Part 18

There was much singing on our floor. Irma used often to croon negro religious songs, the kind parlor entertainers imitate. I loved to listen to her. It was not my clothes she was ironing. Hattie, down the line, mostly dwelt on "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam." Hattie had straight, short hair that stood out all over her head, and a face like a negro kewpie. She was up to mischief seven hours of the nine, nor could Miss Cross often subdue her. Hattie had been on our floor four years. One lively day Irma was singing with gusto "Abide With Me." For some reason I had broken into the rather unfactory-like ballad of "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and Lucia was caroling some Italian song lustily--all of us at one and the same time. Finally Miss Cross called over, "For land's sakes, two of you girls stop singing!" Since Irma and I were the only two of the three to understand her, we made Christian martyrs of ourselves and let Lucia have the floor.

Miss Cross was concerned once as to how I happened to know so many hymns. Green earrings do not look particularly hymny. The fact was, I had not thought of most of the hymns our sixth floor sang since I was knee high. In those long ago days a religious grandmother took me once to a Methodist summer camp meeting, at which time I resolved before my Maker to join the Salvation Army and beat a tambourine. So when Miss Cross asked me how I knew so many hymns, and the negro-revivalist variety, I answered that I once near joined the Salvation Army. "You don't say!" said the amazed Miss Cross.

One day Miss Cross and Jacobs, a Jew who bossed some department which brought him often to our floor, to see, for instance, should they wash more curtains or do furniture covers, had a great set-to on the subject of religion. Jacobs was an iconoclast. Edna left her handkerchiefs to join in. I eavesdropped visibly. Jacobs 'lowed there was no hell. Whereat Miss Cross and Edna wanted to know the sense of being good. Jacobs 'lowed there was no such thing as a soul. Miss Cross and Edna fairly clutched each other.

"Then what is there that makes you happy or unhappy, if it ain't your soul?" asked Miss Cross, clenchingly.

"Oh, hell!" grunted Jacobs, impatiently, after having just argued there was no such place.

Jacobs uttered much heresy. Miss Cross and Edna perspired in anguish. Then I openly joined the group.

Miss Cross turned to me. "I tell you how I feel about Christianity. If a lot of these educated college professors and lawyers and people like that, when they read all the books they do and are smart as they are--if Christianity is good enough for them, it's good enough for me!"

Jacobs was so disgusted that he left.

Whereat Edna freed her soul of all the things she wanted to say about hell and punishment for sins. She went too far for Miss Cross. Edna spoke of thieves and murderers and evildoers in general, and what they ought to get in both this world and the next. Quite a group had collected by this time.

Then Miss Cross turned to us all and said: "We're in no position to pass judgment on people that do wrong. Look at us. Here we are, girls what have everything. We got nice homes, enough to eat and wear, we have 'most everything in the world we want. We don't know what it's like to be tempted, 'cause we're so fortunate. An' I say we shouldn't talk about people who go wrong."

That--in a laundry.

And only Edna seemed not to agree.

* * * * *

To-day at lunch the subject got around to matrimony. Eleanor said: "Any girl can get married, if she wants to so bad she'll take any old thing, but who wants to take any old thing?"

"Sure," I added, cockily. "Who wants to pick up with anyone they can vamp in the Subway?"

Whereupon I get sat upon and the line of argument was interesting. Thus it ran:

After all, why wasn't a man a girl vamped in the Subway the safest kind? Where did working girls get a chance to meet men, anyhow? About the only place was the dance hall, and goodness knows what kind of men you did meet at a dance hall. They were apt to be the kind to make questionable husbands; like as not they were "sports." But the Subway! Now there you were more likely to pick up with the dependable kind. Every girl at the table knew one or several married couples whose romances had begun on the Subway, and "every one of 'em turned out happy." One girl told of a man she could have vamped the Sunday before in the Subway, but he was too sportily dressed and she got scared and quit in the middle. The other girls all approved her conduct. Each expressed deep suspicion of the "sporty" man. Each supported the Subway romance.

I withdrew my slur on the same.

* * * * *

A guilty feeling came over me as the day for leaving the laundry approached. Miss Cross and I had become very friendly. We planned to do all sorts of things together. Our floor was such a companionable, sociable place. It didn't seem square to walk off and leave those girls, black and white, who were my friends. In the other factories I just disappeared as suddenly as I came. After a few days I could not stand it and penned a jiggly note to Miss Cross. Unexpectedly, I was going to have to move to Pennsylvania (that was true, for Christmas vacation). I hated to leave her and the girls, etc., etc. I was her loving friend, "Constance," alias "Sunbeam."

In a Dress Factory

Fingers poke through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers, spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes, duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old brown-leather bag. In the old brown-leather bag is an old black purse. In the old black purse are fifty-five cents, a key, and a safety pin. In the old brown bag are also two sticks of Black Jack chewing gum, a frayed handkerchief, and the crumpled list of possibilities. If you should lose the list!

That list was copied from the Sunday World--from the "Female Help Wanted, Miscellaneous." The future looked bright Sunday. Now after four attempts to land jobs had ended in being turned down cold, the future did not look bright at all. Because, you understand, we are going on the assumption that the old black purse in the old brown bag with fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin were all that stood between us and--well, a number of dismal things. Which was fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin more than some folk had that Monday morning in New York.

You must know in days of unemployment that it is something of a catastrophe if you do not land the first job you apply for Monday morning. For by the time you reach the second place on the list, no matter how fast you go, it is apt to be filled up from the group who were waiting there from 7.30 on, as you had waited at your first hope. The third chance is slimmer still by far, and if you keep on until 10 or 11 it is mostly just plain useless.

And if you do not land a job Monday, that whole week is as good as lost. Of course, there is always a chance--the smallest sort of hopeless chance--that something can be found later on in the week. The general happening is that you stake your all on the 7.30 to 8.30 wait Monday morning. Often it is 9 before the firm sees fit to announce it wants no more help, and there you are with fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin--or less--to do till Monday next.

Strange the cruel comfort to be felt from the sight of the countless others hurrying about hopelessly, hopefully, that raw Monday morning. On every block where a firm had advertised were girls scanning their already worn-looking lists, making sure of the address, hastening on. Nor were they deterred by the procession marching away--even if some one called, "No use goin' up there--they don't want no more." Perhaps, after all, thought each girl to herself, the boss would want her. The boss did not.

First, early in the morning and full of anticipation I made for the bindery on West Eighteenth Street. That sounded the likeliest of the possibilities. No need to get out the paper to make sure again of the number. It must be where that crowd was on the sidewalk ahead, some thirty girls and as many men and boys. Everyone was pretty cheerful--it was twenty minutes to eight and most of us were young. Rather too many wanted the same job, but there were no worries to speak of. Others might be unlucky--not we. So our little group talked. Bright girls they were, full of giggles and "gee's." Finally the prettiest and the brightest of the lot peered in through the street doors. "Say, w'at d'ye know? I see a bunch inside! Come on!"

In we shoved our way, and there in the dismal basement-like first floor waited as many girls and men as on the sidewalk. "Good night! A fat show those dead ones outside stand!" And we passed the time of day a bit longer. The pretty and smart one was not for such tactics long. "W'at d'ye say we go up to where the firm is and beat the rest of 'em to it!" "You said it!" And we tore up the iron stairs. On the second flight we passed a janitor. "Where's the bindery?"