As to dancing, Bella's chum in Detroit used to go to a dance every single night and work all day. Sundays she'd go to a show and a dance. Bella tried it one week and had to lay off three days of the next week before she could get back to work. Lost her twenty-one dollars. No more of that for Bella. Just once in a while was enough for her.
They did not talk about “vamping dopes” at the brassworks. Everyone asked you if you were “keepin' company,” and talked of fellas and sweethearts and intended husbands. That was the scale. As before, all the married ones invariably advised against matrimony. Irish Minnie told us one lunch time that it was a bad job, this marrying business. “Of course,” she admitted, pulling on a piece of roast pork with her teeth, “my husband ain't what you'd call a _bad_ man.” That was as far as Minnie cared to go.
Perhaps one reason why the brassworks employed so many crooked and decrepit was as an efficiency measure. The few males who were whole caused so many flutterings among the female hands that it seriously interfered with production. Rosie's real cause for turning Frank down was that she was after Good Lookin'. Good Lookin' would not have been so good lookin' out along the avenue, but in the setting of our third floor he was an Adonis. Rosie worked a power press. I would miss the clank of her machine. There she would be up in the corner of the floor where Good Lookin' worked. Good Lookin' would go for a drink. Rosie would get thirsty that identical moment. They would carry on an animated conversation, to be rudely broken into by a sight of the boss meandering up their way. Rosie would make a dash for her machine, Good Lookin' would saunter over to his.
From the start I had pestered the boss to be allowed on a power press, for two reasons: one just because I wanted to—the same reason why a small boy wants to work at machinery; secondly, I wanted to be able to pose at the next job as an experienced power-press worker and sooner or later get a high-power machine. One day the boss was watching me at the foot press. “Y'know, m'girl, I think you really got intelligence, blessed if I don't. I'm goin' to push you right ahead. I'll make a machinist out of you yet, see if I don't. You stay right on here and you'll be making big money yet.” (Minnie—eleven years in her last job—fourteen dollars a week now.) Anyway, one morning he came up—and that morning foot presses of every description had lost all fascination for me—and he said, “You still want a power press?”