Such a state of affairs is indeed worth following up....
Monday morning he came around breezily—he really was a cordial, kindly soul—and said; “Well, dearie, how are you this morning?”
“Good as anybody can be on twelve dollars a week.”
“_Ach_, forget it, forget it! Always money, money! Whether a person gets ten cents or three hundred dollars—it's not the money that counts”—his hands went up in the air—“it's the _service_!”
Yet employers tell labor managers they must not sentimentalize.
A bit later he came back. “I tell you what I'll do. You stay late every night this week and work Saturday afternoon like I told you you should, and I'll pay you for it!”
To such extremes a sense of justice can carry one! (Actually, he had expected that extra work of me gratis!)
During the week I figured out that in his own heart that boss had figured out a moral equivalent for a living wage. There was nothing he would not do for me. Did he but come in my general direction, I was given a helping hand. He joked with me continually. The hammer and nails were always busy. I was not only “dearie,” I was “sweetheart.” But fourteen dollars a week—that was another story.
Ada was full of compassion and suggested various arguments I should use next week on the boss. It was awful what he paid me, Ada declared. She too would talk to him.
The second week I got closer to the girls. Or, more truthfully put, they got closer to me. At the other factories I had asked most of the questions and answered fewer. Here I could hardly get a question in edgewise for the flood which was let loose on me. I explained in each factory that I lived with a widow who brought me from California to look after her children. I did some work for her evenings and Saturday afternoon and Sunday, to pay for my room and board. Not only was I asked every conceivable question about myself, but at the dress factory I had to answer uncountable questions about the lady I lived with—her “gentlemen friends,” her clothes, her expenses. It was like pulling teeth for me to get any information out of the girls.
In such a matter as reading, for example. Every girl I asked was fond of reading. What kind of books? Good books. Yes, but the names. I got _We Two_ out of Sarah, and Jean was reading Ibsen's _Doll's House_. It was a swell book, a play. After hours one night she told me the story. Together with Ada's concern over my grammar it can be seen that I left the dress factory in intellectual advance over the condition in which I entered.