The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by HerselfRichardson, Dorothy
History
The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself
Richardson, Dorothy
Women -- Employment -- New York (State) -- New York -- History -- Sources
As for myself, I have been merely prosperous--prosaically and
uninterestingly, though none the less agreeably, prosperous. I do not
know whether I am happy or not. I am still a working girl, and by all
the portents of the dream-book I am foredoomed eternally to remain a
wage-earner in spite of all Mrs. Minnie's good offices. For I was born
on a Saturday; and "Saturday's child must work for its living."
Now, I do not care to be accused of a superstitious faith in
dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of
inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my
unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why
not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms
possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable
Forelady, in cooperation with her plans and along the lines of her least
resistance?
This I have tried to do. How I have done it, and what the results have
been, I shall now try to sketch with not more attention to tedious
details than I feel justified in assuming may be of some help and
encouragement to other strugglers.
I became a stenographer and typewriter, earning twenty dollars a week. I
worked hard for my money, and the day was still a long day. I went to
work at nine o'clock in the morning, and while I was supposed to get off
at five, and sometimes did, I was often obliged to work till six or
seven.
And this I called prosperity? Yes; for me this was prosperity, when I
remembered the circumstances of my beginnings.
When I met Minnie Plympton on the street corner, that hot summer night,
I was "dead broke," not only in purse, but in body and spirit as well.
She took me home with her to the two small rooms where she was doing
light housekeeping, and where we continued to live together until her
marriage a year later broke up our happy domestic partnership. A few
weeks after Minnie took me home with her I got a position in the notion
department of one of the large stores. I received only four dollars a
week; but, as our rent was small and our living expenses the very
minimum, I was able to meet my half of the joint expenditure. I worked
four months at selling pins and needles and thread and whalebone and a
thousand and one other things to be found in a well-stocked notion
department; and then, by a stroke of good luck and Minnie Plympton's
assistance, I got a place as demonstrator of a new brand of tea and
coffee in the grocery department of the same "emporium." My new work was
not only much lighter and pleasanter, but it paid me the munificent
salary of eight dollars a week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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