Part 28

"Say, I'm for coming every time." Perhaps we three girls will have started the style of outside attendance at the meetings.

Whether a wider participation of operatives, a deeper understanding of Industrial Democracy and the Partnership Plan, develops or not, certainly they are a long step on the way to some sort of permeation of interest. For the next morning early, my last morning, as I started work, I heard toothless old Mrs. Holley call over to aged Mrs. Owens, whose husband even these days is never sober: "Hi, Mrs. Owens, what do ye know habout hit! Hain't it grand we got out over five million five hundred thousand yards last month?"

"I say it's grand," grinned Mrs. Owens. "More 'n a million over what we done month before."

"Hi say--over fifteen million the last three months. Hi say we're some bleachery, that's what hi say!"

No. 1470, "Pantry Girl"

Perhaps, more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers, where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and washing have not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the growth of such normal intercourse between the sexes as leads to happy matrimony. No need to depend on dance halls or the Subway to pick up a "fella." No need for external administrations from wholesome social workers whose aim is to enable the working man or woman to see something of the opposite sex.

Yet forever are there flies in ointments. Flossie was one of the salad girls in the main kitchen. Flossie was Irish, young, most of her teeth gone. Her sister had worked at our hotel two years earlier, then had sent for Flossie to come from Ireland. The sister was now married.

Innocently, interestedly, I asked, "To a man she knew here at the hotel?"

Flossie cast a withering eye upon me. "The good Lord save us! I should say not! And what decent girl would ever be marryin' the likes of a man who worked around a hotel? She couldn't do much worse! Just steer clear of hotel men, I'm tellin' ya. They're altogether too wise to be safe for any girl."

We were eating supper. The table of eight all nodded assent.

Too wise or not too wise--at least there is a--cordiality--a predisposition toward affection on the part of male hotel workers which tends to make one's outside male associates seem fearfully formal, if not stiffly antagonistic. If one grows accustomed to being called "Sweetheart," "Darling" on first sight, ending in the evening by the time-clock man's greeting of, "Here comes my little bunch of love!"--is it not plain that outside in the cruel world such words as a mere "How-do-you-do" or "Good morning" seem cold indeed?

What happens when a girl works three years in this affectionate atmosphere and then marries a plumber who hollers merely "say" at her?

* * * * *

Behind the scenes in a hotel--what is it all about? To find that out I poked around till the employment-office entrance of one of New York's biggest and newest hotels was discovered. There had been no "ad." in the Sunday paper which would give a hint that any hotel needed additional help. We took our chances. Some twenty men waited in a little hallway, two women inside the little office. One of the women weighed at least two hundred and fifty, the other not a pound over ninety. Both could have been grandmothers, both wanted chamber work. The employment man spied me.

"What do you want?"

"A job."

"What kind of a job?"

"Anything but bein' chambermaid."

"What experience have you had in hotel work?"

"None, but lots in private homes. I'd like a job around the kitchen some place."

"Ever try pantry work?"

"Not in a hotel, but lots in private families. I can do that swell!" (What pantry work meant I hadn't the least idea--thought perhaps washing glasses and silverware.)

He put on his coat and hat and dashed upstairs. He always put on his coat and hat to go upstairs. In a few moments he dashed hurriedly back, followed by another man whose teeth were all worn down in the front. I learned later that he was an important steward.

He asked me all over again all the questions the first man had asked, and many more. He was in despair and impatient when he found I had not a single letter of recommendation from a single private family I had worked for. I could have written myself an excellent one in a few moments. Could I bring a letter back later in the day?

"Can you fix salads?"

"Sure!"

"You think you could do the job?"

"Sure!"