Making Both Ends Meet Part 6

On the next morning the case against the tall Italian was rapidly examined, and the Italian discharged. He was then summoned back in reb.u.t.tal, and Natalya and Anna's case was called. Four witnesses, one of them being the proprietor of the factory, were produced against them, and stated that Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the Italian was escorting. At the close of the case against Natalya and Anna, Judge Cornell said:[17] "I find the girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile for me to fine them. Some charitable women would pay their fines or they could get a bond. I am going to commit them to the workhouse under the c.u.mulative Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity of thinking over what they have done."

"Miss Violet Pike came forward then," said Natalya, "and said, 'Cannot this sentence be mollified?'

"And he said it could not be mollified.

"They took us away in a patrol to the Tombs.

"We waited in the waiting-room there. The matron looked at us and said, 'You are not bad girls. I will not send you down to the cells. You can do some sewing for me here.' But I could not sew. I felt so bad, because I could not eat the food they gave us at noon for dinner in the long hall with all the other prisoners. It was coffee with mola.s.ses in it, and oatmeal and bread so bad that after one taste we could not swallow it down. Then, for supper, we had the same, but soup, too, with some meat bones in it. And even before you sat down at the table these bones smelled so it made you very sick. But they forced you to sit down at the table before it, whether you ate or drank anything or not. And the prisoners walked by in a long line afterward and put their spoons in a pail of hot water, just the same whether they had eaten anything with the spoons or not.

"Then we walked to our cells. It was night, and it was dark--oh, so dark in there it was dreadful! There were three other women in the cell--some of them were horrid women that came off the street. The beds were one over the other, like on the boats--iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket.

But it was so cold you had to put both over you; and the iron springs underneath were bare, and they were dreadful to lie on. There was no air; you could hardly breathe. The horrid women laughed and screamed and said terrible words.

"Anna Lunska felt so sick and was so very faint, I thought what should we do if she was so much worse in the night in this terrible darkness, where you could see nothing at all. Then I called through the little grating to a woman who was a sentinel that went by in the hall all through the night, 'My friend is sick. Can you get me something if I call you in the night?'

"The woman just laughed and said, 'Where do you think you are? But if you pay me, I will come and see what I can do.'

"In a few minutes she came back with a candle, and shuffled some cards under the candlelight, and called to us, 'Here, put your hand through the grate and give me a quarter and I'll tell you who your fellows are by the cards.' Then Anna Lunska said, 'We do not care to hear talk like that,'

and the woman went away.

"All that night it was dreadful. In the morning we could not eat any of the breakfast. They took us in a wagon like a prison with a little grating, and then in a boat like a prison with a little grating. As we got on to it, there was another girl, not like the rest of the women prisoners. She cried and cried. And I saw she was a working girl. I managed to speak to her and say, 'Who are you?' She said, 'I am a striker. I cannot speak any English.' That was all. They did not wish me to speak to her, and I had to go on.

"From the boat they made us go into the prison they call Blackwell's Island. Here they made us put on other clothes. All the clothes they had were much, much too large for me, and they were dirty. They had dresses in one piece of very heavy, coa.r.s.e material, with stripes all around, and the skirts are gathered, and so heavy for the women. They almost drag you down to the ground. Everything was so very much too big for me, the sleeves trailed over my hands so far and the skirts on the ground so far, they had to pin and pin them up with safety-pins.

"Then we had the same kind of food I could not eat; and they put us to work sewing gloves. But I could not sew, I was so faint and sick. At night there was the same kind of food I could not eat, and all the time I wondered about that s.h.i.+rt-waist striker that could not speak one word of English, and she was all alone and had the same we had in other ways.

When we walked by the matron to go to our cells at night, at first she started to send Anna Lunska and me to different cells. She would have made me go alone with one of the terrible women from the street. But I was so dreadfully frightened, and cried so, and begged her so to let Anna Lunska and me stay together, that at last she said we could.

"Just after that I saw that other girl, away down the line, so white, she must have cried and cried, and looking so frightened. I thought, 'Oh, I ought to ask for her to come with us, too' But I did not dare. I thought, 'I will make that matron so mad that she will not even let Anna Lunska and me stay together,' So I got almost to our cell before I went out of the line and across the hall and went back to the matron and said: 'Oh, there is another Russian girl here. She is all alone. She cannot speak one word of English. Please, please couldn't that girl come with my friend and me?'

"She said, 'Well, for goodness' sake! So you want to band all the strikers together here, do you? How long have you known her?'

"I said, 'I never saw her until to-day.'

"The matron said, 'For the land's sake, what do you expect here?' but she did not say anything else. So I went off, just as though she wasn't going to let that girl come with us; for I knew she would not want to seem as though she would do it, at any rate.

"But, after we were in the cell with an Irish woman and another woman, the door opened, and that Russian girl came in with us. Oh, she was so glad!

"After that it was the same as the night before, except that we could see the light of the boats pa.s.sing. But it was dark and cold, and we had to put both the quilt and the blanket over us and lie on the springs, and you must keep all of your clothes on to try to be warm. But the air and the smells are so bad. I think if it were any warmer, you would almost faint there. I could not sleep.

"The next day they made me scrub. But I did not know how to scrub. And, for Anna Lunska, she wet herself all over from head to foot. So they said, very cross, 'It seems to us you do not know how to scrub a bit. You can go back to the sewing department.' On the way I went through a room filled with negresses, and they called out, 'Look, look at the little kid,' And they took hold of me, and turned me around, and all laughed and sang and danced all around me. These women, they do not seem to mind at all that they are in prison.

"In the sewing room the next two days I was so sick I could hardly sew.

The women often said horrid things to each other, and I sat on the bench with them. There was one woman over us at sewing that argued with me so much, and told me how much better it was for me here than in Russian prisons, and how grateful I should be.

"I said, 'How is that, then? Isn't there the same kind of food in those prisons and in these prisons? And I think there is just as much liberty.'"

On the last day of Natalya's sentence, after she was dressed in her own little jacket and hat again and just ready to go, one of the most repellent women of the street said to her, "I am staying in here and you're going out. Give me a kiss for good-by." Natalya said that this woman was a horror to her. "But I thought it was not very nice to refuse this; so I kissed her a good-by kiss and came away."

The officers guarded the girls to the prison boat for their return to New York. There, at the ferry, stood a delegation of the members of the Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union waiting to receive them.

Such is the account of one of the seven hundred arrests made during the s.h.i.+rt-waist strike, the chronicle of a peaceful striker.

As the weeks went on, however, in spite of the advice of the Union officers, there were a few instances of violence on the part of the Union members. Among thirty thousand girls it could not be expected that every single person should maintain the struggle in justice and temperance with perfect self-control. In two or three cases the Union members struck back when they were attacked. In a few cases they became excited and attacked strike breakers. In one factory, although there was no violence, the workers conducted their negotiations in an unfair and unfortunate manner.

They had felt that all their conditions except the amount of wages were just, and they admired and were even remarkably proud of the management, a firm of young and well-intentioned manufacturers. Early in the general strike, however, they went out without a word to the management, without even signifying to it in any way the point they considered unjust. The management did not send to inquire. After a few days it resumed work with strike breakers. The former employees began picketing. The management sent word to them that it would not employ against them, so long as they were peaceful and within the law, any of the means of intimidation that numbers of the other firms were using--special police and thugs. The girls sent word back that they would picket peacefully and quietly. But afterward, on their own admission, which was most disarming in its candor, they became careless and "too gay." They went picketing in too large numbers and were too noisy. Instantly the firm employed police.

Before this, however, the girls had begun to discuss and to realize the unintelligence of their behavior in failing to send a committee to the management to describe their position clearly and to obtain terms. They now appointed and instructed such a committee, came rapidly to terms with the management, and have been working for them in friendly relations ever since.

While in general the strike was both peaceful in conduct and just in demand and methods of demand on the part of the strikers, these exceptions must, of course, be mentioned in the interests of truth.

Further, it would convey a false impression to imply that every striker arrested had as much sense and force of character as Natalya Urusova.

Natalya was especially protected in her ordeal by a vital love of observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these qualities she could spend night after night locked up with the women of the street, in her funny, enormous prison clothes, and remain as uninfluenced by her companions as if she had been some blossoming geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cellar as a convenience for a few minutes, and then carried out again to her native fresh air. But such qualities as hers cannot be demanded of all very young and unprotected girls, and to place them wantonly with women of the streets has in general an outrageous irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently implied by the experience of a girl of Natalya's individual penetration and self-reliance.

III

In the period since the strike began many factories had been settling upon Union terms. But many factories were still on strike, and picketing on the part of the Union was continuing, as well as unwarranted arrests, like Natalya's, on the part of the employers and the police. The few exceptions to the general rule of peaceful picketing have been stated.

Over two hundred arrests were made within three days early in December.

On the 3d of December a procession of ten thousand women marched to the City Hall, accompanying delegates from the Union and the Woman's Trade-Union League, and visited Mayor McClellan in his office and gave him this letter:--

HONORABLE GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, Mayor of the City of New York.

We, the members of the Ladies' s.h.i.+rt-waist Makers' Union, a body of thirty thousand women, appeal to you to put an immediate stop to the insults and intimidations and to the abuses to which the police have subjected us while we have been picketing. This is our lawful right.

We protest to you against the flagrant discrimination of the Police Department in favor of the employers, who are using every method to incite us to violence.

We appeal to you directly in this instance, instead of to your Police Commissioner.

We do this because our requests during the past six months have had no effect in decreasing the outrages perpetrated upon our members, nor have our requests been granted a fair hearing.

Yours respectfully, S. s.h.i.+NDLER, Secretary.

The Mayor thanked the committee for bringing the matter to his attention, and promised to take up the complaint with the Police Commissioner.

But the arrests and violence of the police continued unchecked.

On the 5th of December the Political Equality League, at the instigation of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, held a packed meeting for the benefit of the s.h.i.+rt-waist Makers' Union. Many imprisoned girls were present, and gave to the public clear, straightforward stories of the treatment they had received at the hands of the city. The committee of the meeting had offered the Mayor and other city officials a box, but they refused to be present.

Again the arrests and violence continued without protection for the workers. Nevertheless their cause was constantly gaining, and although all attempts at general arbitration were unsuccessful, more and more employers settled with the operatives. They continued to settle during December and January until the middle of February. All but thirteen of the shops in New York had then made satisfactory terms with the Union workers. It was officially declared that the strike was over.

Natalya's shop had settled with the operatives on the 23d of January, and she went back to work on the next day.

She had an increase of $2 a week in wages--$8 a week instead of $6. Her hours were now fifty-two a week instead of sixty--that is to say, nine and one-half hours a day, with a Sat.u.r.day half-holiday. But she has since then been obliged to enter another factory on account of slack work.

Among the more skilled workers than Natalya in New York to-day, Irena Kovalova, who supports her mother and her younger brother and sister, has $11 a week instead of $9. She is not obliged to work on Sunday, and her factory closes at five o'clock instead of six on Sat.u.r.day. "I have four hours less a week," she said with satisfaction. The family have felt able to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material for a suit, costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this for Irena as a present.

Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, Anna Klotin, who sent $120 home to her family last year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8 a week, and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her former $12 a week. Hers was one of the thirteen factories that did not settle. Of their one hundred and fifty girls, they wished about twenty of their more skilled operators to return to them under Union conditions, leaving the rest under the old long hours of overtime and indeterminate, unregulated wages. Anna was one of the workers the firm wished to retain on Union terms, but she felt she could not separate her chances in her trade from the fortunes of her one hundred and thirty companions. She refused to return under conditions so unjust for them. She has stayed on in her boarding place, as her landlady, realizing Anna's responsible character, is always willing to wait for money when work is slack. She has bought this year only two pairs of shoes, a hat for 50 cents, and one or two muslin waists, which she made herself. She has lived on such work as she could find from time to time in different factories. Anna did not grudge in any way her sacrifice for the less skilled workers. "In time," she said, "we will have things better for all of us." And the chief regret she mentioned was that she had been unable to send any money home since the strike.

The staunchest allies of the s.h.i.+rt-waist makers in their attempt to obtain wiser trade conditions were the members and officers of the Woman's Trade-Union League, whose response and generosity were constant from the beginning to the end of the strike. The chronicle of the largest woman's strike in this country is not yet complete. A suit is now pending against the Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union for conspiracy in restraint of trade, brought by the Sittomer s.h.i.+rt-waist Co. A test suit is pending against Judge Cornell for false imprisonment, brought by one of the s.h.i.+rt-waist strikers.

The whole outcome of the strike in its effect on women's wages in the s.h.i.+rt-waist trade, their income and outlay in their work, both financially and in vitality, cannot, of course, yet be fully known. The statement that there has been a general rise of wages must be modified in other ways than that suggested by the depletion of Anna Klotin's income in the year since the strike. In factories where price on piece-work is subject to arbitration between a Union committee of the workers and the firm, the committee is not always able to obtain a fair price for labor.

One of the largest factories made a verbal agreement to observe Union conditions, but it signed no written contract, and has since broken its word. It discriminates against Union members, and it insists on Sunday work and on night work for more than two nights a week. Further, during the seventeen weeks of the strike many s.h.i.+rt-waist orders ordinarily filled in New York were placed with New Jersey and Pennsylvania firms.

The present New York season has been unusually dull, and now, on this writing, early in August, many girls are discouraged on account of the slight amounts they earn through slack work.