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

M >> Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst >> The Woman Who Toils

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My observations were confined chiefly to the women. Two things, however,
regarding the men I noticed as fixed rules. They were all breadwinners;
they worked because they needed the money to live; they supported
entirely the woman, wife or mother, of the household who did not work.
In many cases they contributed to the support of even the wage-earning
females of the family: the woman who does not work when she does not
need to work is provided for.

The women were divided into two general classes: Those who worked
because they needed to earn their living, and those who came to the
factories to be more independent than at home, to exercise their
coquetry and amuse themselves, to make pin money for luxuries. The men
formed a united class. They had a purpose in common. The women were in a
class with boys and with children. They had nothing in common but their
physical inferiority to man. The children were working from necessity,
the boys were working from necessity; the only industrial unit
complicating the problem were the girls who worked without being obliged
to--the girls who had "all the money they needed, but not all the money
they wanted." To them the question of wages was not vital. They could
afford to accept what the breadwinner found insufficient. They were
better fed, better equipped than the self-supporting hand; they were
independent about staying away from the factory when they were tired or
ill, and they alone determined the reputation for irregularity in which
the breadwinners were included.

Here, then, it seemed to me, was the first chance to offer help.

The self-supporting woman should be in competition only with other
self-supporting industrial units. The problem for her class will settle
itself, according to just and natural laws, when the purpose of this
class is equally vital to all concerned. Relief, it seemed to me, could
be brought to the breadwinner by separating from her the girl who works
for luxuries.

How could this be done?

There is, I believe, a way in which it can be accomplished naturally.
The non-self-supporting girls must be attracted into some field of work
which requires instruction and an especial training, which pays them as
well while calling into play higher faculties than the brutalizing
machine labour. This field of work is industrial art: lace-making,
hand-weaving, the fabrication of tissues and embroideries,
gold-smithery, bookbinding, rug-weaving, woodcarving and inlaying, all
the branches of industrial art which could be executed by woman in her
home, all the manual labour which does not require physical strength,
which would not place the woman, therefore, as an inferior in
competition with man, but would call forth her taste and skill, her
training and individuality, at the same time being consistent with her
destiny as a woman.

The American factory girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for
knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world,
to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for
forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There
is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give
their time and their money to lifting the non-breadwinners from the
slavish, brutalizing machines at which they work, ignorant of anything
better, and placing them by education, by cultivation, in positions of
comparative freedom--freedom of thought, taste and personality.

Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston
and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed.
Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it
is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient
merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted.
There is not a factory which would not furnish some material. The
recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual
advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages
would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art
School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in
proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast
as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of
hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a
plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions.

Who will act as mediator?

I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to
help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and
the girl who works for luxuries.

* * * * *

MARIE VAN VORST

INTRODUCTORY

VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN

VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS

IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

INTRODUCTORY

There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its
brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism
have always had much to say in praise of the "beauty of toil." Carlyle
has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When
one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from
ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal
holidays as the sole respite--to find at the month's end that the only
possible economics are pleasures--one is at least better fitted to
comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of
the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason
of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside
for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and
bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was
possible, to live as she lived, work as she worked. In thus approaching
her I believed that I could share her ambitions, her pleasures, her
privations.

Working by her side day after day, I hoped to be a mirror that should
reflect the woman who toils, and later, when once again in my proper
sphere of life, to be her expositor in an humble way--to be a mouthpiece
for her to those who know little of the realities of everlasting labour.

I have in the following pages attempted to solve no problem--I have
advanced no sociologic schemes. Conclusions must be drawn by those who
read the simple, faithful description of the woman who toils as I saw
her, as I worked beside her, grew to understand in a measure her point
of view and to sympathize with her struggle.

MARIE VAN VORST.
Riverdale-on-Hudson,
1902.

* * * * *

A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII

A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN

"Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace
to the public safety."--Roosevelt.

Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it
which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The
workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot,
the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of
the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is _the
labourer's head_ upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the
vortex of the crowd.

_That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace
society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass._

Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the
Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample
provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish
employment of new machinery--tells on the great manufacturing world.

Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery
or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be
given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical
culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is
securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers'
souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned
out at cheaper cost.

The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made
their demands for shorter hours and better pay.

* * * * *

LYNN

Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a
dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the
self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the
daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour
bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue
noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to
me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air.

I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class
whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out
necessities and luxuries for the market.

[Illustration: A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY--At work in a Lynn shoe
factory]

[Illustration: ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY: A very expert "vamper,"
an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week]

The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows:

Hat $ 40
Sealskin coat 200
Black cloth dress 150
Silk underskirt 25
Kid gloves 2
Underwear 30
----
$ 447

The clothes I put on were as follows:

Small felt hat $ .25
Woolen gloves .25
Flannel shirt-waist 1.95
Gray serge coat 3.00
Black skirt 2.00
Underwear 1.00
Tippet 1.00
----
$9.45

* * * * *

When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in
a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to
back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get
nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my
speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust.

* * * * *

One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The
route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet thick
covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter
scene the sun shone brilliantly.

No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former
personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had
discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto
pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder
to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners.

Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in
the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the
streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to
this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course,
and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church
stamping the place New England.

Lynn is made up of factories--great masses of ugliness, red brick,
many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this
town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in
our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there
are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is
70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops.

The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a
directory and found the address of the Young Women's Christian
Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal
streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once
displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout
my first experience--qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality
and human interest.

"I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the
night."

I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple
decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing
less in the older woman's face.

"Work in the shops?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own
way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy.

She said earnestly: "You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't
know about, child."

She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper.

"Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here.
I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town
just _anywheres_! You might get into trouble."

She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or
directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question,
receive some information; and thus in marvelous friendliness she turned
and outstretched her hand--I was a stranger and this was her welcome.

I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I
myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I
intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or
any aid.

Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden
tenement set back from the road.

"Furnished Room to Rent," read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced
woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said:

"Ve only got a 'sheep' room."

At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a
_cheap_ room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That
was the kind of people she received.

I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was
French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from
Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our
understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always.

My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean,
agreeable room.

Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She
would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the "young ladies"
who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her furniture by
slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to
complain of me--I would take care.

The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of
course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first
floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I
made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame
Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging
manners.

"Mademoiselle Ballard has work?"

"Not yet."

"Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here
three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!"

Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have
slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn!
My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods,
weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated.

The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of
the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks,
frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but
stopped finally before a humbler shop--where a sign swung at the door:
"Hands Wanted." I went in here and opened a door on the third floor
into a small office.

I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
revolving desk-chair.

"I want work. Got any?"

"Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?"

(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)

"Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest."

"Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?"

"It's gluein' suspender straps."

"Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!"

He smiled, indulgent of this whim.

"They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.)

"Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!"

"Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
back."

He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
suspender straps, tempting me with them.

"What you ever done?"

"Nothing. I'm green!"

"That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?"

"Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all."

"Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
no time." ...

Preston's!

That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!

I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my
judgment.

A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
help:

"But I am green; I can't do office work."

Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--"

He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
refusing applicants for work.

"Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm
getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings."

"You'll give me a chance, then?"

"Yes, I will!"

It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
houseless.

With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before
nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets
filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I
wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for
sauce, ate a good meal.

Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time
the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my
goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading:

"_Wanted, Vampers_."

A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand
for work was greeted at the office this time with--"Any signs out?"

"Yes."

(What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer
nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor."

Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes
were were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within
a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an
elevator--a freight elevator; there are no others, of course. This
lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook
and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety
doors"--continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to
receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the
shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping
inadvertently to sudden death.

I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was
in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation
and the noise was startling and deafening.

I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for
the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the
employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to
attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect
aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated.

Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account
book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me
something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand.

"Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green."

She didn't even look at me, but called--shrieked, rather--above the
machine din to her colleagues:

"Got anything for a green hand?"

The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got
from any one in authority in Parsons'.

"Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?"

"No, ma'am."

"I'll have you learned _pressin'_; we need a _presser_. Go take your
things off, then get right down over there."

I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and
coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty
floor.

Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two
hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I
went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained.
I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman.

On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me,
although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who
demanded her time and patience. She was to "learn me pressin'," and she
did.

Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a
pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The
branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows:

Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps,
vamps, etc. Dipping my brush in the glue, I gummed all the extreme
outer edges. When the "case" had been gummed, the first bits were dry,
then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine
little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled
hem flattened with the hammer--this is "pressing." The case goes from
presser to the seaming machine.

The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it
should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All
this means double work later. "_Twict the work_!" my teacher remarks.
Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the
uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from
time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I
have mastered the method--skill and rapidity can be mine only after many
days; but I worked alone, unaided.

As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating
rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the
hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was
kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only
the beginning!

Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to
me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a
greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my
vamps with the ill-smelling glue.

"This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked
they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady
said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's
long's you have.'"

I asked, "What would you rather do than this?"

She didn't seem to know.

"I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you--I bet you!"

(I didn't--but not quite for her reason.)

As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told
Maggie McGowan I was going home.

"Tired already?" There was still an hour to dark.

As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment
spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes--three
dozen pairs.

"I guess I'll have to put it on my card," she soliloquized, "'cause I
learned you."

"Do--do----"

"It's only about seven cents, anyway."

"Three hours' work and that's all I've made?"[2]

[Footnote 2: An expert presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day.
This is rare and maximum.]

She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of
gain and wealth.

"Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?"

[Illustration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND

Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl,
and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at
the same work]

"Ten years."

"And you make?"

"Well, I don't want to discourage you." ...

(If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was
her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.)

"... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve
dollars a week."

"Then I will make four!"

(Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of
ignorance!)

"_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do
housework!"

It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of
women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a
day labour.

"Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?"

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