The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 12
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In the vocabulary of those who write and lecture on the self-supporting woman, there is no more misleading phrase than "the poor factory girl." The self-respecting, alert factory-worker—and there are thousands upon thousands of such workers in the United States—neither asks nor merits pity. Many of them make more money in a week than the average mediocre stenographer makes in a month. Thousands of them perform less exhausting work than the girl who stands behind a counter. The vast majority of them have union hours, and each year officials get closer and closer to the heart of factory life, enforcing laws of sanitation and human safety.
When the factory girls have a grievance or are threatened with a reduction of wages, they do not ask rich and charitably-inclined women to open "homes" where they can live on a semicharity basis. They appoint committees, confer with committees from unions for men, and arbitrate the case with their employers. If times are "panicky," they may have to work on part time, or mills may be closed for weeks or months; but saleswomen and stenographers suffer the same financial reverses in hard times.
The girl who learns any trade in a factory soon finds that this knowledge is like a certain amount of capital on which she can always draw for an income. If she is an expert worker and she does not like the methods of her employers, she can seek other work among competitive firms. If she requires a change of climate or feels the spirit of wanderlust stirring within her, she can cross the continent if need be, and feel reasonably certain that wherever she finds a similar factory, there will be an opening for her skilled hands.
Among my self-supporting correspondents during the past ten years, hundreds have been factory-workers who have used their knowledge of trades, their powers of observation and the acquaintance gained in the despised factory life to accomplish certain long-cherished ambitions. One of the best traveling saleswomen in the country to-day represents a great corsetmaking firm in whose employ she started as an apprentice. Five girls who started together in a stocking factory now have a plant of their own, and are making a comfortable, independent living therefrom. The head of the Young Women's Christian Association factory work in an Eastern city was herself an operator in a shirt-waist factory, saw the need of welfare work among foreign-born girls, studied practical philanthropy, and became a successful social worker. A woman who designed trimming for a New York manufacturer of tailored suits for women is now the head of an importing firm which deals in laces, trimmings and buttons.
True, girls toil year after year for mere stipends, in factories which require large numbers of purely mechanical workers to feed machines or perform the simplest of hand tasks. But these girls, if placed in offices, would address envelopes or do filing or telephone operating at four, five or six dollars a week to the end of their business careers.
As an instance, take the case of a young Hungarian girl who, on her arrival in America, found work in a box factory at four dollars a week. She was extremely deft, and became one of the best piece-workers in the shop, her earnings varying from nine to twelve dollars a week. Foreign girls worked all around her, the factory's manager kept within the law but no more, and the environment was not pleasant. The girl had to wear washable clothes to work, because of the glue.
She watched clerks and stenographers whom she met going to and from work, in lunch hours and at the settlement house where she spent her evenings. She grew to hate the factory and determined to become a stenographer. By day she worked at her old task of making boxes; by night she studied English. And always she saved every penny, until she could leave the factory and enter a business college, where she studied like the personification of concentration. It was a laudable ambition, but no one told her what the poor girl did not realize—that stenography cannot be built on a faulty education, and this girl had not been educated in either her own language or in English. She mastered stenography, but her knowledge of English remained defective. She could secure no position.
She went back to the school for more instruction in English. Her funds ran low. Her relatives, whose daughters were doing well in the factories, felt no sympathy for her and refused financial aid. Charitable women helped her in the matter of clothes and incidental expenses, but no one asked her how she was living. The truth was that she was very nearly starving. And when at last she mastered English and was eligible for a position as stenographer at seven or eight dollars a week, she was so broken in health and nerves that she was mentally unfit to cope with the petty annoyances of office life. Employer after employer had to dismiss her, and eventually a charitably inclined woman sent her to the country to recuperate. After eight years of this precarious existence, she has a position where she earns ten dollars a week, but her ambition is broken, her economic future is most uncertain.
Had she given to her factory work the same enthusiasm and concentration that she devoted to the mistaken vocation of stenography, she would have become forewoman or perhaps a partner in a small factory.
Gradually the American girl is leaving the factory and its trade to her foreign cousin. And for what? For less money and equally hard work in a store or office. The girl who cannot advance in a factory will not advance in a store or office, where she is paid less money for her time and indifferent services. The girl who is purely a working machine, without executive ability, without the alertness and ambition that make for success in any line of work, will earn more money in a factory than in a store, because in salesmanship, above almost any line of work, personality and enthusiasm must be exerted.
Owners and managers of factories speak with great bitterness of the American girls who could earn twelve or fifteen dollars a week at their looms or machines, who are standing behind counters for five and six dollars a week. Said one employer whose factory occupies a great loft far above the heat and roar of the city streets, and whose girls, mostly foreigners, earn from ten to fourteen dollars a week:
"Five years ago the names on our payroll were largely Irish, German or English. To-day they are almost exclusively Slav. And in that department store on the next corner you will find girls standing on their feet from 8:15 to 6 every day for seven dollars a week. The—air in that store is foul, the heat in summer maddening. The rest-rooms for the girls are a mockery, located in a dingy basement with electric light and foul air. Up here our girls earn a minimum of ten dollars a week, they sit at machines run by electricity. The air is pure, our lunchroom is a model one, and we are thinking of putting our factory on a profit-sharing basis.
"The root of the trouble is that oft-quoted phrase, the poor factory girl, and the subsequent feeling of caste which is fatal to the earning capacity of the American girl who must be wholly or partly self-supporting. She would rather be a cheap clerk or stenographer than lose what she considers social standing by working in a factory. With this false standard of pride she ekes out a miserable existence. She cannot save because she has nothing to lay aside. She lives from hand to mouth and becomes a creature of expedients, in nowise fitted for the wife of an American man of moderate means.
"Our girls have bank accounts, they live with their parents, not at 'homes,' and before they are twenty-five most of them marry, with habits of thrift instilled in them. No girl can be thrifty when she has no meal insured beyond what her current week's salary can pay for."
This interview is offered for the particular help of the girl who, having completed her elementary or grammar grades in the public schools, is hesitating between what is known as "business career," i.e., cheap office work or cheaper salesmanship, and entering a factory to learn some form of skilled labor. It is quite true that foreign girls have almost monopolized factory work, but this is because the American girl has permitted the condition to arise. It is also true that many of the surroundings of factory life are distasteful to the American girl; but what of impudent customers, overbearing, unjust floor-walkers in stores, and fault-finding superiors in big offices? For every factory that defies the laws of sanitation and decency, there is a department store which does the same thing. For every manufacturer who maintains a system of fines and unjust withholding of wages, there is a superintendent of employees in a dry-goods or a department store who is past-master of the same tricks. And most certainly I should urge the young woman who lives in a factory community to investigate the conditions and openings for work in the local concerns before she puts her last penny into a "business training" built upon an elementary knowledge of English.
To the girl seeking factory work in sanitary surroundings the up-to-date plants of pure-food packers offer many attractions. To be sure, it is claimed that the model plants maintained by many of these manufacturers are part of the advertising methods of the firm, but this does not alter the fact that the workers participate in the benefits of pure food, cleanly environment and self-respect which result. At one of the factories maintained by a cracker and biscuit trust, I found girls working at wages from five to twelve dollars a week in almost ideal surroundings, and let me add that most of these girls were American-born. Every room in which I found girls employed was spotless, with dust absorbers, pure air and plenty of it. At various points of the building were splendid lavatories with enameled basins, tubs and shower-baths, a matron in attendance, cots for girls taken ill at their work, an emergency closet with simple remedies aplenty, and an attractive lunchroom. These girls wearforms, purchased by themselves and laundered by the company. Their work is monotonous. Most of them perform some portion of the packing process, feeding pasteboard to machines that turn out boxes, closing the boxes, labeling them, etc.
In another Pennsylvania food plant, I found girls in immaculate uniforms sorting and preparing fruits and vegetables, sealing and labeling cans, packing, etc. These girls often earn no more than five dollars a week, but they would earn no more in stores. If they are capable of earning higher wages, they are paid them right there in that factory.
These girls have model rest-rooms and lavatories, and are furnished with clubrooms, a gymnasium and an auditorium where dances and other entertainments are given after working hours.
In a mid-West city I found a soap factory with as fine a body of women employees as you will see anywhere in America, because they work on the profit-sharing plan, and have a civil service system of advancement. In a New York City shirt-waist factory I found Irish and American girls working under most comfortable conditions, and apparently content with their surroundings and their earnings. Just two blocks on the other side of Broadway I found a typical sweatshop, the workers strained, intent, plainly underpaid, underfed Polish girls, all of them sewing on the type of shirt-waist that makes the Monday morning bargain sales possible.
There are factories and factories. In New England, there are cotton mills where 500 girls work in one room, where dust and vapor are so thick that they form a peculiar haze. In California, fruit packers work under ideal conditions. On the lower end of Manhattan Island I visited a candy factory which a few days later was raided by the municipal food inspectors and whose owner was heavily fined. Here the girls worked in a fire-trap of a building, with halls dark as midnight and smells foul enough to outweigh that of the sickeningly-sweet chocolate. A fifteen-minute ride on the elevated road brought me to a huge loft, where a hundred girls and a few men made candy in rooms that would have put the average fussy housewife to shame.
Very often factories are what employees make them. Many firms who have tried to improve the environment of their employees have been discouraged by the abuse of their property by the very employees they were trying to help.
It is impossible in this space to discuss the economic position of the woman factory-worker. Investigators have proven that her presence in the factory world has reduced wages and driven expert male workers out of the trades. On the other hand, she has also reduced hours and bettered conditions in factories. But after all, the most important fact is that she has arrived and is monopolizing many lines of work, blazing the way for the rising generation of girls who, with little education, must become self-supporting.
It is impossible, also, within this limited space, to particularize about even a fair proportion of the trades in which girls find employment and quick advancement, but a few general figures furnished by employers and confirmed by workers may be of interest.
Many of the candy manufacturers have schools for girls with a system of civil service promotion. Girls armed with board of health, department of education or child labor law certificates, according to the municipal government, are taken as apprentices while quite young. They start at three or four dollars a week, and if deft are soon advanced to five dollars a week. Experts in the factory seldom earn more than eight dollars a week, but manufacturers who also manage retail stores promote their most intelligent girls to the position of saleswoman in the retail store, which may lead to the post of head of stock. The girl who has worked in the factory is given the preference in the store.
In all large cities where millinery centers may be found, artificial flower factories also exist. Italian girls crowd many of these factories and much sweatshop work is done, but factories are also found in fine lofts, with good light, exhaust fans and plenty of elbow-room for the workers, and American workers to boot. Here the maximum earnings are ten dollars a week, unless a girl becomes forewoman, when her salary is determined by her value to the concern. An apprentice can always secure a chance at one of these factories at the opening of the rush season.
The bonnaz machines for which operators are always in demand are features of every factory which turns out upholstery supplies, scarfs, draperies, portières, table-covers, etc. This machine does braiding, outlining and various forms of fancy stitchery, employees generally doing piece-work and earning, when expert, fifteen dollars a week. Young girls start here knotting fringe and doing other finishing work. The girl who shows adaptability and eagerness to learn is soon given a chance at a machine, and these apprentices make about seven dollars a week, their earnings increasing with their dexterity.
In the hosiery factories for which Philadelphia is noted, the girls start at three dollars a week in what is known as the finishing department, stamping and packing the stockings. The knitters are the highest-priced workers, their minimum earnings being ten dollars a week. The piece-worker is always a law unto herself, but often the rapid workers pay the price of their big records with nervous prostration or other ailments peculiar to abnormal concentration.
In Pittsburgh, the center of the cheap cigar or stogy industry, girls work by the thousands at this trade alone, earning six dollars per week. In the cotton mills of New England you will find as many thousand more weavers working for an average of a dollar and a half a day or nine dollars per week. Yet there have been cases in all these factories where girls have doubled the average wages.
Operators in suit and waist factories do piece-work principally, and as a rule make twelve dollars per week. In underwear factories the inexperienced worker is first employed at sewing on buttons, running ribbon through beading, pressing, etc., and makes not more than two or three dollars per week. Tucking, joining tucking to insertion, sewing on lace, etc., are all done by machine and paid for by the yard. At first a girl earns no more at this than by sewing on buttons, but very soon she works up to six dollars per week. From this work she passes on to joining garments and adjusting trimming by machine, and at this an experienced hand makes from twelve to fourteen dollars per week. The girl who can embroidery neatly can secure work in shirt factories embroidering initials and monograms on custom-made shirts.
The girl in search of this work must watch the "want ad," columns of the daily papers and haunt the neighborhood where such factories are to be found. Here she will find signs "Experienced Operators Wanted," or "Apprentices or Learners Wanted." She is always safe in applying where she sees the latter sign. Best of all is the acquaintance of some one already employed in the factory, who will not only let her know when an opening occurs, but will help her during the first weeks of her apprenticeship.
In suit, shirt-waist and skirt factories girls are employed as sorters. That is, they take the various pieces of cloth from the cutters, assorting sleeve-pieces and various parts of the waist according to size, 34, 36, 38, etc. This develops the bump of accuracy. The minimum salary is generally three dollars, the maximum eight dollars. There is little chance for advancement. In factories handling cloth suits, men are employed largely as operators, but girls are employed to sew on trimming, run buttonhole machines and do much of the lighter operating. Wages are about the same as at white-goods factories, and all this is piece-work, depending, therefore, on the energy and concentration of the operator. Machinery is now run by electricity.
Box factories give employment to many girls, but the rooms are, as a rule, badly arranged and illy ventilated. Girls may start at this work as pasters, i.e., binding corners and edges of boxes with pasteboard strips. They generally work two weeks for nothing, then earn about three dollars per week, and even an expert cannot make more than nine dollars. The glue workers, who cover boxes with fancy paper, make as high as ten dollars per week, but must work in very hot rooms with hot glue. These are merely sample lines of work and indicate salary paid.
Feather making and curling form an excellent trade for deft-fingered girls. The operator starts at three dollars per week, scraping marabout or French turkey down. Next she sews on the down and earns six dollars per week. From this she advances to ostrich feather-making, at which she earns as high as eighteen dollars per week. An expert curler commands the best salary of all, about twenty dollars per week.
These fragmentary figures from payrolls go to prove that while there is no great future in factory work, save for the exceptional girl who would carve for herself a successful business career wherever she started, factory work promises a fair wage during the seven years which is the average period of work for girls and women the country over. And for the woman who works no longer than that, it provides equally good pay in equally sanitary surroundings as does stenography or salesmanship, the usual alternative with the average girl.