Part 23

The first day I was at the dress factory a very dirty but pleasant-faced little Jewish girl said to me, "Ever try workin' at home? Ain't it just awful?" She had made thirty-two dollars a week beading at her last place--didn't know what she'd get here.

I had hoped to hear murmurings and discussions about the conditions of the garment trades and the unions--not a word the whole time. Papers were full of a strike to be called the next week throughout the city, affecting thousands of waist and dress makers. It might as well have been in London. Not an echo of interest in it reached our factory. I asked Sarah if she had ever worked in a union shop. "Sure." "Any different from this?" "Different? You bet it's different. Boss wouldn't dare treat you the way you get treated here." But as usual I was yelled for and got no chance ever to pin Sarah to details.

A group of girls in the dressing room exploded one night, "Gee! they sure treat you like dogs here! No soap, no towels--nothing." The hours were good--8.30 to 12.15; 1 to 5.15. One Saturday Ada and the boss asked the beaders to work in the afternoon. Not one stayed. Too many had heard the tales of girls working overtime and not being paid anything extra.

* * * * *

Wednesday I went back after my last week's pay. When the cashier caught sight of me she was full of interest. "I was writing you a letter this very day. The boss wants you back awful badly. He's out just now for lunch. Can't you wait?"

Just then the boss stepped from the elevator. "Ach, here you are! Now, dearie, if it's just a matter of a few dollars or so--"

I was leaving town. Much discussion. No, I couldn't stay on. Well, if I insisted--yes, he'd get my pay envelope. My, oh, my, they missed me! Why so foolish as to leave New York? Now, as for my wages, they could easily be fixed to suit.... All right, all right, he'd get my last pay envelope.

And there was my pay envelope with just twelve dollars again. "What about my overtime?"

Overtime? Who said anything about overtime? He did himself. He'd promised me if I worked every night that week late I'd get paid for it. Every single night I had stayed, and where was my pay for it?

He shook his finger at my time card.

Show him one hour of overtime on that card!

I showed him where every night the time clock registered overtime.

Yes, but not once was it a full hour. And didn't I know overtime never counted unless it was at least a full hour?

No, he had never explained anything about that. I'd worked each night until everything was done and I'd been told I could go.

Well, of course he didn't want to rob me. I really had nothing coming to me. Each night I'd stayed on till about 6. But they would figure it out and see what they could pay me. They figured. I waited. At length majestically he handed out fifty-six cents.

* * * * *

The fat, older brother in the firm rode down in the elevator with me--he who used to move silently around the factory about four times a day, squinting out of his beady eyes, such light as shown there bespeaking 100 per-cent possession. He held his fat thumbs in the palms of his fat hands and benignly he was wont to survey his realm. Mine! Mine! Mine! his every inch of being said. Nor could his proportion of joy have been greater if he had six floors of his own to survey, instead of one little claptrap back room. It did make him so happy. He wore a kindly and never-changing expression, and he never spoke.

Going down in the elevator, he edged over to my corner. He pinched my arm, he pinched my cheeks. Ach, but he'd miss me bad. Nice girl, I was.

Evidently he, too, had evolved a moral equivalent for a living wage. Little kindly personal attentions were his share for anything not adequately covered by twelve dollars and fifty-six cents.

No. 536 Tickets Pillow Cases

Ah, one should write of the bleachery via the medium of poetry! If the thought of the brassworks comes in one breath and the bleachery in the next, the poetry must needs be set to music--the Song of the Bleachery. What satisfaction there must be to an employer who grows rich--or makes his income, whatever it may be--from a business where so much light-heartedness is worked into the product! Let those who prefer to sob over woman labor behind factory prison bars visit our bleachery. Better still, let them work there. Here at least is one spot where they can dry their tears. If the day ever dawns when the conditions in that bleachery can be referred to as typical of American industrial life, exist the agitator, the walking delegate, the closed and open shop fight.

I can hear a bleachery operator grunting, "My Gawd! what's the woman ravin' over? Is it our bleachery she's goin' on about?" Most of the workers in the bleachery know no other industrial experience. In that community, so it seems, a child is born, attends school up to the minimum required, or a bit beyond, and then goes to work in the bleachery--though a few do find their way instead to the overall factory, and still fewer to the shirtwaist factory. No other openings exist at the Falls.

There is more or less talk nowadays about Industrial Democracy. Some of us believe that the application of the democratic principle to industry is the most promising solution to industrial unrest and inefficiency. The only people who have written about the idea or discussed it, so far, have been either theorizers or propagandists from among the intellectuals, or enthused appliers of the principle, more or less high up in the business end of the thing. What does Industrial Democracy mean to the rank and file working under it? Is it one of those splendid programs which look epoch-making in spirit, but never permeates to those very people whom it is especially designed to affect?

It was to find out what the workers themselves thought of Industrial Democracy that I boarded a boat and journeyed seventy miles up the Hudson to work in the bleachery, where, to the pride of those responsible, functions the Partnership Plan.

What do the workers think of working under a scheme of Industrial Democracy?

What do the citizens of the United States think of living under a scheme of Political Democracy?

The average citizen does not think one way or the other about it three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Even voting days the rank and file of us do not ponder overlong on democracy versus autocracy. Indeed, if it could be done silently, in the dead of night, and the newspapers would promise not to say a word about it, perhaps we might change to a benevolent autocracy, and if we could silence all orators, as well as the press, what proportion of the population would be vitally concerned in the transition? Sooner or later, of course, alterations in the way of doing this and that would come about, the spirit of the nation would change. But through it all--autocracy, if it were benevolent, or democracy--there would be little conscious concern on the part of the great majority. Always provided the press and orators would keep quiet.

From my own experience, the same could be said of Industrial Democracy. Autocracy, democracy, the rank and file of the workers, especially the women workers, understand not, ponder not.