"If I stay here," thought she, "in a few weeks I shall be like these others. No matter how hard I may fight, I'll be dragged down." As impossible to escape the common lot as for a swimmer alone in mid-ocean to keep up indefinitely whether long or brief, the struggle could have but, the one end—to be sunk in, merged in, the ocean.
It took no great amount of vanity for her to realize that she was in every way the superior of all those around her—in every way except one. What did she lack? Why was it that with her superior intelligence, her superior skill both of mind and of body, she could be thus dragged down and held far below her natural level? Why could she not lift herself up among the sort of people with whom she belonged—or even make a beginning toward lifting herself up? Why could she not take hold? What did she lack? What must she acquire—or what get rid of?
At lunch time she walked with the ugly woman up and down the first side street above the building in which the factory was located. She ate a roll she bought from a pushcart man, the woman munched an apple with her few remnants of teeth. "Most of the girls is always kicking," said the woman. "But I'm mighty satisfied. I get enough to eat and to wear, and I've got a bed to sleep in—and what else is there in life for anybody, rich or poor?"
"There's something to be said for that," replied Susan, marveling to find in this piteous creature the only case of thorough content she had ever seen.
"I make my four to five per," continued the woman. "And I've got only myself. Thank God, I was never fool enough to marry. It's marrying that drags us poor people down and makes us miserable. Some says to me, 'Ain't you lonesome?' And I says to them, says I, 'Why, I'm used to being alone. I don't want anything else.' If they was all like me, they'd not be fightin' and drinkin' and makin' bad worse. The bosses always likes to give me work. They say I'm a model worker, and I'm proud to say they're right. I'm mighty grateful to the bosses that provide for the like of us. What'd we do without 'em? That's what I'd like to know."
She had pitied this woman because she could never hope to experience any of the great joys of life. What a waste of pity, she now thought. She had overlooked the joy of joys—delusions. This woman was secure for life against unhappiness.
A few days, and Susan was herself regarded as a model worker. She turned out hats so rapidly that the forewoman, urged on by Mr. Himberg, the proprietor, began to nag at the other girls. And presently a notice of general reduction to thirty-five cents a dozen was posted. There had been a union; it had won a strike two years before—and then had been broken up by shrewd employing of detectives who had got themselves elected officers. With the union out of the way, there was no check upon the bosses in their natural and lawful effort to get that profit which is the most high god of our civilization. A few of the youngest and most spirited girls—those from families containing several workers—indignantly quit. A few others murmured, but stayed on. The mass dumbly accepted the extra twist in the screw of the mighty press that was slowly squeezing them to death. Neither to them nor to Susan herself did it happen to occur that she was the cause of the general increase of hardship and misery. However, to have blamed her would have been as foolish and as unjust as to blame any other individual. The system ordained it all. Oppression and oppressed were both equally its helpless instruments. No wonder all the vast beneficent discoveries of science that ought to have made the whole human race healthy, long-lived and prosperous, are barely able to save the race from swift decay and destruction under the ravages of this modern system of labor worse than slavery—for under slavery the slave, being property whose loss could not be made good without expense, was protected in life and in health.
Susan soon discovered that she had miscalculated her earning power. She had been deceived by her swiftness in the first days, before the monotony of her task had begun to wear her down. Her first week's earnings were only four dollars and thirty cents. This in her freshness, and in the busiest season when wages were at the highest point.
In the room next hers—the same, perhaps a little dingier—lived a man. Like herself he had no trade—that is, none protected by a powerful union and by the still more powerful—in fact, the only powerful shield—requirements of health and strength and a certain grade of intelligence that together act rigidly to exclude most men and so to keep wages from dropping to the neighborhood of the line of pauperism. He was the most industrious and, in his small way, the most resourceful of men. He was insurance agent, toilet soap agent, piano tuner, giver of piano lessons, seller of pianos and of music on commission. He worked fourteen and sixteen hours a day. He made nominally about twelve to fifteen a week. Actually—because of the poverty of his customers and his too sympathetic nature he made five to six a week—the most any working person could hope for unless in one of the few favored trades. Barely enough to keep body and soul together. And why should capital that needs so much for fine houses and wines and servants and automobiles and culture and charity and the other luxuries—why should capital pay more when so many were competing for the privilege of being allowed to work?
She gave up her room at Mrs. Tucker's—after she had spent several evenings walking the streets and observing and thinking about the miseries of the fast women of the only class she could hope to enter. "A woman," she decided, "can't even earn a decent living that way unless she has the money to make the right sort of a start. 'To him that hath shall be given; from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.' Gideon was my chance and I threw it away."