Chapter 9

The dress factory job was like another world compared with candy, brass, and the laundry. In each of those places I had worked on one floor of a big plant, doing one subdivided piece of labor among equally low-paid workers busy at the same sort of job as myself. Of what went on in the processes before and after the work we did, I knew and saw nothing. We packed finished chocolates; we punched slots in already-made lamp cones; we ironed already washed, starched, and dampened clothes. Such work as we did took no particular skill, though a certain improvement in speed and quality of work came with practice. One's eyes could wander now and then, one's thoughts could wander often, and conversation with one's neighbors was always possible.

Behold the dress factory, a little complete world of its own on one small floor where every process of manufacture, and all of it skilled work, could be viewed from any spot. Not quite every process--the designer had a room of her own up front nearer where the woodwork was white.

"Ready-made clothing!" It sounds so simple--just like that. Mrs. Fine Lady saunters into a shop, puts up her lorgnette, and lisps, "I'd like to see something in a satin afternoon dress." A plump blonde in tight-fitting black with a marcel wave trips over to mirrored doors, slides one back, takes a dress off its hanger--and there you are! "So much simpler than bothering with a dressmaker."

But whatever happened to get that dress to the place where the blonde could sell it? "Ready-made," indeed! There has to be a start some place before there is any "made" to it. It was at that point in our dress factory when the French designer first got a notion into her head--she who waved her arms and gesticulated and flew into French-English rages just the way they do on the stage. "_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_"--gray-haired Madame would gasp at our staid and portly Mr. Rogers. Ada could say "My Gawd!" through her Russian nose to him and it had nothing like the same wilting effect.

Ready-made--yes, ready-made. But first Madame got her notion, and then she and her helpers concocted the dress itself. A finished article, it hung inside the wire inclosure where the nice young cutter kept himself and his long high table. The cutter took a look at the finished garment hanging on the side of his cage, measured a bit with his yardstick, and then proceeded to cut the pattern out of paper. Whereupon he laid flat yards and yards of silks and satins on his table and with an electric cutter sliced out his parts. One mistake--one slice off the line--_Mon Dieu!_ it's too terrible to think of! All these pieces had to be sorted according to sizes and colors, and tied and labeled. (Wanted--bright and useful girl right here.)

Next came the sewing machine operators (electric power)--a long narrow table, nine machines at a side, but not more than fourteen operators were employed--thirteen girls and one lone young man. They said that on former piece rates this man used to make from ninety dollars to one hundred dollars a week. The operators were all well paid, especially by candy, brass, and laundry standards, but they were a skilled lot. A very fine-looking lot too--some of the nicest-looking girls I've seen in New York. Everyone had a certain style and assurance. It was good for the eyes to look on them after the laundry thirteen-dollar-a-week type.

When the first operators had done their part the dresses were handed over to the drapers. There were two drapers; they were getting around fifty dollars a week before the hard times. One of the drapers was as attractive a girl as I ever saw any place--bobbed hair, deep-set eyes, a Russian Jewess with features which made her look more like an Italian. She spoke English with hardly any accent. She dressed very quietly and in excellent taste. All day long the two draped dresses on forms--ever pinning and pinning. The drapers turned the dresses over to certain operators, who finished all machine sewing. The next work fell to the finishers.

In that same end of the factory sat the four finishers, getting "about twenty dollars a week," but again no one seemed sure. Two were Italians who could talk little English. One was Gertie, four weeks married--"to a Socialist." Gertie was another of the well-dressed ones. If you could know these dress factory girls you would realize how, unless gifted with the approach of a newspaper reporter--and I lack that approach--it was next to impossible to ask a girl herself what she was earning. No more than you could ask a lawyer what his fees amounted to. The girls themselves who had been working long together in the same shop did not seem to know what one another's wages were. It was a new state of affairs in my factory experience.

The finishers, after sewing on all hooks and eyes and fasteners and doing all the remaining handwork on the dresses, turned them over to the two pressers, sedate, assured Italians, who ironed all day long and looked prosperous and were very polite.

They brought the dresses back to Jean and her helper--two girls who put the last finishing touches on a garment before it went into the showroom--snipping here and there, rough edges all smoothed off. It was to Jean the boss called my second morning, very loud so all could hear: "If you find anything wrong mit a dress, don't _look_ at it, don't _bodder wid_ it--jus' t'row it in dere faces and made dem do it over again! It's not like de old days no more!" (Whatever he meant by that.) So--there was your dress, "ready-made."

Such used to be the entire factory, adding the two office girls; the model, who was wont to run around our part of the world now and then in a superior fashion, clad in a scanty pale-pink-satin petticoat which came just below her knees and an old gray-and-green sweater; plus various male personages, full of business and dressed in their best. Goodness knows what all they did do to keep the wheels of industry running--perhaps they were salesmen. They had the general appearance of earning at least ten to twenty thousand dollars a year. It may possibly have risen as high as two thousand.

And Peters--who was small though grown, and black, and who cleaned up with a fearful dust and snitched lead pencils if you left them around.

At present, in addition, there were the sixteen crochet beaders, because crochet beading is stylish in certain quarters--this "department" newly added just prior to my arrival. But before the beaders could begin work the goods had to be stamped, and before they could be stamped Mr. Rogers (he was middle-aged and a dear and an Italian and his name wasn't "Rogers," but some unpronounceable thing the Germans couldn't get, so it just naturally evolved into something that began with the same letter which they could pronounce) had to concoct a design. He worked in the cage at a raised end of the cutting table. He pricked the pattern through paper with a machine, at a small table outside by the beaders, that was always piled high with a mess of everything from spools to dresses, which Mr. Rogers patiently removed each time to some spot where some one else found them on top of something she wanted, and less patiently removed them to some other spot, where still less patiently they were found in the way and dumped some place else. Such was life in one factory. And Ada would call out still later: "Mr. Rogers, did you see a pile of dresses on this table when you went to work?"

Whereat in abject politeness and dismay Mr. Rogers would dash from "inside" to "outside" and explain in very broken English that there had been some things on the table, but "vaire carefully" he had placed them--here. And to Mr. Rogers's startled gaze the pile had disappeared.

If a dress had to be beaded, Mr. Rogers took the goods after the cutter finished his job, and he and his helpers stamped the patterns on sleeves, front and back, skirt, by rubbing chalk over the paper. Upon the scene at this psychological moment enters the bright girl to make herself useful. The bright girl "framed-up" the goods for the beaders to work on. (In fact, you noted she entered even earlier, by helping the cutter tie the bundles according to size and color.)

"Frame-up" means taking boards the proper length with broad tape tacked along one edge. First you pin the goods lengthwise, pins close together. Then you find side boards the desired length and pin the goods along the sides. Then with four iron clamps you fasten the corners together, making the goods as tight as a drum. There is a real knack to it, let me tell you--especially when it comes to queerly shaped pieces--odd backs or fronts or sleeves. Or where you have a skirt some six or eight feet long and three broad. But I can frame! Ada said so.

When I got a piece framed (Now I write those six words and grin) ... "_when_" ... Two little skinny horses I had to rest the frames upon. The space I had in which to make myself useful was literally about three by four feet just in front of the shelves where the thread and beads were kept. That is, I had it if no one wanted to get anything in the line of thread or beads, which they always did want to get. Whereupon I moved out--which meant my work might be knocked on the floor, or if it was bigger I had to move the work out with me. Or I crawled under it and got the thread or beads myself. If it were a skirt I was framing up I earned the curses, though friendly, of the assemblage. No one could pass in any direction. The beaders were shut in their quarters till I got through, or they crawled under. Or I poked people in the back with the frames while I was clamping them. I fought and bled and died over every large frame I managed to get together, for the frame was larger than the space I had to work in. Until in compassion they finally moved me around the corner into the dressmaking quarters, which tried Joe's soul. Joe was the Italian foreman of that end of things. He was nice. But he saw no reason why I should be moved up into his already crowded space. Indeed, I was only a little better off. The fact of the matter was that the more useful I became the more in everybody's way I got. Indeed, it can be taken as a tribute to human nature that everyone in that factory was not a crabbed nervous wreck from having to work on top of everyone else. It was almost like attempting dressmaking in the Subway. The boss at times would gaze upon my own frantic efforts, and he claimed: "Every time I look at you the tears come in my eis." And I would tell him, "Every time I think about myself the tears come in mine." About every other day he appeared with a hammer and some nails and would pound something some place, with the assurance that his every effort spelled industrial progress and especial help to me.

"All I think on is your comfort, yes?"

"Don't get gray over it!"

Nor will I forget that exhibition of the boss's ideas of scientific management. Nothing in the factory was ever where anyone could find it. It almost drove me crazy. What was my joy then when one day the boss told me to put the spools in order. There was a mess of every-colored spool, mixed with every other color, tangled ends, dust, buttons, loose snappers, more dust, beads, more spools, more dust. A certain color was wanted by a stitcher. There was nothing to do but paw. The spool, like as not, would be so dusty it would take blowings and wipings on your skirt before it could be discovered whether the color was blue or black. I tied my head in tissue paper and sat down to the dusty job of sorting those spools. Laboriously I got all the blacks together and in one box. Laboriously all the whites. That exhausted all the boxes I could lay hands on. I hunted up the boss. "I can't do that spool job decent if I ain't got no boxes to put the different colors in."

"Boxes, boxes! What for you want boxes?"

"For the spools."

"'Ain't you got no boxes?"

"'Ain't got another one."

He hustled around to the spool shelves where I was working.

"_Ach_, boxes! Here are two boxes. What more you want?"

Majestically, energetically, he dumped my black spools out of one box, my white spools out of the other--dumped them back with a flourish into the mess of unassorted dust and colors.

"Here are two boxes! What more you want?"

What redress had I for such a grievance except to wail at him: "My Gawd! my Gawd! I jus' put those spools in them boxes!"

"_Ach_, so!" says the boss. "Vell, put um back in again."

With the sweat of my life's blood I unearthed a ragged empty box here, another there, no two sizes the same. After three days of using every minute to be spared from other jobs on those shelves, I had every single spool where it belonged and each box labeled as to color. How wondrous grand it looked! How clean and dusted! I made the boss himself gaze upon the glory of it.

"_Ach_, fine!" he beamed.

Two days later it was as if I had never touched a spool. The boxes were broken, the spools spilled all over--pawing was again in season. Not yet quite so much dust, but soon even the dust would be as of yore.

"One cause of labor unrest is undoubtedly the fact that the workers are aware that present management of industry is not always 100 per cent efficient."

* * * * *

So then, I framed up. Nor was it merely that I worked under difficulties as to space. Another of the boss's ideas of scientific management seemed to be to employ as few bright and useful girls as possible. He started with three. He ended with just one. From dawn to dewy eve I tore. It was "Connie, come here!" (Ada, the beadwork forelady.) "Connie, come here!" (The cutter.) "Connie, thread, thread, yes? There's a good girl!" (The beaders.) "Connie, changeable beads, yes? That's the girl!" "Connie, unframe these two skirts quick as you can!" "Connie, never mind finishing those skirts; I got to get this 'special' framed up right away!" "Connie, didn't you finish unframing those skirts?" "Connie, tissue paper, yes? Thanks awfully." "Connie, did you see that tag I laid here? Look for it, will you?"

But the choice and rare moment of my bright and useful career was when the boss himself called, "Oh, Miss Connie, come _mal_ here, yes?" And when I got _mal_ there he said, "I want you should take my shoes to the cobblers _so fort_ yes?... And be sure you get a check ... and go quick, yes." Whereupon he removed his shoes and shuffled about in a pair of galoshes.

I put on the green tam. I put on the old brown coat with now three buttons gone and the old fur collar, over my blue-checked apron, and with the boss's shoes under my arm out I fared, wishing to goodness I would run into some one I knew, to chuckle with me. Half an hour later the boss called me again.

"I think it is time you should bring my shoes back, yes?" I went. The cobbler said it would be another five minutes. Five minutes to do what I would within New York! It was a wondrous sensation. Next to the cobbler's a new building was going up. I have always envied the folks who had time to hang over a railing and watch a new building going up. At last--my own self, my green tam, my brown coat over the blue-checked apron, chewing a stick of Black Jack, hung over the railing and for five whole minutes and watched the men on the steel skeleton. All the time my salary was going on just the same.

I was hoping the boss would tip me--say, a dime--for running his errands. Otherwise I might never get a tip from anyone. He did not. He thanked me, and after that he called me "dearie."

Ada's face wore an anxious look when I got back. She was afraid I might not have liked running errands. Running errands, it seemed, was not exactly popular. I assured her it was "so swell watchin' the riveters on the new buildin'" I didn't care about the shoes.

The first day in any new job seems strange, and you wonder if you ever will get acquainted. In the dress factory I felt that way for several days. Hitherto I had always worked with girls all round me, and it was no time before we were chatting back and forth. In the dress factory I worked by myself at chores no one else did. Also, the other girls had the sort of jobs which took concentration and attention--there was comparatively little talk. Also, the sewing machines inside and the riveting on that steel building outside made too much noise for easy conversation.

At lunch time most of the girls went out to eat at various restaurants round about. They looked so grand when they got their coats and hats on that I could never see them letting me tag along in my old green tam and two-out-of-five buttoned coat. My wardrobe had all fitted in appropriately to candy and brass and the laundry, but not to dressmaking. So I ate my lunch out of a paper bag in the factory with such girls as stayed behind. They were mostly the beaders. And they were mostly "dead ones"--the sort who would not talk had they been given a bonus and share in the profits for it. They read the _Daily News_, a group of some five to one paper, and ate.

By Thursday of the first week I was desperate. How was I ever to "get next" to the dress factory girls? During the lunch hour Friday I gulped down my food and tore for Gimbel's, where I bought five new buttons. Saturday I sewed them on my coat, and Monday and all the next week I ate lunch with Ada and Eva and Jean and Kate at a Yiddish restaurant where the food had strange names and stranger tastes. But at least there was conversation.

Ada I loved--our forelady in the bead work--young, good-looking, intelligent. She rather took me under her wing, in gratitude for which I showed almost immediate improvement along those lines whereon she labored over me. My grammar, for instance. When I said "it ain't," Ada would say, "Connie, Connie, _ain't_!" Whereat I gulped and said "isn't," and Ada smiled approval. Within one week I had picked up wonderfully. At the end of that week Ada and I were quite chummy. She asked me one day if I were married. No. Was she? "You don't think I'd be working like this if I was, do you?" When I asked her what she would be doing if she didn't have to work, she answered, "Oh, lots of things." Nor could I pin her to details. She told me she'd get married to-morrow only her "sweetheart" was a poor man. But she was crazy about him. Oh, she was! The very next day she flew over to where I was framing up. "I've had a fight with my sweetheart!"

It was always difficult carrying on a conversation with Ada. She was being hollered for from every corner of the factory continually, and in the few seconds we might have had for talk I was hollered for. Especially is such jumpiness detrimental to sharing affairs of the heart. I know only fragments of Ada's romance. The fight lasted all of four days. Then he appeared one evening, and next morning, she beamingly informed me that "her sweetheart had made up. Oh, but he's _some_ lover, _I_ tell you!"

Ada was born in Russia, but came very young to this country. She spoke English without an accent. Never had she earned less than twenty dollars a week, starting out as a bookkeeper. When crochet beading first became the rage, about five years ago, she went over to that and sometimes made fifty dollars and sixty dollars a week. Here as forelady, she made forty dollars. Twenty dollars of that she gave each week to her mother for board and lodging. Often she had gone on summer vacations. For three years she had paid for a colored girl to do the housework at home. I despaired at first of having Ada so much as take notice of the fact that I was alive. What was my joy then, at the end of the first week, to have her come up and say to me: "Do you know what I want? I want you to come over to Brooklyn and live with me and my folks."

Oh, it's wretched to just walk off and leave folks like that!

That same Saturday morning the boss said he wanted to see me after closing time. There seemed numerous others he wanted to see. Then I discovered, while waiting my turn with these others, that practically no one there knew her "price." There was a good deal of resentment about it, too. He had hired these girls and no word about pay. The other girls waiting that morning were beaders. I learned one trick of the trade which it appears is more or less universal. They had left their former jobs to come to this factory in answer to an "ad" for crochet beaders. If after one week it was found they were getting less than they had at the old place, they would go back and say they had been sick for a week. Otherwise they planned to stay on at this factory. Each girl was called in alone, and alone bargained with the boss. Monday, Sadie, just for instance, ahead of me in the Saturday line, reported the conversation she had had with the boss:

"Well, miss, what you expect to get here?"

"What I'm worth."

"Yes, yes--you're worth one hundred dollars, but I'm talking just plain English. What you expect to get?"

"I tell you what I'm worth."

"All right, you're worth one hundred dollars; you think you'll get thirty dollars. I'll pay you twenty dollars."

(Sadie had previously told me under no consideration would she remain under twenty-five dollars, but she remained for twenty dollars.)

My turn. I thought there was no question about my "price." It was fourteen dollars. But perhaps seeing how I had run my legs almost off, and pinned my fingers almost off all week, the boss was going voluntarily to raise me.

"What wages you expect to get here?"

Oh, well, since he thus opened the question we would begin all new. I had worked so much harder than I had anticipated.

"Sixteen dollars a week."

"Ho--sixteen dollars!--and last Monday it was fourteen dollars. You're going up, yes?"

"But the work's much harder 'n I thought it 'ud be."

"So you go from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars and I got you here to tell you you'd get twelve dollars."

Oh, but I was mad--just plain mad! "You let me work all week thinkin' I was gettin' fourteen dollars. It ain't fair!"

"Fair? I pay you what I can afford. Times are hard now, you know."

I could not speak for my upset feelings. To pay me twelve dollars for the endless labor of that week when he had allowed me to think I was getting fourteen dollars! To add insult to injury, he said, "Next week I want you should work later than the other girls evenings, and make no date for next Saturday" (I had told him I was in a hurry to get off for lunch this Saturday) "because I shall want you should work Saturday afternoon."

Such a state of affairs is indeed worth following up....

Monday morning he came around breezily--he really was a cordial, kindly soul--and said; "Well, dearie, how are you this morning?"

I went on pinning.

"Good as anybody can be on twelve dollars a week."

"_Ach_, forget it, forget it! Always money, money! Whether a person gets ten cents or three hundred dollars--it's not the money that counts"--his hands went up in the air--"it's the _service_!"

Yet employers tell labor managers they must not sentimentalize.

A bit later he came back. "I tell you what I'll do. You stay late every night this week and work Saturday afternoon like I told you you should, and I'll pay you for it!"

To such extremes a sense of justice can carry one! (Actually, he had expected that extra work of me gratis!)

During the week I figured out that in his own heart that boss had figured out a moral equivalent for a living wage. There was nothing he would not do for me. Did he but come in my general direction, I was given a helping hand. He joked with me continually. The hammer and nails were always busy. I was not only "dearie," I was "sweetheart." But fourteen dollars a week--that was another story.

Ada was full of compassion and suggested various arguments I should use next week on the boss. It was awful what he paid me, Ada declared. She too would talk to him.