"Is it some man now that you're needing?"
"No," Hertha said with a little laugh that ended in a sob, "it's not a man, Kathleen, it's my black mammy."
She put her arms around her friend's neck and kissed her good-night; and then went to her room, her head erect, her carriage that of the granddaughter of Judge Ogilvie. She had taken the first step and the next would not be so difficult. But Kathleen, out in the kitchen, shook her head and looked mystified.
CHAPTER XIX
The "Imperial," to which Hertha went every morning, was a high-grade shop. The large room in which she spent forty-nine hours a week was as clean as a conscientious scrubwoman could make it; the ventilation was not bad, and few of the workers were obliged to use artificial light. At rare moments of interruption, when stopping to catch a bit of thread or to adjust a piece of trimming, Hertha would look about at her companions bent over their machines, one running a tuck here, another attaching the lace to the muslin there, and would marvel at their dexterity and at the speed with which the finished product came out ready to go to another room to be pressed. Later she might see it at a department store, thrown over a show figure, and priced at $5.65 or $3.95, according to the day of the week. They were pretty shirtwaists and she took a pride in her part in their production.
By January the trade became brisk. Orders for "Imperial" waists were shipped to-day to give place to new orders to be shipped to-morrow. The girls were paid by the piece, and were, for their own interest, likely to work as fast as they could; but foreman and manufacturer were continually calling for greater speed. The exigencies of the trade—capricious changes of style, a keen competition among the manufacturers—created a period of swift production to be followed by a period of unemployment. Now, in midwinter, work was speeded up; and, bending over each whirring machine, was a taut, tired girl whose one thought, if she thought at all, was of the signal that should come at last to tell her that this day's work was done.
Hertha never became accustomed to the daily speeding. Not only did her body rebel against it, but her spirit refused to accept its sacrilege. She had always enjoyed making clothes, seeing a garment grow under her fingers. No matter how simple the article might be at which she was at work, she had felt the satisfaction of the creator when the final stitch was taken and the parts had become a useful whole. But now nothing grew; everything was made artificially by a series of explosions as they made puffed rice. At her machine she ran row after row of small tucks, fashioning the shoulders to give fullness to the bust. It was a graceful pattern, but if she stopped a moment to think of it she lost money for her employer and for herself. Her mind must be concentrated on her machine and on the goods that she fed it with the constant suggestion of hurrying, and again hurrying, and under the accusing eye of the foreman hurrying yet again.
Among the few American girls who worked at the shop was one Annie Black, who lived in a suburb. Annie seemed always to be running to and from trains. Her life on the road bore a striking similarity to her life at her machine. She rushed in the morning to get the 6:59, which, if it were on time, got her in and at work by eight. By shortening her noon hour she could just catch the 5:51 train for home. But if the 6:59 was late, then it was futile to attempt to make up lost time and she must work until nearly six and take the 6:41 back to a late dinner. And as her trains moved so moved her machine with its girl engine driver impatient for each run to be over and done.
We all love to make things, and the tragedy of the modern factory is that it denies this joy to the worker. Within the great buildings that we see from the street car window or that we flash by on the railroad train, men and women are not fashioning shirtwaists or shoes or automobiles; they are not seeing one out of the million things of man's creation grow beneath their touch; they are performing a series of motions for which they receive remuneration. The swifter and more accurate the performance of these motions the better the pay; but of the finished product they have neither knowledge nor thought. At ten years of age, with needle or wheel, they are better, more intelligent creators than at thirty, when, with fagged brain, they mechanically add their part to the multitude of parts that make up the factory product. At ten they take joy in the thing they have made and may sell it for a nickel or a kiss; at thirty they have but one desire, to dispose of their part of the product as dearly as they can. For, as they have no part in the creation of the whole, so they have no share in the intricate ways of business that make possible the factory's life. They are only tools like the machines they operate, to be used by the few, the creators, who, like the gods themselves, conceive and command.