The Woman Who Toils by Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

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[Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the
costume of the pickle factory]

[Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe
factory]

* * * * *

THE WOMAN WHO TOILS

_Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_

BY

MRS. JOHN VAN VORST

and

MARIE VAN VORST

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK:

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1903

* * * * *

DEDICATION

To Mark Twain

In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in
Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him
kin with the whole world:--

this book is inscribed by

BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST.

* * * * *

PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT

_Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902.

_My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_:

_I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most
melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is
fundamentally infinitely more important than any other
question in this country--that is, the question of race
suicide, complete or partial_.

_An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
"independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to
one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the
fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial
qualities without which there can be no strong races--the
qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of
scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to
work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to
be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside
of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the
foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that
the only things really worth having in life are those the
acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man
or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout
life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from
home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy
children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the
sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the
beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is
brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman
who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as
to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to
dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the
race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
all healthy people_.

_Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one
quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the
nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and
coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor
people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury
in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work
in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and
ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of
families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest
thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that
nation has cause to be alarmed about its future_.

_There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble
with the situation you set forth is one of character, and
therefore we can conquer it if we only will._

_Very sincerely yours,_

_THEODORE ROOSEVELT._

* * * * *

PREFATORY NOTE

A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same
title in _Everybody's Magazine_. Nearly a third of the volume has not
been published in any form.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory 1

II. In a Pittsburg Factory 7

III. Perry, a New York Mill Town 59

IV. Making Clothing in Chicago 99

V. The Meaning of It All 155

By MARIE VAN VORST

CHAPTER PAGE

VI. Introductory 165

VII. A Maker of Shoes at Lynn 169

VIII. The Southern Cotton Mills 215
The Mill Village
The Mill

IX. The Child in the Southern Mills 275

* * * * *

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes,
_Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

"The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot
falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning," 12

"Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the
lives consumed, and vanishing again," 58

"They trifle with love," 70

After Saturday night's shopping, 84

Sunday evening at Silver Lake, 96

"The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy
with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards," 102

In a Chicago theatrical costume factory, 114

Chicago types, 128

The rear of a Chicago tenement, 144

A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory, 172

One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper,"
an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week, 172

"Learning" a new hand, 184

The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass., 196

"Fancy gumming," 210

An all-round, experienced hand, 210

"Mighty mill--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate," 220

"The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type," 240

* * * * *

THE WOMAN WHO TOILS

CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY

BY

MRS. JOHN VAN VORST

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of
society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated
as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper
and the lower, the educated and the uneducated--and a further variety of
opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come
into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or
elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for
their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us
recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral
and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical
development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help
them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in
every way.

Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have
two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material
advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who
consider the poor as objects of charity, to be treated sentimentally,
or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics
nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for
the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope
we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality
upon earth.

It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we
must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with
their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must
discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their
surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily
effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived
ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral,
spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an
undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its
practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and
to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out
to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and
sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help
and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers
which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as
they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that
occurred to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for
the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I
might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find
out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with
ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman
is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined,

1st. By nature,
2d. By family life,
3d. By social laws;

what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the
woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new
society as manifested by its working girls.

After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away
convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am
hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the
hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general
help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their
material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are
condemned to slow death--mental, moral, physical death! If into their
prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon
should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain.

* * * * *

IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY

In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon
Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined
by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in
the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616
inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to
these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and
clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a
glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this
Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to
call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose
despots are the employers--the multi-millionaire patrons--and whose
serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an
authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons,
the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this
difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a
thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also,
thousands of separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the
pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are
run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change.
The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first
and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays
no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself
over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied,
and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to
effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in
Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their
ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love
of art, and of classic forms, the desire to embellish--all that was
inspired by culture of the beautiful; the Renaissance in America is the
rebirth of man's originality in the invention of the useful, the virgin
power of man's wits as quickened in the crude struggle for life.
Florence is _par excellence_ the place where we can study the Italian
Renaissance; Pittsburg appealed to me as a most favourable spot to watch
the American Renaissance, the enlivening of energies which give value to
a man devoid of education, energies which in their daily exercise with
experience generate a new force, a force that makes our country what it
is, industrially and economically. So it was toward Pittsburg that I
first directed my steps, but before leaving New York I assumed my
disguise. In the Parisian clothes I am accustomed to wear I present the
familiar outline of any woman of the world. With the aid of coarse
woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a
knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the
ordinary type. I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the
fortunate--I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate. I am
to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of
them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and
sorrows.

I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated
as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the
gateman says a respectful "To the right" or "To the left," and trusts to
his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's
hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: "Now
you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for
you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry--just put those three
cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman
is standing and he'll direct you to your train."

This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a
certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a
class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later
myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their
manual training, ignorant on all subjects.

My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to
Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of
miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy
streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a
frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the
streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly
like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic.
Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues;
occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning
bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every
three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The
trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of
the mills.

I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar
where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant
scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce
bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that
passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed
Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the
pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his
arm.

[Illustration: "THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE
SOOT FALLS SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING"]

In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a
common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred
through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.

At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I
receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and
I answer as best I can.

"What is it you want?"

"Board and work in a factory."

"Have you ever worked in a factory?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you ever done any housework?"

She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming
prisoners and reasoning with the poor.

"Yes, ma'am, I have done housework."

"What did you make?"

"Twelve dollars a month."

"I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and
fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?"

"No, ma'am."

"Are you making anything now?"

"No, ma'am."

"Can you afford to pay board?"

"Yes, as I hope to get work at once."

She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge
for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population
of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry
written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of
half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled
close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three
o'clock I find the waif boarding-house.

The matron is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false
hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive
manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to
direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make herself
dreaded. In the distance I can hear a shrill, nasal orchestra of
children's voices. I am cold and hungry. I have as yet no job. The
noise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden
impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter--to snap my
fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate.
Something within me calls _Courage_! I take a room at three dollars a
week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with
cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron
tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman.

I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life,
but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt
letters: "_Women Employees_."

The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a
gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and
about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all
surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a
thousand. Each number means a workman--each tick of the clock a moment
of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the
window of the glass cage. It opens.

"Do you need any girls?" I ask, trying not to show my emotion.

"Ever worked in a factory?"

"No, sir; but I'm very handy."

"What have you done?"

"Housework," I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself.

"Well," he says, looking at me, "they need help up in the bottling
department; but I don't know as it would pay you--they don't give more
than sixty or seventy cents a day."

"I am awfully anxious for work," I say. "Couldn't I begin and get
raised, perhaps?"

"Surely--there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You
come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it,
and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good
workers."

The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not
come in vain. I have a place!

When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had
heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there
are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform
checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the
babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the
freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down
into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order.
Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs.

"_Quit rocking_!" the false mother cries at them. "You make my head
ache. Most of 'em have no parents," she explains to me. "None of 'em
have homes."

Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for,
growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance;
each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The
matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated.
The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This
"Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His
rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he
reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't
bring me no toys." And then with pride, "My mamma buys rice and tea and
lots of things," and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, "My
mamma comes in the street cars, only," sadly, "she don't never come."

Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without.
At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming
to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and,
gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the
short outlines of their lives.

"I've been to the hospital," says one, "and so's Lily. I drank a lot of
washing soda and it made me sick."

Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. "I had typhoy fever--I was in
the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the
lights--it was just evening--and a man came in and he took one of the
babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the
row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was
something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing,
and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white
thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another time," Lily goes
on, "there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was
takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on
chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle."

Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only
with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an
understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic
difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image
the violent and brutal side of existence--the only one with which they
are acquainted.

At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open
into a long room with a slanting roof. It serves as nursery and parlour.
In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are
seated with babies on their knees. They have the meek look of those who
doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures
of the overworked. Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt
shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high
foreheads. One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother's arms; one
is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes
through a scarlet mask. The corners of the room are filled with the
drones--those who "work for a bite of grub." The cook, her washing done,
has piled her aching bones in a heap; her drawn face waits like an
indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue. Mary, the
woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison's
walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite
of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her
profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over
them--dull and silent, they deaden her face. And Jennie, the charwoman,
is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and
withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is
twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a
mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a
task.

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