Part 14

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There was one place I was not going to work, and that was a laundry! I had been through laundries, I had read about laundries, and it was too much to ask anyone--if it was not absolutely necessary--to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons and thread manufactured and patterns cut and garments made up, and fitted, or not, and then to keep those garments clean! We talk with such superiority of the fact that we wear clothes and heathen savages get along with beads and rushes. For just that some six hundred and fifty thousand people work six days a week doing laundry work alone--not to mention mother at the home washboard--or electric machine. We must be clean, of course, or we would not be civilized, but I do not see why we need be so fearfully sot up about it.

A new Monday morning came along, and I waited from 7.40 to 9.15 in a six-by-nine entry room, with some twenty-five men and women, to answer the advertisement:

GIRLS, OVER 18

with public school education, to learn machine ironing, marking, and assorting linens; no experience necessary; splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions; hours 8 to 5.30; half day Saturday.

What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls from the brassworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.

I was third in line. The manager himself interviewed us inside, since the "Welfare Worker" was ill. What experience had I? I was experienced in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the "family" floor--two vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it so hard as the brassworks--in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced, instead of the usual twelve. At the end of two weeks, if I wasn't earning more than fourteen dollars--it was a piecework system, with fourteen dollars as a minimum--I'd have to go, and make room for some one who could earn more than fourteen dollars.

I wonder if the Welfare Worker would have made the same speech. That manager was a fraud. On our floor, at least, no one had ever been known to earn more than her weekly minimum. He was a smart fraud. Only I asked too many questions upstairs, he would have had me working like a slave to hold my job.

By the time clock, where I was told to wait, stood the woman just ahead of me in the line. She was the first really bitter soul I had run across in factory work. Her husband had been let out of his job, along with all workers in his plant, without notice. After January 1st they might reopen, but at 1914 wages. There was one child in the family. The father had hunted everywhere for work. For one week the mother had searched. She had tried a shoe polish factory; they put her on gluing labels. The smell of the glue made her terribly sick to her stomach--for three days she was forced to stay in bed. Three times she had tried this laundry. Each day, after keeping her waiting in line an hour or so, they had told her to come back the next day. At last she had gotten as far as the time clock. I saw her several times in the evening line after that; she was doing "pretty well"--"shaking" on the third floor. Her arms nearly dropped off by evening, but she sure was glad of the thirteen dollars a week. Her husband had found nothing.

The third to join our time-clock ranks was a Porto-Rican. She could speak no English at all. They put her at scrubbing floors for twelve dollars a week. About 4 that afternoon she appeared on our floor, all agitated. She needed a Spanish girl there to tell the boss she was leaving. She was one exercised piece of temper when it finally penetrated just what her job was.

"Family" occupied two-thirds of the sixth and top floor--the other third was the "lunch room." Five flights to walk up every morning. But at least there was the lunch room without a step up at noon. And it was worth climbing five flights to have Miss Cross for a forelady. Sooner or later I must run into a disagreeable forelady, for the experience. To hear folks talk, plenty of that kind exist. Miss Cross was glad I was to be on her floor. She told the manager and me she'd noticed me that morning in line and just thought I'd made a good press ironer. Was I Eyetalian?

She gave me the second press from the door, right in front of a window, and a window open at the top. That was joy for me, but let no one think the average factory girl consciously pines for fresh air. Miss Cross ironed the lowers of a pair of pajamas to show me how it was done, then the coat part. While she was instructing me in such intricacies, she was deftly finding out all she could about my past, present, and future--married or single, age, religion, and so on. And I watched, fascinated, crumpled pajama legs, with one mighty press of the foot, appear as perfect and flawless as on the Christmas morning they were first removed from the holly-decorated box.

"Now you do it."

I took the coat part of a pair of pink pajamas, smoothed one arm a bit by hand as I laid it out on the stationary side of the ironing press, shaped somewhat like a large metal sleeve board. With both hands I gripped the wooden bar on the upper part, all metal but the bar. With one foot I put most of my weight on the large pedal. That locked the hot metal part on the padded, heated, lower half with a bang. A press on the release pedal, the top flew up--too jarringly, if you did not keep hold of the bar with one hand. That ironed one side of one sleeve. Turn the other side, press, release. Do the other sleeve on two sides. Do the shoulders all around--about four presses and releases to that. Another to one side of the front--two if it is for a big fat man. One under the arm, two or three to the back, one under the other arm, one or two to the other half of the front, one, two, or three to the collar, depending on the style. About sixteen clanks pressing down, sixteen releases flying up, to one gentleman's pajama coat. I had the hang of it, and was left alone. Then I combined ironing and seeing what was what. If a garment was very damp--and most of them were--the press had to be locked several seconds before being released, to dry it out. During those seconds one's eyes were free to wander.

On my left, next the door, worked a colored girl with shell-rimmed spectacles, very friendly, whose name was Irma. Of Irma later. On my right was the most woebegone-looking soul, an Italian widow, Lucia, in deep mourning--husband dead five weeks, with two daughters to support. She could not speak a word of English, and in this country sixteen years. All this I had from the forelady in between her finding out everything there was to know about me. Bless my soul, if Lucia did not perk up the second the forelady left, edge over, and direct a volume of Italian at me. What won't green earrings do! Old Mrs. Reilly called out, "Ach, the poor soul's found a body to talk to at last!" But, alas! Lucia's hope was short lived. "What!" called Mrs. Reilly, "you ain't Eyetalian? Well, you ought to be, now, because you look it, and because there ought to be somebody here for Lucy to talk to!" Lucia was diseased-looking and unkempt-looking and she ironed very badly. Everyone tried to help her out. They instructed her with a flow of English. When Lucia would but shake her head they used the same flow, only much louder, several at once. Then Lucia would mumble to herself for several minutes over her ironing. At times, late in the afternoon, Miss Cross would grow discouraged.

"Don't you understand that when you iron a shirt you put the sleeves over the puffer first?"

Lucia would shake her head and shrug her shoulders helplessly. Miss Cross would repeat with vehemence. Then one girl would poke Lucia and point to the puffer--"Puffer! puffer!" Another would hold up a shirt and holler "Shirt! shirt!" and Lucia would nod vaguely. The next shirt she did as all the others--puffer last, which mussed the ironed part--until some one stopped her work and did a whole shirt for Lucia correct, from beginning to end.

Next to Lucia stood Fanny, colored. She was a good-hearted, helpful, young married thing, not over-cleanly and not overstrong. That first morning she kept her eye on me and came to my rescue on a new article of apparel every so often. Next to Fanny stood the three puffers for anyone to use--oval-shaped, hot metal forms, for all gathers, whether in sleeves, waists, skirts, or what not. Each girl had a large egg-shaped puffer on her own table as well. Next to the puffers stood the two sewing machines, where Spanish Sarah and colored Hattie darned and mended.

At the side, behind the machines, stood Ida at her press. All the presses were exactly alike. Ida was a joy to my eyes. At first glance she appeared just a colored girl, but Ida was from Trinidad; her skin was like velvet, her accent Spanish. As the room grew hot from the presses and the steam, along about 4, and our feet began to burn and grow weary, I would look at Ida. It was so easy to picture the exact likes of her, not more than a generation or two ago, squatting under a palm tree with a necklace of teeth, a ring through her nose, tropic breezes playing on that velvet skin. (Please, I know naught of Trinidad or its customs and am only guessing.) And here stood Ida, thumping, thumping on the ironing press, nine hours, lacking ten minutes, a day, on the sixth floor of a laundry in Harlem, that we in Manhattan might be more civilized.

Once she told me she had lost fifteen pounds in this country. "How?"

"Ah, child," she said, "it's tha mother sickness. Don't you ever know it? Back home in Trinidad are my mother, my father, my two little boys. Oh, tha sickness to see them! But what is one to do when you marry a poor man? He must come to this country to find work, and then, after a while, I must come, too."

Behind Ida stood two other colored girls, and at the end press a white girl who started the day after I did. She stayed only five days, and left in disgust--told me she'd never seen such hard work. Beyond the last press were the curtain frames and the large, round padded table for ironing fancy table linen by hand. Then began the lunch tables.

Behind the row of presses by the windows stood the hand ironers who did the fancy work. First came Ella, neat, old, gray-haired, fearfully thin, wrinkled, with a dab of red rouge on each cheek. After all, one really cannot be old if one dabs on rouge before coming to work all day in a laundry. Ella had hand ironed all her life. She had been ten years in her last job, but the place changed hands. She liked ironing, she said. Ella never talked to anybody, even at lunch time.

Behind Ella ironed Anna Golden, black, who wore striped silk stockings. She always had a bad cold. Most of the girls had colds most of the time--from the steam, they said. Anna had spent two dollars on medicine that week, which left her fourteen dollars. Anna was the one person to use an electric iron. It had newly been installed. The others heated their irons over gas flames. Every so often Miss Cross would call out, "I smell gas!" So did everybody else. After Anna, Lucile, blackest of all and a widow. And then--Mrs. Reilly.

Mrs. Reilly and Hattie were the characters of the sixth floor. Mrs. Reilly was old and fat and Irish. She had stood up hand ironing so long the part of her from the waist up seemed to have settled down into her hips. Eleven years had Mrs. Reilly ironed in our laundry. She was the one pieceworker in the building. In summer she could make from twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, but she claimed she lost a great part of it in winter. She said she was anxious to get on timework. One afternoon I saw Mrs. Reilly iron just two things--the rest of the while, nothing to do, she sat on an old stool with her eyes closed.

The first afternoon, Mrs. Reilly edged over to me on pretext of ironing out a bit of something on my press.

"An' how are you makin' out?"

"All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get tired?