The Woman Who Toils | Page 7

disguise is so successful I have deceived not only others but myself. I have become with desperate reality a factory girl, alone, inexperienced, friendless. I am making $4.20 a week and spending $3 of this for board alone, and I dread not being strong enough to keep my job. I climb endless stairs, am given a white cap and an apron, and my life as a factory girl begins. I become part of the ceaseless, unrelenting mechanism kept in motion by the poor.
The factory I have chosen has been built contemporaneously with reforms and sanitary inspection. There are clean, well-aired rooms, hot and cold water with which to wash, places to put one's hat and coat, an obligatory uniform for regular employees, hygienic and moral advantages of all kinds, ample space for work without crowding.
Side by side in rows of tens or twenties we stand before our tables waiting for the seven o'clock whistle to blow. In their white caps and blue frocks and aprons, the girls in my department, like any unfamiliar class, all look alike. My first task is an easy one; anybody could do it. On the stroke of seven my fingers fly. I place a lid of paper in a tin jar-top, over it a cork; this I press down with both hands, tossing the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite of myself I hurry; I cannot work fast enough--I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling, washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment for the simple work assigned to me. One hour passes, two, three hours; I fit ten, twenty, fifty dozen caps, and still my energy keeps up.
The forewoman is a pretty girl of twenty. Her restless eyes, her metallic voice are the messengers who would know all. I am afraid of her. I long to please her. I am sure she must be saying "How well the new girl works."
Conversation is possible among those whose work has become mechanical. Twice I am sent to the storeroom for more caps. In these brief moments my companions volunteer a word of themselves.
"I was out to a ball last night," the youngest one says. "I stayed so late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning."
"That's nothing," another retorts. "There's hardly an evening we don't have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest."
And on my second trip the pale creature with me says:
"I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last Friday week. It's awful lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I miss her dreadful. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it."
"Oh, no, you won't," the answer comes from a girl with short skirts. "You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind."
Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks, blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in hearts heretofore light with youth.
When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites--news to tell. We herd down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The ménu varies little: bread and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally a sausage, a bit of cheese or a piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and "sociables."
At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement.