Seven-thirty the next morning found me at the publishing house and true to his word the manager gave me the vacant chair. Although monotonous, folding, like addressing is not unpleasant work. Busy fingers did not prevent those women from talking and I soon heard a lot of gossip about several of my neighbors. The young woman across the table from me was the wife of a chauffeur. As she worked, she used her handkerchief from time to time to absorb tears that rolled over her baby-doll cheeks.
Her husband, so the whisper ran around, was in love with his employer. This woman, according to his wife, not only gave the chauffeur handsome presents, but held long conversations with him over the telephone the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. Besides, she took him to the theatre with her and had him lunch and dine with her at obscure road-houses when they went alone for long drives into the country.
“How many children have you?” I asked the weeping woman.
She tossed her head scornfully and assured me and all in ear-shot that she hadn’t any and never had intended to have any, thank God! Not she, to lose her shape for a child! Later on I remarked to an older woman who sat next to me that I didn’t see why the chauffeur’s wife should be so broken up—she called her husband a scoundrel and they had no children.
“A married woman hadn’t ought to have to work,” my neighbor reproved me. “Unless her husband is sick or misfortunate.”
Evidently her opinion was shared by all my neighbors. This woman in perfect health, under thirty and whining, actually shedding tears because she had to work, had their sympathy. Not that she was poorer or her condition in any way harder than their own, but for the single reason that she as a married woman had a right to be supported. While turning this idea over in my mind my attention was attracted by a ripple of pleased exclamations.
A slender old gentleman had entered the loft from the elevator and was passing along the aisle between the workers. The carnation in his buttonhole was not more spotlessly white than his hair and whiskers. From time to time when he would recognize a worker he would pause, shake hands, and exchange a few remarks. At the end of our table he greeted the woman in charge of the folders cordially, told her that he was glad to see her back and hoped that she would remain until the work was finished. When in reply to his question she assured him that everything, including the delivery of the bottled milk, was being done for the workers’ comfort, he bowed to us all and passed on.
The last glimpse I had of him was among the men workers at the far end of the loft. He had stooped to pick up the crutch of a lame man, an old addresser who, I was told, did more than two thousand envelopes a day.
During the three days and a half that I worked for that firm I never heard so much as a whispered complaint against conditions. The loft in which we worked was well lighted and ventilated. Though the weather was bitterly cold it was always comfortably heated. The chairs were comfortable and the tables of a comfortable height. Though pens and ink and other supplies were never wasted, the workers were generously supplied.
On Saturday at one o’clock I was paid eight dollars. It seemed a huge amount compared to the six dollars I might have received had I continued at the department store.