Working With the Working WomanParker, Cornelia Stratton
History
Working With the Working Woman
Parker, Cornelia Stratton
United States -- Social conditions; Women -- Employment -- United States; Working class -- United States
Therefore, why not lunch rooms, and attractive lunch rooms, and good
food, well cooked? Yes, it is good business, and besides it puts a
woman on a much more efficient level to herself and society. At our
tables the girls were talking about different lunch-room conditions
they had come across in their work. One girl told of a glass company
she had worked for that recently was forced to shut down. She dwelt
feelingly on the white lunch room and the good food, and especially
the paper napkins—the only place she had worked where they gave
napkins. She claimed there was not a girl who did not want to cry when
she had to quit that factory. “Everybody loved it,” she said. I tried
to find out if she felt the management had been paying for the
polished brass rails, the good food, and the napkins out of the
workers' wages. “Not on your life!” she answered. She had been a file
clerk.
Take dental clinics in the factories. Four teeth on our floor were
extracted while I was at the laundry. For a couple of days each girl
moaned and groaned and made everybody near her miserable. Then she got
Miss Cross's permission to go to some quack dentist, and out came the
tooth. Irma had two out at one dollar each. It was going to cost her
forty dollars to get them back in. A person with his or her teeth in
good condition is a far better citizen than one suffering from the
toothache.
If I had my way I should like to see a rest room in every factory
where women are employed, and some time, however short, allowed in the
middle of the afternoon to make use of it.
Eight hours is long enough for any woman to do sustained physical
work, with no possibility for overtime.
Nor have we so much as touched on what it means to live on thirteen
dollars or fourteen dollars a week.
“But then you have taken away all the arguments for organization!”
Should organization be considered as an end in and of itself, or as
one possible means to an end?
Word was passed this morning that “company” was coming! The bustling
and the hustling and the dusting! Every girl had to clean her press
from top to bottom, and we swept the floor with lightning speed. Miss
Cross dashed to her little mirror and put powder on her nose. Hattie
tied a curtain around her head to look like a Red Cross nurse. Every
time the door opened we all got expectant palpitations. We were not
allowed to speak, yet ever and anon Hattie or Mrs. Reilly would let
out some timely remarks. Whereat we all got the giggles. Miss Cross
would almost hiss, “GIRLS!” whereat we subsided. It was nerve
wracking. And the company never came! They got as far as the third
floor and gave out. But it was not until afternoon that we knew
definitely that our agony was for naught.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account