Read Ebook: Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New York by Anonymous

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Ebook has 1833 lines and 101792 words, and 37 pages

My interest became personal. Polly Preston would be able to direct envelopes and fold circulars.

"What do they pay you?"

Alice shook her head.

"When the manager heard that I had been getting twenty-five dollars a week, he said he was ashamed to tell me what they paid. He asked what was the least I would come for. I don't see how any one can possibly live on less than twelve dollars a week in New York. Do you?"

"Don't you do it," Alice interrupted, grabbing me by the arm. "The bread is stale and cold, the butter is uneatable, the coffee is not coffee at all, and the milk is skimmed until it is a blue-green. You won't be able to eat a thing, and they'll charge you thirty cents for it."

While thirty cents did not, at that time, seem to me a great price to pay for a breakfast, stale bread and blue-green milk was not tempting. Though my plans had never included a second person, it now occurred to me that if Alice wished to join me she might be of real assistance as well as a pleasant companion.

"Wonderful!" she exclaimed, on hearing my explanation. "If we can only stick it out through the Christmas rush you'll get material for no end of stories. I've always wanted to see just what the Christmas rush is like in a popular New York store."

Alice was about twenty-three and small. Like many small women, she was continually standing on her dignity. And like many men and more women, the first of their family to attain a college degree, she was perpetually bringing the fact of having that degree before her associates. She was the best example I have ever seen of beauty without symmetry. Her dark hair was stringy, her face was long, her upper lip short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her lashes short and dark, her nose long and her dark complexion blotchy. She had but one really fine feature--eyes, blue-gray in color and eloquently expressive. Because of her eyes she must always be a noticeably attractive woman.

On leaving her I walked across town to the Central Branch of the Y. W. C. A., and after getting a satisfying breakfast for fifteen cents I asked the price of rooms. The cheapest rate was sixty-five cents the night with two in a room. Clutching my pocketbook I hurried out--the purchasing power of five dollars might not be so great as it had appeared.

A subway train set me down at the entrance of a large department store whose advertisement for salesladies in that morning's paper had attracted my attention. The advertisement read "experience unnecessary" and I knew the head of the firm to be one of the most widely known philanthropists in the country.

In the employment department of this great store I stared at the voluminous application-blank given me to fill out. My age, color, nationality, my mother's maiden name, my father's profession. Were my parents living or dead. My own personal history for the past ten years. The names and addresses of two property-owners who would vouch for me.

"Ah!" I congratulated myself, on reading this last item. "The superintendent has his eye on you for a good position at a fat salary."

On returning the paper with all the questions truthfully answered the girl at the window informed me that they would drop me a card in a day or so telling me when to come to work. A glow of satisfied pride swept over me. Who said an unskilled woman had a hard time earning an honest living in New York? Alice hadn't found it difficult to get a job at a living wage. I was sure of one. However, no use loafing.

It was past ten o'clock when I applied at a mail-order house advertising for addressers.

"Any experience?" was the only question asked by the kindly little manager.

Who has not addressed envelopes? It proved to be piece-work in a well-lighted, comfortably heated loft. At five o'clock that afternoon I had finished one thousand envelopes and thereby earned one dollar and a quarter--it being three-line work. On leaving the building the problem of where to spend the night faced me. A thought of the municipal lodging-house for women again occurred to me, but recalling that I was a working woman, not an investigator, and as Polly Preston would know nothing about such a place, I pushed the suggestion aside. Returning to the Y. W. C. A., I meekly asked for a bed in a sixty-five-cent room.

My roommate was an oldish young lady who confided to me that she had come from a small town in the Middle West to take a position with the Metropolitan Opera Company. She had no acquaintance with the manager or any member of the company. Indeed I could not learn that she had an acquaintance in New York City. Her confidence was nothing short of sublime. While she might not get a leading r?le, never having studied abroad, she assured me that she had a hunch that she would get an important part--far above the chorus.

All the evening and far into the night, when she was not singing the latest ragtime she was crowing like a hen. She called it exercising her upper register. Having spent one year as a student in a conservatory of music I knew from experience the only thing to do was to let her find out conditions for herself.

The following day by writing steadily from eight to six I managed to address fifteen hundred envelopes. The companionship of the six women who shared the long table with me was diverting. Before the day was half gone each of the five had confided to all within reach of her voice her personal history and reason for working. During the lunch-hour the sixth woman continued to write, nibbling from time to time at an apple and what appeared to be a slice of dry bread. Finally she inquired if I were married.

"You're lucky," she congratulated me. "If I could make sure my four children would be took care of I'd put myself to sleep and never wake up."

"How about your husband?" was my horrified rejoinder.

"He's gone," she replied with a quavering little chuckle. "When our fifth baby came he left." After a pause she added: "Maybe he wouldn't have gone if he'd a-knowd it was goin' to die so soon." Another pause. Then wistfully: "Maybe he would--never no countin' on a man."

The next day at eleven the little manager informed us that having finished all the envelopes he would have no further need of our services until time to send out their spring catalogues. Having received a post-card from the department store telling me to report ready for work at eight-thirty the following Monday morning, this abrupt ending of my first job caused me no regret.

Deciding to devote the afternoon to looking for rooms, I hurried back to the Y. W. C. A. and approached the woman in charge of the Rooming Bureau. When she learned that my limit was two dollars and a half a week she shook her head. She had not had a room as low as that in at least two years. So late in the season and two rooms on the same floor? Impossible! When I reminded her of newspapers and magazine articles advising working women on the economic division of their wages her face crinkled into a smile.

"Those people find out the wage of the average working girl--some don't even take that trouble--then they sit at their desks and divide it up for her. Sometimes they make real touching stories. I've often wondered how much they are paid." She looked me over. "Perhaps you can tell me? You are a writer."

The attack was so unexpected that I actually stuttered. When I asked why she had made such a guess she replied indifferently:

"Only a professional social investigator or a writer could be so ignorant and at the same time so cock-sure. You are not a social investigator. At least I never saw one whose shoes were so clean this late in the week."

On my making a full confession her interest was aroused. When she was convinced that Alice and I purposed to live on our earnings she turned her catalogue of rooms over to me. Selecting twenty of what appeared to me to be the most desirable addresses I set out.

It was after three o'clock when the door at the last address on my list closed behind me. The cheapest room I had seen was three dollars and a half a week. Its only window opened on a shaft and there was no heat of any sort. In an effort to bolster up my flagging spirits I became defiantly independent.

Why confine myself to the Y. W. C. A. list? I had passed a number of attractive-looking houses with the sign "furnished rooms" out. Why not investigate them? Alice and I were both old enough, had sufficient experience and judgment, to see if anything was amiss.

Just off one of the most beautiful squares in New York I came upon an unusually attractive-looking house with a furnished-room sign out. Even the sign itself was neater and more cheerful-appearing than any that had previously attracted my attention. The door was opened by the landlady. It was a charming room--on the second floor with a huge bay window--that overlooked a well-kept back yard. The bathroom was on the same floor, and in a little private hall just outside the door of the room there was a gas-stove with two burners.

On learning that the rent was three dollars the week, including gas for cooking, I opened my pocketbook to pay a week advance.

"Emily."

Quickly turning toward the door from which direction the call appeared to come, I as quickly remembered that my mother had been in her grave more than fourteen years. Without thought, moved entirely by instinct, I slipped by the woman and out of the room. Halting on the stairs between her and the door I explained that it seemed to me wiser to consult Alice before definitely deciding.

Out on the streets my cheeks tingled with shame. Was I a fool or a coward or both? There had been nothing suspicious about the woman and certainly her house was more attractive than any on the Y. W. list. Out there in the sunlight it seemed the height of absurdity to imagine that my mother had spoken to me. Deciding to telephone Alice and ask her to meet me at the house on her way from work I turned toward Third Avenue to look for the nearest drug-store.

Discovering that I was almost under the eaves of a home for deaconesses, it occurred to me that they might have a list of decent rooming-houses in that neighborhood. At any rate, I reasoned, they would certainly be in a position to reassure me about the house I had just left.

While the little deaconess who opened the door was going over her list of rooms looking for a vacancy, I mentioned having called at a house on that block, giving the number.

"Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed. "You mustn't think of going there. That house has been raided by the police three times within the past month."

When at last she found a rooming-house on her list not marked "filled" she gave me the address. Within half an hour I had taken and paid for exactly what Alice and I had set our hearts on--two small clean rooms on the top floor in the back of an old-fashioned house in a convenient and decent neighborhood.

"Of course we shall have to keep our living expenses within what you are now paying," I told Alice that evening, when she stopped in on her way from work. "Two dollars and a half each a week for rent and one dollar and a half each for our household budget. It would have been nicer if you could have moved to-night."

"I'd have come quick enough," Alice retorted. "You told me not to dare to come before Tuesday."

"Certainly. You have paid until Tuesday noon. You cannot afford to give that home the price of five meals and three nights' room-rent. We are out to learn the value of money, not how to spend it."

"Stop it! If you knew the price of foodstuffs in the push-cart markets you'd know that three dollars a week will give two women all they can eat--provided they do their own cooking and use common sense in buying."

"Will you do the buying for the first week?" Alice demanded.

"No indeed. No weekly shifts for me--either as a buyer or as a cook. A month is the shortest period one should attempt when economy is to be considered. I have thought it all out. The one who does the buying cooks dinner and washes up the breakfast dishes. The other washes the dinner dishes and cooks breakfast. How does that suit you?"

"I'm willing to do the work," Alice assured me. "But I believe we'll starve to death if we don't put in more than a dollar and a half a week for food."

"I was forgetting to tell you about my adventure," I said, hoping to give her a change of thought and thereby stop her croaking. "It was really exciting." I then described my experience at the unlisted rooming-house and the deaconess home.

"How comforting it is to know that the spirits of our loved ones are always hovering around us, guarding us from harm!" she commented solemnly. "After such a direct manifestation--What!" she cried, interrupting herself as she realized the significance of my smile. "Do you mean to say that you don't believe your mother could come to warn you?"

"I know nothing about would or could, but I don't believe she did. What you call a direct manifestation seems to me merely a vestigial faculty inherited from our remote ancestors--who, not yet having developed the orderly, conscious mind, existed by means of powers akin to instinct of animals. It may not be very flattering to think of one's ancestors as the missing link, but I prefer it to the suspicion that the spirit of my mother has nothing better to do than to chase around after me."

For a few minutes there was a profound silence. Then Alice began to snap and unsnap the fastening of her glove while I continued to polish my shoes.

"Well," my friend began with a sigh, "of course every one has a right to their own opinion. I don't believe in the missing-link theory. What's more, I do believe in a hereafter and that I shall be able to come back and help the people I love."

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