Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their Lives

“It was like heaven to me,” she said, “when my friend came back to the city and got me that place as skirt-hand at Madame M – ’s. I was so far gone I had even thought of the river, and said to myself it might be the easiest way out. You can’t help but like Madame, for she’s smooth-tongued and easy, and praises your work, and she made me think I’d soon be advanced and get the place I ought to have. She paid regularly at first, and I began to pick up courage. It was over-hours always. Madame would come in smiling and say: ‘Ah, dear girls! What trouble! It is an order that must be finished so soon. Who will be kind and stay so leetle longer?’ Then we all stayed, and she’d have tea made and send it in, and sandwiches or something good, and they all said, ‘She’s an angel. You won’t find anybody like Madame.’ She was so plausible, too, that even when there was longer and longer time between the payments the girls didn’t blame her, but borrowed of one another and put off their landladies and managed all ways to save her feelings. Jenny G – had been here longer than any of them, and she worshipped Madame and wouldn’t hear a word even when one or another complained. But Jenny’s feet were on the ground and she hadn’t a stitch of warm underclothes, and she took a cold in December, and by January it had tight hold of her. I went to Madame myself then, and begged her to pay Jenny if it wasn’t but a little, and she cried and said if she could only raise the money she would. She didn’t; and by and by I went again, and then she turned ugly. I looked at her dumfounded when she spoke her real mind and said if we didn’t like it we could leave; there were plenty of others. I wouldn’t believe my ears even, and said to myself she was worn out with trouble and couldn’t mean a word of it. I wanted money for myself, but I wouldn’t ask even for anybody but Jenny.

“Next day Madame brought her ten dollars of the two hundred and twenty she owed her, and Jenny got shoes; but it was too late. I knew it well, for I’d seen my sister go the same way. Quick consumption ain’t to be stopped with new shoes or anything but new lungs, and there’s no patent for them yet that ever I’ve heard of. She was going last night when I went round, and sure as you live I’m going to put her death in the paper myself. I’ve been saving my money off lunches to do it, and I’ll write it: ‘Murdered by a fashionable dressmaker on – Street, in January, 1886, Jenny G – , age nineteen years and six months.’ Maybe they won’t put it in, but here it is, ready for any paper that’s got feeling enough to care whether sewing-girls are cheated and starved and killed, or whether they get what they’ve earned. I’ve got work at home now. It don’t matter so much to me; but I’m a committee to attend to this thing, and I’ll find out every fraud in New York that I can. I’ve got nine names now, – three of ’em regular fashionables on the west side, and six of ’em following their example hard as they can on the east; and a friend of mine has printed, in large letters, ‘Beware of’ at the head of a slip, and I add names as fast as I get them, and every girl that comes in my way I warn against them. Do much good? No. They’ll get all the girls they want, and more; but it’s some satisfaction to be able to say they are cheats, making a living out of the flesh and blood of their dupes, and I’ll say it till I die.”

Here stands the experience of one woman with fearlessness enough to protest and energy enough to have at last secured a tolerable living. The report, for such it may be considered, might be made of many more names than those upon her black list, or found on the books of the Union. Happily for the worker, they form but a small proportion of the long list of dressmakers who deal fairly. But the life of the ordinary hand who has not ability enough to rise is, like that of the great majority who depend on the needle, whether machine or hand, filled with hardship, uncertainty, overwork, under-pay. The large establishments have next to no dull season, but we deal in the present chapter only with private workers; and often, on the east side especially, where prices and wages are always at the lowest ebb, the girls who have used all their strength in overwork during the busy season of spring and fall must seek employment in cigar factories or in anything that offers in the intermediate time, the wages giving no margin for savings which might aid in tiding over such periods. The dressmaker herself is often a sufferer, conscienceless customers abounding, who pay for the work of one season only when anxious for that of the next. Often it is mere carelessness, – the recklessness which seems to make up the method of many women where money obligations are concerned; but often also they pass deliberately from one dressmaker to another, knowing that New York holds enough to provide for the lifetime of the most exacting customer. There is small redress for these cases, and the dressmaker probably argues the matter for herself and decides that she has every right, being cheated, to balance the scale by a little of the same order on her own account.

A final form of rascality referred to in a previous chapter is found here, as in every phase of the clothing trade, whether on small or large scale. Girls are advertised for “to learn the trade,” and the usual army of applicants appear, those who are selected being told that the first week or two will be without wages, and only the best workers will be kept. Each girl is thus on her mettle, and works beyond her strength and beyond any fair average, to find herself discharged at the end of the time and replaced by an equally eager and equally credulous substitute. There are other methods of fraud that will find place in a consideration of phases of the same work in the great establishments, some difficulties of the employer being reserved for the same occasion.

CHAPTER SIXTH.

MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS

To do justice to employer as well as employed is the avowed object of our search, yet as it goes on, and the methods made necessary by competition become more and more clear, it is evident that back of every individual case of wrong and oppression lies a deeper wrong and a more systematized oppression. Master and servant alike are in the same bonds, and the employer is driven as mercilessly as he drives. He may deny it. He may even be quite unconscious of his own subjection, or, if he thinks at all of its extent, may look enviously at the man or the corporation that has had power to enslave him. The monopolist governs not only the market but the bodies and souls of all who provide wares for that market; yet the fascination of such power is so tremendous that to stand side by side with him is the dream of every young merchant, – the goal on which his eyes are set from the beginning. Only in like power is any satisfaction to be found. Any result below this high-water mark can be counted little else than failure.

To this end, then, toils the employer of every grade, bringing every faculty to bear on the lessening of waste, whether in material or time; the conservation of every force working in line with his purpose. Naturally, the same effect is produced as that mentioned in a previous paper. The employees come to represent “so much producing power,” and are driven at full speed or shut off suddenly like the machines of which they are the necessary but still more or less accidental associates. Certain formulas are used, evolved apparently from experience, and carrying with them an assurance of so much grieved but inevitable conviction that it is difficult to penetrate below the surface and realize that, while in degree true, they are in greater degree false. In various establishments, large and small, beginning with one the pay-roll of which carries 1,462 employees, and ending with one having hardly a third this number, the business manager made invariably the same statement: “We make our money from incidentals rather than from any given department. You are asking particularly about suits. I suppose you’ll think it incredible, but in suits we work at a dead loss. It is only an accommodation to our customers that makes us keep that department open. The work should be put out to mean any profit, but we can’t do that with the choicest materials, and so we make it up in other directions. You would have to go into business yourself to understand just how we are driven.”

“Suppose you refused to be driven? A firm of your standing must have matters a good deal in its own hands. Suppose – ”

“Suppose!” The manager threw out his hands in a gesture more full of disclaimer than any words. “There is no room for supposes in business, madam. We do what we must. How are we to compete with a factory turning out suits by steam power? Not that we would compete. There is really no occasion,” he added hastily. “But their methods certainly have an unpleasant influence, and we are obliged to take them into account slightly.”

“Then your statement would be, that no matter how expensive the suit made up, you can make no profit on it?”

“Absolutely none. It is a concession to a customer’s whims. We could buy the same thing and sell to her at half the price, but she prefers to select materials and have them put together in our work-room, and we must humor her. But rents are so enormous that the space for every woman employed by us in these departments may be said to represent simply so many cubic feet in good coin, bringing us no return. Our profits are dwindling with every year.”

“Might not co-operation – ”

Again the manager threw out his hands.

“Simply another form of robbery. We have investigated the history of co-operation, and it does not appear to affiliate with our institutions. The lamentable failure of the Co-operative Dress Association ought to be the answer to that suggestion. No, madam. There is no profit in suits, or in any form of made-up clothing for ladies’ wear, if it is done on the premises. You have to turn it over to the wholesale manufacturer if you want profit.”

Having heard this statement in many forms, and recognizing the fact that increase in rents as well as in systematized competition might well have reduced profits, it still appeared incredible that the rates charged held no surplus for the firm. Little by little it has become possible to supplement each statement by others of a different order. Nothing is more difficult than to obtain trustworthy information regarding the methods of a firm whose standing is such that to have served it is always a passport to other employment; whose payments are regular, and where every detail of work-room is beyond criticism. It is no question of bare-faced robbery as in that of many cited, yet even here the old story tells itself in different form, and with an element which, in many a less pretentious establishment, has not yet been found to exist.

The work done here is piece-work. French cutters and fitters, receiving from thirty to fifty dollars a week, give that guarantee of style and elegance which is inherent in everything bearing the stamp of the firm. Experts run the machines in the sewing-machine room, being paid by the day at the rate of from six to eight dollars per week in the busy season. The buttonholes are made by women who do nothing else, and who are paid by the dozen, earning from five to seven dollars weekly. All stitched seams are done in the machine-room, and the dress passes from there to the sewing-room, into the hands of the sewing-girls, who receive from three to four dollars and a half for each garment. The latter price is seldom reached; four dollars and a half or five dollars paying for a dress loaded with trimming, puffs, flounces, etc.

At this rate there would seem to be a chance for wages a good deal beyond the average, but it is one of the unwritten laws that no sewing-girl shall exceed five dollars per week; whether formulated by superintendent or by firm remains yet to be discovered. The one unquestionable fact is that if the superintendent of the work-room finds that any girl is expert enough to make over this amount the price per garment is docked, to bring her down to the level. They are never driven. On the contrary, they must wait often, two or three hours at times, for the arrival of “Madame,” who must inspect the work, drape a skirt, or give some suggestion as to trimming. No entreaty can induce the superintendent to give out another piece of work which might fill this vacant time, and the girls dare not state their case to the employer. No member of the firm enters the work-rooms. Reports are made by the superintendent of the department, and the firm remains content with knowing that it has provided every comfort for its employees. Complaint would insure discharge, and if a girl hints that she cannot live on five dollars a week the answer has been for the years during which the present superintendent has held the place, always the same: —

“If you haven’t a home so that you have no expense of board, it is your own fault, and I can’t be expected to do anything about it.”

There appears to be no question as to the entire “respectability” of the woman, who would undoubtedly deny the implication contained in her own words. But there is rivalry between the superintendents as to which department shall make largest returns in profits, and wages are kept down to secure that end. There is also no question that a proportion of those employed are “supported,” and merely add this work as a means of securing a little more pin-money. It is true of but a very few, but of those few an undeniable fact. It is equally a fact that, in spite of the managers’ assertions, profit can be made and is made from this department, and that a large percentage of such profit comes directly from the pocket of the sewing-girl, who, even when she adds buttonhole-making in the simpler dresses, can never pass beyond a fixed wage.

In other large establishments on both sides of the city methods are much the same, with merely slight variations as to comfort of quarters, time for lunch, sanitary conditions, etc. But in all alike, the indispensable, but always very helpless, sewing-girl appears to be one of the chief sources of profit, and to have small capacity and no opportunity for improving her condition. Even where the work comes from the manufactory, and steam has taken the place of foot-power, no machine has yet been run so automatically that the human hand can be entirely dispensed with. The “finisher” remains a necessity, and as finisher sometimes passes slightly beyond the rate obtained when merely sewing-girl. Only slightly, however. It is a deeply rooted conviction among these workers that a tacit or even, it may be, formal understanding has been settled upon by employers in general.

“I don’t know how it is,” said one of the most intelligent among the many I have talked with; “there’s never any trouble about getting work. I’ve even had them send after me when I had gone somewhere else in hopes of doing better. I used to earn ten and twelve dollars a week on suits, children’s or ladies’, but now if I earn five or sometimes six I do well. The work goes on with a rush. It’s a whole building except the first floor, – five stories, and suits of every kind. The rooms are all crowded, and they give out piece-work, but they’ve managed it so that we all earn about alike. When the rush of the fall and spring season is over they do white work and flannel skirts and such things, and a great many are discharged in the lull. But go where you will, up-town or down, it doesn’t seem to matter how well you can turn off the work or how long you have been at it. They all say, if we ask for better pay, ‘It can’t be had as long as there is such competition. We’re losing straight ahead.’ I don’t understand. We don’t any of us understand, because here is the great rush of work and it must be done. They can’t do without us, and yet they are grinding us down so that I get half distracted sometimes, wondering where it will end and if things will ever be better.”

“Would not private sewing be better? There is always a demand for good seamstresses.”

“I don’t know anything about private sewing. You have to cut and plan, and I never learned that. I like to work on things that are cut by a cutter and just so, and I can make up my dozen after dozen with not an eighth of an inch difference in my measurements. I’m an expert, you know.”

“But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly you could earn a dollar and a quarter a day and board and have your evening quite free.”

The girl shook her head. “I’ve had that said to me before, but you know it’s more independent as I am. Maybe things will be better by and by.”

There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deep-seated prejudice, and this exists to a bewildering degree among these workers, who, for some inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that private employ of any nature whatever is inevitably a despotism filled with unknown horrors. There appears to be also a certain esprit du corps that holds sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of herself as one of such and such a firm’s hands, and to regard this distinction as compensation for over-hours and under-pay and all known wretchedness encompassing her trade. The speaker I have quoted was an American girl of twenty-six, had had three years in public schools, and regarded the city as the only place in which life could be considered endurable.

“I shouldn’t know what to do in the country if I were there,” she said. “I don’t seem to like it somehow. It isn’t the company, for mother and me keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know how to get along in the city, and the country scares me. I like my work if only I could get more pay for it.”

“Do you ever think that if all who work in your line joined together and made common cause you might even things a little; that it might be easier for all of you?”

“We wouldn’t dare,” she answered, aghast. “Why, do you know, there’d be ten for each one of us that was turned off. Women come there by the hundred. That’s what they say to me in our firm: ‘What’s the use of fussing when here are dozens waiting to take your place?’ There isn’t any use. They say now that it is the dull season, and they’ve put our room on flannel skirts; two tucks and a hem, and a muslin yoke that has to be gone round four times with the stitching. One day I made ten, but nine is all one can do without nearly killing themselves, and they pay us one dollar a dozen for making them. It used to be a dollar and a half, and that was fair enough. It’s the kind of work I like. I shouldn’t be content to do any other; but it’s bringing us all down to starvation point, and I think something ought to be done.”

In a case like this, and it is the type of many hundreds of skilled workers, who regard their calling with a certain pride, and could by no possibility be induced to seek other lines of work or other methods of living, there seems little to be accomplished. They are, however, but a small portion of the army who wait for some deliverance, and who, if they had been born to a trifle more common sense, would turn in the one sole direction from which relief is certain, this relief and the reasons for and against it having no place at this stage of the investigation.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL

From the fig-leaf down, it would seem as if a portion of the original curse accompanying it had passed on to each variation or amplification of first methods, its heaviest weight falling always on the weak shoulders that, if endurance could make strong, should belong to-day to a race of giants. Of the ninety and more trades now open to women, thirty-eight involve some phase of this question of clothing, about which centre some of the worst wrongs of modern civilization. It is work that has legitimate place. It must be done by some one, since the exigencies of this same civilization have abolished old methods and made home manufactures seem a poor and most unsatisfactory substitute for the dainty stitching and ornamentation of the cheaper shop-work. It is work that many women love, and, if living wages could be had, would do contentedly from year to year. Of their ignorance and blindness, and the mysterious possession they call pride, and the many stupidities on which their small lives are founded, there is much to be said, when these papers have done their first and most essential work of showing conditions as they are; – as they are, and not as the disciples of laissez faire would have us to believe they are.

“It is the business of these philanthropists to raise a hue and cry; to exaggerate every evil and underrate every good. They are not to be trusted. Look at our institutions and see what we are doing for the poor. Study statistics and see how comfortable they are!”

This is the word of a recent correspondent of a Podsnapian turn of mind, who proceeded to present facts and figures bearing out his theory. And on a Sunday shortly after, he was confirmed in his faith and greatly strengthened and comforted by words from a popular preacher, long owner of a popular pulpit, who, standing there as the representative of a master whose message was to the poor, and who turned to them from the beginning, as the hearers who alone could know most truly what meaning the message bore, spoke these words: —

“Moreover, all this hue and cry about so much destitution and misery and the unscrupulous greed of employers is groundless. I am convinced that more than one half – yes, fully three quarters – of the pauperism of which you heard so much in the late campaign exists only in the minds of the Georgeites. The picture drawn of New York’s misery is over-colored, and its inspiration is in the distorted imaginations of the George fanatics… The rum-holes are the cause of all the misery… I have been watching for thirty-five years, and in all my investigations among the poor I never yet found a family borne down by poverty that did not owe its fall to rum.”

This most extraordinary statement, from a man who in one year alone could not have listened to even half the appeals for help likely to have come to him in his position, without discovering that death and disaster in many forms played, if not the chief part, certainly that next in order to rum, can be accounted for only on the ground that a hobby ridden too hard has been known to bear off at the same time both the common-sense and power of judgment of the rider. Prohibition appears to him, as to many another, the only solution; the gospel of negation the only gospel for rich or poor. Since the Church first began to misinterpret the words of its Founder, since men who built hospitals first made the poor to fill them, the “thou shalt not” of the priest has stood in the way of a human development that, if allowed free play, had long ago made its own code, and found in natural spiritual law the key to the overcoming of that formulated by men to whom the divine in man was forever unrecognized and unrecognizable.

This is no place for the discussion of what, to many good men and women, seems the only safety for human kind; but to one who studies the question somewhat at least with the eyes of the physician, it becomes certain that no “thou shalt not” will ever give birth to either conscience or love of goodness and purity and decent living, or any other good that man must know; and that till the Church learns this, her hold on men and women will lessen, year by year. Every fresh institution in the miles of asylums and hospitals that cover the islands of the East River, and stretch on farther and farther with every year, is an added disgrace, an added count in the indictment against modern civilization. There are moments when the student of social conditions abhors Philanthropy; when a disaster that would wipe out at one stroke every institution the city treasures would seem a gift straight from God, if only thereby the scales might fall from men’s eyes, and they might learn that hiding foulness in an asylum is not extirpation; that something deeper and stronger than Philanthropy must work, before men can be saved.

It is as student, not as professional philanthropist, that I write; and the years that have brought experience have brought also a conviction, sharpened by every fresh series of facts, that no words, no matter what fire of fervor may lie behind, can make plain the sorrow of the poor. To ears that will hear, to souls that seek forever some way that may help in truth and not in name, even to them it loses power at moments. To souls that sit at ease and leave to “the power that works for righteousness” the evolution of humanity from its prison of poverty and ignorance and pain, it is quite useless to speak. They have their theory, and the present civilization contents them. But for the men and women who are neither Georgeites merely, nor philanthropists merely, nor certain that any sect or creed or ism will help, but who know that the foulest man is still brother, and the wretchedest, weakest woman still sister, whose shame and sorrow not only bear a poison that taints all civilization, but are forever our shame and our sorrow till the world is made clean, – for these men and women I write, not what I fancy, but what I see and know.