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Rose
Gollup emigrated from a small village in western Russia in 1892
at the age of twelve with her unmarried aunt. Her father, who
had come to New York City earlier, paid for their tickets. She
and her father lived in a rented room on the Lower East Side,
saving money to bring over her mother and her younger brothers
and sisters.
About
the same time the bitter cold came father told me one night that
he found work for me in a shop where he knew the presser. I lay
awake long that night. I was eager to begin life on my own responsibility
but was also afraid. We rose earlier than usual that morning for
father had to take me to the shop and not be over late for his
own work. I wrapped my thimble and scissors, with a piece of bread
for breakfast, in a bit of newspaper, carefully stuck two needles
into the lapel of my coat and we started.
The
shop was on Pelem Street, a shop district one block long and just
wide enough for two ordinary sized wagons to pass each other.
We stopped at a door where I noticed at once a brown shining porcelain
knob and a half rubbed off number seven. Father looked at his
watch and at me.
"Don't
look so frightened," he said. "You need not go in until
seven. Perhaps if you start in at this hour he will think you
have been in the habit of beginning at seven and will not expect
you to come in earlier. Remember, be independent. At seven o'clock
rise and go home no matter whether the others go or stay."
He
began to tell me something else but broke off suddenly, said "good-bye"
over his shoulder and went away quickly. I watched him until he
turned into Monroe street.
Now
only I felt frightened, and waiting made me nervous, so I tried
the knob. The door yielded heavily and closed slowly. I was half
way up when it closed entirely, leaving me in darkness. I groped
my way to the top of the stairs and hearing a clattering noise
of machines, I felt about, found a door, and pushed it open and
went in. A tall, dark, beardless man stood folding coats at a
table. I went over and asked him for the name (I don't remember
what it was). "Yes," he said crossly. "What do
you want?"
I
said, "I am the new feller hand." He looked at me from
head to foot. My face felt so burning hot that I could scarcely
see.
"It
is more likely," he said, "that you can pull bastings
than fell sleeve lining." Then turning from me he shouted
over the noise of the machine: "Presser, is this the girl?"
The presser put down the iron and looked at me. "I suppose
so," he said, "I only know the father."
The
cross man looked at me again and said, "Let's see what you
can do." He kicked a chair, from which the back had been
broken off, to the finisher's table, threw a coat upon it and
said raising the corner of his mouth: "Make room for the
new feller hand."
One
girl tittered, two men glanced at me over their shoulders and
pushed their chairs apart a little. By this time I scarcely knew
what I was about. I laid my coat down somewhere and pushed my
bread into the sleeve. Then I stumbled into the bit of space made
for me at the table, drew in the chair and sat down. The men were
so close to me on each side I felt the heat of their bodies and
could not prevent myself from shrinking away. The men noticed
and probably felt hurt. One made a joke, the other laughed and
the girls bent their heads low over their work. All at once the
thought came: "If I don't do this coat quickly and well he
will send me away at once." I picked up the coat and threaded
my needle, and began hastily, repeating the lesson father impressed
upon me. "Be careful not to twist the sleeve lining, take
small false stitches."
My
hands trembled so that I could not hold the needle properly. It
took me a long while to do the coat. But at last it was done.
I took it over to the boss and stood at the table waiting while
he was examining it. He took long, trying every stitch with his
needle. Finally he put it down and without looking at the table
I drew my knees close together and stitched as quickly as I could.
When
the pedlar came into the shop everybody bought rolls. I felt hungry
but I was ashamed and would not eat the plain, heavy rye bread
while the others ate rolls.
All
day I took my finished work and laid it on the boss's table. He
would glance at the clock and give me other work. Before the day
was over I knew that this was a "piece work shop," that
there were four machines and sixteen people were working. I also
knew that I had done almost as much work as the "grown-up
girls" and that they did not like me. I heard Betsy, the
head feller hand, talking about "a snip of a grl coming and
taking the very bread out of your mouth." The only one who
could have been my friend was the presser who knew my father.
But him I did not like. The worst I knew about him just now was
that he was a soldier because the men called him so. But a soldier,
I had learned, was capable of anything. And so, noticing that
he looked at me often, I studiously kept my eyes from his corner
of the room.
Seven
o'clock came and every one worked on. I wanted to rise as father
had told me to do and go home. But I had not the courage to stand
up alone. I kept putting off going from minute to minute. My neck
felt stiff and my back ached. I wished there were a back to my
chair so that I could rest against it a little. When the people
began to go home it seemed to me that it had been night a long
time.
The
next morning when I came into the shop at seven o'clock, I saw
at once that all the people were there and working as steadily
as if they had been at work a long while. I had just time to put
away my coat and go over to the table, when the boss shouted gruffly,
"Look here, girl, if you want to work here you better come
in early. No office hours in my shop." It seemed very still
in the room, even the machines stopped. And his voice sounded
dreadfully distinct. I hastened into the bit of space between
the two men and sat down. He brought me two coats and snapped,
"Hurry with these!"
From
this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except
by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried
me from early until late. He gave me only two coats at a time
to do. When I took them over and as he handed me the new work
he would say quickly and sharply, "Hurry!" And when
he did not say it in words he looked at me and I seemed to hear
even more plainly, "Hurry!" I hurried but he was never
satisfied....
[A
union organizer described the conditions that girls like Rose
worked under]. "Fourteen hours a day you sit on a chair,
often without a back, felling coats. Fourteen hours you sit close
to the other feller hand feeling the heat of her body against
yours, her breath on your face. Fourteen hours with your back
bent, your eyes close to your work you sit stitching in a dull
room often by gas light. In the winter during all these hours
as you sit stitching your body is numb with cold. In the summer,
as far as you are concerned, there might be no sun, no green grass,
no soft breezes. You with your eyes close to the coat on your
lap are sitting and sweating the livelong day. The black cloth
dust eats into your very pores. You are breathing the air that
all the other bent and sweating bodies in the shop are throwing
off, and the air that comes in from the yard heavy and disgusting
with the filth and the odour of the open toilets.
"If
any of you know this, and think about it, you say to yourselves,
no doubt, 'What is the use of making a fuss? Will the boss pay
any attention to me if I should talk to him? And anyway it won't
be for long. I won't stay in the shop all my life. I'll--perhaps
this year, or next-----.' Girls, I know your thought. You expect
to get married! Not so quick! Even the man who works in a shop
himself does not want to marry a white-faced dull-eyed girl who
for years has been working fourteen hours a day. He realises that
you left your strength in the shop, and that to marry you he would
take on a bundle of troubles, and doctor's bills on his head.
You know what he does most often? He sends to Russia for a girl
he once knew, one who has never seen the inside of a shop. Or
else he marries the little servant girl with the red cheeks and
bright eyes.
"And
even if you do marry, are you so secure? Don't forget that your
husband himself is working in the shop fourteen hours and more
a day, breathing the filthy air and the cloth dust. How long will
he last? Who knows! You may have to go back to the shop. And even
worse than this may be awaiting you. Your children may have to
go to the shop! And unless you, now, change it, they may have
to run through the streets in the rain and snow in her worn little
shoes, and thin coat. She will stand trembling before the boss
in the same dull shop, perhaps, where you had once stood. She
will sit in the same backless chair, rickety now, with her little
back bent, for fourteen hours."
Rose
Cohen, Out of the Shadows, 108-112, 123-127
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