coffee,
+sometimes soup, <!-- Page 63 -->sometimes dessert. If this can pay for two hundred
+there is no reason why for five cents a hot meal of some kind could not
+be given the women. They don't demand it, so they are left to make
+themselves ill on pickles and preserves.</p>
+
+<p>The coloured cook is full of song and verse. He quotes from the Bible
+freely, and gives us snatches of popular melodies.</p>
+
+<p>We have frequent calls from the elevator boy, who brings us ice and
+various provisions. Both men, I notice, take their work easily. During
+the morning a busy Irish woman comes hurrying into our precincts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say,&quot; she yells in a shrill voice, &quot;my cauliflowers ain't here, are
+they? I ordered 'em early and they ain't came yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without properly waiting for an answer she hurries away again.</p>
+
+<p>The coloured cook turns to the elevator boy understandingly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just like a woman! Why, before I'd <i>make a fuss</i> about cauliflowers or
+anything else!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>About eleven the head forewoman stops in to eat a plate of rice and
+milk. While I am cutting bread for the two hundred I hear her say to the
+cook in a gossipy tone:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you like the new girl? She's here all alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I am called away and do not hear the rest of the <!-- Page 64 -->conversation. When I
+return the cook lectures me in this way:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here alone, are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get along nicely and not kill
+yourself with work either. Just stick at it and they'll do right by you.
+Lots o' girls who's here alone gets to fooling around. Now I like
+everybody to have a good time, and I hope you'll have a good time, too,
+but you mustn't carry it too far.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mind went back as he said this to a conversation I had had the night
+before with a working-girl at my boarding-house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is your home?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She had been doing general housework, but ill-health had obliged her to
+take a rest.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me skeptically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We don't have no homes,&quot; was her answer. &quot;We just get up and get
+whenever they send us along.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And almost as a sequel to this I thought of two sad cases that had come
+close to my notice as fellow boarders.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting alone one night by the gas stove in the parlour. The
+matron had gone out and left me to &quot;answer the door.&quot; The bell rang and
+I opened cautiously, for the wind was howling and driving the snow and
+sleet about on the winter air. A <!-- Page 65 -->young girl came in; she was seeking a
+lodging. Her skirts and shoes were heavy with water. She took off her
+things slowly in a dazed manner. Her short, quick breathing showed how
+excited she was. When she spoke at last her voice sounded hollow, her
+eyes moved about restlessly. She stopped abruptly now and then and
+contracted her brows as though in an appeal for merciful tears; then she
+continued in the same broken, husky voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose I'm not the only one in trouble. I've thought a thousand
+times over that I would kill myself. I suppose I loved him&mdash;but I <i>hate</i>
+him now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These two sentences, recurring, were the story's all.</p>
+
+<p>The impotence of rebellion, a sense of outrage at being abandoned, the
+instinctive appeal for protection as a right, the injustice of being
+left solely to bear the burden of responsibility which so long as it was
+pleasure had been shared&mdash;these were the thoughts and feelings breeding
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>She had spent the day in a fruitless search for her lover. She had been
+to his boss and to his rooms. He had paid his debts and gone, nobody
+knew where. She was pretty, vain, homeless; alone to bear the
+responsibility she had not been alone to incur. She could not shirk it
+as the man had done. They had both disregarded the law. On whom were the
+consequences weighing more heavily? On the <!-- Page 66 -->woman. She is the sufferer;
+she is the first to miss the law's protection. She is the weaker member
+whom, for the sake of the race, society protects. Nature has made her
+man's physical inferior; society is obliged to recognize this in the
+giving of a marriage law which beyond doubt is for the benefit of woman,
+since she can least afford to disregard it.</p>
+
+<p>Another evening when the matron was out I sat for a time with a young
+working woman and her baby. There is a comradeship among the poor that
+makes light of indiscreet questions. I felt only sympathy in asking:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you alone to bring up your child?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, ma'am,&quot; was the answer. &quot;I'll never go home with <i>him</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at <i>him</i>: a wizened, four-months-old infant with a huge flat
+nose, and two dull black eyes fixed upon the gas jet. The girl had the
+grace of a forest-born creature; she moved with the mysterious strength
+and suppleness of a tree's branch. She was proud; she felt herself
+disgraced. For four months she had not left the house. I talked on,
+proposing different things.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know what to do,&quot; she said. &quot;I can't never go home with <i>him</i>,
+and if I went home without him I'd never be the same. I don't know what
+I'd do if anything happened to <i>him</i>.&quot; Her head bowed over the child;
+she held him close to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the coloured cook and my day in <!-- Page 67 -->the kitchen. I had
+ample opportunity to compare domestic service with factory work. We set
+the table for two hundred, and do a thousand miserable slavish tasks
+that must be begun again the following day. At twelve the two hundred
+troop in, toil-worn and begrimed. They pass like locusts, leaving us
+sixteen hundred dirty dishes to wash up and wipe. This takes us four
+hours, and when we have finished the work stands ready to be done over
+the next morning with peculiar monotony. In the factory there is
+stimulus in feeling that the material which passes through one's hands
+will never be seen or heard of again.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday the owner of the factory comes at lunch time with several
+friends and talks to us with an amazing <i>camaraderie</i>. He is kindly,
+humourous and tactful. One or two missionaries speak after him, but
+their conversation is too abstract for us. We want something dramatic,
+imaginative, to hold our attention, or something wholly natural. Tell us
+about the bees, the beavers or the toilers of the sea. The longing for
+flowers has often come to me as I work, and a rose seems of all things
+the most desirable. In my present condition I do not hark back to
+civilized wants, but repeatedly my mind travels toward the country
+places I have seen in the fields and forests. If I had a holiday I would
+spend it seeing not what man but what God has made. These are the things
+to be remembered in addressing <!-- Page 68 -->or trying to amuse or instruct girls who
+are no more prepared than I felt myself to be for any preconceived ideal
+of art or ethics. The omnipresence of dirt and ugliness, of machines and
+&quot;stock,&quot; leave the mind in a state of lassitude which should be roused
+by something natural. As an initial remedy for the ills I voluntarily
+assumed I would propose amusement. Of all the people who spoke to us
+that Saturday, we liked best the one who made us laugh. It was a relief
+to hear something funny. In working as an outsider in a factory girls'
+club I had always held that nothing was so important as to give the poor
+something beautiful to look at and think about&mdash;a photograph or copy of
+some <i>chef d'oeuvre</i>, an <i>objet d'art</i>, lessons in literature and art
+which would uplift their souls from the dreariness of their
+surroundings. Three weeks as a factory girl had changed my beliefs. If
+the young society women who sacrifice one evening every week to talk to
+the poor in the slums about Shakespeare and Italian art would instead
+offer diversion first&mdash;a play, a farce, a humourous recitation&mdash;they
+would make much more rapid progress in winning the confidence of those
+whom they want to help. The working woman who has had a good laugh is
+more ready to tell what she needs and feels and fears than the woman who
+has been forced to listen silently to an abstract lesson. In society
+when we wish to make friends with people we begin by entertaining them.
+<!-- Page 69 -->It should be the same way with the poor. Next to amusement as a means
+of giving temporary relief and bringing about relations which will be
+helpful to all, I put instruction, in the form of narrative, about the
+people of other countries, our fellow man, how he lives and works; and,
+third, under this same head, primitive lessons about animals and plants,
+the industries of the bees, the habits of ants, the natural phenomena
+which require no reasoning power to understand and which open the
+thoughts upon a delightful unknown vista.</p>
+
+<p>My first experience is drawing to its close. I have surmounted the
+discomforts of insufficient food, of dirt, a bed without sheets, the
+strain of hard manual labour. I have confined my observations to life
+and conditions in the factory. Owing, as I have before explained, to the
+absorption of factory life into city life in a place as large as
+Pittsburg, it seemed to me more profitable to centre my attention on the
+girl within the factory, leaving for a small town the study of her in
+her family and social life. I have pointed out as they appeared to me
+woman's relative force as a worker and its effects upon her economic
+advancement. I have touched upon two cases which illustrate her relative
+dependence on the law. She appeared to me not as the equal of man either
+physically or legally. It remained to study her socially. In the factory
+where I worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days. <!-- Page 70 -->The
+women's highest wages were lower than the man's lowest. Both were
+working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial
+work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were
+properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and
+pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a
+single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw
+myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at
+the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying
+conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of
+labourers taking part in the competition. In the masculine category I
+met but one class of competitor: the bread-winner. In the feminine
+category I found a variety of classes: the bread-winner, the
+semi-bread-winner, the woman who works for luxuries. This inevitably
+drags the wage level. The self-supporting girl is in competition with
+the child, with the girl who lives at home and makes a small
+contribution to the household expenses, and with the girl who is
+supported and who spends all her money on her clothes. It is this
+division of purpose which takes the &quot;spirit&quot; out of them as a class.
+There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is
+not equally vital to them all. It is not only nature and the law which
+demand protection for women, but society as well. In every case of <!-- Page 71 -->the
+number I investigated, if there were sons, daughters or a husband in the
+family, the mother was not allowed to work. She was wholly protected. In
+the families where the father and brothers were making enough for bread
+and butter, the daughters were protected partially or entirely. There is
+no law which regulates this social protection: it is voluntary, and it
+would seem to indicate that civilized woman is meant to be an economic
+dependent. Yet, on the other hand, what is the new force which impels
+girls from their homes into the factories to work when they do not
+actually need the money paid them for their effort and sacrifice? Is it
+a move toward some far distant civilization when women shall have become
+man's physical equal, a &quot;free, economic, social factor, making possible
+the full social combination of individuals in collective industry&quot;? This
+is a matter for speculation only. What occurred to me as a possible
+remedy both for the oppression of the woman bread-winner and also as a
+betterment for the girl who wants to work though she does not need the
+money, was this: the establishment of schools where the esthetic
+branches of industrial art might be taught to the girls who by their
+material independence could give some leisure to acquiring a profession
+useful to themselves and to society in general. The whole country would
+be benefited by the opening of such schools as the Empress of Russia has
+patronized for the main<!-- Page 72 -->tenance of the &quot;petites industries,&quot; or those
+which Queen Margherita has established for the revival of lace-making in
+Italy. If there was such a counter-attraction to machine labour, the
+bread-winner would have a freer field and the non-bread-winner might
+still work for luxury and at the same time better herself morally,
+mentally and esthetically. She could aid in forming an intermediate
+class of labourers which as yet does not exist in America: the
+hand-workers, the <i>main d'oeuvre</i> who produce the luxurious objects of
+industrial art for which we are obliged to send to Europe when we wish
+to beautify our homes.</p>
+
+<p>The American people are lively, intelligent, capable of learning
+anything. The schools of which I speak, founded, not for the
+manufacturing of the useful but of the beautiful, could be started
+informally as classes and by individual effort. Such labour would be
+paid more than the mechanical factory work; the immense importation from
+abroad of objects of industrial art sufficiently proves the demand for
+them in this country; there would be no material disadvantage for the
+girl who gave up her job in a pickle factory. Her faculties would be
+well employed, and she could, without leaving her home, do work which
+would be of esthetic and, indirectly, of moral value.</p>
+
+<p>I was discouraged at first to see how difficult it was to help the
+working girls as individuals and how still more difficult to help them
+as a class. There is <!-- Page 73 -->perhaps no surer way of doing this than by giving
+opportunities to those who have a purpose and a will. No amount of
+openings will help the girl who has not both of these. I watched many
+girls with intelligence and energy who were unable to develop for the
+lack of a chance a start in the right direction. Aside from the few
+remedies I have been able to suggest, I would like to make an appeal for
+persistent sympathy in behalf of those whose misery I have shared. Until
+some marvelous advancement has been made toward the reign of justice
+upon earth, every man, woman and child should have constantly in his
+heart the sufferings of the poorest.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the
+streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental
+food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of
+labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a
+Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the
+cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has
+produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass,
+they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their
+bargains cheap; from us, the co&ouml;perators who enable them to have the
+luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the
+monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd
+to our work in the winter <!-- Page 74 -->dawn; think of us as we bend over our task
+all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we
+resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of
+us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand
+protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your
+material demands; think of us&mdash;be merciful.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='058.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/058-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/058-1_th.jpg"
+alt="Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the lives
+consumed, and vanishing again" />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;WAVING ARMS OF SMOKE AND STEAM, A SYMBOL OF SPENT ENERGY, OF THE LIVES
+CONSUMED, AND VANISHING AGAIN&quot;<br />
+Factories on the Alleghany River at the 16th Street bridge, just below
+the pickle works
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_III'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<center>PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>No place in America could have afforded better than Pittsburg a chance
+to study the factory life of American girls, the stimulus of a new
+country upon the labourers of old races, the fervour and energy of a
+people animated by hope and stirred to activity by the boundless
+opportunities for making money. It is the labourers' city <i>par
+excellence</i>; and in my preceding chapters I have tried to give a clear
+picture of factory life between the hours of seven and six, of the
+economic conditions, of the natural social and legal equipment of woman
+as a working entity, of her physical, moral and esthetic development.</p>
+
+<p>Now, since the time ticked out between the morning summoning whistle to
+that which gives release at night is not half the day, and only
+two-thirds of the working hours, my second purpose has been to find a
+place where the factory girl's own life could best be studied: her
+domestic, religious and sentimental life.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the western part of New York State, one of my comrades at
+the pickle works had told me, <!-- Page 79 -->there was a town whose population was
+chiefly composed of mill-hands. The name of the place was Perry, and I
+decided upon it as offering the typical American civilization among the
+working classes. New England is too free of grafts to give more than a
+single aspect; Pittsburg is an international bazaar; but the foundations
+of Perry are laid with bricks from all parts of the world, held together
+by a strong American cement.</p>
+
+<p>Ignorant of Perry further than as it exists, a black spot on a branch of
+a small road near Buffalo, I set out from New York toward my destination
+on the Empire State Express. There was barely time to descend with my
+baggage at Rochester before the engine had started onward again,
+trailing behind it with world-renowned rapidity its freight of travelers
+who, for a few hours under the car's roof, are united by no other common
+interest than that of journeying quickly from one spot to another, where
+they disperse never to meet again. My Perry train had an altogether
+different character. I was late for it, but the brakeman saw me coming
+and waved to the engineer not to start until my trunk was checked and
+safely boarded like myself. Then we bumped our way through meadows
+quickened to life by the soft spring air; we halted at crossroads to
+pick up stray travelers and shoppers; we unloaded plowing machines and
+shipped crates of live fowl; we waited at wayside stations with
+high-sounding names <!-- Page 80 -->for family parties whose unpunctuality was
+indulgently considered by the occupants of the train.</p>
+
+<p>My companions, chiefly women, were of the homely American type whose New
+England drawl has been modified by a mingling of foreign accents. They
+took advantage of this time for &quot;visiting&quot; with neighbours whom the
+winter snows and illnesses had rendered inaccessible. Their inquiries
+for each other were all kindliness and sympathy, and the peaceful,
+tolerant, uneventful way in which we journeyed from Rochester to Perry
+was a symbol of the way in which these good people had journeyed across
+life. Perry, the terminus of the line, was a frame station lodged on
+stilts in a sea of surrounding mud. When the engine had come to a
+standstill and ceased to pant, when the last truck had been unloaded,
+the baggage room closed, there were no noises to be heard except those
+that came from a neighbouring country upon whose peace the small town
+had not far encroached; the splash of a horse and buggy through the mud,
+a monotonous voice mingling with the steady tick of the telegraph
+machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible
+stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the
+earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the
+railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a
+man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools,
+rakes <!-- Page 81 -->and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in
+resuming my toil-worn clothes had led me to make certain modifications
+which I feared in so small a town as Perry might relegate me to the
+class I had voluntarily abandoned. The man in rubber boots looked me
+over as I approached, bag in hand, and to my salutation he replied:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Going down to the mill, I suppose. There's lots o' ladies comes in the
+train every day now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was the perfection of tact; he placed me in one sentence as a
+mill-hand and a lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll take you down as far as Main Street,&quot; he volunteered, giving me at
+once a feeling of kindly interest which &quot;city folks&quot; have not time to
+show.</p>
+
+<p>We found our way by improvised crossings through broad, soft beds of
+mud. Among the branches of the sap-fed trees which lined the unpaved
+streets transparent balls of glass were suspended, from which, as
+twilight deepened, a brilliant artificial light shot its rays, the
+perfection of modern invention, over the primitive, unfinished little
+town of Perry, which was all contrast and energy, crudity and progress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's a lot of the girls left the mill yesterday,&quot; my companion
+volunteered. &quot;They cut the wages, and some of the oldest hands got right
+out. There's more than a thousand of 'em on the pay-roll, but I guess
+you can make good money if you're ready to work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 82 -->We had reached Main Street, which, owing to the absence of a trolley,
+had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out
+into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame
+stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My
+guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of
+mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with
+their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some
+ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the Perry population.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Follow the boardwalk!&quot; was the simple command I received. &quot;Keep right
+along until you come to the mill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I presently fell in with a drayman, who was calling alternately to his
+horse as it sucked in and out of the mud and to a woman on the plank
+walk. She had on a hat with velvet and ostrich plumes, a black frock, a
+side bag with a lace handkerchief. She was not young and she wore
+spectacles; but there was something nervous about her step, a slight
+tremolo as she responded to the drayman, which suggested an adventure or
+the hope of it. The boardwalk, leading inevitably to the mill, announced
+our common purpose and saved us an introduction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Going down to get work?&quot; was the question we simultaneously asked of
+each other. My companion, <!-- Page 83 -->all eagerness, shook out the lace
+handkerchief in her side bag and explained:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't have to work; my folks keep a hotel; but I always heard so much
+about Perry I thought I'd like to come up, and,&quot; she sighed, with a
+flirt of the lace handkerchief and a contented glance around at the rows
+of white frame houses, &quot;I'm up now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Want board?&quot; the drayman called to me. &quot;You kin count on me for a good
+place. There's Doctor Meadows, now; he's got a nice home and he just
+wants two boarders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The middle-aged woman with the glasses glanced up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doctor Meadows of Tittihute?&quot; she asked. &quot;I wont go there; he's too
+strict. He's a Methodist minister. You couldn't have any fun at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I followed suit, denouncing Doctor Killjoy as she had, hoping that her
+nervous, frisky step would lead me toward the adventure she was
+evidently seeking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; the drayman responded indulgently, &quot;I guess Mr. Norse will know
+the best place for you folks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was
+but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot,
+the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill
+revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. Tall, lank and
+meager, with a wrinkled face and a furtive mustache, Mr. Norse <!-- Page 84 -->made his
+rounds with a list of complaints and comments in one hand, a pencil in
+the other and a black cap on his head which tipped, indulgent, attentive
+to hear and overhear. His manner was professional. He looked at us,
+placed us, told us to return at one o'clock, recommended a
+boarding-house, and, on his way to some other case, sent a small boy to
+accompany us on future stretches of boardwalk to our lodgings. The
+street we followed ended in a rolling hillside, and beyond was the
+mysterious blue that holds something of the infinite in its mingling of
+clouds and shadows. The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the
+sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings.
+The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves
+into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door
+and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all
+folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built
+without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a
+large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and
+ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock
+with a rusty bell marked the hour from a shelf on the wall, and out of
+the kitchen, seen in vista, came a spluttering sound of frying food. Our
+hostess took us into the parlour. Several family pictures of stony-eyed
+women and men with chin beards, and a life-sized <!-- Page 85 -->Frances Willard in
+chromo, looked down at our ensuing interview.</p>
+
+<p>Board, lodging, heat and light we could have at $2.75 a week. Before the
+husky clock had struck twelve, I was installed in a small room with the
+middle-aged woman from Batavia and a second unknown roommate.</p>
+
+<p>Now what, I asked myself, is the mill's attraction and what is the power
+of this small town? Its population is 3,346. Of these, 1,000 work in the
+knitting-mill, 200 more in a cutlery factory and 300 in various flour,
+butter, barrel, planing mills and salt blocks. Half the inhabitants are
+young hands. Not one in a hundred has a home in Perry; they have come
+from all western parts of the State to work. There are scarcely any
+children, few married couples and almost no old people. It is a town of
+youthful contemporaries, stung with the American's ambition for
+independence and adventure, charmed by the gaiety of being boys and
+girls together, with an ever possible touch of romance which makes the
+hardest work seem easy. Within the four board walls of each house, whose
+type is repeated up and down Perry streets, there is a group of factory
+employees boarding and working at the mill. Their names suggest a
+foreign parentage, but for several generations they have mingled their
+diverse energies in a common effort which makes Americans of them.</p>
+
+<p>As I lived for several weeks among a group of this <!-- Page 86 -->kind, who were
+fairly representative, I shall try to give, through a description of
+their life and conversation, their personalities and characteristics,
+their occupations out of working hours, a general idea of these unknown
+toilers, who are so amazingly like their more fortunate sisters that I
+became convinced the difference is only superficial&mdash;not one of kind but
+merely of variety. The Perry factory girl is separated from the New York
+society girl, not by a few generations, but by a few years of culture
+and training. In America, where tradition and family play an unimportant
+part, the great educator is the spending of money. It is through the
+purchase of possessions that the Americans develop their taste, declare
+themselves, and show their inherent capacity for culture. Give to the
+Perry mill-hands a free chance for growth, transplant them, care for
+them, and they will readily show how slight and how merely a thing of
+culture the difference is between the wild rose and the American beauty.</p>
+
+<p>What were my first impressions of the hands who returned at noon under
+the roof which had extended unquestioning its hospitality? Were they a
+band of slaves, victims to toil and deprivation? Were they making the
+pitiful exchange of their total vitality for insufficient nourishment?
+Did life mean to them merely the diminishing of their forces?</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, they entered gay, laughing young, a youth guarded
+intact by freedom and <!-- Page 87 -->hope. What were the subjects of conversation
+pursued at dinner? Love, labour, the price paid for it, the advantages
+of town over country life, the neighbour and her conduct. What was the
+appearance of my companions? There was nothing in it to shock good
+taste. Their hands and feet were somewhat broadened by work, their skins
+were imperfect for the lack of proper food, their dresses were of coarse
+material; but in small things the differences were superficial only. Was
+it, then, in big things that the divergence began which places them as a
+lower class? Was it money alone that kept them from the places of
+authority? What were their ambitions, their perplexities? What part does
+self-respect play? How well satisfied are they, or how restless? What
+can we learn from them? What can we teach them?</p>
+
+<p>We ate our dinner of boiled meat and custard pie and all started back in
+good time for a one o'clock beginning at the mill. For the space of
+several hundred feet its expressionless red brick walls lined the
+street, implacable, silent. Within all hummed to the collective activity
+of a throng, each working with all his force for a common end. Machines
+roared and pounded; a fine dust filled the air&mdash;a cloud of lint sent
+forth from the friction of thousands of busy hands in perpetual contact
+with the shapeless anonymous garments they were fashioning. There were,
+on their way between the cutting-and the <!-- Page 88 --><!-- Page 89 -->finishing-rooms, 7,000 dozen
+shirts. They were to pass by innumerable hands; they were to be held and
+touched by innumerable individuals; they were to be begun and finished
+by innumerable human beings with distinct tastes and likings, abilities
+and failings; and when the 7,000 dozen shirts were complete they were to
+look alike, and they were to look as though made by a machine; they were
+to show no trace whatever of the men and the women who had made them.
+Here we were, 1,000 souls hurrying from morning until night, working
+from seven until six, with as little personality as we could, with the
+effort to produce, through an action purely mechanical, results as
+nearly as possible identical one to the other, and all to the machine
+itself.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='070.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/070-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/070-1_th.jpg"
+alt="They trifle with love." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;THEY TRIFLE WITH LOVE&quot;
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>What could be the result upon the mind and health of this frantic
+mechanical activity devoid of thought? It was this for which I sought an
+answer; it is for this I propose a remedy.</p>
+
+<p>At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr.
+Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make
+money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in
+mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could
+make; I was offered the favourite work in the mill&mdash;shirt finishing, at
+thirty cents a day and all I could make; and when I shook my head to see
+how far I could exploit my indifference and said, &quot;Thirty cents is <!-- Page 90 -->too
+little,&quot; Mr. Norse's answer was: &quot;Well, I suppose you, like the rest of
+us, are trying to earn a living. I will guarantee you seventy-five cents
+a day for the first two weeks, and all you can make over it is yours.&quot;
+My apprenticeship began under the guidance of an &quot;old girl&quot; who had been
+five years in the mill. A dozen at a time the woolen shirts were brought
+to us, complete all but the adding of the linen strips in front where
+the buttons and buttonholes are stitched. The price of this operation is
+paid for the dozen shirts five, five and a half and six cents, according
+to the complexity of the finish. My instructress had done as many as
+forty dozen in one day; she averaged $1.75 a day all the year around.
+While she was teaching me the factory paid her at the rate of ten cents
+an hour.</p>
+
+<p>A touch of the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A
+second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt
+standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was
+not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I
+sewed frantically into the middle of shirts. I watched my needle,
+impotent as it flew up and down, and when by chance I made a straight
+seam I brought it to so sudden a stop that the thread raveled back
+before my weary eyes. When my back and fingers ached so that I could no
+longer bend over the work, I watched my comrades with amazement. The
+machine was <!-- Page 91 -->not a wild animal in their hands, but an instrument that
+responded with niceness to their guidance. Above the incessant roar and
+burring din they called gaily to each other, gossiping, chatting,
+telling stories. What did they talk about? Everything, except domestic
+cares. The management of an interior, housekeeping, cooking were things
+I never once heard mentioned. What were the favourite topics, those
+returned to most frequently and with surest interest? Dress and men. Two
+girls in the seaming-room had got into a quarrel that day over a packer,
+a fine looking, broad-shouldered fellow who had touched the hearts of
+both and awakened in each an emotion she claimed the right to defend.
+The quarrel began lightly with an exchange of unpleasant comment; it
+soon took the proportions of a dispute which could not give itself the
+desired vent in words alone. The boss was called in. He made no attempt
+to control what lay beyond his power, but applying factory legislation
+to the case, he ordered the two Amazons to &quot;register out&quot; until the
+squabble was settled, as the factory did not propose to pay its hands
+for the time spent in fights. So the two girls &quot;rang out&quot; past the
+timekeeper and took an hour in the open air, hand to hand, fist to fist,
+which, as it happens to man, had its calming effect.</p>
+
+<p>We stitched our way industriously over the 7,000 dozen. Except for the
+moments when some girl <!-- Page 92 -->called a message or shouted a conversation,
+there was nothing to occupy the mind but the vibrating, pulsing,
+pounding of the machinery. The body was shaken with it; the ears
+strained.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl opposite me was a new hand. Her rosy cheeks and straight
+shoulders announced this fact. She had been five months in the mill; the
+other girls around her had been there two years, five years, nine years.
+There were 150 of us at the long, narrow tables which filled the room.
+By the windows the light and air were fairly good. At the centre tables
+the atmosphere was stagnant, the shadows came too soon. The wood's edge
+ran within a few yards of the factory windows. Between it and us lay the
+stream, the water force, the power that had called men to Perry. There,
+as everywhere in America, for an individual as for a place, the
+attraction was industrial possibilities. As Niagara has become more an
+industrial than a picturesque landscape, so Perry, in spite of its
+serene and beautiful surroundings, is a shrine to mechanical force in
+whose temple, the tall-chimneyed mill, a human sacrifice is made to the
+worshipers of gain.</p>
+
+<p>My <i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i> was talkative. &quot;Say,&quot; she said to her neighbour, &quot;Jim
+Weston is the worst flirt I ever seen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who's Jim Weston?&quot; the other responded, diving into the box by her side
+for a handful of gray woolen shirts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, he's the one who made my teeth&mdash;he made teeth for all of us up
+home,&quot; and her smile reveals the handiwork of Weston.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I had false teeth,&quot; is the comment made upon this, &quot;I wouldn't tell
+anybody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought some,&quot; continues the implacable new girl, unruffled, &quot;of
+having a gold filling put in one of my front teeth. I think gold
+fillings are so pretty,&quot; she concludes, looking toward me for a
+response.</p>
+
+<p>This primitive love of ornament I found manifest in the same
+medico-barbaric fancy for wearing eye-glasses. The nicety of certain
+operations in the mill, performed not always in the brightest of lights,
+is a fatal strain upon the eyes. There are no oculists in Perry, but a
+Buffalo member of the profession makes a monthly visit to treat a new
+harvest of patients. Their daily effort toward the monthly finishing of
+40,000 garments permanently diminishes their powers of vision. Every
+thirty days a new set of girls appears with glasses. They wear them as
+they would an ornament of some kind, a necklace, bracelet or a hoop
+through the nose.</p>
+
+<p>When the six o'clock whistle blew on the first night I had finished only
+two dozen shirts. &quot;You've got a good job,&quot; my teacher said, as we came
+out together in the cool evening air. &quot;You seem to be taking to it.&quot;
+They size a girl up the minute she comes in. If she has quick motions
+she'll get on all right. &quot;I guess you'll make a good finisher.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 94 -->Once more we assembled to eat and chat and relax. After a moment by the
+kitchen pump we took our places at table. Our hostess waited upon us.
+&quot;It takes some grit,&quot; she explained, &quot;and more grace to keep boarders.&quot;
+Except on Sundays, when all men might be considered equals in the sight
+of the Lord, she and her husband did not eat until we had finished. She
+passed the dishes of our frugal evening meal&mdash;potatoes, bread and butter
+and cake&mdash;and as we served ourselves she held her head in the opposite
+direction, as if to say, &quot;I'm not looking; take the biggest piece.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was with my roommates I became the soonest acquainted. The butcher's
+widow from Batavia was a grumbler. &quot;How do you like your job?&quot; I asked
+her as we fumbled about in the dim light of our low-roofed room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Lordy,&quot; was the answer, &quot;I didn't think it would be like this. I'd
+rather do housework any day. I bet you won't stay two weeks.&quot; She was
+ugly and stupid. She had been married young to a butcher. Left alone to
+battle with the world, she might have shaken out some of her dullness,
+but the butcher for many years had stood between her and reality,
+casting a still deeper shadow on her ignorance. She had the monotony of
+an old child, one who questions constantly but who has passed the age
+when learning is possible. The butcher's death had opened new
+possibilities. After a period of respectful <!-- Page 95 -->mourning, she had set out,
+against the wishes of her family, with a vague, romantic hope that was
+expressed not so much in words as in a certain picture hat trimmed with
+violet chiffon and carried carefully in a bandbox by itself, a new,
+crisp sateen petticoat, and a golf skirt she had sat up until one
+o'clock to finish the night before she left home. It was inevitable that
+the butcher's widow should be disappointed. There was too much grim
+reality in ten-hour days spent over a machine in the stifling mill room
+to feed a sentimentalist whose thirty odd years were no accomplice to
+romance. She grumbled and complained. Secret dissatisfaction preyed upon
+her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily
+and with no <i>arri&egrave;re pens&eacute;e</i>. At the end of the first week the picture
+hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen
+petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like
+the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant
+sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had
+gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more
+than sixty cents a day. She left us and went back to do housework in
+Batavia.</p>
+
+<p>My other roommate was of the Madonna type. In our class she would have
+been called an invalid. Her hands trembled, she was constantly in pain,
+and her nerves were rebellious without frequent doses of <!-- Page 96 -->bromide. We
+found her one night lying in a heap on the bed, her moans having called
+us to her aid. It was the pain in her back that never stopped, the ache
+between her shoulders, the din of the machines in her ears, the
+vibration, the strain of incessant hours upon her tired nerves. We fixed
+her up as best we could, and the next day at quarter before seven she
+was, like the rest of us, bending over her machine again. She had been a
+school-teacher, after passing the necessary examination at the Geneseo
+Normal School. She could not say why school-teaching was uncongenial to
+her, except that the children &quot;made her nervous&quot; and she wanted to try
+factory work. Her father was a cheese manufacturer up in the Genesee
+Valley. She might have lived quietly at home, but she disliked to be a
+dependent. She was of the mystic, sentimental type. She had a broad
+forehead, straight auburn hair, a clear-cut mouth, whose sharp curves
+gave it sweetness. Though her large frame indicated clearly an
+Anglo-Saxon lineage, there was nothing of the sport about her. She had
+never learned to skate or swim, but she could sit and watch the hills
+all day long. Her clothes had an esthetic touch. Mingled with her
+nervous determination there was a sentimental yearning. She was an
+idealist, impelled by some controlling emotion which was the mainspring
+of her life.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little we became friends. Our common <!-- Page 97 -->weariness brought us
+often together after supper in a listless, confidential mood before the
+parlour stove. We let the conversation drift inevitably toward the
+strong current that was marking her with a touch of melancholy, like all
+those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror,
+reflecting visions that have no place in reality. We talked about
+blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man's name;
+and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form. Her
+voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related
+the story. It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like
+herself. Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning. She slipped a
+gold locket from a chain on her throat. It framed her hero's picture,
+the source of her courage, the embodiment of her heroic energy: a man of
+thirty, who had failed at everything; good-looking, refined, a personage
+in real life who resembled the inhabitants of her enchanted mirror. In
+the story she told there were stars and twilight, summer evenings,
+walks, talks, hopes and vague projects. Any practical questions I felt
+ready to ask would have sounded coarse. The little school-teacher with
+shattered nerves embodied a hope that was more to her than meat and
+drink and money. She was of those who do not live by bread alone.</p>
+
+<p>Among the working population of Perry there are all manner of American
+characteristics manifest. <!-- Page 98 -->In a country where conditions change with
+such rapidity that each generation is a revelation to the one which
+preceded it, it is inevitable that the family and the State should be
+secondary to the individual. We live with our own generation, with our
+contemporaries. We substitute experience for tradition. Each generation
+lives for itself during its prime. As soon as its powers begin to
+decline it makes way with resignation for the next: &quot;We have had our
+day; now you can have yours.&quot; Thus in the important decisions of life,
+the choosing of a career, matrimony or the like, the average American is
+much more influenced by his contemporaries than by his elders, much more
+stimulated or determined by the friends of his own age than by the older
+members of his family. This detaching of generations through the
+evolution of conditions is inevitable in a new civilization; it is part
+of the country's freedom. It adds fervour and zest and originality to
+the effort of each. But it means a youth without the peace of
+protection; an old age without the harvest of consolation. The man in
+such a battle as life becomes under these circumstances is better
+equipped than the woman, whose nature disarms her for the struggle. The
+American woman is restless, dissatisfied. Society, whether among the
+highest or lowest classes, has driven her toward a destiny that is not
+normal. The factories are full of old maids; the colleges are full of
+old maids; the ballrooms in the worldly <!-- Page 99 -->centres are full of old maids.
+For natural obligations are substituted the fictitious duties of clubs,
+meetings, committees, organizations, professions, a thousand unwomanly
+occupations.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot attempt to touch here upon the classes who have not a direct
+bearing on our subject, but the analogy is striking between them and the
+factory elements of which I wish to speak. I cannot dwell upon details
+that, while full of interest, are yet somewhat aside from the present
+point, but I want to state a fact, the origin of whose ugly consequences
+is in all classes and therefore concerns every living American woman.
+Among the American born women of this country the sterility is greater,
+the fecundity less than those of any other nation in the world, unless
+it be France, whose anxiety regarding her depopulation we would share in
+full measure were it not for the foreign immigration to the United
+States, which counteracts the degeneracy of the American.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>1</sup></a>
+The original causes for this increasing sterility are moral and not
+physical. When this is known, does not the philosophy of the American
+working woman become a subject of vital interest? Among the enemies to
+fecundity and a natural destiny there are two which act as potently in
+the lower as in the upper classes: the triumph of individualism, the
+love of luxury. America <!-- Page 100 -->is not a democracy, the unity of effort between
+the man and the woman does not exist. Men were too long in a majority.
+Women have become autocrats or rivals. A phrase which I heard often
+repeated at the factory speaks by itself for a condition: &quot;She must be
+married, because she don't work.&quot; And another phrase pronounced
+repeatedly by the younger girls: &quot;I don't have to work; my father gives
+me all the money I need, but not all the money I <i>want</i>. I like to be
+independent and spend my money as I please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What are the conclusions to be drawn? The American-born girl is an
+egoist. Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of
+mill drudgery) is for herself. She works for luxury until the day when a
+proper husband presents himself. Then, she stops working and lets him
+toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall not be diminished by
+increasing family demands.</p>
+
+<p>In those cases where the woman continues to work after marriage, she
+chooses invariably a kind of occupation which is inconsistent with
+child-bearing. She returns to the mill with her husband. There were a
+number of married couples at the knitting factory at Perry. They
+boarded, like the rest of us. I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby
+while I was in the town.</p>
+
+<p>I can think of no better way to present this love of luxury, this
+triumph of individualism, this passion <!-- Page 101 -->for independence than to
+continue my account of the daily life at Perry.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday night we drew our pay and got out at half-past four. This
+extra hour and a half was not given to us; we had saved it up by
+beginning each day at fifteen minutes before seven. In reality we worked
+ten and a quarter hours five days in the week in order to work eight and
+a half on the sixth.</p>
+
+<p>By five o'clock on Saturdays the village street was animated with
+shoppers&mdash;the stores were crowded. At supper each girl had a collection
+of purchases to show: stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons,
+elaborate hairpins. Many of them, when their board was paid, had less
+than a dollar left of the five or six it had taken them a week to earn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not working to save,&quot; was the claim of one girl for all. &quot;I'm
+working for pleasure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing
+to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better
+food. I watched her as she put her things into the trunk. She had a
+quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy
+hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was
+full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great
+excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially
+hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for
+a confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You got a letter to-night, didn't you?&quot; I asked innocently. &quot;Was it
+the one you wanted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My, yes,&quot; she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths
+of her trunk. &quot;It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been
+going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I
+went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make
+twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as
+he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's
+what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he
+owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano
+this fall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, of course,&quot; I said eagerly, &quot;you will accept him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, my! no,&quot; she answered, shaking her head. &quot;I don't want to be
+married.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and
+you have already been 'going with him' three years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is
+time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am.
+He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it
+would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I
+left, but he <!-- Page 104 --><!-- Page 103 -->let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I
+got my independence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What part did the love of humanity play in this young egoist's heart?
+She was living, as she had so well explained it, &quot;not to save, but to
+give herself pleasure&quot;; not to spare others, but to exercise her will in
+spite of them. Tenderness, reverence, gratitude, protection are the
+feelings which one generation awakens for another. Among the thousand
+contemporaries at Perry, from the sameness of their ambitions, there was
+inevitable rivalry and selfishness. The closer the age and capacity the
+keener the struggle.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='084.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/084-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/084-1_th.jpg"
+alt="After Saturday night's shopping." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+AFTER SATURDAY NIGHT'S SHOPPING
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>There are seven churches in Perry of seven different denominations. In
+this small town of 3,000 inhabitants there are seven different forms of
+worship. The church plays an important part in the social life of the
+mill hands. There are gatherings of all sorts from one Sunday to
+another, and on Sunday there are almost continuous services. There are
+frequent conversions. When the Presbyterian form fails they &quot;try&quot; the
+Baptist. There is no moral instruction; it is all purely religious; and
+they join one church or another more as they would a social club than an
+ordained religious organization.</p>
+
+<p>Friday was &quot;social&quot; night at the church. Sometimes there was a &quot;poverty&quot;
+social, when every one put on shabby clothes, and any one who wore a
+<!-- Page 105 -->correct garment of any sort was fined for the benefit of the church.
+Pound socials were another variety of diversion, where all the
+attendants were weighed on arriving and charged a cent admission for
+every pound of avoirdupois.</p>
+
+<p>The most popular socials, however, were box socials, and it was to one
+of these I decided to go with two girls boarding in the house. Each of
+us packed a box with lunch as good as we could afford&mdash;eggs, sandwiches,
+cakes, pickles, oranges&mdash;and arrived with these, we proceeded to the
+vestry-room, where we found an improvised auctioneer's table and a pile
+of boxes like our own, which were marked and presently put up for sale.
+The youths of the party bid cautiously or recklessly, according as their
+inward conviction told them that the box was packed by friend or foe.</p>
+
+<p>My box, which, like the rest, had supper for two, was bid in by a tall,
+nice-looking mill hand, and we installed ourselves in a corner to eat
+and talk. He was full of reminiscence and had had a checkered career.
+His first experience had been at night work in a paper mill. He worked
+eleven hours a night one week, thirteen hours a night the next week, in
+and out of doors, drenched to the skin. He had lost twenty-five pounds
+in less than a year, and his face was a mere mask drawn over the
+irregular bones of the skull.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always like whatever I am doing,&quot; he responded <!-- Page 106 -->at my protestation of
+sympathy. &quot;I think that's the only way to be. I never had much appetite
+at night. They packed me an elegant pail, but somehow all cold food
+didn't relish much. I never did like a pail.... How would you like to
+take a dead man's place?&quot; he asked, looking at me grimly.</p>
+
+<p>I begged him to explain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One of my best friends,&quot; he began, &quot;was working alongside of me, and I
+guess he got dizzy or something, for he leaned up against the big belt
+that ran all the machinery and he was lifted right up in the air and
+tore to pieces before he ever knew what struck him. The boss came in and
+seen it, and the second question he asked, he says, 'Say, is the
+machinery running all right?' It wasn't ten minutes before there was
+another man in there doing the dead man's work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I began to undo the lunch-box, feeling very little inclined to eat. We
+divided the contents, and my friend, seeing perhaps that I was
+depressed, told me about the &quot;shows&quot; he had been to in his wanderings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, I don't care as much for comedy as some folks,&quot; he explained. &quot;I
+like 'Puddin' Head Wilson' first rate, but the finest thing I ever seen
+was two of Shakespeare's: 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Julius C&aelig;sar.'
+If you ever get a chance I advise you to go and hear them; they're
+great.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I responded cordially, and when we had exhausted <!-- Page 107 -->Shakespeare I asked
+him how he liked Perry people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, first rate,&quot; he said. &quot;I've been here only a month, but I think
+there's too much formality. It seems to me that when you work alongside
+of a girl day after day you might speak to her without an introduction,
+but they won't let you here. I never seen such a formal place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said very little. The boy talked on of his life and experiences. His
+English was good except for certain grammatical errors. His words were
+well chosen. There was between him and the fortunate boys of a superior
+class only a few years of training.</p>
+
+<p>The box social was the beginning of a round of gaieties. The following
+night I went with my box-social friend to a ball. Neither of us danced,
+but we arrived early and took good places for looking on. The barren
+hall was dimly lighted. In the corner there was a stove; at one end a
+stage. An old man with a chin beard was scattering sand over the floor
+with a springtime gesture of seed sowing. He had his hat on and his coat
+collar turned up, as though to indicate that the party had not begun. By
+and by the stage curtain rolled up and the musicians came out and
+unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the
+Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs
+and asked for <i>sol la</i> from an esthetic young <!-- Page 108 -->lady pianist, with whom
+they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made
+an official <i>entr&eacute;e</i> from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part
+of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the
+first two-step struck up there were eight or ten couples on the floor.
+They held on to each other closely, with no outstretched arms as is the
+usual form, and they revolved very slowly around and around the room.
+The young men had smooth faces, patent leather boots, very smart cravats
+and a sheepish, self-conscious look. The girls had elaborate
+constructions in frizzed hair, with bows and tulle; black trailing
+skirts with coloured ruffled under-petticoats, light-coloured blouses
+and fancy belts. They seemed to be having a very good time.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home we passed a brightly lighted grocery shop. My friend
+looked in with interest. &quot;Goodness,&quot; he said, &quot;but those Saratoga chips
+look good. Now, what would you order,&quot; he went on, &quot;if you could have
+anything you liked?&quot; We began to compose a m&eacute;nu with oysters and chicken
+and all the things we never saw, but it was not long before my friend
+cried &quot;Mercy! Oh, stop; I can't stand it. It makes me too hungry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The moon had gone under a cloud. The wooden sidewalks were rough and
+irregular, and as we walked along toward home I tripped once or twice.
+Presently I felt a strong arm put through mine, <!-- Page 109 -->with this assurance:
+&quot;Now if you fall we'll both fall together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After four or five days' experience with a machine I began to work with
+more ease and with less pain between my shoulders. The girls were kind
+and sympathetic, stopping to help and encourage the &quot;new girl.&quot; One of
+the shirt finishers, who had not been long in the mill herself, came
+across from her table one day when I was hard at work with a pain like a
+sword stab in my back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know how you ache,&quot; she said. &quot;It just makes me feel like crying when
+I see how you keep at it and I can guess how tired you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was so fatiguing as the noise. In certain places near the eyelet
+and buttonhole machines it was impossible to make one's neighbour hear
+without shouting. My teacher, whose nerves, I took it, were less
+sensitive than mine, expressed her sensations in this way:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's just terrible sitting here all day alone, worrying and thinking
+all by yourself and hustling from morning until night. Lots of the girls
+have nervous prostration. My sister had it and I guess I'm getting it. I
+hear the noise all night. Quite a few have consumption, too, from the
+dust and the lint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The butcher's widow, the school-teacher and I started in at about the
+same time. At the end of two weeks the butcher's widow had long been
+gone. The school-teacher had averaged seventy-nine cents <!-- Page 110 -->a day and I
+had averaged eighty-nine. My best day I finished sixteen dozen shirts
+and netted $1.11. My board and washing cost me three dollars, so that
+from the first I had a living insured.</p>
+
+<p>There was one negress in the factory. She worked in a corner quite by
+herself and attended to menial jobs, such as sweeping and picking up
+scraps. A great many of the girls and boys took correspondence courses
+in stenography, drawing, bookkeeping, illustrating, etc., etc. The
+purely mechanical work of the mill does not satisfy them. They are
+restless and ambitious, exactly the material with which to form schools
+of industrial art, the class of hand-workers of whom I have already
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>One of the girls who worked beside us as usual in the morning, left a
+note on her machine at noon one day to say that she would never be back.
+She was going up to the lake to drown herself, and we needn't look for
+her. Some one was sent in search. She was found sitting at the lake's
+edge, weeping. She did not speak. We all talked about it in our leisure
+moments, but the work was not interrupted. There were various
+explanations: she was out of her mind; she was discouraged with her
+work; she was nervous. No one suggested that an unfortunate love affair
+be the cause of her desperate act. There was not a word breathed against
+her reputation. I would have felt impure in proposing what to me seemed
+most probable.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 111 -->The mill owners exert, as far as possible, an influence over the moral
+tone of their employees, assuming the right to judge their conduct both
+in and out of the factory and to treat them as they see fit. The average
+girls are self-respecting. They trifle with love. The attraction they
+wish to exert is ever present in their minds and in their conversation.
+The sacrifices they make for clothes are the first in importance. They
+have superstitions of all kinds: to sneeze on Saturday means the arrival
+of a beau on Sunday; a big or little tea leaf means a tall or a short
+caller, and so on. There is a book of dreams kept on one table in the
+mill, and the girls consult it to find the interpretation of their
+nocturnal reveries. They are fanciful, sentimental, cold, passionless.
+The accepted honesty of married life makes them slow to discard the
+liberty they love, to dismiss the suitors who would attend their wedding
+as one would a funeral.</p>
+
+<p>There is, of course, another category of girl, who goes brutally into
+passionate pleasures, follows the shows, drinks and knocks about town
+with the boys. She is known as a &quot;bum,&quot; has sacrificed name and
+reputation and cannot remain in the mill.</p>
+
+<p>We discussed one night the suitable age for a girl to become mistress of
+herself. The boy of the household maintained that at eighteen a girl
+could marry, but that she must be twenty-one before she could have her
+own way. All the girls insisted that they <!-- Page 112 -->could and did boss themselves
+and had even before they were eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>Two chums who boarded in my house gave a charming illustration of the
+carelessness and the extravagance, the independence and love of it which
+characterizes feminine America. One of these was a <i>deracinee</i>, a child
+with a foreign touch in her twang; a legend of other climes in the
+dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in
+her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a <i>mondaine</i>. She had the social
+gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the <i>glissey mortel
+n'appuyez jamais</i> attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an
+adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has
+mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days of Esther.</p>
+
+<p>When the other girls waited feverishly for love letters, she was opening
+a pile of invitations to socials and theatre parties. Discreet and
+condescending, she received more than she gave.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the posters were out for a Tuesday performance of &quot;Faust,&quot;
+preparations began in the household to attend. Saturday shopping and
+supper were hurried through and by six o'clock Lorraine was at the
+sewing machine tucking chiffon for hats and bodices. After ten hours'
+work in the mill, she began again, eager to use the last of the spring
+twilight, prolonged by a quarter moon. <!-- Page 113 -->There was a sudden, belated gust
+of snow; in the blue mist each white frame house glowed with a warm,
+pink light from its parlour stove. Lorraine's fingers flew. A hat took
+form and grew from a heap of stuff into a Parisian creation; a bolero
+was cut and tucked and fitted; a skirt was ripped and stitched and
+pressed; a shirt-waist was started and finished. For two nights the
+girls worked until twelve o'clock so that when the &quot;show&quot; came they
+might have something new to wear that nobody had seen. This must have
+been the unanimous intention of the Perry populace, for the peanut
+gallery was a bower of fashion. Styles, which I had thought were new in
+Paris, were familiarly worn in Perry by the mill hands. White kid gloves
+were <i>en regle</i>. The play was &quot;Faust.&quot; All allusions to the triumph of
+religion over the devil; all insinuations on the part of Mephistopheles
+in regard to the enviable escape of Martha's husband and of husbands in
+general, from prating women in general; all invocations of virtue and
+moral triumph, were greeted with bursts of applause. Between the acts
+there was music, and the ushers distributed showers of printed
+advertisements, which the audience fell at once to reading as though
+they had nothing to talk about.</p>
+
+<p>I heard only one hearty comment about the play: &quot;That devil,&quot; said
+Lorraine, as we walked home together, &quot;was a corker!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have left until the last the two friends who held <!-- Page 114 -->a place apart in
+the household: the farmer and his wife, the old people of another
+generation with whom we boarded. They had begun life together forty
+years ago. They lived on neighbouring farms. There was dissension
+between the families such as we read of in &quot;Pyramus and Thisbe,&quot; &quot;Romeo
+and Juliet.&quot; The young people contrived a means of corresponding. An old
+coat that hung in the barn, where nobody saw it, served as post-office.
+Truman pleaded his cause ardently and won his Louisa. They fixed a day
+for the elopement. A fierce snowstorm piled high its drifts of white,
+but all the afternoon long the little bride played about, burrowing a
+path from the garden to her bedroom window, and when night came and
+brought her mounted hero with it, she climbed up on to the saddle by his
+side and rode away to happiness, leaving ill nature and quarrels far
+behind. Side by side, as on the night of their wedding ride, they had
+traversed forty years together. Ill health had broken up their farm
+home. When Truman could no longer work they came in to Perry to take
+boarders, having no children. The old man never spoke. He did chores
+about the house, made the fire mornings, attended to the parlour stove;
+he went about his work and no one ever addressed a word to him; he
+seemed to have no more live contact with the youth about him than
+driftwood has with the tree's new shoots. He had lived his life on a
+farm; he was a land captain; <!-- Page 115 -->he knew the earth's secrets as a ship's
+captain knows the sea's. He paced the mild wooden pavements of Perry,
+booted, and capped for storm and wind, deep snow and all the inimical
+elements a pioneer might meet with. His new false teeth seemed to shine
+from his shaggy gray beard as a symbol of this new town experience in a
+rough natural existence, out of keeping, ill assorted. Tempted to know
+what his silence hid, I spent an hour with him by the kitchen stove one
+Sunday afternoon. His memory went easily back to the days when there
+were no railroads, no telegraphs, no mills. He was of a speculative turn
+of mind:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see,&quot; he said, &quot;what makes men so crazy after gold. They're
+getting worse all the time. Gold ain't got no real value. You take all
+the gold out of the world and it wouldn't make no difference whatever.
+You can't even make a tool to get a living with, out of gold; but just
+do away with the iron, and where would you be?&quot; And again, he
+volunteered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think Mr. Carnegie would have done a deal nobler if he had paid his
+men a little more straight along. He wouldn't have had such a name for
+himself. But don't you believe it would have been better to have paid
+those men more for the work they were doing day by day than it is now to
+give pensions to their families? I know what I think about the matter.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='096.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/096-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/096-1_th.jpg"
+alt="Sunday evening at Silver Lake." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+SUNDAY EVENING AT SILVER LAKE
+<br />
+The mill girls' excursion resort. A special train and 'busses run on
+Sundays, and &quot;everybody&quot; goes
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>I asked him how he liked city life.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me a farm every time,&quot; was his answer. &quot;Once you've seen a town
+you know it all. It's the same over and over again. But the country's
+changing every day in the year. It's a terrible thing, being sick,&quot; he
+went on. &quot;It seems sometimes as though the pain would tear me to pieces
+when I walk across the floor. I wasn't no good on the farm any more, so
+my wife took a notion we better come in town and take boarders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was with this happily balanced couple; as his side grew heavier
+she took on more ballast and swung even with him. She had the quick
+adaptability common to American women. During the years of farm life
+religious meetings and a few neighbours had kept her in touch with the
+outside world. The church and the kitchen were what she had on the farm;
+the church and the kitchen were what she had in town; family life
+supplemented by boarders, a social existence kept alive by a few
+faithful neighbours. She had retained her activity and sympathy because
+she was intelligent, because she lived with the <i>young</i>. The man could
+not make himself one of another generation, so he lived alone. He had
+lost his companions, the &quot;cow kind and the sheep kind&quot;; he had lost
+control over the earth that belonged to him; he was disused; he
+suffered; he pined. But as they sat together side by side at table, his
+look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back
+over a long <!-- Page 118 -->vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to
+those about&mdash;years that had glorified confidence in this life as it
+passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_IV'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<center>MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House,
+asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I
+intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go
+before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was
+pinned in a black silk bag.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first day of May. A hot wind blew eddies of dust up and down
+the electric car tracks; the streets were alive with children; a group
+swarmed in front of each doorstep, too large to fit into the house
+behind it. Down the long, regular avenues that stretched right and left
+there was a broken line of tenements topped by telegraph wires and
+bathed in a soft cloud of black soot falling from a chimney in the
+neighbourhood. The sidewalks were a patchwork of dirt, broken
+paving-stones and wooden boards. The sunshine was hot and gloomy. There
+were no names on the corner lamps and the house numbers were dull and
+needed repainting. It was already late in the afternoon: I had but an
+hour or two before dark to find a lodging. The <!-- Page 122 -->miserable, overcrowded
+tenement houses repelled me, yet I dreaded that there should not be room
+among them for one more bread-winner to lodge. I hailed a cluster of
+children in the gutter:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say,&quot; I said, &quot;do you know where Mrs. Hicks lives to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They crowded around, eager. The tallest boy, with curly red hair and
+freckles, pointed out Mrs. Hicks' residence, the upper windows of a
+brick flat that faced the world like a prison wall. After I had rung and
+waited for the responding click from above, a cross-eyed Italian woman
+with a baby in her arms motioned to me from the step where she was
+sitting that I must go down a side alley to find Mrs. Hicks. Out of a
+promiscuous heap of filth, a broken-down staircase led upward to a row
+of green blinds and a screen door. Somebody's housekeeping was scattered
+around in torn bits of linen and tomato cans.</p>
+
+<p>The screen door opened to my knock and the Hicks family gushed at
+me&mdash;ever so many children of all ages and an immense mother in an
+under-waist and petticoat. The interior was neat; the wooden floors were
+scrubbed spotless. I congratulated myself. Mrs. Hicks clucked to the
+family group, smiled at me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never took a boarder in my life. I ain't got room enough for my own
+young ones, let alone strangers.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='102.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/102-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/102-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with
+the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;THE BREATH OF THE BLACK, SWEET NIGHT REACHED THEM, FETID, HEAVY WITH
+THE ODOUR OF DEATH AS IT BLEW ACROSS THE STOCKYARDS&quot;
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p><!-- Page 124 -->There were two more names on my list. I proceded to the nearest and
+found an Irish lady living in basement rooms ornamented with green
+crochet work, crayon portraits, red plaid table-cloths and chromo
+picture cards.</p>
+
+<p>She had rheumatism in her &quot;limbs&quot; and moved with difficulty. She was
+glad to talk the matter over, though she had from the first no intention
+of taking me. From my then point of view nothing seemed so desirable as
+a cot in Mrs. Flannagan's front parlour. I even offered in my eagerness
+to sleep on the horsehair sofa. Womanlike, she gave twenty little
+reasons for not taking me before she gave the one big reason, which was
+this:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind having you myself, but
+I've got three sons, and you know <i>boys is queer</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was late, the sun had set and only the twilight remained for my
+search before night would be upon me and I would be driven to some
+charity refuge.</p>
+
+<p>I had one more name, and climbed to find its owner in a tenement flat.
+She was a German woman with a clubfoot. Two half-naked children
+incrusted with dirt were playing on the floor. They waddled toward me as
+I asked what my chances were for finding a room and board. The mother
+struck first one, then the other, of her offspring, and they fell into
+two little heaps, both wailing. From a hole back of the kitchen came the
+sympathetic response <!-- Page 125 -->of a half-starved shaggy dog. He howled and the
+babes wailed while we visited the dusky apartment. There was one room
+rented to a day lodger who worked nights, and one room without a window
+where the German family slept. She proposed that I share the bed with
+her that night until she could get an extra cot. Her husband and the
+children could sleep on the parlour lounge. She was hideous and dirty.
+Her loose lips and half-toothless mouth were the slipshod note of an
+entire existence. There was a very dressy bonnet with feathers hanging
+on a peg in the bedroom, and two gala costumes belonging to the tearful
+twins.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll come back in an hour, thank you,&quot; I said. &quot;Don't expect me if I am
+not here in an hour,&quot; and I fled down the stairs. Before the hour was up
+I had found, through the guidance of the Irish lady with rheumatism, a
+clean room in one street and board in another. This was inconvenient,
+but safe and comparatively healthy.</p>
+
+<p>My meals were thirty-five cents a day, payable at the end of the week;
+my room was $1.25 a week, total $3.70 a week.</p>
+
+<p>My first introduction to Chicago tenement life was supper at Mrs.
+Wood's.</p>
+
+<p>I could hear the meal sputtering on the kitchen stove as I opened the
+Wood front door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wood, combining duties as cook and hostess, called to me to make
+myself at home in the front <!-- Page 126 -->parlour. I seated myself on the sofa, which
+exuded the familiar acrid odour of the poor. Opposite me there was a
+door half open leading into a room where a lamp was lighted. I could see
+a young girl and a man talking together. He was sitting and had his hat
+on. She had a halo of blond hair, through which the lamplight was
+shining, and she stood near the man, who seemed to be teasing her. Their
+conversation was low, but there was a familiar cry now and then, half
+vulgar, half affectionate.</p>
+
+<p>When we had taken our places at the table, Mrs. Wood presented us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is Miss Ida,&quot; she said, pointing to the blonde girl; &quot;she's been
+boarding over a year with me, and this,&quot; turning to the young man who
+sat near by with one arm hanging listlessly over the back of a chair,
+&quot;this is Miss Ida's intended.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The other members of the household were a fox terrier, a canary and
+&quot;Wood&quot;&mdash;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: &quot;Good-by; take care of yourself.&quot; She
+had a few pets, her children were married and gone, she had a miniature
+patch of garden, <!-- Page 127 -->a trust in the church guild&mdash;which took some time and
+attention for charitable works, and she did her own cooking and
+housework. &quot;And,&quot; she explained to me in the course of our conversation
+at supper, &quot;I never felt the need of joining these University Settlement
+Clubs to get into society.&quot; Wood and his wife were a good sort. Miss Ida
+was kind in her inquiries about my plans.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever operated a power machine?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded&mdash;with what pride she little dreamed. &quot;I've run an
+electric Singer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my, don't be so formal; take your knife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say,&quot; called a voice from the door, &quot;say, come on, Ida, I'm waiting for
+you.&quot; And the blonde fianc&eacute;e hurried away with an embarrassed laugh to
+join her lover. She was refined and delicate, her ears were <!-- Page 128 -->small, her
+hands white and slender, she spoke correctly with a nasal voice, and her
+teeth (as is not often the case among this class, whose lownesses seem
+suddenly revealed when they open their mouths) were sound and clean.</p>
+
+<p>The man's smooth face was all commonness and vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's had appendicitis,&quot; Mrs. Wood explained when we were alone. &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When are they going to be married?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, dear me, they don't think of that yet; they're in no hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will Miss Ida work after she's married?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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 <!-- Page 129 -->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 multitude.</p>
+
+<p>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 space 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 passed the plate glass
+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: &quot;Manglers
+wanted!&quot; attracted my attention in the window of a large steam laundry.
+I was not a &quot;<!-- Page 130 -->mangler,&quot; but I went in and asked to see the boss. &quot;Ever
+done any mangling?&quot; was his first question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I answered, &quot;but I am sure I could learn.&quot; I put so much ardour
+into my response that the boss at once took an interest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might give you a place as shaker; you could start in and work up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you pay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Four dollars a week until you learn. Then you would work up to five,
+five and a half.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Better than nothing, was all I could think, but I can't live on four a
+week.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How often do you pay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Every Tuesday night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This meant no money for ten days.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you think you'd like to try shaking come round Monday morning at
+seven o'clock.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Which I took as my dismissal until Monday.</p>
+
+<p>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 &quot;nothing venture, nothing have,&quot; my pioneer spirit prompted,
+and soon deep in the list of <i>Wanted, Females</i>, I felt repaid. Even in
+my destitute condition I had a choice in mind. If possible I wanted to
+work without machinery in a shop where <!-- Page 131 -->the girls used their hands alone
+as power. Here seemed to be my heart's content&mdash;a short, concise
+advertisement, &quot;Wanted, hand sewers.&quot; 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 fashionable 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.</p>
+
+<p>The owner, Mr. F., got up from his desk and came toward me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I seen your advertisement in the morning paper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he answered in a kindly voice. &quot;Are you a tailoress?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir; I've never done much sewing except on a machine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, we have machines here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; I almost interrupted, beginning to fear that my training at Perry
+was to limit all further experience to an electric Singer, &quot;I'd rather
+work with my hands. I like the hand-work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me and gave me an answer which <!-- Page 132 -->exactly coincided with my
+theories. He said this, and it was just what I wanted him to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, sir,&quot; I responded. &quot;What do you pay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll give you six dollars a week while you're learning.&quot; I could hardly
+control a movement of delight. Six dollars a week! A dollar a day for an
+apprentice!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But&quot;&mdash;my next question I made as dismal as possible&mdash;&quot;when do you pay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Generally not till the end of the second week,&quot; the kindly voice said;
+&quot;but we could arrange to pay you at the end of the first if you needed
+the money.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I come in Monday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come in this afternoon at 12:30 if you're ready.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm ready,&quot; I said, &quot;but I ain't brought no lunch with me, and it's too
+late now to get home and back again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man put his hand in his pocket and laid down before me a fifty-cent
+piece, advanced on my pay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take that,&quot; he said, with courtesy; &quot;get yourself a lunch in the
+neighbourhood and come back at half-past twelve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I went to the nearest restaurant. It was an immense bakery patronized by
+office girls and men, <!-- Page 133 -->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&mdash;independent; they could use their money
+as they liked. They came in groups&mdash;a rustling frou-frou announced silk
+underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, masses of trimming 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 <i>a la mode</i> and chocolate were
+the most serious m&eacute;nus. This nourishing 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.</p>
+
+<p>This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away.
+It is in this class that <!-- Page 134 -->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 prostitution 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 class 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.</p>
+
+<p>For what and for whom do they work?</p>
+
+<p>Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some
+member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty
+members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is
+secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward a ruinous
+goal. They scorn the hand-workers; they feel themselves a <i>noblesse</i> by
+comparison. They are the American snobs whose coat of arms marks not a
+well-remembered family but prospective luxuries.... Married, they bring
+as a portion thriftless tastes, to satisfy which more than one business
+man has wrecked his career. They work like men; why should they not live
+as men do, with similar responsibilities? What should <!-- Page 135 -->we think of a
+class of masculine clerks and employees who spent all their money on
+clothes?</p>
+
+<p>The boss was busy when I got back to the clothing establishment. From
+the bench where I waited for orders I could take an inventory of the
+shop's productions. Arrayed in rows behind glass cases there were all
+manner of uniforms: serious uniforms going to the colonies to be shot to
+pieces, militia uniforms that would hear their loudest heart-beats under
+a fair head; drum-majors' hats that would never get farther than the
+peaceful lawn of a military post; fireman's hats; the dark-blue coat of
+a lonely lighthouse guardian; the undignified short jacket of a
+&quot;buttons.&quot; All that meant parade and glory, the uniforms that make men
+identical by making each proud of himself for his brass buttons and gold
+lace. Even in the heavy atmosphere of the shop's rear, though they
+appeared somewhat dingy and tarnished, they had their undeniable charm,
+and I thought with pity of the hands that had to sew on plain serge
+suits.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='114.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/114-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/114-1_th.jpg"
+alt="In a Chicago theatrical costume factory." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+IN A CHICAGO THEATRICAL COSTUME FACTORY
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>As soon as the boss saw me, the generous Mr. F. who advanced me the
+fifty cents smiled at the skeptical Mr. F. who had never expected to see
+me again. One self said to the other: &quot;I told you so!&quot; and all the
+kindly lines in the man's face showed that he had looked for the best
+even in his inferiors and that he had found mankind worth trusting. He
+was the most generous employer I met with <!-- Page 136 --><!-- Page 137 -->anywhere; I also took him to
+be the least businesslike. But, as though quickly to establish the law
+of averages, his head forewoman counterbalanced all his mercies by her
+ferocious crossness. She terrorized everybody, even Mr. F. It was to
+her, I concluded, that we owed our $6 a week. No girl would stay for
+less; it was an atelier chiefly of foreign employees; the proud American
+spirit would not stand the lash of Frances' tongue. She had been ten
+years in the place whose mad confusion was order to her. Mr. F. did not
+dare to send her away; he preferred keeping a perpetual advertisement in
+the papers and changing hands every few days.</p>
+
+<p>The workroom on our floor was fifty or sixty feet long, with windows on
+the street at one end and on a court at the other. The middle of the
+room was lighted by gas. The air was foul and the dirt lay in heaps at
+every corner and was piled up under the centre tables. It was less like
+a workshop than an old attic. There was the long-accumulated disorder of
+hasty preparation for the vanities of life. It had not at all the aspect
+of a factory which makes a steady provision of practical things. There
+were odds and ends of fancy costumes hanging about&mdash;swords, crowns,
+belts and badges. Under the sewing machines' swift needles flew the
+scarlet coats of a regiment; gold and silver braid lay unfurled on the
+table; the hand-workers bent over an armful of khaki; a row of young
+girls were fitting military <!-- Page 138 -->caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the
+ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and
+epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst
+of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks
+bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite,
+a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl
+counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a
+sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is very handsome with dark eyes
+and fine features, and he has the &quot;average figure,&quot; so that he serves as
+manikin for the atelier; and I find him alternately a workman in
+overalls and a Turkish magnate with turban and flowing robes. It is into
+this atmosphere of toil and unreality that I am initiated as a hand
+sewer. Something of the dramatic and theatrical possesses the very
+managers themselves. Below, a regiment waits impatient for new brass
+buttons; we sew against time and break all our promises. Messengers
+arrive every few minutes with fresh reports of rising ire on the part of
+disappointed customers. Down the stairs pell-mell comes an elderly
+partner of the firm with a gold-and-purple crown on his head and after
+him follows the kindly Mr. F. in an usher's jacket. &quot;If you don't start
+now,&quot; he calls, &quot;that order'll be left on our hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Amid such confusion the regular rhythm of the <!-- Page 139 -->needle as it carries its
+train of thread across the yards of coloured cloth is peaceful,
+consoling. I have on one side of me a tailor who speaks only Polish, on
+the other side a seamstress who speaks only German. Across the frontier
+I thus become they communicate with signs, and I get my share of work
+planned out by each. Every woman in the place is cross except the girl
+next to me. She has only just come in and the poison of the forewoman
+has not yet stung her into ill nature. She is, like all the foreigners,
+neatly, soberly dressed in a sensible frock of good durable material.
+The few Americans in the shop have on elaborate shirt-waists in
+light-coloured silks with fancy ribbon collars. We are well paid, there
+is no doubt of it. We begin work at 8 A.M. and have a generous half-hour
+at noon. Most of the girls are Germans and Poles, and they have all
+received training as tailoresses in their native countries. To the sharp
+onslaught of Frances' tongue they make no response except in dogged
+silent obedience, whereas the dressy Americans with their proper spirit
+of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command.
+Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears.
+Frances is ubiquitous. She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse,
+she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F.,
+and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little
+Polish girl, in tears. This latter comes to me, her face <!-- Page 140 -->wrought with
+emotion. She was receiving nine dollars a week; it is her first place in
+America. This sudden dismissal, its injustice, requires an explanation.
+She cannot speak a word of English and asks me to put my poor German at
+her service as interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. F. is clearly a man who advocates everything for peace, and as there
+is for him no peace when Frances is not satisfied, we gain little by our
+appeal to him except a promise that he will attend later to the troubles
+of the Polish girl. But later, as earlier, Frances triumphs, and I soon
+bid good-by to my seatmate and watch her tear-stained face disappear
+down the dingy hallway. She was a skilled tailoress, but she could not
+cut out men's garments, so Frances dismissed her. I wonder when my turn
+will come, for I am a green hand and yet determined to keep the American
+spirit. For the sake of justice I will not be downed by Frances.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to make friends with the girls; we dare not converse lest a
+fresh insult be hurled at us. For every mistake I receive a loud, severe
+correction. When night comes I am exhausted. The work is easy, yet the
+moral atmosphere is more wearing than the noise of many machines. My job
+is often changed during the week. I do everything as a greenhorn, but I
+work hard and pay attention, so that there is no excuse to dismiss me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am only staying here between jobs,&quot; the girl <!-- Page 141 -->next me volunteers at
+lunch. &quot;My regular place burnt out. You couldn't get <i>me</i> to work under
+<i>her</i>. I wouldn't stand it even if they do pay well.&quot; She is an
+American.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're lucky to be so independent,&quot; says a German woman whose dull
+silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature. &quot;I'm glad enough to get the
+money. I was up this morning at five, working. There's myself and my
+mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make. My husband is
+sick. He's in Arizona.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What were you doing at five?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a trade,&quot; she answers. &quot;I work on hair goods. It don't bring me
+much, but I get in a few hours night and morning and it helps some.
+There's so much to pay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was young, but youth is no lover of discomfort. Hardships had chased
+every vestige of <i>jeunesse</i> from her high, wrinkled brow and tired brown
+eyes. Like a mirror held against despair her face reflected no ray of
+hope. She was not rebellious, but all she knew of life was written there
+in lines whose sadness a smile now and again intensified.</p>
+
+<p>Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and
+tobacco smoke. The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the
+tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe. Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at
+my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across the city, held
+tightly under my <!-- Page 142 -->arm, become, before eating, a block of food, a
+composite meal in which I can distinguish original bits of ham sandwich
+and apple pie. The work, however, does not seem hard to me. I sew on
+buttons, rip trousers, baste coat sleeves&mdash;I do all sorts of odd jobs
+from eight until six, without feeling, in spite of the bad air, any
+great physical fatigue which ten minutes' brisk walk does not shake off.
+But never have the hours dragged so; the moral weariness in the midst of
+continual scolding and abuse are unbearable. Each night I come to a firm
+decision to leave the following day, but weakly I return, sure of my
+dollar and dreading to face again the giant city in search of work.
+About four one afternoon, well on in the week, Frances brings me a pair
+of military trousers; the stripes of cloth at the side seam are to be
+ripped off. I go to work cheerfully cutting the threads and slipping one
+piece of cloth from the other.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy
+way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way
+that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you
+tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her
+way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below,
+which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first
+on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift <!-- Page 143 -->first the
+upper, then the under thread. I begin by cutting a long hole in the
+trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it. She has frightened me
+into dishonesty. Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to
+turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other
+stitch. While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every
+moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers. I killed it. It
+was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table. Then I put down
+the trousers and drew away my chair. It was useless saying anything to
+the girl next me. She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word;
+but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances'
+husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's bedbugs in them clothes,&quot; I said. &quot;I won't work on 'em. No,
+sir, not if she sends me away this very minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In a great hurry Frances passed me twice. She called out angrily both
+times without waiting for an answer:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you finish them pants?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Frances was a German. She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes,
+which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair. She had no lips
+whatever. Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade. Her
+eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and
+nasal.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 144 -->On her third round she faced me with the same question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you finish them pants?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because,&quot; I answered this time, &quot;there's bedbugs in 'em and I ain't
+goin' to touch 'em!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! my!&quot; she taunted me, in a sneering voice, &quot;that's dreadful, ain't
+it? Bedbugs! Why, you need only just look on the floor to see 'em
+running around anywhere!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mike!&quot; she called to the presser in the corner, &quot;will you have this
+<i>young lady's</i> card made out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I
+joined a group of girls who were sewing badges.</p>
+
+<p>We had made up all description of political badges&mdash;badges for the
+court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of
+coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying
+men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with
+black-and-silver &quot;in memoriam&quot; badges, to be worn as a last tribute to
+some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to the grave under
+the emblem that had united them.</p>
+
+<p>We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living. At six the
+power was turned off, the <!-- Page 145 -->machine hands went home, there was still an
+unfinished heap of black badges.</p>
+
+<p>I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for
+dressing-room. Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You darsn't leave till you've finished them badges.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How could I feel the slavery they felt? My nerves were sensitive; I was
+unaccustomed to their familiar hardships. But on the other hand, my
+prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to
+rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money
+lined. They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as
+physical fatigue. There was nothing between them and starvation except
+the success of their daily effort. What opposition could the German
+woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited
+to be fed beside her own?</p>
+
+<p>With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy
+windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing
+darkness, I started down the stairs. A hand was laid on my arm, and I
+looked up and saw Mike's broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose you understand,&quot; he said, &quot;that there'll be no more work for
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered, &quot;I understand,&quot; and we <!-- Page 146 -->exchanged a glance that meant
+we both agreed it was Frances' fault.</p>
+
+<p>In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had
+advanced me. He seemed surprised at this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sorry,&quot; he said, in his gentle voice, &quot;that we couldn't arrange
+things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sorry, too,&quot; I said. But I dared not add a word against Frances.
+She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see
+her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me. I remembered a remark the
+German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl: &quot;People
+ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the end of this somewhat agitating day I returned to my tenement
+lodgings as to a haven of rest. There was one other lodger besides
+myself: she was studying music on borrowed money at four dollars a
+lesson. Obviously she was a victim to luxury in the same degree as the
+young women with whom I had lunched at the bakery. Nothing that a rich
+society girl might have had been left out of her wardrobe, and borrowed
+money seemed as good as any for making a splurge.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Arnold was something of a snob, intellectual and otherwise. It was
+evident from my wretched clothes and poor grammar that I was not
+accustomed to ladies of her type, but, far from <!-- Page 147 -->sparing me, she
+humiliated me with all sorts of questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm tired of taffeta jackets, aren't you?&quot; she would ask, apropos of my
+flimsy ulster. &quot;I had taffeta last year, with velvet and satin this
+winter; but I don't know what I'll get yet this summer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After supper, on my return, I found her sitting in the parlour with Mrs.
+Brown. They never lighted the gas, as there was an electric lamp which
+sent its rays aslant the street and repeated the pattern of the window
+curtains all over Mrs. Brown's face and hands.</p>
+
+<p>Drawn up on one end of the horsehair sofa, Miss Arnold, in a purple
+velvet blouse, chatted to Mrs. Brown and me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm from Jacksonville,&quot; she volunteered, patting her masses of curly
+hair. &quot;Do you know anybody from Jacksonville? It's an elegant town, so
+much wealth, so many retired farmers, and it's such an educational
+centre. Do you like reading?&quot; she asked me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't get time,&quot; is my response.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my!&quot; she rattles on. &quot;I'm crazy about reading. I do love blank
+verse&mdash;it makes the language so choice, like in Shakespeare.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brown and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat,
+remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss
+Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering back<!-- Page 148 -->ground
+for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the
+world on the tenement horsehair sofa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In case you don't like your work,&quot; she Lady Bountifuls me, &quot;I can get
+you a stylish place as maid with some society people just out of
+Chicago&mdash;friends of mine, an elegant family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't care to live out,&quot; I respond, thanking her. &quot;I like my Sundays
+and my evenings off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brown pricks up her ears at this, and I notice that thereafter she
+keeps close inquiry as to how my Sundays and evenings are spent.</p>
+
+<p>But the bell rings. Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the
+piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone,
+begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource
+among the poor. If she had had any infirmity&mdash;a wooden leg or a glass
+eye&mdash;she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had
+been spared intact she chose second best.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've had lots of shocks,&quot; she said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky
+rocking-chair. The light from over the way flickered and gleamed. Mrs.
+Brown's broad, yellow face and gray hair were now brilliant, now somber,
+as she rocked in and out of the silver rays. Her voice was a metallic
+whine, and when she laughed against her regular, even, false teeth there
+was a sound like the mechanical yelp of a toy cat. Married at sixteen,
+her whole life had been <!-- Page 149 -->Brown on earth below and God in His heaven
+above. Childless, she and Brown had spent over fifty years together. It
+was natural in the matter of shocks the first she should tell me about
+was Brown's death. The story began with &quot;a breakfast one Sunday morning
+at nine o'clock.... Brown always made the fire, raked down the ashes,
+set the coffee to boil, and when the toast and eggs were ready he called
+me. And that wasn't one morning, mind you&mdash;it was every morning for
+fifty years. But this particular morning I noticed him speaking strange;
+his tongue was kind o' thick. He didn't hardly eat nothing, and as soon
+as I'd done he got up and carried the ashes downstairs to dump 'em. When
+he come up he seemed dizzy. I says to him, 'Don't you feel good?' but he
+didn't seem able to answer. He made like he was going to undress. He put
+his hand in his pocket for his watch, and he put it in again for his
+pocketbook; but the second time it stayed in&mdash;he couldn't move it no
+more; it was dead and cold when I touched it. He leaned up against the
+wall, and I tried to get him over on to the sofa. When I looked into his
+eyes I see that he was gone. He couldn't stand, but I held on to him
+with all my force; I didn't let his head strike as he went down. <i>When
+he fell we fell together</i>.&quot; Her voice was choked; even now after three
+years as she told the story she could not believe it herself.</p>
+
+<p>Presently when she is calm again she continues <!-- Page 150 -->the recital of her
+shocks&mdash;three times struck by lightning and once run over. Her simple
+descriptions are straightforward and dramatic. As she talks the wind
+blows against the windows, the shutters rattle and an ugly white china
+knob, against which the curtains are draped, falls to the floor.
+Tenderly, amazed, she picks it up and looks at it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Brown put that up,&quot; she says; &quot;there hasn't no hand touched it since
+his'n.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Proprietor of this house in which she lives, Mrs. Brown is fairly well
+off. She rents one floor to an Italian family, one to some labourers,
+and one to an Irishman and his wife who get drunk from time to time and
+rouse us in the night with tumult and scuffling. She has a way of
+disappearing for a week or more and returning without giving any account
+of herself. Relations are strained, and Mrs. Brown in speaking of her
+says:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't care what trouble I was in, I wouldn't call in that Irish
+woman. I don't have anything to do with her. I'd rather get the Dago
+next door.&quot; And hereafter follows a mild tirade against the
+Italians&mdash;the same sentiments I have heard expressed before in the
+labouring centres.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='128.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/128-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/128-1_th.jpg"
+alt="Chicago types." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+CHICAGO TYPES
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;They're kind folks and good neighbours,&quot; Mrs. Brown explains, &quot;but
+they're different from us. They eat what the rest of us throw away, and
+there's no work they won't do. They're putting money aside fast; most of
+'em owns their own houses; but <!-- Page 151 --><!-- Page 152 -->since they've moved into this
+neighbourhood the price of property's gone down. I don't have nothing to
+do with 'em. We don't any of us. They're not like us; they're
+different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without letting a day elapse I started early the following morning in
+search of a new job. The paper was full of advertisements, but there was
+some stipulation in each which narrowed my possibilities of getting a
+place, as I was an unskilled hand. There was, however, one simple &quot;Girls
+wanted!&quot; which I answered, prepared for anything but an electric sewing
+machine.</p>
+
+<p>The address took me to a more fashionable side of the city, near the
+lake; a wide expanse of pale, shimmering water, it lay a refreshing
+horizon for eyes long used to poverty's quarters. Like a sea, it rolled
+white-capped waves toward the shore from its far-away emerald surface
+where sail-freighted barks traveled at the wind's will. Free from man's
+disfiguring touch, pure, immaculate, it appeared bridelike through a
+veil of morning mist. And at its very brink are the turmoil and
+confusion of America's giant industries. In less than an hour I am
+receiving wages from a large picture frame company in East Lake Street.
+Once more I have made the observation that men are more agreeable bosses
+than women. The woman, when she is not exceptionally disagreeable, like
+Frances, is always annoying. She bothers and nags; things must be <!-- Page 153 -->done
+her way; she enjoys the legitimate minding of other people's business.
+Aiming at results only, the masculine mind is more tranquil. Provided
+you get your work done, the man boss doesn't care what methods you take
+in doing it. For the woman boss, whether you get your work done or not,
+you must do it her way. The overseer at J.'s picture frame manufactory
+is courteous, friendly, considerate. I have a feeling that he wishes me
+to co&ouml;perate with him, not to be terrorized and driven to death by him.
+My spirits rise at once, my ambition is stimulated, and I desire his
+approval. The work is all done by the piece, he explains to me, telling
+me the different prices. The girls work generally in teams of three,
+dividing profits. Nothing could be more modern, more middle-class, more
+popular, more philistine than the production of J.'s workrooms. They are
+the cheap imitations fed to a public hungry for luxury or the semblance
+of it. Nothing is genuine in the entire shop. Water colours are imitated
+in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are
+imitated in applications of pressed brass. Great works of art are
+belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest
+pocket. Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every
+size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby's crib
+in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the
+piano in the front parlour. <!-- Page 154 -->The range of subjects covers a familiar
+list of comedies or tragedies&mdash;the partings before war, the interior
+behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the
+chocolate girl, the skipper and his daughter, etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>My job is easy, but slow. With a hammer and tacks I fasten four tin
+mouldings to the four corners of a gilt picture frame. Twenty-five cents
+for a hundred is the pay given me, and it takes me half a day to do this
+many; but my comrades don't allow me to get discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're doing well,&quot; a red-haired <i>vis-a-vis</i> calls to me across the
+table. And the foreman, who comes often to see how I am getting along,
+tells me that the next day we are to begin team-work, which pays much
+better.</p>
+
+<p>The hours are ten a day: from seven until five thirty, with twenty-five
+minutes at noon instead of half an hour. The extra five minutes a day
+mount up to thirty minutes a week and let us off at five on Saturdays.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation around me leads me to suppose that my companions are
+not downtrodden in any way, nor that they intend letting work interfere
+with happiness. They have in their favour the most blessed of all
+gifts&mdash;youth. The tragic faces one meets with are of the women
+breadwinners whose burdens are overwhelming and of the children in whom
+physical fatigue arrests development and <!-- Page 155 -->all possibility of pleasure.
+My present team-mates and those along the rest of the room are Americans
+between fourteen and twenty-four years of age, full of unconscious hope
+for the future, which is natural in healthy, well-fed youth, taking
+their work cheerily as a self-imposed task in exchange for which they
+can have more clothes and more diversions during their leisure hours.</p>
+
+<p>The profitable job given us on the following day is monotonous and
+dirty, but we net $1.05 each. There is a mechanical roller which passes
+before us, carrying at irregular intervals a large sheet of coloured
+paper covered with glue. My <i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i> and I lay the palms of our right
+hands on to the glue surface and lift the sheet of paper to its place on
+the table before us, over a stiff square of bristol board. The boss of
+the team fixes the two sheets together with a brush which she
+manipulates skilfully. We are making in this way the stiff backs which
+hold the pictures into their frames. When we have fallen into the proper
+swing we finish one hundred sheets every forty-five minutes. We could
+work more rapidly, but the sheets are furnished to us at this rate, and
+it is so comfortable that conversation is not interrupted. The subjects
+are the same as elsewhere&mdash;dress, young men, entertainments. The girls
+have &quot;beaux&quot; and &quot;steady beaux.&quot; The expression, &quot;Who is she going
+with?&quot; means who is her steady beau. &quot;I've got Jim Smith <i>now</i>, but I
+don't <!-- Page 156 -->know whether I'll keep him,&quot; means that Jim Smith is on trial as
+a beau and may become a &quot;steady.&quot; They go to Sunday night subscription
+dances and arrive Monday morning looking years older than on Saturday,
+after having danced until early morning. &quot;There's nothing so smart for a
+ball,&quot; the mundane of my team tells us, &quot;as a black skirt and white silk
+waist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>About ten in the morning most of us eat a pickle or a bit of cocoanut
+cake or some titbit from the lunch parcel which is opened seriously at
+twelve.</p>
+
+<p>The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and
+not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and
+cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having
+no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return
+to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the
+resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural
+condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There
+are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run
+presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my
+self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a
+situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find
+policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.
+Other people of whom I inquire <!-- Page 157 -->my way are sometimes curt, sometimes
+compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not
+nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom
+I speak often call me &quot;dear&quot; in answering.</p>
+
+<p>Under the trellis of the elevated road the &quot;cables&quot; clang their way.
+Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge
+over the rough pavements. The sidewalks are crowded with people who are
+dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business
+type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which
+line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke.
+The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address
+given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by
+the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles,
+followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses'
+hoofs have died away. Excitement for a moment supersedes business. The
+fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed
+against policemen's arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which
+sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the
+perpetual veil of soot.</p>
+
+<p>I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in
+print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger.
+Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days. The numbers <!-- Page 158 -->correspond. But
+there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies. The
+employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and promises
+to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand. Another boss
+printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the
+following Monday at three dollars a week. A kindly forelady in a large
+printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants
+only trained workers. &quot;I'm real sorry,&quot; she says. &quot;You're from the East,
+aren't you? I notice you speak with an accent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this time it is after three in the afternoon; my chances are
+diminishing as the day goes on and others apply before me. There is one
+more possibility at a box and label company which has advertised for a
+girl to feed a Gordon press. I have never heard of a Gordon press, but I
+make up my mind not to leave the label company without the promise of a
+job for the very next day. The stairway is dingy and irregular. My
+spirits are not buoyant as I open a swinging door and enter a room with
+a cage in the middle, where a lady cashier, dressed in a red silk waist,
+sits on a high stool overlooking the office. Three portly men, fat, well
+nourished, evidently of one family, are installed behind yellow ash
+desks, each with a lady typewriter at his right hand. I go timidly up to
+the fattest of the three. He is in shirt sleeves, evidently feeling <!-- Page 159 -->the
+heat painfully. He pretends to be very busy and hardly looks up when I
+say:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I seen your ad. in the paper this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're rather late,&quot; is his answer. &quot;I've got two girls engaged
+already.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too late!&quot; I say with an intonation which interrupts his work for a
+minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from
+tragedy to a good-humoured smile, I ask:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, are you sure those girls'll come? You can't always count on us,
+you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughs at this. &quot;Have you ever run a Gordon press?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir; but I'm awful handy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where have you been working?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At J.'s in Lake Street.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you make?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dollar a day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you come in to-morrow about eleven and I'll tell you then whether
+I can give you anything to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't you be sure now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Truly disappointed, my voice expresses the eagerness I feel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; the fat man says indulgently, &quot;you come in to-morrow morning at
+eight and I'll give you a job.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The following day I begin my last and by far my most trying
+apprenticeship.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 160 -->The noise of a single press is deafening. In the room where I work
+there are ten presses on my row, eight back of us and four printing
+machines back of them. On one side of the room only are there windows.
+The air is heavy with the sweet, stifling smell of printer's ink and
+cheap paper. A fine rain of bronze dust sifts itself into the hair and
+clothes of the girls at our end of the room, where they are bronzing
+coloured advertisements. The work is all done standing; the hours are
+from seven until six, with half an hour at noon, and holiday at one
+thirty on Saturdays. It is to <i>feed</i> a machine that I am paid three
+dollars a week. The expression is admirably chosen. The machine's iron
+jaws yawn for food; they devour all I give, and when by chance I am slow
+they snap hungrily at my hand and would crush my fingers did I not
+snatch them away, feeling the first cold clutch. It is nervous work.
+Each leaf to be printed must be handled twice; 5,000 circulars or
+bill-heads mean 10,000 gestures for the printer, and this is an
+afternoon's work.</p>
+
+<p>Into the square marked out for it by steel guards the paper must be
+slipped with the right hand, while the machine is open; with the left
+hand the printed paper must be pulled out and a second fitted in its
+place before the machine closes again. What a master to serve is this
+noisy iron mechanism animated by steam! It gives not a moment's respite
+to the worker, whose thoughts must never wander <!-- Page 161 -->from her task. The
+girls are pale. Their complexions without exception are bad.</p>
+
+<p>We are bossed by men. My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious,
+he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me. There
+is some complaining <i>sotto voce</i> of the other boss, who, it appears, is
+a hard taskmaster. Both are very young, both chew tobacco and
+expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor.
+While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of
+ill-repute. He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more
+accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings. He is
+communicative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like your job?&quot; he asks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, first rate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They don't pay enough. I give notice last week and got a raise. I guess
+I'll stay on here until about August.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then where are you going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Going home,&quot; he answers. &quot;I've been away from home for seven years. I
+run away when I was thirteen and I've been knocking around ever since,
+takin' care of myself, makin' a livin' one way or another. My folks
+lives in California. I've been from coast to coast&mdash;and I tell you I'll
+be mighty glad to get back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever been sick?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, twice. It's no fun. No matter how much <!-- Page 162 -->licking a boy gets he
+ought never to leave home. The first year or so you don't mind it so
+much, but when you've been among strangers two years, three years, all
+alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own
+folks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you saving up?&quot; I ask.</p>
+
+<p>He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll be able to leave here in August,&quot; he explains, when he has
+finished spitting, &quot;for Omaha. In three months I can save up enough to
+get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to
+San Francisco. I tell you,&quot; he adds, returning to his work, &quot;a person
+ought never to leave home.&quot; He had nine months of work and privation
+before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years.
+With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at
+the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full
+speed homeward toward those we love! Nine months, two hundred and
+seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait. He was manly. He had the
+spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men
+extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another
+for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy's life. He had
+not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound.
+His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle
+where he <!-- Page 163 -->worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a
+nonentity&mdash;a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without
+individual brilliancy, added to the general luster.</p>
+
+<p>The first day I had a touch of pride in getting easily ahead of the new
+girl who started in when I did. From my machine I could see only the
+back of her head; it was shaking disapproval at every stroke she made
+and had to make over again. She had a mass of untidy hair and a slouchy
+skirt that slipped out from her belt in the back. If not actually
+stupid, she was slow, and the foreman and the girl who took turns
+teaching her exchanged glances, meaning that they were exhausting their
+patience and would readily give up the job. I was pleased at being
+included in these glances, and had a miserable moment of vanity at lunch
+time when the old girls, the habitu&eacute;s, came after me to eat with them.
+The girl with the untidy hair and the long skirt sat quite by her self.
+Without unfolding her newspaper bundle, she took bites of things from
+it, as though she were a little ashamed of her lunch. My moment of
+vanity had passed. I went over to her, not knowing whether her
+appearance meant a slipshod nature or extreme poverty. As we were both
+new girls, there was no indiscretion in my direct question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like your job?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not understand what she answered, so I continued: &quot;Ever worked
+before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 164 -->She opened her hands and held them out to me. In the palm of one there
+was a long scar that ran from wrist to forefinger. Two nails had been
+worn off below the quick and were cracked through the middle. The whole
+was gloved in an iron callous, streaked with black.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does that look like work?&quot; was her response. It was almost impossible
+to hear what she said. Without a palate, she forced the words from her
+mouth in a strange monotone. She was one of nature's monstrous failures.
+Her coarse, opaque skin covered a low forehead and broad, boneless nose;
+her teeth were crumbling with disease, and into her full lower lip some
+sharp tool had driven a double scar. She kept her hand over her mouth
+when she talked, and except for this movement of self-consciousness her
+whole attitude was one of resignation and humility. Her eyes in their
+dismal surroundings lay like clear pools in a swamp's midst reflecting
+blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was you doing to get your hands like that?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tipping shoe-laces. I had to quit, 'cause they cut the pay down. I
+could do twenty-two gross in a day, working until eight o'clock, and I
+didn't care how hard I worked so long as I got good pay&mdash;$9 a week. But
+the employer'd been a workman himself, and they're the worst kind. He
+cut me down to $4 a week, so I quit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 165 -->Do you live home?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I give all I make to my mother, and she gives me my clothes and
+board. Almost anywhere I can make $7 a week, and I feel when I earn that
+much like I was doing right. But it's hard to work and make nothing. I'm
+slow to learn,&quot; she smiled at me, covering her mouth with her hand, &quot;but
+I'll get on to it by and by and go as fast as any one; only I'm not very
+strong.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the matter with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heart disease for one thing, and then I'm so nervous. It's kind of hard
+to have to work when you're not able. To-day I can hardly stand, my
+head's aching so. They make the poor work for just as little as they
+can, don't they? It's not the work I mind, but if I can't give in my
+seven a week at home I get to worrying.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now and then as she talked in her inarticulate pitiful voice the tears
+added luster to her eyes as her emotions welled up within her.</p>
+
+<p>The machines began to roar and vibrate again. The noon recess was over.
+She went back to her job. Her broad, heavy hands began once more to
+serve a company on whose moderate remuneration she depended for her
+daily bread. Her silhouette against the window where she stood was no
+longer an object for my vain eyes to look upon with a sense of
+superiority. I could hear the melancholy intonation of her voice,
+pronouncing words of courage over <!-- Page 166 -->her disfigured underlip. She was one
+of nature's failures&mdash;one of God's triumphs.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday night my fellow lodger, Miss Arnold, and I made an expedition
+to the spring opening of a large dry-goods shop in the neighbourhood of
+Mrs. Brown's. I felt rather humble in my toil-worn clothes to accompany
+the young woman, who had an appearance of prosperity which borrowed
+money alone can give. But she encouraged me, and we started together for
+the principal street of the quarter whose history was told in its
+show-case windows. Pawnshops and undertakers, bakeries and soda-water
+fountains were ranged side by side on this highway, as the necessity for
+them is ranged with incongruous proximity in the existence of those who
+live pell-mell in moral and material disorder after the manner of the
+poor. There was even a wedding coach in the back of the corner
+undertaker's establishment, and in the front window a coffin, small and
+white, as though death itself were more attractive in the young, as
+though the little people of the quarter were nearer Heaven and more
+suggestive of angels than their life-worn elders. The spotless tiny
+coffin with its fringe and satin tufting had its share of the ideal,
+mysterious, unused and costly; in the same store with the wedding coach,
+it suggested festivity: a reunion to celebrate with tears a small
+pilgrim's right to sleep at last undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>The silver rays of the street lamps mingled with <!-- Page 167 -->the yellow light of
+the shop windows, and on the sidewalk there was a cosmopolitan public.
+Groups of Italian women crooned to each other in their soft voices over
+the bargains for babies displayed at the spring opening; factory girls
+compared notes, chattered, calculated, tried to resist, and ended by an
+extravagant choice; the German women looked and priced and bought
+nothing; the Hungarians had evidently spent their money on arriving.
+From the store window wax figures of the ideal woman, clad in latest
+Parisian garb, with golden hair and blue eyes, gazed down benignly into
+the faces uplifted with envy and admiration. Did she not plainly say to
+them &quot;For $17 you can look as I do&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>The store was apparently flourishing, and except for such few useful
+articles as stockings and shirts it was stocked with trash. Patronized
+entirely by labouring men and women, it was an indication to their
+needs. Here, for example, was a stand hung with silk dress skirts,
+trimmed with lace and velvet. They were made after models of expensive
+dress-makers and were attempts at the sort of thing a Mme. de Rothschild
+might wear at the Grand Prix de Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Varying from $11 to $20, there was not one of the skirts made of
+material sufficiently solid to wear for more than a few Sunday outings.
+On another counter there were hats with extravagant garlands of flowers,
+exaggerated bows and plumes, wraps <!-- Page 169 --><!-- Page 168 -->with ruffles of lace and long
+pendant bows; silk boleros; a choice of things never meant to be
+imitated in cheap quality.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='144.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/144-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/144-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The rear of a Chicago tenement." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+THE REAR OF A CHICAGO TENEMENT
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>I watched the customers trying on. Possessed of grace and charm in their
+native costumes, hatless, with gay-coloured shawls on their shoulders,
+the Italian women, as soon as they donned the tawdry garb of the
+luxury-loving labourer, were common like the rest. In becoming
+prosperous Americans, animated by the desire for material possession
+which is the strength and the weakness of our countrymen, they lost the
+character that pleases us, the beauty we must go abroad to find.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Arnold priced everything, compared quality and make with
+Jacksonville productions, and decided to buy nothing, but in refusing to
+buy she had an air of opulence and taste hard to please which surpassed
+the effect any purchase could have made.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday morning Mrs. Brown asked me to join her and Miss Arnold for
+breakfast They were both in slippers and dressing-gowns. We boiled the
+coffee and set the table with doughnuts and sweet cakes, which Miss
+Arnold kept in a paper bag in her room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hardly ever eat, except between meals,&quot; she explained. &quot;A nibble of
+cake or candy is as much as I can manage, my digestion is so poor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever since Brown died,&quot; the widow responded, &quot;I've had my meals just
+the same as though he were here. All I want,&quot; she went on, as we seated
+our<!-- Page 170 -->selves and exchanged courtesies in passing the bread and butter,
+&quot;all I want is somebody to be kind to me. I've got a young niece that
+I've tried to have with me. I wrote to her and says: 'Your auntie's
+heart's just crying out for you!' And I told her I'd leave her all I've
+got. But she said she didn't feel like she could come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As soon as breakfast is over the mundane member of the household starts
+off on a day's round of visits. When the screen door has shut upon her
+slender silhouette, Mrs. Brown settles down for a chat. She takes out
+the brush and comb, unbraids her silver locks and arranges them while
+she talks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Arnold's always on the go; she's awful nervous. These society
+people aren't happy. Life's not all pleasure for them. You can be sure
+they have their ups and downs like the rest of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess that's likely,&quot; is my response.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They don't tell the truth always, in the first place. They say there's
+got to be deceit in society, and that these stylish people pretend all
+sorts of things. Well, then, all I say is,&quot; and she pricks the comb into
+the brush with emphasis, &quot;all I say is, you better keep out of society.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had twisted her gray braids into a coil at the back of her head, and
+dish-washing is now the order of the day. As we splash and wipe, Mrs.
+Brown looks at me rather closely. She is getting ready to <!-- Page 171 -->speak. I can
+feel this by a preliminary rattle of her teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're a new girl here,&quot; she begins; &quot;you ain't been long in Chicago. I
+just thought I'd tell you about a girl who was workin' here in the
+General Electric factory. She was sixteen&mdash;a real nice-lookin' girl from
+the South. She left her mother and come up here alone. It wasn't long
+before she got to foolin' round with one of the young men over to the
+factory. They were both young; they didn't mean no harm; but one day she
+come an' told me, cryin' like anythin', that she was in trouble, and her
+young man had slipped off up to Michigan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here Mrs. Brown stopped to see if I was interested, and as I responded
+with a heartfelt &quot;Oh, my!&quot; she went on:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you ought to have seen that girl's sufferin', her loneliness for
+her mother. I'd come in her room sometimes at midnight&mdash;the very room
+you have now&mdash;and find her on the floor, weepin' her heart out. I want
+to tell you never to get discouraged. Just you listen to what happened.
+The gentleman from the factory got a sheriff and they started up north
+after the young man, determined to get him by force if they couldn't by
+kindness. Well, they found him and they brought him back; he was willin'
+to come, and they got everythin' fixed up for the weddin' without
+tellin' her a thing about it, and one day she was sittin' right there,&quot;
+she pointed to the <!-- Page 172 -->rocking chair in the front parlour window, &quot;when he
+come in. He was carryin' a big bunch of cream roses, tied with long
+white ribbons. He offered 'em to her, but she wouldn't look at them nor
+at him. After awhile they went together into her room and talked for
+half an hour, and when they come back she had consented to marry him. He
+was real kind. He kept askin' me if she had cried much and thankin' me
+for takin' care of her. They were married, and when the weddin' was over
+she didn't want to stay with him. She said she wanted her mother, but we
+talked to her and told her what was right, and things was fixed up
+between them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had taken down from its hook in the corner sunlight the canary bird
+and his cage. She put them on the table and prepared to give the bird
+his bath and fresh seed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see,&quot; she said, drawing up a chair, &quot;that's what good employers
+will do for you. If you're working in a good place they'll do right by
+you, and it don't pay to get down-hearted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thanked her and showed the interest I truly felt in the story.
+Evidently I must account for my Sundays! It was with the bird now that
+Mrs. Brown continued her conversation. He was a Rip Van Winkle in
+plumage. His claws trailed over the sand of the cage. Except when Mrs.
+Brown had a lodger or two with her, the bird was the only living thing
+in her part of the tenement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 173 -->I've had him twenty-five years,&quot; she said to me. &quot;Brown give him to
+me. I guess I'd miss him if he died.&quot; And presently she repeated again:
+&quot;I don't believe I even know how much I'd miss him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the last evening of my tenement residence I was sitting in a
+restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose
+Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and
+irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper
+earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew
+must be open, as I felt a cold wind. The lake brought capricious changes
+of the temperature: the thermometer had fallen the night before from
+seventy to thirty. I turned to see who the newcomer might be. The sight
+of him set my heart beating faster. The restaurant keeper was
+questioning the man to find out who he was.... He was evidently
+nobody&mdash;a fragment of anonymous humanity lashed into <i>debris</i> upon the
+edge of a city's vortex; a remnant of flesh and bones for human
+appetites to feed on; a battleground of disease and vice; a beggar
+animated by instinct to get from others what he could no longer earn for
+himself; the type <i>par excellence</i> who has worn out charity
+organizations; the poor wreck of a soul that would create pity if there
+were none of it left in the world. He was asking for food. The
+proprietor gave him the <!-- Page 174 -->address of a free lodging-house and turned him
+away. He pulled his cap over his head; the door opened and closed,
+letting in a fresh gale of icy air. The man was gone. I turned back to
+my supper. Scientific philanthropists would have means of proving that
+such men are alone to blame for their condition; that this one was in
+all probability a drunkard, and that it would be useless, worse than
+useless, to help him. But he was cold and hungry and penniless, and I
+knew it. I went as swiftly as I could to overtake him. He had not
+traveled far, lurching along at a snail's pace, and he was startled when
+I came up to him. One of his legs was longer than the other; it had been
+crushed in an accident. They were not pairs, his legs, and neither were
+his eyes pairs; one was big and blind, with a fixed pupil, and the other
+showed all his feelings. Across his nose there was a scar, a heavy scar,
+pale like the rest of his face. He was small and had sandy hair. The
+directors of charity bureaus could have detected perhaps a faint
+resemblance to the odour of liquor as he breathed a halo of frosty air
+over his scraggly red beard.</p>
+
+<p>Through the weather-beaten coat pinned over it his bare chest was
+visible.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a cold night!&quot; I began. &quot;Are you out of a job?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With his wistful eye he gave me a kind glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been sick. There's a sharp pain right in <!-- Page 175 -->through here.&quot; He showed
+me a spot under his arm. &quot;They thought at the hospital that I 'ad
+consumption. But,&quot; his face brightened, &quot;I haven't got it.&quot; He showed in
+his smile the life-warrant that kept him from suicide. <i>He wanted to
+live.</i></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where did you sleep last night?&quot; I asked. &quot;It was a cold night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To tell you the truth,&quot; he responded in his strong Scotch accent, &quot;I
+slept in a wagon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I proposed that we do some shopping together; he looked at me gratefully
+and limped along to a cheap clothing store, kept by an Italian. The
+warmth within was agreeable; there was a display of garments hung across
+the ceiling under the gas-light. My companion waited, leaning against
+the glass counter, while I priced the flannel shirts. To be sure, my own
+costume promised little bounty. The price of the shirt was seventy-five
+cents, and as soon as he heard this the poor man said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you mustn't spend as much as that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Looking first at the pauper, then at me, the Italian leaned over and
+whispered to me, &quot;I think I understand. You can have the shirt for
+sixty, and I'll put in a pair of socks, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus we had become a fraternity; all were poor, the stronger woe helping
+the weaker.... When his toilet was complete the poor man looked half a
+head taller.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 176 -->Shall I wrap up your old cap for you?&quot; the salesman asked, and the
+other laughed a broken, long-disused laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess I won't need it any more,&quot; he said, turning to me.</p>
+
+<p>His face had changed like the children's valentines that grow at a touch
+from a blank card to a glimpse of paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the street again we shook hands. I was going back to my supper.
+He was going, the charity directors would say, to pawn his shirt and
+coat.</p>
+
+<p>The man had evidently not more than a few months to live; I was leaving
+Chicago the following day. We would undoubtedly never meet again.</p>
+
+<p>As his bony hand lay in mine, his eyes looked straight at me. &quot;Thank
+you,&quot; he said, and his last words were these:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll stand by you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a pledge of fraternity at parting. There was no material
+substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any
+generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron
+of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who
+are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no
+scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity;
+of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases;
+of those whose charity is tolerant and maternal, patient with <!-- Page 177 -->the
+helpless, prepared for disappointments; not looking for results, ever
+ready to begin again, so long as the paradox of suffering and inability
+are linked together in humanity.</p><!-- Page 178 -->
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_V'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<center>THE MEANING OF IT ALL</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>Before concluding the recital of my experiences as a working girl, I
+want to sum up the general conclusions at which I arrived and to trace
+in a few words the history of my impressions. What, first of all, was my
+purpose in going to live and work among the American factory hands? It
+was not to gratify simple curiosity; it was not to get material for a
+novel; it was not to pave the way for new philanthropic associations; it
+was not to obtain crude data, such as fill the reports of labour
+commissioners. My purpose was to <i>help</i> the working girl&mdash;to help her
+mentally, morally, physically. I considered this purpose visionary and
+unpractical, I considered it pretentious even, and I cannot say that I
+had any hope of accomplishing it. What did I mean by <i>help</i>? Did I mean
+a superficial remedy, a palliative? A variety of such remedies occurred
+to me as I worked, and I have offered them gladly for the possible aid
+of charitable people who have time and money to carry temporary relief
+to the poor. It was not relief of this kind that I meant by <i>help</i>. I
+meant an <i>amelioration in natural conditions</i>. <!-- Page 182 -->I was not hopeful of
+discovering any plan to bring about this amelioration, because I
+believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the
+working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to
+resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the
+test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a
+sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked,
+that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and
+that they can therefore be corrected. It is with hope for the material
+betterment of the breadwinning woman, for the moral advancement of the
+semi-breadwinner and the esthetic improvement of the country, that I
+submit what seems a rational plan.</p>
+
+<p>For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my
+companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to
+dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death. My own physical
+sufferings were acute. My heart was torn with pity. I revolted against a
+society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and
+bodies. Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on
+human lives. To every new impression I responded with indiscriminate
+compassion. It is impossible for the imagination to sustain for more
+than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like
+myself is <!-- Page 183 -->obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells,
+the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw
+mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling.
+The mind cannot grasp what it means to be frantic with pain in the
+shoulders and back before nine in the morning, and to watch the clock
+creep around to six before one has a right to drop into the chair that
+has stood near one all day long. Yet it is not until the system has
+become at least in a great measure used to such physical effort that one
+can judge without bias. When I had grown so accustomed to the work that
+I was equal to a long walk after ten hours in the factory; when I had
+become so saturated with the tenement smell that I no longer noticed it;
+when any bed seemed good enough for the healthy sleep of a working girl,
+and any food good enough to satisfy a hungry stomach, then and then only
+I began to see that in the great unknown class there were a multitude of
+classes which, aside from the ugliness of their esthetic surroundings
+and the intellectual inactivity which the nature of their occupation
+imposes, are not all to be pitied: they are a collection of human
+individuals with like capacities to our own. The surroundings into which
+they are born furnish little chance for them to develop their minds and
+their tastes, but their souls suffer nothing from working in squalour
+and sordidness. Certain acts of impulsive generosity, of disinterested
+<!-- Page 184 -->kindness, of tender sacrifice, of loyalty and fortitude shone out in
+the poverty-stricken wretches I met on my way, as the sun shines
+glorious in iridescence on the rubbish heap that goes to fertilize some
+rich man's fields.</p>
+
+<p>My observations were confined chiefly to the women. Two things, however,
+regarding the men I noticed as fixed rules. They were all breadwinners;
+they worked because they needed the money to live; they supported
+entirely the woman, wife or mother, of the household who did not work.
+In many cases they contributed to the support of even the wage-earning
+females of the family: the woman who does not work when she does not
+need to work is provided for.</p>
+
+<p>The women were divided into two general classes: Those who worked
+because they needed to earn their living, and those who came to the
+factories to be more independent than at home, to exercise their
+coquetry and amuse themselves, to make pin money for luxuries. The men
+formed a united class. They had a purpose in common. The women were in a
+class with boys and with children. They had nothing in common but their
+physical inferiority to man. The children were working from necessity,
+the boys were working from necessity; the only industrial unit
+complicating the problem were the girls who worked without being obliged
+to&mdash;the girls who had &quot;all the <!-- Page 185 -->money they needed, but not all the money
+they wanted.&quot; To them the question of wages was not vital. They could
+afford to accept what the breadwinner found insufficient. They were
+better fed, better equipped than the self-supporting hand; they were
+independent about staying away from the factory when they were tired or
+ill, and they alone determined the reputation for irregularity in which
+the breadwinners were included.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, it seemed to me, was the first chance to offer help.</p>
+
+<p>The self-supporting woman should be in competition only with other
+self-supporting industrial units. The problem for her class will settle
+itself, according to just and natural laws, when the purpose of this
+class is equally vital to all concerned. Relief, it seemed to me, could
+be brought to the breadwinner by separating from her the girl who works
+for luxuries.</p>
+
+<p>How could this be done?</p>
+
+<p>There is, I believe, a way in which it can be accomplished naturally.
+The non-self-supporting girls must be attracted into some field of work
+which requires instruction and an especial training, which pays them as
+well while calling into play higher faculties than the brutalizing
+machine labour. This field of work is industrial art: lace-making,
+hand-weaving, the fabrication of tissues and embroideries,
+gold-smithery, bookbinding, rug-weaving, wood<!-- Page 186 -->carving and inlaying, all
+the branches of industrial art which could be executed by woman in her
+home, all the manual labour which does not require physical strength,
+which would not place the woman, therefore, as an inferior in
+competition with man, but would call forth her taste and skill, her
+training and individuality, at the same time being consistent with her
+destiny as a woman.</p>
+
+<p>The American factory girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for
+knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world,
+to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for
+forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There
+is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give
+their time and their money to lifting the non-breadwinners from the
+slavish, brutalizing machines at which they work, ignorant of anything
+better, and placing them by education, by cultivation, in positions of
+comparative freedom&mdash;freedom of thought, taste and personality.</p>
+
+<p>Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston
+and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed.
+Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it
+is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient
+merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted.
+There is not a factory which would not <!-- Page 187 -->furnish some material. The
+recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual
+advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages
+would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art
+School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in
+proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast
+as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of
+hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a
+plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Who will act as mediator?</p>
+
+<p>I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to
+help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and
+the girl who works for luxuries.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>MARIE VAN VORST</h2>
+
+<br />
+
+<center>INTRODUCTORY</center>
+<br />
+<center>VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN</center>
+<br />
+<center>VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS</center>
+<br />
+<center>IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS</center>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_VI'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<center>INTRODUCTORY</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its
+brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism
+have always had much to say in praise of the &quot;beauty of toil.&quot; Carlyle
+has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When
+one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from
+ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal
+holidays as the sole respite&mdash;to find at the month's end that the only
+possible economics are pleasures&mdash;one is at least better fitted to
+comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of
+the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason
+of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside
+for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and
+bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was
+possible, to live as she lived, work as she worked. In thus approaching
+her I believed that I could share her ambitions, her pleasures, her
+privations.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 192 -->Working by her side day after day, I hoped to be a mirror that should
+reflect the woman who toils, and later, when once again in my proper
+sphere of life, to be her expositor in an humble way&mdash;to be a mouthpiece
+for her to those who know little of the realities of everlasting labour.</p>
+
+<p>I have in the following pages attempted to solve no problem&mdash;I have
+advanced no sociologic schemes. Conclusions must be drawn by those who
+read the simple, faithful description of the woman who toils as I saw
+her, as I worked beside her, grew to understand in a measure her point
+of view and to sympathize with her struggle.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>MARIE VAN VORST.<br /></span>
+<span>Riverdale-on-Hudson,<br /></span>
+<span>1902.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_VII'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<center>A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace
+to the public safety.&quot;&mdash;Roosevelt.</p>
+
+<p>Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it
+which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The
+workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot,
+the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of
+the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is <i>the
+labourer's head</i> upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the
+vortex of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p><i>That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace
+society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass.</i></p>
+
+<p>Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the
+Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample
+provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish
+employment of new machinery&mdash;tells on the great manufacturing world.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 196 -->Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery
+or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be
+given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical
+culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is
+securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers'
+souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned
+out at cheaper cost.</p>
+
+<p>The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made
+their demands for shorter hours and better pay.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>LYNN</p>
+
+<p>Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a
+dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the
+self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the
+daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour
+bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue
+noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to
+me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air.</p>
+
+<p>I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class
+whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out
+necessities and luxuries for the market.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='172.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/172-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/172-1_th.jpg"
+alt="In the Lynn shoe factory." />
+</a>
+<center>
+A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY<br />
+At work in a Lynn shoe factory. <br />
+</center>
+<br />
+<a href="images/172-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/172-2_th.jpg"
+alt="In the Lynn shoe factory." />
+</a>
+<center>
+ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY<br />
+A very expert &quot;vamper,&quot; an Irish
+girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week.
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows:</p>
+
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td>Hat </td><td align="right">$&nbsp;&nbsp;40</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sealskin coat</td><td align="right">200</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Black cloth dress</td><td align="right">150</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Silk underskirt</td><td align="right">25</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Kid gloves</td><td align="right">2</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Underwear</td><td align="right">30</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">$&nbsp;447</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The clothes I put on were as follows:</p>
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td>Small felt hat</td><td align="right">$&nbsp;&nbsp;.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Woolen gloves</td><td align="right">.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Flannel shirt-waist</td><td align="right">1.95</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Gray serge coat</td><td align="right">3.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Black skirt</td><td align="right">2.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Underwear</td><td align="right">1.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Tippet</td><td align="right">1.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">$&nbsp;9.45</td></tr>
+</table>
+<br />
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<br />
+<p>When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in
+a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to
+back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get
+nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my
+speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The
+route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet <!-- Page 199 -->thick
+covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter
+scene the sun shone brilliantly.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former
+personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had
+discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto
+pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder
+to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.</p>
+
+<p>Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in
+the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the
+streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to
+this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course,
+and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church
+stamping the place New England.</p>
+
+<p>Lynn is made up of factories&mdash;great masses of ugliness, red brick,
+many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this
+town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in
+our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there
+are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is
+70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.</p>
+
+<p>The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a
+directory and found the address of <!-- Page 200 -->the Young Women's Christian
+Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal
+streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once
+displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout
+my first experience&mdash;qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality
+and human interest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the
+night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple
+decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing
+less in the older woman's face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Work in the shops?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, ma'am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own
+way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>She said earnestly: &quot;You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't
+know about, child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here.
+I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town
+just <i>anywheres</i>! You might get into trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or
+directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question,
+receive some information; and thus in marvelous <!-- Page 201 -->friendliness she turned
+and outstretched her hand&mdash;I was a stranger and this was her welcome.</p>
+
+<p>I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I
+myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I
+intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or
+any aid.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden
+tenement set back from the road.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Furnished Room to Rent,&quot; read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced
+woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ve only got a 'sheep' room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a
+<i>cheap</i> room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That
+was the kind of people she received.</p>
+
+<p>I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was
+French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from
+Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our
+understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always.</p>
+
+<p>My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean,
+agreeable room.</p>
+
+<p>Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She
+would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the &quot;young ladies&quot;
+who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her <!-- Page 202 -->furniture by
+slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to
+complain of me&mdash;I would take care.</p>
+
+<p>The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of
+course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first
+floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I
+made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame
+Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging
+manners.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle Ballard has work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here
+three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have
+slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn!
+My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods,
+weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated.</p>
+
+<p>The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of
+the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks,
+frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but
+stopped finally before a humbler shop&mdash;where a sign swung at the door:
+&quot;Hands Wanted.&quot; I went in here and opened a door on the third floor
+into a small office.</p>
+
+<p>I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
+twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
+I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
+revolving desk-chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want work. Got any?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's gluein' suspender straps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, indulgent of this whim.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They all does! Don't they, Mary?&quot; (She acquiesced.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
+back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
+suspender straps, tempting me with them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What you ever done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing. I'm green!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Mary said; &quot;I have to learn them all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
+four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
+no time.&quot; ...</p>
+
+<p>Preston's!</p>
+
+<p>That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
+way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
+half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!</p>
+
+<p>I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
+outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
+neither of the factories in which I was employed was &quot;model&quot; to my
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
+help:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I am green; I can't do office work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
+me in his private office. I told him: &quot;I want work badly&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had nothing&mdash;was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
+disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
+refusing applicants for work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here&quot;&mdash;he mitigated his refusal&mdash;&quot;come <!-- Page 205 -->to-morrow at nine. I'm
+getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll give me a chance, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I will!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
+houseless.</p>
+
+<p>With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before
+nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets
+filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I
+wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for
+sauce, ate a good meal.</p>
+
+<p>Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time
+the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my
+goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading:</p>
+
+<center>&quot;<i>Wanted, Vampers</i>.&quot;</center>
+
+<p>A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand
+for work was greeted at the office this time with&mdash;&quot;Any signs out?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer
+nodded: &quot;Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes
+were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within a
+factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an
+elevator&mdash;a freight elevator; there are no others, <!-- Page 206 -->of course. This lift
+was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook and
+rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between &quot;safety
+doors&quot;&mdash;continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to
+receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the
+shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping
+inadvertently to sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was
+in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation
+and the noise was startling and deafening.</p>
+
+<p>I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for
+the forelady by her &quot;air&quot;; nothing else distinguished her from the
+employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to
+attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect
+aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.</p>
+
+<p>Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account
+book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me
+something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She didn't even look at me, but called&mdash;shrieked, rather&mdash;above the
+machine din to her colleagues:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Got anything for a green hand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 207 -->The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got
+from any one in authority in Parsons'.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, ma'am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll have you learned <i>pressin'</i>; we need a <i>presser</i>. Go take your
+things off, then get right down over there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and
+coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two
+hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I
+went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained.
+I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman.</p>
+
+<p>On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me,
+although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who
+demanded her time and patience. She was to &quot;learn me pressin',&quot; and she
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a
+pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The
+branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps,
+vamps, etc. Dipping my brush <!-- Page 208 -->in the glue, I gummed all the extreme
+outer edges. When the &quot;case&quot; had been gummed, the first bits were dry,
+then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine
+little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled
+hem flattened with the hammer&mdash;this is &quot;pressing.&quot; The case goes from
+presser to the seaming machine.</p>
+
+<p>The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it
+should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All
+this means double work later. &quot;<i>Twict the work</i>!&quot; my teacher remarks.
+Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the
+uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from
+time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I
+have mastered the method&mdash;skill and rapidity can be mine only after many
+days; but I worked alone, unaided.</p>
+
+<p>As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating
+rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the
+hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was
+kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only
+the beginning!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='184.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/184-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/184-1_th.jpg"
+alt="'Learning' a new hand." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;LEARNING&quot; A NEW HAND.<br/>
+Miss P., an experienced &quot;gummer&quot; on vamp linings, is a New England girl,
+and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at
+the same work.
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to
+me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a
+greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my
+vamps with the ill-smelling glue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked
+they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady
+said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's
+long's you have.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked, &quot;What would you rather do than this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She didn't seem to know.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you&mdash;I bet you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(I didn't&mdash;but not quite for her reason.)</p>
+
+<p>As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told
+Maggie McGowan I was going home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tired already?&quot; There was still an hour to dark.</p>
+
+<p>As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment
+spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes&mdash;three
+dozen pairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess I'll have to put it on my card,&quot; she soliloquized, &quot;'cause I
+learned you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do&mdash;do&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only about seven cents, anyway.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Three hours' work and that's all I've made?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of
+gain and wealth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you make?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't want to discourage you.&quot; ...</p>
+
+<p>(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was
+her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot; ... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve
+dollars a week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will make four!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of
+ignorance!)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>I don't want to discourage you</i>, but I guess you'd better do
+housework!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of
+women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a
+day labour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't <i>you</i> do housework, Maggie?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook
+breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here.
+When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate,
+as she, generous creature, took it to be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After you've been here a few years,&quot; she said, &quot;you'll make more than I
+do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 212 -->Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs
+climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were
+tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat
+in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating
+spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of
+which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming,
+singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000
+paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one
+piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my
+tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from
+my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends
+had said to me: &quot;Your hands will betray you!&quot; If the girls at my side in
+Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as
+they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure
+class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and
+beauty from a woman's hands.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to
+her: &quot;I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are
+twice as black.&quot; She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: &quot;I
+never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they
+used to be real nice, though.&quot; She held the blunted <!-- Page 213 -->ends up. &quot;They're
+awful! I do love a nice hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh
+air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils,
+sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3"><sup>3</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as
+cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a
+shift at a toilet.</p>
+
+<p>Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the
+table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper
+table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she
+waited upon her nine guests.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst
+of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness of
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Ballard!&quot; The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced
+me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women
+besides myself and four men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange,&quot; said my hostess in her
+pretty Canadian <i>patois</i>. &quot;I want her to be at home here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she'll be at home all right!&quot; A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette
+from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling
+good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come to work in the shops?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever been to Lynn before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; live in Paris&mdash;stranger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My, but that's hard&mdash;all alone here! Got a job?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I explained to the attentive interest of all.</p>
+
+<p>From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or passed to me
+the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every
+shred of appetite, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's
+stifling heat would have dulled hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Let it go! I was far too interested to eat.</p>
+
+<p>The table was crowded with all manner of substances passing for
+food&mdash;cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten
+at one time and at will; the drink was tea.</p>
+
+<p>At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pass anywhere for a business
+man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a
+bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika
+and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle
+<!-- Page 215 -->Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed),
+then Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless
+questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent.
+Their attitude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which
+qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who
+suffer privation, who labour.</p>
+
+<p>Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and
+Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in
+good English and mediocre French.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most
+has to get spoken of weeks in advance&mdash;introduced by friends, too!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mika said: &quot;My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The
+landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak
+for you to our foreladies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as
+though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, <i>mon enfant</i>, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange
+place. <i>Ici nous sommes toute une famille</i>&quot;.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All one family?&quot; Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a
+stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who,
+one day by <!-- Page 216 -->chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your
+side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your
+clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge
+form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face,
+brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.</p>
+
+<p>Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her
+guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an
+hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social
+climber's ladder.</p>
+
+<p>Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the <i>truffle</i>
+buried in <i>pate de foie gras</i>; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies
+and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a <i>canard a
+la presse</i> throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no
+labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding
+bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry,
+eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.</p>
+
+<p>Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But mademoiselle eats nothing&mdash;a bird's appetite.&quot; And here was
+displayed the first hint of vulgarity we are taught to look for in the
+other class.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands about my arms. &quot;<i>Tiens! un <!-- Page 217 -->bras tout de meme!</i>&quot; and
+she looked at Maurice, the young man on my right.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Maurice c'est toi qui devrait t'informer des bras d'mademoiselle.&quot;</i></p>
+
+<p>(&quot;Maurice, it is you who should inform yourself of mademoiselle's
+arms.&quot;)</p>
+
+<p>Maurice laughed with appreciation, as did the others. He was the sole
+American at table; out of courtesy for him we talked English from time
+to time, although he assured us he understood all we said in &quot;the
+jargon.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To Maurice a master pen could do justice; none other. His <i>type</i> is seen
+stealing around corners in London's Whitechapel and in the lowest
+quarters of New York: a lounger, indolent, usually drunk. Maurice was
+the type, with the qualities absent. Tall, lank, loosely hung together,
+made for muscular effort, he wore a dark flannel shirt, thick with
+grease and oil stains, redolent with tobacco, a checked waistcoat, no
+collar or cravat. From the collarless circle of his shirt rose his
+strong young neck and bullet head; his forehead was heavy and square
+below the heavy brows; his black eyes shone deep sunken in their
+caverns.</p>
+
+<p>His black hair, stiff as a brush, came low on his forehead; his mouth
+was large and sensual, his teeth brilliant. But his hands! never to be
+forgotten! Scrubbed till flesh might well have parted from the <!-- Page 218 -->bones!
+clean, even if black and mutilated with toil; fingers forever darkened;
+stained ingrained ridges rising around the nails, hard and ink-black as
+leather. Maurice was Labour&mdash;its Symbol&mdash;its Epitome.</p>
+
+<p>At the landlady's remark he had blushed and addressed me frankly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, I work to de 'Lights.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(Lights! Can such a word be expressive of the factory which has daily
+blackened and scarred and dulled this human instrument?)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the 'Lights,' and it ain't no <i>cinch</i>, I can tell you! I got to keep
+movin'. Every minute I'm late I get docked for wages&mdash;it's a day's work
+to the 'Lights.' When <i>she</i> calls me at six&mdash;why, I don't turn over and
+snooze another! I just turn right out. I walk two miles to my shop&mdash;and
+every man in his place at 6:45! Don't you forgit it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He cleaned his plate of food.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I jest keep movin' all de time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his mouth&mdash;rose unceremoniously, put on his pot-like derby
+ajaunt, lit a vile cigar, slipped into a miserable old coat, and was
+gone, the odour of his weed blending its new smell with kitchen fumes.</p>
+
+<p>He is one of the absolutely real creatures I have ever seen. Of his
+likeness types of crime are drawn. Maurice&mdash;blade keen-edged, hidden in
+its battered sheath, its ugly case&mdash;terrible yet attractive speci<!-- Page 219 -->men of
+strength and endurance&mdash;Youth and Manhood in you are bound to labour as
+on the rack, and in the ordeal you keep (as does the mass of humanity)
+Silence!</p>
+
+<p>Eat by this man's side, heap his plate with coarse victuals, feel the
+touch of his flannel sleeve against your own flannel blouse, see his
+look of brotherhood as he says:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, if de job dey give you is too hard, why, I guess I kin get yer in
+to the 'Lights'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These are sensations facts alone can give.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>After dinner we sit all together in the parlour, the general
+living-room: carpet-covered sofa, big table, few chairs&mdash;that's all. We
+talk an hour&mdash;and on what? We discuss Bernhardt, the divine Sarah. &quot;Good
+shows don't come to Lynn much; it don't pay them. You can't get more
+than fifty cents a seat. Now Bernhardt don't like to act for fifty-cent
+houses! But the theatres are crowded if ever there's a good show. We get
+tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House.&quot; Maude Adams was a
+favourite. R&eacute;jane had been seen. Of course, the vital American
+interest&mdash;money&mdash;is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The
+packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read,
+discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the
+pleasure it would be to travel and see the world.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 220 -->At nine, friendly handshaking. &quot;Good-night. You're tired. You'll like
+it all right to the shops, see if you don't! You'll make money, too. The
+forelady must a-seen that you were ambitious. Why, to my shop when a new
+hand applies for a job the foreman asks: 'What does he look like?
+Ambitious lookin'? Well, then&mdash;there's room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ambitious to make shoes! To grind out all you can above the average five
+dollars a week, all you may by conscientious, unflagging work during 224
+hours out of a month.</p>
+
+<p>Good-night to the working world! Landlady and friendly co-labourers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Il ne faut pas vous gener, mademoiselle; nous sommes toute une
+famille</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs in my room the excitement died quite out of me. I lay wakeful
+in the hard, sheetless bed. It was cold, my window-pane freezing
+rapidly. I could not sleep. On either side, through the thin walls of
+the house, I could hear my neighbours settling to repose. Maurice's room
+was next to mine. He whistled a short snatch of a topical song as he
+undressed. On the other side slept the landlady's children; opposite,
+the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's
+song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed
+silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted
+to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 221 -->Before six the next morning&mdash;black as night&mdash;the call: &quot;Mau&mdash;rice!
+Mau&mdash;<i>rice</i>!&quot; rang through the hall. Summons to us all, given through
+him on whom the exigencies of life fell the heaviest. Maurice worked by
+day system&mdash;the rest of us were freed men and women by comparison.</p>
+
+<p>The night before, timid and reluctant to descend the two flights of
+pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought
+up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be
+if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by
+pitcher. A little water nearly frozen was at hand for my toilet. By six
+I was dressed and my bed made; by 6:15 in the kitchen, dense with smoke
+from the frying breakfast. Through the haze the figures of my friends
+declared themselves. Codfish balls, bread and butter and coffee formed
+the repast.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice is the first to finish, standing a moment to light his pipe, his
+hat acock; then he is gone. The sisters wash at the sink, Mika combing
+her mass of frowzy dark hair, talking meanwhile. The sisters' toilet,
+summary and limited, is frankly displayed.</p>
+
+<p>At my right the bride consumes five enormous fish balls, as well as much
+bread. Her husband, a young, handsome, gentle creature, eats sparingly.
+His hand is strapped up at the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's wrong?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Strained tendons. Doctor says they'd be all <!-- Page 222 -->right if I could just hold
+up a little. They don't get no chance to rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why not 'hold up' awhile?&quot; He regards me sympathetically as one who
+says to an equal, a fellow: &quot;You know why!&mdash;for the same reason that you
+yourself will work sick or well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>On fait ce que l'on peut</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(&quot;One does one's best!&quot;)</p>
+
+<p>When the young couple had left the room our landlady said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The little woman eats well, doesn't she! She needs no tonic! All day
+long she sits in my parlour and rocks&mdash;and rocks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She does nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But yes! She reads novels!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past six when I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is
+slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still
+half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring to life.</p>
+
+<p>I become, after a block or two, one of a hurrying throng of labour-bound
+fellows&mdash;dark forms appear from streets and avenues, going in divers
+directions toward their homes. Homes? Where one passes most of one's
+life, is it not <i>Home</i>?</p>
+
+<p>These figures to-day bend head and shoulders against the wind as it
+blows neck-coverings about, forces bare hands into coat pockets.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the town has been traversed, railroad track crossed, and
+Parsons' in sight, day has nearly broken. Pink clouds float over factory
+roofs in a sky growing bluer, flushing to day.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='196.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/196-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/196-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass." />
+</a>
+<center>
+THE WINDOW SIDE OF MISS K.'S PARLOUR AT LYNN, MASS.
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>From now on the day is shut out for those who here and there enter the
+red-brick factories. An hour at noon? Of course, this magnificent hour
+is theirs! Time to eat, time to feed the human machine. One hour in
+which to stretch limbs, to pull to upright posture the bent body.
+Meanwhile daylight progresses from glowing beauty to high noon, and
+there the acme of brilliance seems to pause, as freed humanity stares
+half-blinded at God's midday rest.</p>
+
+<p>All the remaining hours of daylight are for the leisure world. Not till
+night claims Lynn shall the factory girl be free.</p>
+
+<p>Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side
+those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in
+a cheery tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Working here? Got it good?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all right. Good-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new
+class!</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long,
+low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign
+to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not <!-- Page 225 -->fully found the
+workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but
+was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me&mdash;hard ordeal
+for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun
+my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the
+seats beyond me and on either side were filled.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks
+like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of
+good-fellowship&mdash;coin freely passed from workwoman to workwoman.</p>
+
+<p>This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush
+dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was
+massed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like
+lightning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like your job?&quot; I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to
+all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but
+made no direct reply. &quot;I used to have what you're doing; it's awful.
+That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got <i>this</i>.&quot;
+She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But don't you smell it from here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so bad; this here&quot; (pointing to her black fluid) &quot;smells stronger;
+it <i>drownds</i> it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I make my wages clear,&quot; she announced to me a few minutes later.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward.
+I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't
+cost me anything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running,
+waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and
+not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ain't from these parts,&quot; she continued, confidentially, &quot;I'm down
+East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes
+(thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room
+grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie,
+loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the
+like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and
+at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because
+one had been three hours at work.</p>
+
+<p>A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an
+apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a
+prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her
+half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, you'd better <i>earn</i> an apple before you buy one!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 227 -->My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded
+her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very
+indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make
+shoes. In a cheerful &quot;undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.
+It drove Maggie McGowan &quot;mad,&quot; so she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, why don't some of <i>youse</i> sing?&quot; said the little creature, looking
+down our busy line. &quot;I never hear no singing in the shops.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maggie said, &quot;Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The other laughed sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I jest have to sing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You seem happy; are you?&quot; She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You bet! That's the way to be!&quot; Then after a little, in an aside to me
+alone, she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;See the sun?&quot; she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through
+the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) &quot;He's peekin' at me! He'll find <i>you</i>
+soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sun, friend, light, air, seek them&mdash;seek them! Pour what tide of pure
+gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads
+at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed
+shoulders! on the flying hands!</p>
+
+<p>At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom <!-- Page 228 -->and habit. Unwilling to
+thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I
+went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I
+had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and
+cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that
+which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.</p>
+
+<p>The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired
+out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and
+folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to
+continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue
+(oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Maggie asked me, &quot;How old do I look?&quot; I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it
+seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. &quot;It's
+this,&quot; Maggie nodded to the workroom; &quot;it takes it out of you! Just you
+wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory,
+shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the
+horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.</p>
+
+<p>Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 229 -->Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions
+she was courtesy itself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say,&quot; to her neighbour, &quot;where do you think Miss Ballard's from?
+Paris!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. &quot;My, but that's
+a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She fell to work again, and said after a little: &quot;Paris! Why, that's
+like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is
+like!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of
+satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast
+narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of
+the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the
+afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over
+her head and exclaimed: &quot;My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five
+cents to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maggie McGowan (indicating me): &quot;Here's a girl who's had the misfortune
+never to work in a shoe-shop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Misfortune?</i> You don't mean that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maggie: &quot;Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd
+jump into the river!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a
+lot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sick of the shoe-shops.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been at this work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten years. When you have worked ten years in Lynn you will be sick of
+the shops.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was sick of the shops, and I had not worked ten years. And for my
+hard-toiling future, such as she imagined that it would be, I could see
+that she pitied me. Once, supposing that since I am so green and so
+ill-clad, and so evidently bent on learning my trade the best I knew,
+she asked me in a voice quick with sisterhood:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, are you hungry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, no.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be all right! No American girl need to starve in America.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the shops the odours are more easily endured than is the noise. All
+conversation is shrieked out, and all the vision that one has as one
+lifts one's eyes from time to time is a sky seen through dirty
+window-panes, distant chimney-pots, and the roof-lines of like houses of
+toil.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I gathered this from our interrupted talk that flowed unceasingly
+despite the noise of our hammers and the noise of the general room.</p>
+
+<p>They worked at a trade uncongenial. Not one had a good word to say for
+shop-labour there, despite its advantages, in this progressive land of
+generous pay. Each woman in a narrow, touching degree <!-- Page 231 -->was a dreamer.
+Housework! too servile; but then, compared to shopwork it was leisure.</p>
+
+<p>By four the gas was lit here and there where burners were available.
+Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in
+semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became
+mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and
+blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the gas jets in misty circles.</p>
+
+<p>Unaltered alone was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the
+machinery, the long soughing of the power-engine.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there a woman stops to rest a second, her head sunk in her
+hand; or she rises, stretches limbs and body. A man wanders in from the
+next room, a pipe in his mouth, or a bad cigar, and pausing by one of
+the pale operators, whose space of rest is done, he flings down in front
+of her a new pile of piece-work from the cutting machines.</p>
+
+<p>We are up five flights of stairs. There are at least two hundred girls.
+Machine oil, rags, refuse, cover the floor&mdash;such <i>d&egrave;bris</i> as only awaits
+a spark from a lighted match or cigar to burst into flames. Despite laws
+and regulations the building is not fire-proof. There is no fire-escape.
+A cry of fire, and great Heaven! what escape for two hundred of us from
+this mountain height, level with roofs of the distant town!</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 232 -->Thus these women, shapes mysterious in gaslight and twilight, labour:
+life is at stake; health, youth, vigour, supply little more than bread.
+I rise; my bruised limbs, at first numb, then aching, stir for the first
+time after five hours of steady work. The pile of shoes before me is
+feeble evidence of the last hours' painful effort.</p>
+
+<p>I get into my clothes&mdash;skirt, jacket and hat, all impregnated now with
+factory and tenement odours, and stumble downstairs and out into the
+street. I have earned fifty cents to-day&mdash;but then, I am green!</p>
+
+<p>When once more in the cool, fresh air, released, I draw in a long and
+grateful breath.</p>
+
+<p>Lynn on this winter night is a snow-bound, midwinter village. In the
+heavens is the moon's ghost, a mist-shrouded, far-away disk. But it is
+the Christmas moon, shining on the sleeping thousands in the town, where
+night alone is free. The giant factories are silent, the machines at
+last quiet, the long workrooms moon-invaded. Labour is holy, but serfdom
+is accursed, and toil which demands that every hour of daylight should
+be spent in the race for existence&mdash;all of the daylight&mdash;is kin to
+slavery! There is no time for mental or physical upright-standing, no
+time for pleasure.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One day I decided to consider myself dismissed from Parsons'. They had
+taught me all they could, <!-- Page 233 -->unless I changed my trade, in that shop; I
+wished to learn a new one in another. Therefore, one morning I applied
+at another factory, again one of the largest in Lynn. The sign read:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Cleaner Wanted</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cleaner&quot; sounded easy to learn. My experience this time was with a
+foreman instead of a forelady. The workroom I sought was on the second
+floor, a room filled with men, all of them standing. Far down the room's
+centre I saw the single figure of a woman at her job. By her side I was
+soon to be, and we two the sole women on the second floor.</p>
+
+<p>The foreman was distinctly a personage. Small, kind, alive, he wore a
+straw hat and eye-glasses. He had decided in a moment that my short
+application for &quot;something to do&quot; was not to be gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever worked before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This time I had a branch of a trade at my fingers' ends.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir; presser.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was proud of my trade.</p>
+
+<p>I did not even know, as I do now, that &quot;cleaning&quot; is the filthiest job
+the trade possesses. It is in bad repute and difficult to secure a woman
+to do the unpleasant work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You come with me,&quot; he said cheerfully; &quot;I'll teach you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The forelady at Parsons' did not know whether I <!-- Page 234 -->worked well or not. She
+never came to see. The foreman in Marches' taught me himself.</p>
+
+<p>Two high desks, like old-time school desks, rose in the workshop's
+centre. Behind one of these I stood, whilst the foreman in front of me
+instructed my ignorance. The room was filled with high crates rolled
+hither and thither on casters. These crates contained anywhere from
+thirty-two to fifty pairs of boots. The cases are moved from operator to
+operator as each man selects the shoes to apply to them the especial
+branch of his trade. From the crate of boots rolled to my side I took
+four boots and placed them on the desk before me. With the heel of one
+pressed against my breast, I dipped my forefinger in a glass of hot soap
+and water, water which soon became black as ink. I passed my wet, soapy
+finger all around the boot's edges, from toe to heel. This loosened, in
+the space between the sole and vamp, the sticky dye substance on the
+leather and particles so-called &quot;dirt.&quot; Then with a bit of wood covered
+with Turkish toweling I scraped the shoe between the sole and vamp and
+with a third cloth polished and rubbed the boot clean. In an hour's time
+I did one-third as well as my companion. I cleaned a case in an hour,
+whilst she cleaned three.</p>
+
+<p>When my employer had left me I observed the woman at my side: an untidy,
+degraded-looking creature, long past youth. Her hands beggared
+description; their covering resembled skin not at <!-- Page 235 -->all, but a dark-blue
+substance, leatherlike, bruised, ingrained, indigo-hued. Her nails
+looked as though they had been beaten severely. One of her thumbs was
+bandaged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I lost one nail; rotted off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Horrible! How, pray?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That there water: it's poison from the shoe-dye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly my hands were changing to a faint likeness of my companion's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't tell him,&quot; she said, &quot;that I told you that. He'll be mad; he'll
+think I am discouraging you. But you'll lose your forefinger nail, all
+right!&quot; Then she gave a little laugh as she turned her boot around to
+polish it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Once I tried to clean my hands up. Lord! it's no good! I scrub 'em with
+a scrubbin'-brush on Sundays.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been at this job?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten months.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They called her &quot;Bobby&quot;; the men from their machines nodded to her now
+and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was
+ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in
+earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from
+us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood.
+I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet
+was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the
+<!-- Page 236 -->morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to
+&quot;Bobby.&quot; He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his
+job she said to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor?
+You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did that man come over to tell you this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. He said it made you tired.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man,
+bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the
+cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole
+he held to the flying wheel.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is
+scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against
+forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen
+sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bobby&quot; was not talkative or communicative simply because she had
+nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question
+to me during the time I worked by her side: &quot;Do you like your job?&quot; and
+although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too
+exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She
+took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. <!-- Page 237 -->Every now and then
+she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day
+was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents.
+During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of
+shoes.</p>
+
+<p>In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work.
+Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial &quot;B&quot; on the tag and
+rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into
+his active charge.</p>
+
+<p>The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He
+was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far
+personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been a presser long at the shoe-shops?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold
+the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you; perhaps I won't, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself,&quot; he said; &quot;I know how that
+is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On his next visit he asked me: &quot;Where you goin'; to when you get out of
+here to-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him that I was all right&mdash;that I had a place to stay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose
+I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes
+you a livin'.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the foreman had left me I turned to look at &quot;Bobby.&quot; She was in the
+act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not going to drink that!&quot; I gasped, horrified. &quot;Where did you
+get it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I drawed it awhile ago,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for
+a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew
+the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so
+limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an
+American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight
+years old, and her brain was stunted.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='210.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/210-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/210-1_th.jpg"
+alt="Fancy gumming" />
+</a>
+<center>
+&quot;FANCY GUMMING&quot;<br />
+Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her
+husband also works in a factory, and between them they have made enough
+to build a pretty little cottage<br />
+</center>
+<br />
+<a href="images/210-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/210-2_th.jpg"
+alt="An all-round, experienced hand." />
+</a>
+<center>AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND<br />
+Mrs. F., who has worked
+in the factory more than twenty years, once as a forewoman, now earns
+only $5 or $6 a week.
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down
+once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made
+the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than
+one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands
+were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen
+and men.</p>
+
+<p>Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage <!-- Page 240 -->in a vessel. The top
+floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained
+blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that
+eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been
+impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and
+ate, in spite of the inconveniences, ravenously, and paid for my dinner
+fifteen cents. Most of my neighbours took one course, stew or soup. I
+rose half-satisfied, dizzy from the fumes and the bad air. I am safe in
+saying that I never smelled anything like to Weyman's, and I hope never
+to again. Never again shall I hear food and drink discussed by the
+<i>gourmet</i>&mdash;discuss, indeed, with him over his repast&mdash;but there shall
+rise before me Weyman's restaurant, low-ceiled, foul, crowded to
+overflowing. I shall see the diners bend edged appetites to the
+unpalatable food. These Weyman patrons, mark well, are the rich ones,
+the swells of labour&mdash;able to squander fifteen to twenty cents on their
+stew and tea. There are dozens, you remember, still in the unaired
+fourth and fifth stories&mdash;at &quot;lunching&quot; over their sandwiches. Far
+more vivid, more poignant even must be to me the vision of &quot;Bobby.&quot; I
+shall see her eat her filthy sandwich with her blackened hands, see her
+stoop to blow the scum of deadly matter from her typhoid-breeding glass.</p>
+
+<p>In Lynn, unless she boards at home, a girl's living <!-- Page 241 -->costs her at best
+$3.75 a week. If she be of the average<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>4</sup></a> her month's earnings are $32.Reduce this by general
+expenses and living and her surplus is $16, to earn which she has toiled
+224 hours. You will recall that there are, out of the 22,000 operatives
+in Massachusetts, 5,000 who make under $5 a week. I leave the reader to
+compute from this the luxuries and possible pleasures consistent with
+this income.</p>
+
+<p>A word for the swells of the trade, for swells exist. One of my
+companions at 28 Viger Street made $14 a week. Her expenses were $4; she
+therefore had at her disposition about $40 a month. She had no
+family&mdash;<i>every cent of her surplus she spent on her clothes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I like to look down and see myself dressed nice,&quot; she said; &quot;it makes
+me feel good. I don't like myself in poor clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She <i>was</i> well-dressed&mdash;her furs good, her hat charming. We walked to
+work side by side, she the lady of us. Of course she belongs to the
+Union. Her possible illness is provided for; her death will bring $100
+to a distant cousin. She is only tired out, thin, undeveloped, pale,
+that's all. She is almost a capitalist, and extremely well dressed.</p>
+
+<p>Poor attire, if I can judge by the reception I met with in Lynn,
+influences only those who by reason of birth, breeding and education
+should be above such things. In Viger Street I was more simply <!-- Page 242 -->clad
+than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a
+spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement
+lodging Mika took my hand at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-by.&quot; Her eyes actually filled. &quot;I'm awful sorry you're going. If
+the world don't treat you good come back to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on
+whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect&mdash;the spoiled creature of the
+traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New
+York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in
+time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched
+my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and
+waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the
+favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the
+cleaner from Marches'.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_VIII'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<center>THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS</center>
+<br />
+<center>THE MILL VILLAGE</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>Columbia, South Carolina, of course is conscious that there are mills
+without its city precincts. It is proud of the manufacture that gives
+the city precedence and commercial value all over the world. The trolley
+runs to the mills empty, as a rule, after the union depot is passed.</p>
+
+<p>Frankly, what is there to be seen in these dusty suburbs? Entry to the
+mills themselves is difficult, if not absolutely impossible. And that
+which forms the background for the vast buildings, the Mill Village, is
+a section to be shunned like the plague. Plague is not too strong a word
+to apply to the pest-ridden, epidemic-filled, filthy settlement where in
+this part of the country the mill-hand lives, moves and has his being,
+horrible honeycomb of lives, shocking morals and decency.</p>
+
+<p>Around Columbia there lie five mills and their respective
+settlements&mdash;Excelsior, the Granton, Calcutta, the Richland and the
+Capital City. Each of these mills boasts its own so-called town. When
+<!-- Page 246 -->these people are free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday they are too
+exhausted to do anything but turn into their hovels to sleep. At most on
+Saturday afternoons or Sundays they board a trolley and betake
+themselves to a distant park which, in the picturesque descriptions of
+Columbia, reads like an Arcadia and is in reality desolation.</p>
+
+<p>The mill-hands are not from the direct section of Columbia. They are
+strangers brought in from &quot;the hills&quot; by the agents of the company, who
+go hither and thither through the different parts of the country
+describing to the poor whites and the hill dwellers work in the mills as
+a way to riches and success. Filled with dreams of gain and possessions,
+with hopes of decent housing and schooling for their children, they
+leave their distant communities and troop to the mills. These immigrants
+are picturesque, touching to see. They come with all they own in the
+world on their backs or in their hands; penniless; burrs and twigs often
+in the hair of the young girls. They are hatless, barefooted, ignorant;
+innocent for the most part&mdash;and hopeful! What the condition of these
+labourers is after they have tested the promises of the manufacturer and
+found them empty bubbles can only be understood and imagined when one
+has seen their life, lived among them, worked by their side, and
+comprehended the tragedy of this population&mdash;a floating population,
+going from Granton to Excelsior, from Excelsior <!-- Page 247 -->to Richland, hither and
+thither, seeking&mdash;seeking better conditions. They have no affiliation
+with the people of the town; they are looked down upon as scum: and in
+good sooth, for good reason, scum they are!</p>
+
+<p>It is spring, warm, gracious. This part of the world seems to be
+well-nigh treeless! There is no generous foliage, but wherever there are
+branches to bear it the first green has started out, delicate, tender
+and beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>In my simple work garb I leave Columbia and take a trolley to the mill
+district. I have chosen Excelsior as best for my purpose. Its reputation
+is most at stake; its prospectus dazzling; its annals effective. If such
+things are done in Gath...!</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say with what timidity I descend from the tram in this strange
+country, foreign to my Northern habitation and filled with classes whose
+likeness I have never seen and around which the Southern Negro makes a
+tad and gloomy background.</p>
+
+<p>Before the trolley has arrived at the corporation stores Excelsior has
+spoken&mdash;roared, clicked forth so vibrantly, so loudly, I am prepared to
+feel the earth shake. This is the largest mill in the world and looks
+it! A model, too, in point of view of architecture. I have read in the
+prospectus that it represents $1,750,000 capital, possesses 104,000
+spindles, employs 1,200 hands, and can, with crowding, employ 3,000.
+Surely it will have place for one <!-- Page 248 -->more, then! I am impressed with its
+grandeur as it rises, red-bricked, with proud, straight towers toward
+its centre&mdash;impressed and frightened by its insistent call as it rattles
+and hums to me across the one-sixteenth of a mile of arid sand track. At
+one side Christianity and doctrine have constructed a church: a second
+one is building. On the other side, at a little distance, lies Granton,
+second largest mill. All this I take in as I make my way Excelsiorward.
+Between me and the vast mill itself there is not a soul. A thick, sandy
+road winds to the right; in the distance I can see a black trestle over
+which the freight cars take the cotton manufactures to the distant
+railroad and ship them to all parts of the world. Beyond the trestle are
+visible the first shanties of the mill town.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='220.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/220-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/220-1_th.jpg"
+alt="Mighty mill&mdash;pride of the architect and the commercial magnate." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;MIGHTY MILL&mdash;PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL
+MAGNATE&quot;<br />
+&quot;Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed;
+breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot.&quot;
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>Work first and lodgings afterward are my goals. At the door of Excelsior
+I am more than overwhelmed by its magnificence and its loud voice that
+makes itself so far-reachingly heard. There is no entry for me at the
+front of the mill, and I toil around to the side; not a creature to be
+seen. I venture upon the landing and make my way along a line of freight
+cars&mdash;between the track and the mill.</p>
+
+<p>A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar
+follows him! He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern
+courtesy not yet extinct. I hasten to ask for work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, thar's jest plenty of work, I reckon! Go in that do'; the
+overseer will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in
+dimensions. Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and
+are piled in the centre. Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them,
+outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes
+of the black Negro of true Southern blood. I have been told there is no
+Negro labour in the mills. I take advantage of my guide's kind face to
+ask him if he knows where I can lodge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hed the measles? Well, my gyrl got 'em. Thar's a powerful sight of
+measles hyar. I'd take you-all to bo'd at my house ef you ain't 'fraid
+of measles. Thar's the hotel.&quot; (He points to what at the North would be
+known as a brick shanty.) &quot;A gyrl can bo'd thar for $2.25 a week. You
+won't make that at first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With extreme kindness he leads me into the roaring mill past picturesque
+black men and cotton bales: we reach the &quot;weave-room.&quot; I am told that
+carpet factories are celebrated for their uproar, but the weave-looms of
+a cotton mill to those who know them need no description! This is chaos
+before order was conceived: more weird in that, despite the din and
+thunder, everything is so orderly, so perfectly carried forth by the
+machinery. Here the cotton cloth is woven. Excelsior is so vast that
+from <!-- Page 251 -->one end to the other of a room one cannot distinguish a friend. I
+decide instantly that the weave-room shall not be my destination! An
+overseer comes up to me. He talks with me politely and kindly&mdash;that is,
+as well as he can, he talks! It is almost impossible to hear what he
+says. He asks me simple and few questions and engages me promptly to
+work that &quot;<i>evening</i>&quot; as the Southerner calls the hours after midday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can see all the work and choose a sitting or a standing job.&quot; This
+is an improvement on Pittsburg and Lynn.</p>
+
+<p>I have been told there is always work in the mills for the worker.</p>
+
+<p>It is not strange that every inducement consistent with corporation
+rules should be made to entice the labouring girl! The difficulty is
+that no effort is made to keep her! The ease with which, in all these
+experiences, work has been obtained, goes definitely to prove that there
+is a demand everywhere for labourers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Organize labour, therefore, so well that the work-woman who obtains her
+task may be able to continue it and keep her health and her
+self-respect</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With Excelsior as my future workshop I leave the mill to seek lodging in
+the mill village.</p>
+
+<p>The houses built by the corporation for the hands are some five or six
+minutes' walk, not more, from the palace-like structure of the mill
+proper. To reach <!-- Page 252 -->them I plod through a roadway ankle-deep in red clay
+dust. The sun is bright and the air heavy, lifeless and dull; the scene
+before me is desolate, meager and poverty-stricken in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p>The mill houses are all built exactly alike. Painted in sickly greens
+and yellows, they rise on stilt-like elevations above the malarial soil.
+Here the architect has catered to the different families, different
+individual tastes in one point of view alone, regarding the number of
+rooms: They are known as &quot;four-or six-room cottages.&quot; In one of the
+first cottages to the right a wholesome sight&mdash;the single wholesome
+sight I see during my experience&mdash;meets my eye. Human kindness has
+transformed one of the houses into a kindergarten&mdash;&quot;Kindergarten&quot; is
+over the door. A pretty Southern girl, a lady, stands surrounded by her
+little flock. The handful of half a dozen emancipated children who are
+not in the mills is refreshing to see. There are very few; the
+kindergarten flags for lack of little scholars.</p>
+
+<p>I accost her. &quot;Can you tell me any decent place to board?&quot; She is sorry,
+regards me kindly with the expression I have grown to know&mdash;the look the
+eyes adopt when a person of one class addresses her sister in a lower
+range.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a stranger come out to work in the mills.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the young lady takes little interest in me. Children are her care.
+They surround her, clinging, laughing, calling&mdash;little birds fed so
+gently by the <!-- Page 253 -->womanly hand. She turns from the working-woman to them,
+but not before indicating a shanty opposite:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Green lives there in that four-room cottage. She is a good woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the door's crack I interview Mrs. Green, a pallid, sickly
+creature, gowned, as are most of the women, in a calico garment made all
+in one piece. She permits me to enter the room which forms (as do all
+the front rooms in a mill cottage) bedroom and general living-room.</p>
+
+<p>Here is confusion incarnate&mdash;and filthy disorder. The tumbled, dirty bed
+fills up one-half the room. In it is a little child, shaking with
+chills. On the bare floor are bits of food, old vegetables, rags, dirty
+utensils of all sorts of domestic description. The house has a sickening
+odour. The woman tells me she is too ill to keep tidy&mdash;too ill to keep
+boarders. We do not strike a bargain. &quot;I am only here four months,&quot; she
+said. &quot;Sick ever since I come, and my little girl has fevernaygu.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I wander forth and a child directs me to a six-room cottage, &quot;a real
+bo'din'-house.&quot; I attack it and thus discover the dwelling where I make
+my home in Excelsior.</p>
+
+<p>From the front room of this dwelling a kitchen opens. Within its shadow
+I see a Negro washing dishes. A tall woman, taller than most men,
+angular, white-haired, her face seared by toil and <!-- Page 254 -->stricken with age,
+greets me: she is the landlady. At her skirts, catching them and staring
+at a stranger, wanders a very young child&mdash;a blue-eyed, clean little
+being; a great relief, in point of fact, to the general filth hitherto
+presented me. The room beyond me is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Jones?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has &quot;jest ben com'in' Letty's
+hair.&quot; Letty smiles delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick
+thing.&quot; Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the
+stranger's child. &quot;And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She
+don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can I find lodging here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looks at me. &quot;Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of
+gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you
+can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there,
+too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard
+on her; she's ben sick fo' days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at
+noon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stranger hyar, I reckon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; from Massachusetts. A shoe-hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shakes her head: &quot;You wont like the mills.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 255 -->She draws Letty between her old stiff knees, seats herself on a
+straight chair, and combs the child's hair on either side its pathetic,
+gentle little face. So I leave her for the present to return to Columbia
+and fetch back with me my bundle of clothes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When I return at noon it is dinner time. I enter and am introduced, with
+positive grace and courtesy, by my dear old landlady to her son-in-law,
+&quot;Tommy Jones,&quot; a widower, a man in decent store clothes and a Derby hat
+surrounded by a majestic crape sash. He is nonchalantly loading a large
+revolver, and thrusts it in his trousers pocket: &quot;Always carry it,&quot; he
+explains; &quot;comes handy!&quot; Then I am presented to the gentlemen boarders.
+I beg to go upstairs, with my bundles, and I see for the first time my
+dwelling part of this shanty.</p>
+
+<p>A ladderlike stair leading directly from the kitchen takes me into the
+loft. Heavens! the sight of that sleeping apartment! There are three
+beds in it, sagging beds, covered by calico comforters. The floor is
+bare; the walls are bare. I have grown to know that &quot;Jones'&quot; is the
+cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it
+lacks perfection. Around the bare walls hang the garments of the other
+women who share the room with me. What humble and pathetic decorations!
+poor, miserable clothes&mdash;a shawl or two, a coat or two, a cotton
+wrapper, a hat; and on one nail the miniature <!-- Page 256 -->clothes of Letty&mdash;a
+little night-dress and a tiny blue cotton dress. I put my bundle down by
+the side of my bed which I am to share with another woman, and descend,
+for Mrs. Jones' voice summons me to the midday meal.</p>
+
+<p>The nourishment provided for these thirteen-hour-a-day labourers is as
+follows: On a tin saucepan there was a little salt pork and on another
+dish a pile of grease-swimming spinach. A ragged Negro hovered over
+these articles of diet; the room was full of the smell of frying. After
+the excitement of my search for work, and the success, if success it can
+be called that so far had met me, I could not eat; I did not even sit
+down. I made my excuse. I said that I had had something to eat in
+Columbia, and started out to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the mill-hand has reached his home a good fifteen minutes
+out of the three-quarters of an hour recreation is gone: his food is
+quickly bolted, and by the time I have reached the little brick hotel
+pointed out to me that morning and descended to its cellar restaurant,
+forced myself to drink a cup of sassafras tea, and mounted again into
+the air, the troop of workers is on the march millward. I join them.</p>
+
+<p>Although the student of philanthropy and the statistician would find
+difficulty in forcing the countersign of the manufactories, the worker
+may go everywhere.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 257 -->I do not see my friend of the morning, the overseer, in the
+&quot;weave-room&quot;; indeed, there is no one to direct me; but I discover,
+after climbing the stairs, a room of flying spools and more subdued
+machinery, and it appears that the spool-room is this man's especial
+charge. He consigns to me a standing job. A set of revolving spools is
+designated, and he secures a pretty young girl of about sixteen, who
+comes cheerfully forward and consents to &quot;learn&quot; me.</p>
+
+<p>Spooling is not disagreeable, and the room is the quietest part of the
+mill&mdash;noisy enough, but calm compared to the others. In Excelsior this
+room is, of course, enormous, light and well ventilated, although the
+temperature, on account of some quality of the yarn, is kept at a point
+of humidity far from wholesome.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Spooling&quot; is hard on the left arm and the side. Heart disease is a
+frequent complaint amongst the older spoolers. It is not dirty compared
+to shoe-making, and whereas one stands to &quot;spool,&quot; when one is not
+waiting for yarn it is constant movement up and down the line. The fact
+that there are more children than young girls, more young girls than
+women, proves the simplicity of this task. The cotton comes from the
+spinning-room to the spool-room, and as the girl stands before her
+&quot;side,&quot; as it is called, she sees on a raised ledge, whirling in rapid
+vibration, some one hundred huge spools full <!-- Page 258 -->of yarn; whilst below her,
+each in its little case, lies a second bobbin of yarn wound like a
+distaff.</p>
+
+<p>Her task controls machinery in constant motion, that never stops except
+in case of accident.</p>
+
+<p>With one finger of her right hand she detaches the yarn from the distaff
+that lies inert in the little iron rut before her. With her left hand
+she seizes the revolving circle of the large spool's top in front of
+her, holding this spool steady, overcoming the machinery for the moment
+not as strong as her grasp. This demands a certain effort. Still
+controlling the agitated spool with her left hand, she detaches the end
+of yarn with the same hand from the spool, and by means of a patent
+knotter harnessed around her palm she joins together the two loosened
+ends, one from the little distaff and one from this large spool, so that
+the two objects are set whirling in unison and the spool receives all
+the yarn from the distaff. Up and down this line the spooler must walk
+all day long, replenishing the iron grooves with fresh yarn and
+reknitting broken strands. This is all that there is of &quot;spooling.&quot; It
+demands alertness, quickness and a certain amount of strength from the
+left arm, and that is all! To conceive of a woman of intelligence
+pursuing this task from the age of eight years to twenty-two on down
+through incredible hours is not salutary. You will say to me, that if
+she demands nothing more she is fit for nothing more. I cannot think it.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 259 -->The little girl who teaches me spooling is fresh and cheerful and
+jolly; I grant her all this. She lives at home. I am told by my
+subsequent friends that she thinks herself better than anybody. This
+pride and ambition has at least elevated her to neat clothes and a
+sprightliness of manner that is refreshing. She does not hesitate to
+evince her superiority by making sport of me. She takes no pains to
+teach me well. Instead of giving me the patent knotter, which would have
+simplified my job enormously, she teaches me what she expresses &quot;the
+old-fashioned way&quot;&mdash;knotting the yarn with the fingers. I have mastered
+this slow process by the time that the overseer discovers her trick and
+brings me the harness for my left hand. She is full of curiosity about
+me, asking me every sort of question, to which I give the best answers
+that I can. By and by she slips away from me. I turn to find her; she
+has vanished, leaving me under the care of a truly kind, sad little
+creature in a wrapper dress. This little Maggie has a heart of gold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you-all fret,&quot; she consoles. &quot;That's like Jeannie: she's so
+<i>mean</i>. When you git to be a remarkable fine spooler she'll want you on
+her side, you bet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She assists my awkwardness gently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll learn you all right. You-all kin stan' hyar by me all day. Jeannie
+clean fergits she was a greenhorn herself onct; we all wuz. Whar you
+come from?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lynn, Massachusetts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you-all git <i>worried</i> with the train? I only bin onto it onct, and
+it worried me for days!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She tells me her simple annals with no question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My paw he married ag'in, and me stepmother peard like she didn't care
+for me; so one day I sez to paw, 'I'm goin' to work in the mills'&mdash;an' I
+lef home all alone and come here.&quot; After a little&mdash;&quot;When I sayd good-by
+to my father peard like <i>he</i> didn't care neither. I'm all alone here. I
+bo'ds with that girl's mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I wore that day in the mill a blue-checked apron. So did Maggie, but
+mine was from Wanamaker's in New York, and had, I suppose, a certain
+style, for the child said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suttenly dew think that yere's a awful pretty apron: where'd you git
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where I came from,&quot; I answered, and, I am sorry to say, it sounded
+brusque. For the little thing blushed, fearful lest she had been
+indiscreet.... (Oh, I assure you the qualities of good breeding are
+there! Some of my factory and mill friends can teach the set in which I
+move lessons salutary!)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't mean jest 'xactly wherebouts,&quot; she murmurs; &quot;I only meant it
+warn't from these parts.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>During the afternoon the gay Jeannie returns and presents to me a tin
+box. It is filled with a black <!-- Page 261 -->powder. &quot;Want some?&quot; Well, what is it?
+She greets my ignorance with shrieks of laughter. In a trice half a
+dozen girls have left their spooling and cluster around me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She ain't never <i>seen</i> it!&quot; and the little creature fills her mouth
+with the powder which she keeps under her tongue. &quot;It is <i>snuff</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They all take it, old and young, even the smallest children. Their
+mouths are brown with it; their teeth are black with it. They take it
+and smell it and carry it about under their tongues all day in a black
+wad, spitting it all over the floor. Others &quot;dip,&quot; going about with the
+long sticks in their mouths. The air of the room is white with cotton,
+although the spool-room is perhaps the freest. These little particles
+are breathed into the nose, drawn into the lungs. Lung disease and
+pneumonia&mdash;consumption&mdash;are the constant, never-absent scourge of the
+mill village. The girls expectorate to such an extent that the floor is
+nauseous with it; the little girls practise spitting and are adepts at
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Over there is a woman of sixty, spooling; behind the next side is a
+child, not younger than eight, possibly, but so small that she has to
+stand on a box to reach her side. Only the very young girls show any
+trace of buoyancy; the older ones have accepted with more or less
+complaint the limitation of their horizons. They are drawn from the hill
+<!-- Page 262 -->district with traditions no better than the loneliness, desertion and
+inexperience of the fever-stricken mountains back of them. They are
+illiterate, degraded; the mill has been their widest experience; and all
+their tutelage is the intercourse of girl to girl during the day and in
+the evenings the few moments before they go to bed in the mill-houses,
+where they either live at home with parents and brothers all working
+like themselves, or else they are fugitive lodgers in a boarding-house
+or a hotel, where their morals are in jeopardy constantly. As soon as a
+girl passes the age, let us say of seventeen or eighteen, there is no
+hesitation in her reply when you ask her: &quot;Do you like the mills?&quot;
+Without exception the answer is, &quot;I <i>hate them</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed with the novelty of learning my trade, the time goes swiftly.
+Yet even the interest and excitement does not prevent fatigue, and from
+12:45 to 6:45 seems interminable! Even when the whistle blows we are not
+all free&mdash;Excelsior is behindhand with her production, and those whom
+extra pay can beguile stay on. Maggie, my little teacher, walks with me
+toward our divided destinations, her quasi-home and mine.</p>
+
+<p>Neither in the mill nor the shoe-shops did I take precaution to change
+my way of speaking&mdash;and not once had it been commented upon. To-day
+Maggie says to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I reckon you-all is 'Piscopal?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you-all <i>talks</i> 'Piscopal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So much for a tribute to the culture of the church.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At Jones' supper is ready, spread on a bare board running the length of
+the room&mdash;a bare board supported by saw-horses; the seats are boards
+again, a little lower in height. They sag in the middle threateningly.
+One plate is piled high with fish&mdash;bones, skin and flesh all together in
+one odourous mass. Salt pork graces another platter and hominy another.
+I am alone in the supper room. The guests, landlord and landlady are all
+absent. Some one, as he rushes by me, gives me the reason for the
+desertion:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They've all gone to see the fight; all the white fellers is after a
+nigger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the window I can see the fleeing forms of the settlers&mdash;women,
+sunbonnets in hand, the men hatless. It appears that all the world has
+turned out to see what lawless excitement may be in store. The whirling
+dust and sand in the distance denote the group formed by the Negro and
+his pursuers. This, standing on the little porch of my lodging-house, I
+see and am glad to find that the chase is fruitless. The black man,
+tortured to distraction, dared at length to rebel, and from the moment
+that he showed spirit his life was not worth a farthing, but his legs
+were, and he got clear of Excelsior. The <!-- Page 264 -->lodgers troop back. Molly, my
+landlady's niece, breathing and panting, disheveled, leads the
+procession and is voluble over the affair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They-all pester a po'r nigger's life out 'er him, ye'es, they dew so!
+Ef a nigger wants ter show his manners to me, why, I show mine to him,&quot;
+she said generously, &quot;and ef he's a mannerly nigger, why, I ain't got
+nothin' ag'in him; no, sir, I suttenly ain't!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to conceive how broad and philanthropic, how generous
+and unusual this poor mill girl's standpoint is contrasted with the
+sentiment of the people with which she moves.</p>
+
+<p>I slip into my seat at the table in the centre of the sagging board and
+find Molly beside me, the girl from Excelsior with the pretty hair on
+the other side. The host, Mr. Jones, honours the head of the table, and
+&quot;grandmaw&quot; waits upon us. Opposite are the three men operatives,
+flannel-shirted and dirty. The men are silent for the most part, and
+bend over their food, devouring the unpalatable stuff before them. I
+feel convinced that if they were not so terribly hungry they could not
+eat it. Jones discourses affably on the mill question, advising me to
+learn &quot;speeding,&quot; as it pays better and is the only advanced work in the
+mill.</p>
+
+<p>Molly, my elbow-companion, seems to take up the whole broad seat, she is
+so big and so pervading; and her close proximity&mdash;unwashed, heavy with
+perspiration as she is, is not conducive to appetite. <!-- Page 265 -->She is full of
+news and chatter and becomes the leading spirit of the meal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill
+to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who
+pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Amanda Wilcox she dun tol' Ida Jacobs that she'd <i>do her</i> at noon, and
+Ida she sarst her back. It was all about a <i>sport</i><a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>5</sup></a>&mdash;Bill James.He's been spo'tin' Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I
+reckon, and Amanda got crazy over it and 'clared she'd spile her game.
+And she tol' Ida Jacobs a lie about Bill&mdash;sayd he' been spo'tin' her
+down to the Park on Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, the whole spinnin'-room was out to see what they-all'd do at
+noon, and they jest resh'd for each other like's they was crazy; and one
+man he got between 'em and sayd, 'Now the gyrl what spits over my hand
+first can begin the fight.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They both them spit right, into each other's faces, they did so; and
+arter that yer couldn't get them apart. Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the
+ha'r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist. They was
+suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn't just parted them; it
+took three men to part 'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her story was much appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was. She can't git back
+to work fer days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill.</p>
+
+<p>After supper the men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to
+the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a
+comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her. She made a lap, a
+generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty. Mrs. White
+had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You-all come here to me, Letty.&quot; She held out her large dirty hands to
+the blue-eyed waif. In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and
+ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in
+search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a
+moment motionless and on the verge of tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You-all come to Molly and go By-O.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was some magic in that word that at long past eight charmed the
+eighteen-months'-old baby. She toddled across the floor to the
+mill-girl, who lifted her tenderly into her ample lap. The big, awkward
+girl, scarcely more than a child herself, uncouth, untutored, suddenly
+gained a dignity and a grace maternal&mdash;not too much to say it, she had
+charm.</p>
+
+<p>Letty leaned her head against Molly's breast and smiled contentedly,
+whilst the mill-girl rocked softly to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall Molly sing By-O?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She should. The little face, lifted, declared its request.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Letty must sing, too,&quot; murmured the young girl. &quot;Sing By-O! We'll all
+sing it together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Letty covered her eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two
+words sweetly, &quot;By-O! By-O!&quot; and Molly joined her. Thus they rocked and
+hummed, a picture infinitely touching to see.</p>
+
+<p>One of these two would soon be an unclaimed foundling when the unknown
+woman had faded out of existence. The other&mdash;who can say how to her
+maternity would come!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the room where we sit Jones' wife died a few weeks before, victim to
+pneumonia that all winter has scourged the town&mdash;&quot;the ketchin'
+kind&quot;&mdash;that is the way it has been caught, and fatally by many.<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In one corner stands a sewing machine, in another an organ&mdash;luxuries: in
+these cases, objects of art. They are bought on the installment plan,
+and some of these girls pay as high as $100 for the organ in monthly
+payments of $4 at a time. The mill-girl is too busy to use the machine
+and too ignorant to play the organ.</p>
+
+<p>Jones is a courteous host. His lodgers occupy <!-- Page 268 -->the comfortable seats,
+whilst he perches himself on the edge of a straight high-backed chair
+and converses with us, not lighting his pipe until urged, then
+deprecatingly smoking in little smothered puffs. I feel convinced that
+Jones thinks that Massachusetts shoe-hands are a grade higher in the
+social scale than South Carolina mill-girls! Because, after being
+witness more than once to my morning and evening ablutions on the back
+steps, he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, I am goin' to dew the right thing by you-all; I'm goin' to fix up
+a wash-stand in that there loft.&quot; This is a triumph over the lax,
+uncleanly shiftlessness of the Southern settlement. Again:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You-all must of had good food whar you come from: your skin shows it;
+'tain't much like hyar-'bouts. Why, I'd know a mill-hand anywhere, if I
+met her at the North Pole&mdash;salla, pale, sickly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I might have added for him, deathlike, ... skeleton ... <i>doomed</i>. But I
+listen, rocking in the best chair, whilst Mrs. White glides in from the
+kitchen and, unobserved, takes her place on a little low chair by the
+sewing machine behind Jones. Her baby rocks contentedly in Molly's arms.</p>
+
+<p>Jones continues: &quot;I worked in the mill fifteen years. I have done a
+little of all jobs, I reckon, and I ain't got no use for mill-work. If
+they'd pay me fifty cents a side to run the 'speeders' I'd <i>go</i> in fer
+an hour or two now and then. Why, I sell sewing machines and organs to
+the mill-hands all over the <!-- Page 269 -->country. I make $60 a month, and <i>I touch
+all my money</i>,&quot; he said significantly. &quot;It's the way to do. A man don't
+feel no dignity unless he does handle his own money, if it's ten cents
+or ten dollars.&quot; He then explains the corporation's methods of paying
+its slaves. Some of the hands never touch their money from month's end
+to month's end. Once in two weeks is pay-day. A woman has then worked
+122 hours. The corporation furnishes her house. There is the rent to be
+paid; there are also the corporation stores from which she has been
+getting her food and coal and what gewgaws the cheap stuff on sale may
+tempt her to purchase. There is a book of coupons issued by the mill
+owners which are as good as gold. It is good at the stores, good for the
+rent, and her time is served out in pay for this representative
+currency. This is of course not obligatory, but many of the operatives
+avail themselves or bind themselves by it. When the people are ill,
+Jones says, they are docked for wages. When, for indisposition or
+fatigue, they knock a day off, there is a man, hired especially for this
+purpose, who rides from house to house to find out what is the matter
+with them, to urge them to rise, and if they are not literally too sick
+to move, they are hounded out of their beds and back to their looms.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='240.jpg'></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+<a href="images/240-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/240-1_th.jpg"
+alt="The Southern mill-hand's face." />
+</a>
+<center>
+
+&quot;THE SOUTHERN MILL-HAND'S FACE IS UNIQUE, A FEARFUL TYPE&quot;
+
+</center></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>Jones himself, mark you, is emancipated! He has set himself free; but he
+is still a too-evident although a very innocent partisan of the
+corporation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 271 -->I think,&quot; he says, &quot;that the mill-hand is <i>meaner</i> to the corporation
+than the corporation is to the mill-hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, they would strike for shorter hours and better pay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously with one word he condemns his own cause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the use of these hyar mill-hands tryin' to fight corporations?
+Why, Excelsior is the biggest mill under one roof in the world; its
+capital is over a million; it has 24,500 spindles. The men that run
+these mills have got all their stuff paid for; they've got piles of
+money. What do they care for a few penniless lot of strikers? They can
+shut down and not feel it. Why, these hyar people might just as well
+fight against a stone wall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which
+they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a
+mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has
+fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He
+perforce <i>will</i> speak well. I do not blame him.</p>
+
+<p>He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He
+wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and
+washed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill.
+Any of 'em would be jealous of <!-- Page 272 -->you-all.&quot; Then he warns, again forced to
+plead for another side: &quot;You-all won't come out as you go in, I tell
+you! You're the picture of health. Why,&quot; he continues, a little later,
+&quot;you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why, in the
+summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall they've
+got down to &mdash;&mdash; and dance there till four o'clock&mdash;come home just in time
+to get into the mills at 5:45.&quot; Which fact convinces me of nothing but
+that the women are still, despite their condition and their white
+slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human beings (Thank
+God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) <i>not yet crushed to the
+dumb endurance of beasts</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my
+loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me.
+Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the
+lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark,
+suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In
+the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is
+warm and stifling.</p>
+
+<p>Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try
+to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on
+the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too
+profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into
+sight. Sheepishly <!-- Page 273 -->she comes across the room to me&mdash;sits down on the
+nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose
+colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and
+perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any kind around her
+neck and waist, but her headdress is a tribute to feminine vanity!
+Compactly screwed curl papers, dozens of them, accentuate the hard,
+unlovely lines of her face and brow. Her features are coarse, heavy and
+square, but her eyes are clear, frank and kind. She has an appealing,
+friendly expression; Molly is a distinctly whole-souled, nice creature.
+One elbow sinks in the bed and she cradles her crimped head in her
+large, dirty hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My, ef I could write as fast as you-all I'd write some letters, I
+reckon. Ust ter write; like it good enough, tew; but I ain't wrote in
+months. I was thinkin' th' other day ef I didn't take out the <i>pencile</i>
+I'd dun forgit how to spell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without the window through which she gazes is seen the pale night sky
+and in the heavens hangs the thread of a moon. Its light is unavailing
+alongside of the artificial moon&mdash;an enormous electric light. This lifts
+its brilliant, dazzling circumference high in the centre of the mill
+street. I have but to move a trifle aside from the window coping's
+shelter to receive a blinding blaze. But Molly has been subtle enough to
+discover the natural beauty of the night. She sees, curiously enough,
+past this modern <!-- Page 274 -->illumination: the young moon has charm for her. &quot;Ain't
+it a pretty night?&quot; she asks me. Its beauty has not much chance to
+enhance this room and the crude forms, but it has awakened something
+akin to sentiment in the breast of this young savage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't guess ever any one gets tired of hearing <i>sweet music</i><a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7"><sup>7</sup></a>, does
+you-all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the nicest music you have ever heard, Molly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, a gui-taar an' a mandolin. It's so sweet! I could sit for hours
+an' hyar 'em pick.&quot; Her curlpaper head wags in enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Up to the hills, from whar I cum, I ust ter hyar 'em a serenadin' of
+some gyrl an' I ust ter set up in bed and lis'en tel it died out; it
+warn't for <i>me</i>, tho'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't they ever serenade you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, <i>ma'am</i>; I don't pay no 'tention to spo'tin'.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without, the moon's slender thread holds in a silvery circle the
+half-defined misty ball that shall soon be full moon. Thank heavens I
+shall not see this golden globe form, wane, decline in this town,
+forgotten of gods and men! But the woman at my side must see it mark its
+seasons; she is inscrutably part of the colony devoted to unending toil!
+Here all she has brought of strong youth shall fade and perish; womanly
+sentiment be crushed; die out in sterility; or worse, coarsen to the
+animal like to those whose companion she is forced to be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 275 -->I live to the Rockies, an' Uncle Tom he come up after me and carried
+me down hyar. My auntie died two weeks ago in the livin'-room; she had
+catchin' pneumonia. I tuk care of her all through her sickness, did
+every mite for her, and there was bo'ders, tew&mdash;I guess half a dozen of
+'em&mdash;and I cooked and washed and everything for 'em all. When she died I
+went to work in the mill. Say, I reckon you-all didn't see my new hat?&quot;
+It was fetched, done up with care in paper. She displayed it, a white
+straw round hat, covered with roses. At praise of it and admiration the
+girl flushed with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My, you <i>dew</i> like it? Why, I didn't think it <i>pretty, much</i>. Uncle Tom
+dun buy it for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gives all her wages to Uncle Tom, who in turn brings her from time
+to time such stimulus to labour as some pretty feminine thing like this.
+<i>This</i> shall crown Molly's hair freed from the crimpers when the one day
+of the week, Sunday, comes! Not from Sunday till Sunday again are those
+hair crimpers unloosed.</p>
+
+<p>Despite Uncle Tom's opposition to mill work for women, despite his
+cognizance of the unhealthfulness of the mills, he knew a thing or two
+when he put his strapping innocent niece to work thirteen hours a day
+and pocketed himself the spoils.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't go to bade awful early, because I don't sleep ef I do; I'm too
+tired to sleep. When I feel <!-- Page 276 -->real sick I tries to stay home a day, and
+then the overseer he rides around and <i>worries</i> me to git up. I declare
+ef I wouldn't near as soon git up as to be roused up. They don't give
+you no peace, rousing you out of bed when you can scarcely stand. I
+suttenly dew feel bade to-night; I suttenly can't scarcely get to bed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here into our discourse, mounting the stairs, comes the pale mother and
+her little child. This ghost of a woman, wedding-ringless, who called
+herself Mrs. White, could scarcely crawl to her bed. She was whiter than
+the moon and as slender. Molly's bed is close to mine. The night toilet
+of this girl consisted of her divesting herself of her shoes, stockings
+and her cotton wrapper, then in all the other garments she wore during
+the day she turned herself into bed, nightgownless, unwashed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. White undressed her child, giving it very good care. It was a tiny
+creature, small-boned and meager. Every time I looked over at it it
+smiled appealingly, touchingly. Finally when she went downstairs to the
+pump to get a drink of water for it, I went over and in her absence
+stroked the little hand and arm: such a small hand and such an
+infinitesimal arm! Unused to attention and the touch, but not in the
+least frightened, Letty extended her miniature member and looked up at
+me in marvel. Mrs. White on her return made herself ready for the night.
+She said in her frail <!-- Page 277 -->voice: &quot;Letty's a powerful hand for vegetubbles,
+and she eats everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Memory of the ham and the putrid fish I had seen this
+eighteen-months-old child devour not an hour ago came to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. White let down her hair&mdash;a nonchalance that Molly had not been
+guilty of. This woman's hair was no more than a wisp. It stood out thin,
+wiry, almost invisible in the semilight. This was the extent of her
+toilet. She slipped out of her shoes, but she did not even take off her
+dress. Then she turned in by her child. She was very ill; it was plain
+to be seen. Death was fast upon this woman's track; it should clutch her
+inevitably within the next few weeks at most, if that emaciated body had
+resistance for so long. Her languor was slow and indicative, her gray,
+ashen face like death itself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lie still, Letty,&quot; she whispers to the baby; &quot;don't touch mother&mdash;she
+can't stand it to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mattress was straw and billowy, the bed sheetless, and under the
+weight of the cotton comforter I tried to compose myself. There were
+five of us in the little loft. My bedfellow was peaceful and lay still,
+too tired to do anything else. In front of me was the open window,
+through which shone the electric light, blatant and insistent; behind
+this, the clock of Excelsior&mdash;brightly lit and incandescent&mdash;glared in
+upon us, giant hands going round, seeming to threaten the hour of dawn
+and frightening <!-- Page 278 -->sleep and mocking, bugbearing the short hours which the
+working-woman might claim for repose.</p>
+
+<p>It was well on to nine o 'clock and the mills were working overtime.
+Molly turned restlessly on her bed and murmured, &quot;I suttenly dew feel
+bad to-night.&quot; A little later I heard her say over to herself: &quot;My, I
+forgot to say my prayers.&quot; She was the sole member of the loft to whom
+sleep came; it came to her soon. I lay sleepless, watching the clock of
+Excelsior. The ladder staircase openly led to the kitchen: there was no
+door, no privacy possible to our quarters, and the house was full of
+men.</p>
+
+<p>A little later Letty cries: &quot;A drink, a drink!&quot; and the tone of the
+mother, who replies, is full of patience, but fuller still of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush, Letty, hush! Mother's too sick to get it.&quot; But the child
+continues to fret and plead. Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches
+out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water
+which has brought death to so many in the mill village. The child drinks
+it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself
+staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all
+through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing
+momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable&mdash;she rises to be
+violently sick over and over again. It seems an indefinite number of
+times to one who lies awake listening, <!-- Page 279 -->and must seem unceasing to the
+poor wretch who returns to her bed only to rise again.</p>
+
+<p>She groans and suffers and bites her exclamations short. Twice she goes
+to the window and by the light of the electric lamp pours laudanum into
+a glass and takes it to still her pain and her need.</p>
+
+<p>The odours become so nauseous that I am fain to cover my face and head.
+The child fed on salt ham and pork is restless and thirsty all night and
+begs for water at short intervals. At last the demand is too much for
+the poor agonized mother&mdash;she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to
+which one feels her gentleness must be forced. &quot;Hark! The cat will get
+you, Letty! See that cat?&quot; And the feline horror in nameless form,
+evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, who
+murmurs, sobs and subsides.</p>
+
+<p>What spirit deeper than her character has hitherto displayed stirs the
+mill-girl in the bed next to me? Possibly the tragedy in the other bed;
+possibly the tragedy of her own youth. At all events, whatever burden is
+on her, her cross is heavy! She murmurs in her dreams, in a voice more
+mature, more serious than any tone of hers has indicated:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is a strange cry&mdash;call&mdash;appeal. It rings solemn to me as I lie and
+watch and pity. Hours of night which should be to the labourer peaceful,
+full of repose after the day, drag along from nine o'clock, <!-- Page 280 -->when we
+went to bed, till three. At three Mrs. White falls into a doze. I envy
+her. Over me the vermin have run riot; I have killed them on my neck and
+my arms. When it seemed that flesh and blood must succumb, and sleep,
+through sheer pity, take hold of us, a stirring begins in the kitchen
+below which in its proximity seems a part of the very room we occupy.
+The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire. At a
+quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly
+smoke has ascended the stairway to us. This smoke is thick with
+odours&mdash;the odour of bad grease and bad meat. Its cloud conceals the
+beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the
+window. It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates
+itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall. So permeating is it
+that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me
+all day. I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap
+of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. <i>I know what they
+are</i>, for I have seen them the night before&mdash;great crimson bits of flesh
+torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as
+he crouched by the kitchen table.</p>
+
+<p>This preparation continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time
+to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior
+rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever <!-- Page 281 -->might be lucky
+enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. &quot;Molly!&quot; The girl murmurs
+and turns. &quot;Come, you-all git up; you take so powerful long to dress
+yo'self!&quot; Long to dress! It is difficult to see how that would be
+possible. She rises reluctantly, yawning, sighing; lifts her scarcely
+rested body, puts on her stockings and her shoes and the dirty wrapper.
+Her hair is untouched, her face unwashed, but she is ready for the day!
+Mrs. White has actually fallen asleep, the small roll, her baby, curled
+up close to her back.</p>
+
+<p>Molly's summons is mine as well. I am a mill-hand with her. I rise and
+repeat my ablutions of the evening before. Unhooking the tin basin,
+possessing myself of a bit of soap on the kitchen stairs, I wash my face
+and hands. Although the water is dipped from the pail on which a scum
+has formed, still it is so much more cool, refreshing and stimulating
+than anything that has come in contact with me for hours that it is a
+positive pleasure.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name='THE_MILL'></a><h2>THE MILL</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>By this time the morning has found us all, and unlovely it seems as
+regarded from this shanty environment. At 4:50 Excelsior has shrieked
+every settler awake. At half-past five we have breakfasted and I pass
+out of the house, one of the half-dozen who seek the mill from our
+doors.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 282 -->We fall in with the slowly moving, straggling file, receiving additions
+from each tenement as we pass.</p>
+
+<p>Beside me walks a boy of fourteen in brown earth-coloured clothes. He is
+so thin that his bones threaten to pierce his vestments. He has a
+slender visage of the frailness I have learned to know and distinguish:
+it represents the pure American type of people known as &quot;poor white
+trash,&quot; and with whose blood has been scarcely any admixture of foreign
+element. A painter would call his fine, sensitive face beautiful: it is
+the face of a martyr. His hat of brown felt slouches over bright red
+hair; one cuffless hand, lank and long, hangs down inert, the other
+sleeve falls loose; he is one-armed. His attitude and gait express his
+defrauded existence. Cotton clings to his clothes; his shoes, nearly
+falling off his feet, are red with clay stains. I greet him; he is shy
+and surprised, but returns the salutation and keeps step with me. He is
+&quot;from the hills,&quot; an orphan, perfectly friendless. He boards with a lot
+of men; evidently their companionship has not been any solace to him,
+for, as he is alone this day, I see him always alone.</p>
+
+<p>He works from 5:45 to 6:45, with three-quarters of an hour at noon, and
+has his Saturday afternoons and his Sundays free. He is destitute of the
+quality we call joy and has never known comfort. He makes fifty cents a
+day; he has no education, no way <!-- Page 283 -->of getting an education; he is almost
+a man, crippled and condemned. At my exclamation when he tells me the
+sum of his wages he looks up at me; a faint likeness to a smile comes
+about his thin lips: &quot;<i>It keeps me in existence</i>!&quot; he says in a slow
+drawl. He used just those words.</p>
+
+<p>At the different doors of the mill we part. He is not unconscious of my
+fellowship with him, that I feel and know. A kindling light has come
+across his face. &quot;Good luck to you!&quot; I bid him, and he lifts his head
+and his bowed shoulders and with something like warmth replies, &quot;I hope
+you-all will have good luck, tew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As we come into the spooling-room from the hot air without the mill
+seems cold. I go over to a green box destined for the refuse of the
+floors and sit down, waiting for work. On this day I am to have my own
+&quot;side&quot;&mdash;I am a full-fledged spooler. Excelsior has gotten us all out of
+our beds before actual daylight, but that does not mean we are to have a
+chance to begin our money-making piece-work job at once! &quot;Thar ain't
+likely to be no yarn for an hour to-day,&quot; Maggie tells me. She is no
+less dirty than yesterday, or less smelly, but also she is no less kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I reckon you-all are goin' to make a remarkable spooler,&quot; she cheers me
+on. &quot;You'll get tired out at first, but then I gets tired, tew, right
+along, only it ain't the same <i>kind</i>&mdash;it's not so <i>sharp</i>.&quot; Her
+distinction is clever.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 284 -->Across the room at one of the &quot;drawing-in frames&quot; I see the figure of
+an unusally pretty girl with curly dark hair. She bends to her job in
+front of the frame she runs; it has the effect of tapestry, of that work
+with which women of another&mdash;oh, of <i>quite</i> another class&mdash;amuse their
+leisure, with which they kill their time. &quot;Drawing-in,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8"><sup>8</sup></a> although a
+sitting job, is considered to be a back-breaker.The girls are ambitious at this work; they
+make good wages. They sit close to their frames, bent over, for twelve
+hours out of the day. This girl whom I see across the floor of the
+Excelsior is an object to rest the eyes upon; she is a beauty. There is
+not much beauty of any kind or description in sight. Maggie has noticed
+her esthetic effect. &quot;You-all seen that girl; she's suttenly prob'ly am
+<i>peart</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She is a new hand from a distance. This is her first day. What miserable
+chance has brought her here? If she stays the mill will claim her body
+and soul. The overseer has marked her out; he hovers in the part of the
+room where she works. She has colour and her difference to her pale
+companions is marked. Excelsior will not leave those roses unwithered. I
+can foretell the change as yellow unhealthfulness creeps upon her cheeks
+and the red forever goes. There are no red cheeks here, not one. She has
+chosen a sitting-down job thinking it easier. I saw her lean back, put
+her hands around her waist <!-- Page 285 -->and rest, or try to, after she has bent four
+hours over her close task. I go over to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They say it's awful hard on the eyes, but they tell me, too, that I'll
+be a remarkable fine hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw her apply for work, and saw, too, the man's face as he looked at
+her when she asked: &quot;Got any work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've got plenty of work for a good-looking woman like you,&quot; he said
+with significance, and took pains to place her within his sight.</p>
+
+<p>The yarn has come in, and I return to my part of the mill; Maggie flies
+to her spools and leaves me to seek my distant place far away from her.
+I set my work in order; whilst my back is turned some girl possesses
+herself of my hand-harness. Mine was a new one, and the one she leaves
+for me is broken. This delays, naturally, and the overseer, after
+proving to his satisfaction that I am hampered, gets me a new one and I
+set to work.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the older hands come without breakfast, and a little later tin
+pails or paper parcels appear. These operatives crouch down in a Turkish
+fashion at the machines' sides and take a hasty mouthful of their
+unwholesome, unpleasant-looking food, eating with their fingers more
+like animals than human beings. By eight the full steam power is on, to
+judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one
+of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to
+<!-- Page 286 -->approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands
+that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the
+byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The
+tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed.
+There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you can tell it by the scowls
+and the low, insulting words as an enemy passes. To protect the hair
+from the flying pieces of cotton the more particular women, and
+oftentimes children as well, wear felt hats pulled down well over the
+eyes. The cotton, indeed, thistledown-like, flies without cessation
+through the air&mdash;spins off from the spools; it rises and floats, falling
+on the garments and in the hair, entering the nostrils and throat and
+lungs. I repeat, the expectoration, the coughing and the throat-cleaning
+is constant. Over there two girls have taken advantage of a wait for
+yarn to go to sleep on the floor; their heads are pillowed on each
+others' shoulders; they rest against a cotton bale. Maggie wanders over
+to me to see &quot;how you-all is gettin' on.&quot; &quot;Tired?&quot; &quot;Well, I reckon I am.
+Thank God we get out in a little while now.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One afternoon I went up to the loft to rest a few moments before going
+to the mill. Mrs. White was sitting on her bed, a slender figure in the
+blue-checked wrapper she always wore. Her head was close to <!-- Page 287 -->the window,
+her silhouette in the light, pale and slender. &quot;I wa'n't sick when I
+come hyar, but them mills! They's suttinly tew hyard on a woman!
+Weave-room killed me, I guess. I couldn't hyar at all when I come out
+and scarcely could stan' on ma feet when I got home. Tew tyred to eat,
+tew; and the water hyar is regularly pisen; hev you-all seen it? It's
+all colours. Doctor done come to see me; ain't helpin' me any; 'pears
+like he-all ain't goin' to come no mo'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you have a husband, why don't you go to him and let him care for
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, turning her wedding-ringless hand over and over on her
+lap: the flies came buzzing in around us, and in the near distance
+Excelsior buzzed, the loudest, most insistent creature on this part of
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seems like a woman ought to help a man&mdash;some,&quot; she murmured. Downstairs
+Mrs. Jones sums her up in a few words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She-all suttinly ain't no <i>'Mrs'</i> in the world! Calls herself
+<i>'White.'</i>&quot; (The intonation is not to be mistaken.) &quot;Pore thing's
+dyin'&mdash;knows it, tew! Come hyar to die, I reckon. She'll die right up
+thar in that baed, tew. Doctor don't come no mo'. Know she cayn't pay
+him nothin'. You-all come hyar to grandmaw, Letty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The child around whom the threads of existence are weaving fabric more
+intricate than any woof or <!-- Page 288 -->warp of the great mills goes confidingly to
+the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she
+speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen
+save Tolstoi's could do justice. Mine can do no more than display them
+by faithfully transcribing their simple dialect-speech.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sixty-four years old, an' played out. Worked too hyard. Worked
+every day since I was a child, and when I wasn't workin' had the fevar.
+Come from the hills las' month. When his wife dyde, the son he come an'
+fetched me cross the river to help him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How has she lived so long and so well, with life &quot;so hyard on her&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I loved my husban', yes, ma'am, I regularly loved him; reckon no woman
+didn't ever love a man mo', and he loved me, tew, jest ez much. Seems
+tho' God couldn't bayr to see us-all so happy&mdash;couldn't las'; he dyde.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones' figure is a case of bones covered with a brown
+substance&mdash;you could scarcely call it skin; a weather-beaten, tanned
+hide; nothing more. This human statue, ever responsive to the eternal
+moulding, year after year has been worked upon by the titan instrument,
+Labour: struggle, disease, want. But this hill woman has known love. It
+has transfigured her, illumined her. This poor deformed body is a torch
+only for an immortal flame. I know now why it seems good to be near her,
+why her <!-- Page 289 -->eyes are inspired.... I rise to leave her and she comes forward
+to me, puts out her hand first, then puts both thin, old arms about me
+and kisses me.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of the settlement, it borders on the humourous to use the
+word sanitation. In the mill district, as far as my observation reached,
+there is none. Refuse not too vile for the public eye is thrown into the
+middle of the streets in front of the houses. The general drainage is
+performed by emptying pans and basins and receptacles into the
+backyards, so that as one stands at the back steps of one's own door one
+breathes and respires the filth of half a dozen shanties. Decaying
+vegetables, rags, dirt of all kinds are the flowers of these people, the
+decorations of their miserable garden patches. To walk through Granton
+(which the prospectus tells us is well drained) is to evoke nausea; to
+<i>inhabit</i> Granton is an ordeal which even necessity cannot rob of its
+severity.</p>
+
+<p>These settlers, habitants of dwellings built by finance solely for the
+purpose of renting, are celebrated for their immorals&mdash;&quot;a rough, lying,
+bad lot.&quot; &quot;Oh, the mill-hands!&quot; ... Sufficient, expressive designation.
+Nevertheless, these people, simple, direct and innocent, display
+qualities that we have been taught are enviable&mdash;a lack of curiosity,
+for the most part, in the affairs of <!-- Page 290 -->others, a warm Southern courtesy,
+a human kindliness. I found these people degraded because of their
+habits and not of their tendencies, which statement I can justify;
+whatever may be their natural instincts, born, nurtured in their
+unlovely environment, they have no choice but to fall into the usages of
+poverty and degradation. They have seen nothing with which to compare
+their existences; they have no time, no means to be clean, and no
+stimulus to be decent.</p>
+
+<p>A job at Granton was no more difficult to secure than was &quot;spoolin'&quot; at
+the other mill. I applied one Saturday noon, when Granton was silent and
+the operatives within their doors asleep, for the most part, leaving the
+village as deserted as it is on a workday. A like desolation pervades
+the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a
+shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad,
+pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with
+which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors&mdash;cotton that
+resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent
+regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time
+in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the
+loneliness, the lawlessness of the place, the risk and boldness of my
+venture.</p>
+
+<p>By this I was most thoroughly a mill-girl in <!-- Page 291 -->appearance, at least; my
+clothes were white with cotton, my hair far from tidy; fatigue and
+listlessness unassumed were in my attitude. I had not heard the Southern
+dialect for so long not to be able to fall into it with little effort. I
+told him I had been a &quot;spooler&quot; and did not like it&mdash;&quot;wanted to spin.&quot;
+He listened silently, regarding me with interest and with what I
+trembled to fear was disbelief. I desperately pushed back my sunbonnet
+and in Southern drawl begged for work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Spinnin'?&quot; he asked. &quot;What do you want to spin for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was a Yankee, his accent sharp and keen. How clean and decent and
+capable he appeared, the dark mill back of him; shantytown, vile, dirty,
+downtrodden, beside him!</p>
+
+<p>I told him that I was tired of spooling and knew I could make more by
+something else.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his hands into his pockets. &quot;To-night is Saturday; alone
+here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where you going to stay in Granton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't learn spinnin',&quot; he said decidedly. &quot;I am head of the
+<i>speedin'-room</i>. I'll give you a job in my room on Monday morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My relief was immense. His subsequent questions I parried, thanked him,
+and withdrew to keep secret from Excelsior that I had deserted for
+Granton.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 292 -->Although these mills are within three hundred feet of each other, the
+villagers do not associate. The workings of Granton are unknown to
+Excelsior and vice versa.</p>
+
+<p>The speeding-room in Granton is second only in noise to the weave-room.
+Conversation must be entrancing and vital to be pursued here! The
+speeder has under her care as many machines as her skill can control.</p>
+
+<p>My teacher, Bessie, ran four sides, seventy-six speeders on a side, her
+work being regulated by a crank that marked the vibrations. To the lay
+mind the terms of the speeding-room can mean nothing. This girl made
+from $1.30 to $1.50 a day. She controlled in all 704 speeders; these she
+had to replenish and keep running, and to clean all the machinery gear
+with her own hands; to oil the steel, even to bend and clean under the
+lower shelf and come into contact with the most dangerous parts of the
+mechanism. The girl at the speeder next to me had just had her hand
+mashed to a jelly. The speeder watches her ropers run out; these stand
+at the top and back of the line. The ropers are refilled and their ends
+attached to the flying speeders by a quick motion. The yarn from the
+ropers is wound off on to the speeders. When the speeders are full of
+yarn they are detached from the nest of steel in which they whirl and
+are thrown into a hand-car which is pushed about the room by the girls
+themselves. Speeding <!-- Page 293 -->is excessively dirty work and greasy; the oiling
+and cleaning is only fit for a man to do.</p>
+
+<p>The girl who teaches me has been at her work for ten years; she entered
+the factory at eight. She was tall, raw-boned, an expert, deft and
+capable, and, as far as I could judge in our acquaintance, thoroughly
+respectable.</p>
+
+<p>There are long waits in this department of the cotton-spinning life. On
+tall green stools we sit at the end of our sides during the time it
+takes for one well-filled roper to spin itself out; we talk, or rather
+contrive to make ourselves heard. She has a sweet, gentle face; she is
+courtesy and kindness itself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think about all day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I couldn't even begin to tell all my thoughts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me some.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I think about books, I reckon. Do you-all like readin'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't nuthin' I like so good when I ain't tyrd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you often tired?&quot; And this question surprises her. She looks up at
+me and smiles. &quot;Why, I'm <i>always</i> tyrd! I read novels for the most part;
+like to read love stories and about fo'ran travel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(For one short moment please consider: This hemmed-in life, this limited
+existence, encompassed on all sides by the warfare and battle and din of
+<!-- Page 294 -->maddening sounds, vibrations around her during twelve hours of the day,
+vibrations which, mean that her food is being gained by each pulse of
+the engine and its ratio marked off by the disk at her side. Before her
+the scene is unchanged day after day, month after month, year after
+year. It is not an experience to this woman who works beside me so
+patiently; it is her life. The forms she sees are warped and scarred;
+the intellects with which she comes in contact are dulled and
+undeveloped. All they know is toil, all they know of gain is a
+fluctuation in a wage that ranges from cents to a dollar and cents
+again, never touching a two-dollar mark. The children who, barefooted,
+filthy, brush past her, sweeping the cotton from the infected floors,
+these are the only forms of childhood she has ever seen. The dirty women
+around her, low-browed, sensual, are the forms of womanhood that she
+knows; and the men? If she does not feed the passion of the overseer,
+she may find some mill-hand who will contract a &quot;mill marriage&quot; with
+this daughter of the loom, a marriage little binding to him and which
+will give her children to give in time to the mill. This is the realism
+of her love story: She reads books that you, too, may have read; she
+dares to dream of scenes, to picture them&mdash;scenes that you have sought
+and wearied of. A tithe of our satiety would mean her banquet, her
+salvation!... Her happiness? <i>That</i> question who can answer for her or
+for you?)</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 295 -->She continues: &quot;I'm very fond of fo'ran travel, only I ain't never had
+much occasion for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This pathos and humour keep me silent. A few ropers have run out; she
+rises. I rise, too, to replace, to attach, and set the exhausted line
+taut and complete again.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years! Ten years! All her girlhood and youth has been given to
+keeping ropers supplied with fresh yarn and speeders a-whirling. During
+this travail she has kept a serenity of expression, a depth of sweetness
+at which I marvel. Her voice is peculiarly soft and, coupled with the
+dialect drawl, is pleasant to hear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hate the mills!&quot; she says simply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What would you be if you could choose?&quot; I venture to ask. She has no
+hesitation in answering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd love to be a trained nurse.&quot; Then, turn about is fair play in her
+mind, I suppose, for she asks:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What would <i>you-all</i> be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And ashamed not to well repay her truthfulness I frankly respond: &quot;I'd
+like to write a book.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I <i>dee</i>-clare.&quot; She stares at me. &quot;Why, you-all <i>is</i> ambitious. Did you
+ever write anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A letter or two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She is interested and kindles, leaning forward. &quot;I suttenly ain't so
+high in my ambitions,&quot; she says appreciatively. &quot;Wish you'd write a love
+story for me to read,&quot; and she ponders over the idea, her eyes on my
+snowy flying speeders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 296 -->Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin's on writin' hyar? Ef you don't
+mind anybody's messin' with your things, bring your scrappin's to me an'
+I'll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not,&quot; she whispered to me
+encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills
+than a loud sound.</p>
+
+<p>I thanked her and said: &quot;Do you think that you'd know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I guess I would!&quot; she said confidently. &quot;I ain't read all my life
+sense I was eight years old not to know good writin' from bad. Can
+you-all sing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Play sweet music?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I jest love it.&quot; She enthuses. &quot;Every Saturday afternoon I take of a
+music teacher on the gee-tar. It costs me a quarter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could see the scene: a shanty room, the tall, awkward figure bending
+over her instrument; the type that the teacher made, the ambition, the
+eagerness&mdash;all of which qualities we are so willing to deny to the
+slaves of toil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They ain't much flowers here in Granton,&quot; she said again. &quot;'Tain't no
+use to try to have even a few geraneums; it's so dry; ain't no yards nor
+gardens, nuther.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Musing on this desolation as she walks up and <!-- Page 297 -->down the line, she says:
+&quot;I dew love flowers, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Over and over again I am asked by those whose wish I suppose is to prove
+to themselves and their consciences that the working-girl is not so
+actively wretched, her outcry is not so audible that we are forced to
+respond:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The working people are happy? The factory girls are happy, are they
+not? Don't you find them so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Is it a satisfaction to the leisure class, to the capitalist and
+employer, to feel that a woman poorly housed, ill-fed, in imminent moral
+danger, every temptation rampant over barriers down, overworked,
+overstrained by labour varying from ten to thirteen hours a day, by
+all-night labour, and destruction of body and soul, <i>is happy</i>?</p>
+
+<p>Do you <i>wish</i> her to be so? Is the existence <i>ideal</i>?</p>
+
+<p>I can speak only for the shoe manufacturing girl of Lynn and for the
+Southern mill-hand.</p>
+
+<p>I thank Heaven that I can say truthfully, that of all who came under my
+observation, not one who was of age to reflect was happy. I repeat, the
+working-woman is brave and courageous, but the most sane and hopeful
+indication for the future of the factory girl and the mill-hand is that
+she rebels, dreams of something better, and will in the fullness of time
+stretch toward it. They <!-- Page 298 -->have no time to think, even if they knew how.
+All that remains for them in the few miserable hours of relief from
+labour and confinement and noise is to seek what pastime they may find
+under their hand. We have never realized, they have never known, that
+their great need&mdash;given the work that is wrung from them and the
+degradation in which they are forced to live&mdash;is a craving for amusement
+and relaxation. Amusements for this class are not provided; they <i>can</i>
+laugh, they rarely do. The thing that they seek&mdash;let me repeat: I
+cannot repeat it too often&mdash;in the minimum of time that remains to them,
+is distraction. They do not want to read; they do not want to study;
+they are too tired to concentrate. How can you expect it? I heard a
+manufacturer say: &quot;We gave our mill-hands everything that we could to
+elevate them&mdash;a natatorium, a reading library&mdash;and these halls fell into
+disuse.&quot; I ask him now, through these pages, the questions which I did
+not put to him then as I listened in silence to his complaint. He said
+he thought too much was done for the mill-hands. What time would he
+suggest that they should spend in the reading-room, even if they have
+learned to read? They rise at four; at a quarter before six they are at
+work. The day in winter is not born when they start their tasks; the
+night has fallen long before they cease. In summer they are worked long
+into their evenings. They tell me that <!-- Page 299 -->they are too tired to eat; that
+all they want to do is to turn their aching bones on to their miserable
+mattresses and sleep until they are cried and shrieked awake by the mill
+summons. Therefore they solve their own questions. Nothing is provided
+for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is
+within their reach&mdash;animal enjoyment, human intercourse and
+companionship. They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let
+us believe, more excuse.</p>
+
+<p>The mill marriage is a farce, and yet they choose to call their unions
+now and again a marriage. Many a woman has been a wife several times in
+the same town, in the same house. The bond-tying is a form, and, of
+course, mostly ignored. The settlements swarm with illegitimate
+children. Next to me work two young girls, both under seventeen, both
+ringless and with child.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let me picture the Foster household, where I used to call Saturday
+evenings.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Foster herself, dirty, slipshod, a frowzy mass, hugs her fireside.
+Although the day is warm, she kindled a fire to stimulate the thin, poor
+blood exhausted by disease and fevers. Two flatirons lie in a dirty heap
+on the floor. As usual, the room is a nest of filth and untidiness.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Foster is half paralyzed, but her tongue is free. She talks
+fluently in her soft Southern drawl, <!-- Page 300 -->more Negro than white as to speech
+and tone. Up to her sidles a dirty, pretty little boy of four.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This yere is too little to go to the mill, but he's wild to go; yes,
+ser, he is so. Las' night he come to me en say, 'Auntie, you-all wake me
+up at fo' 'clock sure; I got ter go ter the mill.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here the little blond child, whose mouth is set on a pewter spoon
+dripping over with hominy, grins appreciatively. He throws back his
+white and delicate little face, and his aunt, drawing him close to her,
+caresses him and continues: &quot;Yes, ma'am, to-day he dun wake up after
+they-all had gone and he sayd, 'My goodness, I dun oversleep mase'f!' He
+sha'n't go to the mill,&quot; she frowned, &quot;not ef we can help it. Why, I
+don't never let him outen my sight; 'fraid lest those awful mill
+children would git at him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus she sheltered him with what care she knew&mdash;care that unfortunately
+<i>could not go far enough back to protect him</i>! His mother came in at the
+noon hour, as we sat there rocking and chatting. She was a straight,
+slender creature, not without grace in her shirt-waist and her
+low-pulled felt hat that shadowed her sullen face. She was very young,
+not more than twenty-two, and her history indicative and tragic. With a
+word only and a nod she passes us; she has now too many vital things and
+incidents in her own career to be curious regarding a strange mill-hand.
+She goes with her comrade&mdash;and cousin&mdash;<!-- Page 301 -->Mamie, into the kitchen to
+devour in as short a time as possible the noon dinner, served by the
+grandmother: cabbage and hominy. &quot;They don't have time 'nough to eat,&quot;
+the aunt says; &quot;no sooner then they-all come in and bolt their dinner
+then it is time to go back.&quot; Her child has followed her. Minnie was
+married at thirteen; in less than a year she was a grass widow. &quot;My
+goodness, there's lots of grass widows!&quot; my frowsled hostess nods. &quot;Why,
+in one weave-room hyar there ain't a gyrl but what's left by her
+husband. One day a new gyrl come for to run a loom and they yells out at
+her, 'Is you-all a grass widow? Yer can't come in hyar ef you ain't.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But it was after her grass widowhood that Minnie's tragedy began. The
+mill was her ruin. So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go,
+<i>does not</i> go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put
+there to run these women's work. The overseer was father of her child,
+and when she tried to force from him recognition and aid he threw over
+his position and left Columbia and this behind him. This, one instance
+under my own eyes observed. There are many.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mamie works all night&quot; (she spoke of the other girl)&mdash;&quot;makes more
+money. My, but she hates the mills! Says she ain't ever known a restful
+minute sence she left the hills.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My hostess has drawn the same conclusion from my Northern appearance
+that the Joneses drew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 302 -->You-all must eat good where you come from! you look so healthy.' Do
+you-all know the Banks girl over to Calcutta?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They give her nine months.&quot; (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round
+here.) &quot;Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts
+like a man. She drew her knife on a man last week&mdash;cut his face all up
+and into his side through his lung. Tried to pass as she was his wife,
+but when they had her up, ma'am, they proved she had been three men's
+wives and he four gyrl's husbands. He liked to died of the cut. They've
+given her nine months, but he ain't the only man that bears her marks.
+Over to Calcutta it's the knife and the gun at a wink. This yere was an
+awful pretty gyrl. My Min seed her peekin' out from behind the loom in
+the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said: 'Who's that yere pretty
+boy peekin' at me?' And that gyrl told Min that she couldn't help knife
+the men, they all worried on her so! 'Won't never leave me alone; I jest
+have to draw on 'em; there ain't no other way.'&quot;...</p>
+
+<p>For the annals of morality and decency do not take up this faithful
+account and picture the cotton-mill village. You will not find it in
+these scenes drawn from the life as it is at this hour, as it is
+portrayed by the words that the very people themselves will pour into
+your ears. Under the walls of <!-- Page 303 -->Calcutta Negroes are engaged in laying
+prospective flower beds, so that the thirteen-hour workers may look out
+from time to time and see the forms of flowers. On the other side rise
+some twenty shanties. These houses of Calcutta village are very small,
+built from the roughest unpainted boards. Here it is, in this little
+settlement, that the knife comes flashing out at a word&mdash;that the women
+shoot as well as men, and perhaps more quickly.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;Richmond aint so bad as the other!&quot; I can hear Mrs. Foster drawl out
+this recommendation to us. &quot;They ain't so much chills here. We dun move
+up from town first; had to&mdash;too high rents for we-all; now we dun stay
+hyar. Why, some of the gyrls and boys works to Granton and bo'ds hyar;
+seems like it's mo' healthy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Moving, ambulant population! tramping from hill to hill, from sand-heap
+to sand-heap to escape the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling,
+bitter existence&mdash;pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the
+sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter
+what the burden's weight must be, <i>one must live</i>! It takes a great
+deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of
+interest. At what should they rejoice?</p>
+
+<p>I have made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an
+absolute lack of every form or <!-- Page 304 -->sight that might inspire or cause a soul
+to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from
+labour. There should be a complete readjustment of this system. I have
+been interested in reading in the New York <i>Sun</i> of April 20th of the
+visit of the bishops to the model factories in Ohio. I am constrained to
+wish that bishops and clergy and philanthropists and millionaires and
+capitalists might visit in bodies and separately the mills of South
+Carolina and their tenement population. It is difficult to know just
+what the ideas are of the people who have constructed these dwellings.
+They tell us in this same prospectus, which I have read with interest
+after my personal experience, that these villages are &quot;<i>picturesque</i>.&quot;
+This is the only reference I find to the people and their conditions. I
+have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without
+prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern
+country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's
+existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot
+but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to
+destruction before the scales swing even.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_IX'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<center>THE CHILD IN SOUTHERN MILLS</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>In the week before I left for the South I dined in &mdash;&mdash; with a very
+charming woman and her husband. Before a table exquisite in its
+appointments, laden with the best the market could offer and good taste
+display, sat the mistress, a graceful, intelligent young woman, full of
+philanthropic, charitable interests, and one whom I know to be devoted
+to the care and benefiting of little children in her city. During the
+meal I said to her casually:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know that in your mills in South Carolina to-night, as we sit
+here, little children are working at the looms and frames&mdash;little
+children, some of them not more than six years old?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She said, in astonishment, &quot;I don't know it; and I can't believe it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told her I should soon see just how true the reports were, and when I
+returned to New York I would tell her the facts. She is not alone in her
+ignorance. Not one person, man or woman, to whom I told the facts of the
+cases I observed &quot;<i>dreamed that children worked in any mills in the
+<!-- Page 308 -->United States</i>!&quot; After my experience amongst the working class, I am
+safe in saying that I consider their grievances to be the outcome of the
+ignorance and greed of the manufacturer abetted, aided and made possible
+by the ignorance and poverty of the labourer.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more conscience-silencing than to accuse the writers of
+the different articles on child-labour of sentimentality. The comfort in
+which we live makes it easy to eliminate thoughts that torture us to
+action in the cause of others. I will be delighted to meet an accusation
+of sentimentality and exaggeration by any man or woman who has gone to a
+Southern mill as an operative and worked side by side with the children,
+lived with them in their homes. It is defamation to use the word &quot;home&quot;
+in connection with the unwholesome shanty in the pest-ridden district
+where the remnant of the children's lives not lived in the mill is
+passed. This handful of unpainted huts, raised on stilts from the soil,
+fever-ridden and malarious; this blank, ugly line of sun-blistered
+shanties, along a road, yellow-sand deep, is a mill village. The word
+<i>village</i> has a cheerful sound. It summons a country scene, with the
+charms of home, however simple and unpretentious. There is nothing to
+charm or please in the villages I have already, in these pages, drawn
+for you to see and which with veritable sick reluctance I summon again
+before your eyes. <!-- Page 309 -->Every house is like unto its neighbour&mdash;a shelter put
+up rapidly and filled to the best advantage.</p>
+
+<p>There is not a garden within miles, not a flower, scarcely a tree. Arid,
+desolate, beautyless, the pale sand of the State of South Carolina
+nurtures as best it can a stray tree or shrub&mdash;no more. At the foot of
+the shanties' black line rises the cotton mill. New, enormous, sanitary
+(!!). Its capital runs into millions; its prospectuses are pompous; its
+pay-roll mysterious. You will not be able to say how many of the fifteen
+hundred odd hands at work in this mill are adults, how many children. In
+the State of South Carolina there are statistics of neither births,
+marriages nor deaths. What can you expect of a mill village!</p>
+
+<p>At 5:45 we have breakfasted&mdash;the twelve of us who live in one small
+shanty, where we have slept, all five of us in one room, men to the
+right of the kitchen, women and children on the left. To leave the
+pestilence of foul air, the stench of that dwelling, is blessed, even if
+the stroke that summons is the mill whistle.</p>
+
+<p>As we troop to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like
+town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and
+infirmity&mdash;but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy
+its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel
+between its merciless jaws is the little child.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 310 -->So long as I am part of its food and triumph I will study the mill.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the line of flashing, whirling spools, I lean against the green
+box full of cotton refuse and regard the giant room.</p>
+
+<p>It is a wonderful sight. The mill itself, a model of careful,
+well-considered building, has every facility for the best and most
+advantageous manufacture of textiles. The fine frames of the intricate
+&quot;warping,&quot; the well-placed frames of the &quot;drawing-in&quot; all along the
+window sides of the rooms; then lines upon lines of spool frames. Great
+piles of stuff lie here and there in the room. It is early&mdash;&quot;all the
+yarn ain't come yet.&quot; Two children whose work has not been apportioned
+lie asleep against a cotton bale. The terrible noise, the grinding,
+whirling, pounding, the gigantic burr renders other senses keen. By my
+side works a little girl of eight. Her brutal face, already bespeaking
+knowledge of things childhood should ignore, is surrounded by a forest
+of yellow hair. She goes doggedly at her spools, grasping them sullenly.
+She walks well on her bare, filthy feet. Her hands and arms are no
+longer flesh colour, but resemble weather-roughened hide, ingrained with
+dirt. Around the tangle of her hair cotton threads and bits of lint make
+a sort of aureole. (Her nimbus of labour, if you will!) There is nothing
+saint-like in that face, nor in the loose-lipped mouth, whence exudes a
+black stain of snuff as between her lips she turns the root she chews.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's a mean girl,&quot; my little companion says; &quot;we-all don't hev nothin'
+to say to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her maw hunts her to the mill; she don't want to go&mdash;no, sir&mdash;so she's
+mad most the time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus she sets her dogged resistance in scowling black looks, in quick,
+frantic gestures and motions against the machinery that claims her
+impotent childhood. The nimbus around her furze of hair remains; there
+are other heads than saints&mdash;there are martyrs! Let the child wear her
+crown.</p>
+
+<p>Through the looms I catch sight of Upton's, my landlord's, little child.
+She is seven; so small that they have a box for her to stand upon. She
+is a pretty, frail, little thing, a spooler&mdash;&quot;a good spooler, tew!&quot;
+Through the frames on the other side I can only see her fingers as they
+clutch at the flying spools; her head is not high enough, even with the
+box, to be visible. Her hands are fairy hands, fine-boned, well-made,
+only they are so thin and dirty, and her nails&mdash;claws; she would do well
+to have them cut. A nail can be torn from the finger, <i>is</i> torn from the
+finger frequently<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9"><sup>9</sup></a>, by this flying <!-- Page 312 -->spool.I go over to Upton's little girl.
+Her spindles are not thinner nor her spools whiter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How old are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looks six. It is impossible to know if what she says is true. The
+children are commanded both by parents and bosses to advance their ages
+when asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tired?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nods, without stopping. She is a &quot;remarkable fine hand.&quot; She makes
+forty cents a day. See the value of this labour to the
+manufacturer&mdash;cheap, yet skilled; to the parent it represents $2.40 per
+week.</p>
+
+<p>I must not think that as I work beside them I will gain their
+confidence! They have no time to talk. Indeed, conversation is not well
+looked upon by the bosses, and I soon see that unless I want to entail a
+sharp reproof for myself and them I must stick to my &quot;side.&quot; And at noon
+I have no heart to take their leisure. At twelve o'clock, Minnie, a
+little spooler, scarcely higher than her spools, lifts her hands above
+her head and exclaims: <i>&quot;Thank God, there's the whistle!&quot;</i> I watched
+them disperse: some run like mad, always bareheaded, to fetch the
+dinner-pail for mother or father who work in the mill and who choose to
+spend these little legs and spare their own. It takes ten minutes to go,
+ten to return, and the little labourer has ten to <!-- Page 313 -->devote to its own
+food, which, half the time, he is too exhausted to eat.</p>
+
+<p>I watch the children crouch on the floor by the frames; some fall asleep
+between the mouthfuls of food, and so lie asleep with food in their
+mouths until the overseer rouses them to their tasks again. Here and
+there totters a little child just learning to walk; it runs and crawls
+the length of the mill. Mothers who have no one with whom to leave their
+babies bring them to the workshop, and their lives begin, continue and
+end in the horrible pandemonium.</p>
+
+<p>One little boy passes by with his broom; he is whistling. I look up at
+the cheery sound that pierces fresh but faint and natural above the
+machines' noise. His eyes are bright; his good spirits surprise me: here
+is an argument for my comfortable friends who wish to prove that the
+children &quot;are happy!&quot; I stop him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You seem very jolly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He grins.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been working?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two or three days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gay creature has just <i>begun</i> his servitude and brings into the
+dreary monotony a flash of the spirit which should fill childhood.</p>
+
+<p>I think it will be granted that it takes a great deal to discourage and
+dishearten a child. The hopefulness of the mill communities lies in just
+those elements that overwork in the adult and that child <!-- Page 314 -->labour will
+ultimately destroy. When hope is gone in the adult he must wreak some
+vengeance on the bitter fate that has robbed him. There is no more
+tragic thing than the hopeless child. The adult who grows hopeless can
+affiliate with the malcontents and find in the insanity of anarchy what
+he calls revenge.</p>
+
+<p>It seems folly to insult the common sense of the public by asking them
+whether they think that thirteen hours a day, with a half to
+three-quarters of an hour for recreation at noon, or the same amount of
+night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with
+unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a
+pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of
+hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ...
+whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women
+whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good
+for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive development, to the
+making of decent manhood or womanhood? What kind of citizen can this
+child&mdash;if he is fit enough in the economic struggle of the world to
+survive&mdash;turn out to be? Not citizens at all: creatures scarcely fit to
+be called human beings.</p>
+
+<p>I asked the little girl who teaches me to spool who the man is whom I
+have seen riding around on horseback through the town.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, he goes roun' rousin' up the hands who ain't in their places.
+Sometimes he takes the children outen thayre bades an' brings 'em back
+to the mill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And if the child can stand, it spins and spools until it drops, till
+constitution rebels, and death, the only friend it has ever known, sets
+it free.</p>
+
+<p>Besides being spinners and spoolers, and occasionally weavers even, the
+children sweep the cotton-strewed floors. Scarcely has the miserable
+little object, ragged and odourous, passed me with his long broom, which
+he drags half-heartedly along, than the space he has swept up is
+cotton-strewn again. It settles with discouraging rapidity; it has also
+settled on the child's hair and clothes, and his eyelashes, and this
+atmosphere he breathes and fairly eats, until his lungs become diseased.
+Pneumonia&mdash;fatal in nearly all cases here&mdash;and lung fever had been a
+pestilence, &quot;a regular plague,&quot; before I came. There were four cases in
+the village where I, lived, and fever and ague, malaria and grippe did
+their parts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, thar ain't never a haouse but's got somebody sick,&quot; my little
+teacher informed me in her soft Southern dialect. &quot;I suttinly never did
+see a place like this for dyin' in winter time. I reckon et's funerals
+every day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is a little child, not more than seven years old. The land is a hot
+enough country, we will <!-- Page 316 -->concede, but not a savage South Sea Island! She
+has on one garment, if a tattered sacking dress can so be termed. Her
+bones are nearly through her skin, but her stomach is an unhealthy
+pouch, abnormal. <i>She has dropsy.</i> She works in <i>a new mill</i>&mdash;in one of
+the largest mills in South Carolina. Here is a slender little boy&mdash;a
+birch rod (good old simile) is not more slender, but the birch has the
+advantage: it is elastic&mdash;it bends, has youth in it. This boy looks
+ninety. He is a dwarf; twelve years old, he appears seven, no more. He
+sweeps the cotton off the floor of &quot;the baby mill.&quot; (How tenderly and
+proudly the owners speak of their brick and mortar.) He sweeps the
+cotton and lint from the mill aisles from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. without a
+break in the night's routine. He stops of his own accord, however, to
+cough and expectorate&mdash;he has advanced tuberculosis.</p>
+
+<p>At night the shanties receive us. On a pine board is spread our
+food&mdash;can you call it nourishment? The hominy and molasses is the best
+part; salt pork and ham are the strong victuals.</p>
+
+<p>It is eight o'clock when the children reach their homes&mdash;later if the
+mill work is behindhand and they are kept over hours. They are usually
+beyond speech. They fall asleep at the table, on the stairs; they are
+carried to bed and there laid down as they are, unwashed, undressed; and
+the inanimate bundles of rags so lie until the mill summons them <!-- Page 317 -->with
+its imperious cry before sunrise, while they are still in stupid sleep:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you do on Sundays?&quot; I asked one little girl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, thare ain't nothing much to dew. I go to the park sometimes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This park is at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia. Picture
+it! A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby
+undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be
+conceived. On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to
+so spend the day. On Sundays the mill shanties are full of sleepers.</p>
+
+<p>The park has a limited number of devotees. Through the beautyless paths
+and walks the figures pass like shadows. There come three mill girls arm
+in arm; their curl papers, screwed tight all the week, are out on
+Sunday, in greasy, abundant curls. Sunday clothes are displayed in all
+their superbness. Three or four young men, town fellows, follow them;
+they are all strangers, but they will go home arm in arm.</p>
+
+<p>Several little children, who have no clothes but those, they wear, cling
+close to the side of a gaunt, pale-faced man, who carries in his arms
+the youngest. The little girl has become a weight to be carried on
+Sundays; she has worked six days of the week&mdash;shall she not rest on the
+seventh? She shall; she <!-- Page 318 -->claims this, and lies inert on the man's arm,
+her face already seared with the scars of toil.</p>
+
+<p>I ran such risk taking pictures that I relinquished the task, and it was
+only the last day at the mill, while still in my working clothes with a
+camera concealed in my pocket, that I contrived to get a picture or two.
+I ventured to ask two little boys who swept the mill to stand for their
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't kyar to,&quot; the older one said. I explained that it would not
+hurt them, as I thought he was afraid; but his little companion
+vouchsafed: &quot;We-all ain't got no nickel.&quot; When they understood it was a
+free picture they were as delighted as possible and posed with alacrity,
+making touching apologies for their greasy, dirty condition.</p>
+
+<p>When I asked one of them if he was ever clean, he said: &quot;On Sunday I
+wash my hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was noon, on the day I chose to leave &mdash;&mdash;, turning my back on the
+mill that had allured me to its doors and labour. In South Carolina
+early April is torrid, flies and mosquitoes are rampant. What must this
+settlement be in midsummer heat? There is no colour in the Southern
+scene; the clothes of the mill-hands, the houses, the soil are of one
+tone&mdash;and, more strange, there is not one line of red, one dash of life,
+in the faces of the hundreds of women and children that pass me on their
+way back to work.</p>
+
+<p>Under the existing circumstances they have no <!-- Page 319 -->outlook, these people, no
+hope; their appearance expresses accurately the changeless routine of an
+existence devoted to eternal ignorance, eternal toil.</p>
+
+<p>From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing,
+inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate
+and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the
+cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this
+Southern mill justly famous.</p>
+
+<p>The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill
+claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little
+things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy,
+frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their
+sleeves; they are barefooted, bareheaded. With these little figures the
+elements wanton; they can never know the fullness of summer or the
+proper maturity of autumn. Suns have burned them, rains have fallen upon
+them, as unprotected through storms they go to their work. The winter
+winds have penetrated the tatters with blades like knives; gray and
+dusty and earth-coloured the line passes. These are children? No, they
+are wraiths of childhood&mdash;they are effigies of youth! What can Hope work
+in this down-trodden soil for any future harvest? They can curse and
+swear; they chew tobacco and take snuff. When they speak at all their
+voices <!-- Page 320 -->are feeble; ears long dulled by the thunder of the mill are no
+longer keen to sound; their speech is low and scarcely audible. Over
+sallow cheeks where the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you
+suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood.
+As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue
+settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to
+elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark
+the distinctive visages of these children of labour.</p>
+
+<p>At certain seasons of the year they actually die off like flies. They
+fall subject, not to children's diseases exactly&mdash;nothing really natural
+seems to come into the course of these little existences&mdash;they fall a
+prey to the maladies that are the outcomes of their conditions. They are
+always half-clad in the winter time; their clothes differ nothing at all
+from their summer clothes; they have no overcoats or coats; many of them
+go barefoot all winter long. They come out from the hot mills into cold,
+raw winds and fall an easy prey to pneumonia, scourge of the mill-town.
+Their general health is bad all the year round; their skins and
+complexions have taken the tone of the sandy soil of the Southern
+country in which they are bred and in which their martyrdom is
+accomplished. I never saw a rosy cheek nor a clear skin: these are the
+parchment editions of childhood on which <!-- Page 321 -->Tragedy is written indelibly.
+You can there read the eternal condemnation of those who have employed
+them for the sake of gain.</p>
+
+<p>It is a melancholy satisfaction to believe that mill labour will kill
+off little spinners and spoolers. Unfortunately, this is not entirely
+true. There are constitutions that survive all the horrors of existence.
+I have worked both in Massachusetts and the South beside women who
+entered the mill service at eight years of age. One of these was still
+in her girlhood when I knew her. She was very strong, very good and
+still had some illusions left. I do not know what it goes to prove, when
+I say that at twenty, in spite of twelve years of labour, she still
+dreamed, still hoped, still longed and prayed <i>for something that was
+not a mill</i>. If this means content in servitude, if this means that the
+poor white trash are born slaves, or if, on the contrary, it means that
+there is something inherent in a woman that will carry her past suicide
+and past idiocy and degradation, all of which is around her, I think it
+argues well for the working women.</p>
+
+<p>The other woman was forty. She had no illusions left&mdash;please remember
+she had worked since eight; she had reached, if you like, the idiot
+stage. She had nothing to offer during all the time I knew her but a few
+sentences directly in connection with her toil.</p>
+
+<p>It is useless to advance the plea that spooling is <!-- Page 322 -->not difficult. No
+child (we will cancel under twelve!) should work at all. No human
+creature should work thirteen hours a day. No baby of six, seven or
+eight should be seen in the mills.</p>
+
+<p>It is also useless to say that these children tell you that they &quot;like
+the mill.&quot; They are beaten by their parents if they do not tell you
+this, and, granted that they do not like their servitude, when was it
+thought expedient that a child should direct its existence? If they do
+not pass the early years of their lives in study, when should they
+learn? At what period of their lives should the children of the Southern
+mill-hand be educated? Long before they reach their teens their habits
+are formed&mdash;ignorance is ingrained; indeed, after a few years they are
+so vitally reduced that if you will you cannot teach them. Are these
+little American children, then, to have no books but labour? No
+recreation? To be crushed out of life to satisfy the ignorance and greed
+of their parents, the greed of the manufacturers? Whatever else we are,
+we are financiers <i>per se</i>. The fact that to-day, as for years past,
+Southern cotton mills are employing the labour of children under tender
+age&mdash;employing an army of them to the number of twenty thousand under
+twelve&mdash;can only be explained by a frank admittal that infantile labour
+has been considered advantageous to the cause of gain.</p>
+
+<p>This gain, apparent by the facts that a mill can be <!-- Page 323 -->run for thousands
+of dollars less in the South than a like mill can be run in the North,
+and its net surplus profits be the same as those of the Northern
+manufactory, is one by which one generation alone will profit. The
+attractiveness of the figures is fallacious. What I imply is
+self-evident. The infant population (its numbers give it a right to this
+dignity of term) whose cheap toil feeds the mills is doomed. I mean to
+say that the rank and file of humanity are daily weeded out; that
+thousands of possibly strong, healthy, mature labouring men and women
+are being disease-stricken, hounded out of life; the cotton mill child
+cannot develop to the strong normal adult working-man and woman. The
+fiber exhausted in the young body cannot be recreated. Early death
+carries hundreds out of life, disease rots the remainder, and the dulled
+maturity attained by a creature whose life has been passed in this
+labour is not fit to propagate the species.</p>
+
+<p>The excessively low wages paid these little mill-hands keep under, of
+necessity, the wage paid the grown labourer. It is a crying pity that
+children are equal to the task imposed upon them. It is a crying pity
+that machines (since they have appeared, with their extended,
+all-absorbing power) should not do all! Particularly in the Southern
+States do they evince, at a fatal point, their limit, display their
+inadequacy. When babies can be employed successfully for thirteen hours
+out of the twenty-four <!-- Page 324 -->at all machines with men and women; when infants
+feeds mechanism with labour that has not one elevating, humanizing
+effect upon them physically or mentally, it places human intelligence
+below par and cheapens and distorts the nobler forms of toil. Not only
+is it &quot;no disgrace to work,&quot; but on the contrary it is a splendid thing
+to be able to labour, and those who gain their bread by the sweat of
+their brow are not the servants of mankind in the sense of the term, but
+the patriarchs and controllers of the world's march and the most subtle
+signs of the times. But there are distinctly fitnesses of labour, and
+the proper presentation to the working-man and woman and child is a
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>No one to-day would be likely for an instant to concede that to replace
+the treadmill horse with a child (a thing often seen and practised in
+times past) would be an advantage. And yet the march of the child up and
+down before its spooling frame is more suggestive of an animal&mdash;of the
+dog hitched to the Belgian milk cart; of the horse on the
+mill-tread&mdash;than another analogy.</p>
+
+<p>Contrast this pallid automaton with the children of the poor in a New
+York kindergarten, where the six-or seven-year-old child of the German,
+the Hungarian, the Polish emigrant, may have its imagination stimulated,
+its creative and individual faculties employed as it is taught to <i>make
+things</i>&mdash;construct, combine, weave, sew, mould. Every <!-- Page 325 -->power latent is
+cajoled to expression, every talent encouraged. Thus work in its first
+form is rendered attractive, and youth and individuality are encouraged.
+In the South of this American country whose signet is individualism,
+whose strength (despite our motto, &quot;United we stand&quot;) is in the
+individual freedom and vast play of original thought, here in the South
+our purest born, the most unmixed blood of us, is being converted into
+machines of labour when the forms of little children are bound in youth
+to the spindle and loom.</p>
+
+<p>In a certain mill in Alabama there are seventy-five child-labourers who
+work twelve hours out of the twenty-four; they have a half-hour at noon
+for luncheon. There is a night school in connection with this mill
+corporation. Fancy it, a night school for the day-long child labourer!
+Fifty out of seventy-five troop to it. Although they are so tired they
+cannot keep awake on the benches, and the littlest of them falls asleep
+over its letters, although they weep with fatigue, they are eager to
+learn! Is there a more conclusive testimony to the quality of the
+material that is being lost to the States and the country by the
+martyrdom of intelligent children?</p>
+
+<p>One hears two points of view expressed on this subject. The capitalist
+advances that the greed of the parents forces the children into the
+mills; the people themselves tell you that unless they are <!-- Page 326 -->willing to
+let their available children work, their own lives are made impossible
+by the overseers. A widow who has children stands a fair chance of
+having her rent free; if she refuses this tithe of flesh and blood she
+is too often thrust into the street. So I am told. Now, which of these
+facts is the truth? It seems to be clearly too much left to the decision
+of private enterprise or parental incapability. The Legislature is the
+only school in which to decide the question. During my stay in South
+Carolina I never heard one woman advocate the mills for children. One
+mother, holding to her breast her illegitimate child, her face dark with
+dislike, said: &quot;<i>Them mills!</i> I would not let <i>my</i> little boy work in
+'em! No, sir! He would go over my dead body.&quot; Another woman said: &quot;<i>My</i>
+little girl work? No, ma'am; she goes to school!&quot; and the child came in
+even as she spoke&mdash;let me say the only cheerful specimen of childhood,
+with the exception of the few little creatures in the kindergarten, that
+I saw in the mill district.</p>
+
+<p>South Carolina has become very haughty on this topic and has reached a
+point when she tells us she is to cure the sore in her own body without
+aid or interference. At a late session of the Legislature the bill for
+the restriction of child labour&mdash;we must call it this, since it
+legislates only for the child under ten&mdash;this bill was defeated by only
+two dissenting voices. A humane gentleman who laid <!-- Page 327 -->claim to one of
+these voices was heard to ejaculate as the bill failed to pass: &quot;Thank
+God!&quot; Just why, it is not easy to understand.</p>
+
+<p>When I was so arrogant as to say to the editor of <i>The State</i>, the
+leading paper in South Carolina, that I hoped my article might aid the
+cause, I made an error clearly, for he replied:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We need no aid. The people of South Carolina are aroused to the horror
+and will cure it themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Georgia is not roused to the horror; Alabama is stirring actively; but
+the Northerners who own these mills&mdash;the capitalists, the manufacturers,
+the men who are building up a reputation for the wealth of South
+Carolina and Alabama mills, are the least aroused of all. We must
+believe that many directors of these mills are ignorant of the state of
+affairs, and that those who are enlightened willingly blind their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The mill prospectuses are humourous when read by the investigator. We
+are told &quot;labour-unions cut no figure here!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Go at night through the mills with the head of the Labour Federation and
+with the instigator of the first strikes in this district&mdash;with men who
+are the brain and fiber of the labour organization, and see the friendly
+looks flash forth, see the understanding with which they are greeted all
+through certain mills. Consider that not 200 miles away at the <!-- Page 328 -->moment
+are 22,000 labourers on strike. Then greet these statements with a
+smile!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On my return to the North I made an especial effort to see my New
+England friend. We lunched together this time, and at the end of the
+meal her three little children fluttered in to say a friendly word. I
+looked at them, jealous for their little defrauded fellows, whose
+twelve-hour daily labour served to purchase these exquisite clothes and
+to heap with dainties the table before us. But I was nevertheless
+rejoiced to see once again the forms of real childhood for whom air and
+freedom and wealth were doing blessed tasks. When we were alone I drew
+for my friend as well as I could pictures of what I had seen. She leaned
+forward, took a brandied cherry from the dish in front of her, ate it
+delicately and dipped her fingers in the finger-bowl; then she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear friend, I am going to surprise you very much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waited, and felt that it would be difficult to surprise me with a tale
+of a Southern mill.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those little children&mdash;<i>love the mill!</i> They <i>like</i> to work. It's a
+great deal better for them to be employed than for them to run the
+streets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled over her argument, and I waited.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know,&quot; she continued, &quot;that I believe they are really very
+happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 329 -->She had well presented her argument. She had said she would surprise
+me&mdash;and she did.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not feel it a breach of affection and hospitality if I print
+what you say?&quot; I asked her. &quot;It's only fair that the capitalist's view
+should be given here and there first hand. You own one-half the mill
+in &mdash;&mdash;, Carolina?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think of a model mill with only nine hours a day labour,
+holidays and all nights free, schools, where education is enforced by
+the State; reading-rooms open as well as churches&mdash;amusement halls,
+music, recreation and pleasure, as well as education and religion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think,&quot; she said keenly, &quot;that united, concentrated action on the
+part of the cotton mill owners might make such a thing feasible; for us
+to try it alone would mean ruin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not ruin,&quot; I amended; &quot;a reduction of income.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ruin,&quot; she said, firing. &quot;We couldn't compete. To compete,&quot; she said
+with the conviction of an intelligent, well-informed manufacturer, &quot;I
+must have my sixty-six hours a week!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of discontent is always abroad when false conditions exist.
+Its restless presence is controlled by one spirit alone&mdash;humanity&mdash;when
+reasonably are weighed and justly decided the questions of balance
+between Capital and Labour.</p>
+
+<p>We must believe that there is no unsolvable <!-- Page 330 -->problem before us in
+considering the presence of the child in the Southern mills.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing in the essence of the subject to discourage the social
+economist. The question should not be left to the decision of the
+private citizen. This stuff is worth saving. There is the making in
+these children of first-class citizens. I quote from the illustrated
+supplement of the South Carolina <i>State</i> that you may see what the mill
+manufacturers think of the quality of the &quot;poor white trash&quot;:</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The operatives in the South Carolina mills are the common
+     people&mdash;the bone and sinew who have left the fields to the
+     Negroes. They are industrious, intelligent, frugal, and have
+     the native instincts of honesty and integrity and of fidelity
+     which are essential to good citizenship.&quot; </p></div>
+
+<p>If such things are true of the mill-hands of South Carolina, it is worth
+while to save their children.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Henceforth, to my vision across the face of the modern history of labour
+and manufacture will eternally defile the gray, colourless column of the
+Southern mill-hands: an earth-hued line of humanity&mdash;a stream that
+divides not.</p>
+
+<p>Here there are no stragglers. At noon and night the pace is quick,
+eager. Steady as a prison gang, it goes to food, rest and freedom. But
+this alacrity is absent in the morning. On the hem of night, the fringe
+of day, the march is slow and lifeless. Many <!-- Page 331 -->of the heads are bent and
+downcast; some of the faces peer forward, and sallow masks of human
+countenances lift, with a look set beyond the mill&mdash;toward who can say
+what vain horizon! The Stream wanders slowly toward the Houses of
+Labour, although whipped by invisible scourge of Need. Without this
+incentive and spur, think you it would pursue a direction toward
+<i>thirteen hours of toil</i>, shut from air and sunlight and day, taking in
+its rank the women, the young girl and the little child?</p>
+
+<p>The tone of the garments is somber and gray, blending with the gray of
+the dawn; or red, blending with the earth stains of the peculiar
+Southern soil; or claylike and pale yellow. Many of the faces are
+pallid, some are tense, most of them are indifferent, dulled by toil and
+yet not all unintelligent. Those who are familiar with the healthy type
+of the decent workmen of the West and East must draw their distinctions
+as they consider this peculiar, unfamiliar class. The Southern
+mill-hand's face is unique&mdash;a fearful type, whose perusal is not
+pleasant or cheerful to the character-reader, to the lover of humanity
+or to the prophet of the future. Thus they defile: men with felt hats
+drawn over their brows; women, sunbonneted or hatless; children
+barefoot, bareheaded, ragged, unwashed. Unwashed these labourers have
+gone to bed; unwashed they have arisen. To their garments cling the bits
+of cotton, the threads of cotton, the strands of roping, badges <!-- Page 332 -->of
+their trade, brand of their especial toil. As they pass over the red
+clay, over the pale yellow sand, the earth seems to claim them as part
+of her unchanging phase; cursed by the mandate primeval&mdash;&quot;by the sweat
+of thy brow&quot;&mdash;Earth-Born!</p>
+
+<p>In the early morning the giant mill swallows its victims, engorges
+itself with entering humanity; then it grows active, stirring its
+ponderous might to life, movement and sound. Hear it roar, shudder,
+shattering the stillness for half a mile! It is full now of flesh and
+blood, of human life and brain and fiber: it is content! Triumphantly
+during the long, long hours it devours the tithe of body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Behind lies the deserted, accursed village, destitute of life during the
+hours of day, condemned to the care of a few women, the old, the
+bedridden and the sick&mdash;of which last there are plenty.</p>
+
+<p>Mighty Mills&mdash;pride of the architect and the commercial magnate; charnel
+houses, devastators, destructors of homes and all that mankind calls
+hallowed; breeders of strife, of strike, of immorality, of sedition and
+riot&mdash;buildings tremendous&mdash;you give your immutable faces,
+myriads-windowed, to the dust-heaps, to the wind-swept plains of sand.
+When South Carolina shall have taken from you (as its honour and wisdom
+and citizenship is bound to do) the youngest of the children, do you
+think that you shall inevitably continue to devour what remains? <!-- Page 333 -->There
+is too much resistance yet left in the mass of human beings. Youth will
+then rebel at a servitude beginning <i>at ten years of age</i>: and the women
+will lift their arms above their heads one day in desperate gesture of
+appeal and cry out&mdash;not for the millionaire's surplus; not a tirade
+anarchistic against capital.... What is this woman of the hills and
+woman of the mills that she should so demand? She will call for hours
+short enough to permit her to bear her children; for requital
+commensurate with the exigence of progressive civilization; for wages
+equal to her faithful toil.</p>
+
+<p>This is not too fantastic a demand or too ideal a state to be divinely
+hoped for, believed in and brought to pass.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">NOTE. I have seen, in Aragon, Georgia, hope for the future of the
+mill-hands. The Aragon Cotton Mills are an improvement <!-- Page 334 -->on the South
+Carolina Mills and are under the direct supervision of an owner whose
+sole God is not gain. Mr. Walcott is an agitator of the nine-hours-a-day
+movement; he is opposed to Child Labour, and in all his relations with
+his hands he is humane and kindly. I look to the time when Aragon shall
+set a perfect pattern of what a mill-town should be. It is already quite
+the best I have seen. Its healthfulness is far above the average, and
+its situation most fortunate.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Not inapt here is the pagan idea of <i>Nous</i>, moving upon chaos, stirring
+the stagnant, unresponsive forces into motion; agitating these forces
+into action; the individual elements separate and go forth, each one on
+its definitely inspired mission. Some inevitable hour shall see the
+universal agitation of the vast body known as the &quot;labouring class.&quot; For
+the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so
+ignorant and so down-pressed.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<center>FOOTNOTES</center>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">1</a>
+George Engelman, M.D., &quot;The Increasing Sterility of American Women,&quot;
+from the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 5, 1901.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">2</a> An expert
+presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day. This is rare and maximum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">3</a> At
+Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate the shop.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">4</a> Lynn's average wages are $8 per week.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">5</a> A beau.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">6</a> There are no statistics, they tell me, kept of births,
+marriages or deaths in this State; it is less surprising that the mill
+village has none.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">7</a> The Southern term for stringed instruments.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">8</a> A good
+drawer-in makes $1.25 a day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">9</a> In Huntsville,
+Alabama, a child of eight lost her index and middle fingers of the right
+hand in January, 1902. One doctor told me that he had amputated the
+fingers of more than a hundred babies. A merchant told me he had
+<i>frequently</i> seen children whose hands had been cut off by the
+machinery.&mdash;<i>American Federationist</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">10</a> Of the 21,000,000
+spindles in the United States, the South has 6,000,000. $35,381,000 of
+Carolina's wealth is in cotton mills.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
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+</body>
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+
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,8039 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Who Toils
+       Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls
+
+Author: Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2005 [EBook #15218]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WHO TOILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Alicia Williams and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. at www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the
+costume of the pickle factory]
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe
+factory]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
+
+_Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_
+
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+and
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+To Mark Twain
+
+In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in
+Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him
+kin with the whole world:--
+
+this book is inscribed by
+
+BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+
+_Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_
+
+
+     WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902.
+
+     _My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_:
+
+     _I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
+     your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most
+     melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is
+     fundamentally infinitely more important than any other
+     question in this country--that is, the question of race
+     suicide, complete or partial_.
+
+     _An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
+     "independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to
+     one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the
+     fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial
+     qualities without which there can be no strong races--the
+     qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of
+     scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to
+     work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to
+     be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside
+     of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
+     worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the
+     foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that
+     the only things really worth having in life are those the
+     acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man
+     or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout
+     life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from
+     home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy
+     children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the
+     sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the
+     beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is
+     brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman
+     who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as
+     to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to
+     dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the
+     race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
+     all healthy people_.
+
+     _Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one
+     quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
+     qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
+     brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
+     can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the
+     nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and
+     coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor
+     people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury
+     in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work
+     in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and
+     ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of
+     families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest
+     thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that
+     nation has cause to be alarmed about its future_.
+
+     _There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble
+     with the situation you set forth is one of character, and
+     therefore we can conquer it if we only will._
+
+     _Very sincerely yours,_
+
+     _THEODORE ROOSEVELT._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same
+title in _Everybody's Magazine_. Nearly a third of the volume has not
+been published in any form.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+       I.  Introductory                                              1
+
+      II.  In a Pittsburg Factory                                    7
+
+     III.  Perry, a New York Mill Town                              59
+
+      IV.  Making Clothing in Chicago                               99
+
+       V.  The Meaning of It All                                   155
+
+
+By MARIE VAN VORST
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+      VI.  Introductory                                            165
+
+     VII.  A Maker of Shoes at Lynn                                169
+
+    VIII.  The Southern Cotton Mills                               215
+             The Mill Village
+             The Mill
+
+      IX.  The Child in the Southern Mills                         275
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes,
+                                                         _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                            FACING PAGE
+
+"The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot
+  falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning,"                12
+
+"Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the
+  lives consumed, and vanishing again,"                             58
+
+"They trifle with love,"                                            70
+
+After Saturday night's shopping,                                    84
+
+Sunday evening at Silver Lake,                                      96
+
+"The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy
+  with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards,"       102
+
+In a Chicago theatrical costume factory,                           114
+
+Chicago types,                                                     128
+
+The rear of a Chicago tenement,                                    144
+
+A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory,          172
+
+One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper,"
+  an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week,                   172
+
+"Learning" a new hand,                                             184
+
+The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass.,               196
+
+"Fancy gumming,"                                                   210
+
+An all-round, experienced hand,                                    210
+
+"Mighty mill--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate,"  220
+
+"The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type,"         240
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of
+society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated
+as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper
+and the lower, the educated and the uneducated--and a further variety of
+opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come
+into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or
+elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for
+their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us
+recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral
+and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical
+development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help
+them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in
+every way.
+
+Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have
+two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material
+advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who
+consider the poor as objects of charity, to be treated sentimentally,
+or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics
+nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for
+the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope
+we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality
+upon earth.
+
+It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we
+must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with
+their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must
+discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their
+surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily
+effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived
+ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral,
+spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an
+undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its
+practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and
+to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out
+to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and
+sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help
+and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers
+which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as
+they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that
+occurred to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for
+the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I
+might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find
+out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with
+ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman
+is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined,
+
+    1st. By nature,
+     2d. By family life,
+     3d. By social laws;
+
+what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the
+woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new
+society as manifested by its working girls.
+
+After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away
+convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am
+hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the
+hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general
+help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their
+material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are
+condemned to slow death--mental, moral, physical death! If into their
+prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon
+should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
+
+
+In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon
+Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined
+by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in
+the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616
+inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to
+these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and
+clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a
+glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this
+Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to
+call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose
+despots are the employers--the multi-millionaire patrons--and whose
+serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an
+authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons,
+the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this
+difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a
+thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also,
+thousands of separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the
+pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are
+run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change.
+The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first
+and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays
+no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself
+over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied,
+and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to
+effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in
+Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their
+ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love
+of art, and of classic forms, the desire to embellish--all that was
+inspired by culture of the beautiful; the Renaissance in America is the
+rebirth of man's originality in the invention of the useful, the virgin
+power of man's wits as quickened in the crude struggle for life.
+Florence is _par excellence_ the place where we can study the Italian
+Renaissance; Pittsburg appealed to me as a most favourable spot to watch
+the American Renaissance, the enlivening of energies which give value to
+a man devoid of education, energies which in their daily exercise with
+experience generate a new force, a force that makes our country what it
+is, industrially and economically. So it was toward Pittsburg that I
+first directed my steps, but before leaving New York I assumed my
+disguise. In the Parisian clothes I am accustomed to wear I present the
+familiar outline of any woman of the world. With the aid of coarse
+woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a
+knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the
+ordinary type. I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the
+fortunate--I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate. I am
+to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of
+them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and
+sorrows.
+
+I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated
+as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the
+gateman says a respectful "To the right" or "To the left," and trusts to
+his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's
+hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: "Now
+you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for
+you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry--just put those three
+cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman
+is standing and he'll direct you to your train."
+
+This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a
+certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a
+class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later
+myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their
+manual training, ignorant on all subjects.
+
+My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to
+Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of
+miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy
+streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a
+frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the
+streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly
+like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic.
+Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues;
+occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning
+bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every
+three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The
+trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of
+the mills.
+
+I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar
+where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant
+scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce
+bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that
+passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed
+Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the
+pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his
+arm.
+
+[Illustration: "THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE
+SOOT FALLS SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING"]
+
+In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a
+common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred
+through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.
+
+At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I
+receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and
+I answer as best I can.
+
+"What is it you want?"
+
+"Board and work in a factory."
+
+"Have you ever worked in a factory?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Have you ever done any housework?"
+
+She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming
+prisoners and reasoning with the poor.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, I have done housework."
+
+"What did you make?"
+
+"Twelve dollars a month."
+
+"I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and
+fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Are you making anything now?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Can you afford to pay board?"
+
+"Yes, as I hope to get work at once."
+
+She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge
+for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population
+of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry
+written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of
+half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled
+close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three
+o'clock I find the waif boarding-house.
+
+The matron is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false
+hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive
+manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to
+direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make herself
+dreaded. In the distance I can hear a shrill, nasal orchestra of
+children's voices. I am cold and hungry. I have as yet no job. The
+noise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden
+impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter--to snap my
+fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate.
+Something within me calls _Courage_! I take a room at three dollars a
+week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with
+cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron
+tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman.
+
+I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life,
+but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt
+letters: "_Women Employees_."
+
+The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a
+gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and
+about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all
+surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a
+thousand. Each number means a workman--each tick of the clock a moment
+of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the
+window of the glass cage. It opens.
+
+"Do you need any girls?" I ask, trying not to show my emotion.
+
+"Ever worked in a factory?"
+
+"No, sir; but I'm very handy."
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Housework," I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself.
+
+"Well," he says, looking at me, "they need help up in the bottling
+department; but I don't know as it would pay you--they don't give more
+than sixty or seventy cents a day."
+
+"I am awfully anxious for work," I say. "Couldn't I begin and get
+raised, perhaps?"
+
+"Surely--there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You
+come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it,
+and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good
+workers."
+
+The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not
+come in vain. I have a place!
+
+When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had
+heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there
+are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform
+checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the
+babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the
+freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down
+into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order.
+Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs.
+
+"_Quit rocking_!" the false mother cries at them. "You make my head
+ache. Most of 'em have no parents," she explains to me. "None of 'em
+have homes."
+
+Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for,
+growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance;
+each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The
+matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated.
+The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This
+"Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His
+rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he
+reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't
+bring me no toys." And then with pride, "My mamma buys rice and tea and
+lots of things," and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, "My
+mamma comes in the street cars, only," sadly, "she don't never come."
+
+Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without.
+At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming
+to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and,
+gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the
+short outlines of their lives.
+
+"I've been to the hospital," says one, "and so's Lily. I drank a lot of
+washing soda and it made me sick."
+
+Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. "I had typhoy fever--I was in
+the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the
+lights--it was just evening--and a man came in and he took one of the
+babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the
+row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was
+something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing,
+and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white
+thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another time," Lily goes
+on, "there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was
+takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on
+chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle."
+
+Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only
+with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an
+understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic
+difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image
+the violent and brutal side of existence--the only one with which they
+are acquainted.
+
+At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open
+into a long room with a slanting roof. It serves as nursery and parlour.
+In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are
+seated with babies on their knees. They have the meek look of those who
+doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures
+of the overworked. Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt
+shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high
+foreheads. One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother's arms; one
+is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes
+through a scarlet mask. The corners of the room are filled with the
+drones--those who "work for a bite of grub." The cook, her washing done,
+has piled her aching bones in a heap; her drawn face waits like an
+indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue. Mary, the
+woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison's
+walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite
+of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her
+profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over
+them--dull and silent, they deaden her face. And Jennie, the charwoman,
+is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and
+withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is
+twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a
+mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a
+task.
+
+What could be hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be
+clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was
+impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was
+a total absence of beauty in everything--not a line of grace, not a
+pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to
+this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade
+the tenement. It was probable my comrades felt at no time the discomfort
+I did, but the harm done them is not the physical suffering their
+condition causes, but the moral and spiritual bondage in which it holds
+them. They are not a class of drones made differently from us. I saw
+nothing to indicate that they were not born with like _capacities_ to
+ours. As our bodies accustom themselves to luxury and cleanliness,
+theirs grow hardened to deprivation and filth. As our souls develop with
+the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal--an intellectual,
+esthetic and moral ideal--their souls diminish under the oppression of a
+constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they
+become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an
+argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as
+false. From all I saw I am convinced that, _given their relative
+preparation_ for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys
+are the same as ours in kind and in degree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy
+maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours
+until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal
+darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me
+as I went to bed: "If you want to wash," she said, "you'd better wash
+now; you can't have no water in your room, and there won't be nobody up
+when you leave in the morning." My evening bath is supplemented by a
+whisk of the sponge at five.
+
+Without it is black--a more intense black than night's beginning, when
+all is astir. The streets are silent, an occasional train whirls past,
+groups of men hurry hither and thither swinging their arms, rubbing
+their ears in the freezing air. Many of them have neither overcoats nor
+gloves. Now and then a woman sweeps along. Her skirts have the same
+swing as my own short ones; under her arm she carries a newspaper bundle
+whose meaning I have grown to know. My own contains a midday meal: two
+cold fried oysters, two dried preserve sandwiches, a pickle and an
+orange. My way lies across a bridge. In the first gray of dawn the river
+shows black under its burden of ice. Along its troubled banks
+innumerable chimneys send forth their hot activity, clouds of seething
+flames, waving arms of smoke and steam--a symbol of spent energy, of the
+lives consumed and vanishing again, the sparks that shine an instant
+against the dark sky and are spent forever.
+
+As I draw nearer the factory I move with a stream of fellow workers
+pouring toward the glass cage of the timekeeper. He greets me and starts
+me on my upward journey with a wish that I shall not get discouraged, a
+reminder that the earnest worker always makes a way for herself.
+
+"What will you do about your name?" "What will you do with your hair and
+your hands?" "How can you deceive people?" These are some of the
+questions I had been asked by my friends.
+
+Before any one had cared or needed to know my name it was morning of
+the second day, and my assumed name seemed by that time the only one I
+had ever had. As to hair and hands, a half-day's work suffices for their
+undoing. And my disguise is so successful I have deceived not only
+others but myself. I have become with desperate reality a factory girl,
+alone, inexperienced, friendless. I am making $4.20 a week and spending
+$3 of this for board alone, and I dread not being strong enough to keep
+my job. I climb endless stairs, am given a white cap and an apron, and
+my life as a factory girl begins. I become part of the ceaseless,
+unrelenting mechanism kept in motion by the poor.
+
+The factory I have chosen has been built contemporaneously with reforms
+and sanitary inspection. There are clean, well-aired rooms, hot and cold
+water with which to wash, places to put one's hat and coat, an
+obligatory uniform for regular employees, hygienic and moral advantages
+of all kinds, ample space for work without crowding.
+
+Side by side in rows of tens or twenties we stand before our tables
+waiting for the seven o'clock whistle to blow. In their white caps and
+blue frocks and aprons, the girls in my department, like any unfamiliar
+class, all look alike. My first task is an easy one; anybody could do
+it. On the stroke of seven my fingers fly. I place a lid of paper in a
+tin jar-top, over it a cork; this I press down with both hands, tossing
+the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite of myself I hurry; I cannot
+work fast enough--I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have
+finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle
+is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for
+sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling,
+washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment for
+the simple work assigned to me. One hour passes, two, three hours; I fit
+ten, twenty, fifty dozen caps, and still my energy keeps up.
+
+The forewoman is a pretty girl of twenty. Her restless eyes, her
+metallic voice are the messengers who would know all. I am afraid of
+her. I long to please her. I am sure she must be saying "_How well the
+new girl works_."
+
+Conversation is possible among those whose work has become mechanical.
+Twice I am sent to the storeroom for more caps. In these brief moments
+my companions volunteer a word of themselves.
+
+"I was out to a ball last night," the youngest one says. "I stayed so
+late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning."
+
+"That's nothing," another retorts. "There's hardly an evening we don't
+have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest."
+
+And on my second trip the pale creature with me says:
+
+"I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last Friday week. It's awful
+lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I
+miss her _dreadful_. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it."
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," the answer comes from a girl with short skirts.
+"You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month
+and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind."
+
+Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same
+heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with
+us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making
+duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks,
+blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in
+hearts heretofore light with youth.
+
+When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my
+job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle
+jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle
+blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a
+part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to
+life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites--news to tell. We herd
+down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in
+all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The menu varies little: bread
+and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally a sausage, a bit of cheese or a
+piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The
+dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in
+dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and
+"sociables."
+
+At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to
+my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my
+thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a
+numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can
+they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled;
+bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and
+loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the
+monotony of it, the never-ending supply of work to be begun and
+finished, begun and finished, begun and finished! Now and then some one
+cuts a finger or runs a splinter under the flesh; once the mustard
+machine broke--and still the work goes on, on, on! New girls like
+myself, who had worked briskly in the morning, are beginning to loiter.
+Out of the washing-tins hands come up red and swollen, only to be
+plunged again into hot dirty water. Would the whistle never blow? Once I
+pause an instant, my head dazed and weary, my ears strained to bursting
+with the deafening noise. Quickly a voice whispers in my ear: "You'd
+better not stand there doin' nothin'. If _she_ catches you she'll give
+it to you."
+
+On! on! bundle of pains! For you this is one day's work in a thousand of
+peace and beauty. For those about you this is the whole of daylight,
+this is the winter dawn and twilight, this is the glorious summer noon,
+this is all day, this is every day, this is _life_. Rest is only a bit
+of a dream, snatched when the sleeper's aching body lets her close her
+eyes for a moment in oblivion.
+
+Out beyond the chimney tops the snowfields and the river turn from gray
+to pink, and still the work goes on. Each crate I lift grows heavier,
+each bottle weighs an added pound. Now and then some one lends a helping
+hand.
+
+"Tired, ain't you? This is your first day, ain't it?"
+
+The acid smell of vinegar and mustard penetrates everywhere. My ankles
+cry out pity. Oh! to sit down an instant!
+
+"Tidy up the table," some one tells me; "we're soon goin' home."
+
+Home! I think of the stifling fumes of fried food, the dim haze in the
+kitchen where my supper waits me; the children, the band of drifting
+workers, the shrill, complaining voice of the hired mother. This is
+home.
+
+I sweep and set to rights, limping, lurching along. At last the whistle
+blows! In a swarm we report; we put on our things and get away into the
+cool night air. I have stood ten hours; I have fitted 1,300 corks; I
+have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents.
+
+The impressions of my first day crowd pell-mell upon my mind. The sound
+of the machinery dins in my ears. I can hear the sharp, nasal voices of
+the forewoman and the girls shouting questions and answers.
+
+A sudden recollection comes to me of a Dahomayan family I had watched at
+work in their hut during the Paris Exhibition. There was a magic spell
+in their voices as they talked together; the sounds they made had the
+cadence of the wind in the trees, the running of water, the song of
+birds: they echoed unconsciously the caressing melodies of nature. My
+factory companions drew their vocal inspiration from the bedlam of
+civilization, the rasping and pounding of machinery, the din which they
+must out-din to be heard.
+
+For the two days following my first experience I am unable to resume
+work. Fatigue has swept through my blood like a fever. Every bone and
+joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories
+and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling
+house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company
+I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than
+where I am; at the broom factory they employ only men. I decide to
+continue with tin caps and pickle jars.
+
+My whole effort now is to find a respectable boarding-house. I start
+out, the thermometer near zero, the snow falling. I wander and ask,
+wander and ask. Up and down the black streets running parallel and at
+right angles with the factory I tap and ring at one after another of the
+two-story red-brick houses. More than half of them are empty, tenantless
+during the working hours. What hope is there for family life near the
+hearth which is abandoned at the factory's first call? The sociableness,
+the discipline, the division of responsibility make factory work a
+dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern
+conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls,
+impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery
+as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes:
+sport, college education, machinery--each is a factor in the gradual
+transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a
+collection of individuals with separate interests and aims outside the
+home.
+
+I pursue my search. It is the dinner hour. At last a narrow door opens,
+letting a puff of hot rank air blow upon me as I stand in the vestibule
+questioning: "Do you take boarders?"
+
+The woman who answers stands with a spoon in her hand, her eyes fixed
+upon a rear room where a stove, laden with frying-pans, glows and
+sputters.
+
+"Come in," she says, "and get warm."
+
+I walk into a front parlour with furniture that evidently serves
+domestic as well as social purposes. There is a profusion of white
+knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the
+fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the
+barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already
+I feel at home.
+
+"Want board, do you?" the woman asks. "Well, we ain't got no place;
+we're always right full up."
+
+My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on
+again.
+
+"I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want," the woman
+calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out.
+
+The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take
+"mealers" only, some only "roomers," some "only gentlemen." I begin to
+understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on
+account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to
+fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town
+the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply
+of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between
+city and country factory life that there is between university life in
+a capital and in a country town.
+
+A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to
+rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman.
+Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and
+beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist.
+
+"Do you take boarders?"
+
+"Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much
+trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room," she continues,
+opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her
+forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence
+the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring:
+
+"My husband was killed on the railroad last week. He lived three hours.
+They took him to the hospital--a boy come running down and told me. I
+went up as fast as I could, but it was too late; he never spoke again. I
+guess he didn't know what struck him; his head was all smashed. He was
+awful good to me--so easy-going. I ain't got my mind down to work yet.
+If you don't like this here room," she goes on listlessly, "maybe you
+could get suited across the way."
+
+Thompson Seton tells us in his book on wild animals that not one among
+them ever dies a natural death. As the opposite extreme of vital
+persistence we have the man whose life, in spite of acute disease, is
+prolonged against reason by science; and midway comes the labourer, who
+takes his chances unarmed by any understanding of physical law, whose
+only safeguards are his wits and his presence of mind. The violent
+death, the accidents, the illnesses to which he falls victim might be
+often warded off by proper knowledge. Nature is a zealous enemy;
+ignorance and inexperience keep a whole class defenseless.
+
+The next day is Saturday. I feel a fresh excitement at going back to my
+job; the factory draws me toward it magnetically. I long to be in the
+hum and whir of the busy workroom. Two days of leisure without resources
+or amusement make clear to me how the sociability of factory life, the
+freedom from personal demands, the escape from self can prove a
+distraction to those who have no mental occupation, no money to spend on
+diversion. It is easier to submit to factory government which commands
+five hundred girls with one law valid for all, than to undergo the
+arbitrary discipline of parental authority. I speed across the
+snow-covered courtyard. In a moment my cap and apron are on and I am
+sent to report to the head forewoman.
+
+"We thought you'd quit," she says. "Lots of girls come in here and quit
+after one day, especially Saturday. To-day is scrubbing day," she smiles
+at me. "Now we'll do right by you if you do right by us. What did the
+timekeeper say he'd give you?"
+
+"Sixty or seventy a day."
+
+"We'll give you seventy," she says. "Of course, we can judge girls a
+good deal by their looks, and we can see that you're above the average."
+
+She wears her cap close against her head. Her front hair is rolled up in
+crimping-pins. She has false teeth and is a widow. Her pale, parched
+face shows what a great share of life has been taken by daily
+over-effort repeated during years. As she talks she touches my arm in a
+kindly fashion and looks at me with blue eyes that float about under
+weary lids. "You are only at the beginning," they seem to say. "Your
+youth and vigour are at full tide, but drop by drop they will be sapped
+from you, to swell the great flood of human effort that supplies the
+world's material needs. You will gain in experience," the weary lids
+flutter at me, "but you will pay _with your life_ the living you make."
+
+There is no variety in my morning's work. Next to me is a bright, pretty
+girl jamming chopped pickles into bottles.
+
+"How long have you been here?" I ask, attracted by her capable
+appearance. She does her work easily and well.
+
+"About five months."
+
+"How much do you make?"
+
+"From 90 cents to $1.05. I'm doing piece-work," she explains. "I get
+seven-eighths of a cent for every dozen bottles I fill. I have to fill
+eight dozen to make seven cents. Downstairs in the corking-room you can
+make as high as $1.15 to $1.20. They won't let you make any more than
+that. Me and them two girls over there are the only ones in this room
+doing piece-work. I was here three weeks as a day-worker."
+
+"Do you live at home?" I ask.
+
+"Yes; I don't have to work. I don't pay no board. My father and my
+brothers supports me and my mother. But," and her eyes twinkle, "I
+couldn't have the clothes I do if I didn't work."
+
+"Do you spend your money all on yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I am amazed at the cheerfulness of my companions. They complain of
+fatigue, of cold, but never at any time is there a suggestion of
+ill-humour. Their suppressed animal spirits reassert themselves when the
+forewoman's back is turned. Companionship is the great stimulus. I am
+confident that without the social _entrain_, the encouragement of
+example, it would be impossible to obtain as much from each individual
+girl as is obtained from them in groups of tens, fifties, hundreds
+working together.
+
+When lunch is over we are set to scrubbing. Every table and stand, every
+inch of the factory floor must be scrubbed in the next four hours. The
+whistle on Saturday blows an hour earlier. Any girl who has not finished
+her work when the day is done, so that she can leave things in perfect
+order, is kept overtime, for which she is paid at the rate of six or
+seven cents an hour. A pail of hot water, a dirty rag and a
+scrubbing-brush are thrust into my hands. I touch them gingerly. I get a
+broom and for some time make sweeping a necessity, but the forewoman is
+watching me. I am afraid of her. There is no escape. I begin to scrub.
+My hands go into the brown, slimy water and come out brown and slimy. I
+slop the soap-suds around and move on to a fresh place. It appears there
+are a right and a wrong way of scrubbing. The forewoman is at my side.
+
+"Have you ever scrubbed before?" she asks sharply. This is humiliating.
+
+"Yes," I answer; "I have scrubbed ... oilcloth."
+
+The forewoman knows how to do everything. She drops down on her knees
+and, with her strong arms and short-thumbed, brutal hands, she shows me
+how to scrub.
+
+The grumbling is general. There is but one opinion among the girls: it
+is not right that they should be made to do this work. They all echo the
+same resentment, but their complaints are made in whispers; not one has
+the courage to openly rebel. What, I wonder to myself, do the men do on
+scrubbing day. I try to picture one of them on his hands and knees in a
+sea of brown mud. It is impossible. The next time I go for a supply of
+soft soap in a department where the men are working I take a look at the
+masculine interpretation of house cleaning. One man is playing a hose on
+the floor and the rest are rubbing the boards down with long-handled
+brooms and rubber mops.
+
+"You take it easy," I say to the boss.
+
+"I won't have no scrubbing in my place," he answers emphatically. "The
+first scrubbing day, they says to me 'Get down on your hands and knees,'
+and I says--'Just pay me my money, will you; I'm goin' home. What
+scrubbing can't be done with mops ain't going to be done by me.' The
+women wouldn't have to scrub, either, if they had enough spirit all of
+'em to say so."
+
+I determined to find out if possible, during my stay in the factory,
+what it is that clogs this mainspring of "spirit" in the women.
+
+I hear fragmentary conversations about fancy dress balls, valentine
+parties, church sociables, flirtations and clothes. Almost all of the
+girls wear shoes with patent leather and some or much cheap jewelry,
+brooches, bangles and rings. A few draw their corsets in; the majority
+are not laced. Here and there I see a new girl whose back is flat, whose
+chest is well developed. Among the older hands who have begun work early
+there is not a straight pair of shoulders. Much of the bottle washing
+and filling is done by children from twelve to fourteen years of age.
+On their slight, frail bodies toil weighs heavily; the delicate child
+form gives way to the iron hand of labour pressed too soon upon it.
+Backs bend earthward, chests recede, never to be sound again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a Sunday of rest I arrive somewhat ahead of time on Monday
+morning, which leaves me a few moments for conversation with a
+piece-worker who is pasting labels on mustard jars. She is fifteen.
+
+"Do you like your job?" I ask.
+
+"Yes, I do," she answers, pleased to tell her little history. "I began
+in a clothing shop. I only made $2.50 a week, but I didn't have to
+stand. I felt awful when papa made me quit. When I came in here, bein'
+on my feet tired me so I cried every night for two months. Now I've got
+used to it. I don't feel no more tired when I get home than I did when I
+started out." There are two sharp blue lines that drag themselves down
+from her eyes to her white cheeks.
+
+"Why, you know, at Christmas they give us two weeks," she goes on in the
+sociable tone of a woman whose hands are occupied. "I just didn't know
+what to do with myself."
+
+"Does your mother work?"
+
+"Oh, my, no. I don't have to work, only if I didn't I couldn't have the
+clothes I do. I save some of my money and spend the rest on myself. I
+make $6 to $7 a week."
+
+The girl next us volunteers a share in the conversation.
+
+"I bet you can't guess how old I am."
+
+I look at her. Her face and throat are wrinkled, her hands broad, and
+scrawny; she is tall and has short skirts. What shall be my clue? If I
+judge by pleasure, "unborn" would be my answer; if by effort, then "a
+thousand years."
+
+"Twenty," I hazard as a safe medium.
+
+"Fourteen," she laughs. "I don't like it at home, the kids bother me so.
+Mamma's people are well-to-do. I'm working for my own pleasure."
+
+"Indeed, I wish I was," says a new girl with a red waist. "We three
+girls supports mamma and runs the house. We have $13 rent to pay and a
+load of coal every month and groceries. It's no joke, I can tell you."
+
+The whistle blows; I go back to my monotonous task. The old aches begin
+again, first gently, then more and more sharply. The work itself is
+growing more mechanical. I can watch the girls around me. What is it
+that determines superiority in this class? Why was the girl filling
+pickle jars put on piece-work after three weeks, when others older than
+she are doing day-work at fifty and sixty cents after a year in the
+factory? What quality decides that four shall direct four hundred?
+Intelligence I put first; intelligence of any kind, from the natural
+penetration that needs no teaching to the common sense that every one
+relies upon. Judgment is not far behind in the list, and it is soon
+matured by experience. A strong will and a moral steadiness stand
+guardians over the other two. The little pickle girl is winning in the
+race by her intelligence. The forewomen have all four qualities,
+sometimes one, sometimes another predominating. Pretty Clara is smarter
+than Lottie. Lottie is more steady. Old Mrs. Minns' will has kept her at
+it until her judgment has become infallible and can command a good
+price. Annie is an evenly balanced mixture of all, and the five hundred
+who are working under the five lack these qualities somewhat, totally,
+or have them in useless proportions.
+
+Monday is a hard day. There is more complaining, more shirking, more
+gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to
+dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young
+man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the
+language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the
+abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other,
+but in all they say there is not a word of value--nothing that would
+interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the
+sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration
+of the French _ouvriere_. The Old World generations ago divided itself
+into classes; the lower class watched the upper and grew observant and
+appreciative, wise and discriminating, through the study of a master's
+will. Here in the land of freedom, where no class line is rigid, the
+precious chance is not to serve but to live for oneself; not to watch a
+superior, but to find out by experience. The ideal plays no part, stern
+realities alone count, and thus we have a progressive, practical,
+independent people, the expression of whose personality is interesting
+not through their words but by their deeds.
+
+When the Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the
+dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her
+temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain,
+the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at
+first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad
+English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to
+adopt the twang. No allusion is made to my pronunciation except by one
+girl, who says:
+
+"I knew you was from the East. My sister spent a year in Boston and when
+she come back she talked just like you do, but she lost it all again.
+I'd give anything if I could talk _aristocratic_."
+
+I am beginning to understand why the meager lunches of
+preserve-sandwiches and pickles more than satisfy the girls whom I was
+prepared to accuse of spending their money on gewgaws rather than on
+nourishment. It is fatigue that steals the appetite. I can hardly taste
+what I put in my mouth; the food sticks in my throat. The girls who
+complain most of being tired are the ones who roll up their newspaper
+bundles half full. They should be given an hour at noon. The first half
+of it should be spent in rest and recreation before a bite is touched.
+The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and
+pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I
+did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and
+sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste.
+
+So long as I remain in the bottling department there is little variety
+in my days. Rising at 5:30 every morning, I make my way through black
+streets to offer my sacrifice of energy on the altar of toil. All is
+done without a fresh incident. Accumulated weariness forces me to take a
+day off. When I return I am sent for in the corking-room. The forewoman
+lends me a blue gingham dress and tells me I am to do "piece"-work.
+There are three who work together at every corking-table. My two
+companions are a woman with goggles and a one-eyed boy. We are not a
+brilliant trio. The job consists in evening the vinegar in the bottles,
+driving the cork in, first with a machine, then with a hammer, letting
+out the air with a knife stuck under the cork, capping the corks,
+sealing the caps, counting and distributing the bottles. These
+operations are paid for at the rate of one-half a cent for the dozen
+bottles, which sum is divided among us. My two companions are earning a
+living, so I must work in dead earnest or take bread out of their
+mouths. At every blow of the hammer there is danger. Again and again
+bottles fly to pieces in my hand. The boy who runs the corking-machine
+smashes a glass to fragments.
+
+"Are you hurt?" I ask, my own fingers crimson stained.
+
+"That ain't nothin'," he answers. "Cuts is common; my hands is full of
+'em."
+
+The woman directs us; she is fussy and loses her head, the work
+accumulates, I am slow, the boy is clumsy. There is a stimulus
+unsuspected in working to get a job done. Before this I had worked to
+make the time pass. Then no one took account of how much I did; the
+factory clock had a weighted pendulum; now ambition outdoes physical
+strength. The hours and my purpose are running a race together. But,
+hurry as I may, as we do, when twelve blows its signal we have corked
+only 210 dozen bottles! This is no more than day-work at seventy cents.
+With an ache in every muscle, I redouble my energy after lunch. The girl
+with the goggles looks at me blindly and says:
+
+"Ain't it just awful hard work? You can make good money, but you've got
+to hustle."
+
+She is a forlorn specimen of humanity, ugly, old, dirty, condemned to
+the slow death of the overworked. I am a green hand. I make mistakes; I
+have no experience in the fierce sustained effort of the bread-winners.
+Over and over I turn to her, over and over she is obliged to correct me.
+During the ten hours we work side by side not one murmur of impatience
+escapes her. When she sees that I am getting discouraged she calls out
+across the deafening din, "That's all right; you can't expect to learn
+in a day; just keep on steady."
+
+As I go about distributing bottles to the labelers I notice a strange
+little elf, not more than twelve years old, hauling loaded crates; her
+face and chest are depressed, she is pale to blueness, her eyes have
+indigo circles, her pupils are unnaturally dilated, her brows
+contracted; she has the appearance of a cave-bred creature. She seems
+scarcely human. When the time for cleaning up arrives toward five my
+boss sends me for a bucket of water to wash up the floor. I go to the
+sink, turn on the cold water and with it the steam which takes the place
+of hot water. The valve slips; in an instant I am enveloped in a
+scalding cloud. Before it has cleared away the elf is by my side.
+
+"Did you hurt yourself?" she asks.
+
+Her inhuman form is the vehicle of a human heart, warm and tender. She
+lifts her wide-pupiled eyes to mine; her expression does not change from
+that of habitual scrutiny cast early in a rigid mould, but her voice
+carries sympathy from its purest source.
+
+There is more honour than courtesy in the code of etiquette. Commands
+are given curtly; the slightest injustice is resented; each man for
+himself in work, but in trouble all for the one who is suffering. No
+bruise or cut or burn is too familiar a sight to pass uncared for.
+
+It is their common sufferings, their common effort that unites them.
+
+When I have become expert in the corking art I am raised to a better
+table, with a bright boy, and a girl who is dignified and indifferent
+with the indifference of those who have had too much responsibility. She
+never hurries; the work slips easily through her fingers. She keeps a
+steady bearing over the morning's ups and downs. Under her load of
+trials there is something big in the steady way she sails.
+
+"Used to hard work?" she asks me.
+
+"Not much," I answer; "are you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I began at thirteen in a bakery. I had a place near the oven
+and the heat overcame me."
+
+Her shoulders are bowed, her chest is hollow.
+
+"Looking for a boarding place near the factory, I hear," she continues.
+
+"Yes. You live at home, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. There's four of us: mamma, papa, my sister and myself. Papa's
+blind."
+
+"Can't he work?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he creeps to his job every morning, and he's got so much
+experience he kind o' does things by instinct."
+
+"Does your mother work?"
+
+"Oh, my, no. My sister's an invalid. She hasn't been out o' the door for
+three years. She's got enlargement of the heart and consumption, too, I
+guess; she 'takes' hemorrhages. Sometimes she has twelve in one night.
+Every time she coughs the blood comes foaming out of her mouth. She
+can't lie down. I guess she'd die if she lay down, and she gets so tired
+sittin' up all night. She used to be a tailoress, but I guess her job
+didn't agree with her."
+
+"How many checks have we got," I ask toward the close of the day.
+
+"Thirteen," Ella answers.
+
+"An unlucky number," I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion.
+
+"Are you superstitious?" she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the
+pickle jars. "I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having
+presentiments, and they come true, too."
+
+Here is a mystic, I thought; so I continued:
+
+"And what about dreams?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "Dreams! I have the queerest of anybody!"
+
+I was all attention.
+
+"Why, last night," she drew near to me, and spoke slowly, "I dreamed
+that mamma was drunk, and that she was stealing chickens!"
+
+Such is the imagination of this weary worker.
+
+The whole problem in mechanical labour rests upon economy of force. The
+purpose of each, I learned by experience, was to accomplish as much as
+possible with one single stroke. In this respect the machine is superior
+to man, and man to woman. Sometimes I tried original ways of doing the
+work given me. I soon found in every case that the methods proposed by
+the forewoman were in the end those whereby I could do the greatest
+amount of work with the least effort. A mustard machine had recently
+been introduced to the factory. It replaced three girls; it filled as
+many bottles with a single stroke as the girls could fill with twelve.
+This machine and all the others used were run by boys or men; the girls
+had not strength enough to manipulate them methodically.
+
+The power of the machine, the physical force of the man were simplifying
+their tasks. While the boy was keeping steadily at one thing, perfecting
+himself, we, the women, were doing a variety of things, complicated and
+fussy, left to our lot because we had not physical force for the simpler
+but greater effort. The boy at the corking-table had soon become an
+expert; he was fourteen and he made from $1 to $1.20 a day. He worked
+ten hours at one job, whereas Ella and I had a dozen little jobs almost
+impossible to systematize: we hammered and cut and capped the corks and
+washed and wiped the bottles, sealed them, counted them, distributed
+them, kept the table washed up, the sink cleaned out, and once a day
+scrubbed up our own precincts. When I asked the boy if he was tired he
+laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more
+with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by _nature_ a more
+valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to
+abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had
+given us a handicap at the start.
+
+For a few days there is no vacancy at the corking-tables. I am sent back
+to the bottling department. The oppressive monotony is one day varied by
+a summons to the men's dining-room. I go eagerly, glad of any change. In
+the kitchen I find a girl with skin disease peeling potatoes, and a
+coloured man making soup in a wash-boiler. The girl gives me a stool to
+sit on, and a knife and a pan of potatoes. The dinner under preparation
+is for the men of the factory. There are two hundred of them. They are
+paid from $1.35 up to $3 a day. Their wages begin above the highest
+limit given to women. The dinner costs each man ten cents. The $20 paid
+in daily cover the expenses of the cook, two kitchen maids and the
+dinner, which consists of meat, bread and butter, vegetables and coffee,
+sometimes soup, sometimes dessert. If this can pay for two hundred
+there is no reason why for five cents a hot meal of some kind could not
+be given the women. They don't demand it, so they are left to make
+themselves ill on pickles and preserves.
+
+The coloured cook is full of song and verse. He quotes from the Bible
+freely, and gives us snatches of popular melodies.
+
+We have frequent calls from the elevator boy, who brings us ice and
+various provisions. Both men, I notice, take their work easily. During
+the morning a busy Irish woman comes hurrying into our precincts.
+
+"Say," she yells in a shrill voice, "my cauliflowers ain't here, are
+they? I ordered 'em early and they ain't came yet."
+
+Without properly waiting for an answer she hurries away again.
+
+The coloured cook turns to the elevator boy understandingly:
+
+"Just like a woman! Why, before I'd _make a fuss_ about cauliflowers or
+anything else!"
+
+About eleven the head forewoman stops in to eat a plate of rice and
+milk. While I am cutting bread for the two hundred I hear her say to the
+cook in a gossipy tone:
+
+"How do you like the new girl? She's here all alone."
+
+I am called away and do not hear the rest of the conversation. When I
+return the cook lectures me in this way:
+
+"Here alone, are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get along nicely and not kill
+yourself with work either. Just stick at it and they'll do right by you.
+Lots o' girls who's here alone gets to fooling around. Now I like
+everybody to have a good time, and I hope you'll have a good time, too,
+but you mustn't carry it too far."
+
+My mind went back as he said this to a conversation I had had the night
+before with a working-girl at my boarding-house.
+
+"Where is your home?" I asked.
+
+She had been doing general housework, but ill-health had obliged her to
+take a rest.
+
+She looked at me skeptically.
+
+"We don't have no homes," was her answer. "We just get up and get
+whenever they send us along."
+
+And almost as a sequel to this I thought of two sad cases that had come
+close to my notice as fellow boarders.
+
+I was sitting alone one night by the gas stove in the parlour. The
+matron had gone out and left me to "answer the door." The bell rang and
+I opened cautiously, for the wind was howling and driving the snow and
+sleet about on the winter air. A young girl came in; she was seeking a
+lodging. Her skirts and shoes were heavy with water. She took off her
+things slowly in a dazed manner. Her short, quick breathing showed how
+excited she was. When she spoke at last her voice sounded hollow, her
+eyes moved about restlessly. She stopped abruptly now and then and
+contracted her brows as though in an appeal for merciful tears; then she
+continued in the same broken, husky voice:
+
+"I suppose I'm not the only one in trouble. I've thought a thousand
+times over that I would kill myself. I suppose I loved him--but I _hate_
+him now."
+
+These two sentences, recurring, were the story's all.
+
+The impotence of rebellion, a sense of outrage at being abandoned, the
+instinctive appeal for protection as a right, the injustice of being
+left solely to bear the burden of responsibility which so long as it was
+pleasure had been shared--these were the thoughts and feelings breeding
+hatred.
+
+She had spent the day in a fruitless search for her lover. She had been
+to his boss and to his rooms. He had paid his debts and gone, nobody
+knew where. She was pretty, vain, homeless; alone to bear the
+responsibility she had not been alone to incur. She could not shirk it
+as the man had done. They had both disregarded the law. On whom were the
+consequences weighing more heavily? On the woman. She is the sufferer;
+she is the first to miss the law's protection. She is the weaker member
+whom, for the sake of the race, society protects. Nature has made her
+man's physical inferior; society is obliged to recognize this in the
+giving of a marriage law which beyond doubt is for the benefit of woman,
+since she can least afford to disregard it.
+
+Another evening when the matron was out I sat for a time with a young
+working woman and her baby. There is a comradeship among the poor that
+makes light of indiscreet questions. I felt only sympathy in asking:
+
+"Are you alone to bring up your child?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "I'll never go home with _him_."
+
+I looked at _him_: a wizened, four-months-old infant with a huge flat
+nose, and two dull black eyes fixed upon the gas jet. The girl had the
+grace of a forest-born creature; she moved with the mysterious strength
+and suppleness of a tree's branch. She was proud; she felt herself
+disgraced. For four months she had not left the house. I talked on,
+proposing different things.
+
+"I don't know what to do," she said. "I can't never go home with _him_,
+and if I went home without him I'd never be the same. I don't know what
+I'd do if anything happened to _him_." Her head bowed over the child;
+she held him close to her breast.
+
+But to return to the coloured cook and my day in the kitchen. I had
+ample opportunity to compare domestic service with factory work. We set
+the table for two hundred, and do a thousand miserable slavish tasks
+that must be begun again the following day. At twelve the two hundred
+troop in, toil-worn and begrimed. They pass like locusts, leaving us
+sixteen hundred dirty dishes to wash up and wipe. This takes us four
+hours, and when we have finished the work stands ready to be done over
+the next morning with peculiar monotony. In the factory there is
+stimulus in feeling that the material which passes through one's hands
+will never be seen or heard of again.
+
+On Saturday the owner of the factory comes at lunch time with several
+friends and talks to us with an amazing _camaraderie_. He is kindly,
+humourous and tactful. One or two missionaries speak after him, but
+their conversation is too abstract for us. We want something dramatic,
+imaginative, to hold our attention, or something wholly natural. Tell us
+about the bees, the beavers or the toilers of the sea. The longing for
+flowers has often come to me as I work, and a rose seems of all things
+the most desirable. In my present condition I do not hark back to
+civilized wants, but repeatedly my mind travels toward the country
+places I have seen in the fields and forests. If I had a holiday I would
+spend it seeing not what man but what God has made. These are the things
+to be remembered in addressing or trying to amuse or instruct girls who
+are no more prepared than I felt myself to be for any preconceived ideal
+of art or ethics. The omnipresence of dirt and ugliness, of machines and
+"stock," leave the mind in a state of lassitude which should be roused
+by something natural. As an initial remedy for the ills I voluntarily
+assumed I would propose amusement. Of all the people who spoke to us
+that Saturday, we liked best the one who made us laugh. It was a relief
+to hear something funny. In working as an outsider in a factory girls'
+club I had always held that nothing was so important as to give the poor
+something beautiful to look at and think about--a photograph or copy of
+some _chef d'oeuvre_, an _objet d'art_, lessons in literature and art
+which would uplift their souls from the dreariness of their
+surroundings. Three weeks as a factory girl had changed my beliefs. If
+the young society women who sacrifice one evening every week to talk to
+the poor in the slums about Shakespeare and Italian art would instead
+offer diversion first--a play, a farce, a humourous recitation--they
+would make much more rapid progress in winning the confidence of those
+whom they want to help. The working woman who has had a good laugh is
+more ready to tell what she needs and feels and fears than the woman who
+has been forced to listen silently to an abstract lesson. In society
+when we wish to make friends with people we begin by entertaining them.
+It should be the same way with the poor. Next to amusement as a means
+of giving temporary relief and bringing about relations which will be
+helpful to all, I put instruction, in the form of narrative, about the
+people of other countries, our fellow man, how he lives and works; and,
+third, under this same head, primitive lessons about animals and plants,
+the industries of the bees, the habits of ants, the natural phenomena
+which require no reasoning power to understand and which open the
+thoughts upon a delightful unknown vista.
+
+My first experience is drawing to its close. I have surmounted the
+discomforts of insufficient food, of dirt, a bed without sheets, the
+strain of hard manual labour. I have confined my observations to life
+and conditions in the factory. Owing, as I have before explained, to the
+absorption of factory life into city life in a place as large as
+Pittsburg, it seemed to me more profitable to centre my attention on the
+girl within the factory, leaving for a small town the study of her in
+her family and social life. I have pointed out as they appeared to me
+woman's relative force as a worker and its effects upon her economic
+advancement. I have touched upon two cases which illustrate her relative
+dependence on the law. She appeared to me not as the equal of man either
+physically or legally. It remained to study her socially. In the factory
+where I worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days. The
+women's highest wages were lower than the man's lowest. Both were
+working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial
+work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were
+properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and
+pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a
+single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw
+myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at
+the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying
+conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of
+labourers taking part in the competition. In the masculine category I
+met but one class of competitor: the bread-winner. In the feminine
+category I found a variety of classes: the bread-winner, the
+semi-bread-winner, the woman who works for luxuries. This inevitably
+drags the wage level. The self-supporting girl is in competition with
+the child, with the girl who lives at home and makes a small
+contribution to the household expenses, and with the girl who is
+supported and who spends all her money on her clothes. It is this
+division of purpose which takes the "spirit" out of them as a class.
+There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is
+not equally vital to them all. It is not only nature and the law which
+demand protection for women, but society as well. In every case of the
+number I investigated, if there were sons, daughters or a husband in the
+family, the mother was not allowed to work. She was wholly protected. In
+the families where the father and brothers were making enough for bread
+and butter, the daughters were protected partially or entirely. There is
+no law which regulates this social protection: it is voluntary, and it
+would seem to indicate that civilized woman is meant to be an economic
+dependent. Yet, on the other hand, what is the new force which impels
+girls from their homes into the factories to work when they do not
+actually need the money paid them for their effort and sacrifice? Is it
+a move toward some far distant civilization when women shall have become
+man's physical equal, a "free, economic, social factor, making possible
+the full social combination of individuals in collective industry"? This
+is a matter for speculation only. What occurred to me as a possible
+remedy both for the oppression of the woman bread-winner and also as a
+betterment for the girl who wants to work though she does not need the
+money, was this: the establishment of schools where the esthetic
+branches of industrial art might be taught to the girls who by their
+material independence could give some leisure to acquiring a profession
+useful to themselves and to society in general. The whole country would
+be benefited by the opening of such schools as the Empress of Russia has
+patronized for the maintenance of the "petites industries," or those
+which Queen Margherita has established for the revival of lace-making in
+Italy. If there was such a counter-attraction to machine labour, the
+bread-winner would have a freer field and the non-bread-winner might
+still work for luxury and at the same time better herself morally,
+mentally and esthetically. She could aid in forming an intermediate
+class of labourers which as yet does not exist in America: the
+hand-workers, the _main d'oeuvre_ who produce the luxurious objects of
+industrial art for which we are obliged to send to Europe when we wish
+to beautify our homes.
+
+The American people are lively, intelligent, capable of learning
+anything. The schools of which I speak, founded, not for the
+manufacturing of the useful but of the beautiful, could be started
+informally as classes and by individual effort. Such labour would be
+paid more than the mechanical factory work; the immense importation from
+abroad of objects of industrial art sufficiently proves the demand for
+them in this country; there would be no material disadvantage for the
+girl who gave up her job in a pickle factory. Her faculties would be
+well employed, and she could, without leaving her home, do work which
+would be of esthetic and, indirectly, of moral value.
+
+I was discouraged at first to see how difficult it was to help the
+working girls as individuals and how still more difficult to help them
+as a class. There is perhaps no surer way of doing this than by giving
+opportunities to those who have a purpose and a will. No amount of
+openings will help the girl who has not both of these. I watched many
+girls with intelligence and energy who were unable to develop for the
+lack of a chance a start in the right direction. Aside from the few
+remedies I have been able to suggest, I would like to make an appeal for
+persistent sympathy in behalf of those whose misery I have shared. Until
+some marvelous advancement has been made toward the reign of justice
+upon earth, every man, woman and child should have constantly in his
+heart the sufferings of the poorest.
+
+On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the
+streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental
+food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of
+labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a
+Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the
+cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has
+produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass,
+they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their
+bargains cheap; from us, the cooeperators who enable them to have the
+luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the
+monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd
+to our work in the winter dawn; think of us as we bend over our task
+all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we
+resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of
+us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand
+protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your
+material demands; think of us--be merciful.
+
+[Illustration: "WAVING ARMS OF SMOKE AND STEAM, A SYMBOL OF SPENT
+ENERGY, OF THE LIVES CONSUMED, AND VANISHING AGAIN"
+
+Factories on the Alleghany River at the 16th Street bridge, just below
+the pickle works]
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN
+
+
+No place in America could have afforded better than Pittsburg a chance
+to study the factory life of American girls, the stimulus of a new
+country upon the labourers of old races, the fervour and energy of a
+people animated by hope and stirred to activity by the boundless
+opportunities for making money. It is the labourers' city _par
+excellence_; and in my preceding chapters I have tried to give a clear
+picture of factory life between the hours of seven and six, of the
+economic conditions, of the natural social and legal equipment of woman
+as a working entity, of her physical, moral and esthetic development.
+
+Now, since the time ticked out between the morning summoning whistle to
+that which gives release at night is not half the day, and only
+two-thirds of the working hours, my second purpose has been to find a
+place where the factory girl's own life could best be studied: her
+domestic, religious and sentimental life.
+
+Somewhere in the western part of New York State, one of my comrades at
+the pickle works had told me, there was a town whose population was
+chiefly composed of mill-hands. The name of the place was Perry, and I
+decided upon it as offering the typical American civilization among the
+working classes. New England is too free of grafts to give more than a
+single aspect; Pittsburg is an international bazaar; but the foundations
+of Perry are laid with bricks from all parts of the world, held together
+by a strong American cement.
+
+Ignorant of Perry further than as it exists, a black spot on a branch of
+a small road near Buffalo, I set out from New York toward my destination
+on the Empire State Express. There was barely time to descend with my
+baggage at Rochester before the engine had started onward again,
+trailing behind it with world-renowned rapidity its freight of travelers
+who, for a few hours under the car's roof, are united by no other common
+interest than that of journeying quickly from one spot to another, where
+they disperse never to meet again. My Perry train had an altogether
+different character. I was late for it, but the brakeman saw me coming
+and waved to the engineer not to start until my trunk was checked and
+safely boarded like myself. Then we bumped our way through meadows
+quickened to life by the soft spring air; we halted at crossroads to
+pick up stray travelers and shoppers; we unloaded plowing machines and
+shipped crates of live fowl; we waited at wayside stations with
+high-sounding names for family parties whose unpunctuality was
+indulgently considered by the occupants of the train.
+
+My companions, chiefly women, were of the homely American type whose New
+England drawl has been modified by a mingling of foreign accents. They
+took advantage of this time for "visiting" with neighbours whom the
+winter snows and illnesses had rendered inaccessible. Their inquiries
+for each other were all kindliness and sympathy, and the peaceful,
+tolerant, uneventful way in which we journeyed from Rochester to Perry
+was a symbol of the way in which these good people had journeyed across
+life. Perry, the terminus of the line, was a frame station lodged on
+stilts in a sea of surrounding mud. When the engine had come to a
+standstill and ceased to pant, when the last truck had been unloaded,
+the baggage room closed, there were no noises to be heard except those
+that came from a neighbouring country upon whose peace the small town
+had not far encroached; the splash of a horse and buggy through the mud,
+a monotonous voice mingling with the steady tick of the telegraph
+machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible
+stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the
+earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the
+railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a
+man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools,
+rakes and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in
+resuming my toil-worn clothes had led me to make certain modifications
+which I feared in so small a town as Perry might relegate me to the
+class I had voluntarily abandoned. The man in rubber boots looked me
+over as I approached, bag in hand, and to my salutation he replied:
+
+"Going down to the mill, I suppose. There's lots o' ladies comes in the
+train every day now."
+
+He was the perfection of tact; he placed me in one sentence as a
+mill-hand and a lady.
+
+"I'll take you down as far as Main Street," he volunteered, giving me at
+once a feeling of kindly interest which "city folks" have not time to
+show.
+
+We found our way by improvised crossings through broad, soft beds of
+mud. Among the branches of the sap-fed trees which lined the unpaved
+streets transparent balls of glass were suspended, from which, as
+twilight deepened, a brilliant artificial light shot its rays, the
+perfection of modern invention, over the primitive, unfinished little
+town of Perry, which was all contrast and energy, crudity and progress.
+
+"There's a lot of the girls left the mill yesterday," my companion
+volunteered. "They cut the wages, and some of the oldest hands got right
+out. There's more than a thousand of 'em on the pay-roll, but I guess
+you can make good money if you're ready to work."
+
+We had reached Main Street, which, owing to the absence of a trolley,
+had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out
+into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame
+stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My
+guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of
+mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with
+their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some
+ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the Perry population.
+
+"Follow the boardwalk!" was the simple command I received. "Keep right
+along until you come to the mill."
+
+I presently fell in with a drayman, who was calling alternately to his
+horse as it sucked in and out of the mud and to a woman on the plank
+walk. She had on a hat with velvet and ostrich plumes, a black frock, a
+side bag with a lace handkerchief. She was not young and she wore
+spectacles; but there was something nervous about her step, a slight
+tremolo as she responded to the drayman, which suggested an adventure or
+the hope of it. The boardwalk, leading inevitably to the mill, announced
+our common purpose and saved us an introduction.
+
+"Going down to get work?" was the question we simultaneously asked of
+each other. My companion, all eagerness, shook out the lace
+handkerchief in her side bag and explained:
+
+"I don't have to work; my folks keep a hotel; but I always heard so much
+about Perry I thought I'd like to come up, and," she sighed, with a
+flirt of the lace handkerchief and a contented glance around at the rows
+of white frame houses, "I'm up now."
+
+"Want board?" the drayman called to me. "You kin count on me for a good
+place. There's Doctor Meadows, now; he's got a nice home and he just
+wants two boarders."
+
+The middle-aged woman with the glasses glanced up quickly.
+
+"Doctor Meadows of Tittihute?" she asked. "I wont go there; he's too
+strict. He's a Methodist minister. You couldn't have any fun at all."
+
+I followed suit, denouncing Doctor Killjoy as she had, hoping that her
+nervous, frisky step would lead me toward the adventure she was
+evidently seeking.
+
+"Well," the drayman responded indulgently, "I guess Mr. Norse will know
+the best place for you folks."
+
+We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was
+but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot,
+the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill
+revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. Tall, lank and
+meager, with a wrinkled face and a furtive mustache, Mr. Norse made his
+rounds with a list of complaints and comments in one hand, a pencil in
+the other and a black cap on his head which tipped, indulgent, attentive
+to hear and overhear. His manner was professional. He looked at us,
+placed us, told us to return at one o'clock, recommended a
+boarding-house, and, on his way to some other case, sent a small boy to
+accompany us on future stretches of boardwalk to our lodgings. The
+street we followed ended in a rolling hillside, and beyond was the
+mysterious blue that holds something of the infinite in its mingling of
+clouds and shadows. The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the
+sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings.
+The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves
+into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door
+and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all
+folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built
+without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a
+large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and
+ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock
+with a rusty bell marked the hour from a shelf on the wall, and out of
+the kitchen, seen in vista, came a spluttering sound of frying food. Our
+hostess took us into the parlour. Several family pictures of stony-eyed
+women and men with chin beards, and a life-sized Frances Willard in
+chromo, looked down at our ensuing interview.
+
+Board, lodging, heat and light we could have at $2.75 a week. Before the
+husky clock had struck twelve, I was installed in a small room with the
+middle-aged woman from Batavia and a second unknown roommate.
+
+Now what, I asked myself, is the mill's attraction and what is the power
+of this small town? Its population is 3,346. Of these, 1,000 work in the
+knitting-mill, 200 more in a cutlery factory and 300 in various flour,
+butter, barrel, planing mills and salt blocks. Half the inhabitants are
+young hands. Not one in a hundred has a home in Perry; they have come
+from all western parts of the State to work. There are scarcely any
+children, few married couples and almost no old people. It is a town of
+youthful contemporaries, stung with the American's ambition for
+independence and adventure, charmed by the gaiety of being boys and
+girls together, with an ever possible touch of romance which makes the
+hardest work seem easy. Within the four board walls of each house, whose
+type is repeated up and down Perry streets, there is a group of factory
+employees boarding and working at the mill. Their names suggest a
+foreign parentage, but for several generations they have mingled their
+diverse energies in a common effort which makes Americans of them.
+
+As I lived for several weeks among a group of this kind, who were
+fairly representative, I shall try to give, through a description of
+their life and conversation, their personalities and characteristics,
+their occupations out of working hours, a general idea of these unknown
+toilers, who are so amazingly like their more fortunate sisters that I
+became convinced the difference is only superficial--not one of kind but
+merely of variety. The Perry factory girl is separated from the New York
+society girl, not by a few generations, but by a few years of culture
+and training. In America, where tradition and family play an unimportant
+part, the great educator is the spending of money. It is through the
+purchase of possessions that the Americans develop their taste, declare
+themselves, and show their inherent capacity for culture. Give to the
+Perry mill-hands a free chance for growth, transplant them, care for
+them, and they will readily show how slight and how merely a thing of
+culture the difference is between the wild rose and the American beauty.
+
+What were my first impressions of the hands who returned at noon under
+the roof which had extended unquestioning its hospitality? Were they a
+band of slaves, victims to toil and deprivation? Were they making the
+pitiful exchange of their total vitality for insufficient nourishment?
+Did life mean to them merely the diminishing of their forces?
+
+On the contrary, they entered gay, laughing young, a youth guarded
+intact by freedom and hope. What were the subjects of conversation
+pursued at dinner? Love, labour, the price paid for it, the advantages
+of town over country life, the neighbour and her conduct. What was the
+appearance of my companions? There was nothing in it to shock good
+taste. Their hands and feet were somewhat broadened by work, their skins
+were imperfect for the lack of proper food, their dresses were of coarse
+material; but in small things the differences were superficial only. Was
+it, then, in big things that the divergence began which places them as a
+lower class? Was it money alone that kept them from the places of
+authority? What were their ambitions, their perplexities? What part does
+self-respect play? How well satisfied are they, or how restless? What
+can we learn from them? What can we teach them?
+
+We ate our dinner of boiled meat and custard pie and all started back in
+good time for a one o'clock beginning at the mill. For the space of
+several hundred feet its expressionless red brick walls lined the
+street, implacable, silent. Within all hummed to the collective activity
+of a throng, each working with all his force for a common end. Machines
+roared and pounded; a fine dust filled the air--a cloud of lint sent
+forth from the friction of thousands of busy hands in perpetual contact
+with the shapeless anonymous garments they were fashioning. There were,
+on their way between the cutting-and the finishing-rooms, 7,000 dozen
+shirts. They were to pass by innumerable hands; they were to be held and
+touched by innumerable individuals; they were to be begun and finished
+by innumerable human beings with distinct tastes and likings, abilities
+and failings; and when the 7,000 dozen shirts were complete they were to
+look alike, and they were to look as though made by a machine; they were
+to show no trace whatever of the men and the women who had made them.
+Here we were, 1,000 souls hurrying from morning until night, working
+from seven until six, with as little personality as we could, with the
+effort to produce, through an action purely mechanical, results as
+nearly as possible identical one to the other, and all to the machine
+itself.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY TRIFLE WITH LOVE"]
+
+What could be the result upon the mind and health of this frantic
+mechanical activity devoid of thought? It was this for which I sought an
+answer; it is for this I propose a remedy.
+
+At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr.
+Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make
+money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in
+mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could
+make; I was offered the favourite work in the mill--shirt finishing, at
+thirty cents a day and all I could make; and when I shook my head to see
+how far I could exploit my indifference and said, "Thirty cents is too
+little," Mr. Norse's answer was: "Well, I suppose you, like the rest of
+us, are trying to earn a living. I will guarantee you seventy-five cents
+a day for the first two weeks, and all you can make over it is yours."
+My apprenticeship began under the guidance of an "old girl" who had been
+five years in the mill. A dozen at a time the woolen shirts were brought
+to us, complete all but the adding of the linen strips in front where
+the buttons and buttonholes are stitched. The price of this operation is
+paid for the dozen shirts five, five and a half and six cents, according
+to the complexity of the finish. My instructress had done as many as
+forty dozen in one day; she averaged $1.75 a day all the year around.
+While she was teaching me the factory paid her at the rate of ten cents
+an hour.
+
+A touch of the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A
+second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt
+standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was
+not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I
+sewed frantically into the middle of shirts. I watched my needle,
+impotent as it flew up and down, and when by chance I made a straight
+seam I brought it to so sudden a stop that the thread raveled back
+before my weary eyes. When my back and fingers ached so that I could no
+longer bend over the work, I watched my comrades with amazement. The
+machine was not a wild animal in their hands, but an instrument that
+responded with niceness to their guidance. Above the incessant roar and
+burring din they called gaily to each other, gossiping, chatting,
+telling stories. What did they talk about? Everything, except domestic
+cares. The management of an interior, housekeeping, cooking were things
+I never once heard mentioned. What were the favourite topics, those
+returned to most frequently and with surest interest? Dress and men. Two
+girls in the seaming-room had got into a quarrel that day over a packer,
+a fine looking, broad-shouldered fellow who had touched the hearts of
+both and awakened in each an emotion she claimed the right to defend.
+The quarrel began lightly with an exchange of unpleasant comment; it
+soon took the proportions of a dispute which could not give itself the
+desired vent in words alone. The boss was called in. He made no attempt
+to control what lay beyond his power, but applying factory legislation
+to the case, he ordered the two Amazons to "register out" until the
+squabble was settled, as the factory did not propose to pay its hands
+for the time spent in fights. So the two girls "rang out" past the
+timekeeper and took an hour in the open air, hand to hand, fist to fist,
+which, as it happens to man, had its calming effect.
+
+We stitched our way industriously over the 7,000 dozen. Except for the
+moments when some girl called a message or shouted a conversation,
+there was nothing to occupy the mind but the vibrating, pulsing,
+pounding of the machinery. The body was shaken with it; the ears
+strained.
+
+The little girl opposite me was a new hand. Her rosy cheeks and straight
+shoulders announced this fact. She had been five months in the mill; the
+other girls around her had been there two years, five years, nine years.
+There were 150 of us at the long, narrow tables which filled the room.
+By the windows the light and air were fairly good. At the centre tables
+the atmosphere was stagnant, the shadows came too soon. The wood's edge
+ran within a few yards of the factory windows. Between it and us lay the
+stream, the water force, the power that had called men to Perry. There,
+as everywhere in America, for an individual as for a place, the
+attraction was industrial possibilities. As Niagara has become more an
+industrial than a picturesque landscape, so Perry, in spite of its
+serene and beautiful surroundings, is a shrine to mechanical force in
+whose temple, the tall-chimneyed mill, a human sacrifice is made to the
+worshipers of gain.
+
+My _vis-a-vis_ was talkative. "Say," she said to her neighbour, "Jim
+Weston is the worst flirt I ever seen."
+
+"Who's Jim Weston?" the other responded, diving into the box by her side
+for a handful of gray woolen shirts.
+
+"Why, he's the one who made my teeth--he made teeth for all of us up
+home," and her smile reveals the handiwork of Weston.
+
+"If I had false teeth," is the comment made upon this, "I wouldn't tell
+anybody."
+
+"I thought some," continues the implacable new girl, unruffled, "of
+having a gold filling put in one of my front teeth. I think gold
+fillings are so pretty," she concludes, looking toward me for a
+response.
+
+This primitive love of ornament I found manifest in the same
+medico-barbaric fancy for wearing eye-glasses. The nicety of certain
+operations in the mill, performed not always in the brightest of lights,
+is a fatal strain upon the eyes. There are no oculists in Perry, but a
+Buffalo member of the profession makes a monthly visit to treat a new
+harvest of patients. Their daily effort toward the monthly finishing of
+40,000 garments permanently diminishes their powers of vision. Every
+thirty days a new set of girls appears with glasses. They wear them as
+they would an ornament of some kind, a necklace, bracelet or a hoop
+through the nose.
+
+When the six o'clock whistle blew on the first night I had finished only
+two dozen shirts. "You've got a good job," my teacher said, as we came
+out together in the cool evening air. "You seem to be taking to it."
+They size a girl up the minute she comes in. If she has quick motions
+she'll get on all right. "I guess you'll make a good finisher."
+
+Once more we assembled to eat and chat and relax. After a moment by the
+kitchen pump we took our places at table. Our hostess waited upon us.
+"It takes some grit," she explained, "and more grace to keep boarders."
+Except on Sundays, when all men might be considered equals in the sight
+of the Lord, she and her husband did not eat until we had finished. She
+passed the dishes of our frugal evening meal--potatoes, bread and butter
+and cake--and as we served ourselves she held her head in the opposite
+direction, as if to say, "I'm not looking; take the biggest piece."
+
+It was with my roommates I became the soonest acquainted. The butcher's
+widow from Batavia was a grumbler. "How do you like your job?" I asked
+her as we fumbled about in the dim light of our low-roofed room.
+
+"Oh, Lordy," was the answer, "I didn't think it would be like this. I'd
+rather do housework any day. I bet you won't stay two weeks." She was
+ugly and stupid. She had been married young to a butcher. Left alone to
+battle with the world, she might have shaken out some of her dullness,
+but the butcher for many years had stood between her and reality,
+casting a still deeper shadow on her ignorance. She had the monotony of
+an old child, one who questions constantly but who has passed the age
+when learning is possible. The butcher's death had opened new
+possibilities. After a period of respectful mourning, she had set out,
+against the wishes of her family, with a vague, romantic hope that was
+expressed not so much in words as in a certain picture hat trimmed with
+violet chiffon and carried carefully in a bandbox by itself, a new,
+crisp sateen petticoat, and a golf skirt she had sat up until one
+o'clock to finish the night before she left home. It was inevitable that
+the butcher's widow should be disappointed. There was too much grim
+reality in ten-hour days spent over a machine in the stifling mill room
+to feed a sentimentalist whose thirty odd years were no accomplice to
+romance. She grumbled and complained. Secret dissatisfaction preyed upon
+her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily
+and with no _arriere pensee_. At the end of the first week the picture
+hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen
+petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like
+the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant
+sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had
+gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more
+than sixty cents a day. She left us and went back to do housework in
+Batavia.
+
+My other roommate was of the Madonna type. In our class she would have
+been called an invalid. Her hands trembled, she was constantly in pain,
+and her nerves were rebellious without frequent doses of bromide. We
+found her one night lying in a heap on the bed, her moans having called
+us to her aid. It was the pain in her back that never stopped, the ache
+between her shoulders, the din of the machines in her ears, the
+vibration, the strain of incessant hours upon her tired nerves. We fixed
+her up as best we could, and the next day at quarter before seven she
+was, like the rest of us, bending over her machine again. She had been a
+school-teacher, after passing the necessary examination at the Geneseo
+Normal School. She could not say why school-teaching was uncongenial to
+her, except that the children "made her nervous" and she wanted to try
+factory work. Her father was a cheese manufacturer up in the Genesee
+Valley. She might have lived quietly at home, but she disliked to be a
+dependent. She was of the mystic, sentimental type. She had a broad
+forehead, straight auburn hair, a clear-cut mouth, whose sharp curves
+gave it sweetness. Though her large frame indicated clearly an
+Anglo-Saxon lineage, there was nothing of the sport about her. She had
+never learned to skate or swim, but she could sit and watch the hills
+all day long. Her clothes had an esthetic touch. Mingled with her
+nervous determination there was a sentimental yearning. She was an
+idealist, impelled by some controlling emotion which was the mainspring
+of her life.
+
+Little by little we became friends. Our common weariness brought us
+often together after supper in a listless, confidential mood before the
+parlour stove. We let the conversation drift inevitably toward the
+strong current that was marking her with a touch of melancholy, like all
+those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror,
+reflecting visions that have no place in reality. We talked about
+blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man's name;
+and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form. Her
+voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related
+the story. It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like
+herself. Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning. She slipped a
+gold locket from a chain on her throat. It framed her hero's picture,
+the source of her courage, the embodiment of her heroic energy: a man of
+thirty, who had failed at everything; good-looking, refined, a personage
+in real life who resembled the inhabitants of her enchanted mirror. In
+the story she told there were stars and twilight, summer evenings,
+walks, talks, hopes and vague projects. Any practical questions I felt
+ready to ask would have sounded coarse. The little school-teacher with
+shattered nerves embodied a hope that was more to her than meat and
+drink and money. She was of those who do not live by bread alone.
+
+Among the working population of Perry there are all manner of American
+characteristics manifest. In a country where conditions change with
+such rapidity that each generation is a revelation to the one which
+preceded it, it is inevitable that the family and the State should be
+secondary to the individual. We live with our own generation, with our
+contemporaries. We substitute experience for tradition. Each generation
+lives for itself during its prime. As soon as its powers begin to
+decline it makes way with resignation for the next: "We have had our
+day; now you can have yours." Thus in the important decisions of life,
+the choosing of a career, matrimony or the like, the average American is
+much more influenced by his contemporaries than by his elders, much more
+stimulated or determined by the friends of his own age than by the older
+members of his family. This detaching of generations through the
+evolution of conditions is inevitable in a new civilization; it is part
+of the country's freedom. It adds fervour and zest and originality to
+the effort of each. But it means a youth without the peace of
+protection; an old age without the harvest of consolation. The man in
+such a battle as life becomes under these circumstances is better
+equipped than the woman, whose nature disarms her for the struggle. The
+American woman is restless, dissatisfied. Society, whether among the
+highest or lowest classes, has driven her toward a destiny that is not
+normal. The factories are full of old maids; the colleges are full of
+old maids; the ballrooms in the worldly centres are full of old maids.
+For natural obligations are substituted the fictitious duties of clubs,
+meetings, committees, organizations, professions, a thousand unwomanly
+occupations.
+
+I cannot attempt to touch here upon the classes who have not a direct
+bearing on our subject, but the analogy is striking between them and
+the factory elements of which I wish to speak. I cannot dwell upon
+details that, while full of interest, are yet somewhat aside from the
+present point, but I want to state a fact, the origin of whose ugly
+consequences is in all classes and therefore concerns every living
+American woman. Among the American born women of this country the
+sterility is greater, the fecundity less than those of any other
+nation in the world, unless it be France, whose anxiety regarding her
+depopulation we would share in full measure were it not for the
+foreign immigration to the United States, which counteracts the
+degeneracy of the American.[1] The original causes for this increasing
+sterility are moral and not physical. When this is known, does not the
+philosophy of the American working woman become a subject of vital
+interest? Among the enemies to fecundity and a natural destiny there
+are two which act as potently in the lower as in the upper classes:
+the triumph of individualism, the love of luxury. America is not a
+democracy, the unity of effort between the man and the woman does not
+exist. Men were too long in a majority. Women have become autocrats or
+rivals. A phrase which I heard often repeated at the factory speaks by
+itself for a condition: "She must be married, because she don't work."
+And another phrase pronounced repeatedly by the younger girls: "I
+don't have to work; my father gives me all the money I need, but not
+all the money I _want_. I like to be independent and spend my money as
+I please."
+
+  [Footnote 1: George Engelman, M.D., "The Increasing Sterility of
+  American Women," from the Journal of the American Medical
+  Association, October 5, 1901.]
+
+What are the conclusions to be drawn? The American-born girl is an
+egoist. Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of
+mill drudgery) is for herself. She works for luxury until the day when a
+proper husband presents himself. Then, she stops working and lets him
+toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall not be diminished by
+increasing family demands.
+
+In those cases where the woman continues to work after marriage, she
+chooses invariably a kind of occupation which is inconsistent with
+child-bearing. She returns to the mill with her husband. There were a
+number of married couples at the knitting factory at Perry. They
+boarded, like the rest of us. I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby
+while I was in the town.
+
+I can think of no better way to present this love of luxury, this
+triumph of individualism, this passion for independence than to
+continue my account of the daily life at Perry.
+
+On Saturday night we drew our pay and got out at half-past four. This
+extra hour and a half was not given to us; we had saved it up by
+beginning each day at fifteen minutes before seven. In reality we worked
+ten and a quarter hours five days in the week in order to work eight and
+a half on the sixth.
+
+By five o'clock on Saturdays the village street was animated with
+shoppers--the stores were crowded. At supper each girl had a collection
+of purchases to show: stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons,
+elaborate hairpins. Many of them, when their board was paid, had less
+than a dollar left of the five or six it had taken them a week to earn.
+
+"I am not working to save," was the claim of one girl for all. "I'm
+working for pleasure."
+
+This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing
+to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better
+food. I watched her as she put her things into the trunk. She had a
+quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy
+hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was
+full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great
+excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially
+hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for
+a confidence.
+
+"You got a letter to-night, didn't you?" I asked innocently. "Was it
+the one you wanted?"
+
+"My, yes," she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths
+of her trunk. "It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been
+going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I
+went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make
+twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as
+he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's
+what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he
+owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano
+this fall."
+
+"Well, of course," I said eagerly, "you will accept him?"
+
+She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised.
+
+"No, my! no," she answered, shaking her head. "I don't want to be
+married."
+
+"But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and
+you have already been 'going with him' three years."
+
+"Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is
+time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am.
+He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it
+would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I
+left, but he let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I
+got my independence."
+
+What part did the love of humanity play in this young egoist's heart?
+She was living, as she had so well explained it, "not to save, but to
+give herself pleasure"; not to spare others, but to exercise her will in
+spite of them. Tenderness, reverence, gratitude, protection are the
+feelings which one generation awakens for another. Among the thousand
+contemporaries at Perry, from the sameness of their ambitions, there was
+inevitable rivalry and selfishness. The closer the age and capacity the
+keener the struggle.
+
+[Illustration: AFTER SATURDAY NIGHT'S SHOPPING]
+
+There are seven churches in Perry of seven different denominations. In
+this small town of 3,000 inhabitants there are seven different forms of
+worship. The church plays an important part in the social life of the
+mill hands. There are gatherings of all sorts from one Sunday to
+another, and on Sunday there are almost continuous services. There are
+frequent conversions. When the Presbyterian form fails they "try" the
+Baptist. There is no moral instruction; it is all purely religious; and
+they join one church or another more as they would a social club than an
+ordained religious organization.
+
+Friday was "social" night at the church. Sometimes there was a "poverty"
+social, when every one put on shabby clothes, and any one who wore a
+correct garment of any sort was fined for the benefit of the church.
+Pound socials were another variety of diversion, where all the
+attendants were weighed on arriving and charged a cent admission for
+every pound of avoirdupois.
+
+The most popular socials, however, were box socials, and it was to one
+of these I decided to go with two girls boarding in the house. Each of
+us packed a box with lunch as good as we could afford--eggs, sandwiches,
+cakes, pickles, oranges--and arrived with these, we proceeded to the
+vestry-room, where we found an improvised auctioneer's table and a pile
+of boxes like our own, which were marked and presently put up for sale.
+The youths of the party bid cautiously or recklessly, according as their
+inward conviction told them that the box was packed by friend or foe.
+
+My box, which, like the rest, had supper for two, was bid in by a tall,
+nice-looking mill hand, and we installed ourselves in a corner to eat
+and talk. He was full of reminiscence and had had a checkered career.
+His first experience had been at night work in a paper mill. He worked
+eleven hours a night one week, thirteen hours a night the next week, in
+and out of doors, drenched to the skin. He had lost twenty-five pounds
+in less than a year, and his face was a mere mask drawn over the
+irregular bones of the skull.
+
+"I always like whatever I am doing," he responded at my protestation of
+sympathy. "I think that's the only way to be. I never had much appetite
+at night. They packed me an elegant pail, but somehow all cold food
+didn't relish much. I never did like a pail.... How would you like to
+take a dead man's place?" he asked, looking at me grimly.
+
+I begged him to explain.
+
+"One of my best friends," he began, "was working alongside of me, and I
+guess he got dizzy or something, for he leaned up against the big belt
+that ran all the machinery and he was lifted right up in the air and
+tore to pieces before he ever knew what struck him. The boss came in and
+seen it, and the second question he asked, he says, 'Say, is the
+machinery running all right?' It wasn't ten minutes before there was
+another man in there doing the dead man's work."
+
+I began to undo the lunch-box, feeling very little inclined to eat. We
+divided the contents, and my friend, seeing perhaps that I was
+depressed, told me about the "shows" he had been to in his wanderings.
+
+"Now, I don't care as much for comedy as some folks," he explained. "I
+like 'Puddin' Head Wilson' first rate, but the finest thing I ever seen
+was two of Shakespeare's: 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Julius Caesar.'
+If you ever get a chance I advise you to go and hear them; they're
+great."
+
+I responded cordially, and when we had exhausted Shakespeare I asked
+him how he liked Perry people.
+
+"Oh, first rate," he said. "I've been here only a month, but I think
+there's too much formality. It seems to me that when you work alongside
+of a girl day after day you might speak to her without an introduction,
+but they won't let you here. I never seen such a formal place."
+
+I said very little. The boy talked on of his life and experiences. His
+English was good except for certain grammatical errors. His words were
+well chosen. There was between him and the fortunate boys of a superior
+class only a few years of training.
+
+The box social was the beginning of a round of gaieties. The following
+night I went with my box-social friend to a ball. Neither of us danced,
+but we arrived early and took good places for looking on. The barren
+hall was dimly lighted. In the corner there was a stove; at one end a
+stage. An old man with a chin beard was scattering sand over the floor
+with a springtime gesture of seed sowing. He had his hat on and his coat
+collar turned up, as though to indicate that the party had not begun. By
+and by the stage curtain rolled up and the musicians came out and
+unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the
+Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs
+and asked for _sol la_ from an esthetic young lady pianist, with whom
+they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made
+an official _entree_ from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part
+of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the
+first two-step struck up there were eight or ten couples on the floor.
+They held on to each other closely, with no outstretched arms as is the
+usual form, and they revolved very slowly around and around the room.
+The young men had smooth faces, patent leather boots, very smart cravats
+and a sheepish, self-conscious look. The girls had elaborate
+constructions in frizzed hair, with bows and tulle; black trailing
+skirts with coloured ruffled under-petticoats, light-coloured blouses
+and fancy belts. They seemed to be having a very good time.
+
+On the way home we passed a brightly lighted grocery shop. My friend
+looked in with interest. "Goodness," he said, "but those Saratoga chips
+look good. Now, what would you order," he went on, "if you could have
+anything you liked?" We began to compose a menu with oysters and chicken
+and all the things we never saw, but it was not long before my friend
+cried "Mercy! Oh, stop; I can't stand it. It makes me too hungry."
+
+The moon had gone under a cloud. The wooden sidewalks were rough and
+irregular, and as we walked along toward home I tripped once or twice.
+Presently I felt a strong arm put through mine, with this assurance:
+"Now if you fall we'll both fall together."
+
+After four or five days' experience with a machine I began to work with
+more ease and with less pain between my shoulders. The girls were kind
+and sympathetic, stopping to help and encourage the "new girl." One of
+the shirt finishers, who had not been long in the mill herself, came
+across from her table one day when I was hard at work with a pain like a
+sword stab in my back.
+
+"I know how you ache," she said. "It just makes me feel like crying when
+I see how you keep at it and I can guess how tired you are."
+
+Nothing was so fatiguing as the noise. In certain places near the eyelet
+and buttonhole machines it was impossible to make one's neighbour hear
+without shouting. My teacher, whose nerves, I took it, were less
+sensitive than mine, expressed her sensations in this way:
+
+"It's just terrible sitting here all day alone, worrying and thinking
+all by yourself and hustling from morning until night. Lots of the girls
+have nervous prostration. My sister had it and I guess I'm getting it. I
+hear the noise all night. Quite a few have consumption, too, from the
+dust and the lint."
+
+The butcher's widow, the school-teacher and I started in at about the
+same time. At the end of two weeks the butcher's widow had long been
+gone. The school-teacher had averaged seventy-nine cents a day and I
+had averaged eighty-nine. My best day I finished sixteen dozen shirts
+and netted $1.11. My board and washing cost me three dollars, so that
+from the first I had a living insured.
+
+There was one negress in the factory. She worked in a corner quite by
+herself and attended to menial jobs, such as sweeping and picking up
+scraps. A great many of the girls and boys took correspondence courses
+in stenography, drawing, bookkeeping, illustrating, etc., etc. The
+purely mechanical work of the mill does not satisfy them. They are
+restless and ambitious, exactly the material with which to form schools
+of industrial art, the class of hand-workers of whom I have already
+spoken.
+
+One of the girls who worked beside us as usual in the morning, left a
+note on her machine at noon one day to say that she would never be back.
+She was going up to the lake to drown herself, and we needn't look for
+her. Some one was sent in search. She was found sitting at the lake's
+edge, weeping. She did not speak. We all talked about it in our leisure
+moments, but the work was not interrupted. There were various
+explanations: she was out of her mind; she was discouraged with her
+work; she was nervous. No one suggested that an unfortunate love affair
+be the cause of her desperate act. There was not a word breathed against
+her reputation. I would have felt impure in proposing what to me seemed
+most probable.
+
+The mill owners exert, as far as possible, an influence over the moral
+tone of their employees, assuming the right to judge their conduct both
+in and out of the factory and to treat them as they see fit. The average
+girls are self-respecting. They trifle with love. The attraction they
+wish to exert is ever present in their minds and in their conversation.
+The sacrifices they make for clothes are the first in importance. They
+have superstitions of all kinds: to sneeze on Saturday means the arrival
+of a beau on Sunday; a big or little tea leaf means a tall or a short
+caller, and so on. There is a book of dreams kept on one table in the
+mill, and the girls consult it to find the interpretation of their
+nocturnal reveries. They are fanciful, sentimental, cold, passionless.
+The accepted honesty of married life makes them slow to discard the
+liberty they love, to dismiss the suitors who would attend their wedding
+as one would a funeral.
+
+There is, of course, another category of girl, who goes brutally into
+passionate pleasures, follows the shows, drinks and knocks about town
+with the boys. She is known as a "bum," has sacrificed name and
+reputation and cannot remain in the mill.
+
+We discussed one night the suitable age for a girl to become mistress of
+herself. The boy of the household maintained that at eighteen a girl
+could marry, but that she must be twenty-one before she could have her
+own way. All the girls insisted that they could and did boss themselves
+and had even before they were eighteen.
+
+Two chums who boarded in my house gave a charming illustration of the
+carelessness and the extravagance, the independence and love of it which
+characterizes feminine America. One of these was a _deracinee_, a child
+with a foreign touch in her twang; a legend of other climes in the
+dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in
+her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a _mondaine_. She had the social
+gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the _glissey mortel
+n'appuyez jamais_ attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an
+adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has
+mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days of Esther.
+
+When the other girls waited feverishly for love letters, she was opening
+a pile of invitations to socials and theatre parties. Discreet and
+condescending, she received more than she gave.
+
+As soon as the posters were out for a Tuesday performance of "Faust,"
+preparations began in the household to attend. Saturday shopping and
+supper were hurried through and by six o'clock Lorraine was at the
+sewing machine tucking chiffon for hats and bodices. After ten hours'
+work in the mill, she began again, eager to use the last of the spring
+twilight, prolonged by a quarter moon. There was a sudden, belated gust
+of snow; in the blue mist each white frame house glowed with a warm,
+pink light from its parlour stove. Lorraine's fingers flew. A hat took
+form and grew from a heap of stuff into a Parisian creation; a bolero
+was cut and tucked and fitted; a skirt was ripped and stitched and
+pressed; a shirt-waist was started and finished. For two nights the
+girls worked until twelve o'clock so that when the "show" came they
+might have something new to wear that nobody had seen. This must have
+been the unanimous intention of the Perry populace, for the peanut
+gallery was a bower of fashion. Styles, which I had thought were new in
+Paris, were familiarly worn in Perry by the mill hands. White kid gloves
+were _en regle_. The play was "Faust." All allusions to the triumph of
+religion over the devil; all insinuations on the part of Mephistopheles
+in regard to the enviable escape of Martha's husband and of husbands in
+general, from prating women in general; all invocations of virtue and
+moral triumph, were greeted with bursts of applause. Between the acts
+there was music, and the ushers distributed showers of printed
+advertisements, which the audience fell at once to reading as though
+they had nothing to talk about.
+
+I heard only one hearty comment about the play: "That devil," said
+Lorraine, as we walked home together, "was a corker!"
+
+I have left until the last the two friends who held a place apart in
+the household: the farmer and his wife, the old people of another
+generation with whom we boarded. They had begun life together forty
+years ago. They lived on neighbouring farms. There was dissension
+between the families such as we read of in "Pyramus and Thisbe," "Romeo
+and Juliet." The young people contrived a means of corresponding. An old
+coat that hung in the barn, where nobody saw it, served as post-office.
+Truman pleaded his cause ardently and won his Louisa. They fixed a day
+for the elopement. A fierce snowstorm piled high its drifts of white,
+but all the afternoon long the little bride played about, burrowing a
+path from the garden to her bedroom window, and when night came and
+brought her mounted hero with it, she climbed up on to the saddle by his
+side and rode away to happiness, leaving ill nature and quarrels far
+behind. Side by side, as on the night of their wedding ride, they had
+traversed forty years together. Ill health had broken up their farm
+home. When Truman could no longer work they came in to Perry to take
+boarders, having no children. The old man never spoke. He did chores
+about the house, made the fire mornings, attended to the parlour stove;
+he went about his work and no one ever addressed a word to him; he
+seemed to have no more live contact with the youth about him than
+driftwood has with the tree's new shoots. He had lived his life on a
+farm; he was a land captain; he knew the earth's secrets as a ship's
+captain knows the sea's. He paced the mild wooden pavements of Perry,
+booted, and capped for storm and wind, deep snow and all the inimical
+elements a pioneer might meet with. His new false teeth seemed to shine
+from his shaggy gray beard as a symbol of this new town experience in a
+rough natural existence, out of keeping, ill assorted. Tempted to know
+what his silence hid, I spent an hour with him by the kitchen stove one
+Sunday afternoon. His memory went easily back to the days when there
+were no railroads, no telegraphs, no mills. He was of a speculative turn
+of mind:
+
+"I don't see," he said, "what makes men so crazy after gold. They're
+getting worse all the time. Gold ain't got no real value. You take all
+the gold out of the world and it wouldn't make no difference whatever.
+You can't even make a tool to get a living with, out of gold; but just
+do away with the iron, and where would you be?" And again, he
+volunteered:
+
+"I think Mr. Carnegie would have done a deal nobler if he had paid his
+men a little more straight along. He wouldn't have had such a name for
+himself. But don't you believe it would have been better to have paid
+those men more for the work they were doing day by day than it is now to
+give pensions to their families? I know what I think about the matter."
+
+[Illustration: SUNDAY EVENING AT SILVER LAKE
+
+The mill girls' excursion resort. A special train and 'busses run on
+Sundays, and "everybody" goes.]
+
+I asked him how he liked city life.
+
+"Give me a farm every time," was his answer. "Once you've seen a town
+you know it all. It's the same over and over again. But the country's
+changing every day in the year. It's a terrible thing, being sick," he
+went on. "It seems sometimes as though the pain would tear me to pieces
+when I walk across the floor. I wasn't no good on the farm any more, so
+my wife took a notion we better come in town and take boarders."
+
+Thus it was with this happily balanced couple; as his side grew heavier
+she took on more ballast and swung even with him. She had the quick
+adaptability common to American women. During the years of farm life
+religious meetings and a few neighbours had kept her in touch with the
+outside world. The church and the kitchen were what she had on the farm;
+the church and the kitchen were what she had in town; family life
+supplemented by boarders, a social existence kept alive by a few
+faithful neighbours. She had retained her activity and sympathy because
+she was intelligent, because she lived with the _young_. The man could
+not make himself one of another generation, so he lived alone. He had
+lost his companions, the "cow kind and the sheep kind"; he had lost
+control over the earth that belonged to him; he was disused; he
+suffered; he pined. But as they sat together side by side at table, his
+look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back
+over a long vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to
+those about--years that had glorified confidence in this life as it
+passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO
+
+
+On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House,
+asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I
+intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go
+before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was
+pinned in a black silk bag.
+
+It was the first day of May. A hot wind blew eddies of dust up and down
+the electric car tracks; the streets were alive with children; a group
+swarmed in front of each doorstep, too large to fit into the house
+behind it. Down the long, regular avenues that stretched right and left
+there was a broken line of tenements topped by telegraph wires and
+bathed in a soft cloud of black soot falling from a chimney in the
+neighbourhood. The sidewalks were a patchwork of dirt, broken
+paving-stones and wooden boards. The sunshine was hot and gloomy. There
+were no names on the corner lamps and the house numbers were dull and
+needed repainting. It was already late in the afternoon: I had but an
+hour or two before dark to find a lodging. The miserable, overcrowded
+tenement houses repelled me, yet I dreaded that there should not be room
+among them for one more bread-winner to lodge. I hailed a cluster of
+children in the gutter:
+
+"Say," I said, "do you know where Mrs. Hicks lives to?"
+
+They crowded around, eager. The tallest boy, with curly red hair and
+freckles, pointed out Mrs. Hicks' residence, the upper windows of a
+brick flat that faced the world like a prison wall. After I had rung and
+waited for the responding click from above, a cross-eyed Italian woman
+with a baby in her arms motioned to me from the step where she was
+sitting that I must go down a side alley to find Mrs. Hicks. Out of a
+promiscuous heap of filth, a broken-down staircase led upward to a row
+of green blinds and a screen door. Somebody's housekeeping was scattered
+around in torn bits of linen and tomato cans.
+
+The screen door opened to my knock and the Hicks family gushed at
+me--ever so many children of all ages and an immense mother in an
+under-waist and petticoat. The interior was neat; the wooden floors were
+scrubbed spotless. I congratulated myself. Mrs. Hicks clucked to the
+family group, smiled at me, and said:
+
+"I never took a boarder in my life. I ain't got room enough for my own
+young ones, let alone strangers."
+
+[Illustration: "THE BREATH OF THE BLACK, SWEET NIGHT REACHED THEM,
+FETID, HEAVY WITH THE ODOUR OF DEATH AS IT BLEW ACROSS THE STOCKYARDS"]
+
+There were two more names on my list. I proceded to the nearest and
+found an Irish lady living in basement rooms ornamented with green
+crochet work, crayon portraits, red plaid table-cloths and chromo
+picture cards.
+
+She had rheumatism in her "limbs" and moved with difficulty. She was
+glad to talk the matter over, though she had from the first no intention
+of taking me. From my then point of view nothing seemed so desirable as
+a cot in Mrs. Flannagan's front parlour. I even offered in my eagerness
+to sleep on the horsehair sofa. Womanlike, she gave twenty little
+reasons for not taking me before she gave the one big reason, which was
+this:
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind having you myself, but
+I've got three sons, and you know _boys is queer_."
+
+It was late, the sun had set and only the twilight remained for my
+search before night would be upon me and I would be driven to some
+charity refuge.
+
+I had one more name, and climbed to find its owner in a tenement flat.
+She was a German woman with a clubfoot. Two half-naked children
+incrusted with dirt were playing on the floor. They waddled toward me as
+I asked what my chances were for finding a room and board. The mother
+struck first one, then the other, of her offspring, and they fell into
+two little heaps, both wailing. From a hole back of the kitchen came the
+sympathetic response of a half-starved shaggy dog. He howled and the
+babes wailed while we visited the dusky apartment. There was one room
+rented to a day lodger who worked nights, and one room without a window
+where the German family slept. She proposed that I share the bed with
+her that night until she could get an extra cot. Her husband and the
+children could sleep on the parlour lounge. She was hideous and dirty.
+Her loose lips and half-toothless mouth were the slipshod note of an
+entire existence. There was a very dressy bonnet with feathers hanging
+on a peg in the bedroom, and two gala costumes belonging to the tearful
+twins.
+
+"I'll come back in an hour, thank you," I said. "Don't expect me if I am
+not here in an hour," and I fled down the stairs. Before the hour was up
+I had found, through the guidance of the Irish lady with rheumatism, a
+clean room in one street and board in another. This was inconvenient,
+but safe and comparatively healthy.
+
+My meals were thirty-five cents a day, payable at the end of the week;
+my room was $1.25 a week, total $3.70 a week.
+
+My first introduction to Chicago tenement life was supper at Mrs.
+Wood's.
+
+I could hear the meal sputtering on the kitchen stove as I opened the
+Wood front door.
+
+Mrs. Wood, combining duties as cook and hostess, called to me to make
+myself at home in the front parlour. I seated myself on the sofa, which
+exuded the familiar acrid odour of the poor. Opposite me there was a
+door half open leading into a room where a lamp was lighted. I could see
+a young girl and a man talking together. He was sitting and had his hat
+on. She had a halo of blond hair, through which the lamplight was
+shining, and she stood near the man, who seemed to be teasing her. Their
+conversation was low, but there was a familiar cry now and then, half
+vulgar, half affectionate.
+
+When we had taken our places at the table, Mrs. Wood presented us.
+
+"This is Miss Ida," she said, pointing to the blonde girl; "she's been
+boarding over a year with me, and this," turning to the young man who
+sat near by with one arm hanging listlessly over the back of a chair,
+"this is Miss Ida's intended."
+
+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 embarrassed 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 class, 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 multitude.
+
+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 space 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 passed the plate glass
+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 destitute 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
+advertisement, "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 fashionable 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 advertisement 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, masses of trimming 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 nourishing 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 class 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 prostitution 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 class 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?
+
+Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some
+member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty
+members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is
+secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward a ruinous
+goal. They scorn the hand-workers; they feel themselves a _noblesse_ by
+comparison. They are the American snobs whose coat of arms marks not a
+well-remembered family but prospective luxuries.... Married, they bring
+as a portion thriftless tastes, to satisfy which more than one business
+man has wrecked his career. They work like men; why should they not live
+as men do, with similar responsibilities? What should we think of a
+class of masculine clerks and employees who spent all their money on
+clothes?
+
+The boss was busy when I got back to the clothing establishment. From
+the bench where I waited for orders I could take an inventory of the
+shop's productions. Arrayed in rows behind glass cases there were all
+manner of uniforms: serious uniforms going to the colonies to be shot to
+pieces, militia uniforms that would hear their loudest heart-beats under
+a fair head; drum-majors' hats that would never get farther than the
+peaceful lawn of a military post; fireman's hats; the dark-blue coat of
+a lonely lighthouse guardian; the undignified short jacket of a
+"buttons." All that meant parade and glory, the uniforms that make men
+identical by making each proud of himself for his brass buttons and gold
+lace. Even in the heavy atmosphere of the shop's rear, though they
+appeared somewhat dingy and tarnished, they had their undeniable charm,
+and I thought with pity of the hands that had to sew on plain serge
+suits.
+
+[Illustration: IN A CHICAGO THEATRICAL COSTUME FACTORY]
+
+As soon as the boss saw me, the generous Mr. F. who advanced me the
+fifty cents smiled at the skeptical Mr. F. who had never expected to see
+me again. One self said to the other: "I told you so!" and all the
+kindly lines in the man's face showed that he had looked for the best
+even in his inferiors and that he had found mankind worth trusting. He
+was the most generous employer I met with anywhere; I also took him to
+be the least businesslike. But, as though quickly to establish the law
+of averages, his head forewoman counterbalanced all his mercies by her
+ferocious crossness. She terrorized everybody, even Mr. F. It was to
+her, I concluded, that we owed our $6 a week. No girl would stay for
+less; it was an atelier chiefly of foreign employees; the proud American
+spirit would not stand the lash of Frances' tongue. She had been ten
+years in the place whose mad confusion was order to her. Mr. F. did not
+dare to send her away; he preferred keeping a perpetual advertisement in
+the papers and changing hands every few days.
+
+The workroom on our floor was fifty or sixty feet long, with windows on
+the street at one end and on a court at the other. The middle of the
+room was lighted by gas. The air was foul and the dirt lay in heaps at
+every corner and was piled up under the centre tables. It was less like
+a workshop than an old attic. There was the long-accumulated disorder of
+hasty preparation for the vanities of life. It had not at all the aspect
+of a factory which makes a steady provision of practical things. There
+were odds and ends of fancy costumes hanging about--swords, crowns,
+belts and badges. Under the sewing machines' swift needles flew the
+scarlet coats of a regiment; gold and silver braid lay unfurled on the
+table; the hand-workers bent over an armful of khaki; a row of young
+girls were fitting military caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the
+ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and
+epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst
+of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks
+bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite,
+a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl
+counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a
+sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is very handsome with dark eyes
+and fine features, and he has the "average figure," so that he serves as
+manikin for the atelier; and I find him alternately a workman in
+overalls and a Turkish magnate with turban and flowing robes. It is into
+this atmosphere of toil and unreality that I am initiated as a hand
+sewer. Something of the dramatic and theatrical possesses the very
+managers themselves. Below, a regiment waits impatient for new brass
+buttons; we sew against time and break all our promises. Messengers
+arrive every few minutes with fresh reports of rising ire on the part of
+disappointed customers. Down the stairs pell-mell comes an elderly
+partner of the firm with a gold-and-purple crown on his head and after
+him follows the kindly Mr. F. in an usher's jacket. "If you don't start
+now," he calls, "that order'll be left on our hands."
+
+Amid such confusion the regular rhythm of the needle as it carries its
+train of thread across the yards of coloured cloth is peaceful,
+consoling. I have on one side of me a tailor who speaks only Polish, on
+the other side a seamstress who speaks only German. Across the frontier
+I thus become they communicate with signs, and I get my share of work
+planned out by each. Every woman in the place is cross except the girl
+next to me. She has only just come in and the poison of the forewoman
+has not yet stung her into ill nature. She is, like all the foreigners,
+neatly, soberly dressed in a sensible frock of good durable material.
+The few Americans in the shop have on elaborate shirt-waists in
+light-coloured silks with fancy ribbon collars. We are well paid, there
+is no doubt of it. We begin work at 8 A.M. and have a generous half-hour
+at noon. Most of the girls are Germans and Poles, and they have all
+received training as tailoresses in their native countries. To the sharp
+onslaught of Frances' tongue they make no response except in dogged
+silent obedience, whereas the dressy Americans with their proper spirit
+of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command.
+Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears.
+Frances is ubiquitous. She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse,
+she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F.,
+and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little
+Polish girl, in tears. This latter comes to me, her face wrought with
+emotion. She was receiving nine dollars a week; it is her first place in
+America. This sudden dismissal, its injustice, requires an explanation.
+She cannot speak a word of English and asks me to put my poor German at
+her service as interpreter.
+
+Mr. F. is clearly a man who advocates everything for peace, and as there
+is for him no peace when Frances is not satisfied, we gain little by our
+appeal to him except a promise that he will attend later to the troubles
+of the Polish girl. But later, as earlier, Frances triumphs, and I soon
+bid good-by to my seatmate and watch her tear-stained face disappear
+down the dingy hallway. She was a skilled tailoress, but she could not
+cut out men's garments, so Frances dismissed her. I wonder when my turn
+will come, for I am a green hand and yet determined to keep the American
+spirit. For the sake of justice I will not be downed by Frances.
+
+It is hard to make friends with the girls; we dare not converse lest a
+fresh insult be hurled at us. For every mistake I receive a loud, severe
+correction. When night comes I am exhausted. The work is easy, yet the
+moral atmosphere is more wearing than the noise of many machines. My job
+is often changed during the week. I do everything as a greenhorn, but I
+work hard and pay attention, so that there is no excuse to dismiss me.
+
+"I am only staying here between jobs," the girl next me volunteers at
+lunch. "My regular place burnt out. You couldn't get _me_ to work under
+_her_. I wouldn't stand it even if they do pay well." She is an
+American.
+
+"You're lucky to be so independent," says a German woman whose dull
+silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature. "I'm glad enough to get the
+money. I was up this morning at five, working. There's myself and my
+mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make. My husband is
+sick. He's in Arizona."
+
+"What were you doing at five?" I asked.
+
+"I have a trade," she answers. "I work on hair goods. It don't bring me
+much, but I get in a few hours night and morning and it helps some.
+There's so much to pay."
+
+She was young, but youth is no lover of discomfort. Hardships had chased
+every vestige of _jeunesse_ from her high, wrinkled brow and tired brown
+eyes. Like a mirror held against despair her face reflected no ray of
+hope. She was not rebellious, but all she knew of life was written there
+in lines whose sadness a smile now and again intensified.
+
+Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and
+tobacco smoke. The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the
+tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe. Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at
+my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across the city, held
+tightly under my arm, become, before eating, a block of food, a
+composite meal in which I can distinguish original bits of ham sandwich
+and apple pie. The work, however, does not seem hard to me. I sew on
+buttons, rip trousers, baste coat sleeves--I do all sorts of odd jobs
+from eight until six, without feeling, in spite of the bad air, any
+great physical fatigue which ten minutes' brisk walk does not shake off.
+But never have the hours dragged so; the moral weariness in the midst of
+continual scolding and abuse are unbearable. Each night I come to a firm
+decision to leave the following day, but weakly I return, sure of my
+dollar and dreading to face again the giant city in search of work.
+About four one afternoon, well on in the week, Frances brings me a pair
+of military trousers; the stripes of cloth at the side seam are to be
+ripped off. I go to work cheerfully cutting the threads and slipping one
+piece of cloth from the other.
+
+Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy
+way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way
+that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you
+tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her
+way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below,
+which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first
+on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift first the
+upper, then the under thread. I begin by cutting a long hole in the
+trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it. She has frightened me
+into dishonesty. Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to
+turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other
+stitch. While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every
+moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers. I killed it. It
+was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table. Then I put down
+the trousers and drew away my chair. It was useless saying anything to
+the girl next me. She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word;
+but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances'
+husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do.
+
+"There's bedbugs in them clothes," I said. "I won't work on 'em. No,
+sir, not if she sends me away this very minute."
+
+In a great hurry Frances passed me twice. She called out angrily both
+times without waiting for an answer:
+
+"Why don't you finish them pants?"
+
+Frances was a German. She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes,
+which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair. She had no lips
+whatever. Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade. Her
+eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and
+nasal.
+
+On her third round she faced me with the same question:
+
+"Why don't you finish them pants?"
+
+"Because," I answered this time, "there's bedbugs in 'em and I ain't
+goin' to touch 'em!"
+
+"Oh! my!" she taunted me, in a sneering voice, "that's dreadful, ain't
+it? Bedbugs! Why, you need only just look on the floor to see 'em
+running around anywhere!"
+
+I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed
+to me.
+
+"Mike!" she called to the presser in the corner, "will you have this
+_young lady's_ card made out."
+
+She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I
+joined a group of girls who were sewing badges.
+
+We had made up all description of political badges--badges for the
+court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of
+coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying
+men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with
+black-and-silver "in memoriam" badges, to be worn as a last tribute to
+some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to the grave under
+the emblem that had united them.
+
+We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living. At six the
+power was turned off, the machine hands went home, there was still an
+unfinished heap of black badges.
+
+I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for
+dressing-room. Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice:
+
+"You darsn't leave till you've finished them badges."
+
+How could I feel the slavery they felt? My nerves were sensitive; I was
+unaccustomed to their familiar hardships. But on the other hand, my
+prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to
+rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money
+lined. They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as
+physical fatigue. There was nothing between them and starvation except
+the success of their daily effort. What opposition could the German
+woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited
+to be fed beside her own?
+
+With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy
+windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing
+darkness, I started down the stairs. A hand was laid on my arm, and I
+looked up and saw Mike's broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward
+me.
+
+"I suppose you understand," he said, "that there'll be no more work for
+you."
+
+"Yes," I answered, "I understand," and we exchanged a glance that meant
+we both agreed it was Frances' fault.
+
+In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had
+advanced me. He seemed surprised at this.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, in his gentle voice, "that we couldn't arrange
+things."
+
+"I'm sorry, too," I said. But I dared not add a word against Frances.
+She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see
+her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me. I remembered a remark the
+German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl: "People
+ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living."
+
+At the end of this somewhat agitating day I returned to my tenement
+lodgings as to a haven of rest. There was one other lodger besides
+myself: she was studying music on borrowed money at four dollars a
+lesson. Obviously she was a victim to luxury in the same degree as the
+young women with whom I had lunched at the bakery. Nothing that a rich
+society girl might have had been left out of her wardrobe, and borrowed
+money seemed as good as any for making a splurge.
+
+Miss Arnold was something of a snob, intellectual and otherwise. It was
+evident from my wretched clothes and poor grammar that I was not
+accustomed to ladies of her type, but, far from sparing me, she
+humiliated me with all sorts of questions.
+
+"I'm tired of taffeta jackets, aren't you?" she would ask, apropos of my
+flimsy ulster. "I had taffeta last year, with velvet and satin this
+winter; but I don't know what I'll get yet this summer."
+
+After supper, on my return, I found her sitting in the parlour with Mrs.
+Brown. They never lighted the gas, as there was an electric lamp which
+sent its rays aslant the street and repeated the pattern of the window
+curtains all over Mrs. Brown's face and hands.
+
+Drawn up on one end of the horsehair sofa, Miss Arnold, in a purple
+velvet blouse, chatted to Mrs. Brown and me.
+
+"I'm from Jacksonville," she volunteered, patting her masses of curly
+hair. "Do you know anybody from Jacksonville? It's an elegant town, so
+much wealth, so many retired farmers, and it's such an educational
+centre. Do you like reading?" she asked me.
+
+"I don't get time," is my response.
+
+"Oh, my!" she rattles on. "I'm crazy about reading. I do love blank
+verse--it makes the language so choice, like in Shakespeare."
+
+Mrs. Brown and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat,
+remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss
+Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background
+for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the
+world on the tenement horsehair sofa.
+
+"In case you don't like your work," she Lady Bountifuls me, "I can get
+you a stylish place as maid with some society people just out of
+Chicago--friends of mine, an elegant family."
+
+"I don't care to live out," I respond, thanking her. "I like my Sundays
+and my evenings off."
+
+Mrs. Brown pricks up her ears at this, and I notice that thereafter she
+keeps close inquiry as to how my Sundays and evenings are spent.
+
+But the bell rings. Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the
+piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone,
+begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource
+among the poor. If she had had any infirmity--a wooden leg or a glass
+eye--she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had
+been spared intact she chose second best.
+
+"I've had lots of shocks," she said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky
+rocking-chair. The light from over the way flickered and gleamed. Mrs.
+Brown's broad, yellow face and gray hair were now brilliant, now somber,
+as she rocked in and out of the silver rays. Her voice was a metallic
+whine, and when she laughed against her regular, even, false teeth there
+was a sound like the mechanical yelp of a toy cat. Married at sixteen,
+her whole life had been Brown on earth below and God in His heaven
+above. Childless, she and Brown had spent over fifty years together. It
+was natural in the matter of shocks the first she should tell me about
+was Brown's death. The story began with "a breakfast one Sunday morning
+at nine o'clock.... Brown always made the fire, raked down the ashes,
+set the coffee to boil, and when the toast and eggs were ready he called
+me. And that wasn't one morning, mind you--it was every morning for
+fifty years. But this particular morning I noticed him speaking strange;
+his tongue was kind o' thick. He didn't hardly eat nothing, and as soon
+as I'd done he got up and carried the ashes downstairs to dump 'em. When
+he come up he seemed dizzy. I says to him, 'Don't you feel good?' but he
+didn't seem able to answer. He made like he was going to undress. He put
+his hand in his pocket for his watch, and he put it in again for his
+pocketbook; but the second time it stayed in--he couldn't move it no
+more; it was dead and cold when I touched it. He leaned up against the
+wall, and I tried to get him over on to the sofa. When I looked into his
+eyes I see that he was gone. He couldn't stand, but I held on to him
+with all my force; I didn't let his head strike as he went down. _When
+he fell we fell together_." Her voice was choked; even now after three
+years as she told the story she could not believe it herself.
+
+Presently when she is calm again she continues the recital of her
+shocks--three times struck by lightning and once run over. Her simple
+descriptions are straightforward and dramatic. As she talks the wind
+blows against the windows, the shutters rattle and an ugly white china
+knob, against which the curtains are draped, falls to the floor.
+Tenderly, amazed, she picks it up and looks at it.
+
+"Brown put that up," she says; "there hasn't no hand touched it since
+his'n."
+
+Proprietor of this house in which she lives, Mrs. Brown is fairly well
+off. She rents one floor to an Italian family, one to some labourers,
+and one to an Irishman and his wife who get drunk from time to time and
+rouse us in the night with tumult and scuffling. She has a way of
+disappearing for a week or more and returning without giving any account
+of herself. Relations are strained, and Mrs. Brown in speaking of her
+says:
+
+"I don't care what trouble I was in, I wouldn't call in that Irish
+woman. I don't have anything to do with her. I'd rather get the Dago
+next door." And hereafter follows a mild tirade against the
+Italians--the same sentiments I have heard expressed before in the
+labouring centres.
+
+[Illustration: CHICAGO TYPES]
+
+"They're kind folks and good neighbours," Mrs. Brown explains, "but
+they're different from us. They eat what the rest of us throw away, and
+there's no work they won't do. They're putting money aside fast; most of
+'em owns their own houses; but since they've moved into this
+neighbourhood the price of property's gone down. I don't have nothing to
+do with 'em. We don't any of us. They're not like us; they're
+different."
+
+Without letting a day elapse I started early the following morning in
+search of a new job. The paper was full of advertisements, but there was
+some stipulation in each which narrowed my possibilities of getting a
+place, as I was an unskilled hand. There was, however, one simple "Girls
+wanted!" which I answered, prepared for anything but an electric sewing
+machine.
+
+The address took me to a more fashionable side of the city, near the
+lake; a wide expanse of pale, shimmering water, it lay a refreshing
+horizon for eyes long used to poverty's quarters. Like a sea, it rolled
+white-capped waves toward the shore from its far-away emerald surface
+where sail-freighted barks traveled at the wind's will. Free from man's
+disfiguring touch, pure, immaculate, it appeared bridelike through a
+veil of morning mist. And at its very brink are the turmoil and
+confusion of America's giant industries. In less than an hour I am
+receiving wages from a large picture frame company in East Lake Street.
+Once more I have made the observation that men are more agreeable bosses
+than women. The woman, when she is not exceptionally disagreeable, like
+Frances, is always annoying. She bothers and nags; things must be done
+her way; she enjoys the legitimate minding of other people's business.
+Aiming at results only, the masculine mind is more tranquil. Provided
+you get your work done, the man boss doesn't care what methods you take
+in doing it. For the woman boss, whether you get your work done or not,
+you must do it her way. The overseer at J.'s picture frame manufactory
+is courteous, friendly, considerate. I have a feeling that he wishes me
+to cooeperate with him, not to be terrorized and driven to death by him.
+My spirits rise at once, my ambition is stimulated, and I desire his
+approval. The work is all done by the piece, he explains to me, telling
+me the different prices. The girls work generally in teams of three,
+dividing profits. Nothing could be more modern, more middle-class, more
+popular, more philistine than the production of J.'s workrooms. They are
+the cheap imitations fed to a public hungry for luxury or the semblance
+of it. Nothing is genuine in the entire shop. Water colours are imitated
+in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are
+imitated in applications of pressed brass. Great works of art are
+belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest
+pocket. Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every
+size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby's crib
+in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the
+piano in the front parlour. The range of subjects covers a familiar
+list of comedies or tragedies--the partings before war, the interior
+behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the
+chocolate girl, the skipper and his daughter, etc., etc.
+
+My job is easy, but slow. With a hammer and tacks I fasten four tin
+mouldings to the four corners of a gilt picture frame. Twenty-five cents
+for a hundred is the pay given me, and it takes me half a day to do this
+many; but my comrades don't allow me to get discouraged.
+
+"You're doing well," a red-haired _vis-a-vis_ calls to me across the
+table. And the foreman, who comes often to see how I am getting along,
+tells me that the next day we are to begin team-work, which pays much
+better.
+
+The hours are ten a day: from seven until five thirty, with twenty-five
+minutes at noon instead of half an hour. The extra five minutes a day
+mount up to thirty minutes a week and let us off at five on Saturdays.
+
+The conversation around me leads me to suppose that my companions are
+not downtrodden in any way, nor that they intend letting work interfere
+with happiness. They have in their favour the most blessed of all
+gifts--youth. The tragic faces one meets with are of the women
+breadwinners whose burdens are overwhelming and of the children in whom
+physical fatigue arrests development and all possibility of pleasure.
+My present team-mates and those along the rest of the room are Americans
+between fourteen and twenty-four years of age, full of unconscious hope
+for the future, which is natural in healthy, well-fed youth, taking
+their work cheerily as a self-imposed task in exchange for which they
+can have more clothes and more diversions during their leisure hours.
+
+The profitable job given us on the following day is monotonous and
+dirty, but we net $1.05 each. There is a mechanical roller which passes
+before us, carrying at irregular intervals a large sheet of coloured
+paper covered with glue. My _vis-a-vis_ and I lay the palms of our right
+hands on to the glue surface and lift the sheet of paper to its place on
+the table before us, over a stiff square of bristol board. The boss of
+the team fixes the two sheets together with a brush which she
+manipulates skilfully. We are making in this way the stiff backs which
+hold the pictures into their frames. When we have fallen into the proper
+swing we finish one hundred sheets every forty-five minutes. We could
+work more rapidly, but the sheets are furnished to us at this rate, and
+it is so comfortable that conversation is not interrupted. The subjects
+are the same as elsewhere--dress, young men, entertainments. The girls
+have "beaux" and "steady beaux." The expression, "Who is she going
+with?" means who is her steady beau. "I've got Jim Smith _now_, but I
+don't know whether I'll keep him," means that Jim Smith is on trial as
+a beau and may become a "steady." They go to Sunday night subscription
+dances and arrive Monday morning looking years older than on Saturday,
+after having danced until early morning. "There's nothing so smart for a
+ball," the mundane of my team tells us, "as a black skirt and white silk
+waist."
+
+About ten in the morning most of us eat a pickle or a bit of cocoanut
+cake or some titbit from the lunch parcel which is opened seriously at
+twelve.
+
+The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and
+not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and
+cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.
+
+The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having
+no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return
+to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the
+resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural
+condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There
+are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run
+presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my
+self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a
+situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find
+policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.
+Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes
+compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not
+nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom
+I speak often call me "dear" in answering.
+
+Under the trellis of the elevated road the "cables" clang their way.
+Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge
+over the rough pavements. The sidewalks are crowded with people who are
+dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business
+type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which
+line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke.
+The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address
+given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by
+the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles,
+followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses'
+hoofs have died away. Excitement for a moment supersedes business. The
+fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed
+against policemen's arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which
+sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the
+perpetual veil of soot.
+
+I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in
+print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger.
+Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days. The numbers correspond. But
+there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies. The
+employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and promises
+to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand. Another boss
+printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the
+following Monday at three dollars a week. A kindly forelady in a large
+printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants
+only trained workers. "I'm real sorry," she says. "You're from the East,
+aren't you? I notice you speak with an accent."
+
+By this time it is after three in the afternoon; my chances are
+diminishing as the day goes on and others apply before me. There is one
+more possibility at a box and label company which has advertised for a
+girl to feed a Gordon press. I have never heard of a Gordon press, but I
+make up my mind not to leave the label company without the promise of a
+job for the very next day. The stairway is dingy and irregular. My
+spirits are not buoyant as I open a swinging door and enter a room with
+a cage in the middle, where a lady cashier, dressed in a red silk waist,
+sits on a high stool overlooking the office. Three portly men, fat, well
+nourished, evidently of one family, are installed behind yellow ash
+desks, each with a lady typewriter at his right hand. I go timidly up to
+the fattest of the three. He is in shirt sleeves, evidently feeling the
+heat painfully. He pretends to be very busy and hardly looks up when I
+say:
+
+"I seen your ad. in the paper this morning."
+
+"You're rather late," is his answer. "I've got two girls engaged
+already."
+
+"Too late!" I say with an intonation which interrupts his work for a
+minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from
+tragedy to a good-humoured smile, I ask:
+
+"Say, are you sure those girls'll come? You can't always count on us,
+you know."
+
+He laughs at this. "Have you ever run a Gordon press?"
+
+"No, sir; but I'm awful handy."
+
+"Where have you been working?"
+
+"At J.'s in Lake Street."
+
+"What did you make?"
+
+"A dollar a day."
+
+"Well, you come in to-morrow about eleven and I'll tell you then whether
+I can give you anything to do."
+
+"Can't you be sure now?"
+
+Truly disappointed, my voice expresses the eagerness I feel.
+
+"Well," the fat man says indulgently, "you come in to-morrow morning at
+eight and I'll give you a job."
+
+The following day I begin my last and by far my most trying
+apprenticeship.
+
+The noise of a single press is deafening. In the room where I work
+there are ten presses on my row, eight back of us and four printing
+machines back of them. On one side of the room only are there windows.
+The air is heavy with the sweet, stifling smell of printer's ink and
+cheap paper. A fine rain of bronze dust sifts itself into the hair and
+clothes of the girls at our end of the room, where they are bronzing
+coloured advertisements. The work is all done standing; the hours are
+from seven until six, with half an hour at noon, and holiday at one
+thirty on Saturdays. It is to _feed_ a machine that I am paid three
+dollars a week. The expression is admirably chosen. The machine's iron
+jaws yawn for food; they devour all I give, and when by chance I am slow
+they snap hungrily at my hand and would crush my fingers did I not
+snatch them away, feeling the first cold clutch. It is nervous work.
+Each leaf to be printed must be handled twice; 5,000 circulars or
+bill-heads mean 10,000 gestures for the printer, and this is an
+afternoon's work.
+
+Into the square marked out for it by steel guards the paper must be
+slipped with the right hand, while the machine is open; with the left
+hand the printed paper must be pulled out and a second fitted in its
+place before the machine closes again. What a master to serve is this
+noisy iron mechanism animated by steam! It gives not a moment's respite
+to the worker, whose thoughts must never wander from her task. The
+girls are pale. Their complexions without exception are bad.
+
+We are bossed by men. My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious,
+he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me. There
+is some complaining _sotto voce_ of the other boss, who, it appears, is
+a hard taskmaster. Both are very young, both chew tobacco and
+expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor.
+While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of
+ill-repute. He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more
+accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings. He is
+communicative.
+
+"Do you like your job?" he asks.
+
+"Yes, first rate."
+
+"They don't pay enough. I give notice last week and got a raise. I guess
+I'll stay on here until about August."
+
+"Then where are you going?"
+
+"Going home," he answers. "I've been away from home for seven years. I
+run away when I was thirteen and I've been knocking around ever since,
+takin' care of myself, makin' a livin' one way or another. My folks
+lives in California. I've been from coast to coast--and I tell you I'll
+be mighty glad to get back."
+
+"Ever been sick?"
+
+"Yes, twice. It's no fun. No matter how much licking a boy gets he
+ought never to leave home. The first year or so you don't mind it so
+much, but when you've been among strangers two years, three years, all
+alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own
+folks."
+
+"Are you saving up?" I ask.
+
+He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice.
+
+"I'll be able to leave here in August," he explains, when he has
+finished spitting, "for Omaha. In three months I can save up enough to
+get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to
+San Francisco. I tell you," he adds, returning to his work, "a person
+ought never to leave home." He had nine months of work and privation
+before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years.
+With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at
+the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full
+speed homeward toward those we love! Nine months, two hundred and
+seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait. He was manly. He had the
+spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men
+extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another
+for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy's life. He had
+not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound.
+His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle
+where he worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a
+nonentity--a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without
+individual brilliancy, added to the general luster.
+
+The first day I had a touch of pride in getting easily ahead of the new
+girl who started in when I did. From my machine I could see only the
+back of her head; it was shaking disapproval at every stroke she made
+and had to make over again. She had a mass of untidy hair and a slouchy
+skirt that slipped out from her belt in the back. If not actually
+stupid, she was slow, and the foreman and the girl who took turns
+teaching her exchanged glances, meaning that they were exhausting their
+patience and would readily give up the job. I was pleased at being
+included in these glances, and had a miserable moment of vanity at lunch
+time when the old girls, the habitues, came after me to eat with them.
+The girl with the untidy hair and the long skirt sat quite by her self.
+Without unfolding her newspaper bundle, she took bites of things from
+it, as though she were a little ashamed of her lunch. My moment of
+vanity had passed. I went over to her, not knowing whether her
+appearance meant a slipshod nature or extreme poverty. As we were both
+new girls, there was no indiscretion in my direct question:
+
+"Like your job?"
+
+I could not understand what she answered, so I continued: "Ever worked
+before?"
+
+She opened her hands and held them out to me. In the palm of one there
+was a long scar that ran from wrist to forefinger. Two nails had been
+worn off below the quick and were cracked through the middle. The whole
+was gloved in an iron callous, streaked with black.
+
+"Does that look like work?" was her response. It was almost impossible
+to hear what she said. Without a palate, she forced the words from her
+mouth in a strange monotone. She was one of nature's monstrous failures.
+Her coarse, opaque skin covered a low forehead and broad, boneless nose;
+her teeth were crumbling with disease, and into her full lower lip some
+sharp tool had driven a double scar. She kept her hand over her mouth
+when she talked, and except for this movement of self-consciousness her
+whole attitude was one of resignation and humility. Her eyes in their
+dismal surroundings lay like clear pools in a swamp's midst reflecting
+blue sky.
+
+"What was you doing to get your hands like that?" I asked.
+
+"Tipping shoe-laces. I had to quit, 'cause they cut the pay down. I
+could do twenty-two gross in a day, working until eight o'clock, and I
+didn't care how hard I worked so long as I got good pay--$9 a week. But
+the employer'd been a workman himself, and they're the worst kind. He
+cut me down to $4 a week, so I quit."
+
+"Do you live home?"
+
+"Yes. I give all I make to my mother, and she gives me my clothes and
+board. Almost anywhere I can make $7 a week, and I feel when I earn that
+much like I was doing right. But it's hard to work and make nothing. I'm
+slow to learn," she smiled at me, covering her mouth with her hand, "but
+I'll get on to it by and by and go as fast as any one; only I'm not very
+strong."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Heart disease for one thing, and then I'm so nervous. It's kind of hard
+to have to work when you're not able. To-day I can hardly stand, my
+head's aching so. They make the poor work for just as little as they
+can, don't they? It's not the work I mind, but if I can't give in my
+seven a week at home I get to worrying."
+
+Now and then as she talked in her inarticulate pitiful voice the tears
+added luster to her eyes as her emotions welled up within her.
+
+The machines began to roar and vibrate again. The noon recess was over.
+She went back to her job. Her broad, heavy hands began once more to
+serve a company on whose moderate remuneration she depended for her
+daily bread. Her silhouette against the window where she stood was no
+longer an object for my vain eyes to look upon with a sense of
+superiority. I could hear the melancholy intonation of her voice,
+pronouncing words of courage over her disfigured underlip. She was one
+of nature's failures--one of God's triumphs.
+
+Saturday night my fellow lodger, Miss Arnold, and I made an expedition
+to the spring opening of a large dry-goods shop in the neighbourhood of
+Mrs. Brown's. I felt rather humble in my toil-worn clothes to accompany
+the young woman, who had an appearance of prosperity which borrowed
+money alone can give. But she encouraged me, and we started together for
+the principal street of the quarter whose history was told in its
+show-case windows. Pawnshops and undertakers, bakeries and soda-water
+fountains were ranged side by side on this highway, as the necessity for
+them is ranged with incongruous proximity in the existence of those who
+live pell-mell in moral and material disorder after the manner of the
+poor. There was even a wedding coach in the back of the corner
+undertaker's establishment, and in the front window a coffin, small and
+white, as though death itself were more attractive in the young, as
+though the little people of the quarter were nearer Heaven and more
+suggestive of angels than their life-worn elders. The spotless tiny
+coffin with its fringe and satin tufting had its share of the ideal,
+mysterious, unused and costly; in the same store with the wedding coach,
+it suggested festivity: a reunion to celebrate with tears a small
+pilgrim's right to sleep at last undisturbed.
+
+The silver rays of the street lamps mingled with the yellow light of
+the shop windows, and on the sidewalk there was a cosmopolitan public.
+Groups of Italian women crooned to each other in their soft voices over
+the bargains for babies displayed at the spring opening; factory girls
+compared notes, chattered, calculated, tried to resist, and ended by an
+extravagant choice; the German women looked and priced and bought
+nothing; the Hungarians had evidently spent their money on arriving.
+From the store window wax figures of the ideal woman, clad in latest
+Parisian garb, with golden hair and blue eyes, gazed down benignly into
+the faces uplifted with envy and admiration. Did she not plainly say to
+them "For $17 you can look as I do"?
+
+The store was apparently flourishing, and except for such few useful
+articles as stockings and shirts it was stocked with trash. Patronized
+entirely by labouring men and women, it was an indication to their
+needs. Here, for example, was a stand hung with silk dress skirts,
+trimmed with lace and velvet. They were made after models of expensive
+dress-makers and were attempts at the sort of thing a Mme. de Rothschild
+might wear at the Grand Prix de Paris.
+
+Varying from $11 to $20, there was not one of the skirts made of
+material sufficiently solid to wear for more than a few Sunday outings.
+On another counter there were hats with extravagant garlands of flowers,
+exaggerated bows and plumes, wraps with ruffles of lace and long
+pendant bows; silk boleros; a choice of things never meant to be
+imitated in cheap quality.
+
+[Illustration: THE REAR OF A CHICAGO TENEMENT]
+
+I watched the customers trying on. Possessed of grace and charm in their
+native costumes, hatless, with gay-coloured shawls on their shoulders,
+the Italian women, as soon as they donned the tawdry garb of the
+luxury-loving labourer, were common like the rest. In becoming
+prosperous Americans, animated by the desire for material possession
+which is the strength and the weakness of our countrymen, they lost the
+character that pleases us, the beauty we must go abroad to find.
+
+Miss Arnold priced everything, compared quality and make with
+Jacksonville productions, and decided to buy nothing, but in refusing to
+buy she had an air of opulence and taste hard to please which surpassed
+the effect any purchase could have made.
+
+Sunday morning Mrs. Brown asked me to join her and Miss Arnold for
+breakfast They were both in slippers and dressing-gowns. We boiled the
+coffee and set the table with doughnuts and sweet cakes, which Miss
+Arnold kept in a paper bag in her room.
+
+"I hardly ever eat, except between meals," she explained. "A nibble of
+cake or candy is as much as I can manage, my digestion is so poor."
+
+"Ever since Brown died," the widow responded, "I've had my meals just
+the same as though he were here. All I want," she went on, as we seated
+ourselves and exchanged courtesies in passing the bread and butter,
+"all I want is somebody to be kind to me. I've got a young niece that
+I've tried to have with me. I wrote to her and says: 'Your auntie's
+heart's just crying out for you!' And I told her I'd leave her all I've
+got. But she said she didn't feel like she could come."
+
+As soon as breakfast is over the mundane member of the household starts
+off on a day's round of visits. When the screen door has shut upon her
+slender silhouette, Mrs. Brown settles down for a chat. She takes out
+the brush and comb, unbraids her silver locks and arranges them while
+she talks.
+
+"Miss Arnold's always on the go; she's awful nervous. These society
+people aren't happy. Life's not all pleasure for them. You can be sure
+they have their ups and downs like the rest of us."
+
+"I guess that's likely," is my response.
+
+"They don't tell the truth always, in the first place. They say there's
+got to be deceit in society, and that these stylish people pretend all
+sorts of things. Well, then, all I say is," and she pricks the comb into
+the brush with emphasis, "all I say is, you better keep out of society."
+
+She had twisted her gray braids into a coil at the back of her head, and
+dish-washing is now the order of the day. As we splash and wipe, Mrs.
+Brown looks at me rather closely. She is getting ready to speak. I can
+feel this by a preliminary rattle of her teeth.
+
+"You're a new girl here," she begins; "you ain't been long in Chicago. I
+just thought I'd tell you about a girl who was workin' here in the
+General Electric factory. She was sixteen--a real nice-lookin' girl from
+the South. She left her mother and come up here alone. It wasn't long
+before she got to foolin' round with one of the young men over to the
+factory. They were both young; they didn't mean no harm; but one day she
+come an' told me, cryin' like anythin', that she was in trouble, and her
+young man had slipped off up to Michigan."
+
+Here Mrs. Brown stopped to see if I was interested, and as I responded
+with a heartfelt "Oh, my!" she went on:
+
+"Well, you ought to have seen that girl's sufferin', her loneliness for
+her mother. I'd come in her room sometimes at midnight--the very room
+you have now--and find her on the floor, weepin' her heart out. I want
+to tell you never to get discouraged. Just you listen to what happened.
+The gentleman from the factory got a sheriff and they started up north
+after the young man, determined to get him by force if they couldn't by
+kindness. Well, they found him and they brought him back; he was willin'
+to come, and they got everythin' fixed up for the weddin' without
+tellin' her a thing about it, and one day she was sittin' right there,"
+she pointed to the rocking chair in the front parlour window, "when he
+come in. He was carryin' a big bunch of cream roses, tied with long
+white ribbons. He offered 'em to her, but she wouldn't look at them nor
+at him. After awhile they went together into her room and talked for
+half an hour, and when they come back she had consented to marry him. He
+was real kind. He kept askin' me if she had cried much and thankin' me
+for takin' care of her. They were married, and when the weddin' was over
+she didn't want to stay with him. She said she wanted her mother, but we
+talked to her and told her what was right, and things was fixed up
+between them."
+
+She had taken down from its hook in the corner sunlight the canary bird
+and his cage. She put them on the table and prepared to give the bird
+his bath and fresh seed.
+
+"You see," she said, drawing up a chair, "that's what good employers
+will do for you. If you're working in a good place they'll do right by
+you, and it don't pay to get down-hearted."
+
+I thanked her and showed the interest I truly felt in the story.
+Evidently I must account for my Sundays! It was with the bird now that
+Mrs. Brown continued her conversation. He was a Rip Van Winkle in
+plumage. His claws trailed over the sand of the cage. Except when Mrs.
+Brown had a lodger or two with her, the bird was the only living thing
+in her part of the tenement.
+
+"I've had him twenty-five years," she said to me. "Brown give him to
+me. I guess I'd miss him if he died." And presently she repeated again:
+"I don't believe I even know how much I'd miss him."
+
+On the last evening of my tenement residence I was sitting in a
+restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose
+Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and
+irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper
+earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew
+must be open, as I felt a cold wind. The lake brought capricious changes
+of the temperature: the thermometer had fallen the night before from
+seventy to thirty. I turned to see who the newcomer might be. The sight
+of him set my heart beating faster. The restaurant keeper was
+questioning the man to find out who he was.... He was evidently
+nobody--a fragment of anonymous humanity lashed into _debris_ upon the
+edge of a city's vortex; a remnant of flesh and bones for human
+appetites to feed on; a battleground of disease and vice; a beggar
+animated by instinct to get from others what he could no longer earn for
+himself; the type _par excellence_ who has worn out charity
+organizations; the poor wreck of a soul that would create pity if there
+were none of it left in the world. He was asking for food. The
+proprietor gave him the address of a free lodging-house and turned him
+away. He pulled his cap over his head; the door opened and closed,
+letting in a fresh gale of icy air. The man was gone. I turned back to
+my supper. Scientific philanthropists would have means of proving that
+such men are alone to blame for their condition; that this one was in
+all probability a drunkard, and that it would be useless, worse than
+useless, to help him. But he was cold and hungry and penniless, and I
+knew it. I went as swiftly as I could to overtake him. He had not
+traveled far, lurching along at a snail's pace, and he was startled when
+I came up to him. One of his legs was longer than the other; it had been
+crushed in an accident. They were not pairs, his legs, and neither were
+his eyes pairs; one was big and blind, with a fixed pupil, and the other
+showed all his feelings. Across his nose there was a scar, a heavy scar,
+pale like the rest of his face. He was small and had sandy hair. The
+directors of charity bureaus could have detected perhaps a faint
+resemblance to the odour of liquor as he breathed a halo of frosty air
+over his scraggly red beard.
+
+Through the weather-beaten coat pinned over it his bare chest was
+visible.
+
+"It's a cold night!" I began. "Are you out of a job?"
+
+With his wistful eye he gave me a kind glance.
+
+"I've been sick. There's a sharp pain right in through here." He showed
+me a spot under his arm. "They thought at the hospital that I 'ad
+consumption. But," his face brightened, "I haven't got it." He showed in
+his smile the life-warrant that kept him from suicide. _He wanted to
+live._
+
+"Where did you sleep last night?" I asked. "It was a cold night."
+
+"To tell you the truth," he responded in his strong Scotch accent, "I
+slept in a wagon."
+
+I proposed that we do some shopping together; he looked at me gratefully
+and limped along to a cheap clothing store, kept by an Italian. The
+warmth within was agreeable; there was a display of garments hung across
+the ceiling under the gas-light. My companion waited, leaning against
+the glass counter, while I priced the flannel shirts. To be sure, my own
+costume promised little bounty. The price of the shirt was seventy-five
+cents, and as soon as he heard this the poor man said:
+
+"Oh, you mustn't spend as much as that."
+
+Looking first at the pauper, then at me, the Italian leaned over and
+whispered to me, "I think I understand. You can have the shirt for
+sixty, and I'll put in a pair of socks, too."
+
+Thus we had become a fraternity; all were poor, the stronger woe helping
+the weaker.... When his toilet was complete the poor man looked half a
+head taller.
+
+"Shall I wrap up your old cap for you?" the salesman asked, and the
+other laughed a broken, long-disused laugh.
+
+"I guess I won't need it any more," he said, turning to me.
+
+His face had changed like the children's valentines that grow at a touch
+from a blank card to a glimpse of paradise.
+
+Once in the street again we shook hands. I was going back to my supper.
+He was going, the charity directors would say, to pawn his shirt and
+coat.
+
+The man had evidently not more than a few months to live; I was leaving
+Chicago the following day. We would undoubtedly never meet again.
+
+As his bony hand lay in mine, his eyes looked straight at me. "Thank
+you," he said, and his last words were these:
+
+"I'll stand by you."
+
+It was a pledge of fraternity at parting. There was no material
+substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any
+generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron
+of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who
+are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no
+scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity;
+of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases;
+of those whose charity is tolerant and maternal, patient with the
+helpless, prepared for disappointments; not looking for results, ever
+ready to begin again, so long as the paradox of suffering and inability
+are linked together in humanity.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+
+
+Before concluding the recital of my experiences as a working girl, I
+want to sum up the general conclusions at which I arrived and to trace
+in a few words the history of my impressions. What, first of all, was my
+purpose in going to live and work among the American factory hands? It
+was not to gratify simple curiosity; it was not to get material for a
+novel; it was not to pave the way for new philanthropic associations; it
+was not to obtain crude data, such as fill the reports of labour
+commissioners. My purpose was to _help_ the working girl--to help her
+mentally, morally, physically. I considered this purpose visionary and
+unpractical, I considered it pretentious even, and I cannot say that I
+had any hope of accomplishing it. What did I mean by _help_? Did I mean
+a superficial remedy, a palliative? A variety of such remedies occurred
+to me as I worked, and I have offered them gladly for the possible aid
+of charitable people who have time and money to carry temporary relief
+to the poor. It was not relief of this kind that I meant by _help_. I
+meant an _amelioration in natural conditions_. I was not hopeful of
+discovering any plan to bring about this amelioration, because I
+believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the
+working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to
+resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the
+test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a
+sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked,
+that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and
+that they can therefore be corrected. It is with hope for the material
+betterment of the breadwinning woman, for the moral advancement of the
+semi-breadwinner and the esthetic improvement of the country, that I
+submit what seems a rational plan.
+
+For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my
+companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to
+dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death. My own physical
+sufferings were acute. My heart was torn with pity. I revolted against a
+society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and
+bodies. Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on
+human lives. To every new impression I responded with indiscriminate
+compassion. It is impossible for the imagination to sustain for more
+than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like
+myself is obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells,
+the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw
+mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling.
+The mind cannot grasp what it means to be frantic with pain in the
+shoulders and back before nine in the morning, and to watch the clock
+creep around to six before one has a right to drop into the chair that
+has stood near one all day long. Yet it is not until the system has
+become at least in a great measure used to such physical effort that one
+can judge without bias. When I had grown so accustomed to the work that
+I was equal to a long walk after ten hours in the factory; when I had
+become so saturated with the tenement smell that I no longer noticed it;
+when any bed seemed good enough for the healthy sleep of a working girl,
+and any food good enough to satisfy a hungry stomach, then and then only
+I began to see that in the great unknown class there were a multitude of
+classes which, aside from the ugliness of their esthetic surroundings
+and the intellectual inactivity which the nature of their occupation
+imposes, are not all to be pitied: they are a collection of human
+individuals with like capacities to our own. The surroundings into which
+they are born furnish little chance for them to develop their minds and
+their tastes, but their souls suffer nothing from working in squalour
+and sordidness. Certain acts of impulsive generosity, of disinterested
+kindness, of tender sacrifice, of loyalty and fortitude shone out in
+the poverty-stricken wretches I met on my way, as the sun shines
+glorious in iridescence on the rubbish heap that goes to fertilize some
+rich man's fields.
+
+My observations were confined chiefly to the women. Two things, however,
+regarding the men I noticed as fixed rules. They were all breadwinners;
+they worked because they needed the money to live; they supported
+entirely the woman, wife or mother, of the household who did not work.
+In many cases they contributed to the support of even the wage-earning
+females of the family: the woman who does not work when she does not
+need to work is provided for.
+
+The women were divided into two general classes: Those who worked
+because they needed to earn their living, and those who came to the
+factories to be more independent than at home, to exercise their
+coquetry and amuse themselves, to make pin money for luxuries. The men
+formed a united class. They had a purpose in common. The women were in a
+class with boys and with children. They had nothing in common but their
+physical inferiority to man. The children were working from necessity,
+the boys were working from necessity; the only industrial unit
+complicating the problem were the girls who worked without being obliged
+to--the girls who had "all the money they needed, but not all the money
+they wanted." To them the question of wages was not vital. They could
+afford to accept what the breadwinner found insufficient. They were
+better fed, better equipped than the self-supporting hand; they were
+independent about staying away from the factory when they were tired or
+ill, and they alone determined the reputation for irregularity in which
+the breadwinners were included.
+
+Here, then, it seemed to me, was the first chance to offer help.
+
+The self-supporting woman should be in competition only with other
+self-supporting industrial units. The problem for her class will settle
+itself, according to just and natural laws, when the purpose of this
+class is equally vital to all concerned. Relief, it seemed to me, could
+be brought to the breadwinner by separating from her the girl who works
+for luxuries.
+
+How could this be done?
+
+There is, I believe, a way in which it can be accomplished naturally.
+The non-self-supporting girls must be attracted into some field of work
+which requires instruction and an especial training, which pays them as
+well while calling into play higher faculties than the brutalizing
+machine labour. This field of work is industrial art: lace-making,
+hand-weaving, the fabrication of tissues and embroideries,
+gold-smithery, bookbinding, rug-weaving, woodcarving and inlaying, all
+the branches of industrial art which could be executed by woman in her
+home, all the manual labour which does not require physical strength,
+which would not place the woman, therefore, as an inferior in
+competition with man, but would call forth her taste and skill, her
+training and individuality, at the same time being consistent with her
+destiny as a woman.
+
+The American factory girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for
+knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world,
+to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for
+forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There
+is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give
+their time and their money to lifting the non-breadwinners from the
+slavish, brutalizing machines at which they work, ignorant of anything
+better, and placing them by education, by cultivation, in positions of
+comparative freedom--freedom of thought, taste and personality.
+
+Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston
+and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed.
+Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it
+is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient
+merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted.
+There is not a factory which would not furnish some material. The
+recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual
+advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages
+would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art
+School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in
+proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast
+as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of
+hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a
+plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions.
+
+Who will act as mediator?
+
+I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to
+help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and
+the girl who works for luxuries.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+    INTRODUCTORY
+
+    VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+    VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+    IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its
+brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism
+have always had much to say in praise of the "beauty of toil." Carlyle
+has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When
+one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from
+ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal
+holidays as the sole respite--to find at the month's end that the only
+possible economics are pleasures--one is at least better fitted to
+comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of
+the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason
+of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside
+for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and
+bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was
+possible, to live as she lived, work as she worked. In thus approaching
+her I believed that I could share her ambitions, her pleasures, her
+privations.
+
+Working by her side day after day, I hoped to be a mirror that should
+reflect the woman who toils, and later, when once again in my proper
+sphere of life, to be her expositor in an humble way--to be a mouthpiece
+for her to those who know little of the realities of everlasting labour.
+
+I have in the following pages attempted to solve no problem--I have
+advanced no sociologic schemes. Conclusions must be drawn by those who
+read the simple, faithful description of the woman who toils as I saw
+her, as I worked beside her, grew to understand in a measure her point
+of view and to sympathize with her struggle.
+
+    MARIE VAN VORST.
+    Riverdale-on-Hudson,
+    1902.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN
+
+
+"Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace
+to the public safety."--Roosevelt.
+
+Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it
+which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The
+workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot,
+the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of
+the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is _the
+labourer's head_ upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the
+vortex of the crowd.
+
+_That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace
+society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass._
+
+Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the
+Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample
+provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish
+employment of new machinery--tells on the great manufacturing world.
+
+Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery
+or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be
+given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical
+culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is
+securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers'
+souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned
+out at cheaper cost.
+
+The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made
+their demands for shorter hours and better pay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LYNN
+
+Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a
+dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the
+self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the
+daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour
+bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue
+noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to
+me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air.
+
+I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class
+whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out
+necessities and luxuries for the market.
+
+[Illustration: A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY--At work in a Lynn shoe
+factory]
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY: A very expert "vamper,"
+an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week]
+
+The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows:
+
+    Hat                 $  40
+    Sealskin coat         200
+    Black cloth dress     150
+    Silk underskirt        25
+    Kid gloves              2
+    Underwear              30
+                         ----
+                        $ 447
+
+The clothes I put on were as follows:
+
+    Small felt hat      $ .25
+    Woolen gloves         .25
+    Flannel shirt-waist  1.95
+    Gray serge coat      3.00
+    Black skirt          2.00
+    Underwear            1.00
+    Tippet               1.00
+                         ----
+                        $9.45
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in
+a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to
+back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get
+nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my
+speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The
+route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet thick
+covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter
+scene the sun shone brilliantly.
+
+No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former
+personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had
+discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto
+pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder
+to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.
+
+Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in
+the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the
+streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to
+this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course,
+and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church
+stamping the place New England.
+
+Lynn is made up of factories--great masses of ugliness, red brick,
+many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this
+town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in
+our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there
+are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is
+70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.
+
+The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a
+directory and found the address of the Young Women's Christian
+Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal
+streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once
+displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout
+my first experience--qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality
+and human interest.
+
+"I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the
+night."
+
+I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple
+decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing
+less in the older woman's face.
+
+"Work in the shops?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own
+way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy.
+
+She said earnestly: "You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't
+know about, child."
+
+She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper.
+
+"Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here.
+I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town
+just _anywheres_! You might get into trouble."
+
+She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or
+directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question,
+receive some information; and thus in marvelous friendliness she turned
+and outstretched her hand--I was a stranger and this was her welcome.
+
+I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I
+myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I
+intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or
+any aid.
+
+Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden
+tenement set back from the road.
+
+"Furnished Room to Rent," read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced
+woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said:
+
+"Ve only got a 'sheep' room."
+
+At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a
+_cheap_ room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That
+was the kind of people she received.
+
+I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was
+French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from
+Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our
+understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always.
+
+My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean,
+agreeable room.
+
+Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She
+would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the "young ladies"
+who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her furniture by
+slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to
+complain of me--I would take care.
+
+The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of
+course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first
+floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I
+made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame
+Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging
+manners.
+
+"Mademoiselle Ballard has work?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here
+three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!"
+
+Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have
+slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn!
+My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods,
+weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated.
+
+The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of
+the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks,
+frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but
+stopped finally before a humbler shop--where a sign swung at the door:
+"Hands Wanted." I went in here and opened a door on the third floor
+into a small office.
+
+I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
+twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
+I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
+revolving desk-chair.
+
+"I want work. Got any?"
+
+"Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?"
+
+(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)
+
+"Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest."
+
+"Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?"
+
+"It's gluein' suspender straps."
+
+"Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!"
+
+He smiled, indulgent of this whim.
+
+"They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.)
+
+"Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!"
+
+"Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
+back."
+
+He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
+suspender straps, tempting me with them.
+
+"What you ever done?"
+
+"Nothing. I'm green!"
+
+"That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?"
+
+"Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all."
+
+"Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
+four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
+no time." ...
+
+Preston's!
+
+That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
+way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
+half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!
+
+I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
+outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
+neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my
+judgment.
+
+A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
+help:
+
+"But I am green; I can't do office work."
+
+Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
+me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--"
+
+He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
+disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
+refusing applicants for work.
+
+"Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm
+getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings."
+
+"You'll give me a chance, then?"
+
+"Yes, I will!"
+
+It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
+houseless.
+
+With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before
+nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets
+filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I
+wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for
+sauce, ate a good meal.
+
+Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time
+the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my
+goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading:
+
+"_Wanted, Vampers_."
+
+A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand
+for work was greeted at the office this time with--"Any signs out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer
+nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor."
+
+Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes
+were were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within
+a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an
+elevator--a freight elevator; there are no others, of course. This
+lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook
+and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety
+doors"--continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to
+receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the
+shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping
+inadvertently to sudden death.
+
+I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was
+in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation
+and the noise was startling and deafening.
+
+I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for
+the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the
+employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to
+attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect
+aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.
+
+Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account
+book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me
+something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.
+
+"Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green."
+
+She didn't even look at me, but called--shrieked, rather--above the
+machine din to her colleagues:
+
+"Got anything for a green hand?"
+
+The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got
+from any one in authority in Parsons'.
+
+"Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"I'll have you learned _pressin'_; we need a _presser_. Go take your
+things off, then get right down over there."
+
+I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and
+coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty
+floor.
+
+Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two
+hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I
+went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained.
+I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman.
+
+On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me,
+although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who
+demanded her time and patience. She was to "learn me pressin'," and she
+did.
+
+Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a
+pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The
+branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows:
+
+Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps,
+vamps, etc. Dipping my brush in the glue, I gummed all the extreme
+outer edges. When the "case" had been gummed, the first bits were dry,
+then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine
+little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled
+hem flattened with the hammer--this is "pressing." The case goes from
+presser to the seaming machine.
+
+The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it
+should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All
+this means double work later. "_Twict the work_!" my teacher remarks.
+Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the
+uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from
+time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I
+have mastered the method--skill and rapidity can be mine only after many
+days; but I worked alone, unaided.
+
+As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating
+rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the
+hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was
+kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only
+the beginning!
+
+Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to
+me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a
+greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my
+vamps with the ill-smelling glue.
+
+"This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked
+they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady
+said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's
+long's you have.'"
+
+I asked, "What would you rather do than this?"
+
+She didn't seem to know.
+
+"I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you--I bet you!"
+
+(I didn't--but not quite for her reason.)
+
+As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told
+Maggie McGowan I was going home.
+
+"Tired already?" There was still an hour to dark.
+
+As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment
+spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes--three
+dozen pairs.
+
+"I guess I'll have to put it on my card," she soliloquized, "'cause I
+learned you."
+
+"Do--do----"
+
+"It's only about seven cents, anyway."
+
+"Three hours' work and that's all I've made?"[2]
+
+  [Footnote 2: An expert presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day.
+  This is rare and maximum.]
+
+She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of
+gain and wealth.
+
+"Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?"
+
+[Illustration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND
+
+Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl,
+and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at
+the same work]
+
+"Ten years."
+
+"And you make?"
+
+"Well, I don't want to discourage you." ...
+
+(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was
+her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)
+
+"... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve
+dollars a week."
+
+"Then I will make four!"
+
+(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of
+ignorance!)
+
+"_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do
+housework!"
+
+It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of
+women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a
+day labour.
+
+"Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?"
+
+"I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook
+breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here.
+When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!"
+
+My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate,
+as she, generous creature, took it to be.
+
+"After you've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I
+do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me."
+
+Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!
+
+Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs
+climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were
+tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat
+in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating
+spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of
+which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming,
+singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000
+paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one
+piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my
+tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from
+my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends
+had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in
+Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as
+they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure
+class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and
+beauty from a woman's hands.
+
+Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to
+her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are
+twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I
+never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they
+used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're
+awful! I do love a nice hand."
+
+The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh
+air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils,
+sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3]
+
+  [Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate
+  the shop.]
+
+Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as
+cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a
+shift at a toilet.
+
+Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the
+table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper
+table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she
+waited upon her nine guests.
+
+No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst
+of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness of
+welcome.
+
+My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew.
+
+"Miss Ballard!" The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced
+me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women
+besides myself and four men.
+
+"I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange," said my hostess in her
+pretty Canadian _patois_. "I want her to be at home here."
+
+I sat down.
+
+"Oh, she'll be at home all right!" A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette
+from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling
+good-fellowship.
+
+"Come to work in the shops?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ever been to Lynn before?"
+
+"No; live in Paris--stranger."
+
+"My, but that's hard--all alone here! Got a job?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And I explained to the attentive interest of all.
+
+From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or passed to me
+the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every
+shred of appetite, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's
+stifling heat would have dulled hunger.
+
+Let it go! I was far too interested to eat.
+
+The table was crowded with all manner of substances passing for
+food--cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten
+at one time and at will; the drink was tea.
+
+At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pass anywhere for a business
+man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a
+bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika
+and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle
+Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed),
+then Maurice.
+
+Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless
+questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent.
+Their attitude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which
+qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who
+suffer privation, who labour.
+
+Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and
+Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in
+good English and mediocre French.
+
+"It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most
+has to get spoken of weeks in advance--introduced by friends, too!"
+
+Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The
+landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak
+for you to our foreladies."
+
+Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as
+though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my
+shoulder.
+
+"Yes, _mon enfant_, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange
+place. _Ici nous sommes toute une famille_".
+
+"All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a
+stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who,
+one day by chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your
+side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your
+clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge
+form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face,
+brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.
+
+Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her
+guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an
+hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social
+climber's ladder.
+
+Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the _truffle_
+buried in _pate de foie gras_; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies
+and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a _canard a
+la presse_ throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no
+labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding
+bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry,
+eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.
+
+Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so.
+
+The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige.
+
+"But mademoiselle eats nothing--a bird's appetite." And here was
+displayed the first hint of vulgarity we are taught to look for in the
+other class.
+
+She put her hands about my arms. "_Tiens! un bras tout de meme!_" and
+she looked at Maurice, the young man on my right.
+
+"_Maurice c'est toi qui devrait t'informer des bras d'mademoiselle."_
+
+("Maurice, it is you who should inform yourself of mademoiselle's
+arms.")
+
+Maurice laughed with appreciation, as did the others. He was the sole
+American at table; out of courtesy for him we talked English from time
+to time, although he assured us he understood all we said in "the
+jargon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Maurice a master pen could do justice; none other. His _type_ is seen
+stealing around corners in London's Whitechapel and in the lowest
+quarters of New York: a lounger, indolent, usually drunk. Maurice was
+the type, with the qualities absent. Tall, lank, loosely hung together,
+made for muscular effort, he wore a dark flannel shirt, thick with
+grease and oil stains, redolent with tobacco, a checked waistcoat, no
+collar or cravat. From the collarless circle of his shirt rose his
+strong young neck and bullet head; his forehead was heavy and square
+below the heavy brows; his black eyes shone deep sunken in their
+caverns.
+
+His black hair, stiff as a brush, came low on his forehead; his mouth
+was large and sensual, his teeth brilliant. But his hands! never to be
+forgotten! Scrubbed till flesh might well have parted from the bones!
+clean, even if black and mutilated with toil; fingers forever darkened;
+stained ingrained ridges rising around the nails, hard and ink-black as
+leather. Maurice was Labour--its Symbol--its Epitome.
+
+At the landlady's remark he had blushed and addressed me frankly:
+
+"Say, I work to de 'Lights.'"
+
+(Lights! Can such a word be expressive of the factory which has daily
+blackened and scarred and dulled this human instrument?)
+
+"To the 'Lights,' and it ain't no _cinch_, I can tell you! I got to keep
+movin'. Every minute I'm late I get docked for wages--it's a day's work
+to the 'Lights.' When _she_ calls me at six--why, I don't turn over and
+snooze another! I just turn right out. I walk two miles to my shop--and
+every man in his place at 6:45! Don't you forgit it!"
+
+He cleaned his plate of food.
+
+"I jest keep movin' all de time."
+
+He wiped his mouth--rose unceremoniously, put on his pot-like derby
+ajaunt, lit a vile cigar, slipped into a miserable old coat, and was
+gone, the odour of his weed blending its new smell with kitchen fumes.
+
+He is one of the absolutely real creatures I have ever seen. Of his
+likeness types of crime are drawn. Maurice--blade keen-edged, hidden in
+its battered sheath, its ugly case--terrible yet attractive specimen of
+strength and endurance--Youth and Manhood in you are bound to labour as
+on the rack, and in the ordeal you keep (as does the mass of humanity)
+Silence!
+
+Eat by this man's side, heap his plate with coarse victuals, feel the
+touch of his flannel sleeve against your own flannel blouse, see his
+look of brotherhood as he says:
+
+"Say, if de job dey give you is too hard, why, I guess I kin get yer in
+to the 'Lights'!"
+
+These are sensations facts alone can give.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner we sit all together in the parlour, the general
+living-room: carpet-covered sofa, big table, few chairs--that's all. We
+talk an hour--and on what? We discuss Bernhardt, the divine Sarah. "Good
+shows don't come to Lynn much; it don't pay them. You can't get more
+than fifty cents a seat. Now Bernhardt don't like to act for fifty-cent
+houses! But the theatres are crowded if ever there's a good show. We get
+tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House." Maude Adams was a
+favourite. Rejane had been seen. Of course, the vital American
+interest--money--is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The
+packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read,
+discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the
+pleasure it would be to travel and see the world.
+
+At nine, friendly handshaking. "Good-night. You're tired. You'll like
+it all right to the shops, see if you don't! You'll make money, too. The
+forelady must a-seen that you were ambitious. Why, to my shop when a new
+hand applies for a job the foreman asks: 'What does he look like?
+Ambitious lookin'? Well, then--there's room."
+
+Ambitious to make shoes! To grind out all you can above the average five
+dollars a week, all you may by conscientious, unflagging work during 224
+hours out of a month.
+
+Good-night to the working world! Landlady and friendly co-labourers.
+
+"_Il ne faut pas vous gener, mademoiselle; nous sommes toute une
+famille_."
+
+Upstairs in my room the excitement died quite out of me. I lay wakeful
+in the hard, sheetless bed. It was cold, my window-pane freezing
+rapidly. I could not sleep. On either side, through the thin walls of
+the house, I could hear my neighbours settling to repose. Maurice's room
+was next to mine. He whistled a short snatch of a topical song as he
+undressed. On the other side slept the landlady's children; opposite,
+the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's
+song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed
+silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted
+to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete.
+
+Before six the next morning--black as night--the call: "Mau--rice!
+Mau--_rice_!" rang through the hall. Summons to us all, given through
+him on whom the exigencies of life fell the heaviest. Maurice worked by
+day system--the rest of us were freed men and women by comparison.
+
+The night before, timid and reluctant to descend the two flights of
+pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought
+up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be
+if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by
+pitcher. A little water nearly frozen was at hand for my toilet. By six
+I was dressed and my bed made; by 6:15 in the kitchen, dense with smoke
+from the frying breakfast. Through the haze the figures of my friends
+declared themselves. Codfish balls, bread and butter and coffee formed
+the repast.
+
+Maurice is the first to finish, standing a moment to light his pipe, his
+hat acock; then he is gone. The sisters wash at the sink, Mika combing
+her mass of frowzy dark hair, talking meanwhile. The sisters' toilet,
+summary and limited, is frankly displayed.
+
+At my right the bride consumes five enormous fish balls, as well as much
+bread. Her husband, a young, handsome, gentle creature, eats sparingly.
+His hand is strapped up at the wrist.
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Strained tendons. Doctor says they'd be all right if I could just hold
+up a little. They don't get no chance to rest."
+
+"But why not 'hold up' awhile?" He regards me sympathetically as one who
+says to an equal, a fellow: "You know why!--for the same reason that you
+yourself will work sick or well."
+
+"_On fait ce que l'on peut_!"
+
+("One does one's best!")
+
+When the young couple had left the room our landlady said:
+
+"The little woman eats well, doesn't she! She needs no tonic! All day
+long she sits in my parlour and rocks--and rocks."
+
+"She does nothing?"
+
+Madame shrugged.
+
+"But yes! She reads novels!"
+
+It was half-past six when I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is
+slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still
+half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring to life.
+
+I become, after a block or two, one of a hurrying throng of labour-bound
+fellows--dark forms appear from streets and avenues, going in divers
+directions toward their homes. Homes? Where one passes most of one's
+life, is it not _Home_?
+
+These figures to-day bend head and shoulders against the wind as it
+blows neck-coverings about, forces bare hands into coat pockets.
+
+By the time the town has been traversed, railroad track crossed, and
+Parsons' in sight, day has nearly broken. Pink clouds float over factory
+roofs in a sky growing bluer, flushing to day.
+
+[Illustration: THE WINDOW SIDE OF MISS K.'s PARLOUR AT LYNN, MASS]
+
+From now on the day is shut out for those who here and there enter the
+red-brick factories. An hour at noon? Of course, this magnificent hour
+is theirs! Time to eat, time to feed the human machine. One hour in
+which to stretch limbs, to pull to upright posture the bent body.
+Meanwhile daylight progresses from glowing beauty to high noon, and
+there the acme of brilliance seems to pause, as freed humanity stares
+half-blinded at God's midday rest.
+
+All the remaining hours of daylight are for the leisure world. Not till
+night claims Lynn shall the factory girl be free.
+
+Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side
+those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in
+a cheery tone.
+
+"Working here? Got it good?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"That's all right. Good-day."
+
+Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new
+class!
+
+On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long,
+low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign
+to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not fully found the
+workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but
+was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me--hard ordeal
+for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun
+my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the
+seats beyond me and on either side were filled.
+
+Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks
+like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of good-fellowship--coin
+freely passed from workwoman to workwoman.
+
+This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush
+dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was
+massed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like
+lightning.
+
+"Do you like your job?" I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to
+all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but
+made no direct reply. "I used to have what you're doing; it's awful.
+That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got _this_."
+She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only.
+
+"But don't you smell it from here?"
+
+"Not so bad; this here" (pointing to her black fluid) "smells stronger;
+it _drownds_ it.
+
+"I make my wages clear," she announced to me a few minutes later.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward.
+I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't
+cost me anything!"
+
+So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running,
+waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and
+not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end!
+
+"I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down
+East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side."
+
+My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes
+(thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room
+grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie,
+loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the
+like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and
+at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because
+one had been three hours at work.
+
+A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an
+apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a
+prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her
+half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.
+
+"Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!"
+
+My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded
+her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very
+indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make
+shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.
+It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said.
+
+"Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking
+down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops."
+
+Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing."
+
+The other laughed sweetly.
+
+"Well, I jest have to sing."
+
+"You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.
+
+"You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me
+alone, she whispered:
+
+"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.
+
+"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through
+the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_
+soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"
+
+Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure
+gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads
+at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed
+shoulders! on the flying hands!
+
+At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to
+thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I
+went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I
+had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and
+cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that
+which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.
+
+The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired
+out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and
+folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to
+continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue
+(oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it
+seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's
+this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you
+wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."
+
+Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory,
+shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the
+horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.
+
+Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.
+
+Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions
+she was courtesy itself.
+
+"Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from?
+Paris!"
+
+My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's
+a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?"
+
+She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's
+like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is
+like!"
+
+The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of
+satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast
+narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of
+the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the
+afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over
+her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five
+cents to-day."
+
+Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune
+never to work in a shoe-shop."
+
+"_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!"
+
+Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd
+jump into the river!"
+
+She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.
+
+"Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a
+lot!"
+
+"I am sick of the shoe-shops."
+
+"How long have you been at this work?"
+
+"Ten years. When you have worked ten years in Lynn you will be sick of
+the shops."
+
+I was sick of the shops, and I had not worked ten years. And for my
+hard-toiling future, such as she imagined that it would be, I could see
+that she pitied me. Once, supposing that since I am so green and so
+ill-clad, and so evidently bent on learning my trade the best I knew,
+she asked me in a voice quick with sisterhood:
+
+"Say, are you hungry?"
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+"You'll be all right! No American girl need to starve in America."
+
+In the shops the odours are more easily endured than is the noise. All
+conversation is shrieked out, and all the vision that one has as one
+lifts one's eyes from time to time is a sky seen through dirty
+window-panes, distant chimney-pots, and the roof-lines of like houses of
+toil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I gathered this from our interrupted talk that flowed unceasingly
+despite the noise of our hammers and the noise of the general room.
+
+They worked at a trade uncongenial. Not one had a good word to say for
+shop-labour there, despite its advantages, in this progressive land of
+generous pay. Each woman in a narrow, touching degree was a dreamer.
+Housework! too servile; but then, compared to shopwork it was leisure.
+
+By four the gas was lit here and there where burners were available.
+Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in
+semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became
+mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and
+blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the gas jets in misty circles.
+
+Unaltered alone was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the
+machinery, the long soughing of the power-engine.
+
+Here and there a woman stops to rest a second, her head sunk in her
+hand; or she rises, stretches limbs and body. A man wanders in from the
+next room, a pipe in his mouth, or a bad cigar, and pausing by one of
+the pale operators, whose space of rest is done, he flings down in front
+of her a new pile of piece-work from the cutting machines.
+
+We are up five flights of stairs. There are at least two hundred girls.
+Machine oil, rags, refuse, cover the floor--such _debris_ as only awaits
+a spark from a lighted match or cigar to burst into flames. Despite laws
+and regulations the building is not fire-proof. There is no fire-escape.
+A cry of fire, and great Heaven! what escape for two hundred of us from
+this mountain height, level with roofs of the distant town!
+
+Thus these women, shapes mysterious in gaslight and twilight, labour:
+life is at stake; health, youth, vigour, supply little more than bread.
+I rise; my bruised limbs, at first numb, then aching, stir for the first
+time after five hours of steady work. The pile of shoes before me is
+feeble evidence of the last hours' painful effort.
+
+I get into my clothes--skirt, jacket and hat, all impregnated now with
+factory and tenement odours, and stumble downstairs and out into the
+street. I have earned fifty cents to-day--but then, I am green!
+
+When once more in the cool, fresh air, released, I draw in a long and
+grateful breath.
+
+Lynn on this winter night is a snow-bound, midwinter village. In the
+heavens is the moon's ghost, a mist-shrouded, far-away disk. But it is
+the Christmas moon, shining on the sleeping thousands in the town, where
+night alone is free. The giant factories are silent, the machines at
+last quiet, the long workrooms moon-invaded. Labour is holy, but serfdom
+is accursed, and toil which demands that every hour of daylight should
+be spent in the race for existence--all of the daylight--is kin to
+slavery! There is no time for mental or physical upright-standing, no
+time for pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day I decided to consider myself dismissed from Parsons'. They had
+taught me all they could, unless I changed my trade, in that shop; I
+wished to learn a new one in another. Therefore, one morning I applied
+at another factory, again one of the largest in Lynn. The sign read:
+
+"_Cleaner Wanted_!"
+
+"Cleaner" sounded easy to learn. My experience this time was with a
+foreman instead of a forelady. The workroom I sought was on the second
+floor, a room filled with men, all of them standing. Far down the room's
+centre I saw the single figure of a woman at her job. By her side I was
+soon to be, and we two the sole women on the second floor.
+
+The foreman was distinctly a personage. Small, kind, alive, he wore a
+straw hat and eye-glasses. He had decided in a moment that my short
+application for "something to do" was not to be gainsaid.
+
+"Ever worked before?"
+
+This time I had a branch of a trade at my fingers' ends.
+
+"Yes, sir; presser."
+
+I was proud of my trade.
+
+I did not even know, as I do now, that "cleaning" is the filthiest job
+the trade possesses. It is in bad repute and difficult to secure a woman
+to do the unpleasant work.
+
+"You come with me," he said cheerfully; "I'll teach you."
+
+The forelady at Parsons' did not know whether I worked well or not. She
+never came to see. The foreman in Marches' taught me himself.
+
+Two high desks, like old-time school desks, rose in the workshop's
+centre. Behind one of these I stood, whilst the foreman in front of me
+instructed my ignorance. The room was filled with high crates rolled
+hither and thither on casters. These crates contained anywhere from
+thirty-two to fifty pairs of boots. The cases are moved from operator to
+operator as each man selects the shoes to apply to them the especial
+branch of his trade. From the crate of boots rolled to my side I took
+four boots and placed them on the desk before me. With the heel of one
+pressed against my breast, I dipped my forefinger in a glass of hot soap
+and water, water which soon became black as ink. I passed my wet, soapy
+finger all around the boot's edges, from toe to heel. This loosened, in
+the space between the sole and vamp, the sticky dye substance on the
+leather and particles so-called "dirt." Then with a bit of wood covered
+with Turkish toweling I scraped the shoe between the sole and vamp and
+with a third cloth polished and rubbed the boot clean. In an hour's time
+I did one-third as well as my companion. I cleaned a case in an hour,
+whilst she cleaned three.
+
+When my employer had left me I observed the woman at my side: an untidy,
+degraded-looking creature, long past youth. Her hands beggared
+description; their covering resembled skin not at all, but a dark-blue
+substance, leatherlike, bruised, ingrained, indigo-hued. Her nails
+looked as though they had been beaten severely. One of her thumbs was
+bandaged.
+
+"I lost one nail; rotted off."
+
+"Horrible! How, pray?"
+
+"That there water: it's poison from the shoe-dye."
+
+Swiftly my hands were changing to a faint likeness of my companion's.
+
+"Don't tell him," she said, "that I told you that. He'll be mad; he'll
+think I am discouraging you. But you'll lose your forefinger nail, all
+right!" Then she gave a little laugh as she turned her boot around to
+polish it.
+
+"Once I tried to clean my hands up. Lord! it's no good! I scrub 'em with
+a scrubbin'-brush on Sundays."
+
+"How long have you been at this job?"
+
+"Ten months."
+
+They called her "Bobby"; the men from their machines nodded to her now
+and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was
+ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in
+earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from
+us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood.
+I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet
+was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the
+morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to
+"Bobby." He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his
+job she said to me:
+
+"Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor?
+You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend."
+
+"Did that man come over to tell you this?"
+
+"Yes. He said it made you tired."
+
+From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man,
+bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the
+cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole
+he held to the flying wheel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is
+scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against
+forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen
+sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks.
+
+"Bobby" was not talkative or communicative simply because she had
+nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question
+to me during the time I worked by her side: "Do you like your job?" and
+although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too
+exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She
+took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. Every now and then
+she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day
+was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents.
+During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of
+shoes.
+
+In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work.
+Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial "B" on the tag and
+rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into
+his active charge.
+
+The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He
+was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far
+personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say?
+
+"You've been a presser long at the shoe-shops?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold
+the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right."
+
+"Thank you; perhaps I won't, though."
+
+"Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself," he said; "I know how that
+is."
+
+On his next visit he asked me: "Where you goin'; to when you get out of
+here to-night?"
+
+I told him that I was all right--that I had a place to stay.
+
+"If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me."
+
+[Illustration: "FANCY GUMMING."
+
+Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her husband also works in a factory, and
+between them they have made enough to build a pretty little cottage]
+
+[Illustration: AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND.
+
+Mrs. F., who has worked in the factory more than twenty years, once as
+a forewoman, now earns only $5 or $6 a week]
+
+I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity.
+
+"Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose
+I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes
+you a livin'."
+
+When the foreman had left me I turned to look at "Bobby." She was in the
+act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water.
+
+"You're not going to drink that!" I gasped, horrified. "Where did you
+get it?"
+
+"Oh, I drawed it awhile ago," she said.
+
+It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for
+a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew
+the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so
+limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an
+American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight
+years old, and her brain was stunted.
+
+At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down
+once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made
+the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than
+one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands
+were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen
+and men.
+
+Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage in a vessel. The top
+floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained
+blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that
+eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been
+impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and
+ate, in spite of the inconveniences, ravenously, and paid for my dinner
+fifteen cents. Most of my neighbours took one course, stew or soup. I
+rose half-satisfied, dizzy from the fumes and the bad air. I am safe in
+saying that I never smelled anything like to Weyman's, and I hope never
+to again. Never again shall I hear food and drink discussed by the
+_gourmet_--discuss, indeed, with him over his repast--but there shall
+rise before me Weyman's restaurant, low-ceiled, foul, crowded to
+overflowing. I shall see the diners bend edged appetites to the
+unpalatable food. These Weyman patrons, mark well, are the rich ones,
+the swells of labour--able to squander fifteen to twenty cents on their
+stew and tea. There are dozens, you remember, still in the unaired
+fourth and fifth stories--at "lunching" over their sandwiches. Far
+more vivid, more poignant even must be to me the vision of "Bobby." I
+shall see her eat her filthy sandwich with her blackened hands, see her
+stoop to blow the scum of deadly matter from her typhoid-breeding glass.
+
+In Lynn, unless she boards at home, a girl's living costs her at best
+$3.75 a week. If she be of the average[4] her month's earnings are
+$32. Reduce this by general expenses and living and her surplus is
+$16, to earn which she has toiled 224 hours. You will recall that
+there are, out of the 22,000 operatives in Massachusetts, 5,000 who
+make under $5 a week. I leave the reader to compute from this the
+luxuries and possible pleasures consistent with this income.
+
+  [Footnote 4: Lynn's average wages are $8 per week.]
+
+A word for the swells of the trade, for swells exist. One of my
+companions at 28 Viger Street made $14 a week. Her expenses were $4; she
+therefore had at her disposition about $40 a month. She had no
+family--_every cent of her surplus she spent on her clothes_.
+
+"I like to look down and see myself dressed nice," she said; "it makes
+me feel good. I don't like myself in poor clothes."
+
+She _was_ well-dressed--her furs good, her hat charming. We walked to
+work side by side, she the lady of us. Of course she belongs to the
+Union. Her possible illness is provided for; her death will bring $100
+to a distant cousin. She is only tired out, thin, undeveloped, pale,
+that's all. She is almost a capitalist, and extremely well dressed.
+
+Poor attire, if I can judge by the reception I met with in Lynn,
+influences only those who by reason of birth, breeding and education
+should be above such things. In Viger Street I was more simply clad
+than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness.
+
+Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a
+spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement
+lodging Mika took my hand at the door.
+
+"Good-by." Her eyes actually filled. "I'm awful sorry you're going. If
+the world don't treat you good come back to us."
+
+I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on
+whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect--the spoiled creature of the
+traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New
+York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in
+time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched
+my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and
+waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the
+favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the
+cleaner from Marches'.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS
+
+THE MILL VILLAGE
+
+
+Columbia, South Carolina, of course is conscious that there are mills
+without its city precincts. It is proud of the manufacture that gives
+the city precedence and commercial value all over the world. The trolley
+runs to the mills empty, as a rule, after the union depot is passed.
+
+Frankly, what is there to be seen in these dusty suburbs? Entry to the
+mills themselves is difficult, if not absolutely impossible. And that
+which forms the background for the vast buildings, the Mill Village, is
+a section to be shunned like the plague. Plague is not too strong a word
+to apply to the pest-ridden, epidemic-filled, filthy settlement where in
+this part of the country the mill-hand lives, moves and has his being,
+horrible honeycomb of lives, shocking morals and decency.
+
+Around Columbia there lie five mills and their respective
+settlements--Excelsior, the Granton, Calcutta, the Richland and the
+Capital City. Each of these mills boasts its own so-called town. When
+these people are free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday they are too
+exhausted to do anything but turn into their hovels to sleep. At most on
+Saturday afternoons or Sundays they board a trolley and betake
+themselves to a distant park which, in the picturesque descriptions of
+Columbia, reads like an Arcadia and is in reality desolation.
+
+The mill-hands are not from the direct section of Columbia. They are
+strangers brought in from "the hills" by the agents of the company, who
+go hither and thither through the different parts of the country
+describing to the poor whites and the hill dwellers work in the mills as
+a way to riches and success. Filled with dreams of gain and possessions,
+with hopes of decent housing and schooling for their children, they
+leave their distant communities and troop to the mills. These immigrants
+are picturesque, touching to see. They come with all they own in the
+world on their backs or in their hands; penniless; burrs and twigs often
+in the hair of the young girls. They are hatless, barefooted, ignorant;
+innocent for the most part--and hopeful! What the condition of these
+labourers is after they have tested the promises of the manufacturer and
+found them empty bubbles can only be understood and imagined when one
+has seen their life, lived among them, worked by their side, and
+comprehended the tragedy of this population--a floating population,
+going from Granton to Excelsior, from Excelsior to Richland, hither and
+thither, seeking--seeking better conditions. They have no affiliation
+with the people of the town; they are looked down upon as scum: and in
+good sooth, for good reason, scum they are!
+
+It is spring, warm, gracious. This part of the world seems to be
+well-nigh treeless! There is no generous foliage, but wherever there are
+branches to bear it the first green has started out, delicate, tender
+and beautiful.
+
+In my simple work garb I leave Columbia and take a trolley to the mill
+district. I have chosen Excelsior as best for my purpose. Its reputation
+is most at stake; its prospectus dazzling; its annals effective. If such
+things are done in Gath...!
+
+I cannot say with what timidity I descend from the tram in this strange
+country, foreign to my Northern habitation and filled with classes whose
+likeness I have never seen and around which the Southern Negro makes a
+tad and gloomy background.
+
+Before the trolley has arrived at the corporation stores Excelsior has
+spoken--roared, clicked forth so vibrantly, so loudly, I am prepared to
+feel the earth shake. This is the largest mill in the world and looks
+it! A model, too, in point of view of architecture. I have read in the
+prospectus that it represents $1,750,000 capital, possesses 104,000
+spindles, employs 1,200 hands, and can, with crowding, employ 3,000.
+Surely it will have place for one more, then! I am impressed with its
+grandeur as it rises, red-bricked, with proud, straight towers toward
+its centre--impressed and frightened by its insistent call as it rattles
+and hums to me across the one-sixteenth of a mile of arid sand track. At
+one side Christianity and doctrine have constructed a church: a second
+one is building. On the other side, at a little distance, lies Granton,
+second largest mill. All this I take in as I make my way Excelsiorward.
+Between me and the vast mill itself there is not a soul. A thick, sandy
+road winds to the right; in the distance I can see a black trestle over
+which the freight cars take the cotton manufactures to the distant
+railroad and ship them to all parts of the world. Beyond the trestle are
+visible the first shanties of the mill town.
+
+Work first and lodgings afterward are my goals. At the door of Excelsior
+I am more than overwhelmed by its magnificence and its loud voice that
+makes itself so far-reachingly heard. There is no entry for me at the
+front of the mill, and I toil around to the side; not a creature to be
+seen. I venture upon the landing and make my way along a line of freight
+cars--between the track and the mill.
+
+A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar
+follows him! He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern
+courtesy not yet extinct. I hasten to ask for work.
+
+[Illustration: "MIGHTY MILL--PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL
+MAGNATE"
+
+"Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed;
+breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot"]
+
+"Well, thar's jest plenty of work, I reckon! Go in that do'; the
+overseer will tell you."
+
+Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in
+dimensions. Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and
+are piled in the centre. Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them,
+outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes
+of the black Negro of true Southern blood. I have been told there is no
+Negro labour in the mills. I take advantage of my guide's kind face to
+ask him if he knows where I can lodge.
+
+"Hed the measles? Well, my gyrl got 'em. Thar's a powerful sight of
+measles hyar. I'd take you-all to bo'd at my house ef you ain't 'fraid
+of measles. Thar's the hotel." (He points to what at the North would be
+known as a brick shanty.) "A gyrl can bo'd thar for $2.25 a week. You
+won't make that at first."
+
+With extreme kindness he leads me into the roaring mill past picturesque
+black men and cotton bales: we reach the "weave-room." I am told that
+carpet factories are celebrated for their uproar, but the weave-looms of
+a cotton mill to those who know them need no description! This is chaos
+before order was conceived: more weird in that, despite the din and
+thunder, everything is so orderly, so perfectly carried forth by the
+machinery. Here the cotton cloth is woven. Excelsior is so vast that
+from one end to the other of a room one cannot distinguish a friend. I
+decide instantly that the weave-room shall not be my destination! An
+overseer comes up to me. He talks with me politely and kindly--that is,
+as well as he can, he talks! It is almost impossible to hear what he
+says. He asks me simple and few questions and engages me promptly to
+work that "_evening_" as the Southerner calls the hours after midday.
+
+"You can see all the work and choose a sitting or a standing job." This
+is an improvement on Pittsburg and Lynn.
+
+I have been told there is always work in the mills for the worker.
+
+It is not strange that every inducement consistent with corporation
+rules should be made to entice the labouring girl! The difficulty is
+that no effort is made to keep her! The ease with which, in all these
+experiences, work has been obtained, goes definitely to prove that there
+is a demand everywhere for labourers.
+
+_Organize labour, therefore, so well that the work-woman who obtains her
+task may be able to continue it and keep her health and her
+self-respect_.
+
+With Excelsior as my future workshop I leave the mill to seek lodging in
+the mill village.
+
+The houses built by the corporation for the hands are some five or six
+minutes' walk, not more, from the palace-like structure of the mill
+proper. To reach them I plod through a roadway ankle-deep in red clay
+dust. The sun is bright and the air heavy, lifeless and dull; the scene
+before me is desolate, meager and poverty-stricken in the extreme.
+
+The mill houses are all built exactly alike. Painted in sickly greens
+and yellows, they rise on stilt-like elevations above the malarial soil.
+Here the architect has catered to the different families, different
+individual tastes in one point of view alone, regarding the number of
+rooms: They are known as "four-or six-room cottages." In one of the
+first cottages to the right a wholesome sight--the single wholesome
+sight I see during my experience--meets my eye. Human kindness has
+transformed one of the houses into a kindergarten--"Kindergarten" is
+over the door. A pretty Southern girl, a lady, stands surrounded by her
+little flock. The handful of half a dozen emancipated children who are
+not in the mills is refreshing to see. There are very few; the
+kindergarten flags for lack of little scholars.
+
+I accost her. "Can you tell me any decent place to board?" She is sorry,
+regards me kindly with the expression I have grown to know--the look the
+eyes adopt when a person of one class addresses her sister in a lower
+range.
+
+"I am a stranger come out to work in the mills."
+
+But the young lady takes little interest in me. Children are her care.
+They surround her, clinging, laughing, calling--little birds fed so
+gently by the womanly hand. She turns from the working-woman to them,
+but not before indicating a shanty opposite:
+
+"Mrs. Green lives there in that four-room cottage. She is a good woman."
+
+Through the door's crack I interview Mrs. Green, a pallid, sickly
+creature, gowned, as are most of the women, in a calico garment made all
+in one piece. She permits me to enter the room which forms (as do all
+the front rooms in a mill cottage) bedroom and general living-room.
+
+Here is confusion incarnate--and filthy disorder. The tumbled, dirty bed
+fills up one-half the room. In it is a little child, shaking with
+chills. On the bare floor are bits of food, old vegetables, rags, dirty
+utensils of all sorts of domestic description. The house has a sickening
+odour. The woman tells me she is too ill to keep tidy--too ill to keep
+boarders. We do not strike a bargain. "I am only here four months," she
+said. "Sick ever since I come, and my little girl has fevernaygu."
+
+I wander forth and a child directs me to a six-room cottage, "a real
+bo'din'-house." I attack it and thus discover the dwelling where I make
+my home in Excelsior.
+
+From the front room of this dwelling a kitchen opens. Within its shadow
+I see a Negro washing dishes. A tall woman, taller than most men,
+angular, white-haired, her face seared by toil and stricken with age,
+greets me: she is the landlady. At her skirts, catching them and staring
+at a stranger, wanders a very young child--a blue-eyed, clean little
+being; a great relief, in point of fact, to the general filth hitherto
+presented me. The room beyond me is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude.
+
+"Mrs. Jones?"
+
+"Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house."
+
+The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has "jest ben com'in' Letty's
+hair." Letty smiles delightedly.
+
+"This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick
+thing." Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the
+stranger's child. "And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She
+don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her."
+
+"Can I find lodging here?"
+
+She looks at me. "Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of
+gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you
+can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there,
+too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard
+on her; she's ben sick fo' days."
+
+I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at
+noon.
+
+"Stranger hyar, I reckon?"
+
+"Yes; from Massachusetts. A shoe-hand."
+
+She shakes her head: "You wont like the mills."
+
+She draws Letty between her old stiff knees, seats herself on a
+straight chair, and combs the child's hair on either side its pathetic,
+gentle little face. So I leave her for the present to return to Columbia
+and fetch back with me my bundle of clothes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I return at noon it is dinner time. I enter and am introduced, with
+positive grace and courtesy, by my dear old landlady to her son-in-law,
+"Tommy Jones," a widower, a man in decent store clothes and a Derby hat
+surrounded by a majestic crape sash. He is nonchalantly loading a large
+revolver, and thrusts it in his trousers pocket: "Always carry it," he
+explains; "comes handy!" Then I am presented to the gentlemen boarders.
+I beg to go upstairs, with my bundles, and I see for the first time my
+dwelling part of this shanty.
+
+A ladderlike stair leading directly from the kitchen takes me into the
+loft. Heavens! the sight of that sleeping apartment! There are three
+beds in it, sagging beds, covered by calico comforters. The floor is
+bare; the walls are bare. I have grown to know that "Jones'" is the
+cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it
+lacks perfection. Around the bare walls hang the garments of the other
+women who share the room with me. What humble and pathetic decorations!
+poor, miserable clothes--a shawl or two, a coat or two, a cotton
+wrapper, a hat; and on one nail the miniature clothes of Letty--a
+little night-dress and a tiny blue cotton dress. I put my bundle down by
+the side of my bed which I am to share with another woman, and descend,
+for Mrs. Jones' voice summons me to the midday meal.
+
+The nourishment provided for these thirteen-hour-a-day labourers is as
+follows: On a tin saucepan there was a little salt pork and on another
+dish a pile of grease-swimming spinach. A ragged Negro hovered over
+these articles of diet; the room was full of the smell of frying. After
+the excitement of my search for work, and the success, if success it can
+be called that so far had met me, I could not eat; I did not even sit
+down. I made my excuse. I said that I had had something to eat in
+Columbia, and started out to the mill.
+
+By the time the mill-hand has reached his home a good fifteen minutes
+out of the three-quarters of an hour recreation is gone: his food is
+quickly bolted, and by the time I have reached the little brick hotel
+pointed out to me that morning and descended to its cellar restaurant,
+forced myself to drink a cup of sassafras tea, and mounted again into
+the air, the troop of workers is on the march millward. I join them.
+
+Although the student of philanthropy and the statistician would find
+difficulty in forcing the countersign of the manufactories, the worker
+may go everywhere.
+
+I do not see my friend of the morning, the overseer, in the
+"weave-room"; indeed, there is no one to direct me; but I discover,
+after climbing the stairs, a room of flying spools and more subdued
+machinery, and it appears that the spool-room is this man's especial
+charge. He consigns to me a standing job. A set of revolving spools is
+designated, and he secures a pretty young girl of about sixteen, who
+comes cheerfully forward and consents to "learn" me.
+
+Spooling is not disagreeable, and the room is the quietest part of the
+mill--noisy enough, but calm compared to the others. In Excelsior this
+room is, of course, enormous, light and well ventilated, although the
+temperature, on account of some quality of the yarn, is kept at a point
+of humidity far from wholesome.
+
+"Spooling" is hard on the left arm and the side. Heart disease is a
+frequent complaint amongst the older spoolers. It is not dirty compared
+to shoe-making, and whereas one stands to "spool," when one is not
+waiting for yarn it is constant movement up and down the line. The fact
+that there are more children than young girls, more young girls than
+women, proves the simplicity of this task. The cotton comes from the
+spinning-room to the spool-room, and as the girl stands before her
+"side," as it is called, she sees on a raised ledge, whirling in rapid
+vibration, some one hundred huge spools full of yarn; whilst below her,
+each in its little case, lies a second bobbin of yarn wound like a
+distaff.
+
+Her task controls machinery in constant motion, that never stops except
+in case of accident.
+
+With one finger of her right hand she detaches the yarn from the distaff
+that lies inert in the little iron rut before her. With her left hand
+she seizes the revolving circle of the large spool's top in front of
+her, holding this spool steady, overcoming the machinery for the moment
+not as strong as her grasp. This demands a certain effort. Still
+controlling the agitated spool with her left hand, she detaches the end
+of yarn with the same hand from the spool, and by means of a patent
+knotter harnessed around her palm she joins together the two loosened
+ends, one from the little distaff and one from this large spool, so that
+the two objects are set whirling in unison and the spool receives all
+the yarn from the distaff. Up and down this line the spooler must walk
+all day long, replenishing the iron grooves with fresh yarn and
+reknitting broken strands. This is all that there is of "spooling." It
+demands alertness, quickness and a certain amount of strength from the
+left arm, and that is all! To conceive of a woman of intelligence
+pursuing this task from the age of eight years to twenty-two on down
+through incredible hours is not salutary. You will say to me, that if
+she demands nothing more she is fit for nothing more. I cannot think it.
+
+The little girl who teaches me spooling is fresh and cheerful and
+jolly; I grant her all this. She lives at home. I am told by my
+subsequent friends that she thinks herself better than anybody. This
+pride and ambition has at least elevated her to neat clothes and a
+sprightliness of manner that is refreshing. She does not hesitate to
+evince her superiority by making sport of me. She takes no pains to
+teach me well. Instead of giving me the patent knotter, which would have
+simplified my job enormously, she teaches me what she expresses "the
+old-fashioned way"--knotting the yarn with the fingers. I have mastered
+this slow process by the time that the overseer discovers her trick and
+brings me the harness for my left hand. She is full of curiosity about
+me, asking me every sort of question, to which I give the best answers
+that I can. By and by she slips away from me. I turn to find her; she
+has vanished, leaving me under the care of a truly kind, sad little
+creature in a wrapper dress. This little Maggie has a heart of gold.
+
+"Don't you-all fret," she consoles. "That's like Jeannie: she's so
+_mean_. When you git to be a remarkable fine spooler she'll want you on
+her side, you bet."
+
+She assists my awkwardness gently.
+
+"I'll learn you all right. You-all kin stan' hyar by me all day. Jeannie
+clean fergits she was a greenhorn herself onct; we all wuz. Whar you
+come from?"
+
+"Lynn, Massachusetts."
+
+"Did you-all git _worried_ with the train? I only bin onto it onct, and
+it worried me for days!"
+
+She tells me her simple annals with no question:
+
+"My paw he married ag'in, and me stepmother peard like she didn't care
+for me; so one day I sez to paw, 'I'm goin' to work in the mills'--an' I
+lef home all alone and come here." After a little--"When I sayd good-by
+to my father peard like _he_ didn't care neither. I'm all alone here. I
+bo'ds with that girl's mother."
+
+I wore that day in the mill a blue-checked apron. So did Maggie, but
+mine was from Wanamaker's in New York, and had, I suppose, a certain
+style, for the child said:
+
+"I suttenly dew think that yere's a awful pretty apron: where'd you git
+it?"
+
+"Where I came from," I answered, and, I am sorry to say, it sounded
+brusque. For the little thing blushed, fearful lest she had been
+indiscreet....(Oh, I assure you the qualities of good breeding are
+there! Some of my factory and mill friends can teach the set in which I
+move lessons salutary!)
+
+"I didn't mean jest 'xactly wherebouts," she murmurs; "I only meant it
+warn't from these parts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the afternoon the gay Jeannie returns and presents to me a tin
+box. It is filled with a black powder. "Want some?" Well, what is it?
+She greets my ignorance with shrieks of laughter. In a trice half a
+dozen girls have left their spooling and cluster around me.
+
+"She ain't never _seen_ it!" and the little creature fills her mouth
+with the powder which she keeps under her tongue. "It is _snuff_!"
+
+They all take it, old and young, even the smallest children. Their
+mouths are brown with it; their teeth are black with it. They take it
+and smell it and carry it about under their tongues all day in a black
+wad, spitting it all over the floor. Others "dip," going about with the
+long sticks in their mouths. The air of the room is white with cotton,
+although the spool-room is perhaps the freest. These little particles
+are breathed into the nose, drawn into the lungs. Lung disease and
+pneumonia--consumption--are the constant, never-absent scourge of the
+mill village. The girls expectorate to such an extent that the floor is
+nauseous with it; the little girls practise spitting and are adepts at
+it.
+
+Over there is a woman of sixty, spooling; behind the next side is a
+child, not younger than eight, possibly, but so small that she has to
+stand on a box to reach her side. Only the very young girls show any
+trace of buoyancy; the older ones have accepted with more or less
+complaint the limitation of their horizons. They are drawn from the hill
+district with traditions no better than the loneliness, desertion and
+inexperience of the fever-stricken mountains back of them. They are
+illiterate, degraded; the mill has been their widest experience; and all
+their tutelage is the intercourse of girl to girl during the day and in
+the evenings the few moments before they go to bed in the mill-houses,
+where they either live at home with parents and brothers all working
+like themselves, or else they are fugitive lodgers in a boarding-house
+or a hotel, where their morals are in jeopardy constantly. As soon as a
+girl passes the age, let us say of seventeen or eighteen, there is no
+hesitation in her reply when you ask her: "Do you like the mills?"
+Without exception the answer is, "I _hate them_."
+
+Absorbed with the novelty of learning my trade, the time goes swiftly.
+Yet even the interest and excitement does not prevent fatigue, and from
+12:45 to 6:45 seems interminable! Even when the whistle blows we are not
+all free--Excelsior is behindhand with her production, and those whom
+extra pay can beguile stay on. Maggie, my little teacher, walks with me
+toward our divided destinations, her quasi-home and mine.
+
+Neither in the mill nor the shoe-shops did I take precaution to change
+my way of speaking--and not once had it been commented upon. To-day
+Maggie says to me:
+
+"I reckon you-all is 'Piscopal?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, you-all _talks_ 'Piscopal."
+
+So much for a tribute to the culture of the church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jones' supper is ready, spread on a bare board running the length of
+the room--a bare board supported by saw-horses; the seats are boards
+again, a little lower in height. They sag in the middle threateningly.
+One plate is piled high with fish--bones, skin and flesh all together in
+one odourous mass. Salt pork graces another platter and hominy another.
+I am alone in the supper room. The guests, landlord and landlady are all
+absent. Some one, as he rushes by me, gives me the reason for the
+desertion:
+
+"They've all gone to see the fight; all the white fellers is after a
+nigger."
+
+Through the window I can see the fleeing forms of the settlers--women,
+sunbonnets in hand, the men hatless. It appears that all the world has
+turned out to see what lawless excitement may be in store. The whirling
+dust and sand in the distance denote the group formed by the Negro and
+his pursuers. This, standing on the little porch of my lodging-house, I
+see and am glad to find that the chase is fruitless. The black man,
+tortured to distraction, dared at length to rebel, and from the moment
+that he showed spirit his life was not worth a farthing, but his legs
+were, and he got clear of Excelsior. The lodgers troop back. Molly, my
+landlady's niece, breathing and panting, disheveled, leads the
+procession and is voluble over the affair.
+
+"They-all pester a po'r nigger's life out 'er him, ye'es, they dew so!
+Ef a nigger wants ter show his manners to me, why, I show mine to him,"
+she said generously, "and ef he's a mannerly nigger, why, I ain't got
+nothin' ag'in him; no, sir, I suttenly ain't!"
+
+It is difficult to conceive how broad and philanthropic, how generous
+and unusual this poor mill girl's standpoint is contrasted with the
+sentiment of the people with which she moves.
+
+I slip into my seat at the table in the centre of the sagging board and
+find Molly beside me, the girl from Excelsior with the pretty hair on
+the other side. The host, Mr. Jones, honours the head of the table, and
+"grandmaw" waits upon us. Opposite are the three men operatives,
+flannel-shirted and dirty. The men are silent for the most part, and
+bend over their food, devouring the unpalatable stuff before them. I
+feel convinced that if they were not so terribly hungry they could not
+eat it. Jones discourses affably on the mill question, advising me to
+learn "speeding," as it pays better and is the only advanced work in the
+mill.
+
+Molly, my elbow-companion, seems to take up the whole broad seat, she is
+so big and so pervading; and her close proximity--unwashed, heavy with
+perspiration as she is, is not conducive to appetite. She is full of
+news and chatter and becomes the leading spirit of the meal.
+
+"I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill
+to-day."
+
+She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who
+pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear.
+
+"Amanda Wilcox she dun tol' Ida Jacobs that she'd _do her_ at noon,
+and Ida she sarst her back. It was all about a _sport_[5]--Bill James.
+He's been spo'tin' Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I reckon, and Amanda
+got crazy over it and 'clared she'd spile her game. And she tol' Ida
+Jacobs a lie about Bill--sayd he' been spo'tin' her down to the Park
+on Sunday.
+
+  [Footnote 5: A beau.]
+
+"Well, sir, the whole spinnin'-room was out to see what they-all'd do at
+noon, and they jest resh'd for each other like's they was crazy; and one
+man he got between 'em and sayd, 'Now the gyrl what spits over my hand
+first can begin the fight.'
+
+"They both them spit right, into each other's faces, they did so; and
+arter that yer couldn't get them apart. Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the
+ha'r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist. They was
+suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn't just parted them; it
+took three men to part 'em."
+
+Her story was much appreciated.
+
+"Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was. She can't git back
+to work fer days."
+
+The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill.
+
+After supper the men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to
+the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a
+comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her. She made a lap, a
+generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty. Mrs. White
+had disappeared.
+
+"You-all come here to me, Letty." She held out her large dirty hands to
+the blue-eyed waif. In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and
+ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in
+search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a
+moment motionless and on the verge of tears.
+
+"You-all come to Molly and go By-O."
+
+There was some magic in that word that at long past eight charmed the
+eighteen-months'-old baby. She toddled across the floor to the
+mill-girl, who lifted her tenderly into her ample lap. The big, awkward
+girl, scarcely more than a child herself, uncouth, untutored, suddenly
+gained a dignity and a grace maternal--not too much to say it, she had
+charm.
+
+Letty leaned her head against Molly's breast and smiled contentedly,
+whilst the mill-girl rocked softly to and fro.
+
+"Shall Molly sing By-O?"
+
+She should. The little face, lifted, declared its request.
+
+"Letty must sing, too," murmured the young girl. "Sing By-O! We'll all
+sing it together."
+
+Letty covered her eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two
+words sweetly, "By-O! By-O!" and Molly joined her. Thus they rocked and
+hummed, a picture infinitely touching to see.
+
+One of these two would soon be an unclaimed foundling when the unknown
+woman had faded out of existence. The other--who can say how to her
+maternity would come!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the room where we sit Jones' wife died a few weeks before, victim to
+pneumonia that all winter has scourged the town--"the ketchin'
+kind"--that is the way it has been caught, and fatally by many.[6]
+
+  [Footnote 6: There are no statistics, they tell me, kept of
+  births, marriages or deaths in this State; it is less surprising
+  that the mill village has none.]
+
+In one corner stands a sewing machine, in another an organ--luxuries: in
+these cases, objects of art. They are bought on the installment plan,
+and some of these girls pay as high as $100 for the organ in monthly
+payments of $4 at a time. The mill-girl is too busy to use the machine
+and too ignorant to play the organ.
+
+Jones is a courteous host. His lodgers occupy the comfortable seats,
+whilst he perches himself on the edge of a straight high-backed chair
+and converses with us, not lighting his pipe until urged, then
+deprecatingly smoking in little smothered puffs. I feel convinced that
+Jones thinks that Massachusetts shoe-hands are a grade higher in the
+social scale than South Carolina mill-girls! Because, after being
+witness more than once to my morning and evening ablutions on the back
+steps, he said:
+
+"Now, I am goin' to dew the right thing by you-all; I'm goin' to fix up
+a wash-stand in that there loft." This is a triumph over the lax,
+uncleanly shiftlessness of the Southern settlement. Again:
+
+"You-all must of had good food whar you come from: your skin shows it;
+'tain't much like hyar-'bouts. Why, I'd know a mill-hand anywhere, if I
+met her at the North Pole--salla, pale, sickly."
+
+I might have added for him, deathlike, ... skeleton ... _doomed_. But I
+listen, rocking in the best chair, whilst Mrs. White glides in from the
+kitchen and, unobserved, takes her place on a little low chair by the
+sewing machine behind Jones. Her baby rocks contentedly in Molly's arms.
+
+Jones continues: "I worked in the mill fifteen years. I have done a
+little of all jobs, I reckon, and I ain't got no use for mill-work. If
+they'd pay me fifty cents a side to run the 'speeders' I'd _go_ in fer
+an hour or two now and then. Why, I sell sewing machines and organs to
+the mill-hands all over the country. I make $60 a month, and _I touch
+all my money_," he said significantly. "It's the way to do. A man don't
+feel no dignity unless he does handle his own money, if it's ten cents
+or ten dollars." He then explains the corporation's methods of paying
+its slaves. Some of the hands never touch their money from month's end
+to month's end. Once in two weeks is pay-day. A woman has then worked
+122 hours. The corporation furnishes her house. There is the rent to be
+paid; there are also the corporation stores from which she has been
+getting her food and coal and what gewgaws the cheap stuff on sale may
+tempt her to purchase. There is a book of coupons issued by the mill
+owners which are as good as gold. It is good at the stores, good for the
+rent, and her time is served out in pay for this representative
+currency. This is of course not obligatory, but many of the operatives
+avail themselves or bind themselves by it. When the people are ill,
+Jones says, they are docked for wages. When, for indisposition or
+fatigue, they knock a day off, there is a man, hired especially for this
+purpose, who rides from house to house to find out what is the matter
+with them, to urge them to rise, and if they are not literally too sick
+to move, they are hounded out of their beds and back to their looms.
+
+Jones himself, mark you, is emancipated! He has set himself free; but he
+is still a too-evident although a very innocent partisan of the
+corporation.
+
+[Illustration: "THE SOUTHERN MILL HAND'S FACE IS UNIQUE, A FEARFUL
+TYPE"]
+
+"I think," he says, "that the mill-hand is _meaner_ to the corporation
+than the corporation is to the mill-hand."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, they would strike for shorter hours and better pay."
+
+Unconsciously with one word he condemns his own cause.
+
+"What's the use of these hyar mill-hands tryin' to fight corporations?
+Why, Excelsior is the biggest mill under one roof in the world; its
+capital is over a million; it has 24,500 spindles. The men that run
+these mills have got all their stuff paid for; they've got piles of
+money. What do they care for a few penniless lot of strikers? They can
+shut down and not feel it. Why, these hyar people might just as well
+fight against a stone wall."
+
+The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which
+they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a
+mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has
+fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He
+perforce _will_ speak well. I do not blame him.
+
+He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He
+wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and
+washed.
+
+"Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill.
+Any of 'em would be jealous of you-all." Then he warns, again forced
+to plead for another side: "You-all won't come out as you go in, I
+tell you! You're the picture of health. Why," he continues, a little
+later, "you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why,
+in the summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall
+they've got down to ---- and dance there till four o'clock--come home
+just in time to get into the mills at 5:45." Which fact convinces me
+of nothing but that the women are still, despite their condition and
+their white slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human
+beings (Thank God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) _not yet
+crushed to the dumb endurance of beasts_.
+
+Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my
+loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me.
+Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the
+lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark,
+suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In
+the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is
+warm and stifling.
+
+Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try
+to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on
+the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too
+profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into
+sight. Sheepishly she comes across the room to me--sits down on the
+nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose
+colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and
+perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any kind around her
+neck and waist, but her headdress is a tribute to feminine vanity!
+Compactly screwed curl papers, dozens of them, accentuate the hard,
+unlovely lines of her face and brow. Her features are coarse, heavy and
+square, but her eyes are clear, frank and kind. She has an appealing,
+friendly expression; Molly is a distinctly whole-souled, nice creature.
+One elbow sinks in the bed and she cradles her crimped head in her
+large, dirty hand.
+
+"My, ef I could write as fast as you-all I'd write some letters, I
+reckon. Ust ter write; like it good enough, tew; but I ain't wrote in
+months. I was thinkin' th' other day ef I didn't take out the _pencile_
+I'd dun forgit how to spell."
+
+Without the window through which she gazes is seen the pale night sky
+and in the heavens hangs the thread of a moon. Its light is unavailing
+alongside of the artificial moon--an enormous electric light. This lifts
+its brilliant, dazzling circumference high in the centre of the mill
+street. I have but to move a trifle aside from the window coping's
+shelter to receive a blinding blaze. But Molly has been subtle enough to
+discover the natural beauty of the night. She sees, curiously enough,
+past this modern illumination: the young moon has charm for her. "Ain't
+it a pretty night?" she asks me. Its beauty has not much chance to
+enhance this room and the crude forms, but it has awakened something
+akin to sentiment in the breast of this young savage.
+
+"I don't guess ever any one gets tired of hearing _sweet music_[7], does
+you-all?"
+
+  [Footnote 7: The Southern term for stringed instruments.]
+
+"What is the nicest music you have ever heard, Molly?"
+
+"Why, a gui-taar an' a mandolin. It's so sweet! I could sit for hours
+an' hyar 'em pick." Her curlpaper head wags in enthusiasm.
+
+"Up to the hills, from whar I cum, I ust ter hyar 'em a serenadin' of
+some gyrl an' I ust ter set up in bed and lis'en tel it died out; it
+warn't for _me_, tho'!"
+
+"Didn't they ever serenade you?"
+
+"No, _ma'am_; I don't pay no 'tention to spo'tin'."
+
+Without, the moon's slender thread holds in a silvery circle the
+half-defined misty ball that shall soon be full moon. Thank heavens I
+shall not see this golden globe form, wane, decline in this town,
+forgotten of gods and men! But the woman at my side must see it mark its
+seasons; she is inscrutably part of the colony devoted to unending toil!
+Here all she has brought of strong youth shall fade and perish; womanly
+sentiment be crushed; die out in sterility; or worse, coarsen to the
+animal like to those whose companion she is forced to be.
+
+"I live to the Rockies, an' Uncle Tom he come up after me and carried
+me down hyar. My auntie died two weeks ago in the livin'-room; she had
+catchin' pneumonia. I tuk care of her all through her sickness, did
+every mite for her, and there was bo'ders, tew--I guess half a dozen of
+'em--and I cooked and washed and everything for 'em all. When she died I
+went to work in the mill. Say, I reckon you-all didn't see my new hat?"
+It was fetched, done up with care in paper. She displayed it, a white
+straw round hat, covered with roses. At praise of it and admiration the
+girl flushed with pleasure.
+
+"My, you _dew_ like it? Why, I didn't think it _pretty, much_. Uncle Tom
+dun buy it for me."
+
+She gives all her wages to Uncle Tom, who in turn brings her from time
+to time such stimulus to labour as some pretty feminine thing like this.
+_This_ shall crown Molly's hair freed from the crimpers when the one day
+of the week, Sunday, comes! Not from Sunday till Sunday again are those
+hair crimpers unloosed.
+
+Despite Uncle Tom's opposition to mill work for women, despite his
+cognizance of the unhealthfulness of the mills, he knew a thing or two
+when he put his strapping innocent niece to work thirteen hours a day
+and pocketed himself the spoils.
+
+"I can't go to bade awful early, because I don't sleep ef I do; I'm too
+tired to sleep. When I feel real sick I tries to stay home a day, and
+then the overseer he rides around and _worries_ me to git up. I declare
+ef I wouldn't near as soon git up as to be roused up. They don't give
+you no peace, rousing you out of bed when you can scarcely stand. I
+suttenly dew feel bade to-night; I suttenly can't scarcely get to bed!"
+
+Here into our discourse, mounting the stairs, comes the pale mother and
+her little child. This ghost of a woman, wedding-ringless, who called
+herself Mrs. White, could scarcely crawl to her bed. She was whiter than
+the moon and as slender. Molly's bed is close to mine. The night toilet
+of this girl consisted of her divesting herself of her shoes, stockings
+and her cotton wrapper, then in all the other garments she wore during
+the day she turned herself into bed, nightgownless, unwashed.
+
+Mrs. White undressed her child, giving it very good care. It was a tiny
+creature, small-boned and meager. Every time I looked over at it it
+smiled appealingly, touchingly. Finally when she went downstairs to the
+pump to get a drink of water for it, I went over and in her absence
+stroked the little hand and arm: such a small hand and such an
+infinitesimal arm! Unused to attention and the touch, but not in the
+least frightened, Letty extended her miniature member and looked up at
+me in marvel. Mrs. White on her return made herself ready for the night.
+She said in her frail voice: "Letty's a powerful hand for vegetubbles,
+and she eats everything."
+
+Memory of the ham and the putrid fish I had seen this
+eighteen-months-old child devour not an hour ago came to my mind.
+
+Mrs. White let down her hair--a nonchalance that Molly had not been
+guilty of. This woman's hair was no more than a wisp. It stood out thin,
+wiry, almost invisible in the semilight. This was the extent of her
+toilet. She slipped out of her shoes, but she did not even take off her
+dress. Then she turned in by her child. She was very ill; it was plain
+to be seen. Death was fast upon this woman's track; it should clutch her
+inevitably within the next few weeks at most, if that emaciated body had
+resistance for so long. Her languor was slow and indicative, her gray,
+ashen face like death itself.
+
+"Lie still, Letty," she whispers to the baby; "don't touch mother--she
+can't stand it to-night."
+
+My mattress was straw and billowy, the bed sheetless, and under the
+weight of the cotton comforter I tried to compose myself. There were
+five of us in the little loft. My bedfellow was peaceful and lay still,
+too tired to do anything else. In front of me was the open window,
+through which shone the electric light, blatant and insistent; behind
+this, the clock of Excelsior--brightly lit and incandescent--glared in
+upon us, giant hands going round, seeming to threaten the hour of dawn
+and frightening sleep and mocking, bugbearing the short hours which the
+working-woman might claim for repose.
+
+It was well on to nine o 'clock and the mills were working overtime.
+Molly turned restlessly on her bed and murmured, "I suttenly dew feel
+bad to-night." A little later I heard her say over to herself: "My, I
+forgot to say my prayers." She was the sole member of the loft to whom
+sleep came; it came to her soon. I lay sleepless, watching the clock of
+Excelsior. The ladder staircase openly led to the kitchen: there was no
+door, no privacy possible to our quarters, and the house was full of
+men.
+
+A little later Letty cries: "A drink, a drink!" and the tone of the
+mother, who replies, is full of patience, but fuller still of suffering.
+
+"Hush, Letty, hush! Mother's too sick to get it." But the child
+continues to fret and plead. Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches
+out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water
+which has brought death to so many in the mill village. The child drinks
+it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself
+staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all
+through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing
+momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable--she rises to be
+violently sick over and over again. It seems an indefinite number of
+times to one who lies awake listening, and must seem unceasing to the
+poor wretch who returns to her bed only to rise again.
+
+She groans and suffers and bites her exclamations short. Twice she goes
+to the window and by the light of the electric lamp pours laudanum into
+a glass and takes it to still her pain and her need.
+
+The odours become so nauseous that I am fain to cover my face and head.
+The child fed on salt ham and pork is restless and thirsty all night and
+begs for water at short intervals. At last the demand is too much for
+the poor agonized mother--she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to
+which one feels her gentleness must be forced. "Hark! The cat will get
+you, Letty! See that cat?" And the feline horror in nameless form,
+evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, who
+murmurs, sobs and subsides.
+
+What spirit deeper than her character has hitherto displayed stirs the
+mill-girl in the bed next to me? Possibly the tragedy in the other bed;
+possibly the tragedy of her own youth. At all events, whatever burden is
+on her, her cross is heavy! She murmurs in her dreams, in a voice more
+mature, more serious than any tone of hers has indicated:
+
+"Oh, my God!"
+
+It is a strange cry--call--appeal. It rings solemn to me as I lie and
+watch and pity. Hours of night which should be to the labourer peaceful,
+full of repose after the day, drag along from nine o'clock, when we
+went to bed, till three. At three Mrs. White falls into a doze. I envy
+her. Over me the vermin have run riot; I have killed them on my neck and
+my arms. When it seemed that flesh and blood must succumb, and sleep,
+through sheer pity, take hold of us, a stirring begins in the kitchen
+below which in its proximity seems a part of the very room we occupy.
+The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire. At a
+quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly
+smoke has ascended the stairway to us. This smoke is thick with
+odours--the odour of bad grease and bad meat. Its cloud conceals the
+beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the
+window. It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates
+itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall. So permeating is it
+that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me
+all day. I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap
+of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. _I know what they
+are_, for I have seen them the night before--great crimson bits of flesh
+torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as
+he crouched by the kitchen table.
+
+This preparation continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time
+to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior
+rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever might be lucky
+enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. "Molly!" The girl murmurs
+and turns. "Come, you-all git up; you take so powerful long to dress
+yo'self!" Long to dress! It is difficult to see how that would be
+possible. She rises reluctantly, yawning, sighing; lifts her scarcely
+rested body, puts on her stockings and her shoes and the dirty wrapper.
+Her hair is untouched, her face unwashed, but she is ready for the day!
+Mrs. White has actually fallen asleep, the small roll, her baby, curled
+up close to her back.
+
+Molly's summons is mine as well. I am a mill-hand with her. I rise and
+repeat my ablutions of the evening before. Unhooking the tin basin,
+possessing myself of a bit of soap on the kitchen stairs, I wash my face
+and hands. Although the water is dipped from the pail on which a scum
+has formed, still it is so much more cool, refreshing and stimulating
+than anything that has come in contact with me for hours that it is a
+positive pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MILL
+
+By this time the morning has found us all, and unlovely it seems as
+regarded from this shanty environment. At 4:50 Excelsior has shrieked
+every settler awake. At half-past five we have breakfasted and I pass
+out of the house, one of the half-dozen who seek the mill from our
+doors.
+
+We fall in with the slowly moving, straggling file, receiving additions
+from each tenement as we pass.
+
+Beside me walks a boy of fourteen in brown earth-coloured clothes. He is
+so thin that his bones threaten to pierce his vestments. He has a
+slender visage of the frailness I have learned to know and distinguish:
+it represents the pure American type of people known as "poor white
+trash," and with whose blood has been scarcely any admixture of foreign
+element. A painter would call his fine, sensitive face beautiful: it is
+the face of a martyr. His hat of brown felt slouches over bright red
+hair; one cuffless hand, lank and long, hangs down inert, the other
+sleeve falls loose; he is one-armed. His attitude and gait express his
+defrauded existence. Cotton clings to his clothes; his shoes, nearly
+falling off his feet, are red with clay stains. I greet him; he is shy
+and surprised, but returns the salutation and keeps step with me. He is
+"from the hills," an orphan, perfectly friendless. He boards with a lot
+of men; evidently their companionship has not been any solace to him,
+for, as he is alone this day, I see him always alone.
+
+He works from 5:45 to 6:45, with three-quarters of an hour at noon, and
+has his Saturday afternoons and his Sundays free. He is destitute of the
+quality we call joy and has never known comfort. He makes fifty cents a
+day; he has no education, no way of getting an education; he is almost
+a man, crippled and condemned. At my exclamation when he tells me the
+sum of his wages he looks up at me; a faint likeness to a smile comes
+about his thin lips: "_It keeps me in existence_!" he says in a slow
+drawl. He used just those words.
+
+At the different doors of the mill we part. He is not unconscious of my
+fellowship with him, that I feel and know. A kindling light has come
+across his face. "Good luck to you!" I bid him, and he lifts his head
+and his bowed shoulders and with something like warmth replies, "I hope
+you-all will have good luck, tew."
+
+As we come into the spooling-room from the hot air without the mill
+seems cold. I go over to a green box destined for the refuse of the
+floors and sit down, waiting for work. On this day I am to have my own
+"side"--I am a full-fledged spooler. Excelsior has gotten us all out of
+our beds before actual daylight, but that does not mean we are to have a
+chance to begin our money-making piece-work job at once! "Thar ain't
+likely to be no yarn for an hour to-day," Maggie tells me. She is no
+less dirty than yesterday, or less smelly, but also she is no less kind.
+
+"I reckon you-all are goin' to make a remarkable spooler," she cheers me
+on. "You'll get tired out at first, but then I gets tired, tew, right
+along, only it ain't the same _kind_--it's not so _sharp_." Her
+distinction is clever.
+
+Across the room at one of the "drawing-in frames" I see the figure of
+an unusally pretty girl with curly dark hair. She bends to her job in
+front of the frame she runs; it has the effect of tapestry, of that
+work with which women of another--oh, of _quite_ another class--amuse
+their leisure, with which they kill their time. "Drawing-in,"[8]
+although a sitting job, is considered to be a back-breaker. The girls
+are ambitious at this work; they make good wages. They sit close to
+their frames, bent over, for twelve hours out of the day. This girl
+whom I see across the floor of the Excelsior is an object to rest the
+eyes upon; she is a beauty. There is not much beauty of any kind or
+description in sight. Maggie has noticed her esthetic effect. "You-all
+seen that girl; she's suttenly prob'ly am _peart_."
+
+  [Footnote 8: A good drawer-in makes $1.25 a day.]
+
+She is a new hand from a distance. This is her first day. What miserable
+chance has brought her here? If she stays the mill will claim her body
+and soul. The overseer has marked her out; he hovers in the part of the
+room where she works. She has colour and her difference to her pale
+companions is marked. Excelsior will not leave those roses unwithered. I
+can foretell the change as yellow unhealthfulness creeps upon her cheeks
+and the red forever goes. There are no red cheeks here, not one. She has
+chosen a sitting-down job thinking it easier. I saw her lean back, put
+her hands around her waist and rest, or try to, after she has bent four
+hours over her close task. I go over to her.
+
+"They say it's awful hard on the eyes, but they tell me, too, that I'll
+be a remarkable fine hand."
+
+I saw her apply for work, and saw, too, the man's face as he looked at
+her when she asked: "Got any work?"
+
+"We've got plenty of work for a good-looking woman like you," he said
+with significance, and took pains to place her within his sight.
+
+The yarn has come in, and I return to my part of the mill; Maggie flies
+to her spools and leaves me to seek my distant place far away from her.
+I set my work in order; whilst my back is turned some girl possesses
+herself of my hand-harness. Mine was a new one, and the one she leaves
+for me is broken. This delays, naturally, and the overseer, after
+proving to his satisfaction that I am hampered, gets me a new one and I
+set to work.
+
+Many of the older hands come without breakfast, and a little later tin
+pails or paper parcels appear. These operatives crouch down in a Turkish
+fashion at the machines' sides and take a hasty mouthful of their
+unwholesome, unpleasant-looking food, eating with their fingers more
+like animals than human beings. By eight the full steam power is on, to
+judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one
+of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to
+approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands
+that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the
+byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The
+tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed.
+There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you can tell it by the scowls
+and the low, insulting words as an enemy passes. To protect the hair
+from the flying pieces of cotton the more particular women, and
+oftentimes children as well, wear felt hats pulled down well over the
+eyes. The cotton, indeed, thistledown-like, flies without cessation
+through the air--spins off from the spools; it rises and floats, falling
+on the garments and in the hair, entering the nostrils and throat and
+lungs. I repeat, the expectoration, the coughing and the throat-cleaning
+is constant. Over there two girls have taken advantage of a wait for
+yarn to go to sleep on the floor; their heads are pillowed on each
+others' shoulders; they rest against a cotton bale. Maggie wanders over
+to me to see "how you-all is gettin' on." "Tired?" "Well, I reckon I am.
+Thank God we get out in a little while now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon I went up to the loft to rest a few moments before going
+to the mill. Mrs. White was sitting on her bed, a slender figure in the
+blue-checked wrapper she always wore. Her head was close to the window,
+her silhouette in the light, pale and slender. "I wa'n't sick when I
+come hyar, but them mills! They's suttinly tew hyard on a woman!
+Weave-room killed me, I guess. I couldn't hyar at all when I come out
+and scarcely could stan' on ma feet when I got home. Tew tyred to eat,
+tew; and the water hyar is regularly pisen; hev you-all seen it? It's
+all colours. Doctor done come to see me; ain't helpin' me any; 'pears
+like he-all ain't goin' to come no mo'!"
+
+"If you have a husband, why don't you go to him and let him care for
+you?"
+
+She was silent, turning her wedding-ringless hand over and over on her
+lap: the flies came buzzing in around us, and in the near distance
+Excelsior buzzed, the loudest, most insistent creature on this part of
+the earth.
+
+"Seems like a woman ought to help a man--some," she murmured. Downstairs
+Mrs. Jones sums her up in a few words.
+
+"She-all suttinly ain't no _'Mrs'_ in the world! Calls herself
+_'White.'_" (The intonation is not to be mistaken.) "Pore thing's
+dyin'--knows it, tew! Come hyar to die, I reckon. She'll die right up
+thar in that baed, tew. Doctor don't come no mo'. Know she cayn't pay
+him nothin'. You-all come hyar to grandmaw, Letty!"
+
+The child around whom the threads of existence are weaving fabric more
+intricate than any woof or warp of the great mills goes confidingly to
+the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she
+speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen
+save Tolstoi's could do justice. Mine can do no more than display them
+by faithfully transcribing their simple dialect-speech.
+
+"I am sixty-four years old, an' played out. Worked too hyard. Worked
+every day since I was a child, and when I wasn't workin' had the fevar.
+Come from the hills las' month. When his wife dyde, the son he come an'
+fetched me cross the river to help him."
+
+How has she lived so long and so well, with life "so hyard on her"?
+
+"I loved my husban', yes, ma'am, I regularly loved him; reckon no woman
+didn't ever love a man mo', and he loved me, tew, jest ez much. Seems
+tho' God couldn't bayr to see us-all so happy--couldn't las'; he dyde."
+
+Mrs. Jones' figure is a case of bones covered with a brown
+substance--you could scarcely call it skin; a weather-beaten, tanned
+hide; nothing more. This human statue, ever responsive to the eternal
+moulding, year after year has been worked upon by the titan instrument,
+Labour: struggle, disease, want. But this hill woman has known love. It
+has transfigured her, illumined her. This poor deformed body is a torch
+only for an immortal flame. I know now why it seems good to be near her,
+why her eyes are inspired.... I rise to leave her and she comes forward
+to me, puts out her hand first, then puts both thin, old arms about me
+and kisses me.
+
+In speaking of the settlement, it borders on the humourous to use the
+word sanitation. In the mill district, as far as my observation reached,
+there is none. Refuse not too vile for the public eye is thrown into the
+middle of the streets in front of the houses. The general drainage is
+performed by emptying pans and basins and receptacles into the
+backyards, so that as one stands at the back steps of one's own door one
+breathes and respires the filth of half a dozen shanties. Decaying
+vegetables, rags, dirt of all kinds are the flowers of these people, the
+decorations of their miserable garden patches. To walk through Granton
+(which the prospectus tells us is well drained) is to evoke nausea; to
+_inhabit_ Granton is an ordeal which even necessity cannot rob of its
+severity.
+
+These settlers, habitants of dwellings built by finance solely for the
+purpose of renting, are celebrated for their immorals--"a rough, lying,
+bad lot." "Oh, the mill-hands!" ... Sufficient, expressive designation.
+Nevertheless, these people, simple, direct and innocent, display
+qualities that we have been taught are enviable--a lack of curiosity,
+for the most part, in the affairs of others, a warm Southern courtesy,
+a human kindliness. I found these people degraded because of their
+habits and not of their tendencies, which statement I can justify;
+whatever may be their natural instincts, born, nurtured in their
+unlovely environment, they have no choice but to fall into the usages of
+poverty and degradation. They have seen nothing with which to compare
+their existences; they have no time, no means to be clean, and no
+stimulus to be decent.
+
+A job at Granton was no more difficult to secure than was "spoolin'" at
+the other mill. I applied one Saturday noon, when Granton was silent and
+the operatives within their doors asleep, for the most part, leaving the
+village as deserted as it is on a workday. A like desolation pervades
+the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a
+shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad,
+pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with
+which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors--cotton that
+resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent
+regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time
+in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the
+loneliness, the lawlessness of the place, the risk and boldness of my
+venture.
+
+By this I was most thoroughly a mill-girl in appearance, at least; my
+clothes were white with cotton, my hair far from tidy; fatigue and
+listlessness unassumed were in my attitude. I had not heard the Southern
+dialect for so long not to be able to fall into it with little effort. I
+told him I had been a "spooler" and did not like it--"wanted to spin."
+He listened silently, regarding me with interest and with what I
+trembled to fear was disbelief. I desperately pushed back my sunbonnet
+and in Southern drawl begged for work.
+
+"Spinnin'?" he asked. "What do you want to spin for?"
+
+He was a Yankee, his accent sharp and keen. How clean and decent and
+capable he appeared, the dark mill back of him; shantytown, vile, dirty,
+downtrodden, beside him!
+
+I told him that I was tired of spooling and knew I could make more by
+something else.
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets. "To-night is Saturday; alone
+here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where you going to stay in Granton?"
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+"Don't learn spinnin'," he said decidedly. "I am head of the
+_speedin'-room_. I'll give you a job in my room on Monday morning."
+
+My relief was immense. His subsequent questions I parried, thanked him,
+and withdrew to keep secret from Excelsior that I had deserted for
+Granton.
+
+Although these mills are within three hundred feet of each other, the
+villagers do not associate. The workings of Granton are unknown to
+Excelsior and vice versa.
+
+The speeding-room in Granton is second only in noise to the weave-room.
+Conversation must be entrancing and vital to be pursued here! The
+speeder has under her care as many machines as her skill can control.
+
+My teacher, Bessie, ran four sides, seventy-six speeders on a side, her
+work being regulated by a crank that marked the vibrations. To the lay
+mind the terms of the speeding-room can mean nothing. This girl made
+from $1.30 to $1.50 a day. She controlled in all 704 speeders; these she
+had to replenish and keep running, and to clean all the machinery gear
+with her own hands; to oil the steel, even to bend and clean under the
+lower shelf and come into contact with the most dangerous parts of the
+mechanism. The girl at the speeder next to me had just had her hand
+mashed to a jelly. The speeder watches her ropers run out; these stand
+at the top and back of the line. The ropers are refilled and their ends
+attached to the flying speeders by a quick motion. The yarn from the
+ropers is wound off on to the speeders. When the speeders are full of
+yarn they are detached from the nest of steel in which they whirl and
+are thrown into a hand-car which is pushed about the room by the girls
+themselves. Speeding is excessively dirty work and greasy; the oiling
+and cleaning is only fit for a man to do.
+
+The girl who teaches me has been at her work for ten years; she entered
+the factory at eight. She was tall, raw-boned, an expert, deft and
+capable, and, as far as I could judge in our acquaintance, thoroughly
+respectable.
+
+There are long waits in this department of the cotton-spinning life. On
+tall green stools we sit at the end of our sides during the time it
+takes for one well-filled roper to spin itself out; we talk, or rather
+contrive to make ourselves heard. She has a sweet, gentle face; she is
+courtesy and kindness itself.
+
+"What do you think about all day?"
+
+"Why, I couldn't even begin to tell all my thoughts."
+
+"Tell me some."
+
+"Why, I think about books, I reckon. Do you-all like readin'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't nuthin' I like so good when I ain't tyrd."
+
+"Are you often tired?" And this question surprises her. She looks up at
+me and smiles. "Why, I'm _always_ tyrd! I read novels for the most part;
+like to read love stories and about fo'ran travel."
+
+(For one short moment please consider: This hemmed-in life, this limited
+existence, encompassed on all sides by the warfare and battle and din of
+maddening sounds, vibrations around her during twelve hours of the day,
+vibrations which, mean that her food is being gained by each pulse of
+the engine and its ratio marked off by the disk at her side. Before her
+the scene is unchanged day after day, month after month, year after
+year. It is not an experience to this woman who works beside me so
+patiently; it is her life. The forms she sees are warped and scarred;
+the intellects with which she comes in contact are dulled and
+undeveloped. All they know is toil, all they know of gain is a
+fluctuation in a wage that ranges from cents to a dollar and cents
+again, never touching a two-dollar mark. The children who, barefooted,
+filthy, brush past her, sweeping the cotton from the infected floors,
+these are the only forms of childhood she has ever seen. The dirty women
+around her, low-browed, sensual, are the forms of womanhood that she
+knows; and the men? If she does not feed the passion of the overseer,
+she may find some mill-hand who will contract a "mill marriage" with
+this daughter of the loom, a marriage little binding to him and which
+will give her children to give in time to the mill. This is the realism
+of her love story: She reads books that you, too, may have read; she
+dares to dream of scenes, to picture them--scenes that you have sought
+and wearied of. A tithe of our satiety would mean her banquet, her
+salvation!... Her happiness? _That_ question who can answer for her or
+for you?)
+
+She continues: "I'm very fond of fo'ran travel, only I ain't never had
+much occasion for it."
+
+This pathos and humour keep me silent. A few ropers have run out; she
+rises. I rise, too, to replace, to attach, and set the exhausted line
+taut and complete again.
+
+Ten years! Ten years! All her girlhood and youth has been given to
+keeping ropers supplied with fresh yarn and speeders a-whirling. During
+this travail she has kept a serenity of expression, a depth of sweetness
+at which I marvel. Her voice is peculiarly soft and, coupled with the
+dialect drawl, is pleasant to hear.
+
+"I hate the mills!" she says simply.
+
+"What would you be if you could choose?" I venture to ask. She has no
+hesitation in answering.
+
+"I'd love to be a trained nurse." Then, turn about is fair play in her
+mind, I suppose, for she asks:
+
+"What would _you-all_ be?"
+
+And ashamed not to well repay her truthfulness I frankly respond: "I'd
+like to write a book."
+
+"I _dee_-clare." She stares at me. "Why, you-all _is_ ambitious. Did you
+ever write anything?"
+
+"A letter or two."
+
+She is interested and kindles, leaning forward. "I suttenly ain't so
+high in my ambitions," she says appreciatively. "Wish you'd write a love
+story for me to read," and she ponders over the idea, her eyes on my
+snowy flying speeders.
+
+"Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin's on writin' hyar? Ef you don't
+mind anybody's messin' with your things, bring your scrappin's to me an'
+I'll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not," she whispered to me
+encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills
+than a loud sound.
+
+I thanked her and said: "Do you think that you'd know?"
+
+"Well, I guess I would!" she said confidently. "I ain't read all my life
+sense I was eight years old not to know good writin' from bad. Can
+you-all sing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Play sweet music?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I jest love it." She enthuses. "Every Saturday afternoon I take of a
+music teacher on the gee-tar. It costs me a quarter."
+
+I could see the scene: a shanty room, the tall, awkward figure bending
+over her instrument; the type that the teacher made, the ambition, the
+eagerness--all of which qualities we are so willing to deny to the
+slaves of toil.
+
+"They ain't much flowers here in Granton," she said again. "'Tain't no
+use to try to have even a few geraneums; it's so dry; ain't no yards nor
+gardens, nuther."
+
+Musing on this desolation as she walks up and down the line, she says:
+"I dew love flowers, don't you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over and over again I am asked by those whose wish I suppose is to prove
+to themselves and their consciences that the working-girl is not so
+actively wretched, her outcry is not so audible that we are forced to
+respond:
+
+"The working people are happy? The factory girls are happy, are they
+not? Don't you find them so?"
+
+Is it a satisfaction to the leisure class, to the capitalist and
+employer, to feel that a woman poorly housed, ill-fed, in imminent moral
+danger, every temptation rampant over barriers down, overworked,
+overstrained by labour varying from ten to thirteen hours a day, by
+all-night labour, and destruction of body and soul, _is happy_?
+
+Do you _wish_ her to be so? Is the existence _ideal_?
+
+I can speak only for the shoe manufacturing girl of Lynn and for the
+Southern mill-hand.
+
+I thank Heaven that I can say truthfully, that of all who came under my
+observation, not one who was of age to reflect was happy. I repeat, the
+working-woman is brave and courageous, but the most sane and hopeful
+indication for the future of the factory girl and the mill-hand is that
+she rebels, dreams of something better, and will in the fullness of time
+stretch toward it. They have no time to think, even if they knew how.
+All that remains for them in the few miserable hours of relief from
+labour and confinement and noise is to seek what pastime they may find
+under their hand. We have never realized, they have never known, that
+their great need--given the work that is wrung from them and the
+degradation in which they are forced to live--is a craving for amusement
+and relaxation. Amusements for this class are not provided; they _can_
+laugh, they rarely do. The thing that they seek--let me repeat: I
+cannot repeat it too often--in the minimum of time that remains to them,
+is distraction. They do not want to read; they do not want to study;
+they are too tired to concentrate. How can you expect it? I heard a
+manufacturer say: "We gave our mill-hands everything that we could to
+elevate them--a natatorium, a reading library--and these halls fell into
+disuse." I ask him now, through these pages, the questions which I did
+not put to him then as I listened in silence to his complaint. He said
+he thought too much was done for the mill-hands. What time would he
+suggest that they should spend in the reading-room, even if they have
+learned to read? They rise at four; at a quarter before six they are at
+work. The day in winter is not born when they start their tasks; the
+night has fallen long before they cease. In summer they are worked long
+into their evenings. They tell me that they are too tired to eat; that
+all they want to do is to turn their aching bones on to their miserable
+mattresses and sleep until they are cried and shrieked awake by the mill
+summons. Therefore they solve their own questions. Nothing is provided
+for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is
+within their reach--animal enjoyment, human intercourse and
+companionship. They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let
+us believe, more excuse.
+
+The mill marriage is a farce, and yet they choose to call their unions
+now and again a marriage. Many a woman has been a wife several times in
+the same town, in the same house. The bond-tying is a form, and, of
+course, mostly ignored. The settlements swarm with illegitimate
+children. Next to me work two young girls, both under seventeen, both
+ringless and with child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let me picture the Foster household, where I used to call Saturday
+evenings.
+
+Mrs. Foster herself, dirty, slipshod, a frowzy mass, hugs her fireside.
+Although the day is warm, she kindled a fire to stimulate the thin, poor
+blood exhausted by disease and fevers. Two flatirons lie in a dirty heap
+on the floor. As usual, the room is a nest of filth and untidiness.
+
+Mrs. Foster is half paralyzed, but her tongue is free. She talks
+fluently in her soft Southern drawl, more Negro than white as to speech
+and tone. Up to her sidles a dirty, pretty little boy of four.
+
+"This yere is too little to go to the mill, but he's wild to go; yes,
+ser, he is so. Las' night he come to me en say, 'Auntie, you-all wake me
+up at fo' 'clock sure; I got ter go ter the mill.'"
+
+Here the little blond child, whose mouth is set on a pewter spoon
+dripping over with hominy, grins appreciatively. He throws back his
+white and delicate little face, and his aunt, drawing him close to her,
+caresses him and continues: "Yes, ma'am, to-day he dun wake up after
+they-all had gone and he sayd, 'My goodness, I dun oversleep mase'f!' He
+sha'n't go to the mill," she frowned, "not ef we can help it. Why, I
+don't never let him outen my sight; 'fraid lest those awful mill
+children would git at him."
+
+Thus she sheltered him with what care she knew--care that unfortunately
+_could not go far enough back to protect him_! His mother came in at the
+noon hour, as we sat there rocking and chatting. She was a straight,
+slender creature, not without grace in her shirt-waist and her
+low-pulled felt hat that shadowed her sullen face. She was very young,
+not more than twenty-two, and her history indicative and tragic. With a
+word only and a nod she passes us; she has now too many vital things and
+incidents in her own career to be curious regarding a strange mill-hand.
+She goes with her comrade--and cousin--Mamie, into the kitchen to
+devour in as short a time as possible the noon dinner, served by the
+grandmother: cabbage and hominy. "They don't have time 'nough to eat,"
+the aunt says; "no sooner then they-all come in and bolt their dinner
+then it is time to go back." Her child has followed her. Minnie was
+married at thirteen; in less than a year she was a grass widow. "My
+goodness, there's lots of grass widows!" my frowsled hostess nods. "Why,
+in one weave-room hyar there ain't a gyrl but what's left by her
+husband. One day a new gyrl come for to run a loom and they yells out at
+her, 'Is you-all a grass widow? Yer can't come in hyar ef you ain't.'"
+
+But it was after her grass widowhood that Minnie's tragedy began. The
+mill was her ruin. So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go,
+_does not_ go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put
+there to run these women's work. The overseer was father of her child,
+and when she tried to force from him recognition and aid he threw over
+his position and left Columbia and this behind him. This, one instance
+under my own eyes observed. There are many.
+
+"Mamie works all night" (she spoke of the other girl)--"makes more
+money. My, but she hates the mills! Says she ain't ever known a restful
+minute sence she left the hills."
+
+My hostess has drawn the same conclusion from my Northern appearance
+that the Joneses drew.
+
+"You-all must eat good where you come from! you look so healthy.' Do
+you-all know the Banks girl over to Calcutta?"
+
+"No."
+
+"They give her nine months." (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round
+here.) "Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts
+like a man. She drew her knife on a man last week--cut his face all up
+and into his side through his lung. Tried to pass as she was his wife,
+but when they had her up, ma'am, they proved she had been three men's
+wives and he four gyrl's husbands. He liked to died of the cut. They've
+given her nine months, but he ain't the only man that bears her marks.
+Over to Calcutta it's the knife and the gun at a wink. This yere was an
+awful pretty gyrl. My Min seed her peekin' out from behind the loom in
+the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said: 'Who's that yere pretty
+boy peekin' at me?' And that gyrl told Min that she couldn't help knife
+the men, they all worried on her so! 'Won't never leave me alone; I jest
+have to draw on 'em; there ain't no other way.'"...
+
+For the annals of morality and decency do not take up this faithful
+account and picture the cotton-mill village. You will not find it in
+these scenes drawn from the life as it is at this hour, as it is
+portrayed by the words that the very people themselves will pour into
+your ears. Under the walls of Calcutta Negroes are engaged in laying
+prospective flower beds, so that the thirteen-hour workers may look out
+from time to time and see the forms of flowers. On the other side rise
+some twenty shanties. These houses of Calcutta village are very small,
+built from the roughest unpainted boards. Here it is, in this little
+settlement, that the knife comes flashing out at a word--that the women
+shoot as well as men, and perhaps more quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Richmond aint so bad as the other!" I can hear Mrs. Foster drawl out
+this recommendation to us. "They ain't so much chills here. We dun move
+up from town first; had to--too high rents for we-all; now we dun stay
+hyar. Why, some of the gyrls and boys works to Granton and bo'ds hyar;
+seems like it's mo' healthy."
+
+Moving, ambulant population! tramping from hill to hill, from sand-heap
+to sand-heap to escape the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling,
+bitter existence--pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the
+sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter
+what the burden's weight must be, _one must live_! It takes a great
+deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of
+interest. At what should they rejoice?
+
+I have made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an
+absolute lack of every form or sight that might inspire or cause a soul
+to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from
+labour. There should be a complete readjustment of this system. I have
+been interested in reading in the New York _Sun_ of April 20th of the
+visit of the bishops to the model factories in Ohio. I am constrained to
+wish that bishops and clergy and philanthropists and millionaires and
+capitalists might visit in bodies and separately the mills of South
+Carolina and their tenement population. It is difficult to know just
+what the ideas are of the people who have constructed these dwellings.
+They tell us in this same prospectus, which I have read with interest
+after my personal experience, that these villages are "_picturesque_."
+This is the only reference I find to the people and their conditions. I
+have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without
+prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern
+country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's
+existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot
+but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to
+destruction before the scales swing even.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD IN SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS
+
+
+In the week before I left for the South I dined in ---- with a very
+charming woman and her husband. Before a table exquisite in its
+appointments, laden with the best the market could offer and good taste
+display, sat the mistress, a graceful, intelligent young woman, full of
+philanthropic, charitable interests, and one whom I know to be devoted
+to the care and benefiting of little children in her city. During the
+meal I said to her casually:
+
+"Do you know that in your mills in South Carolina to-night, as we sit
+here, little children are working at the looms and frames--little
+children, some of them not more than six years old?"
+
+She said, in astonishment, "I don't know it; and I can't believe it."
+
+I told her I should soon see just how true the reports were, and when I
+returned to New York I would tell her the facts. She is not alone in her
+ignorance. Not one person, man or woman, to whom I told the facts of the
+cases I observed "_dreamed that children worked in any mills in the
+United States_!" After my experience amongst the working class, I am
+safe in saying that I consider their grievances to be the outcome of the
+ignorance and greed of the manufacturer abetted, aided and made possible
+by the ignorance and poverty of the labourer.
+
+There is nothing more conscience-silencing than to accuse the writers of
+the different articles on child-labour of sentimentality. The comfort in
+which we live makes it easy to eliminate thoughts that torture us to
+action in the cause of others. I will be delighted to meet an accusation
+of sentimentality and exaggeration by any man or woman who has gone to a
+Southern mill as an operative and worked side by side with the children,
+lived with them in their homes. It is defamation to use the word "home"
+in connection with the unwholesome shanty in the pest-ridden district
+where the remnant of the children's lives not lived in the mill is
+passed. This handful of unpainted huts, raised on stilts from the soil,
+fever-ridden and malarious; this blank, ugly line of sun-blistered
+shanties, along a road, yellow-sand deep, is a mill village. The word
+_village_ has a cheerful sound. It summons a country scene, with the
+charms of home, however simple and unpretentious. There is nothing to
+charm or please in the villages I have already, in these pages, drawn
+for you to see and which with veritable sick reluctance I summon again
+before your eyes. Every house is like unto its neighbour--a shelter put
+up rapidly and filled to the best advantage.
+
+There is not a garden within miles, not a flower, scarcely a tree. Arid,
+desolate, beautyless, the pale sand of the State of South Carolina
+nurtures as best it can a stray tree or shrub--no more. At the foot of
+the shanties' black line rises the cotton mill. New, enormous, sanitary
+(!!). Its capital runs into millions; its prospectuses are pompous; its
+pay-roll mysterious. You will not be able to say how many of the fifteen
+hundred odd hands at work in this mill are adults, how many children. In
+the State of South Carolina there are statistics of neither births,
+marriages nor deaths. What can you expect of a mill village!
+
+At 5:45 we have breakfasted--the twelve of us who live in one small
+shanty, where we have slept, all five of us in one room, men to the
+right of the kitchen, women and children on the left. To leave the
+pestilence of foul air, the stench of that dwelling, is blessed, even if
+the stroke that summons is the mill whistle.
+
+As we troop to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like
+town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and
+infirmity--but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy
+its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel
+between its merciless jaws is the little child.
+
+So long as I am part of its food and triumph I will study the mill.
+
+Leaving the line of flashing, whirling spools, I lean against the green
+box full of cotton refuse and regard the giant room.
+
+It is a wonderful sight. The mill itself, a model of careful,
+well-considered building, has every facility for the best and most
+advantageous manufacture of textiles. The fine frames of the intricate
+"warping," the well-placed frames of the "drawing-in" all along the
+window sides of the rooms; then lines upon lines of spool frames. Great
+piles of stuff lie here and there in the room. It is early--"all the
+yarn ain't come yet." Two children whose work has not been apportioned
+lie asleep against a cotton bale. The terrible noise, the grinding,
+whirling, pounding, the gigantic burr renders other senses keen. By my
+side works a little girl of eight. Her brutal face, already bespeaking
+knowledge of things childhood should ignore, is surrounded by a forest
+of yellow hair. She goes doggedly at her spools, grasping them sullenly.
+She walks well on her bare, filthy feet. Her hands and arms are no
+longer flesh colour, but resemble weather-roughened hide, ingrained with
+dirt. Around the tangle of her hair cotton threads and bits of lint make
+a sort of aureole. (Her nimbus of labour, if you will!) There is nothing
+saint-like in that face, nor in the loose-lipped mouth, whence exudes a
+black stain of snuff as between her lips she turns the root she chews.
+
+"She's a mean girl," my little companion says; "we-all don't hev nothin'
+to say to her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Her maw hunts her to the mill; she don't want to go--no, sir--so she's
+mad most the time."
+
+Thus she sets her dogged resistance in scowling black looks, in quick,
+frantic gestures and motions against the machinery that claims her
+impotent childhood. The nimbus around her furze of hair remains; there
+are other heads than saints--there are martyrs! Let the child wear her
+crown.
+
+Through the looms I catch sight of Upton's, my landlord's, little
+child. She is seven; so small that they have a box for her to stand
+upon. She is a pretty, frail, little thing, a spooler--"a good
+spooler, tew!" Through the frames on the other side I can only see her
+fingers as they clutch at the flying spools; her head is not high
+enough, even with the box, to be visible. Her hands are fairy hands,
+fine-boned, well-made, only they are so thin and dirty, and her
+nails--claws; she would do well to have them cut. A nail can be torn
+from the finger, _is_ torn from the finger frequently,[9] by this
+flying spool. I go over to Upton's little girl. Her spindles are not
+thinner nor her spools whiter.
+
+  [Footnote 9: In Huntsville, Alabama, a child of eight lost her
+  index and middle fingers of the right hand in January, 1902. One
+  doctor told me that he had amputated the fingers of more than a
+  hundred babies. A merchant told me he had _frequently_ seen
+  children whose hands had been cut off by the
+  machinery.--_American Federationist_.]
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Ten."
+
+She looks six. It is impossible to know if what she says is true. The
+children are commanded both by parents and bosses to advance their ages
+when asked.
+
+"Tired?"
+
+She nods, without stopping. She is a "remarkable fine hand." She makes
+forty cents a day. See the value of this labour to the
+manufacturer--cheap, yet skilled; to the parent it represents $2.40 per
+week.
+
+I must not think that as I work beside them I will gain their
+confidence! They have no time to talk. Indeed, conversation is not well
+looked upon by the bosses, and I soon see that unless I want to entail a
+sharp reproof for myself and them I must stick to my "side." And at noon
+I have no heart to take their leisure. At twelve o'clock, Minnie, a
+little spooler, scarcely higher than her spools, lifts her hands above
+her head and exclaims: _"Thank God, there's the whistle!"_ I watched
+them disperse: some run like mad, always bareheaded, to fetch the
+dinner-pail for mother or father who work in the mill and who choose to
+spend these little legs and spare their own. It takes ten minutes to go,
+ten to return, and the little labourer has ten to devote to its own
+food, which, half the time, he is too exhausted to eat.
+
+I watch the children crouch on the floor by the frames; some fall asleep
+between the mouthfuls of food, and so lie asleep with food in their
+mouths until the overseer rouses them to their tasks again. Here and
+there totters a little child just learning to walk; it runs and crawls
+the length of the mill. Mothers who have no one with whom to leave their
+babies bring them to the workshop, and their lives begin, continue and
+end in the horrible pandemonium.
+
+One little boy passes by with his broom; he is whistling. I look up at
+the cheery sound that pierces fresh but faint and natural above the
+machines' noise. His eyes are bright; his good spirits surprise me: here
+is an argument for my comfortable friends who wish to prove that the
+children "are happy!" I stop him.
+
+"You seem very jolly!"
+
+He grins.
+
+"How long have you been working?"
+
+"Two or three days."
+
+The gay creature has just _begun_ his servitude and brings into the
+dreary monotony a flash of the spirit which should fill childhood.
+
+I think it will be granted that it takes a great deal to discourage and
+dishearten a child. The hopefulness of the mill communities lies in just
+those elements that overwork in the adult and that child labour will
+ultimately destroy. When hope is gone in the adult he must wreak some
+vengeance on the bitter fate that has robbed him. There is no more
+tragic thing than the hopeless child. The adult who grows hopeless can
+affiliate with the malcontents and find in the insanity of anarchy what
+he calls revenge.
+
+It seems folly to insult the common sense of the public by asking them
+whether they think that thirteen hours a day, with a half to
+three-quarters of an hour for recreation at noon, or the same amount of
+night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with
+unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a
+pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of
+hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ...
+whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women
+whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good
+for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive development, to the
+making of decent manhood or womanhood? What kind of citizen can this
+child--if he is fit enough in the economic struggle of the world to
+survive--turn out to be? Not citizens at all: creatures scarcely fit to
+be called human beings.
+
+I asked the little girl who teaches me to spool who the man is whom I
+have seen riding around on horseback through the town.
+
+"Why, he goes roun' rousin' up the hands who ain't in their places.
+Sometimes he takes the children outen thayre bades an' brings 'em back
+to the mill."
+
+And if the child can stand, it spins and spools until it drops, till
+constitution rebels, and death, the only friend it has ever known, sets
+it free.
+
+Besides being spinners and spoolers, and occasionally weavers even, the
+children sweep the cotton-strewed floors. Scarcely has the miserable
+little object, ragged and odourous, passed me with his long broom, which
+he drags half-heartedly along, than the space he has swept up is
+cotton-strewn again. It settles with discouraging rapidity; it has also
+settled on the child's hair and clothes, and his eyelashes, and this
+atmosphere he breathes and fairly eats, until his lungs become diseased.
+Pneumonia--fatal in nearly all cases here--and lung fever had been a
+pestilence, "a regular plague," before I came. There were four cases in
+the village where I, lived, and fever and ague, malaria and grippe did
+their parts.
+
+"Why, thar ain't never a haouse but's got somebody sick," my little
+teacher informed me in her soft Southern dialect. "I suttinly never did
+see a place like this for dyin' in winter time. I reckon et's funerals
+every day."
+
+Here is a little child, not more than seven years old. The land is a hot
+enough country, we will concede, but not a savage South Sea Island! She
+has on one garment, if a tattered sacking dress can so be termed. Her
+bones are nearly through her skin, but her stomach is an unhealthy
+pouch, abnormal. _She has dropsy._ She works in _a new mill_--in one of
+the largest mills in South Carolina. Here is a slender little boy--a
+birch rod (good old simile) is not more slender, but the birch has the
+advantage: it is elastic--it bends, has youth in it. This boy looks
+ninety. He is a dwarf; twelve years old, he appears seven, no more. He
+sweeps the cotton off the floor of "the baby mill." (How tenderly and
+proudly the owners speak of their brick and mortar.) He sweeps the
+cotton and lint from the mill aisles from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. without a
+break in the night's routine. He stops of his own accord, however, to
+cough and expectorate--he has advanced tuberculosis.
+
+At night the shanties receive us. On a pine board is spread our
+food--can you call it nourishment? The hominy and molasses is the best
+part; salt pork and ham are the strong victuals.
+
+It is eight o'clock when the children reach their homes--later if the
+mill work is behindhand and they are kept over hours. They are usually
+beyond speech. They fall asleep at the table, on the stairs; they are
+carried to bed and there laid down as they are, unwashed, undressed; and
+the inanimate bundles of rags so lie until the mill summons them with
+its imperious cry before sunrise, while they are still in stupid sleep:
+
+"What do you do on Sundays?" I asked one little girl.
+
+"Why, thare ain't nothing much to dew. I go to the park sometimes."
+
+This park is at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia. Picture
+it! A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby
+undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be
+conceived. On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to
+so spend the day. On Sundays the mill shanties are full of sleepers.
+
+The park has a limited number of devotees. Through the beautyless paths
+and walks the figures pass like shadows. There come three mill girls arm
+in arm; their curl papers, screwed tight all the week, are out on
+Sunday, in greasy, abundant curls. Sunday clothes are displayed in all
+their superbness. Three or four young men, town fellows, follow them;
+they are all strangers, but they will go home arm in arm.
+
+Several little children, who have no clothes but those, they wear, cling
+close to the side of a gaunt, pale-faced man, who carries in his arms
+the youngest. The little girl has become a weight to be carried on
+Sundays; she has worked six days of the week--shall she not rest on the
+seventh? She shall; she claims this, and lies inert on the man's arm,
+her face already seared with the scars of toil.
+
+I ran such risk taking pictures that I relinquished the task, and it was
+only the last day at the mill, while still in my working clothes with a
+camera concealed in my pocket, that I contrived to get a picture or two.
+I ventured to ask two little boys who swept the mill to stand for their
+pictures.
+
+"I don't kyar to," the older one said. I explained that it would not
+hurt them, as I thought he was afraid; but his little companion
+vouchsafed: "We-all ain't got no nickel." When they understood it was a
+free picture they were as delighted as possible and posed with alacrity,
+making touching apologies for their greasy, dirty condition.
+
+When I asked one of them if he was ever clean, he said: "On Sunday I
+wash my hands."
+
+It was noon, on the day I chose to leave ----, turning my back on the
+mill that had allured me to its doors and labour. In South Carolina
+early April is torrid, flies and mosquitoes are rampant. What must this
+settlement be in midsummer heat? There is no colour in the Southern
+scene; the clothes of the mill-hands, the houses, the soil are of one
+tone--and, more strange, there is not one line of red, one dash of life,
+in the faces of the hundreds of women and children that pass me on their
+way back to work.
+
+Under the existing circumstances they have no outlook, these people, no
+hope; their appearance expresses accurately the changeless routine of an
+existence devoted to eternal ignorance, eternal toil.
+
+From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing,
+inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate
+and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the
+cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this
+Southern mill justly famous.
+
+The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill
+claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little
+things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy,
+frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their
+sleeves; they are barefooted, bareheaded. With these little figures the
+elements wanton; they can never know the fullness of summer or the
+proper maturity of autumn. Suns have burned them, rains have fallen upon
+them, as unprotected through storms they go to their work. The winter
+winds have penetrated the tatters with blades like knives; gray and
+dusty and earth-coloured the line passes. These are children? No, they
+are wraiths of childhood--they are effigies of youth! What can Hope work
+in this down-trodden soil for any future harvest? They can curse and
+swear; they chew tobacco and take snuff. When they speak at all their
+voices are feeble; ears long dulled by the thunder of the mill are no
+longer keen to sound; their speech is low and scarcely audible. Over
+sallow cheeks where the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you
+suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood.
+As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue
+settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to
+elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark
+the distinctive visages of these children of labour.
+
+At certain seasons of the year they actually die off like flies. They
+fall subject, not to children's diseases exactly--nothing really natural
+seems to come into the course of these little existences--they fall a
+prey to the maladies that are the outcomes of their conditions. They are
+always half-clad in the winter time; their clothes differ nothing at all
+from their summer clothes; they have no overcoats or coats; many of them
+go barefoot all winter long. They come out from the hot mills into cold,
+raw winds and fall an easy prey to pneumonia, scourge of the mill-town.
+Their general health is bad all the year round; their skins and
+complexions have taken the tone of the sandy soil of the Southern
+country in which they are bred and in which their martyrdom is
+accomplished. I never saw a rosy cheek nor a clear skin: these are the
+parchment editions of childhood on which Tragedy is written indelibly.
+You can there read the eternal condemnation of those who have employed
+them for the sake of gain.
+
+It is a melancholy satisfaction to believe that mill labour will kill
+off little spinners and spoolers. Unfortunately, this is not entirely
+true. There are constitutions that survive all the horrors of existence.
+I have worked both in Massachusetts and the South beside women who
+entered the mill service at eight years of age. One of these was still
+in her girlhood when I knew her. She was very strong, very good and
+still had some illusions left. I do not know what it goes to prove, when
+I say that at twenty, in spite of twelve years of labour, she still
+dreamed, still hoped, still longed and prayed _for something that was
+not a mill_. If this means content in servitude, if this means that the
+poor white trash are born slaves, or if, on the contrary, it means that
+there is something inherent in a woman that will carry her past suicide
+and past idiocy and degradation, all of which is around her, I think it
+argues well for the working women.
+
+The other woman was forty. She had no illusions left--please remember
+she had worked since eight; she had reached, if you like, the idiot
+stage. She had nothing to offer during all the time I knew her but a few
+sentences directly in connection with her toil.
+
+It is useless to advance the plea that spooling is not difficult. No
+child (we will cancel under twelve!) should work at all. No human
+creature should work thirteen hours a day. No baby of six, seven or
+eight should be seen in the mills.
+
+It is also useless to say that these children tell you that they "like
+the mill." They are beaten by their parents if they do not tell you
+this, and, granted that they do not like their servitude, when was it
+thought expedient that a child should direct its existence? If they do
+not pass the early years of their lives in study, when should they
+learn? At what period of their lives should the children of the Southern
+mill-hand be educated? Long before they reach their teens their habits
+are formed--ignorance is ingrained; indeed, after a few years they are
+so vitally reduced that if you will you cannot teach them. Are these
+little American children, then, to have no books but labour? No
+recreation? To be crushed out of life to satisfy the ignorance and greed
+of their parents, the greed of the manufacturers? Whatever else we are,
+we are financiers _per se_. The fact that to-day, as for years past,
+Southern cotton mills are employing the labour of children under tender
+age--employing an army of them to the number of twenty thousand under
+twelve--can only be explained by a frank admittal that infantile labour
+has been considered advantageous to the cause of gain.
+
+This gain, apparent by the facts that a mill can be run for thousands
+of dollars less in the South than a like mill can be run in the North,
+and its net surplus profits be the same as those of the Northern
+manufactory, is one by which one generation alone will profit. The
+attractiveness of the figures is fallacious. What I imply is
+self-evident. The infant population (its numbers give it a right to this
+dignity of term) whose cheap toil feeds the mills is doomed. I mean to
+say that the rank and file of humanity are daily weeded out; that
+thousands of possibly strong, healthy, mature labouring men and women
+are being disease-stricken, hounded out of life; the cotton mill child
+cannot develop to the strong normal adult working-man and woman. The
+fiber exhausted in the young body cannot be recreated. Early death
+carries hundreds out of life, disease rots the remainder, and the dulled
+maturity attained by a creature whose life has been passed in this
+labour is not fit to propagate the species.
+
+The excessively low wages paid these little mill-hands keep under, of
+necessity, the wage paid the grown labourer. It is a crying pity that
+children are equal to the task imposed upon them. It is a crying pity
+that machines (since they have appeared, with their extended,
+all-absorbing power) should not do all! Particularly in the Southern
+States do they evince, at a fatal point, their limit, display their
+inadequacy. When babies can be employed successfully for thirteen hours
+out of the twenty-four at all machines with men and women; when infants
+feeds mechanism with labour that has not one elevating, humanizing
+effect upon them physically or mentally, it places human intelligence
+below par and cheapens and distorts the nobler forms of toil. Not only
+is it "no disgrace to work," but on the contrary it is a splendid thing
+to be able to labour, and those who gain their bread by the sweat of
+their brow are not the servants of mankind in the sense of the term, but
+the patriarchs and controllers of the world's march and the most subtle
+signs of the times. But there are distinctly fitnesses of labour, and
+the proper presentation to the working-man and woman and child is a
+consideration.
+
+No one to-day would be likely for an instant to concede that to replace
+the treadmill horse with a child (a thing often seen and practised in
+times past) would be an advantage. And yet the march of the child up and
+down before its spooling frame is more suggestive of an animal--of the
+dog hitched to the Belgian milk cart; of the horse on the
+mill-tread--than another analogy.
+
+Contrast this pallid automaton with the children of the poor in a New
+York kindergarten, where the six-or seven-year-old child of the German,
+the Hungarian, the Polish emigrant, may have its imagination stimulated,
+its creative and individual faculties employed as it is taught to _make
+things_--construct, combine, weave, sew, mould. Every power latent is
+cajoled to expression, every talent encouraged. Thus work in its first
+form is rendered attractive, and youth and individuality are encouraged.
+In the South of this American country whose signet is individualism,
+whose strength (despite our motto, "United we stand") is in the
+individual freedom and vast play of original thought, here in the South
+our purest born, the most unmixed blood of us, is being converted into
+machines of labour when the forms of little children are bound in youth
+to the spindle and loom.
+
+In a certain mill in Alabama there are seventy-five child-labourers who
+work twelve hours out of the twenty-four; they have a half-hour at noon
+for luncheon. There is a night school in connection with this mill
+corporation. Fancy it, a night school for the day-long child labourer!
+Fifty out of seventy-five troop to it. Although they are so tired they
+cannot keep awake on the benches, and the littlest of them falls asleep
+over its letters, although they weep with fatigue, they are eager to
+learn! Is there a more conclusive testimony to the quality of the
+material that is being lost to the States and the country by the
+martyrdom of intelligent children?
+
+One hears two points of view expressed on this subject. The capitalist
+advances that the greed of the parents forces the children into the
+mills; the people themselves tell you that unless they are willing to
+let their available children work, their own lives are made impossible
+by the overseers. A widow who has children stands a fair chance of
+having her rent free; if she refuses this tithe of flesh and blood she
+is too often thrust into the street. So I am told. Now, which of these
+facts is the truth? It seems to be clearly too much left to the decision
+of private enterprise or parental incapability. The Legislature is the
+only school in which to decide the question. During my stay in South
+Carolina I never heard one woman advocate the mills for children. One
+mother, holding to her breast her illegitimate child, her face dark with
+dislike, said: "_Them mills!_ I would not let _my_ little boy work in
+'em! No, sir! He would go over my dead body." Another woman said: "_My_
+little girl work? No, ma'am; she goes to school!" and the child came in
+even as she spoke--let me say the only cheerful specimen of childhood,
+with the exception of the few little creatures in the kindergarten, that
+I saw in the mill district.
+
+South Carolina has become very haughty on this topic and has reached a
+point when she tells us she is to cure the sore in her own body without
+aid or interference. At a late session of the Legislature the bill for
+the restriction of child labour--we must call it this, since it
+legislates only for the child under ten--this bill was defeated by only
+two dissenting voices. A humane gentleman who laid claim to one of
+these voices was heard to ejaculate as the bill failed to pass: "Thank
+God!" Just why, it is not easy to understand.
+
+When I was so arrogant as to say to the editor of _The State_, the
+leading paper in South Carolina, that I hoped my article might aid the
+cause, I made an error clearly, for he replied:
+
+"We need no aid. The people of South Carolina are aroused to the horror
+and will cure it themselves."
+
+Georgia is not roused to the horror; Alabama is stirring actively; but
+the Northerners who own these mills--the capitalists, the manufacturers,
+the men who are building up a reputation for the wealth of South
+Carolina and Alabama mills, are the least aroused of all. We must
+believe that many directors of these mills are ignorant of the state of
+affairs, and that those who are enlightened willingly blind their eyes.
+
+The mill prospectuses are humourous when read by the investigator. We
+are told "labour-unions cut no figure here!"
+
+Go at night through the mills with the head of the Labour Federation and
+with the instigator of the first strikes in this district--with men who
+are the brain and fiber of the labour organization, and see the friendly
+looks flash forth, see the understanding with which they are greeted all
+through certain mills. Consider that not 200 miles away at the moment
+are 22,000 labourers on strike. Then greet these statements with a
+smile!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On my return to the North I made an especial effort to see my New
+England friend. We lunched together this time, and at the end of the
+meal her three little children fluttered in to say a friendly word. I
+looked at them, jealous for their little defrauded fellows, whose
+twelve-hour daily labour served to purchase these exquisite clothes and
+to heap with dainties the table before us. But I was nevertheless
+rejoiced to see once again the forms of real childhood for whom air and
+freedom and wealth were doing blessed tasks. When we were alone I drew
+for my friend as well as I could pictures of what I had seen. She leaned
+forward, took a brandied cherry from the dish in front of her, ate it
+delicately and dipped her fingers in the finger-bowl; then she said:
+
+"Dear friend, I am going to surprise you very much."
+
+I waited, and felt that it would be difficult to surprise me with a tale
+of a Southern mill.
+
+"Those little children--_love the mill!_ They _like_ to work. It's a
+great deal better for them to be employed than for them to run the
+streets!"
+
+She smiled over her argument, and I waited.
+
+"Do you know," she continued, "that I believe they are really very
+happy."
+
+She had well presented her argument. She had said she would surprise
+me--and she did.
+
+"You will not feel it a breach of affection and hospitality if I print
+what you say?" I asked her. "It's only fair that the capitalist's view
+should be given here and there first hand. You own one-half the mill
+in ----, Carolina?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What do you think of a model mill with only nine hours a day labour,
+holidays and all nights free, schools, where education is enforced by
+the State; reading-rooms open as well as churches--amusement halls,
+music, recreation and pleasure, as well as education and religion?"
+
+"I think," she said keenly, "that united, concentrated action on the
+part of the cotton mill owners might make such a thing feasible; for us
+to try it alone would mean ruin."
+
+"Not ruin," I amended; "a reduction of income."
+
+"Ruin," she said, firing. "We couldn't compete. To compete," she said
+with the conviction of an intelligent, well-informed manufacturer, "I
+must have my sixty-six hours a week!"
+
+The spirit of discontent is always abroad when false conditions exist.
+Its restless presence is controlled by one spirit alone--humanity--when
+reasonably are weighed and justly decided the questions of balance
+between Capital and Labour.
+
+We must believe that there is no unsolvable problem before us in
+considering the presence of the child in the Southern mills.
+
+There is nothing in the essence of the subject to discourage the social
+economist. The question should not be left to the decision of the
+private citizen. This stuff is worth saving. There is the making in
+these children of first-class citizens. I quote from the illustrated
+supplement of the South Carolina _State_ that you may see what the mill
+manufacturers think of the quality of the "poor white trash":
+
+     "The operatives in the South Carolina mills are the common
+     people--the bone and sinew who have left the fields to the
+     Negroes. They are industrious, intelligent, frugal, and have
+     the native instincts of honesty and integrity and of fidelity
+     which are essential to good citizenship."
+
+If such things are true of the mill-hands of South Carolina, it is worth
+while to save their children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Henceforth, to my vision across the face of the modern history of labour
+and manufacture will eternally defile the gray, colourless column of the
+Southern mill-hands: an earth-hued line of humanity--a stream that
+divides not.
+
+Here there are no stragglers. At noon and night the pace is quick,
+eager. Steady as a prison gang, it goes to food, rest and freedom. But
+this alacrity is absent in the morning. On the hem of night, the fringe
+of day, the march is slow and lifeless. Many of the heads are bent and
+downcast; some of the faces peer forward, and sallow masks of human
+countenances lift, with a look set beyond the mill--toward who can say
+what vain horizon! The Stream wanders slowly toward the Houses of
+Labour, although whipped by invisible scourge of Need. Without this
+incentive and spur, think you it would pursue a direction toward
+_thirteen hours of toil_, shut from air and sunlight and day, taking in
+its rank the women, the young girl and the little child?
+
+The tone of the garments is somber and gray, blending with the gray of
+the dawn; or red, blending with the earth stains of the peculiar
+Southern soil; or claylike and pale yellow. Many of the faces are
+pallid, some are tense, most of them are indifferent, dulled by toil and
+yet not all unintelligent. Those who are familiar with the healthy type
+of the decent workmen of the West and East must draw their distinctions
+as they consider this peculiar, unfamiliar class. The Southern
+mill-hand's face is unique--a fearful type, whose perusal is not
+pleasant or cheerful to the character-reader, to the lover of humanity
+or to the prophet of the future. Thus they defile: men with felt hats
+drawn over their brows; women, sunbonneted or hatless; children
+barefoot, bareheaded, ragged, unwashed. Unwashed these labourers have
+gone to bed; unwashed they have arisen. To their garments cling the bits
+of cotton, the threads of cotton, the strands of roping, badges of
+their trade, brand of their especial toil. As they pass over the red
+clay, over the pale yellow sand, the earth seems to claim them as part
+of her unchanging phase; cursed by the mandate primeval--"by the sweat
+of thy brow"--Earth-Born!
+
+In the early morning the giant mill swallows its victims, engorges
+itself with entering humanity; then it grows active, stirring its
+ponderous might to life, movement and sound. Hear it roar, shudder,
+shattering the stillness for half a mile! It is full now of flesh and
+blood, of human life and brain and fiber: it is content! Triumphantly
+during the long, long hours it devours the tithe of body and soul.
+
+Behind lies the deserted, accursed village, destitute of life during the
+hours of day, condemned to the care of a few women, the old, the
+bedridden and the sick--of which last there are plenty.
+
+Mighty Mills--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate; charnel
+houses, devastators, destructors of homes and all that mankind calls
+hallowed; breeders of strife, of strike, of immorality, of sedition and
+riot--buildings tremendous--you give your immutable faces,
+myriads-windowed, to the dust-heaps, to the wind-swept plains of sand.
+When South Carolina shall have taken from you (as its honour and wisdom
+and citizenship is bound to do) the youngest of the children, do you
+think that you shall inevitably continue to devour what remains? There
+is too much resistance yet left in the mass of human beings. Youth will
+then rebel at a servitude beginning _at ten years of age_: and the women
+will lift their arms above their heads one day in desperate gesture of
+appeal and cry out--not for the millionaire's surplus; not a tirade
+anarchistic against capital.... What is this woman of the hills and
+woman of the mills that she should so demand? She will call for hours
+short enough to permit her to bear her children; for requital
+commensurate with the exigence of progressive civilization; for wages
+equal to her faithful toil.
+
+This is not too fantastic a demand or too ideal a state to be divinely
+hoped for, believed in and brought to pass.[10]
+
+  [Footnote 10: Of the 21,000,000 spindles in the United States, the
+  South has 6,000,000. $35,381,000 of Carolina's wealth is in
+  cotton mills.
+
+  NOTE. I have seen, in Aragon, Georgia, hope for the future of the
+  mill-hands. The Aragon Cotton Mills are an improvement on the
+  South Carolina Mills and are under the direct supervision of an
+  owner whose sole God is not gain. Mr. Walcott is an agitator of
+  the nine-hours-a-day movement; he is opposed to Child Labour, and
+  in all his relations with his hands he is humane and kindly. I
+  look to the time when Aragon shall set a perfect pattern of what
+  a mill-town should be. It is already quite the best I have seen.
+  Its healthfulness is far above the average, and its situation
+  most fortunate.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not inapt here is the pagan idea of _Nous_, moving upon chaos, stirring
+the stagnant, unresponsive forces into motion; agitating these forces
+into action; the individual elements separate and go forth, each one on
+its definitely inspired mission. Some inevitable hour shall see the
+universal agitation of the vast body known as the "labouring class." For
+the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so
+ignorant and so down-pressed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Who Toils
+by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WHO TOILS ***
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