The Woman Who Toils Part 18

Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in a cheery tone.

"Working here? Got it good?"

"I guess so."

"That's all right. Good-day."

Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new cla.s.s!

On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long, low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not fully found the workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me--hard ordeal for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the seats beyond me and on either side were filled.

Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of good-fellows.h.i.+p--coin freely pa.s.sed from workwoman to workwoman.

This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was ma.s.sed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like lightning.

"Do you like your job?" I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but made no direct reply. "I used to have what you're doing; it's awful.

That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got _this_."

She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only.

"But don't you smell it from here?"

"Not so bad; this here" (pointing to her black fluid) "smells stronger; it _drownds_ it.

"I make my wages clear," she announced to me a few minutes later.

"How do you mean?"

"Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward.

I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't cost me anything!"

So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running, waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's f.a.g end!

"I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side."

My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes (thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie, loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because one had been three hours at work.

A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.

"Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!"

My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.

It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said.

"Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops."

Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing."

The other laughed sweetly.

"Well, I jest have to sing."

"You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.

"You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me alone, she whispered:

"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.

"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_ soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"

Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads at the clicking machines! s.h.i.+ne on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed shoulders! on the flying hands!

At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appet.i.te. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.

The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue (oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.

Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."

Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory, shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.

Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.

Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions she was courtesy itself.

"Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from?

Paris!"

My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?"

She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is like!"

The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-sh.e.l.l, a skin of satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five cents to-day."

Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune never to work in a shoe-shop."

"_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!"

Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd jump into the river!"

She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.

"Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a lot!"

"I am sick of the shoe-shops."

"How long have you been at this work?"