Working With the Working Woman

by Cornelia Stratton Parker

Tessie is back. I do love Tessie, and I know Tessie loves me. She had not gone hunting for another job, as I thought. Her husband had had his elbow broken with an electric machine of some sort where he works on milk cans. The morning before she had taken him to the hospital. That made her ten minutes late to the factory. The little pop-eyed man told her, “You go on home!” and off she went. “But he tell me that once more I no come back again,” said Tessie, her cheeks very red.

I begin to get the “class feeling”—to understand a lot of things I wanted to know first hand. In the first place, there is no thought ever, and I don't see in that factory how there can be, for the boss and his interests. Who is he? Where is he? The nearest one comes to him is the pop-eyed man at the door. Once in a while Ida hollers “For Gawd's sake, girls, work faster!” Now that doesn't inspire to increased production for long. There stands Tessie across the table from me—peasant Tessie from near München, with her sweet face and white turned-up cap. She packs as fast as she can, but her hands are clumsy and she can't seem to get the difference between chocolates very well. It is enough to drive a seer crazy. They change the positions on the shelves every so often; the dipping-machine tenders cut capers and mark the same kind of chocolates differently to-day from yesterday. By three in the afternoon you're too sick of chocolates to do any more investigating by sampling. Even Ida herself has sometimes to poke a candy in the bottom—if it feels one way it's “marsh”; another, it's peach; another, it's coconut. But my feeling is not educated and I poke, and then end by having to bite, and then, just as I discover it is peach, after all, some one has run off with the last box and Ida has to be found and a substitute declared.

Tessie gives up in despair and hurls herself on me. So then Tessie is nearest to me in the whole factory, and Tessie is slow. The faster I pack the more it shows up Tessie's slowness. If Ida scolded Tessie it would break my heart. The thought of the man who owns that factory, and his orders and his profits and his obligations, never enter my or any other packer's head. I will not pack so many boxes that Tessie gets left too far behind.

Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or twist comes to me—my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait to get back after lunch. I fly out after the big boxes to pack the little boxes in. In my haste and ignorance I bring back covers by mistake and pack dozens of little boxes in covers. It must all be done over again. Six hundred boxes I pack this day. I've not stopped for breath. I'm not a bit tired when 6 o'clock comes round. I ask Ida when she will put me on piecework—it seems the great ambition of my life is to feel I am on piecework. “When you can pack about two thousand boxes a day,” says Ida. Two thousand! I was panting and proud over six hundred! “Never mind,” says Ida, “you're makin' out fine.” Oh, the thrill of those words! I asked her to show me again about separating the paper cups. I didn't have it just right, I was sure. “My Gawd!” sighed Ida, “what ambition!” Yes, but the ambition did not last more than a few days at that pitch.

Tessie wanted to tell me something about her Mann to-day so badly, but could not find the English words. Her joy when I said, “Tell me in German”! How came I to speak German? I'd spent three years in Germany with an American family, taking care of the children. Honest for once.

“That was luck for you,” says Tessie.

“That was sure luck for me,” says I—honest again.

Wherever Lena works there floats conversation for a radius of three tables. The subject matter is ever the same—“dopes.” “Is he big?... Gee! I say!... More like a sister to him.... He never sees the letters.” “Lena” (from Ida), “shut up and get to work!” ... “I picked him up Sunday.... Where's them waxing papers?... Third she vamped in two days.... Sure treats a girl swell.... Them ain't pineapples....” “Lee-na! get to work or I'll knock the hell out a ya!” And pretty Lena giggles on: “He says.... She says to him.... Sure my father says if he comes 'round again....”

And Tessie and I; I bend over to hear Tessie's soft, low German as she tells me how good her Mann is to her; how he never, never scolds, no matter if she buys a new hat or what; how he brings home all his pay every week and gives it to her. He is such a good Mann. They are saving all their money. In two years they will go back near München and buy a little farm.

Tessie and her poor Mann, with his broken elbow and his swollen arm all black and blue, couldn't sleep last night. Oh dear! this New York! One man at one corner he talk about Harding, one man other corner he talk about Cox; one man under their window he talk MacSwiney—New York talk, talk, talk!