And yet the fact remains that some things get too much on even a philosophical factory girl's nerves. Whereat she merely walks out—if she has gumption enough. The labor turnover, from the point of view of production and efficiency, can well be a vital industrial concern. To the factory girl, it saves her life, like as not. Praise be the labor turnover!
If it were not for that same turnover, I, like the soul-filled college graduate, might feel like calling aloud, not to Heaven, but to the President of the United States and Congress and the Church and Women's clubs: “Come quick and rescue females from the brassworks!” As it is, the females rescue themselves. If there's any concern it's “the boss he should worry.” He must know how every night girls depart never to cross those portals again, so help them Gawd. Every morning a new handful is broken in, to stay there a week or two, if that long, and take to their heels. Praise be the labor turnover, as long as we have such brassworks.
Before eight o'clock of a cold Monday morning (thank goodness it was not raining, since we stood in shivering groups on the sidewalk) I answered the Sunday-morning “ad”:
GIRLS AND WOMEN
between 16 and 36; learners and experienced assemblers and foot-press operators on small brass parts; steady; half day Saturday all year around; good pay and bonus. Apply Superintendent's office.
The first prospects were rather formidable—some fifty men and boys, no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance and we shivered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is wont under the circumstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess admitted she had never danced.
“What?” almost yelled the bride, “Never danced? Good Gawd! girl, you might as well be dead!”
“You said it!” I chimed in. “Might as well dig a hole in the ground and crawl in it.”
“You said it!” and the husky bride and erstwhile (up to the week before) elevator operator at twenty-three dollars a week (she said) gave me a smart thump of understanding. “Girl, you never danced? It's—it's the grandest thing in life!”
The plump Jewess looked a little out of things. “I know,” she sighed, “they tell me it 'u'd make me thin, too, but my folks don't let me go out no place.”