The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory GirlsVan Vorst, John, Mrs.
History
The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls
Van Vorst, John, Mrs.
Child labor -- United States; Women -- Employment -- United States; Working class -- United States
The profitable job given us on the following day is monotonous and
dirty, but we net $1.05 each. There is a mechanical roller which passes
before us, carrying at irregular intervals a large sheet of coloured
paper covered with glue. My _vis-a-vis_ and I lay the palms of our right
hands on to the glue surface and lift the sheet of paper to its place on
the table before us, over a stiff square of bristol board. The boss of
the team fixes the two sheets together with a brush which she
manipulates skilfully. We are making in this way the stiff backs which
hold the pictures into their frames. When we have fallen into the proper
swing we finish one hundred sheets every forty-five minutes. We could
work more rapidly, but the sheets are furnished to us at this rate, and
it is so comfortable that conversation is not interrupted. The subjects
are the same as elsewhere--dress, young men, entertainments. The girls
have "beaux" and "steady beaux." The expression, "Who is she going
with?" means who is her steady beau. "I've got Jim Smith _now_, but I
don't know whether I'll keep him," means that Jim Smith is on trial as
a beau and may become a "steady." They go to Sunday night subscription
dances and arrive Monday morning looking years older than on Saturday,
after having danced until early morning. "There's nothing so smart for a
ball," the mundane of my team tells us, "as a black skirt and white silk
waist."
About ten in the morning most of us eat a pickle or a bit of cocoanut
cake or some titbit from the lunch parcel which is opened seriously at
twelve.
The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and
not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and
cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.
The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having
no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return
to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the
resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural
condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There
are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run
presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my
self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a
situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find
policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.
Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes
compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not
nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom
I speak often call me "dear" in answering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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