Chapter 12

"Gawd! If I could shake the Falls!" many a girl sighed. Yet they had no concrete idea what they would shake it for. Just before I came the bleachery girls were called into meeting and it was explained to them that Bryn Mawr College was planning a two months' summer school for working girls. Its attractions and possibilities were laid forth in detail. It was explained that Vassar College and a woman's club were making it possible for two bleachery girls to go, with all expenses paid. Out of 184 eligible girls four signed up as being interested. One of those later withdrew her name. The two chosen were Bess and Margaret, as fine girls as ever went to any college. There was much excitement the Saturday morning their telegrams came, announcing Bryn Mawr had passed favorably upon their candidacy. Bess especially was beside herself. "Oh, it's what I've longed to have a chance to do all my life!" She had clutched a _New Republic_ under her arms for days containing an article about the summer school. Both Margaret and Bess had spent a couple of years at West Point during the war as servants, for a change. They had worked for the colonel's wife and loved it. "Gee! the fun we had!"

Yet it was no time before Main Street characteristics came to the front.

Only four girls had so much as expressed an interest in the Bryn Mawr scheme. Within a week after the two girls received the telegrams, tongues got busy. Margaret looked ready to cry one afternoon.

"Hey! what's the matter?"

"My Gawd! This place makes you sick. Can't no one let a person get started enjoyin' themselves but what they do their best to spoil it for you!" Her hands were wrapping pillow case bundles like lightning, her head bent over her work. "Don't I know I ain't nothin' but a factory girl? Don't I know I probably won't ever be nothin' but one? Can't a person take a chance to get off for two months and go to that college without everybody sayin' you're tryin' to be stuck up and get to be somethin' grand and think you won't be a factory girl no more? I don't see anything I'm gettin' out of this that's goin' to make me anything but just a factory girl still. I'm not comin' back and put on any airs. My Gawd! My Gawd! Why can't they leave you alone?"

I asked two of the Falls men I knew if their sex would have acted the same as the girls, had it been two men going off for a two months' treat. "You bet," they answered. "It's your darn small-town jealousy, and not just female at all."

Suppose, then, on top of all the drawbacks of small-town life, the girls had to work under big-city factory conditions? At least there was always the laughter, always the talk, always the visiting back and forth, at the bleachery.

My last day on the job witnessed a real event. Katie Martin was to be married in ten days. Therefore, she must have her tin shower at the bleachery. Certain traditions of that sort were unavoidable. At Christmas time the entire Department 10 was decorated from end to end until it was resplendent. Such merrymaking as went on, such presents as were exchanged! And when any girl, American or Italian, was to be married, the whole department gave her a tin shower.

Katie Martin inspected and folded sheets. She was to marry the brother of young Mrs. Annie Turner, who ticketed sheets. Annie saw to it that Katie did not get to work promptly that noon. When she did appear, all out of breath and combing back her hair (no one ever wore a hat to work), there on two lines above her table hung the "shower." The rest of us had been there fifteen minutes, undoing packages, giggling, commenting. Except old Mrs. Brown's present. It was her first experience at a tin shower and she came up to me in great distress. "Can't you stop them girls undoin' all her packages? 'Tain't right. She oughta undo her own. I jus' won't let 'em touch what I brought!" Ever and again a girl would spy Mrs. Brown's contribution. "Hey! Here's a package ain't undone." "No, no, don't you touch it! Ain't to be undone by anybody but her." Poor Mrs. Brown was upset enough for tears.

There were a few other packages not to be undone by anybody but her, because their contents were meant to, and did, cause peals of laughter to the audience and much embarrassment to Katie. On the lines hung first an array of baby clothes, all diminutive size, marked, "For little Charlie." Such are the traditions. Also hung seven kitchen pans, a pail, an egg-beater and gem pans; a percolator, a double boiler and goodness knows what not. On the table stood six cake tins, more pots and pans, salt and pepper shakers, enough of kitchenware to start off two brides. Everybody was pleased and satisfied. Charlie, the groom-to-be, got a friend with a Ford to take the shower home.

The last night of all at the Falls I spent at my second Board of Operatives' meeting, held the first Friday night of each month. The Board of Operatives is intended to represent the interests of the workers in the bleachery. The Board is elected annually by secret ballot by and from the operatives in the eleven different departments of the mill. Margaret and Bess went, too, on request from above, that they might appear more intelligent should anyone ask at Bryn Mawr about the Partnership Plan. ("My land, what _would_ we tell them?" they wailed.) The Board meetings are officially set down as open to all the operatives, only no one ever heard of anyone else ever attending. The two girls were "fussed" at the very idea of being present, and dressed in their best.

The president, elected representative from the starch room, called the meeting to order from his position at the head of the table in the Village Club House. Every member of the Board shaves and puts on his Sunday clothes, which includes a white collar, for the Board meeting. It is no free show, either. They are handed out two dollars apiece for attending, at the end of the meeting, the same idea as if it were Wall Street. The secretary reads the minutes of the Board of Management. ("The Board of Management was set up by the Board of Directors in July, 1919, as a result of a request from the Board of Operatives for more than merely 'advisory' power which the Board of Operatives then enjoyed in reference to matters of mill management, wages, working conditions, etc. The Board of Management consists of six members, three of whom are the treasurer, the New York agent, and the local manager, and three of whom are elected by the Board of Operatives from their number.... The Board of Management is authorized to settle and adjust such matters of mill management as may arise....") The Company statement, up to March 31, 1921, was read. There followed a report from the Housing Committee--first a financial statement. Then it seemed somebody wanted to put somebody else out of a house, and there were many complications indeed arising therefrom, which took much discussion from everyone and bitter words. It looked as if it would have to be taken to court. The conclusion seemed to be that the Board felt that its executive secretary, chosen by the management, though paid out of the common funds, had exceeded his authority in making statements to tenants. We girls rather shivered at the acrimony of the discussion. Had they been lady board members having such a row, half of them would have been in tears. Next, old Mrs. Owens, who shook sheets behind me, wanted to buy a certain house on a certain avenue--company house, of course. Third, one Mr. Jones on Academy Street wants us to paper his kitchen--he will supply the paper. And there followed other items regarding paint for this tenant, new floor for that, should an old company boarding house be remodeled for a new club house or an apartment house; it was decided to postpone roofing a long row of old company houses, etc.

The operative from the folding and packing room was chairman of the Housing Committee, a strong union enthusiast. The representative from the mechanical department reported for the Recreation and Education Committee; all the night school classes had closed, with appropriate final exercises, for the season: the children's playground would be ready for use July 1st. The man from the "gray" room and singe house reported for the Working Conditions Committee. Something about watchmen and a drinking fountain, and wheels and boxes in the starch room; washing facilities for shovelers; benches and back stairs.

The Finance Committee reported a deficit on the mechanical and electrical smoker. Much discussion as to why a deficit and who ought to pay it, and what precedent were they setting, and all and all, but it was ordered paid--this time. Webster's bills were too high for papering and painting company houses. He was a good worker, his plaster and his paper stuck where they belonged, which hadn't been the rule before. But it was decided he was too costly even so, and they were going back to the company paperers--perhaps their work would stick better next time. A report from the Board of Directors was discussed and voted upon.... The minutes of the Board of Operatives were posted all through the mill. Did anyone read them? If so, or if not so, should the Board of Management minutes also be posted? It was voted to postpone posting such minutes, though they were open to any operative, as in the past.

Under Old Business was a long discussion on health benefits and old-age pensions. For some months now the bleachery has been concerned on the subject of old-age pensions. Health benefits have been in operation for some time. The question was, should they pay the second week for accident cases, until the state started its payments the third week?

Under New Business the resignation of the editors of _Bleachery Life_ was read and accepted. Acrimonious discussion as to the running of the _Bleachery Life_. Again we girls shivered. It was announced a certain rich man who recently died had left the Village Club House five hundred dollars--better write no letter of thanks until they got the money. Should the new handbook be printed by union labor at considerably greater expense, or by an open shop? Unanimously voted by union labor. More health-benefit discussions under New Business. It was voted to increase the Board of Management by two additional members--one operative, one from the employing side. Election then and there by a secret ballot. The operative from the "gray" room and singe house was elected over the man from the office force by two votes. Some further housing discussions, and at 11.15 P.M. the meeting adjourned.

"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!"

VI

_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!_"

"Well, you look as if you could. Never mind the letter, but get one to have by you--comes in handy any job you want. Now about pay--I can't pay you what you been used to getting, at least not first month." (I'd mentioned nothing as to wages.) "Second month maybe more. First month all I can pay you is fifty and your meals. That all right?"

As usual, my joy at landing a job was such that any old pay was acceptable.

"Be back in two hours."

Just then the employment man called out to the hall filled with waiting men, "No jobs for any men this morning." I don't know what became of the old women.

I was back before my two hours were up, so anxious to begin. The employment man put on his hat and coat and dashed upstairs after my steward. Just incidentally, speaking of hats and coats, it can be mentioned that all this was in the middle of one of the hottest summers New York ever knew.

The steward led the way up one flight of iron stairs and into the main kitchen. Wasn't I all eyes to see what was what! If anyone is looking for a bit of muck-raking about the hinterland of restaurants, let him not bother to read farther. Nothing could have been cleaner than the kitchen conditions in our hotel. And orders up and down the line were to serve _nothing_ which was not absolutely as it should be.

In a corner of the main kitchen the steward turned me over to Bridget, who was to take me here, there, and the other place. By 11.30 A.M., I was back where I started from, only, thanks to aged Bridget and her none-too-sure leadings, I was clad in a white cap and white all-over apron-dress, and had had my lunch. Thereupon the steward escorted me to my own special corner of the world, where, indeed, I was to be lord of all I surveyed--provided my gaze fell not too far afield.

That particular corner was down one short flight of stairs from the main kitchen into a hustling, bustling, small and compact, often crowded, place where were prepared the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners of such folk who cared more for haste and less for style than the patrons of the main dining rooms. Our café fed more persons in a day than the other dining rooms combined. Outside we could seat five hundred at a time, sixty-five of those at marble counters, the rest at small tables. But our kitchen quarters could have been put in one corner of the spacious, airy upstairs main kitchen.

Through the bustle of scurrying and ordering waiters I was led to a small shelved-off compartment. Here I was to earn my fifty dollars a month from 1.30 P.M. to 9 P.M. daily except Sunday, with one-half hour off for supper. I was entitled to eat my breakfast and lunch at the hotel as well.

This first day, I was instructed to watch for two hours the girl I was to relieve at 1.30. Her hours were from 6 in the morning to 1.30, which meant she got the brunt of the hard work--all of the breakfast and most of the lunch rush. To me fell the tail end of the lunch rush--up to about 2.15, and supper or dinner, which only occasionally could be spoken of as "rush" at all. I discovered later that we both got the same pay, although she had to work very much harder, and also she had been at our hotel almost two years, though only nine months at this special pantry job. Before that she had made toast, and toast only, upstairs in the main kitchen.

The first question Mary asked me that Monday morning was, "You Spanish?" No, I wasn't. Mary was a Spanish grass widow. Ten years she had been married, but only five of that time had she lived with her husband. Where was he? Back in Spain. "No good." She had come on to this country because it was too hard for a woman to make her way in Spain. She spoke little English, but with that little she showed that she was kindly disposed and anxious to help all she could. She herself had a stolid, untidy efficiency about her, and all the while, poor thing, suffered with pains in her stomach.

By the time 1.30 came around I knew what I had to do and could be left to my own devices. To the pantry girl of our café fell various and sundry small jobs. But the end and aim of her life had to be speed.

To the left of my little doorway was a small, deep sink. Next to the sink was a very large ice chest. On the side of the ice chest next the sink hung the four soft-boiled-egg machines--those fascinating contrivances in which one deposited the eggs, set the notch at two, three, four minutes, according to the desires of the hurried guest without, sank the cup-shaped container in the boiling water, and never gave the matter another thought. At the allotted moment the eggs were hoisted as if by magic from out their boilings. Verily are the wonders of civilization manifold! The sink and the protruding ice chest filled the entire left side of my small inclosure. Along the entire right and front was a wide work-shelf. On this shelf at the right stood the electric toasting machine which during busy hours had to be kept going full blast.

"Toast for club!" a waiter sang out as he sped by, and zip! the already partially toasted bread went into the electric oven to be done so crisply and quickly that you could call out to that waiter, "Toast for club" before he could come back and repeat his ominous, "Toast for club!" at you. People who order club sandwiches seem always to be in a special hurry.

In the front corner just next the toaster stood the tray of bread sliced ready to toast, crusts off for dry or buttered toast, crusts on for "club," very thin slices for "toast Melba." Directly in front, and next the bread tray, came the tray filled with little piles of graham and milk crackers, seven in a pile. What an amazing number of folk order graham or milk crackers in a café! It seems unbelievable to one who has always looked upon a place furnishing eatables outside a home as a chance to order somewhat indigestible food prepared entirely differently from what any home could accomplish. Yet I know it to be a fact that people seat themselves at a table or a counter in a more or less stylish café and order things like prunes or rhubarb and graham or milk crackers, and perhaps top off, if they forget themselves so far, with a shredded-wheat biscuit.

It is bad enough if a man feels called upon to act that way before 2 P.M. When he puts in an order for such after 6 in the evening--then indeed it is a case for tears. I would get the blues wondering whatever could ail adult humanity that it ordered shredded-wheat biscuits after dark.

Just above the counter holding the bread and crackers was the counter on which were placed the filled orders for the waiters to whisk away. It was but a step from there to my ice box. The orders it was my business to fill were for blackberries, blueberries, prunes, sliced oranges, rhubarb, grapefruit, whole oranges, apples, sliced peaches and bananas, muskmelons, and four kinds of cheese. These pretty well filled the upper half of the ice chest, together with the finished salads I kept ahead, say three of each, lettuce and tomato, hearts of lettuce, plain lettuce, and sliced tomatoes.

In the lower half stood the pitchers of orange and grape juice, jams and jellies for omelettes to be made down the line, olives, celery, lettuce, cucumbers, a small tub of oranges and a large bowl of sliced lemons. The lemons, lemons, lemons I had daily to slice to complete the ice-tea orders! The next pantry-girl job I fill will be in winter when there is no demand for ice tea. I had also to keep on hand a bowl of American cheese cut the proper size to accompany pie, and together with toast and soft-boiled eggs and crackers and a crock of French dressing set in ice. Such was my kingdom, and I ruled it alone.

During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second apart, each calling an order, "Half a cantaloupe!" "Two orders of buttered toast!" "Combination salad!" (that meant romaine and lettuce leaves, shredded celery, sliced cucumbers, quartered tomatoes, green pepper, watercress, which always had to be made up fresh); "Sliced peaches!" (they could never be sliced in advance); "One order orange juice!" "Toast for club!" then how one's fingers sped!

The wonder of it was no one ever seemed to lose his patience or his temper. That is, nobody out our way. Maybe in the café there was some millionaire hastily en route to a game of golf who cursed the universe in general and the clumsy fingers of some immigrant pantry girl in particular. (Not so fearfully clumsy either.)

Between 2 and 2.30 the rush subsided, and that first day I caught my breath and took time to note the lay of the land.