“We’ll never be young but once,” they would say, “and if we don’t have a good time now, we never will.”
A good time was often secured at enormous cost. I do not know whether it is the habitual dissipation, or whether it happens to be the vogue for this winter, but it is very certain that to the men here the fancy-dress ball is now the incomparable attraction. One or more such functions within their range falls on nearly every Saturday night. They are given for the most part by certain “Brotherhoods” and labor organizations, and they are free, apparently, to all who come dressed in a manner sufficiently “fancy” to meet the views of “the committee,” and pay the price of a ticket, which admits “self and lady.”
As the men saw the night approaching, their talk would turn more and more to the absorbing subjects of costume and the girls whom they meant to take with them. There are shops which do business at letting out ready-made disguises for such occasions, and I have repeatedly seen these hard-working industrious fellows go deep into their pockets, to the extent even of half a week’s pay, for the use for a few hours of some tawdry make-up of velvet and spangles and lace, which reeked with promiscuous wear. And the outlay did not end with dress, for there remained tickets of admission, and the cost of at least two suppers for each and of not a little drinking. It was exceptional for any one of them to come home drunk, and the man who did was sure of a course of steady bantering for days, but some drinking was the rule for the Saturday nights that were given to masquerade. When a play would fall in place in the order of amusement, the men were sure to return by midnight, and there was always then less evidence of drink.
All forms of public gayety seemed scrupulously confined to Saturday nights and Sundays. The men could not have been more punctual at their work, and the habitual week-day evening was the far from exciting one in Mrs. Schulz’s sitting-room, which I have described. There they regularly gathered after supper, and smoked, and romped with the children, and played cards, and read. I was usually off for bed by eight o’clock, for nothing less than ten hours of sleep would fit me for the ten hours of labor in the factory, and the others would follow an hour or two later.
MRS. SCHULZ’S BOARDING-HOUSE.
There we regularly gathered after supper, and smoked, and romped with the children, and played cards, and read.
The morning brought the unwelcome summons to get up in what seemed the dead of night and but an hour or two after the time of going to bed. Cold water would have its rousing effect, as, also, a breakfast by lamplight with an anxious eye on the clock, and then a rush through the sharp air of the morning twilight until you were caught in the living stream which poured through the factory-gate. Work was begun on the minute, and your ear caught the sharp metallic clink of the mowers as the workmen pushed the frames down the loading-platforms to the cars. Even within the brick enclosures and in the stinging cold of the winter air, there arose inevitably with the sound the association of meadows fragrant with the perfume of new-mown timothy and clover drying in the hazy warmth of a long summer afternoon.
Within the buildings, almost in a moment, would rise the turmoil of production. You heard the deafening uproar of far-reaching machinery, as, with wheels whirling in dizzy motion and the straps humming in their flight, it beat time in deep, low throbs to the remorseless measures of a tireless energy. Cleaving the tumult of the sounding air you heard at frequent intervals the buzz-saws as they bit hard with flying teeth into multiple layers of wood, rising to piercing crescendo and then dying away in a sob. There was the din of many hammers, and over the wooden floors and along the run-ways, and through the dark, damp passages of the warehouses, and down the deep vistas of the covered platforms, was the almost constant rumble of hand-trucks pushed by men and boys.
All this unceasingly for five continuous hours, which always seem unending, and then the abrupt signal for twelve o’clock, and the sound of the machinery running down while the men are hastening to their mid-day meal. About the factory-gate are always at this hour groups of women and young children who have brought in pails and baskets hot dinners for their men. On brighter days you can see long lines of operatives sitting along the curbs or with their backs against the high board fence, basking in the sunlight, as they eat their dinners in the open air and converse among themselves and with their wives or children.