Ten Days in a Mad-House and Other Stories (17 page)

at first, but after I questioned her kindly she grew more

communicative.

“I live on Eldrige Street with my parents. My father is a musician, but he will not go on the streets to play. He very seldom gets an

engagement. My mother is sick nearly all the time. I have a sister

who works at passementerie. She can earn from $3 to $5 a week. I

have another sister who has been spooling silk in Twenty-third

Street for five years now. She makes $6 a week. When she comes

home at night her face and hands and hair are all colored from the

silk she works on during the day. It makes her sick, and she is

always taking medicine.”

“Have you worked before?”

“Oh, yes; I used to work at passementerie on Spring Street. I worked

from 7 until 6 o’clock, piecework, and made about $3.50 a week. I left

because the bosses were not kind, and we only had three little oil

lamps to see to work by. The rooms were very dark, but they never

allowed us to burn the gas. Ladies used to come here and take the

work home to do. They did it cheap, for the pleasure of doing it, so

we did not get as much pay as we would otherwise.”

“What did you do after you left there?” I asked.

“I went to work in a fringe factory on Canal Street. A woman had the

place and she was very unkind to all the girls. She did not speak

English. I worked an entire week, from 8 to 6, with only a half-hour

for dinner, and at the end of the week she only paid me 35 cents. You

know a girl cannot live on 35 cents a week, so I left.”

“How do you like the box factory?”

“Well, the bosses seem very kind. They always say good-morning to

me, a thing never done in any other place I ever worked, but it is a

good deal for a poor girl to give two weeks’ work for nothing. I have

been here almost two weeks, and I have done a great deal of work.

It’s all clear gain to the bosses. They say they often dismiss a girl

after her first two weeks on the plea that she does not suit. After this

I am to get $1.50 a week.”

When the whistles of the surrounding factories blew at 12 o’clock the

forewoman told us we could quit work and eat our lunch. I was not

quite so proud of my cleverness in simulating a working girl when

one of them said:

Ten Days in a Mad-House

“Do you want to send out for your lunch?”

“No; I brought it with me,” I replied.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, with a knowing inflection and amused smile.

“Is there anything wrong?” I asked, answering her smile.

“Oh, no,” quickly; “only the girls always make fun of any one who

carries a basket now. No working-girl will carry a lunch or basket. It

is out of style because it marks the girl at once as a worker. I would

like to carry a basket, but I don’t dare, because they would make so

much fun of me.”

The girls sent out for lunch and I asked of them the prices. For five

cents they get a good pint of coffee, with sugar and milk if desired.

Two cents will buy three slices of buttered bread. Three cents, a

sandwich. Many times a number of the girls will put all their money

together and buy quite a little food. A bowl of soup for five cents will

give four girls a taste. By clubbing together they are able to buy

warm lunch.

At one o’clock we were all at work again. I having completed sixty-

four lids, and the supply being consumed was put at “molding in.”

This is fitting the bottom into the sides of the box and pasting it

there. It is rather difficult at first to make all the edges come closely

and neatly together, but after a little experience it can be done easily.

On my second day I was put at a table with some new girls and I

tried to get them to talk. I was surprised to find that they are very

timid about telling their names, where they live or how. I

endeavored by every means a woman knows, to get an invitation to

visit their homes, but did not succeed.

“How much can girls earn here?” I asked the forewoman.

“I do not know,” she said; “they never tell each other, and the bosses

keep their time.”

“Have you worked here long?” I asked.

“Yes, I have been here eight years, and in that time I have taught my

three sisters.”

“Is the work profitable?”

“Well, it is steady; but a girl must have many years’ experience

before she can work fast enough to earn much.”

The girls all seem happy. During the day they would make the little

building resound with their singing. A song would be begun on the

second floor, probably, and each floor would take it up in succession,

until all were singing. They were nearly always kind to one another.

Their little quarrels did not last long, nor were they very fierce. They

were all extremely kind to me, and did all they could to make my

work easy and pleasant. I felt quite proud when able to make an

entire box.

There were two girls at one table on piecework who had been in a

great many box factories and had had a varied experience.

“Girls do not get paid half enough at any work. Box factories are no

worse than other places. I do not know anything a girl can do where

by hard work she can earn more than $6 a week. A girl cannot dress

and pay her boarding on that.”

“Where do such girls live?” I asked.

“There are boarding-places on Bleecker and Houston, and around

such places, where girls can get a room and meals for $3.50 a week.

The room may be only for two, in one bed, or it may have a dozen,

according to size. They have no conveniences or comforts, and

generally undesirable men board at the same place.”

“Why don’t they live at these homes that are run to accommodate

working women?”

“Oh, those homes are frauds. A girl cannot obtain any more home

comforts, and then the restrictions are more than they will endure. A

girl who works all day must have some recreation, and she never

finds it in homes.”

“Have you worked in box factories long?”

“For eleven years, and I can’t say that it has ever given me a living.

On an average I make $5 a week. I pay out $3.50 for board, and my

wash bill at the least is 75 cents. Can any one expect a woman to

dress on what remains?”

“What do you get paid for boxes?”

“I get 50 cents a hundred for one-pound candy boxes, and 40 cents a

hundred for half-pound boxes.”

“What work do you do on a box for that pay?”

“Everything. I get the pasteboard cut in squares the same as you did.

I first ‘set up’ the lids, then I ‘mold in’ the bottoms. This forms a box.

Next I do the ‘trimming,’ which is putting the gilt edge around the

box lid. ‘Cover striping’ (covering the edge of the lid) is next, and

then comes the ‘top label,’ which finishes the lid entire. Then I paper

the box, do the ‘bottom labeling,’ and then put in two or four laces

(lace paper) on the inside as ordered. Thus you see one box passes

through my hands eight times before it is finished. I have to work

very hard and without ceasing to be able to make two hundred

boxes a day, which earns me $1. It is not enough pay. You see I handle two hundred boxes sixteen hundred times for $1. Cheap

labor, isn’t it?”

One very bright girl, Maggie, who sat opposite me, told a story that

made my heart ache.

“This is my second week here,” she said, “and, of course, I won’t

receive any pay until next week, when I expect to receive $1.50 for

six days’ work. My father was a driver before he got sick. I don’t

know what is wrong, but the doctor says he will die. Before I left this

morning he said my father will die soon. I could hardly work

because of it. I am the oldest child, and I have a brother and two

sisters younger. I am sixteen, and my brother is twelve. He gets $2 a

week for being office-boy at a cigar-box factory.”

“Do you have much rent to pay?”

“We have two rooms in a house on Houston Street. They are small

and have low ceilings, and there are a great many Chinamen in the

same house. We pay for these rooms $14 per month. We do not have

much to eat, but then father doesn’t mind it because he can’t eat. We

could not live if father’s lodge did not pay our rent.”

“Did you ever work before?”

“Yes, I once worked in a carpet factory at Yonkers. I only had to

work there one week until I learned, and afterward I made at

piecework a dollar a day. When my father got so ill my mother

wanted me at home, but now when we see I can earn so little they

wish I had remained there.”

“Why do you not try something else?” I asked.

“I wanted to, but could find nothing. Father sent me to school until I

was fourteen, and so I thought I would learn to be a telegraph

operator. I went to a place in Twenty-third Street, where it is taught,

but the man said he would not give me a lesson unless I paid fifty

dollars in advance. I could not do that.”

I then spoke of the Cooper Institute, which I thought every New

Yorker knew was for the benefit of just such cases. I was greatly

astonished to learn that such a thing as the Cooper Institute was

wholly unknown to all the workers around me.

“If my father knew that there was a free school he would send me,”

said one.

“I would go in the evenings,” said another, “if I had known there

was such a place.”

Again, when some of them were complaining of unjust wages, and

some of places where they had been unable to collect the amount

due them after working, I spoke of the mission of the Knights of

Labor, and the newly organized society for women. They were all

surprised to hear that there were any means to aid women in having

justice. I moralized somewhat on the use of any such societies unless

they entered the heart of these factories.

One girl who worked on the floor below me said they were not

allowed to tell what they earned. However, she had been working

here five years, and she did not average more than $5 a week. The

factory in itself was a totally unfit place for women. The rooms were

small and there was no ventilation. If case of fire there was

practically no escape.

Ten Days in a Mad-House

The work was tiresome, and after I had learned all I could from the

rather reticent girls I was anxious to leave. I noticed some rather

peculiar things on my trip to and from the factory. I noticed that men

were much quicker to offer their places to the working-girls on the

cars than they were to offer them to well-dressed women. Another

thing quite as noticeable, I had more men try to get up a flirtation

with me while I was a box-factory girl than I ever had before. The

girls were nice in their manners and as polite as ones reared at home.

They never forgot to thank one another for the slightest service, and

there was quite a little air of “good form” in many of their actions. I

have seen many worse girls in much higher positions than the white

slaves of New York.

THE END.

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