Part 22

"Yes, yes--you're worth one hundred dollars, but I'm talking just plain English. What you expect to get?"

"I tell you what I'm worth."

"All right, you're worth one hundred dollars; you think you'll get thirty dollars. I'll pay you twenty dollars."

(Sadie had previously told me under no consideration would she remain under twenty-five dollars, but she remained for twenty dollars.)

My turn. I thought there was no question about my "price." It was fourteen dollars. But perhaps seeing how I had run my legs almost off, and pinned my fingers almost off all week, the boss was going voluntarily to raise me.

"What wages you expect to get here?"

Oh, well, since he thus opened the question we would begin all new. I had worked so much harder than I had anticipated.

"Sixteen dollars a week."

"Ho--sixteen dollars!--and last Monday it was fourteen dollars. You're going up, yes?"

"But the work's much harder 'n I thought it 'ud be."

"So you go from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars and I got you here to tell you you'd get twelve dollars."

Oh, but I was mad--just plain mad! "You let me work all week thinkin' I was gettin' fourteen dollars. It ain't fair!"

"Fair? I pay you what I can afford. Times are hard now, you know."

I could not speak for my upset feelings. To pay me twelve dollars for the endless labor of that week when he had allowed me to think I was getting fourteen dollars! To add insult to injury, he said, "Next week I want you should work later than the other girls evenings, and make no date for next Saturday" (I had told him I was in a hurry to get off for lunch this Saturday) "because I shall want you should work Saturday afternoon."

Such a state of affairs is indeed worth following up....

Monday morning he came around breezily--he really was a cordial, kindly soul--and said; "Well, dearie, how are you this morning?"

I went on pinning.

"Good as anybody can be on twelve dollars a week."

"Ach, forget it, forget it! Always money, money! Whether a person gets ten cents or three hundred dollars--it's not the money that counts"--his hands went up in the air--"it's the service!"

Yet employers tell labor managers they must not sentimentalize.

A bit later he came back. "I tell you what I'll do. You stay late every night this week and work Saturday afternoon like I told you you should, and I'll pay you for it!"

To such extremes a sense of justice can carry one! (Actually, he had expected that extra work of me gratis!)

During the week I figured out that in his own heart that boss had figured out a moral equivalent for a living wage. There was nothing he would not do for me. Did he but come in my general direction, I was given a helping hand. He joked with me continually. The hammer and nails were always busy. I was not only "dearie," I was "sweetheart." But fourteen dollars a week--that was another story.

Ada was full of compassion and suggested various arguments I should use next week on the boss. It was awful what he paid me, Ada declared. She too would talk to him.

The second week I got closer to the girls. Or, more truthfully put, they got closer to me. At the other factories I had asked most of the questions and answered fewer. Here I could hardly get a question in edgewise for the flood which was let loose on me. I explained in each factory that I lived with a widow who brought me from California to look after her children. I did some work for her evenings and Saturday afternoon and Sunday, to pay for my room and board. Not only was I asked every conceivable question about myself, but at the dress factory I had to answer uncountable questions about the lady I lived with--her "gentlemen friends," her clothes, her expenses. It was like pulling teeth for me to get any information out of the girls.

In such a matter as reading, for example. Every girl I asked was fond of reading. What kind of books? Good books. Yes, but the names. I got We Two out of Sarah, and Jean was reading Ibsen's Doll's House. It was a swell book, a play. After hours one night she told me the story. Together with Ada's concern over my grammar it can be seen that I left the dress factory in intellectual advance over the condition in which I entered.

The girls I had the opportunity of asking were not such "movie" enthusiasts, on the whole. Only now and then they went to "a show." Less frequently they spoke of going to the Jewish Theater. No one was particularly excited over dancing--in fact, Sarah, who looked the blond type of the dance-every-night variety, thought dancing "disgusting." Shows weren't her style. She liked reading. Whenever I got the chance I asked a girl what she did evenings. The answer usually was, "Oh, nothing much." One Friday I asked a group of girls at lunch if they weren't glad the next day was Saturday and the afternoon off. Four of them weren't glad at all, because they had to go home and clean house Saturday afternoons, and do other household chores. "Gee! don't you hate workin' round the house?"

I wonder how much of the women-in-industry movement is traceable to just that.