And gray-haired Ella Jane, smartest of all, ten years folding pillow cases, said: “I don't know anything about that Partnership Plan. All I know is that we get our share of the profits and our bonuses, and I can't imagine a nicer place to work. They do make you work for what you get, though. But it's all white and aboveboard and you know nobody's trying to put something over on you.”
But the general spirit of the place? Could that be traced to anything else but the special industrial scheme of things? One fact at least is certain—the employing end is spared many a detail of management; the shift in responsibility is educating many a worker to the problems of capital. And production is going up.
Have you ever tried to find a spare bed in a town where there seems to be not a spare bed to be had? I left my belongings in an ice cream store and followed every clue, with a helpful hint from the one policeman, or the drug store man, or a fat, soiled grandmother who turned me down because they were already sleeping on top of one another in her house. In between I dropped on a grassy hillside and watched Our Bleachery baseball team play a Sunday afternoon game with the Colored Giants. We won.
And then I took up the hunt again, finally being guided by the Lord to the abode of the sisters Weston—two old maids, combined age one hundred and forty-nine years, who took boarders. Only there were no more to take. The Falls was becoming civilized. Improvements were being installed in most of the houses. Boarders, which meant mainly school-teachers, preferred a house with Improvements. The abode of the sisters Weston had none. It was half a company house, with a pump in the kitchen which drew up brown water of a distressing odor.
The sisters Weston had worked in the overall factory in their earlier years, hours 7 to 6, wages five dollars a week, paid every five to six weeks. Later they tried dressmaking; later still, boarders. I belonged to the last stage of all—they no longer took boarders, they took a boarder. Mr. Welsh from the electrical department in the bleachery, whose wife was in Pennsylvania on a visit to her folks, being sickly and run down, as seemed the wont of wives at the Falls, took his meals at our boarding house, when he was awake for them. Every other week Mr. Welsh worked night shift.
My belongings were installed in the room assigned me, and the younger of the sisters Weston, seventy-three, sat stiffly but kindly in a chair. “Now about the room rent...?” she faltered. Goodness! yes! My relief at finding a place to sleep in after eleven turn-downs was so great that I had completely neglected such a little matter as what the room might cost me.
“What do you charge?” I asked.
“What do you feel you can pay? We want you should have some money left each week after your board's paid. What do you make at the bleachery?”
My conscience fidgeted within me a bit at that. “I'd rather you charged me just what you think the room and board are worth to you, not what you think I can pay.”
“Well, we used to get eight dollars a week for room and board. It's worth that.”