Four Years in the Underbrush

CHAPTER I

FOR POLLY PRESTON’S SAKE

The evening of November 8, 1916, I walked out of the National Arts Club and into the underbrush of the greatest jungle of civilization—I entered the world of the unskilled working woman of New York City. Though a sudden move, such an adventure had been in my mind for weeks. When thinking over the plot of my fifth novel my conscience had demanded:

“Why don’t you go out and get first-hand experience for Polly Preston? She is a child of your own brain. You know her temperamentally as well as mentally and physically. You should be able to judge how she would react under given conditions. Come, be a sport! Get out and see what Polly will really be up against.”

When the opportunity presented itself on the above-mentioned date my reason for accepting it was for the single purpose of getting material for my novel—not because of any special interest in working people, either men or women, as a class. Indeed, it had always been my faith that they who scrub floors or dig ditches are only fit to scrub floors or dig ditches—humanity, like water, finds its own level.

The clock over the main entrance of the Grand Central Station was on the stroke of twelve when I passed under it on my way to the woman’s waiting-room. Glancing around to select the most desirable of the unoccupied chairs, my attention was caught—a woman with a strong Slavic accent 

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was giving a group of immigrant girls a lesson in—not English—American.

“’Ello!” the woman exclaimed, and smiling broadly she extended her hand.

“’Ello!” each girl responded in her turn, and she stolidly allowed her hand to be pumped up and down by the woman.

“Sure,” cried the woman, nodding her head vigorously.

“Zuer,” the girls repeated, and they also nodded vigorously.

“No, no,” was emphasized by a shake of the head.

“Nun, nun,” the girls grunted, but they shook their heads so violently that there could be no doubt of their understanding.

“Goo’-by,” the teacher said at the end of the lesson, as, rising, she held out her hand.

“Goo’-by?” the five questioned in chorus. Then they struggled to their feet and made an awkward attempt at shaking hands.

While the woman was in the lavatory, the girls, glancing around, saw me. Their prolonged stare was followed by an animated discussion. What was there about my appearance to cause anyone to single me out for special comment? The quickest way to settle the question seemed to be to drag my chair across the floor and join the group.

“Hello!” I greeted the five as I planted my chair facing them.

“’Ello!” was their relieved chorus, and cordial smiles flashed over the five faces which an instant before had reflected surprise with a glint of fear.

“’Merican?” the girl nearest asked, and before I could reply the others questioned in chorus “’Merican?”

“Sure, I’m an American,” I assured them, and very gravely I shook, in turn, five surprisingly large hands.

This rite finished, the girl next me reached over and stroked my muff. It was so evident that the others wished 

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to do the same thing that I handed the muff over. It was passed around the circle, each girl stroking it and pressing it for an instant against her cheek—a movement too distinctly feminine to need explanation. Once the muff was back in my possession their interest shifted to my shoes.

“Did they expect me to pass my shoes around for inspection?” was the query that flashed through my mind.

Fortunately the woman returned at that instant. She explained that the girls could not understand why an American woman with mink furs should wear such unfashionable shoes. The girls, all five of them, understanding her explanation, stuck out their feet evidently sure of my approval. They wore silk stockings with the latest cut of low shoes—high French heels with needle-pointed toes. The woman informed me that silk stockings and American shoes were always the first purchase made by an immigrant woman on landing in this country.

My reason for spending the first night of my adventure in the Grand Central was because Polly Preston would not have money enough to go to a hotel and, being a stranger in New York, would know nothing of the municipal lodging-house for women. It was far from a disagreeable experience—that night in the woman’s waiting-room. Indeed, my attention was so absorbed by watching the persons around me, that the announcement of an early train for the West came as a distinct surprise. By the clock it was within a few minutes of five—a new day had come.

Passing through the great concourse of the station I entered a subterranean passage, and, on again coming to the surface of the earth, found myself near the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. Halting I gazed around in surprise. A dream city stretched around me—the city whose dimly realized beauty we all cherish in the depth of our soul. The wide avenue, the buildings, every object in sight, even space itself, was done in soft, luminous grays. 

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There was not a sound—no clang of surface-car, no honk of automobile, no rumble of elevated, no muffled growl of subway, not even the pad of a horse’s hoofs on the velvet asphalt. I was alone in the heart of a great sleeping city—wonderful, mysterious, superb!

The realization of the marvellous beauty of the scene was so unexpected and acute that it hurt. In the pain there was an exaltation that lifted me above the problems of every-day life. Struggling to realize myself as Polly Preston I called to mind the lone five-dollar bill in my purse. Then I sternly reminded myself that my only other worldly possession was the scanty change of underwear folded about my tooth-brush and dressing-comb in the pockets of my coat. Contemplation of my poverty failing to lessen my enjoyment of my surroundings, I focussed my thoughts on my people—my sisters and my brothers and my cousins. How they would shake their heads could they know of my wandering around New York at night and alone!

“Thank God!” I heard them exclaim in chorus, “your dear mother didn’t live to see it.”

Instead of being overwhelmed by a feeling of forlorn loneliness I felt myself grin. Not even one small pang for setting at naught the conventions of my class! A longing to stop the clock possessed me, to hold back dawn, to keep the people asleep, that I, like a disembodied spirit, might wander over the city and drink my fill of its enchanted loveliness. With this wish filling my mind I stood staring along Fifth Avenue—down in the dusk toward Washington Square, up, up between the tall buildings that seemed almost a tunnel, to the faint luminousness which I knew marked the beginning of Central Park.

Yet, excited as my imagination was, it did not warn me that the adventure begun so carelessly would extend over four years instead of a few weeks—and those four years the most eventful in all history—that the war then going 

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on between a few nations in Europe would convulse the world and threaten the very foundations of civilization. No premonition whispered to me of the host of khaki-clad young men whose tramp, tramp, tramp along the wide avenue would be echoed in millions of breaking hearts throughout the length and breadth of our country. Nor of the return march of those same boys—yet were they the same?—in battle-marred uniforms whose faces, though alight with the joys of home-coming and the conscious knowledge that their strength had put an end to the world nightmare, seemed strangely old and still.

In the soft gray dawn touching with silver the still-life scene about me there was no suggestion of Fifth Avenue ablaze with silk flags, its asphalt strewn with flowers, its sidewalk packed by millions of people come to honor the famous personages who would pass, as in review, before the lions guarding the public library—a marshal of France, a general-in-chief of Italy, a king and his queen, and the future ruler of a great empire—each sent by a grateful country as an expression of gratitude and friendship to the people of the United States. And more thrilling perhaps than any of these parades was that at the head of which marched the President of our country, followed by thousands of women, soldiers who know neither nationality nor creed, and the red cross whose banner symbolizes universal mother love.

Then last of all a horde of Jewish children swept along the historic thoroughfare singing psalms of praise, rejoicing over the rebirth of the nation of their fathers—Jerusalem, wrested from Turkish rule, had after centuries again become the capital of the Jewish race.

Nor, standing there in that mild November morning, did I dream that within sound of the human voice almost under the eaves of the public library, as it were, I would find superstition more rampant than among the negroes in the Dark 

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Corner of my native State—a county untouched by railroads and cut off from the rest of the world by turbulent rivers, and in which the white children never have more than three months public schooling during a year and negro children much less. No guardian angel warned me of the plague of influenza that, sweeping around the world, would hover over our great city, touching alike with the finger of death those who dwelt in palaces and they who huddled in tenement homes. No suspicion of the coming of nationwide prohibition was planted in my mind, nor, more surprising still, the knowledge that at our next presidential election men and women, equal as citizens, would cast their ballots standing side by side.

All during those eventful four years I remained in the underbrush—the world of the unskilled working woman of New York City. During that time I held twenty-five different positions in almost as many different fields of work. I directed envelopes for a large mail-order house, was a saleswoman in one of the most advertised of metropolitan department stores, addressed envelopes for a woman’s magazine, folded circulars for one of the largest publishing houses in the country, acted as saleswoman in the premium station of a large profit-sharing business, packed cigarettes, served as waitress in one of the more fashionable hotels at a popular winter health resort, was a packer in a cracker factory, an assistant to a chocolate-dipper in a candy factory, head chambermaid in the home of a millionaire, maid of all work in a two-servant family, helper in a church home for small girls, gentlewoman maid of all work in a philanthropic institution for dependent children, assistant in the loan department of a Wall Street banking institution—one of the largest in the world—and a clerk of the District Board for the city of New York. I addressed envelopes for the same mail-order house, was paid canvasser for the Woman Suffrage Party, proof-reader in that department of the International 

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Y. M. C. A. known as “the guts” of the organization, inspector in a gas-mask factory. I folded circulars in a large printing plant, stamped envelopes for yet another woman’s magazine, worked in the Social Service Department of Bellevue Hospital, was a clerk in the offices of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a license inspector for the same society, and finally saleswoman in the Store Beautiful—perhaps the largest and most beautiful store in the world.

Working shoulder to shoulder and living among my fellow workers on my wages, I became in reality one of the class known as Labor. I shared its misery during the months preceding the entrance of our country into the World War—caused by the continued low wages after the enormous increase in price of every necessity of life; and I suffered along with my fellows the nerve-racking period when our plea for an increase of wage hung in the balance. When finally the general increase was obtained I, with all other inhabitants of the underbrush, drew a breath of relief. When the trend of wages continued upward—judged by the reports in the daily press by leaps and bounds, but by us, who had struggled to keep body and soul together on six or seven dollars a week, or less—the feeling of relief deepened.

With the coming of national prohibition the atmosphere in the tenement districts of New York became almost that of contentment. Many women—hundreds of them—told me:

“My children have shoes, now that the saloon don’t get the first pull at my husband’s pay envelope. It’s grand!”

But that atmosphere of near-contentment did not continue long after the close of the war. During my last year in the underbrush, the working world—including office-workers—had become as one huge caldron simmering, simmering, simmering with suspicion, fear, and hate. One of the chief 

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causes, in New York City, at least, is the housing condition. While the homes of the rich in the Golden Zone remain untenanted the year round, the tenements are so enormously congested that decent family life is next to impossible. Children and young people are forced to spend their leisure time outside their homes. One result of which is the rapid increase in crime—the so-called “crime wave.”

Because I am convinced that these conditions in America are brought about chiefly by lack of understanding, I shall write in the chapters that follow my experience during my four years spent as a working woman in New York City. And I shall earnestly try to show conditions as they actually exist. The bits of conversations given will be taken directly from my diary, and are as nearly verbatim as I could write when each incident was fresh in my mind.

How long I stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, on that November morning, which now seems both so near and so far away, it is impossible for me to say. The spell that gripped me was broken by a sound like a whisper of a roar that increased until, with a clanking crash, an elevated train came to a halt at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street.

Turning down Fifth Avenue I set out in search of Alice Tompkins. Across Bryant Park a single lighted window near the top of a tall building flared out. In the east the waning moon hung a silver crescent against the purple-black curtain of fathomless space.

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